For a very long time, I wanted to participate in the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola; however, I never found the time or considered options that would allow for this experience. As a single, independent working woman, how would I find time for this type of prayer? I could never take a month off for a silent retreat; this would almost become a luxury, one which I would put on a bucket list for a later time. Yet, there was a hunger to travel this Spiritual Journey.

Through Campus Ministry at Saint Peter’s University there came an offer for the 19th Annotation of the Spiritual Exercises in Daily Life, which can be done by people who work full-time. In this version, the Exercises are extended over several months, and the retreatants do weekly prayer practices, readings, and meditations. When the opportunity was offered to me to participate in this Ignatius Retreat in daily life, I jumped to participate in the program. I am a busy person! This was a prayer for a busy person. A win-win!  This would be an easy process, said I. I go to mass, I believe in God, I know the teachings of the church, I worked in Campus Ministry; how bad could this process be? Easy, I thought. I could do this.

Once I began the Spiritual Exercises, I had no idea what was before me. As the process began, my spiritual director (a priest) was easy to talk with. I looked forward to our weekly meetings in a sitting room in his residence, in which we discussed things and prayed together. However, some discipline is required to do your own daily prayer, reading, and meditation. I was spending about 45 minutes each day to prepare for our weekly meetings and to grow in the Spirit. I had to learn to keep myself open to God’s love for me and to grow in a relationship with Jesus so different than I ever imagined. I prayed hard to understand God’s love for me and how deeply that Love is. I had to come to understand the consolation and desolation, the encounter with the gentle angel that touches the soul lightly, “like drops of water to a sponge,” as well as the evil one who comes to bring agitation and insecurity. I met both on this journey towards and with Jesus. I tried to focus on Jesus, always trying to remember that He is meeting me where I am and as the disciples on the road to Emmaus who journey with the risen Christ, I tried to remain on that path. In my struggle, one question that would resurface in my prayer was, what was the force keeping me on the journey? Was the force within myself or was the force that Jesus wanted to truly share his life with me?

About halfway through the daily retreat, there was a bit of a derailment with my process. My spiritual director and I could not continue the process together any longer. There were other priests who were mentors to me in the past, but I felt that their guidance at times had a negative impact on me; this priest felt that I was transferring the negativity from these past relationships onto him and he no longer thought that it would be fruitful for us to continue together on the journey…. BAM! The moment of desolation. What to do? How to continue, should I continue? How do I push through my anger and not stay in this desolation? I felt sad and betrayed. What had I done for this to happen? What was lacking in the journey? Was I to give up? Was this a sign of not being worthy to continue in this relationship with Jesus? In the desolation had the evil one succeeded? What should I do? The process that I thought would be easy had become difficult and painful. As that old Peggy Lee song goes, “Is that all there is?” Was I done? Was Jesus done with me? Was I done with Jesus?

In the search for answers to these questions, I was blessed to connect with a different spiritual director who guided me through the completion of the retreat in daily life. The second spiritual director was understanding, but rehashing the experience and not feeling worthy to continue the process was painful for me. However, I do not give up easily. What was the driving force? What was pulling at me to keep going? What helped through this time of desolation was to always reflect on Psalm 139: “You have searched for me, Lord, and you know me…. Where can I go from your Spirit?”

The Spiritual Exercises helped me to understand that, as with any relationship, there must be an ongoing desire to keep the relationship alive, to keep the communication open, to listen not only with ears but with the heart. I had to keep moving forward and know that the love Jesus has for me is greater than I could ever imagine, greater than anything I have experienced. No matter how many times I am distracted or derailed from the intended course of this relationship, I must push forward. It seemed that there was something unexplainable pulling in my heart to keep moving forward. Was the desire to have God’s love in my life? It was the desire for the desire to keep me on the journey. Perhaps it was something more powerful than wild horses.

I am a person who wants answers and outcomes quickly. Why is the prayer slow? Where are the answers? What I learned or encountered was the slow work of Jesus in this relationship. The Spiritual Exercises are a dance. The dance is sometimes a waltz, sometimes a tango, sometimes swing or sometimes freestyle, and Jesus is the dance partner. Jesus takes the lead and knows how to move, to guide me. When we dance, we become transformed by music and movements that show us what is yet to come. With Jesus as my dance partner, he catches my heart in the music and movement of life. The Spiritual Exercises take me on a journey which captures my very being, allowing me to re-engage my life with the one person who knows me better than I know myself.

