It’s post-book launch. I still show up for my writing practice group most days.
My favorite dog has died, the year has ended, and my nervous system is slowly recuperating from a year of challenge after challenge.
My writing coach asks each of us, “What are you working on today?”
Inside, a part of me feels lost and ashamed – I don’t know what I am working on today. That heady part looks for an endpoint, a goal, a result – something to give her certainty.
I have a list of ideas – each simmering in its own mental crockpot – yet none of them feel ready to put on the page. I find myself longing for the direction I had when I had the end result of a book on the horizon. Before that longing is even finished crossing my mind, I giggle at where I find myself standing once again.
I’m simply in the creative process. The squirrels and whirls, dead spaces, frustrations, deaths, and emptiness ARE a part of the process. My Gawd, how we hate and dismiss the mulching and fallow seasons. But they are the precursor to new life.
They are a part not only of our art but also of our humanness. They are also the nutrients our souls need. (This awareness comes at the exact moment I sip a slightly nasty but nutrient-filled green drink with the texture of dirty water – again, I laugh at how life shows me exactly what I need if I will just drop into the noticing instead of arguing).
Lately, I am passionate and frustrated and righteous that no one has taught us these aspects of being human. In the same way – can one even really “teach us” how to write, paint, or make art? Nope. They can tell us the steps and give us the materials. But we must step into the physical process of the making to make sense of it all in our bones. And there is no linear path there.
Without the stepping in and making – I am only in my head, and my body gets left behind. When I do this, life starts spinning, and I start suffering. I lived there most of my life – in an analytical, head-led life.
The old residue of an incomplete belief, “change your thinking, change your life,” shows up. I’ve been so busy managing my mind -when stepping into the making is what makes everything make sense again. Bring my body to the practice begins to soothe my mind. It certainly slows her down. I remember that I am a maker, not so much a manager.
My head and my body make peace…and then we step into the process of making our art.
