An MFRW Author Post – And check out the other blogs on the hop!
At the moment, we are isolated in a 749 square-foot apartment in downtown Nashville and I am grateful every day for my balcony garden. I have spent hours and hours cultivating a green space in an urban environment, trees, vegetables, herbs, pollinating flowers, and fruits, all the while longing for earth to call my own.
But the moment I’m calling a country estate or a little farmhouse like the one I’ve always dreamed of home, the moment I’ll be dreaming of this city balcony, of the constant squealing of the freight trains and the cacophony of city life. And thus the cycle continues ad infinitum.
It is not that I am impossible to please, but rather that I am too easily pleased, that I want all of these moments, sand between my toes, the jet-setting lifestyle, a well-loved, long-cultivated orchard, a leather-clad library, an eco-minimalist space.
As writers, our job is to take in the world around us and to make sense of it. And how can I possibly make sense when I cannot see the country for the city, the ranch for the beach house? It is not merely in living spaces that I find myself constantly on the search for something new, but in jobs (journalist or astronaut, as if I ever had a chance ) in aesthetic wanderings — dark academia, boho beachy, rustic chic? I am forever dipping my toes into new ponds, exploring new hobbies, and forever dropping projects that no longer interest me.
Because I need to know as much as I possibly can in order to find any answers to the questions we ask every day. I need to live in the city and the country, I need to learn salsa and violin and how to make pasta. I collect these skills and lack-there-of like a dragon and her gold, sitting upon snippets of language, trips to foreign lands, mythological texts, TED Talks, and historical periods. To be a writer is to be innately curious and to be curious is to never be satisfied, always searching, exploring, looking, on a journey that is the destination.
And I love it. It may seem like I am never satisfied, never able to find what I am looking for, but that’s not true. I am always satisfied, always happy, always taking the next step toward that something that might be in the country and might be in the city, at the beach or in the mountains. Perhaps today is for high heels, or aviator sunglasses or floral dresses or leather jackets. Perhaps today is for tea or wine or coffee or lemonade.
I am thankful because today, right now, in these challenging times, when the world has more questions than ever before, this little balcony garden in my city apartment feels like exactly where I’m supposed to be. For now, at least.