Posty McInstaface
A walk with a boy and a dog
Step by step, Throw after throw
Drooly requests beg action
Sandy feet, Clear blue sky
Unending satisfaction
Who is throwing, Who can follow?
What is it even giving
A sense of joy or a moments rush?
Precision is in the living
I went for a walk the other day with my son. He was off school on a random day he wouldn’t usually be off. It was a gift — a day when I might otherwise have been in my craft room, head down, focused on the minutiae: the stitch, the seam, the next small decision. God, I love that work… it always asks me to be planning the next steps, to be thinking ahead while being exactly where I am in the same moment. How lucky am I.
Walking that day though… and its gift of opportunity, felt different.
I felt different.
I could look up at the sky.
On the walk my boy kept on hitting the ball for the dog.
Wallop. Fetch. Return. Again and again.
The dog would sprint, swim, bring the ball back, hungry for more. It felt endless — throw after throw into the sea — and the furry wet ecstatic animal would keep bringing it back, joyful and tireless, eyes wide, feet hopping in wait for the next yeet of the ball. We might still be there, because this hound’s energy knows no end.
There was a clarity in that dogged repetition. Our four legged friend’s joy was simple and present. My son’s engagement was immediate, free. He was on for it, and really didn’t mind his role.
We were loving life in its freedom to be what it just is.
In the relentlessness of the exchange, I found myself thinking about social media — the constancy, the pressure, the strategy.
I’ve been posting a lot these last few weeks, trying to nudge followers forward, to shape ‘likes’ and ‘follows’ and build business. It’s necessary, but it’s unending. And truthfully, working alone, sometimes it’s actually nice to share what you have created with the world, to share how it’s been done, to share who you might be behind the bag or the knitting or the fabric, and what makes the bag or the knitting or the fabric what it is, because… well, you made it.
For a moment, however, I recognised two distinct kinds of momentum:
one mechanical… (often full in potential in many ways, for the readers who like a bit of physics), driven by metrics and obligation (ref also here the daily, constant, never ending thoughts about what to have for dinner);
the other spontaneous, kinetic, driven by delight… freedom.
Both require energy, but they ask for different things from us.
I also see that in this battle of life /work momentum, there is actually some altogether online holy place where the value of what you do is viewable. The unseen time you spend on something has other eyes on it than your own. The point of the work gets context briefly, outside of a product on a shelf briefly touched by a glance or a fleeting hand. Where its not wholly about the likes and follows… 'it’s not egocentric or business-centric in any way. Maybe there was a point in the original body of Instagram that had an altruistic MO for sharing…
OK.. maybe that is a step too far :)
Anyhow…
We walked together, my son and I, chatting, life-ing… drool covered ball in hand, sandy toes stretching free at last, released from their longest-winter-ever shoe prisons
The gift in the walk spurred me to be more patient of the work that needs regular tending — the posting, the planning, the business-side discipline — while also remembering to look up, every day… to make room for unpressured moments of play, and actually to see that ultimately, it’s all one flow. Things get done precisely when they need to. Everything always is led by, and leads to precision in action, in momentum. Even when its hard.
So I have posted the juxtaposition in a reel.
Maybe you would like to see it. It’s on my Instagram page @woven.motion, while you are there… follow, like, comment. (hee hee)
And look up at the sky.