Welcome back Observers, I’m excited to be writing to you again! I needed to collect some very sporadic thoughts before I could put my words to the page again. As you already know, it’s been an interesting time in my life. I’m going backwards to go forward again. A concept I didn’t believe would ever actually work for me.

In addition to the stress of recent months, I simply was in no position to make sense of anything that was happening to me, even as I desperately wanted to escape from it. My usual crutches did not hold me up. I haven’t finished a book in months, I have no space to dance, I had zero energy or desire to get creative in the kitchen, my art supplies are tucked away God knows where.

My desk set up was non-existent, since I’m going through renovations in my space and have very literally been completely displaced in my apartment/life/career/hobbies/health etc. and my family (though I love them) really don’t understand that the flow state is a sacred place and when the keyboard is out and my noise-cancelling headphones are on, I will lose all momentum if I am interrupted.

Though I tried to write, only bits and pieces came through. Fragments of feelings and experiences that I hadn’t completed yet. Pieces which I now have the time and the space to sew together for you all.

Today we are exploring the breaks that lead to breakthroughs.

Like most things in life, this could apply to just about anything. What comes to mind for me when I think of this are the active choices we make to walk away from something, relational or otherwise, the moment in between stopping and starting again, and the result of something else entirely (or at the very least a completion of said thing).

These breaks in time could be seen as failures, or they could be the calm before the incredible, electrifying storm. Moments in time where we are given the space to collect ourselves again and in that process become or create something so much better because of it.

Over the course of the last few months, I came to the hard decision to shelve my first ever novel. It had no direction, it lost its relevance and despite the work I put into it, I couldn’t breathe life into it anymore.

For a writer, this is a fate worse than death, where something we’ve spent perhaps years on (which I have) suddenly flatlines, and no amount of staring at the pages will fix it.

I hope that someday I can revisit it and give it the life it deserves, but for now I wasn’t aligned with what I was trying to write. In that book I was lost, and so were my characters. So I did the right thing, and I stepped away.

Yet in the back of my mind I have had another idea brewing, one that spoke quietly to me daily, in my dreams at night, and told me that right now, we were one and the same…but still the idea wasn’t fully there. So I did nothing.

Before I left my job in Philadelphia, I was sitting at my desk enjoying my afternoon latte. At this point I had already decided that I was leaving, I had found someone to take over my lease and in many more ways than one, my life was packed up and ready to go.

It was quiet this day, a Friday I think, and no one was in the office. Fridays were often my favorite day there, filled with the same excitement at the end of a week, but also so entirely peaceful. I worked for a fashion company, so a very creative place, and as a writer you would be surprised how much inspiration I could find in a place like that.

Emotionally, I was all over the place. Unhappy, confused, hurt, lonely, anxious, but also excited and there was a very small spark of renewal forming inside of me.

Mid sip, it hit me. Every missing piece for my newest novel came flooding into me. So fast that I couldn’t type or write the ideas fast enough.

In that moment, in the break, I had a breakthrough.

So much so that I had no doubts about what I was creating in that moment. I did not question a single decision, because finally, it was exactly right.

I did not force it. I did not try to mold it as it came to me. I did nothing but accept the exact conditions that I was in, the exact conditions that my new novel demanded to be, I did not doubt where I would be going, what I was doing, nothing.

It’s rare to feel that in life, but when you do it’s hard to describe how incredibly powerful that moment can be. I have only come into that awareness a couple of times, but I’m trying to do better to live in that state of mind more often, because the things that come through are life-altering.

To try to put it into words, it’s as if you finally understand every single moment of your life. Every heartbreak, every failure, every success, every question, every person that has some into your life. You understand it in that moment because it couldn’t matter less.

You can’t take it with you, and if you try it could hold you back.

You can’t do anything about it, because other people’s actions and their beliefs are not your responsibility.

You find in that moment you don’t care how it all happened or why, and you’re filled with acceptance that every single moment that made you who you are had purpose.

It’s a flow state of its own design.

So I wrote down every single thought that came to mind for my new novel. Ink covered my hands and the emails that binged on my work computer were promptly ignored. This was more important because I was finally, perfectly aligned with my true purpose in life.

I went to Pinterest and started to bring my novel visually to life, so I could prove to myself that it would be possible and be able to tap into that inspiration whenever the hard days would come again, because they would.

I went to Spotify and started to bring my novel to life audibly. What was the essence of the book? Who were my characters and how could they be represented through sound?

For a moment, it was just me and my utterly and perfectly new ideas. I had told no one, even as I was bursting at the seams to do so. It was just me and this brilliant new hope, and I was angry that I couldn’t write the entire book in one sitting because a part of me was ready to. I’m a planner, and that includes my novels, so I knew that this energy would need to be harnessed to access later, because even as I write this, I haven’t started writing it yet.

I need to continue to bring those ideas to life in small ways so that I can honor what it represents to me, and thus the very essence of why I’m creating it at all.

All this to say, breakthroughs happen in the blink of an eye, in moments where they can be easy to miss. If I had answered that one entirely inconsequential email, I might have lost it entirely. If I didn’t stop to savor that single sip of coffee, I might have missed my chance for who knows how much longer.

I implore you to conquer your fears and take the breaks you need to allow those breakthroughs to come through. We have no idea what we might be missing.

Whether it’s a breakup you’re going through, and you and your partner need time apart before you can ever give your relationship the chance it deserves again.

Or maybe you realize you’re better off without them.

Or maybe you take a break and realize that the job you’re in, the program you’re studying, is making you miserable and doesn’t reflect who you are, so you take the chance to go after what you really want.

Or maybe you need to scrap every idea and walk away for a while, only to be hit with the perfect idea when you least expect it like I was.

It could be anything, in fact it usually is. In every mundane, everyday moment is usually where the exceptional breakthroughs are hiding.

Slow down, Zoom Out, and look up Observers.

You have no idea what you might be missing.