You Don't Know Yet

I took this photo last spring (above), at the beginning of lockdown. Now, at the one year mark, I look at it and see a different version of myself. Early 2020 me was inhibited, cautious and… frankly, lost. Having the world shut down left me a lot of time and space to face things I had been running from for a long time. I think the sudden change in pace of life as we knew it had an introspective effect for a lot of us. Kind of like a reset. When everything is up in the air and you’re reminded that you truly cannot take anything for granted, you’re forced to take stock of what really matters.

And so I woke up everyday with literally nothing to do but just that.

I’m really excited to share a creative project that came out of this time- more on that soon! And I’m excited to be alive, and able to enjoy cups of coffee and make up melodies and teach instruments… I’m thankful to be awake, and to be more lucid than previous versions of myself have been.

This feeling and that photo remind me of a poem I wrote back in 2017 (below). I wrote the poem in 2017, but ended up really living it in 2020. You don’t know yet and you don’t have to know yet. That’s the magic of life and the beauty of creating. You don’t need to know the end result in order to make something beautiful. And you don’t need to have all your ducks in a row to become someone you’re proud of.

You start with absolutely nothing (kind of like a ‘nothing’ year) and you can end up with more meaning than you could have ever imagined…

You Don’t Know Yet

If nothing else
Run your life by curiosity
A twinge of interest
In a direction
A fascination
Over a detail
That you don’t know yet
But want to

For it’s in taking
That one step forward
Just one
After
Another
That’s where you’ll change
That’s where you’ll grow
And develop
Into someone 
You don’t know yet