Someone Else's Brushes May Be Finer Than Yours

Thoughts on the passage of time, the measure of our days, and awareness of our finite lives.

Photo by Shelley Burbank enhanced using the Prisma photo editing application.

In this issue:

• Note from Shelley

• September Pappus

• Journal Prompt

• Publishing News

Note from Shelley

Dear Loyal Reader:

Happy September and Cozy Season! 

If you are like me, you’re reveling in the pumpkin spice coffee and apple spice tea and putting on sweaters in the late afternoon and pulling jeans from your closet after a summer of linen shorts and breezy summer dresses. Maybe you’re putting out the fall sofa pillows and throw blankets, winding brilliant silk foliage leaves around glass candle pillars, and looking forward to all things Halloween next month. 

Have you started watching Gilmore Girls again? I’m a total Gilmore fan, and there’s something about fall and that show. It’s my candy. 

In this month’s Pink Dandelions I’ll be contemplating time, specifically the passing of it, and the concept called Momento Mori. Translated it means, “Reminder of Death.” Basically, when we are aware that we are mortal, we can more fully appreciate being alive. That’s a good thing! 

I think this relates to mindfulness and can be a wonderful tool for living a beautiful and meaningful life. Read the full essay below to hopefully be inspired, not depressed. Then perhaps take a stab at the journal prompt. 

Finally, I share my publishing news. Thank you so much for being part of my life and my writing journey. I mean it from the bottom of my heart. 

Cheers,

Shelley

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September Pappus

Someone Else’s Brushes May Be Finer Than Yours: Thoughts on the passage of time, the measure of our days, and awareness of our finite lives.

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"It is difficult for people of advanced years to start remembering they must die. It is best to form the habit while young.”

—Muriel Spark

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This month, as the heat and bustle of summer ebbs into cooler temps and cozier fall days, I find myself thinking about time: seasons of our lives and seasons of the year, the passage of hours and of decades, the inexorable tripping toward the light fatalistic. And by that I mean death. 

I know it sounds grim, but bear with me. It’s not!

I’m lucky in a way. From an early age I’ve been aware of myself as a human being moving through time. When I was younger, I couldn’t have put it into those exact words, but I do remember being quite young, maybe eight or nine, maybe younger, thinking now and then, “This is a moment I should remember. I need to absorb this particular time and place and feeling.”

Here are some: The glowing old-fashioned bulbs on the Christmas tree and an Andy Williams record playing on the stereo. Summer air stirring a pink, ruffled curtain at the window of my childhood bedroom. The scratchy feel of the bark of the apple tree I’ve just climbed. The cool feel of packed dirt under my bare feet when running into the shade of the big oak tree up the road on a hot summer morning. A soccer ball ricocheting off my knee and sailing into the goal in slow motion. Hiking with my new husband up Tumbledown Mountain at the end of summer and reading Thoreau on the drive back home. Drinking coffee in our first apartment during a snowstorm and thinking, “I’m grown up.”

Not the big momentous occasions. Little moments. 

Of course, most of the time as a kid I went about my daily life not thinking about this stuff. I ate cereal for breakfast and went to school and played tag on the lawn and did my homework and read lots of books and hung out with my friends and my sister and watched Star Trek reruns and Little House on the Prairie and baked cookies with my mom.

I didn’t know about mindfulness until much later, in my thirties or early forties, and none of us can be always in a state of attention. I mean, we’d never get anything done. 

Navel-gazing can be a narcissistic spiral into nothingness. 

The odd moments of awareness, though, most likely prompted my addiction to—er, I mean love of—journaling. From 6th grade on, I’ve felt this pressing need to record my life in writing, to analyze my thoughts and feelings and experiences on the page, to make my existence legible.

Being aware of time passing is a gift.

A young woman I know, Marina Novo*, called me the other day just to chat. Marina’s a women’s apparel buyer for a San Diego athleisure brand company with a degree in fashion merchandising. I met her a few years ago when she was working at Buffalo Exchange in Hillcrest. I bought a pair of Ralph Lauren jeans that barely fit at the time (and I’m too scared to try on again now) and got to talking about fashion as art, writing, and the Sex and the City reboot.

She told me about a wine club in Liberty Station, and we met there a couple of times to talk more about how she might begin to write a novel about her experiences in the fashion industry. Since then she’s reached some important milestones: first professional career position, marriage to her long-term boyfriend, a nice condo apartment in Little Italy. She hasn’t started the book yet.

The other day we got to talking about her job, living-room furniture, fall decorating projects, and wedding photos that she still needs to get printed. Turning pensive, she said, “Is it weird that when I think about the last few years, I feel jealous of my younger self?” 

Did I mention she’s only twenty-six?  

