If you’re weary and tired from endless screen time, join the club.

I get it. It’s easy to believe that constant busyness is good and even honorable. But we eventually reach the point where our brains feel like mush and we can’t quite see reality clearly. It’s defeating.

My many years of writing has taught me that creativity is the antidote to overconsumption. When I sit still, listen to the birds singing, and observe Orion’s Belt twinkling above me, something changes in me. My heartbeat slows, I breathe more deeply, I decipher the timbre of God’s voice. And a poem can put words to this.

You have a poem inside of you that only you can write, but poems are shy and delicate creatures, and they often refuse to emerge until you give them the time and space to do so. But when the words finally find their way from your brain to the page, something divine occurs. Poems help us make sense of things. Poems help us make sense of ourselves. As my poetry professor Bill Jolliff once said, “Poetry can’t make a living, but it can make a life.”

So. There you have it. I think we can all agree we’ve consumed enough content for a while.

Let’s live again, together.