Mission #69: The crevices of life

Mission #69: The crevices of life

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We’re going to take a pause from the active missions this week.  Mission #69 is simply about watching this new video, and then reading this post.  That’s it, that’s the whole mission.  Here we go.

Now, it’s not so much the message of this video that I want to talk about. (The fact that I like making things, and that most of you like making things, is pretty much old news around here, wouldn’t you say?)

What I want to talk about is the video’s backstory, the how and when of creating it.

I didn’t wait for a clean-slate of a day, an empty calendar, or even a decent expanse of time to open up and present itself to me.  (Do any of those three things actually exist, btw?) I created this video in what I call “the crevices of life.”

I know you know what I mean even before I elaborate.

The crevices of life are those 20 minutes, 40 minutes, maybe even a whole hour (!) that dangle in the space between The “Real” Thing I Just Finished and The “Real” Thing I Have to Do Next.   These small, unassuming pockets of time are easy to dismiss and squander; it’s like somehow they don’t really “count.”  

But behold— these stray minutes are where it’s at!  They are tiny but mighty golden fireballs just waiting for our attention and touch.

Remember the very first video that launched this blog, ATM Always Trust Magic?

I filmed that in between soccer carpool shifts one afternoon.

Remember The Beckoning of Lovely 9/09/09?

I conceived and executed the entire thing between 9 am and noon that very morning.  (I initially wasn’t going to do anything on the big day, but I woke up that morning in a panic— how could I not do something on 9/09/09?!)

Remember our graFEETi mission a couple months ago?

Shot that little film with the hour I had between dropping one kid off and picking up another.

Finally, this week’s new video.  I made it a couple Friday nights ago when my daughter had a bunch of pals over. Hubby and I were hanging out in the kitchen, making them dinner/chaperoning/generally being an embarrassment. I had the idea for this crayon art video for a few months, and then just decided to make it right then and there in the kitchen.  That’s my daughter’s head poking into the video at the beginning.  If I unmuted the audio, you’d hear her asking if she could sleep over at a friend’s that night.  (I answered no.)  She then asked if she could stick her head into the frame while I was filming.  (I answered yes.)

I share all this with you as a way to pull back the curtain a bit.  And I like the Oz analogy actually.  Because oz also stands for ounce.  

Ounce by ounce, minute by minute, it all adds up.  I assure you that whatever it is you are hoping to make, or hoping to make happen, it’s more likely to manifest itself if you stop waiting for the right (imagined long stretch of) time…and immediately start dipping into the fractured but endlessly available crevices of life.      — amy

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Thank you to everyone who came out last Thursday for the “Life is a Marathon” mission. I’m editing the film now and should have it up in the next week or two.

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