Looking forward to the year ahead, I’ve picked three intentions. Flashlights for the many trails possible.

Percolate, post, wiggle room.

Some weeks a post isn’t ready here not because I didn’t work hard on it, but because I know I haven’t finished the thought.

Its completion is just out of reach.

Colander: a vessel full of holes, from the Latin for ‘sieve’.
Percolate: to run through the sieve, through those colander-like holes.

Liquid trickles down through soil, through something porous. The nutrients transfer as the water seeps down. The water finds its way.

Ideas develop in their own timing. Take your time.

Thinking through a working practice for sketching, penned at the breakfast bar of a Spitalfields, London, hotel after 12 miles of walking and sketching without my phone the day before.

But despite the desire to let thoughts marinate and develop, I do want to consistently put work out.

So, yes, post.

Hit publish. It won’t be perfect.

These imperfect attempts help me find the thread of thought.

Consistent work accumulates. Ideas develop.

“One of the mistaken notions I often see in people developing their writing practices is a belief that you start drafting only once you’ve figured out what you want to say. Writing *is* thinking.
We should think of the drafting stage as the process of figuring out what we have to say. ”

— John Warner, The Writer’s Practice p. 27 (my favorite writing text to teach highschoolers)

The secret sauce is wiggle room.

I aim to write three essays here a month. (My definition of a blog post might be more robust than many.) That leaves some wiggle room for thinking.

When a month has five Thursdays (the day I aim to post) there’s even an extra week.

Heck, I made up these deadlines, anyway.

So, writing put out consistently but not under such duress that there isn’t room for thinking or indeed other creative endeavors.

Percolate, post, wiggle room: an invitation for the year ahead.

Offline Tools That Help Me Percolate

Watch the sunrise. Especially in winter.
Take a walk. A minimum viable walk is to the end of my street and back. Once I’m out, it’s easy to go further. And we all know that the rhythmic movement of walking aids thought.
Chat with a typewriter. How I found these intentions in the first place.
Read something completely unnecessary, offline. It’s amazing how ideas follow me from one book or magazine article to another though the sources are seemingly unconnected.
A weekly walk to the Post Office—send some real mail!—followed by a mosey over to the library. There’s nothing like browsing. I look for one resource that sparks my interest. Recent fruitful finds: Life in the Studio: Inspiration and Lessons on Creativity; and Let It Out: A Journey Through Journaling.
Shop for books on my own shelves.
Subscribe to a print magazine. Of course, take time to read it when it arrives. Or months later. At the moment: The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, and Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture.
A great find: a small, red-painted, children’s bookshelf ($6 thrift store find). The top shelf tilts at 45 degrees. The books sit at hand level next to my favorite spot to read, spines upward like smiling flowers asking to be picked.
A routine tidy of this and other shelves. Curating a limited number of books is an invitation to read. Tidying sparks connections. It sets the intention to enjoy not just accumulate.

The other morning, I read The Atlantic—a two-month-old edition—before starting the school day with my homeschooled daughter. Was I avoiding starting? Perhaps.

We needed to discuss the poetry of John Donne for an online class she was about to attend. Instead, I turned to the following page of the magazine. Just one more.

Ha! Well, look at that. James Parker on the irresistible poetry of Donne. It opened with a delightful one-paragraph roasting of the Elizabethan era that made me laugh aloud. Serendipity. And back on track, with a chuckle, as we read the article together.

But, the time …

I understand very well the pressed-in seasons of life—of chronic illness, small children, or financial constraint—pressures that seem to make such a luxury impossible. And of course, there are times when you’re hanging by a fingernail, surviving.

I also know the allure of random phone browsing and how it sneaks in to fill the precious moments that were there after all.

There is, for most of us, some time to read, to walk, to percolate.

In thirty years of parenting six kids, I’ve yet to have the pleasure of owning a dishwasher. Daily thinking time is indeed built into every one of my days.

But still, it often comes down to unplugging, just a little bit, today and in the year to come.