There was lightning to the south at three o’clock in the morning.
Not over my house. Not over my yard. Not even close enough to feel like a problem. Just far enough away to be beautiful.
So there I was, coffee in hand, standing in the living room window while somebody else’s storm lit up the sky in soft blue flashes. Every few seconds the clouds would appear, then disappear, like the night was taking notes and changing its mind.
It was quiet in the house.
The dogs were asleep.
No one needed anything.
No one was asking me a question, assigning me a task, or moving a finish line. For a little while, it was just me and somebody else’s storm, and I was very happy to keep it that way.
Later that same day, I drew tiny pictures of a movie I haven’t made yet so I can figure out how to make the movie I haven’t made yet.
That is not a sentence I ever expected to be true about my life, but here we are.
This week, I worked on storyboards for my little animated short. “Worked on” may be generous. “Squinted at, second-guessed, erased, redrew, and occasionally admired from across the room as though they belonged to someone more competent” might be more accurate. But storyboards are not there to be beautiful. They are there to help a person make decisions. Where is the camera? Who is standing where? What has to exist in the scene? What is actually going on besides my vague claim that “something happens here”?
Apparently dreams eventually require paperwork.
And I am learning that if you want to make a thing, a real thing, there is a long stretch in the middle where it does not look impressive at all. It looks like little gray sketches. It looks like testing. It looks like wondering why you have done this to yourself. It looks like a woman in her sixties sitting at home drawing a sunflower-headed person in a kitchen while bread rises in the bread machine and a neighbor mows somewhere down the street.
I realize that from the outside this may not look like a thrilling life.
But I am starting to suspect that “thrilling” has been oversold.
This week, I also took the dogs to the vet. I had been mentally preparing for that outing for days, because when you have two dogs, one human, leashes, a waiting room, and a standard poodle who believes every trip away from home is the social event of the season, there is always potential for nonsense.
Nothing went wrong.
The dogs were fine. The vet was lovely. We all survived.
And because I grew up in a family where “just in case” was practically a spiritual principle, I had taken the following day off too. Just in case the vet trip became a catastrophe. Just in case the dogs were traumatized. Just in case I was traumatized. Just in case the universe felt underappreciated and wanted to remind us who was in charge.
But there was no catastrophe.
So suddenly I had an unexpectedly available Wednesday.
And what did I do with this miraculous gift from the gods of unnecessary preparation?
I worked on the website. Finalized the shot list for the movie. Vacuumed the house, thereby offending both dogs at a deep personal level. Did laundry. Drew storyboards.
In other words, I used my free day to continue being exactly myself.
Years ago, I might have looked at a day like that and said nothing important happened.
Now I’m not so sure.
Because here is what I am learning in this little season of making things: doing something you care about does not have to be grand to matter. It does not need applause. It does not need a market strategy. It does not need permission from younger, cooler, louder people. Sometimes it just needs a table, a little time, and your willingness to begin badly.
I think a lot of loneliness creeps in through idleness and discouragement.
Not all of it. I’m not going to pretend a hobby solves every human sorrow. It doesn’t.
But there is a particular kind of lonely that starts whispering when your mind has nothing to bite into and your hands have nothing to do. It tells you your life is shrinking. It tells you the interesting part is over. It tells you other people are out there living while you are here folding laundry, taking dogs to the vet, and wondering whether your cartoon sunflower should be two inches farther to the left.
I would like to file a grievance with that voice.
Because while it is talking, some of us are quietly building worlds.
Some of us are learning new software later in life. Some of us are drawing terrible little sketches that turn into better ones. Some of us are making music, writing stories, baking bread, planting tomatoes, repainting old chairs, mending curtains, knitting afghans, or teaching ourselves to edit video after the age when the culture assumes we should be reducing ourselves to sensible routines and orthopedic shoes.
I reject that.
I am not interested in becoming less alive just because the calendar has continued its reckless march.
So this week I drew my storyboards.
They are rough. They are imperfect. They are a little ridiculous. They are also proof that I am still here, still curious, still making connections, still trying to turn imagination into something I can hold up to the light.
And I think that matters.
Not because I am making a six-minute animated short.
Because I am making a life.
The funny part is that my animated short is about lost time. And right in the middle of the week, after a vet appointment that turned out to be much less dramatic than advertised, I accidentally found a Wednesday.
That seems about right.
Maybe the important parts of life do not arrive separately, wrapped in music and significance, while everybody stands back and applauds.
Maybe they show up as an unexpectedly free day.
Maybe they show up in little pencil lines.
Maybe they show up in bread dough and lightning and a quiet house and the pleasure of learning something difficult for no good reason except that it keeps your mind awake and your hands busy.
Maybe that is how we chase away at least some of the lonelies.
Not with noise. Not with performance. Not by pretending to be more glamorous than we are.
Just by staying engaged with our own peculiar little lives.
And if that life happens to include an imaginary sunflower and a house full of animated nonsense, so much the better.
