Insight and wine.

Over Memorial Day weekend, my bestie and I got together for a walk in the woods and a wine date. We found some morel mushrooms (which were too dry to eat, but was still exciting, first time we’ve found them even though we’ve looked), and had a lovely long conversation about our art over two nice bottles of white and some wood-fired pizza. She talked about her painting, and I talked about my writing.

We talked about many things, but I said something really insightful which I didn’t even realize was insightful until about an hour after I said it. Then I had to stop her while she was mid-sentence and go, “Oh, I said something awesome an hour ago and I didn’t even realize it was awesome until right now.” And because she’s awesome, she stopped and wanted to know what it was.

We had been talking about her friend who has a degree in Creative Writing, and who doesn’t use it but does write some erotica from time to time. (I had been kind of grousing about people with college degrees who think they’re better than me. I ran into one shortly before our date and it made me grumpy. But anyway.) My bestie said she knows my writing is better than that. And I argued that the genre of writing isn’t what makes it good or not, erotica is valid, it’s just not what I’m into. I want to write about philosophical concepts and how they apply to daily life, and the human experience and how we deal with love and death and grief and finding purpose, but with dragons and shit, because I think speculative fiction is a fun way to explore those ideas.

And we kept talking. But an hour later, I realized: That’s it.

The last few months, I’ve been feeling inspired and wanting to move in a new direction. I’ve been thinking about bringing philosophical concepts into my writing, but I wasn’t sure where to begin. I’ve been mulling that over, and I think I have it figured out — and it dropped out of my mouth while halfway through a bottle of wine.

The host of the podcast I listen to, Unfuck Your Brain, has brought up that self-help is just “genteel” philosophy for “ladies.” Philosophy deals with all sorts of concepts, but a lot of it is “why are we here?” “what should we do with ourselves?” “how can we be the best humans?” “what is our place in the universe?” Add in some psychological principals and attempts to understand ourselves and others on a personal level, and there you are, philosophy is suddenly self-help.

The host of the podcast has stated that she’s out to reclaim practical philosophy as an intellectual pursuit for women, and I love that.

I’m out to do the same, but to reclaim it from a place of high-brow halls of academia and bring it to anyone who wants to think about stuff. And to make it accessible by making it entertaining, with dragons and shit.

That’s it. That’s where I want to go with my work.

I feel very inspired by this, and like it is a solid move in the right direction for me. It’s not a hard course-correction for me, just a gentle one, but it puts me a little bit more on my True North. This is why I started writing. This is the sort of stuff I enjoy reading. This.

And my bestie decided that she’s going to start painting landscapes, because even though she’s always been told they’re boring, she’s always liked them.

I love this for us. I love having a best friend who gets it and wants to talk to me about my creativity and my process. She doesn’t write, much, but she is arty and understands. And I love that I can help her in return.