Setting the Ground
Creating creative foundations
Over the weekend, I floated in the lake.
It was a day that’d proven uncertain. Adrenaline rushed. I’ll save you the details, but it was, for a time, unrooted. Ninety minutes out from the city, solo, I parked my car, and after a day like that, unsettled, I was thankful for a time to pause, for the trees, the crickets at night, the serene perfume of the fresh air and smell of mud, the soft sturdy sand under foot as I swam. It’s a long story, and one that for now I won’t unpack, but it was a day that asked me to stay grounded.
Ground is the foundation of our experiences. Thank god for gravity, I tell myself on flightier days. These feet are here on the earth, I say another time, when my mind is wandering. Here and now. Grounding is present. It is sturdy, steady, and earthy. It is the breath we return to, the feeling of the pen on the page, the release of the thoughts from the air of the mind to the ground of being on the page. The soothing sound of a song or a friend. It is presence with existence. It is this moment right now. Grounding into now, and embodying that presence, can be a space and source of stability.
The moments when I’m up in clouds, high on imagination, is generally when something in my familiar existence is unrooted. It makes sense: to be human is generally to distain change, despite its undulations being the very fabric and nature of life. So grounding practice it is. For me, that’s usually writing, usually a walk, usually a meal.
I think of grounding practices as ways of building a foundation, as the shape of a container in our minds and our lives that we want to pour into. Writing does this for me, like cooking, like walking, like being, and my sense is that writing, or something like it, does the same for you, too.
Imagination paired with grounding in reality gives us the tools we need for creative agency. We imagine what we want to build and where. We bring those ideas down from the blue sky, the clouded day, and plant them like seeds in our bodies and psyches, our communities, and tether them to the terrain. From there, we grow the idea like seeds. We ground into existence. Grounding practices are the foundations of our lives and the shapes that we make. We decide the shape of the container, we decide what we build the walls from, how porous they are, and what we pour in. In practical terms, this could be deciding what thoughts we choose to believe, who or what we allow into our lives, what food/media/songs we consume, what our boundaries and preferences are, how we choose to be, to name a few.
Grounding is the rhythm we come back to, the ways of rebalancing our lives, finding sturdiness despite the change in terrains under our feet. These are the stabilizers, the steady makers, the people or places or things in life that help us root in and for a moment, at least, feel safe.
I like to turn the part of my mind that thinks ahead into the future as the action-taker, the horizons, the clouds. It is the mapmaker, the dreamer, the imagination with the aim. It exists to keep present-self focused while gathering momentum, balancing the weights and lightnesses of risks and staying safe. This future-self communicates and collaborates with the parts of me that are existing now in the present, and when needed, reminds me which paths I want to explore down, what tools I’ll need, and shows me other pathways and points of curiosity. Together with the parts of life I have embodied in the past, we come together in the present to ground. We come together in the present to celebrate. That was then, that’s coming, and this is the present. Grounding practices help support that sense of presence with existence.
The mapmaker and dreamer exists in the present-tense, too, and it in the past. I enter new years, new decades, and they each teach each other and my existence something new. I look along the pathways from the past and collect their wisdom; I tune into the fire, passion, ideas of now, and savor, delight, and celebrate them. Whenever we can, tuning into the present moment can help us remember the gift that is this moment of living. Presence is the practice of now, and grounding into presence is what grounds us into the stability and creativity in the future.
When I am grounded, nourished, resourced, hydrated and slept and thinking clearly, I can more easily access this conversational nature of life — the one that flows between the past, its lessons; the present, its joy and information; and the future, with her wild and beautiful thoughts. When I am in need of something, this conversation becomes harder. Here, I usually start when I can by pausing to check in through writing or breathing, asking, what’s here? what do you need?
Creativity reminds me of the agency we have, and it often needs a channel to flow through and wants to be given the place to exist. The flow of creative life is not one of punishing ourselves, or forgetting forgiveness. Instead it’s a way of allowing, accessing, existing. When we ground into presence, we can more readily and easily remember our creative selves. Those grounding practices are the places and things we return to. They’re the environments that we turn to to tend to within ourselves. A place to be with our existence in our lives.
How to access these creative, generative, internally generous grounding states? This will be different for all of us. But some tools for the road:
Set the intention or aim. Name it clearly. Then create the supportive environment. This could look like: keeping water nearby, stocking the fridge, cooking for the week ahead, keeping your pen and paper by your bedside, gathering with friends, restocking paint colors, keeping the guitar tuned, or pausing to take a slow and steady deep breath.
Create boundaries. Set the foundation. This could look like: affirming for yourself where you are presently and who you are and what you are embodying, thanking your inner critic for its fierceness and asking it to come back another day, picking your favorite number or your current age as the number of minutes you’ll write for, turning off your phone, resisting the seductive pull of a doom scroll, or responding to messages from a rested place when possible, and not urgency.
Envision across the horizon. Work backward. Build momentum. This could look like: Imagining where you want or need to be, then identifying the steps you’ll need to get there. Will you need extra hydration? A longer talk with a friend? Some ink to let your mind go? A soft spot to land and wander? Identify the aim, then build backwards. Build a list of points along the path to get there. Make a list of your soft spots, your pitfalls, your strengths, communities, the places you flourish, or the ways you need assistance, support, or strength. Then, take a step — whatever is the simplest, next, easiest. Then, keep going. The momentum will grow.
Keep it simple. Ground into ease. Notice your pace. Sustain and nourish your aims. Do you want to paint? Take out the brush and make one mark. Do you want to write a story? Open up a notebook, or begin a document. Do you need to make dinner? Open the fridge. Your pace is yours alone. Start simply. Begin, begin.
For glimmers of ideas, starts of stories and songs, poems, insights, pocket notebooks are your grounding companion. For big ideas, working backwards, or creative aims, turn to the spiral notebooks. How does paper help you tend to the past, present, future? Become a paid subscriber and leave a comment below with what’s grounding, or what a paper and pen practice means to you.
workshops + experiences:
September 13 | build your journaling practice at brooklyn brainery
September 15 | suminagashi at brooklyn brainery
September 17 | odette press pop up at earth & me
September 23 | new seasonal session drops for paid subscribers
September 23 | bookbinding at brooklyn brainery
click here for the experience calendar + shop the experience recording library
PS. Brooklyn readers, I’m announcing something new for you next week 🌿