Monday Whatevers
July 25, 2022
Hello, Friend!
It’s Monday, so… inspired by on one of my favorite bits of the Bible, let’s start every week off with a little bit of whatever’s good and noble in the world. Here are a few excellent and noteworthy things I’m seeing in the world right now. Some are beautiful, promising, and reassuring. Some are poignant, thought-provoking, and necessary. All of them add to a greater knowing of God’s presence in this world, within our humanity, and out in the great beyond. And, they all prove there’s an abundance of spectacular, breathtaking tangible and intangible cosmic matter between us.
Please feel free to share in the comments whatever is good that you’re seeing in the world as well.
Blessings,
Marcie
This week I went with friends to a lovely creative retreat hosted by Roxane Gay, Tressie McMillan Cottom, and Debbie Millman.
I feel so blessed (a friend gifted me this trip—wow) and I would like to pass on the blessing of these women’s wisdom with you this week for my Monday Whatever.
ON WRITING…
The things we touch and smell and see and experience through our senses are how stories become powerful. But I have never wanted to only tell powerfully evocative stories. I have wanted to tell evocative stories that become a problem for power.
Tressie McMillian Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays
My sad stories will always be there. I am going to keep telling them even though I hate having the stories to tell. These sad stories will always weigh on me, though that burden lessens the more I realize who I am and what I am worth.
Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
When I write, I am fixing my feet. I am claiming the ethos, or moral authority, to influence public discourse. And I am defying every expectation when I do it.
Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays
You never know when a typical life will be anything but, and you won’t know if you are rewriting history, or rewriting the future, until the writing is complete.
Debbie Millman, Look Both Ways: Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design
ON READING…
I learned a long time ago that life introduces young people to situations they are in no way prepared for, even good girls, lucky girls who want for nothing. Sometimes, when you least expect it, you become the girl in the woods. You lose your name because another one is forced on you. You think you are alone until you find books about girls like you. Salvation is certainly among the reasons I read. Reading and writing have always pulled me out of the darkest experiences in my life. Stories have given me a place in which to lose myself. They have allowed me to remember. They have allowed me to forget. They have allowed me to imagine different endings and better possible worlds.
Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist
ON A WELL-LIVED LIFE…
If you perceive the universe as being a universe of abundance, then it will be. If you think of the universe as one of scarcity, then it will be…If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve. Do what you love, and don’t stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities, don’t compromise, and don’t waste time. Start now. Not 20 years from now, not two weeks from now. Now.
Debbie Millman, How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer
You have to make your own happiness, wherever you are. Your job isn't going to make you happy, your spouse isn't going to make you happy, the weather isn't going to make you happy....You have to decide what you want, and you have to find that way of doing it, whether or not the outside circumstances are going to participate in your success...You have to be able to create your own happiness, period. And if you can't, then you need to find a good shrink who can help you figure out what it's going to take.
Debbie Millman, Design Matters
ON PURPOSE…
I want to be able to show up and raise the hell at the precise right moment that might tip the scales in a way that will make something a little more clear, or a little bit more just, for people I care about.
Tressie McMillan Cottom, “Raising Really Good Hell for People Who Can’t”
ON FREEDOM & WORTH…
They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that ugly is as ugly does. Both are lies. Ugly is everything done to you in the name of beauty. Knowing the difference is part of getting free.
Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays
I am stronger than I am broken.
Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
May your week be filled with whatever is true, honest, just, pure, lovely, gracious, excellent, and worthy of praise.
Much Peace,
Marcie, BCWWF
🔥 Oooh. This morning I turned down a second job that would have made a 7 day warehouse workweek future for me. I am believing in better for myself and found courage to face the uncertainties and the value in myself that would have hidden. I'm committing to a more complicated and long term process of cultivating one on one relationships both in job searching and in personal life that my time allows, and most importantly a more trusting relationship with what God is nudging me. I want my life to be a life of hope for those around me and I'm starting with me and how I value myself. God was nudging me not to take it but I was scared of life getting harder by facing the things that are really holding me back. The courage these writers share in committing to a life of continuous personal development
is really encouraging- facing down the fears inherent in their calling. En-couraging. Have courage and those around you will see in you hope to find it too. It's not the same as comfort or assurance. I have a friend whose creations unsettle and upset and disrupt me a little bit because she has the courage to face off real things in her life and share about it. She's not just an image of success but an artist doing battle with real stuff. Being confronted with what you will need courage for is scary. Seeing someone standing against it with feet flat on the ground and admiring their life is a strange mixture of coaching and creating and challenging. How do we expect to be encouraged without ourselves being confronted with our own unsettling realities that ask us to stand our ground with courage. And somehow in the midst this person has comfort assurance and grace to share. Maybe we have to have courage first and face things and with time maybe others will be encouraged but we have to have courage as best we can. Anyways that you made time to rest, retreat, and share these in this space and allow me some voice here, much peace and respect and happy Monday!
Telling stories that become a problem for power! Yes! I resonate with this deeply and experience this in your writing too --keep writing, Marcie 💖🔥✨