Comically, this title is a concept I have thought about way too much in my odd little life and never thought it would apply to me. Too pretty to put in the water is a funny little realization tale of me stopping my own creative path.

Picture it, Minocqua, 2006…or something like that. I was the director of a non-profit organization at the time. I inherited a lot of annual fundraisers and organization activities with the job. The most time consuming and open to strange interactions, was our handmade wooden canoe raffle. I would carry this canoe around all summer long to every craft show, every small-town Wisconsin event: Cranberry Fest, Beefarama, Lumberjack Days, Loon Days, Pig in the PInes.

I can see you tilting your head. Actually, I contemplated making up fake festival names, but these are real. the lumberjack one I might have wrong. Something something Lumberjack, blah blah.

Anyway. So, I set up a tent with a canoe, a lot of information about the organization and I talked all day in all weather conditions. My car had a box of layers for everything. Snow boots, scarves, rainboots, mittens, a floor length wool jacket.

Oof, this is a long walk to get to a tale.

For 10 hours, I would stand with this gorgeous canoe and I realized men (mostly) would circle the canoe and stoop and look and analyze and rarely touch. After 15 minutes of assessment, they would adjust to standing tall, shake their head a little, look me in the eye, suck in air through their teeth for a beat and say, “Well, THAT is too pretty to put in the water!”

Over and over again, the same routine, the same exact statement, and every time I thought to myself, “…but that is exactly this vessel’s destiny and purpose!”

Shoot forward in time to the last few years. I just realized I have done something recently that IS me kicking the tires of my own activities and declaring that they were “too pretty to put in the water.”

In my life I have been using sketchbooks and journals for as long as I can remember. I love beautiful and unique journals. Happily, I would fill them up with every single thought and doodle and scraps of paper. They would be beat up and I always loved the poetry of how heavy they were when complete. Of course there was a lot of stuff in them, but I liked to think that they were weighty with thoughts and experiences, life.

My struggle with my written voice started the year that my ex-husband passed away unexpectedly after a long struggle with addictions and then my mom passed away after a battle with cancer. Words left my being.

The main source of coping and sorting thoughts just abandoned me along with these influential humans in my life. This is when I turned fully to sketching doodles to continue to attempt to feel. I got bolder as I went along. Never using a pencil to try ideas out, no erasing. I punished myself with this weird need to not allow one sketch to not be finished, often using unique pieces of paper that were not easily replaceable.

But, the last few years, even the sketches and doodles have slowed. I have been working hard to heal all the “little t” traumas of my life, as well as discovering how many there were. Perhaps, at that point in the healing, I was overwhelmed.

Expression became very difficult. I stopped filling these journals and sketchbooks. They lay around and almost taunt me. As if I have forgotten how to express myself. I have learned what is not healthy for me, learned what not to say, how not to react. But now am I stuck? Looking at my sketchbooks and yearning to feel up to the task. Sometimes going so far as to uncap the pen and sit and hope for that first mark…if I could just make a mark, then I could move forward.

One day, I pulled out a cheap composition notebook and started to journal again. This notebook was filled up in no time at all, I couldn’t stop scribbling away. I realized that this notebook was allowable by my broken and very harsh self because it was cheap. Not precious. And therefore, I could not ruin it.

Yeah, inside my mind lives a voice that tells me that I ruin stuff. That maybe I should not be allowed to have nice things. Cool.

So, I had come full circle with paper. Telling myself that the paper and blank books were far too pretty to put in the water. Best to leave them on the shelf to gather dust. Let the blank books NOT fulfill their destiny and purpose.

Good news, I see it now, and I have returned to babbling on paper. Maybe now I will start to use some of my lovely blank books. I have continued to purchase them at the same rate that I used to use them.

I don’t want to lose the beauty of life to worrying about not ruining things.

Hey, let’s draw in the pretty books and use the good china. Let’s not leave boxes and boxes of pristine, untouched stuff behind when we pass.

Honestly, if we are stopping ourselves from expressing and living our best lives, then who could possibly get us to start?

Everyone has something to contribute.

Quit being too pretty to put in the water!!

This ponder happened while enjoying a London Fog at Upshot Coffee Brake Shop in St Charles, MO.

ZB