Writing from the Heart
“The joy was not just in the simple stuff — like a good cup of coffee and being being mindful and present — but experiencing joy, looking for joy, and having a hand in it. And knowing that does not have to be completed necessarily by somebody validating it.”
-Dr. Jason Ridler
This episode is part of a Breathing Wind miniseries titled Finding Unexpected Joy, hosted by Sarah Davis. The Finding Unexpected Joy miniseries explores the idea that joy can happen in the midst of grief, and that maybe we don’t know yet what might come out of our grief journeys.
In this episode, Sarah talks with Dr. Jason Ridler (Dr. Jay) about the act of writing as a way to process by doing, how his grief transformed his relationship to writing, and how he connected back to the joy of why he became a writer in the first place. Dr. Jay is an historian, writer, and teacher of creative writing who has worked for such clients as Johns Hopkins University, Google, and the US Naval Academy, among others. A former punk rock musician and cemetery groundskeeper, Dr. Jay remains a loyal but critical form of professional wrestling.
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Moments from this ~38 minute episode:
[3:01] “Whatever your assumed or presumed goal is on the way to it, life gives you a curveball that actually says that's a stepping stone.”
[5:57] How Dr. Jay came to teach the creative writing class, “Writing from the Heart.”
[9:48] Background behind Catastrophe and Transformation, an article Dr. Jay wrote about his grief over tragic events in his life, and how that shifted his writing trajectory and views on life
[14:28] “When you abandon the goal and you do the art, all of a sudden the art gets better and people want to give you more goals.”
[18:00] “But when you are forced to sit down and put your thoughts on paper, and they reflect back to you, all of a sudden, you're in the process of knowing by doing.”
[19:39] “What grief did was shake most of the illusions I had about how the world worked away. I couldn't be blind to the things that I wanted to be blind to. Grief denied me this.”
[25:45] “When all of that stuff got shattered, the joy was not just in the simple stuff, like a good cup of coffee, and being mindful and present — but experiencing joy, looking for joy, and having a hand in it. And knowing that no one else that does not have to be completed necessarily by somebody validating it.”
Resources mentioned:
Catastrophe and Transformation by Dr. Jason Ridler
Model Yachting Breathing Wind Episode, Episode 49: A walk in the park with friends
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