Seasons of Focus

and a word about "the duty of the moment"

Hi, I’m Alex! Editor, writer, and author. Hello to new subscribers and welcome all to another edition of Chrism and Coffee, a letter about finding meaning in both the sacred and ordinary. This is a special note just for paid subscribers, but please feel free to take a look through the archives for some older letters. Thanks for being here!

When I was in kindergarten, I made my dad a brown clay pinch-pot for Father’s Day. He brought it to his office and one of his coworkers promptly asked him why he had put fake dog poop on his desk. 

“My daughter made that for me! It’s a pot!” he said, aghast. 

Or, at least, that’s how he recounted the story to me (about a decade-and-a-half later.).

Lately, that’s how I feel when I sit down to write. What sounds sharp and lucid in my head ends up looking like the literary equivalent of fake dog poop once it hits the page. But this time, I’m not an endearing kindergartener. I’m a grown woman with kids and a husband and a mortgage and a job. Crude clay creations aren’t so cute anymore.

A lot has happened in the past year, and taking on a full-time job was not the least of it. It’s been an adjustment. And that means less time to write. Less time to anguish over the shape of the clay I’m molding. Less time to buff the bumpy edges to make it look more like a pot (or at least, less like something resembling poop).