I continued to encounter so many wonderful experiences through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius in daily life. With all their twists, rhythms, turns, and derailment in the process, Jesus kept me on my feet. Jesus kept me engaged in the dance. Jesus led me to God through the Spirit, which is forever at work within me. In my desolation, I wanted to give up, much like a dance marathon. I grew weary, but my partner believed in me and pushed me on. Yet in my heart, there was a stronger need to continue. The words of Zephaniah 3:17 rang through, “The Lord your God will take great delight in you.”

In the delight of the dance, I felt Jesus’ love for me.  I learned of His mercy and forgiveness. I grew in gratitude for those who have been on the dance floor with me. I continue this dance with Jesus and I pray that the Spirit stays close and fills me with an awareness of how greatly I am loved and therefore the dance continues. When dancing with Jesus there is no limit to a specific style or tradition. Dancing with Jesus transcends movement and space.

There is a harmony with the sacred presence; each step and each movement, each touch is filled with awe. No choreography is needed and the dance is intimate; at each sway, each turn, Jesus’ hand on my back would convey love, a surrender, a closeness of heart. As the dance continues, I feel his hand guiding me, leading me to a dance of souls imagining the rhythm, passion, forgiveness, and unwavering love.

After a rough beginning of the Spiritual Exercises, stepping on toes and falling, I am able to step forward. Jesus’ arms encircle me, the weight of burdens lifted. The dance floor expands and I dance with the constellation as if it is the dance of love. It is dancing with perfect harmony, a tapestry of healing and hope.

I am grateful Jesus led and guided me across the dance floor so that one day, the dance of love will continue in the grand ballroom of all. Are you willing to join in the dance, knowing that the movement can be challenging, that the rhythm, turns and spinning can cause confusion? The Spiritual Exercises embody what it is like to dance to the rhythm of the one who will always guide our steps on the dance floor. It is a celestial waltz–a dance of souls.

The following is an edited version of a video script I wrote, adapted for reading. As many of those who submit to The Pavan are creatives, I figure submitting this would be right at home and would strike a chord with those who also contemplated putting an end to their artistic careers.

Hi there. I'm pretty sure you haven't heard about me up until this point. In fact, I'd imagine for a lot of you reading this essay, you probably haven’t even seen me on campus. Maybe, if you’re just coming to attend Saint Peter’s after the 2025 school year, you might not ever get to meet me, and I’ll be among many of the other artists here whose voice has been immortalized by the editorial board of this year’s edition of the magazine. But regardless of your relations with me, be they familiar or strange, I want to start this off by saying “thank you.” Thank you for giving this essay, this one thought of mine, a chance at being expressed. This one’s going to seem very “stream-of-consciousness”-esque, but do your best to stay with me on this introspective journey from a fellow creative.

I realize that, as time goes on, many of the mediums I talk about may fall to irrelevancy. Though I do hone my focus on the game Geometry Dash and my contributions to that particular community, it is not intended to be the main point of this piece. In fact, you can view it as an example of expression. With this in mind, even if you, as an artist, cannot connect with this specific medium, I do hope that the point I’m attempting to get across by using it still connects. Art is universal, after all. In fact, the community-sharing aspect of art as a whole is the best way I can start this off. You see, when an artist creates something, they'll create it for a reason. Maybe it's just to vent off some steam or other frustrations from their life. Maybe they have some message they want to share, but have no idea how to share it. Art, in its rawest form, allows us to express these inexpressible ideas. It gives us the power to put whatever we're feeling in tangible form and allow others to feel it too, through their own interpretations. A prime example of this is a content creator on YouTube named Will Ryan, better known online as DAGames. There’s a very good chance you might have heard some of his works – tracks such as “Build Our Machine” (a song inspired by the game Bendy and the Ink Machine), “Brothers in Arms” (another inspired by the game Cuphead), “Slave To The Factory Line” (also inspired by the game Poppy’s Playtime), and more practically had the younger generation in a chokehold from 2017 to the mid 2020s. But it’s not these songs that I’m focused on here, as much as I love and adore them to the point of memory permanence–no. It's his personal, heartfelt songs that really drew my attention. One of the first albums he released on the DAGames channel, back in 2017, was Heart Of An Artist. It was a way for him to channel all of his emotions of sadness, his frustrations with art mediums as a whole, but most importantly, it was all a reflection of him, who he was as an artist.

As I was getting into the swing of art, a lot of these emotional songs really got me to know how he felt inside, feelings that aren’t so easily explainable when just talking about it. It's something that many fans, myself included, have commended him for, using his emotions and talents, in conjunction, to craft a huge fantasy world, complete with complex lore that all ties into the basic concepts of what it means to be an artist. Had I the time, I’d love to gush about all of these stories, but really, explaining them doesn’t do it justice. I’ll have to implore you to look into the story of Goliath, the Iris, and the Dimetrix on your own time–you most certainly won’t regret it. All this being said, for me and many others, he serves as a great inspiration.

