January: Love!

Grew: zucchini seedlings, carrot seedlings, sweet corn seedlings, spinach and lettuce.

Wrote: two weddings, a letter to no one about the river, the first chapter of ‘My Magic Garden’

Discovered/ learnt/ wondered: I loooove weddings; bliss ball recipe; why isn’t photography a major part of ‘The Plan’?

Read: “Big Magic: Creative living beyond Fear” by Elizabeth Gilbert

Successes: 300,000 + steps, 2,000 + squats, booked six new weddings, walked up Durie Hill steps and didn’t die.

Struggled with: sugar cravings, faulty pedometers, lack of sleep.

Highlight: A friend’s wedding

Seeing the first completed month of the plan laid out like that is pretty awesome! What a great start to the year it’s been. The sun is shining, weather is sweet. Yeah.

A major part of The Plan is cultivating a garden, and the sweet January weather has been simply stellar for this. The small picture is the veggie patch, but the big picture is cultivating a life that is more sustainable, putting our land to good use, and creating a relationship with nature. The simple act of planting vegies is having a huge number of benefits for me and my family, like it does for anyone who has a wee patch of their own. It’s saving us money, first and foremost. It gets me outside for longer. I have a sense of purpose and responsibility. I’m learning about seedlings and fruit trees and different ways to deal with those damn slaters, and Alice is learning about it all, too. Alice and the garden is probably the best thing of all. And it wasn’t until our beautiful tomato plants were mauled by the next door neighbours’ scary razorback pig that I realised how much I’ve enjoyed taking care of those little plants.

By crikey, I love gardening. Who knew?

I didn’t only start work on the garden this month; I started work on the creative flow, too. The first weeks of The Plan coincided with my wonderful sister buying a book for me, Big Magic. It is one author’s take on creativity and, essentially, how we can fall in love with our art. I devoured this book and its wisdom. ‘Big Magic’ is the term used to describe the enigma of creativity, inspiration, and our desire to allow the ideas that visit us to manifest. This book, if nothing else, reminded me of how prolifically I wrote as a child and teenager, when I felt ideas flow through me on seas of words that I sailed at my leisure. It reminded me that writing never used to be hard work and that ideas were free. It can be that way again!

When I finished the book I said out loud; ‘Hey, inspiration, I’m gonna need you to start visiting me more often, if that’s ok with you.’ Because this book isn’t a ‘how to create’ self-help book, it is a book about how we open ourselves to the new, the unexpected, the scary and the life-changing. I’m going to need all those skills in the months to come not just for writing but for the physical challenges, too.

So, since I invited inspiration in, she’s visited every Tuesday. She sails in, hands me an oar and pulls me on board, and I feel the sea rush me again. Before she leaves I say thank you; I don’t want to seem ungrateful for her help.

I love the writing process. It’s as much an affirmation as it is a revelation.

I have used Big Magic to help write and edit weddings, delivering five this month and preparing for four that are coming up. And even though I’ve been doing this for five years, the depth and significance of these moments that I am so privileged to be a part of is only just starting to sink in. I hear couples in love declare all kinds of wonderful promises to each other all the time, but do you know what got me? It was a man who, as he slipped a ring on to his wife’s finger, said these words with all confidence;
“This is my greatest gift of love. And it’s only for you.”
I was so close to his self-assurance and complete commitment to those words I felt it spark in the air. I am not saying that those before him didn’t mean it, I’m saying that something inside me has opened up enough to see the weight of their words.

And then on the last Saturday of January, I was a guest at my friend’s wedding, a guest at the first wedding out of 35 in the past five years. A series of events and mistakes on my part meant I was not their celebrant but I think if I was, I would not have seen their wedding for what it really was. I don’t know why, but hearing them pledge to stay together forever – and knowing they are two individuals that will honour that pledge – shook me so much that I still can’t put how I felt in to words.

I love weddings.

This is why January can be summed up with the word ‘love’. Mostly those weddings, but those words I’ve written, too, and all that life around me. It’s all love. I can take that love I discovered in Paul and Alice and apply it elsewhere, find it elsewhere, feel it elsewhere.

Love is sweet. Makes you wanna move jah dancing feet, yeah.