Last weekend, I competed at the Lake Erie Invitational in Lorain, Ohio in Figures and Loops. These are skating set patterns on a set of three circles painted on the floor. Skaters are expected to trace the line completely and execute any maneuvers (pushes, turns, changes of edge or foot) at the correct locations as they do two complete patterns in front of three judges. In the past, I have described it as “the most stressful two minutes of your life.”
There is something incredibly meditative about practicing something highly technical over and over again. When I’m practicing figures and loops, there’s no room in my head for worrying about dinner, finances, work projects, relationships or anything other than where my body is in space and what it is doing. Skating figures and loops isn’t terribly physically demanding but my brain definitely clocks out after about 90 minutes and is ready to move on to something faster and looser like dance.
I’ve realized lately that I have fallen into the same groove when working. There are moments of intense focus interspersed with looser moments of play and exploration. I used to really drive myself hard to focus ALL THE TIME when working (and stop faffing about!). The natural consequence of pushing myself so hard was cycles of intense productivity and intense burnout. Making room for play and exploration has helped alleviate the burnout and get excited about my personal projects again.
I guess it’s time to introduce Jay. He’s loosely based on my son who has a tendency to miss the forest for the trees (or perhaps more accurately, a single ladybug on a tree). He is intensely curious, loves the natural world, and decides one day to set out on an adventure to find something BIG.
The joke of the story is that he finds loads of big things and misses many of them. Big, after all, is not just relative to the eye of the beholder but what’s beholden as well. I definitely need to work on that summary but that’s the general idea of the book.
It will be a picture book with some graphic novel elements and aimed at younger readers (or non-readers and parents) although I like to think the humor and art will appeal to everyone who dares to resist only inhabiting one market segment at a time.