This is my favorite Christmas gift this year.  The oracle pen from Baronfig.  It has a nice heft.  Fits nicely in my hand.  And the ink glides out smooth like silk.  My handwriting has never looked so good.  I love this pen.  I love how powerful it is.   I love how it does my bidding without complaint.  How this unassuming little nib releases my ideas onto the page like magic.  Quietly creating something new that is just mine. 

One year ago I started a writing practice in earnest.  It was a promise I made to my eleven year old self.  That girl loved writing.  She would write plays that her teachers would have the class act out just because.  Usually involving field trips gone awry.  

But some how, some way when she turned 11 she stopped writing for fun.  Sure there were always writing assignments.  But writing to play.  She lost it.  

So last year I decided it was time to play again.  My writing practice has been a wonderful and wild mess.  Completely unstructured.  There are no daily writing prompts.  No word count goals.  No book to write.  Just me, my pen and my journal.  And I just write whatever comes to me in that moment.  

This was intentional.  See for decades I’ve mastered the skill of planning.  I know it well.  Project managing, marketing strategizing, business planning, SWOT analysis, and 1, 3, 5 year plans, and marketing campaigns and travel plans and all the plans!  And I am really really good at planning!    

But at the end of last year I reached burnout.  Something wasn’t right.  And my heart seemed to be screaming at me it was time to go off plan.  

So I went rogue.  And I decided to just write.  Impulsively, with no rhyme or reason.  

Some days I go on my morning walk and a poem just comes out of me.  Some days I write about an old memory from long ago.  Some days I write letters to myself.  My younger self.  My older self.  Some days I write what I’m grateful for.  Some days I write what I’m angry about.  What I’m sad about.  What is lighting me up. 

2024 was my year of curiosity and surprise.  I traveled a lot.  To Fort Lauderdale.  New York City (two times).  Santa Monica.  Julian, CA. Lambertville, NJ (four times), Knoxville, TN, Ocean City, MD, London, Las Vegas, Zion National Park, Zagreb, Rovinj, and Plitvice Lakes Croatia, Naxos Greece, Ivins Utah.  And every where I went I brought my pen and my journal and I wrote. 

Some days I’ve written just a sentence.  Some days 10 pages.  It’s been completely random and impulsive and surprising.  And now one year later I look at all my journals and hundreds and hundreds of pages of stuff.  Some of it I’ve used in speech drafts.  Some of it I’ve used in blog articles and social media posts.  But much of it is just mine and mine alone.  It’s not pretty.  It’s not perfect.  But it’s changed me.     

Writing has been a love story I wrote to myself.  It’s taught me who I am.  What I value. What I need.  What I want.  What went wrong.  How to make it right.  It’s taught me grace and compassion.  Writing has emboldened me.  It’s brought me clarity.  Courage.  Conviction. Oh how I love it!

So I’m upping the ante in 2025.  More writing. For no other reason than it just makes me happy.  And captures the human experience in such a unique way.

Like last week when I took my oldest daughter to a Bruno Mars concert.  Her favorite musician.  It was her Christmas gift.  I channeled my inner Cher a’la Clueless and wore a babydoll dress circa 1995.  I turned 15 again.  My daughter borrowed my favorite leather jacket.  Me, my sister and my daughter.  What a trio were we.  When we got to the venue they surprised us by locking up our phones in these strange little pouches.  What is happening?!  No phones?  No pictures?  But that surprise ended up being the perfect gift.  For two hours we watched Bruno Mars sing and dance his guts out without distraction.  In the moment.  Present and fully engaged.

After the show we immediately decided to write down every magical moment.  We probably could have gone to Chat GPT and prompted it to tell us the highlights of the Bruno Mars Las Vegas Concert series.  I never checked.  But it wasn’t about the output.  It was about the process of writing.  The process of us together remembering and recording our special moments.  It was connecting and clarifying.  and it was ours.  

Now I use generative AI all the time for researching and repurposing original content – like the podcast.  But there is something about the process of writing that I don’t want to give up.  It’s such a cathartic, and healing process.  The act of writing.  And AI will never understand the nuances of the human experience.

It doesn’t know how the chorus to “I Think I want to Marry You” made my heart grow two sizes bigger in my chest.  Or how that totally unexpected guitar solo of Pure Imagination made my whole body tingle.  It doesn’t know how seeing my daughter smiling and dancing beside me singing her favorite song in the world in only the way she can gave me the goosebumps and made my whole body smile.  

It doesn’t know how it feels to dance.  To throw your arms up when the music starts and just move completely unencumbered.  Wild and free.  It doesn’t know what it feels like to sing until your throat hurts.  To clasp hands with someone you love.  It doesn’t know what it is to hear a song you’ve heard a million times in a completely new way.  Or how magical it is to watch as Bruno Mars moonwalks across the stage in a way that only he can.  It doesn’t know what it feels like to laugh.  Full bodied.  Head back.  Hand clapping.  When you hear Bruno Mars sing a song about how he took our phones away. 

Because AI will never have a body like you and I have.  It is the one thing that makes us human.  That makes every one of our experiences so unique and beautiful and ours.  

So what form of creative expression are you interested in exploring this year with your body?  Just for you.  Maybe for you it’s dancing.  Or photography.  Or film.  Or improv.  Or painting.  

What if you started a practice this year and just went for it.  

I know I’m going to keep writing.  It makes me happy.  I asked my Oracle pen “will writing save me?”  

“It is likely” was his reply.

Self Reflection:

• What creative expression did you love as a child? What if you tried it again?
• How can you implement an unstructured practice of creative expression?  What does that look like for you?
• How are you using  generative AI today and what boundaries or personal guidelines/values can you set around usage?
• Is there a promise you want to make to your younger self that has gone unfulfilled? 
• What stories do you want to share?  How do you want to tell those stories?
• How has creative expression transformed you?