After nine years, our reliable Chrysler Town and Country van is giving up the ghost. Although the engine is still solid, the body is rusting and other maladies afflict it. 
We are so ready for a new car. Still, I’ll be sad to see the van go. That van was the third of three vans that I drove several times a year to craft shows in Virginia and elsewhere. I drove it to conferences in Grand Rapids, Pittsburgh, New York City, Newark, and to visit friends and family in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Indiana.
Bob transported an MG engine, plywood, building studs, concrete, bricks, pellets (tons), and rocks, lots of rocks, in that car.
We’ve traveled to weddings and funerals in that car.
And that car carried several full loads of antiques and second-hand furniture back from Indiana where we spent the days antiquing at shows, auctions and antique malls with our good friends, Bill and Patty.
The car is loaded with stories enmeshed in its carpets and upholstery, hiding in the glove box, and lurking in the dashboard. Stories shared by friends, laughing and carrying on. Stories shared by family that often start with “Remember when…?” Even stories shared by our dog, Duncan, who pressed innumerable nose prints to the glass as we traveled to the vet or the dump or the playground, tail wagging in excitement until the last day we traveled with him to the vet.
I’ll be happy to drive a car that I don’t have worry will have brake problems or other performance issues.
But I’ll probably shed more than a few tears when we leave this van as we drive our new car out of the dealership.
Amazing how machines and inanimate objects can hold such power, such energy and even such emotion.
The same is true of your creative work. Anything you create holds your energy in terms of your time, your thoughts, your frustrations and joys, your patience and commitment. Anything you create holds story.
Whether you write, compose music, paint, or create products or programs for coaching clients.
You tell your story, through your medium, to your audience.
And the vehicle for your work holds your energy as well…
Take a look at your work, your studio space, your tools. What energies and memories do they hold?
What stories do they tell?
Which of those supposedly inanimate objects or machines do you need to trade in for a better-performing model?
Even if you shed a few tears as you do…
Does it deserve an ode?