A creative high

What has happened to me? I took a quiet contemplative respite and yet I returned with so much energy, so many new ideas. I am more creative now then when I left.

My flight to Laoag was scheduled to leave at noon but since my driver and I tend to be obsessivecompulsive about departures, arrivals and traffic, I was at the airport by 10, no makeup because I had sore eyes though they weren’t red anymore, sniffling and coughing like a mad animal. I wanted to buy a magazine but they were so expensive, I settled for cough drops. Then I bought myself siopao and coffee for a meal to sustain me between Manila and Laoag.

But the wait was so long. The plane was late as usual. I lamented the traffic on the road and in the air. We were on the runway more than an hour just waiting for the tower to clear our takeoff. To think the trip to Laoag was less than an hour!

I finally arrived in Laoag and went to the convent where they served me a late lunch, then allowed me to rest a bit. This convent is a cloister. There are only three nuns on the outside. The rest are in the cloister, away from the rest of the world, and their task is to pray us. This is a very quiet order.

You know by now that mine was a teaching visit. I didn’t think it was going to do me any good. I knew I would have five days of quiet because I was going to the cloisters and there isn’t much to do there except sit around and read or knit or sleep. Just like home, I thought. Sure I taught for three hours a day but in between I just rested. But when I got back to Manila, after I unpacked my suitcase and rested for a night, I woke up feeling refreshed, so refreshed that I wanted to do a million things I had not thought of doing before.

First I turned my bedroom around. My desk is now where my bed used to be. My bed is now in a diagonal position closer to the window. My feet don’t point to the bedroom door because superstition says that will lead to death. My bed is now close to the window so at night I can see the lights, the moon and the stars. Since I returned the moon has gone from the thin slice it was while it was new, growing slightly every night to where it is now — half-moon. I wake up in darkness seeing it as a heavenly eye watching me. But the moon is friendly and affectionate. I just know it is.

Then I fixed my closet. It looks so much better now. There is more room. Then I bought picture frames for family pictures, had lamps that needed repair fixed, cleaned and fixed almost everything. I stuck a lot of CDs into a bag that I will put in the garbage knowing that I won’t really throw those away, just pass them down and eventually someone will need them. I’m not done because I do all my cleaning and rearranging between the ordinary things I do.

I cleaned all my fashion accessories. That’s not finished because I make the fashion accessories myself and hang from a wrought iron tree so they have collected so much dust. In the process I learned an important lesson. Want to get the tarnish out? Soak them a couple of nights in water with dishwashing liquid. The tarnish sort of melts into the water and the accessories come out clean and shiny.

In between the cleaning and tidying I even managed to make a few pieces of jewelry. I had sort of stopped around Christmas but suddenly I was at it again and found myself expanding into necklaces once more. I am determined to sell them as soon as I finish cleaning my room and the two other rooms in my house plus the kitchen.

What has happened to me? I took a quiet contemplative respite and yet I returned with so much energy, so many new ideas. I am more creative now then when I left. I didn’t do anything on my vacation, didn’t visit any old churches or museums, didn’t even go to a market or sari-sari store. I had already done all of those things before. I just stayed in the convent and was quiet. Still I came back with a lot of energy and oodles and oodles of creativity.

Maybe that’s the secret. Forget about vacations where you do so much — go furiously sightseeing, eat at the best restaurants, have your selfies taken everywhere. Maybe the secret is to go somewhere quiet and do close to nothing. Then make the quiet trip home, unpack, sleep. When you wake up you will feel refreshed, renewed, totally energetic, rushed into a very high creative high! So you just go for it and enjoy your new life to the fullest.