What makes you feel like the best version of you?
Posted by Anna on 17 Nov 2007 | Tagged as: Chit Chat, Writing Life
Home again. I’ve just spent a week with twelve writers at the beach. I slept to the song of the ocean and woke to work until I couldn’t go without coffee a second longer. Then, usually back to work, unless I couldn’t bear to go another second without walking on the beach.
I don’t normally sleep well. I slept a lot–still not all the night through, but more hours. I thought about new stories (and actually started one that taunted me all the way home today).
I wrote and wrote and talked about writing, and learned about new people and enjoyed making new friends. It was almost hard to leave.
Especially the water. I spent two hours yesterday with my feet mostly in the water, saying goodbye to the ocean. I didn’t realize it was two hours, until I finally sensed my frozen face and toes.
Deep down, in the places where I’m nothing except the bits and pieces of raw soul and feeling that form me, the ocean owns me. I feel more peace. I feel brighter, and I feel creative at the beach.
But I had to come home. I have family and a cat and things I have to do. So, here’s my task, to bring that part of me that flowers in sand and ocean and the wind tumbling the clouds with salt–home. To be that happy, peaceful, excited person here, locked on land with my laptop and most of the people I love best.
What is your beach? And how do you manage to live as if you’re there, when you cannot be?
Oh, Anna, I read your post with a little lump in my throat. I was born and raised by the sea and my energy levels always peak when I’m in smelling distance of that wonderful salty air. On my desk sit a few pebbles and shells from my native beach, and bright linens and fripperies from the south of France brighten my home. My daily meditation practice includes a visualization which requires using all the senses, and the ones involving water in some form always seem to make me feel the most peaceful and contented.
November 18th, 2007 at 7:53 amAnna, lovely post. I have secret offices-one on a sandy beach with wild breakers, one on a cliff overlooking a rocky beach far below. It’s funny, I never thought of the fact my secret offices are always by water. Of course, they are also only in my mind but I purposely go there often. One thing that helps me go to these secret places is recorded music of the ocean surf and other water sounds. Dan Gibson does lovely ones–no musical accompaniment–only the sound of water.
I also have a picture posted above my work area of French doors opening to an ocean view.
Thank you for reminding me of my favorite secret places.
November 18th, 2007 at 9:36 amTricia,
I know exactly how you feel. I was also born and raised on a beach, and I so miss it. I picked up a couple of shells on the retreat beach to put with my own home beach shells. Who knows? They might have rubbed barnacles in the past!
Thanks so much for your comment. I’m definitely trying to reclaim that amazing peace. And I’m trying to remember how it felt to walk around with a smile on my face at all times. That’s the way to live!
Come back and share beach stories again!
Anna
November 19th, 2007 at 9:48 amLinda,
I’m going to borrow your secret office refuge. What a great idea. Honestly, in the middle of the night on Friday/Saturday when I was lying awake, listening to the waves I wondered how I’d manage to leave–as much as I missed my family. I quickly downloaded a beach album from iTunes, but I was stuck because I didn’t know which one to choose.
Thanks for the secret office advice (excellent!) and for the Dan Gibson suggestion. I’m heading back to iTunes!
We three should start a beach writers unite group!
And our mission statement will be to feast upon the creativity of water and salt and wind any time we need it!
November 19th, 2007 at 9:52 am