Today, one of poet Jane Kenyon’s most urgent exhortations are ringing in my ears. In advice she wrote to herself and kept over her desk, she said: Be a good steward of your gifts.
Writing, for me, is about stewardship. It’s about actively tending to your life, observing the changes that roll in with the seasons, documenting them and adjusting as necessary.
It’s about maintaining curiosity about your own life and the work you’re doing. It’s about keeping a skeptical eye trained on your own neuroses to make sure that what you’ve previously weed-whacked away hasn’t grown back into another overgrown tangle.
It’s about remembering to be grateful, to meditate on your blessings and to figure out how you might pour some blessings out over other people.
Ultimately, writing-as-stewardship is about actively cultivating your life. It’s the best tool we have to stripping away what doesn’t serve us anymore, and for coaxing something more beautiful into bloom.