How to Begin Again (While Everyone Is Watching)

There’s a specific kind of silence that happens when you begin again.
Not the quiet of starting fresh, but the kind that comes when you return ...older, more uncertain, and aware that someone might be watching.

I’ve felt it at the start of a new sketchbook.
On the first page of a picture book dummy.
The first morning I returned to the field, when the air was thick with fog and the forthysia bowed low, and something in me said: begin.

There’s pressure, somehow, in the beginning that follows a long pause.
To prove you were learning.
To explain where you’ve been.
To show growth.

But I’m learning to let beginnings be smaller than that.
More seed than statement.
More breath than banner.

Sometimes, the one watching most closely is me.
The version of myself who should already know how.
The version who’s afraid I’ve forgotten.
The version who’s still trying to get it right the first time.
Beginning again means letting them all be here and starting anyway.

I tell my students that a good drawing doesn’t begin with a line.
It begins with a shift in attention.
The moment you stop thinking about what you want to say, and start noticing what’s already there.

It’s the same in the garden.
I can’t rush the soil just because I’m ready to plant.
I have to wait until it’s well-mixed, warm, workable, and willing though most of the time I'm impatient.

August is that kind of soil.
Still hot from summer, but quieter.
The zinnias lean from their own weight.
The bees move slowly.
Everything is still blooming, but tiredly.
The urgency has passed.
What’s left is what’s true.

Naturally, I start with what fascinates me most.
And this year, it’s the runner ducks.
They waddle through the garden like a strange punctuation,
slipping between plants, ignoring the paths.
Watching them makes me want to draw.

The first mark I made was a shape I didn’t recognize.
It moved across the page like a diagonal wind
fast, uncertain, and slightly wrong.
I almost stopped.
But I followed it instead.

It didn’t become anything I would keep,
but it moved something loose.
And then the rhythm came.

A student once asked me,
“What if the first line ruins the page?”
I told her,
“Then it’s not the first line. The one after it is.” 😃

So here I am, beginning again, not because I know exactly where I’m going, but because the ground has softened, and I’m ready to step in.

If you’re here too, hovering near the edge of something - Welcome.
Let August teach us how to begin again.
Start soft.
Start quiet.
Let the rhythm lead.

Ginnie