I launched a course called the Month of Courage and a few weeks after, I didn’t feel good about it.
Sometimes I set the date and that helps me to get my butt in gear to produce. But this time, that didn’t happen. This time, when I thought about working on the course, it felt like a heavy burden. This time, it was bad.
Photo credit: Airwolfhound (CC: some rights reserved)
Last night my imagination started to take off. I heard a large truck and my mind started telling the story of what if it’s a plane and it’s doing an emergency landing here because it’s had some sort of failure. My breath quickened. I started to panic.
What should I do? Who should I call? Emergency!
I open up the email and I feel a tightness in my throat and chest. I want the email to disappear. My skin starts to crawl. I’m pissed.
In her most recent book, Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life, best-selling author Dani Shapiro writes,
When writers who are just starting out ask me when it gets easier, my answer is never. It never gets easier. I don’t want to scare them, so I rarely say more than that, but the truth is that, if anything, it gets harder. The writing life isn’t just filled with predictable uncertainties but with the awareness that we are always starting over again.
I am sitting in a café with large windows, light streaming in, jazz music playing. At this point, I have an idea, a working title, a little piece of inspiration. I am starting over again. I don’t know how this piece will turn out but I do know that before I leave the cafe I’ll have a first draft.
There is a little bit of uncertainty – roughly 45 minutes of uncertainty – involved in writing this post. And that amount of uncertainty is manageable for me. Bite sized.
Kootenay Lake, British Columbia
At the end of my last blog post on being quarantined on Christmas day I wrote,
In 2016, I am going to prioritize rest.
And now, on January 7th less than 10 days into the year, I’m realizing I don’t know what exactly that would mean. There are some things I can do that are straight-forward, make sure I get enough sleep, not fill my calendar completely full. But other parts of rest feel more elusive.
Kootenay Lake, Photo credit: Francesca Cogorno
open
soften
still
what is still there?
what blocks the stillness?
The view from my bedroom at the Ashram.
Two years ago at Yasodhara Ashram in the Kootenay Mountains of Western Canada I had the perfect Christmas. A walk alone on the beach followed by a beautiful brunch with my good friends, a gift exchange, helping cook Christmas dinner and then after dinner time alone reading books. It was the perfect balance of time alone, time in nature and time with people I loved.
Continue reading “Can Christmas Day be perfect when you’re quarantined sick in bed?”
Ahhh! It’s so terrifying to post this on the internet. But it is the truth.
I am writing a book!
This all came about because, as many of you know, for two years I wrote a 108 poems in the fall to raise money for the Young Adult Program at Yasodhara Ashram, which means I have over 200 poems written on all different kinds of topics.
poetry
distills
my thoughts
I want to find the truth.
feeling connected
feeling relaxed
at home
and held
you are a part
of my family.
