In Another’s Shoes
Mum and Al are in the Blue Ridge Mountains this week.
Driving along Skyline Drive and hiking every chance they get.
Since they are preoccupied,
I offered to write this week’s blog post.
A picture of the Blue Ridge Mountains from Skyline Drive, sent to me by mum since they have been away.
My name is Lysa. I am the fiddler in the background, the manager of the website, the cheerleader jumping up and down in the stands, and Pamela Anderson’s daughter.
Coming up with a topic for this blog post was harder than I thought it would be. During brainstorming sessions with my mum, it seems so easy for me to throw out ideas for potential blog posts left and right. Now that I am sitting at my computer, I keep pausing over my keyboard.
I finally settled on writing about being in my mother’s shoes. Sitting down with the purpose to write something completely unprompted, rather than in response to someone’s question. Being able to respond has served me well as a skill. Sounding confident, knowing just enough about the topic in question, having enough background knowledge to fill in the gaps; these are all key to crafting a good response.
Turns out, sitting down with the purpose to write something new left me slightly stumped.
I think I knew this would be harder for me, since when I was tasked with writing a bio for The Morgan staff website, it took forever. I thought it was writing about myself that was the roadblock. Unexpectedly, it was the creation part I was struggling with.
This was quite the epiphany for me. I have always considered myself to be unconstrained by the confines of possibility. Letting imagination run wild. Looking back, I see that my only creative endeavors since graduating college have been work related. Though, even in college there was a prompt to guide what I was doing.
Being able to write this post, ended up giving me more than I even considered. When mum and Al return from the mountains, I will talk to her about what I have written here. Maybe she can help me fit more comfortably in my own creating shoes. Especially since I realized, my feet are too small to fit in hers.
This was the finished drawing of the Blue Ridge Mountains that I drew for the Widowmaker Chapbook cover art.
