for the sheer love of it.
We had just pulled out the bin of Christmas decorations from the garage, hauling it inside with a grunt, when a tiny voice in the back of my head whispered, What’s the point?
What’s the point of decking the house, swapping out the decor atop the piano, slipping new photos into picture frames? Why bother this year? Why bother placing tiny glittery trees among the bookshelves? Exchanging grapefruit candles for cedar balsam?
My family loves a good Christmas tree, but their enthusiasm for Christmas decor mostly stops there. If we were to get a tree and hang stockings (you know, the two things connected to presents), they’d be perfectly content to call it done. The gold “merry” sign, the wooden angel, the holiday knick knacks I’ve been collecting over the years? Those are mostly for me. The fresh garland I go out of my way to secure from Trader Joe’s the week it becomes available? Definitely for me.
Nobody in my family cares that I scored a brand new faux wreath—originally from Anthropologie with a $65 price tag attached!—for a whopping $20 on Facebook Marketplace. Nobody cares that I wander around the house rearranging bookshelves and dropping fresh stems of eucalyptus into empty jars, clipping Christmas cards to a hanging display I bought on clearance last New Year’s Eve.
The fact that I am the only one who seems to care about the dozens of tiny tweaks I make to our home decor this season has never really bothered me before, because someone else always sees it. We usually have people in our home this time of year. Play dates over winter break, a Christmas wrapping party with my girlfriends, family get-togethers with food and music. We’ve always had some semblance of hustle and bustle in our home during December, and I could always count on someone else to appreciate my efforts.
“Wow, it looks beautiful in here!”
“Your home is lovely!”
I don’t wish to imply I only decorate for the sake of receiving such compliments, but, if I am honest, the desire to transform our home into a winter wonderland is largely driven by a desire to share that winter wonderland with other people.
I don’t know how I would possibly track this, but I feel confident I am telling the truth when I tell you I have written more words in 2020 than any other recent year. It is entirely possible I have written more this past year than any other year of my life.
The majority of that work is sitting in a notebook and a folder of Google docs that will never see the light of day. I started doing morning pages this year, for the first time ever. The concept, coined by Julia Cameron, is simple:
Morning Pages are three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning. *There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages*—they are not high art. They are not even “writing.” They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind—and they are for your eyes only. Do not over-think Morning Pages: just put three pages of anything on the page … and then do three more pages tomorrow.
Despite Julia’s insistence, and even rave reviews about this practice from friends I trust, I struggled to wrap my mind around the process. I didn’t adopt it right away because I was skeptical of its use.
I’m a type 3 on the enneagram, which means I lean toward productivity over everything. I thrive best when producing, accomplishing, finishing tasks. As a writer, one way that manifests is: my creative work is often wrapped up in output. If I am writing something, 9 times out of 10, I am writing with the intent of publishing. I am writing a blog post, an essay, a freewrite for social media. It’s not that I never write for myself or keep anything private, but I struggle to do so.
Because doing so feels like a giant waste of time.
Why write stream of consciousness pages that nobody will ever read when I could be chipping away at blog posts, essays, Instagram captions? What is the point of writing three pages of garbage each morning that nobody will read when I could be working on real drafts of something I could share with the world?
***
We are still finalizing our holiday plans, but this much I know: hardly anyone is coming to our house this Christmas. By my current calculations, at most we will have a total of three people cross the threshold of our front door this month, all at different times.
There will be no playdates over winter break. There will be no wrapping party, no girls’ movie night, no hosting friends for dinner, no big Christmas Eve hubbub.
Knowing this much, as I unpacked our Christmas bin a few weeks ago and began sorting through various decor items, I considered—is it worth it to decorate this whole house if nobody else sees it?
If I decorate simply because I want to, simply because I find joy in adorning our home with holly sprigs and cinnamon sticks and paper bag snowflakes—is that enough to justify the hours spent doing it (and then undoing it a month later)?
***
I wrote a grand total of four essays in 2019. Toward the end of that year, I felt disheartened about the state of my creative work. I had a baby this year is what I told myself, knowing full well the real excuse ran deeper than that. I had spent the majority of 2019 allowing perfectionism to make a home for itself in my mind and my heart. Every time I sat down to write, I felt wholly and completely paralyzed. Instead of attempting to work through it, I simply surrendered to the cycle: stare at a blank page, feel panic rising in my chest, convince myself I’m a terrible writer, walk away. The less I wrote, the more daunting writing became.
Contrary to the fairytale promises of a sparkly new day planner, I didn’t wake up in 2020 with a new mindset, or a healed attitude. There was no magic trick come January 1. Getting unstuck happened slowly, gradually, over the course of an entire year.
In 2020, I adopted two habits that have completely changed my writing:
I started getting up at 5:30am to read, pray, and do morning pages Monday-Friday.
I formed a writing mastermind group with three close friends.
Here’s what happened …
The more I did morning pages, the more comfortable I got with my shitty first drafts (as Anne Lamott charmingly calls them). The more comfortable I got with my shitty first drafts, the more inclined I was to show them to my mastermind group. The more drafts I showed to my mastermind group, the more feedback I got on my writing. The more feedback I got on my writing, the more I grew in my craft. The more I grew in my craft, the more work I produced. The more work I produced, the more art I offered the world.
But here’s where it gets tricky. All signs point back to morning pages—or writing for the sake of writing, or writing for absolutely nobody but yourself. All signs point back to rising in the dark, writing in a notebook nobody will read, personal accountability, discipline, an authentic desire to follow your own call to create.
You have to be the one to make the first move.
You have to write for yourself, for the sheer love of it, in order for all the other dominoes to fall into place.
It’s almost Christmas. Every morning I wake up at 5:30am and walk past three hanging paper bag snowflakes in the dark. I pour myself a cup of coffee and curl up on the couch with my devotional, Bible, and notebook. From where I sit, I can see a little pinecone garland I carefully strung across the wall hanging, next to our letterboard I updated to read, The thrill of hope / A weary world rejoices. For the next 30 minutes or so, I will sit here, in silence, reading and praying and writing.
I am completely alone. Nobody sees me do this. It is unseen, invisible work. Planting seeds for fruit that will—hopefully—emerge later. I catch a glimpse of a little gold jar filled with cinnamon sticks sitting on the bookshelf across from me. I can’t help but smile. Nobody cares that I put that there.
But it’s beautiful. And I love it.
And that’s enough to keep me adorning the house for Christmas, year after year. And it's enough to keep me writing every morning. Even if nobody sees.
