Lately, I’ve been wondering about oomph.
It’s hard to explain and easier to feel: the kind of vitality that makes you want to show up for your own life.
I noticed it somewhere within my morning practices—stillness, movement, writing—and a newfound devotion to mark making. The studio has grown messier. Paint appears in suspicious places. Ramekins in a parchment-lined baking pan are pressed into service for mixing colors. Two desks seem to have surrendered to some strange and joyful creative uprising.
I feel more alive. That surprises me.
For much of my life, I have loved beauty, polish, and order. Stylishness still has its appeal. I show up for my morning movement practice in sleek, matching dancewear, makeup, and a topknot because looking my best still feels good to me. Beauty, artistry, and self-expression are woven into my nature.
Something has shifted, though.
Paint drips down my arm. Supplies are spread across the studio. An abstract experiment goes gloriously sideways and, instead of tightening, correcting, or controlling the scene, I find myself laughing.
Maybe oomph begins the moment joy becomes more interesting than perfection.
Where Oomph Lives
Lately, I’ve found myself wondering why so many people miss feeling fully alive and barely say it aloud.
There was a time when I filled my days, crowded my calendar, carried responsibilities proudly, and mistook keeping everything moving for living well. Delight still existed, of course, but too often it waited politely at the edges.
Eventually, I began asking myself a harder question: When did life become something to manage more than embrace?
Art is not the answer for everyone. Neither is writing, movement, or watercolor mysteriously finding its way onto the floor. Still, something feels universally true here: oomph seems to grow wherever love, curiosity, and attention meet.
A garden. Music while cooking. A long walk. Making something for the pleasure of making it. Laughing with someone who knows your heart. Being encouraged toward joy instead of away from it.
Gary does that. He sees delight rising in me and reminds me that creativity has lived here a long time—fashion, embroidery, prints, words, beauty, ideas. He notices the spark and gently fans it.
Oomph, I’m beginning to think, lives somewhere between devotion and delight—between what steadies us and what makes us feel most alive.
These days, I still love a certain polished finesse. Looking fabulous and living in fabulous spaces are not exactly off the bargaining table. Somewhere inside me, a stylish inner voice still prefers order to paint splatter.
I simply no longer want appearance to outrank aliveness.
Maybe that’s where oomph lives.
In what sparks us awake and calls us back to wonder.
In what reminds us that life is not asking merely to be managed, but to be loved, entered fully, and lived lit from within.
~ ✦ ~
P.S. What steadies you? What delights you? Somewhere between the two, oomph may be waiting.