On Retreat

"that is not your fucking windmill to conquer"

I’m on a brief writing retreat this week, not totally off the grid, but more off than on. A friend lent me space in a more rural corner of Vermont than even where I live, and so I’ve absconded with Josie the dog. I’ve been sneaking off for residencies or retreats at least a couple times of year for forever— my preferred way to work on, well, anything is in intense spurts; the focus and spaciousness of a retreat is my happy place.

I use retreat and residency somewhat interchangeably, though residencies are usually hosted, something to apply for, while retreat is a more flexible term. Either way, the point is purposeful time away: not work, not vacation, but a liminal space to cultivate creative practice and deep focus where normal rules don’t apply.

I’d love to see more people take space. I encourage my clients in the art of retreat all the time. If you have a more entangled life than mine (read: children), it may take a bit more finagling.

The important part is to go elsewhere.

You can’t do this at home. Laundry lurks at home. Even if you live blissfully alone, unencumbered by obligations to other beings and their energies, you still need to leave.

The elsewhere can be formal or not. Somewhere you apply to, or a hotel room you book via an app last minute (make sure there’s a bathtub). It could be a friend’s house, but only if they are not there or the rare gem of a friend who thoroughly understands the peculiarities of retreat time. Low interactions with others is key. Maybe a dinner gathering at most.

Know what you want to work on ahead of time, but beware of optimistically shoving too many projects into this time. Some retreats are for research or sketching or material gathering or wandering. Others are more focused on finishing something. You’re more likely to overestimate what you will accomplish, forgetting about the fuck off time (see below) or creative digressions, but it’s also okay to show up with every art supply under the sun and only touch the watercolors. I suspect the advanced move is an elegantly minimal goal.

Figure out what discipline or structure will apply ahead of time. Perhaps you need to lock your phone in one of those boxes with a timer. Perhaps you usually read or do the crossword or play Candy Crush first thing in the morning, and instead you will meditate or journal. Maybe you usually are most productive in the morning, but find that the expansion of space and time turns you into a prodigious night owl who sleeps in. Yes, call in useful discipline, but be willing to dispense with what’s too constrictive, and in particular what is normally routine (Except the phone. Do not try to convince yourself that your phone has anything to do with this quest).

Don’t forget your body. Long walks, especially, will be when the sudden strokes of insight will find you.

If nobody is feeding you, consider whether you care about food at all. I once spent time in a residency with a couple of musicians whose protocol for food for their week was a box of rather bland burritos, made at home and frozen, to be dispensed as “pellets” at discrete intervals. You can be a real artistic freak about your food intake! Or decide you want all your favorite snacks on hand and graze with abandon; or order pizza and eat the cold leftovers for every meal for days; or stick with what you eat all the time. Cooking can be a great break if you have a decent kitchen, meals provide essential structure if you need it. The point is, there’s no wrong approach. I also find a grocery store run to be a very therapeutic errand to stick in the middle of a particularly vexing day.

Allow that the first day may be a wash. You wake up with gusto, make your little plans, and then feel antsy, brain-itchy, and putter, or break the box and liberate your phone, or find yourself curating an extensive Sephora shopping cart. You may clean things that aren’t yours to clean or go down a research rabbit hole about an obscure film star from your childhood and their current day whereabouts¹. Like a dog that circles five times before final settling into their bed, don’t worry, you’re just getting ready to go.

There will come a time when you are struck with an unquenchable urge to redesign your entire website or tackle some other insane project that is absolutely consuming and unrelated to why you have come here. This is a mirage, a false oasis shimmering before you in your own blistering desert. Resist this chimera. You are not Don Quixote, and that is not your fucking windmill to conquer.

If you’re gone longer than a week, make sure you fuck off at some point for an afternoon or so.

Watch Law & Order reruns or get out in the world and have a glass of wine² somewhere. Chit chat with a stranger or find live music or spend an entire afternoon reading a dog eared Nora Roberts paperback that you discover in a Tiny Library on one of your long walks.

Some retreats will, beyond your control and wildest efforts, turn into an extended fuck off. Pay very close attention to the fine line between a brain whining for candy and a brain that needs a specific sort of freedom and rest that will not tolerate deep focus. The extent that you are able to discern the difference—trying your best stay firm on the candy, indulgent with the tired brain—will be the extent that fucking off ends up feeling fruitful and worthwhile or a sign of your absolute failure as a human being.

If you’re traveling particularly far, wide, or deep— especially for a residency of two weeks— plan buffer on the back end. Return before a weekend, or sneak an extra day off. This is for laundry and reentry, shaking off the bit of feral about you.

Comments are on for all in case you’d like to share your own retreat wisdom.

1. I found myself falling headlong into a research hole into the decades long creative collaboration between Jim Henson and Frank Oz this morning. No idea how that happened.

2. Alcohol is another consideration. Sometimes I abstain completely, chasing a clearer head; sometimes that glass of wine at the end of the day is the essential reward.