Send the Invitation; Take the Chance

Take the chance and reach out, ask, and imagine.

The audio for this show is excerpted from Creativity Matters Podcast Episode 498.

Photo: Ron Lach, Pexels

“I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. When visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Happy Sunday!

Did you pass notes in school? Do you want to do this or that? Check “yes” or “no.” Refold the note and pass it back.

I think sometimes we need to go back to that. We need to be that clear. That concrete. We need to put our hope on the page. We need to ask people if they want to do things with us, life things.

Time is short.

Check “yes” or “no.” Refold and pass it back.

I often think about dropping a pink invitation on a doorstep. I don’t know why the invitations are always pink. These mental invitations have been hypothetically pink since I dropped a few several years ago, a small shared journey, the idea of doing year-long, individual, “life” scavenger hunts in parallel. What I actually sent was an email, but in my head, it was a pink invitation. A book I had read that year started with an invitation. Maybe it was pink. Maybe that’s why I see these invitations as pink in my head, bright, fluorescent.

When I was in graduate school, I produced an ad-hoc literary theory and creative writing newsletter called Break/ing Ground. I xeroxed it on crazy bright colors of legal-size paper at the local Kinkos copy shop. It was postmodern. It was a project of heart. It is something long forgotten, something I have hoped, again and again, I might stumble over in a box somewhere. At least once, it must have been a vivid pink.

There is something mysterious about an invitation being slid under a door, even better if it is unsigned, sealed with wax, addressed in a tidy print or a flowering script. Some invitations arrive on painted vellum, crisp and full of crinkles. Some arrive folded, hope made smaller, again and again. Some arrive rolled, a scroll wrapped with a bird’s scrap of string.

You are cordially invited….
Will you join me….
Your presence is requested….

Such formality we give to asking someone to share space in recognition of events, in anticipation of tangible response.

These are not the invitations I’m interested in.

I’m interested in the subtle ones, the ones where we are reaching out, making connections, standing on a hilltop or amid a thousand trees and putting forth a whisper of an ask, putting a message into a bottle and the bottle into the water.

Such invitations should be mysterious. Usually they are not, of course. We email. We text. We leave a message.

How much more wonderful when we think of our invitations as special, as mysterious, when we elevate them because we know that the layering of invitations, the following through, the seeing what happens, adds to the shape and form, the fullness and roundness, of life.

However mysterious it is in its arrival, however long you delay the opening, ultimately, of course, the invitation reveals who it is from.

There is an ask.

It may be direct. It may be roundabout. It may be cloaked in uncertainties. It may be a sonnet of explanation or a haiku that leaves the weight of thought behind the moment unspoken, captured in the linguistic turn.

You will need to decide. Should I stay or should I go? Should I jump? Should I take a deep breath and just say yes? What would it look like if I said yes?

I think many people send invitations without a second thought. Maybe they feel sure that a certain percentage of recipients will say yes. Maybe they feel sure that whatever they are orchestrating or imagining will be a success. Maybe history has shown them that people respond positively, that the benefits of shared time and space, of collaboration, of networking, of friendship, outweigh the risks.

I don’t send many invitations.

(Once a week, I do invite people to draw with me. I’m grateful that a few say yes.)

I have been dropped more times than I can count, and that makes me cautious.

Sending an invitation isn’t something to do lightly.

Sure, if you are inviting kids to a birthday party, and the standard is to invite the whole class, then send them out. But when you are considering something more private, more meaningful, an invitation requires careful consideration. It invites quite a bit of overthinking.

There is the risk the recipient(s) will say no.

If the party is for two, the risk can be too much. Even if the party is for three or four, the chance that no one will respond can be overwhelming.

And what happens if people say yes, and you find that the “party” (which is probably a project or a journey or a collaboration or an effort at building community or shared space) is a flop, that it doesn’t work, that it isn’t at all what you envisioned?

Not everything lasts.

People come. People go, often without a word.
Backs are turned.
But we are resilient.

We gather our things, we climb again to the top of the hill or walk to the center of the forest.

We close our eyes and breathe deeply…

And then we whisper.

We wait for the wind to carry our sound, the whisper folded in breath or carefully tucked into the wings of a paper crane.

We know, deep down, that there are moments, there are people, there are projects or opportunities that can be pivotal. We know sometimes that time has brought us to a point where we are ready for a certain project and that it may be a lifeline, another turn of a kaleidoscope that opens the world before us.

Sometimes you drop hints, little crumbs that are part of the tea party that might be down the road, but someone else unknowingly picks them up or sweeps the path before the crumbs are seen or gathered.

This is a cautionary tale. Invitations that are too subtle may be destined to fail. When folded into a paper plane, they may get caught in the wind and travel too far, or not far enough, or get lodged in a tree or on a roof.

The crane you fold may not fly.

I have toyed with an invitation this year. Ultimately, I accept that maybe I am grasping at stars. Or maybe I am just too oblique.

Life is short.
Send your invitations.
Do the thing.
Put it out there.
Ask the question.

I am guilty of not always responding quickly or well. I overthink invitations. I wait until the last minute to commit to things.

Don’t be that way.
Be bold.
Say yes.

Finding ways to interact with or collaborate or share ideas or work alongside or even just get to know others…is a good thing.

The farther we get locked into our own loneliness or isolation, our own exhaustion or apathy or inability to see the light, the harder it gets to say yes.

Step outside of that. Take a chance.

As I approach another turn of the calendar, a few flags in the June sand, I am feeling the weight of all the things tried and failed, all the people who have walked alongside me and left, all the things I have believed in and thought sustaining, only to realize nothing really is.