But that’s just focusing on one popular platform, in one medium. Why don’t we bring it back to something smaller, yet just as comparable in scale, awe, and amazement? In the game Geometry Dash, players have access to a level editor. It does about everything you'd expect a level editor to do: you can place many objects and manipulate them in any way you see fit, from changing their size to changing their color. You can use more advanced features that the game uses in its own levels to build whatever you want. But the results of what can be achieved in this editor go far beyond the limitations that were set by the developer – actual games made within this game, programming languages made out of the game’s own “triggers” (invisible objects in the level that affect many things, such as when an object moves, the color of an object, etc.), levels comprised of so much beauty they're practically worthy of being put up in a museum or set as a computer desktop – everything and more, all spawned from a single community split between players and creators, coming together to form the entirety of the game. People have built amazing levels and challenges that continue to push the boundaries of what's humanly possible, but have also created many stories that have captured the hearts of many, some of which have left unforgettable experiences that are talked about fondly to this day. Simply describing it on paper does not do some of these creations justice; if you’re interested, I highly implore you to search up some of the community’s greatest builds on your own time.

These levels have inspired me, in much the same way that Will Ryan's works have, and I aspired to create something that would have a similar effect on my own audience. So, for years, I sat, studying these levels, these works of art, to see how they do it, wondering all the while what story I could tell. Who would be my audience? Who would be my community?

Community.

I’m sure you’ve seen a trend already with the two examples I’ve given: that being, the mention of communities which have surrounded a person or a topic. The thing that brings people together, the thing that allows an artist to grow, to be noticed, to feel… accepted. Much of what I’m trying to get at here has a lot to do with these ideas. I saw what they had, what they were doing, and I resonated so much with what they did that I got inspired. I wanted to do what they did, share my story with people, be loved, and connect with others who were like me, and that’s what kept me doing art for so long. And, believe it or not, I got that! I would share whatever artwork I would make with my friends on a regular basis, I would upload whatever crazy, wacky, amazingly cool stuff I’d program, and I’d play through and showcase my recently, carefully crafted level that I put a lot of time and effort into. In time, I made a whole Discord server, and invited people from all walks of life to come join in, to connect with others, and to serve as a sort of hub for those who also wanted to share their stuff with whoever. We were a tight-knit community, one that is still going on strong today, albeit a bit slower than in the olden days (or in a time frame more accurate for my age, since 2017). I’ve met many friends and always kept them in the loop on the stuff I was working on. It wasn’t much, but as long as I had those friends, that’s all that mattered to me. That’s all I wanted, and that’s all I got. Over time, we grew to have a mutual feeling of love for one another, genuine interest in what we were working on, and genuine care for the people behind the screen. Art had brought us all together.

So… why stop? Why stop creating when I had gotten exactly what I wanted?

You see, the biggest danger of creating art for different communities is that, sooner or later, you’re going to start wishing that the larger community itself would start to take notice. You’re still grateful for all of your friends, and you still create for them, but sometimes, you feel like you start to bore them. You start thinking you’re not as exciting to them anymore. And soon it quickly begins to feel like you’re creating less for yourself and more for them. At least, that’s what I started feeling. Even though I would root for my friends' successes, watching as they would go on to become established members of the communities that we were a part of, there was still a part of me that wondered, “When will it be my turn? When will I get my time in the spotlight?” And as the days would pass, it started becoming clearer and clearer that I would not be getting that time. And when I started to feel that, I started feeling like I had been cheated out of it. That no matter how much work I put into my next creation, it would simply fall short, destined to not be noticed by anyone. I tried a few things. I tried sharing my work with the community directly. I tried nudging people in the direction of my work, leaving a simple note that said, “Hey, come check this out!” I made The Compositorium, my art account on Instagram, and I shared my work on my wall, both on The Compositorium and my own personal account. People did enjoy it, but my mind would keep playing the dangerous numbers game.

Numbers. The one thing they tell you not to look at when creating is the numbers. Example one: When you start out streaming content, they tell you to turn off the view count. Example two: When you post something online, don’t look at the number of likes, retweets, shares, any of it. No matter what it is, you’re advised not to look at the numbers. Because if you do, you’re going to be disappointed. And at first, I was doing well without paying attention to who actually liked my work and who didn’t. I had my own people liking it, and that was enough for me. But then I started to see the numbers go down. While all of my other creator friends were rising to practical stardom, I started to feel left behind, and I was confused. Why? Why was it that, no matter what I did, I wasn’t getting the same amount of attention that my friends were getting, if I was doing the same thing? Was I really creating for no reason? Is everything that I put out bad? Does it even matter if I create anymore? It’s why so many content creators out there–be it on TikTok, YouTube, whatever–are so scared to put something out there that doesn’t conform to what their audience is used to seeing–in other words, we’re scared of low retention rates. You see, we artists want the attention, we want our voices to be heard. It’s why we create, after all, to share an often-times vulnerable part of ourselves. But when they aren’t heard, it makes some of us feel as though we’re talking to a wall.

