Sara's Blog

This month I’m going back to school…sort of. Seems September is the month for new classes and workshops to spring up all over the city. So this month I’m starting a Spontaneous Writing workshop, and had my first session this week. I love it! The teacher is a Gestalt therapist and so we do guided meditation, then write, then (gulp) read our writing out loud to the rest of the group. The meditation I’m all for, the writing I’m fine with, but reading out loud to a group of strangers? Hmmm…not so much. It’s funny how you think you’re the only one who feels that way, and it’s funny how once you do it, the second time becomes much easier. The benefit—which I hadn’t thought of since I was too concerned about the reading out loud thing—is being able to hear really exceptional writing from others. The teacher is right…your own words do sound different when you read them out loud. And people see things in your writing that you completely missed, because it’s so close to you. I won’t say it’s easy, or comfortable, but since that first class I’ve had words rolling around in my head, just waiting to be written.

Since we’ve moved, I’ve claimed the second bedroom as my craft room—I do regular work in the upstairs living room, on a massive wooden desk with a crack down the center. The little craft room is, well, little, and therefore packed to the ceiling with stamps, fabric, lace scraps, paints, more stamps, and paper, paper, paper. Plus the washing machine, so it always smells good, like laundry powder. I can hear the bells from the Westerkerk a few blocks away and I can see over the rooftops, the benefit to a third-floor apartment in Amsterdam. The best part is not having to tidy up for work the next day—I can just shut the door and come back to my project later...something I really missed being able to do last year. Already it feels so comfortable, cozy…gezellig, as the Dutch would say!