What Was There When I Stopped Looking for Signs

A close up a plant growing in front of a wicker basket.

When I was online dating, I was looking for all the signs.

We were both born in August!
His profile picture has a dog in it!
She emailed me on the 27th, my favourite number!

I was looking for signals that this was right, because I thought that a good relationship was one where everything felt right. I didn’t think that love was a choice I could make. I thought it was a summer rain I would suddenly be engulfed in.

It was the same when we were looking for a studio for Firefly. I would fall in love with an address, a street with the same name as my great aunt, a landlord who was a writer. I looked for resonance, gut feelings. And there were many of those, but none of them worked out.

It turns out that none of it mattered.

The person I would fall deeply (slowly, fearfully, awkwardly) in love with would be one who didn’t stand out at first. Who wasn’t born in August. Who didn’t write me on the 27th. I chose to love him. And I continue to make that choice, every day.

And, the studio we found was 1898 Danforth, as uninspired an address as possible, with a landlord who didn’t give a shit about Firefly, just wanted us to pay our bills on time.

I feel wildly fortunate to have these loves — Ian and 1898 Danforth — but they’re no thanks to my sensitive psychic antenna. They’re here because I pried my stubborn heart open again and again, and got lucky.

But can you blame me for trying?

When something matters deeply, we call our whole selves into finding it.

The trouble comes when we require life to bring us signals and signs along with the gifts it’s already shoring up.

Writers. I’m talking to you.

Writing matters deeply. So it’s so easy to fall into thinking that we need everything to be just right in order to do it. We need to shovel the snow first, get all the emails answered, the cereal boxes off the counter. Lined up. Smallest to largest. We think that only then the writing will come… in showers of inspiration, impossible to ignore.

We’re waiting for the moment when our creative energy gets so intense that it lassos us out of the chaos of distractions like the helpless calf that we are and draws us in.

But you are not a helpless calf.

You can just… choose to write.

As a physical practice, writing is very ordinary. It’s something we say yes or no to every day. And it’s something we can keep saying yes or no to, along with the shovelling, along with Instagram, along with of all the other ka-jillion demands and distractions.

And that, my friend, is the hard part.

It’s hard to choose to do something that no one might notice.
It’s hard to choose to do something that may not make money.
It’s hard to choose to do something that’s just for us.

But hard is fine. My life would be a lot simpler if I didn’t have these 850 square feet of commercial space to manage and I was dating whoever I felt like. But simple isn’t what I’m here for. Creation, effort, devotion, production — to me, that’s what creative energy is for.

In my experience, it never gets easy, but it gets easier. Writing begets writing. The more we choose, the more the choice comes naturally. And there’s company in the struggle. And it’s pretty beautiful in there. Despite the distraction, and self-doubt, there is so much sweetness when we towards it fully and say yes.

In it with you,