"Lucia means light," she says. but I create in the dark. If the muse is going to come at all, early morning is when she finds me tappity-tapping at the kitchen table circling an idea's glint. I find it, lose it, find it again perhaps, in awe of the encounter in a room lit only by a tea light, even on the longest day of the year.

I churn over what it means to build a creative life within our other lives. You do too, I know it. In pursuit of a nesting doll existence it is tempting to focus on mastering the how. Reduced to sets of practices with accompanying catch phrases, recipes for accomplishing the how resonate in the simple way that common sense does. And then there is the what and the why.

The what is a fingerprint - individual, the marks we leave. Lyrics before falling into bed so you will dream them. The exploration of a movement, an expression. Pixels manipulated on a screen that are the yield of the heavy camera on a scarf around your neck always. Always. Seeds pressed into soil. Carved wooden blocks smeared with ink to print. A soufflé. A family. A goddam revolution. 

The why is our common compulsion. The why is because we must.  

Sarah Anne Childers is the online editor at luciajournal.com where she toggles between curating creatives as an editor and creatively curating ideas and the words they live in as a writer. 

sarah@luciajournal.com