telling stories | Miss Mustard Seed

I’ve been telling stories here on this blog since 2009, but they’ve mostly been stories about furniture, about my business, my work, and my creative endeavors.  About refinishing floors as a novice, about my first magazine feature, about the exciting firsts for my business that unfolded as I shared online.  As this blog continues to morph and I continue to evolve as an artist and a person, I have decided to start sharing some of my personal stories here.

These are the stories I tell when sitting around a table with friends, ones that Jeff has heard repeatedly through our 27 years of marriage, ones I revisit because they are funny, memorable, or a part of what has shaped me to be the human I am.  While I do hope the stories entertain, encourage, and offer something to those who still visit long-form blogs like mine, I think I’m doing this more for myself than for anyone else.

Perhaps I’m doing it for my boys as well, since they are still at the age when they tune out as I lapse into a story from my younger years.  I know that might not always be the case, and personal stories are precious and should be recorded.

This blog isn’t going to become a Dear Diary.  In all honesty, I’m not 100% sure where this blog is heading over the next five years, but I find there is less pressure around it this year, and I am feeling more freedom to experiment.  It doesn’t feel as costly to try new things and shed some of the things that were successful in the past, but have lost their luster.

I’ll still share about creativity, art, my house, gardening, books I’m reading, things I’m learning, experiments, and following my curiosity, but I’ll sprinkle in a few stories here and there, as I remember them and feel compelled to share.

I’ve learned a lot about writing over almost 17 years of professional writing, blogging, contributing freelance articles, and penning several books.  One of the things I’ve learned is that the first spark of an idea feels like it could fill an entire series of books.  There’s a rush of excitement that gets my mind buzzing.  It’s the best idea ever, and I could write about it endlessly.  I’ll blow away any wordcount requirement set by the publisher.  Once the spark requires an outline, fleshed-out paragraphs, and an overarching point, it starts to feel a little thin.  It’s not going to require volumes to exhaust this topic.  One chapter might even be a struggle.  Then you sink into the dark night of the soul of a writing project until you slowly dig yourself out.

While I feel that spark about this idea, I really only have a few stories in mind to write about, and only one or two that feel worth telling in a format beyond a casual chat with a friend.  But I have learned that the spark can be tended, fanned, and coaxed into a fire.  Pecking out a 300-word memory might feel good and be worthwhile, if even only just for myself.   I feel like once I start telling the stories, I will remember more.  I’ll sift through the past and keep alert to new stories that should be told.  I trust momentum will kick in, as it often does with such things.

At the very least, it will provide more practice to hone my writing skills.  It’ll be like the sketchbook studies that have improved my paintings…

PS – The photos in this post are of the “book of trees” I made a couple of years ago as creative play.  I never did any drawings or writing in it.  Once I finished it, initially intending it to be a blank canvas, I felt like it was art in and of itself.  I have considered adding a few verses or sketches, but I am more tempted to leave it as is.