Wild Woman of Queens: Notes on Urban Creativity from across the East River.

Sandra Lee Schubert

Erratic Spring

One week ago the air was balmy and breezy. I was wearing my favorite red denim jacket. Yesterday it was balmy, gray with thunderstorms and high winds. In my apartment I am hot, then cold, switching the fan on and off trying to get the temperature perfect. Welcome spring, erratic and unapologetic about the need to be what it wants to be at any moment.

But can I fault spring? Assigning it a personality reflective of my own, I am both overly conscientious and then scattered and forgetful. I write like a fiend and then forget it all in a fit of TV watching and avoidance. I crave community and relationship and then push it all away.

None of this serves me in any healthful way. My friend and I were talking about other friend who is unsentimental. Not to say she is without empathy or feeling but she is not driven by them. Here is an example, when she lost her job she didn't mourn and fret about it, she picked herself up and moved across country and set out to get more work.

I know more then a few artists who are more like me floundering, or succeeding on the whims or winds of the environment. The advent of spring leaves us distracted, and moony, while other artists are pumping out work. Not crappy factory style stuff, but work with real meaning and substance.

I would like to be unsentimental. I want to be less distracted and much more proactive. At this very moment I'm not. I hope. I wish. I crave. I want to be a producer of mass amounts of fine work. I hope. Some day.

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Sandra's e-course leads people to be their creative best through telling their stories. She is a creative vagabond, a poet, writer who co-facilitates the Wild Angels Poets and Writers Group at the historic Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine.Writing for Life: Creating a Story of Your Own. Visit her blog: Email her sandraleeschubert(at)gmail.com or @writing4life via twitter.