Keep finding ways to open the door for people, for your words, for your heart. Keep thinking about saying yes.

Is there an invitation you’ve been meaning to send? Is there one you’ve held to the side? Is there an invitation you need to accept?

Take the next step.

Even if no one shows up, you will be okay. We continue to do what we do because we love it or because we have to or because we can’t imagine not doing it.

Be brave.
Send your invitations.
But be okay alone, too.

Let’s have tea.
No potlucks.
Bring a quote instead. Bring a quote I don’t already know.
Bring a good book recommendation. Bring a joke. Bring a haiku.

Bring your sea glass, your kaleidoscope, your favorite pen.

Thank you for reading.

Amy

Illustrated journal pages from 2019–starting a (birth) year and a new path. A. Cowen

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PS: The primary invitation that has haunted me over the last few months, especially as I’ve envisioned a shared correspondence, is not about body doubling, but I have also been thinking about body doubling or, more generally, about co-working sessions with writers. I wrote about that here. Do I have time or energy for people, really? It feels like no, but our brains are funny this way.

I want to know if you can see 
Beauty even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.
...
It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

from "The Invitation" by Oriah

Illustrated Journal Weeks 15, 16, & 17

These images offer a glimpse at illustrated journal pages from weeks 15, 16, & 17 for Illustrate Your Week 2024. I’ve fallen into a pattern again of doing my under-sketching in colored pencil, sketching the same way I would in pencil, but using colored pencil.

The shift this brings is partly inherent in it being not erasable. But the shift is also in the softness.

Illustrated journal page. A. Cowen 2024

It’s been a while since I worked this way. It was an experiment at some point last year, an exercise in letting go and accepting my lines, my sketchy “feeling it out” process for finding shape and form. I spend time with the undersketch and then, later, use that as my map for inking.

When I got ready for a recent Sunday morning drawing group, it just felt right to grab a colored pencil. When I did this at the start of Week 15, I figured it might be a temporary thing, but it has persisted. (We just finished Week 18 of this calendar year.) There is such a softness to it. It is soothing something that I can’t even identify or articulate.

Illustrated journal page. A Cowen 2024

Sketching with colored pencil invites an embracing of process. I can’t erase the sketched lines so there is a visible layer of color, color that often extends beyond my final lines. This is different than just coloring a drawing because there is a built-in layer of overflow in the undersketch. It is, truly, a layer of its own that lingers there and plays with the inked lines on top.

Illustrated journal page. A Cowen 2024

Some nights, right now, just filling in a circle or two with a colored pencil is providing the mindfulness I need, the sense of my hand moving even when I am too tired to sort things out.

Random Things

A baker’s dozen from this week:

1. I keep running into writing and comments about Buddhism. It has happened with enough regularity that I finally noticed the repetition, the circling. Maybe this is something I need to explore.

2. It feels hard to believe that starting last September, we dealt with repeated and extended hospitalizations through January. After a few months’ reprieve, we are starting again next week. At least this admission is planned. I think back and realize that last May, too, we were exactly here. But five years ago, too. And the year after that. The circle is uncanny.

3. My work account at Instagram is very small. But last week, we had a video get over 55M views. The whole experience has felt meaningless in so many ways.

4. I pulled a stray life detail out of my head this week, and neither of the people I count on to verify things or fill in gaps believed me. That led me down a rabbit hole of files. A project that I was already contemplating just got exponentially more complicated and more vast in scope. Maybe it is a fool’s journey; maybe it will keep me busy.

5. I woke this morning thinking I should go back to a small pocket-size sketchbook for a while. (Those who draw with me will have to gasp, I know.) I have a number of weeks left in my current A4, so it won’t be a sudden move, but I am remembering fondly the days of my pocket visual journals — before I even called it illustrated journaling in the way I do now. It fascinates me how quickly we can shift.

6. I finished week 11 of my Comic Affirmations 100 Day Project this week. Even I am amazed that I’ve kept up with this project. Do I have 22 more in me? Thank you to those who have commented at Instagram (and the one or two following along here).

7. I have been watching The Walking Dead (which I watched long ago but only through maybe season six or seven). I am in the final season now, and I know I am going to be sorry to see these people go.

8. I pulled out my sketchbook from June 2019, thinking there was an “invitation” moment recorded there. There was. And on the page next to it, a sketch of the Yoda fountain. And I found myself in tears. So much hope that year.

9. When you receive a “have a good day” text from a family member (or parent), waiting two days to reply is really not okay. I am not fond of the thumbs up reply, but even that is better than nothing.

10. Mostly it’s an idle thought, but in the moment, part of me would really like to take the Christmas tree down (although I almost never even notice it). But the other part of me knows that if I do, I might never put it up again.

11. I miss our gold poppy chairs. I miss having two chairs in the living room.

12. I gave in to temptation and bought an inexpensive “cooling” pillow case that caught my eye. It boasted a fancy Japanese cooling fabric. To the touch, it does feel cool, but in the night, it was just as hot as anything else.

13. Red spiders have been popping up all over the house. I am beyond grateful though that we don’t live where the cicadas will be this summer.

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Weekly Bits and Pieces

• Prompts for Illustrate Your Week - Week 19

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Made It?

Thank you for reading. It’s nice to get comments. Let me know what stands out for you, what you think after reading, or where we connect.

There are no questions to answer in my post, just food for thought maybe.

For those who like prompts here in the comments:

• A source of light. (I often repeat this one. I know.)

• Your affirmation for the week ahead.

Thank you to those who continue to read and support this space. It means the world.

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