Catching Dew Drops

This morning I sit down to write freely for the first time in a few too many weeks.

Lately, life has required that creativity hop in the backseat and ride passenger for a little while between moving house, hospital visits and a few other wildcards thrown in for good measure.

This morning there are still, as there always will be, a list of “urgent” things pulling at my attention. But they can take their turn waiting for these next 3 hours, while I take the time for a creative release to pour some of the ideas that have been bubbling away up in my brain, onto paper.

Even though the time to write creatively has been in short supply in recent weeks, the ideas have still been arriving. Popping up and dinging in my brain constantly, like my iphone when I forget to turn those pesky newsfeed notifications off.

My ideas don’t usually arrive at convenient times, like now, for example, when I have notepads and pens and a laptop at my fingertips. Nope, my story seeds like to sprout in moments where capturing them is a challenge. Like they want me to prove I REALLY want them. Driving. In the supermarket. During a play date with too many small children requiring constant supervision. In the shower. On hold interminably with Optus, Energex or AGL.

And if I am “too busy” to notice them. If I don’t stop to capture that first seed of an idea and write it down on anything that resembles a scrap of paper as a promise to that idea that I will absolutely commit to doing it justice as soon as I possibly can. It disappears. Ideas don’t enjoy waiting around for me. Unless I make that first scribbly promise.  They are like the morning dew drops that settle on the nasturtium leaves in my winter garden. If I don’t take a moment to notice them for their beauty in the moment…if I decide to rush back inside and make a cup of coffee, put a load of washing on and get the lunchboxes ready first…by the time I get back out to the garden with my lukewarm cup of coffee, ready to enjoy them on my timeline, all those dew drops have disappeared.

An important part of my journey this year has been learning to stop for the small moment it takes to properly notice the beauty of fleeting things, like dew drops. It may only be seconds…but those seconds are often the ones that sustain me for the rest of the day. I am getting better at stopping for the seconds it takes to capture the magical ideas for stories that come to me, before they get tired of trying to get my attention, and dissolve into whirlwind of any given day.

So here I sit, surrounded by a curious collection of captured ideas.  My little dew drops. They’re scrawled over Bunnings receipts, old envelopes, a collection of notebooks, the back of my children’s discarded art work, one odd fish & chip shop napkin and a whole lot of iPhone ‘Notes’.

And this morning, for the rest of the time I have to myself, I get to pick one idea up, dust it off (quite literally in some cases), and keep my scribbly promise to try do it justice through the magic of the written word.

So here’s to catching the metaphorical dew drops in your life, whatever form they happen to arrive in. Here’s to stopping for the small stuff…so that we may grow.