Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott and I am hiding in a thicket of gorse bushes.
These are sort of prickly bushes.
I'm not particularly trying to hide from anybody.
I'm sheltering for sure from quite a gusty wind but this is the time of day I call rush hour in our village and I call it rush hour because it's about to become dark and this is the time of day where people,
Particularly if they've got dogs,
They look out the window and think oh my goodness it's going to get dark and they rush out for their last walk before darkness falls.
So it's actually quite convenient sheltering not just from the wind but potentially from people who want to stop and chat because I actually just want to stop and chat with you at the moment.
Today my reflections are all about what you would engage with,
What you would share,
What you would create,
What you would say if you could just do it for yourself and you didn't have to think of an audience to do it for.
So let me just explain a little bit more.
I've just come off a call with a friend,
A dear friend,
Who helped me write my first book,
My only book,
And I'm in the process now of starting to write another book.
We got together to talk about writing,
We love talking about writing,
And she too explained that she's very much inspired by a writing project and although our writing projects have very different themes,
Very different things that we want to cover and share,
There is one fundamental theme that is shared by both projects and the shared theme is that we both are inspired to write a book but not for an audience or not with an audience in mind,
Not writing to an audience but writing a book that is something that feels like it wants to be expressed in the world and there may or may not be an audience for it.
So for me this book that is emerging is from the Pilgrimage,
It's from my daily journals that I wrote on the Pilgrimage,
It's from the talks that I'm giving about the Pilgrimage and how these talks are starting to bring alive stories and remind me of stories of when I was walking and these stories are like old friends,
They keep bobbing up in my mind wanting to be told,
Wanting to be shared,
And for me the book I want to write is one that is inspired by my Pilgrimage walk,
By the Pilgrimage that wanted to be walked through me,
By the Pilgrimage that is still wanting to be expressed through me and rather than think about the audience who might read it,
I just want to write,
I want it to be written,
I want it to come through me and that was a conversation I had with my friend.
We were talking about writing freely,
Writing and publishing and offering it to people to read but not writing it specifically with someone in mind that we want our stories to be read by and that for me is what I'm reflecting on,
Is what would you do,
What would you share,
What would you create if you weren't doing this for an audience,
If you didn't have a goal or expectation to get to,
If you just wrote for the joy of it or sang for the joy of it or drew for the joy of it or created a meal for the joy of it,
That whatever that creation is for you,
What would it be if you just did it for the joy of the creative process.
My husband is learning,
Self-learning the piano and I love it when I come in to see him learning and he's got an app that he uses to learn and I walk into the room where the piano is and I just love to hear it being played and he's learning it slowly and he's learning it for himself,
He's not going to go out and perform in front of people,
He just feels this real joy in learning and that creative energy is coming through him in the process of learning the piano and so I guess the question I'm asking you today is what wants to be created through you?
It might not be musical or art and it might not be writing,
It doesn't matter what it is,
If you were able to create just for the joy of creating,
What would you like to create?
What is the inspiration that wants to be expressed through you?
I would love to know what comes to mind,
What are you inspired to create just for the joy of creation itself?