Some of us, who haven’t learned to not compare ourselves to others, start to lose motivation.

Here’s a personal example: In the summer of 2022, there was “Armaros,” a Geometry Dash level, meant to be the hardest I had ever made up to that point, and also the best I’d ever built. I’ve made many levels for this game, and a lot more that I haven’t finished and published were mainly canceled due to feeling like nobody would notice or play them. I would tell myself that nobody would like them. Yet even still, for five months, starting in May of 2022, I hyper-fixated on creating a level, doing my best to make something I was proud of. For once, I was enjoying the creation process. Once I finished it, I put it up, hoping that someone would notice, that that would be it, that would be what would bring me to my time in the spotlight. But then, once I came back to it, my mind started playing the numbers game again, and I was disappointed. Not many people had noticed it.

In the summer of 2022, I decided to put my pen down. I was tired of it. Of everything. I deleted my art account, posted something on my story that said “Art is dead,” and went to sleep feeling terrible. I had given up on the one thing I was supposed to be passionate about, all because I felt like nobody would appreciate what I had to say. At this point, I only had one best friend who I would keep updating, but my brain would sometimes get me to think that they were just being nice, that they didn’t really care about what I made and they just felt bad. The numbers game had been played, and I was on the losing end of it. I didn’t want to create anymore. The ink in the creative well had run dry, and the tips of my sketching pencils matched my mood towards even thinking about sharing another project–pointless.

But, you’ve seen the title of this piece. Had I stopped creating entirely, I would have just ended the paper here and left you with a cautionary tale of what happens when you attempt to appease others all the time. But some stories tend to leave a bit more of a happier ending than others–not that I can call this “happy,” nor can I call it the ending. There was one fall semester here on campus where I was put into a creative writing class. For the second half of the semester, each and every single one of us had to submit a story for the class to workshop. Most of us would go twice, seeing how there were only ten of us. Another classmate and I had the pleasure of going a third time. And when I shared my first writing piece, interest had been garnered. People were asking me questions about the world I was making, the finer intricacies of each character and hierarchy I hadn’t even put too much thought into. People were making theories all in that short time we had together, and when I shared the second half of my first writing, people were even more intrigued. By my third story, people were saying they were touched by my writing. It was an odd feeling, knowing that most of these people, some of whom I still see as friends, actually loved what I had to offer. Around the same time, I had restarted my lore-based Minecraft survival roleplay server, which had fallen victim to the art massacre I had incurred months prior, and the story that I had to tell was starting to catch people’s attention. Further storylines branched out, and they’re still going on, waiting to be finished to this day. Heads were turning, and more people were starting to like what I was doing. When I had killed my art account, a couple of my college friends were asking me why I had done it, showing remorse that I had given up on my art.

And you know what really got me to stay in the creating scene? The two weeks I had spent hyper-fixating on making a custom level for a song I really loved and sharing it with the community. I indulged myself in the numbers game again, and this time, I was winning it. People were really starting to take notice. The numbers are still small, that much is true. But… for some reason, I’m finding myself listening to this loud, vocal minority. The people that actually did notice me from day one, the people who have always been there by my side, watching me grow. My friends, who listen to me ramble about making new stuff with as much enthusiasm as I give them, actively helping me grow. And I couldn’t be any more grateful for them than I already am. In a world where the writings I publish don’t get traction, the levels I create don’t get their widespread community recognition, and a world where a lot of the art I post goes widely unnoticed, there is still the small group of people that I didn’t have before when starting out. People who always look forward to what I make next. People who are here for me.

I’m still learning how not to compare myself to others. It’s only been recently that my self-esteem has been on the rise again. But as long as I have a story to tell, I’ll always have a set of ears that’ll listen. I can create my works freely, knowing that someone out there will get what I’m trying to say, and they’ll enjoy consuming them as much as I enjoyed producing them.

And, after all… it’s not exactly in my nature to quit.

The possibility
As opposed to the reality
A love one can hold for someone
Someone they view in such a high regard
It’s unfortunate, yet beautiful
To realize that you messed up and be aware of it
Are you going to use that beauty of awareness to improve
Or dwell and let it simmer in your being
A question most ask but don’t dwell on