luminous debris:

Day One - starting again

I am back to my morning pages, out of which this morning came this question: why am I so busy at things that don't connect to the core of what I want and need to do?

Does saying “yes” to everyone make me feel important or sought after or does it just prolong the procrastination of sitting down by myself, alone, to determine my own direction, my need, my focus and dreams and possibilities?

If I am constantly driving from one place to another - to speak, moderate, help, meet - where am I in all that? I'm disappearing, atomistic, gone. What are the things I do to keep myself from engaging fully around my own work? How is busy-ness a protective shield?

I am facing such resistance and such acceptance so simultaneously that it is confusing. Out of the morass of my morning pages came questions and a plea for a sign, some small affirmation that I am doing the right work - the real work (ironically, RealWork is the name of the business I started 10 years ago...it has taken until now to see what that real work is). “I need for that to happen now. In February, not March or April or May, but this week. Please let the universe affirm me in a way that sustains me,” I wrote this morning.

And shortly afterwards, I opened The Artist's Way to receive this message, clear, for me:

“I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.” - Duke Ellington

I had to laugh. And then I cleared my calendar and sat down to write some blues.

Day 30

"You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down." - Mary Pickford

I am lost in this journey. I have lost my way. I have fallen, stopped, bent over by the wind or a fire or a tornado of the mundane, snapped like a twig. I don't know why.

So this evening, I'm moving from regret and shame to stand up again, not to stay down.

All is not lost. This past week, while my work along The Artist's Way has suffered, something that kept coming up in my morning pages moved me forward, propelled me, finally. After months of hesitation, I sent a book proposal for 37days to an agent. What was my hesitation? Was it perfectionism? Was it fear? Of what, I wonder, of what.