I think Julia Cameron's Artist's Way has a better hit on the Morning Pages. You do it every day, it's a stream of consciousness activity, not meant for publication. Our "wild heart" coach has us asking the same tired old questions, and this is what my conscious stream replied:
This exercise is so.....unnecessary.....for me. I get the need to throw away the thoughts that keep you from creating, but rules are not the problem. Editing - periods - commas- mis-spellings - I can edit as I go without feeling like it's blocking me. It's part of my process, and it doesn't get in the way. It is a critical voice that I trust and value.
So what does hold me back? Partly, it's reading other people's words - feeling envy or dismay... I'll never be that good, or I don't have ideas worth sharing, or "they need an editor!" There are so many words, so many photographs, so much out there, both good and bad. What is the point of adding to the stew?
Okay, so stone soup is the reason. I - they - we all add to it and it's better. I get that, I get that creativity and research are communal activities... but I'd be cilantro in the minestrone: good in and of itself, but in the wrong place, the wrong flavor. Not just unnecessary, but actually deleterious.
These are the rules that hold me back:
Eat certain foods. Meditate. Breath. Write. Exercise. Photograph, then PROCESS. Practise your arts and crafts. Hone your skills. Write through the blocks, practise your violin. DO IT ALL. EVERYD DAY. Start, go, stop, throw it away, but... what have I accomplished?
I am busy all day, but what am I busy with? What's the point of the activity? Am I growing? Practising? Creating? I am taking up spacing, livng. I know inside that the process of creating is what brings me joy, but I also want it to be good, worthwhile. I want it to be more than a better use of time than playing scrabble or online puzzles.
I also don't want to do the prep work, buying supplies, gathering them, setting them out, thinking about them. I don't want to add cilantro to the stew or throw it away because I can't use it. I am impatient, I am critical.
That being said, there is so much waiting to be created, so much music to enjoy. I have my NaNoWriMo novel to finish, my haiku/photo book to explore. I have photos to post-process, music to learn. It's all waiting, and I look at my day and say....maybe tomorrow. Meanwhile, I take more photographs, write more whines, sight-read duets without working at them. I do the easy thing, I don't finish anything. So, what is waiting to be created? Everything and nothing.
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
The Premise
Last weekend, I was sitting in Le Chantilly with my friend M. Across the street, the gents at Horizon Auto Glass were replacing Suby's cracked windshield. Since Thanksgiving weekend, I had been watching the crack travel horizontally from the initial one-foot vertical crack, (presumably created by a flying rock.) Car care is not my life, just as housework is not appealing to me. I like a clean comfortable home and I like having the ability to transport myself from place to place, but the maintenance aspect has always been tedious. So, it took close to 3 months for me to bit the bullet and schedule the repair. I made a huge amount of lemonade from this lemon by scheduling it in Albuquerque and visiting G and M. S gave me the name of a good place and said that I could spend the 3 hours at a lovely French bakery across the way. Done!
M joined me an hour in, and we talked of London and Oaxaca and our various goals. She's in the lovely place of having completed her bucket list. She woke up on New Years' Day thinking, "This is truly the first day of the rest of my life, and that time is short. How do I want to live it?" For her, it was a joyous realization. She is truly living in the moment, and her plans are slow and deep and creative.
I envy her. I want to be in that place. I've been writing about it for several years now: how do I connect, how do I create, how do I live a life of meaning? In my teens I read The Chosen, and I resonated to the concept that life is a blink of an eye. The blink of an eye is nothing, but the eye that blinks is everything. I want my eye to be something. I want to do something besides take up space. I want to be something other than a carbon footprint. I am exhausted and sick constantly. I don't know who I am, or why anyone would want to spend time with me. I bore myself with this constant whining and non-productivity. I say this, not to beg for reassurance, but in a true questioning: what am I giving to this world, these friends, this life?
I shared these thoughts, not for the first time, and M said, "Lying on the couch is giving you some sort of juice. What is it?" As usual, she asks the tough question. I thought about it. I am planning to leave Taos in the near future, because I am clearly unhappy and unproductive here. But, Taos isn't really the issue. I will be taking this person with me, and a change of place will not change my being. Why am I so tired, why am I always sick?
Thinking back over the years, I realize afresh that I am my mother's daughter. She did not like certain aspects of her life, and the only way she could escape was to be sick. It was also her chosen method of control. Am I following that model? I think I am. I am dissatisfied with my life, with working a scheduled job, with loneliness. My escape is in illness. It gives me the excuse to shirk my responsibilities. It gives me a reason to not pursue a creative, useful life.
Why do I not want to pursue my creative side? If I retire, stop with the 40-hour work week, will I spend my time creatively? I didn't when I was with E, but then I was also healing from emotional trauma. Or so I told myself.
As I thought these squirrel-cage thoughts, I received an e-mail from M, telling me about a 30-day writing exercise: prompts to connect you to your "wild heart." We both signed up. And we both have found the coach's emphasis on suffering, as M says, "insufferable." She continues, "she's not the writing coach for me," and I probably agree. Still, the prompts themselves are perhaps worth pursing. So, I'll give them a shot.
M joined me an hour in, and we talked of London and Oaxaca and our various goals. She's in the lovely place of having completed her bucket list. She woke up on New Years' Day thinking, "This is truly the first day of the rest of my life, and that time is short. How do I want to live it?" For her, it was a joyous realization. She is truly living in the moment, and her plans are slow and deep and creative.
I envy her. I want to be in that place. I've been writing about it for several years now: how do I connect, how do I create, how do I live a life of meaning? In my teens I read The Chosen, and I resonated to the concept that life is a blink of an eye. The blink of an eye is nothing, but the eye that blinks is everything. I want my eye to be something. I want to do something besides take up space. I want to be something other than a carbon footprint. I am exhausted and sick constantly. I don't know who I am, or why anyone would want to spend time with me. I bore myself with this constant whining and non-productivity. I say this, not to beg for reassurance, but in a true questioning: what am I giving to this world, these friends, this life?
I shared these thoughts, not for the first time, and M said, "Lying on the couch is giving you some sort of juice. What is it?" As usual, she asks the tough question. I thought about it. I am planning to leave Taos in the near future, because I am clearly unhappy and unproductive here. But, Taos isn't really the issue. I will be taking this person with me, and a change of place will not change my being. Why am I so tired, why am I always sick?
Thinking back over the years, I realize afresh that I am my mother's daughter. She did not like certain aspects of her life, and the only way she could escape was to be sick. It was also her chosen method of control. Am I following that model? I think I am. I am dissatisfied with my life, with working a scheduled job, with loneliness. My escape is in illness. It gives me the excuse to shirk my responsibilities. It gives me a reason to not pursue a creative, useful life.
Why do I not want to pursue my creative side? If I retire, stop with the 40-hour work week, will I spend my time creatively? I didn't when I was with E, but then I was also healing from emotional trauma. Or so I told myself.
As I thought these squirrel-cage thoughts, I received an e-mail from M, telling me about a 30-day writing exercise: prompts to connect you to your "wild heart." We both signed up. And we both have found the coach's emphasis on suffering, as M says, "insufferable." She continues, "she's not the writing coach for me," and I probably agree. Still, the prompts themselves are perhaps worth pursing. So, I'll give them a shot.
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