There is a wonderful children’s book called Like Butter on Pancakes by Johnathan London that describes the perfect day in the country where the sun streams in and melts on your pillow. Butter on pancakes is an appropriate metaphor to describe the blessings and hardships of the year, and developing a habit of writing.
The pancakes, or the stuff the butter sits on
I really like butter, pancakes not so much. Even science is coming around to the fact that butter is probably good for you. Turns out, pancakes are just the thing that holds all the good stuff. You can’t just eat a plate of butter and syrup. I guess you could, but you might not feel very good about it.
This year has been a plate full of pancakes. Like, all you can eat pancakes for me, emotionally. Remember, I said I don’t really like pancakes. They aren’t even sweet enough to be called cakes. They are just a flat piece of heavy kinda cooked dough. 2019 was a giant stack of dry, thick pancakes that I could’ve choked on if not for the butter.
In order to tackle the stacks, I set a goal at the beginning of 2019 that I would write 500 words every day. In order to stop complaining, I started a blog and named it Rachel What If.. and even published something almost every month. A brain dump in a spiral notebook each morning is an invaluable way to put things in their proper place, instead of vomiting them in random conversations where they don’t belong.
Butter, or the good stuff I’ve learned
Aside from the constant love and support of my family as I struggled through this year, developing a writing habit has been the butter. Butter makes everything richer, easier to swallow. Here are the big takeaways from this year:
- You have to understand yourself before you can understand others.
- Stop being so disappointed in yourself so you can stop being disappointed in others.
- When you love yourself fully, you listen to your tears, are compassionate about your shortcomings, and understand your anxiety as a gift from your better, wiser self.
- Love and fear can be in the same room at the same time, but fear cannot be the one making any decisions.
Writing is how I introduce myself to myself. It is how I find out things I thought I had forgotten. It is how I discover what I really think, and how I get rid of all the stuff that doesn’t matter.
Some of the most relevant books I read this year by Elizabeth Gilbert, Ann Lamott, and Stephen King allow me to put things in perspective.
The Cinnamon Roll, or A Year of Rachel What If
If I could eat anything for breakfast, without guilt, or gaining lots of weight, it would be warm gooey cinnamon rolls. There is butter all through those babies. In fact, maybe 2020 will be the year of the cinnamon rolls.
As I think about this last year, I wouldn’t take back a single pancake. While considering what to call the blog a year ago, I settled on Rachel What If because what if is the very beginning. It’s the place where all good stories start.
I’ve been reading Stephen King’s book On Writing, and this morning, he reminded me again why the name of my blog is so appropriate. He says on page 169, “The most interesting situations can usually be expressed as a What If question.” Reading this at this time, I know it’s more than a coincedence. The year of writing that began with a What If question: What if I am a writer? It’s pretty cool to have lived a year of it.