On Refilling the Well...and Memories ~ @AuthorKristina Knight

There is a jar on my desk that is currently only about half-filled, and some of that filling in left over from 2020. It's a jar I put together when bebe was about four or five, and it's meant to be a memory jar.  

We start filling it up on New Year's Day, writing down funny things we said or did, writing about places we visited, putting in movie and theatre and concert stubs, and sometimes a picture or two make the cut, too. Whenever something fun or out of the ordinary happens, we write it down and put it in the jar. Then, on New Year's Eve we empty the jar onto the table and each of us takes a turn reading about...something. Sometimes we pick a memory we put in the jar, sometimes we pick someone else's memory. It's a fun way to remember the year, and I'd like to say that I have all those scraps of paper and ticket stubs in an actual memory book somewhere but the truth is that most of them have gotten thrown out over time. A few still live in old planners that I haven't tossed yet. 

It's one of my favorite things to do, filling up this little jar. But the last couple of years have been hard. Sure, little joyous things have happened but there haven't been movie dates or vacations or much else to fill up the space, and somewhere around mid-2020 I just...stopped. And on New Year's Eve I thought, lets not open the jar, lets keep filling it up because surely we're almost through this pandemic and we'll start doing things again. But, well, things have opened up but the pandemic isn't over. And so the jar is still only about half-filled. 

That jar reminds me that our writing wells don't fill on their own, either. We have to actively fill them up with people watching or meet-ups with writer (and non-writer) friends, with good movies and better books, with music and games. For a long time I've tried to set one day each week aside as a day to refill my writer well, but I've gotten a little lax with that of late. Deadlines and work and home-type work and family things and bebe's schedule and RadioMan's obligations...all of that piles up and I think, "Well, I have X going on later this week so I'd better use my 'well time' to accomplish Task Y." 

But by not refilling my well, by not taking care of me, that can lead to days when the writing just doesn't flow. When the ideas don't seem as firm. When I can't quite grasp the right tone or emotional note. And then I get frustrated with myself and the dirty dishes in the sink and the dust bunnies under the bed and that project that bebe had put off until the last minute...and then I'm Screaming Kristina and everybody better watch out! 

So I've been  making a point to take that time, even if it means the dust bunnies get a little bigger. 

Back to the jar. I'm not much into the woo-woo but there is a part of me that wonders if we'd emptied out the jar in 2020 would 2021 have been filled with ... more? 

Probably not. It's only a jar and I tend to read too much into things, anyway. But I'm determined to fill up the jar for the rest of the year, even if what we fill it with are only conversations and silly family-game-night events. Because I want to read the memories on New Year's Eve, and on New Year's Day I want to start fresh.