Of course I told her not to worry. It’s normal to fret about getting older, even when you aren’t even thirty. Feeling yourself becoming an adult is weird! It’s also easy to romanticize the past. It’s tinged in sepia and smoothed around the edges.

We humans tend to forget about the bad things that happen and to remember the good stuff. Good memories are reinforced in the telling and retelling. We ignore the crappy things that happened. Childhoods seem happier, adolescence less fraught, and early adulthood full of carefree adventure without the burdens of 9-to-5 jobs, mortgages, or kids.  

Just as we like to forget the bad stuff in the past, we often see the future as glittery and more attractive, full of possibility. “Someday, I’ll have this or that and do the other.” It’s easy to get caught up in daydreaming while daily life passes us by.

But why not make an effort to be aware of the present you are in, acknowledging all the good, the bad, and the humdrum?

Stuck to the shelf above my desk is a saying I cut out of some magazine a while ago. “Make Every Day Count.” It’s a worthy goal. Of course, we aren’t going to be 100% successful at this. Some days it’s all we can do to just get the laundry done, the kid to the orthodontist, the report sent to our manager, and supper warmed up in the microwave. I encourage all of you (and myself, too) to make some effort to be mindful of the passage of your days. 

Our lives are our creations, a work of art expressing our true, human selves. We have, at most, about a century of living in us.

Every day is a line in the epic poem of our lives, a dab of color on the canvas, a pirouette in your personal ballet, a note in the symphony of existence. Will we strike an off chord every once in a while? Will we smear the wrong-colored paint? Of course. That’s part of the composition. We go on. We make it part of the creation. 

Nobody else gets to say how you create your life. We are handed circumstances, of course. Someone else’s brushes might be finer than yours. Someone’s paints more brilliant. But so what? Take what you have and make the most of it!

I’ve struggled financially in the past. Emotionally, too. I’ve had heartbreak and despair. It hasn’t always been easy to see the beauty or to feel good about my life. I love writing, but I’m not a NY Times best-selling author or anything. Not even close.

Some things help me through the bad times. Good friends. Good books. Nature. Music. Journaling. Asking for help when I need it. Professional counseling now and then. Changing course. Working harder. Sometimes letting go. And time. 

When we are in the midst of each day, it’s sometimes difficult to see our lives as a whole. This is why I like journals, diaries, sketch books, scrapbooks, and photo albums. Even social media feeds can become records of our days. Seasons come and go. Flowers bloom and fade. Leaves unfurl and eventually turn color and drop to the ground. Someday we will die. 

But in the meantime, we live. Let that sink in. Celebrate a little every day.

*Names and characters in these essays are fictionalized versions or amalgams of real people. The conversations are also fictionalized but based on real exchanges.

Journal Prompt

Take a few moments to sit by yourself, listen to the sounds of nature or a favorite piece of music, and breathe. Have a cup of tea, a mug of coffee, a glass of wine if you want. Let yourself be aware of the space around you, the way your body feels, the texture of your clothing, the thoughts that pass through your mind, the scents and tastes. Now write about what you experience. How does it feel to be you right now in this time and place? Let yourself free-write about anything that comes to mind. Thoughts, feelings, dreams, goals, regrets. This is you, today, in this moment.

Publishing News

My second Olivia Lively mystery, NIGHT MOVES, continues to find readers here and there. Many readers have shared photos of their copies, and that’s been super fun for me to see. Thank you to those who’ve posted on social media and have reviewed the book on Goodreads or Amazon or both. 

The Facebook ad that actually worked

Last week, I bit the bullet and created a paid Facebook ad for both books in the Olivia Lively mystery series. It’s quite a process, figuring out how to use the ad platform, but things went pretty well. At first I didn’t think so. I’d had a decent amount of “clicks” but at first it didn’t seem to impact sales in a significant way.

However, my publisher got back to me with updated figures this week, and eureka! The numbers looked much better. More people bought the first book than the second, which makes sense. It also means these were new readers. Strangers! I’m encouraged. 

Now I’m buckling down to finally rewriting ROSALIE: A Novel. It’s women’s fiction or upmarket fiction depending on how my voice comes through on the rewrite. If it’s more literary it will be upmarket; if more commercial it will be WF. Think Lily King, Jojo Moyes, Taylor Jenkins Reid, and Jennifer Weiner. Somewhere in that vicinity.

I serialized ROSALIE on Wattpad quite a few years ago, right after the first Olivia Lively book, and it’s taken me this long to figure out what I needed to do to make the story work better. I think I’ve finalized the outline and made some changes that add more drama, conflict, and twists.

I’m hoping the rewrite goes fast. My plan is to submit this manuscript to agents. I’ve never looked for an agent to represent me, so this is a big step. Thanks for following along on this writing journey! And feel free to email back. I love to hear from readers and am happy to answer questions.