“Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?” ~ A.A. Milne
SOOOOOO… it’s been just over 3 months since I last wrote.
To be honest, I didn’t actually set out to take this much of a hiatus. I meant to take a little downtime away from the pressure of writing every day, some time to regroup and refocus, and…. well….
3 months later, here we are.
It’s not that I didn’t WANT to write sooner. Any number of times I sat down, pulled up my handy word processor – sometimes, I even managed to pick the quotes to begin and end the piece – and then I stared at the screen for a while, either completely blank or completely frozen, until I shut the program down and slunk off guiltily to do something else.
I don’t know what it is about starting over that makes it so difficult…. Starting never seems to be a problem, but having to re-start… soooo not my thing.
Many of us have this problem. Just ask anyone who’s ever fallen off the diet wagon over the holidays, or tried to get back on track with their exercise program following vacation or after houseguests have come and gone…
You wonder how something that was once second nature and an easy priority has become so difficult and effortful…
I think some of it is that the newness has worn off. For those of us who are “NP’s” on the Myers-Briggs scale, we love a new idea, the possibilities of it, the adventure. By the time we get distracted or knocked off track, we’ve usually discovered the daily grind of our grand venture and the fact that, yes, we DO actually HAVE to do the details. So coming back to a task doesn’t have quite the joie do vive that beginning something new does….
This explains why I have about 35 projects lying around the house, all somewhere in process and none of them completed.
In this case, I think there’s also been an added component. The further I got away from writing the more I felt pressured to come up with something REALLY GOOD when I started up again. Whatever it was had to be poignant, moving, meaningful, the writing poetic, yet succinct – Pulitzer material all the way around!!
No wonder it took me 3 months to start again… oy!
But lately, the Universe seems to have taken to pretty much bashing me upside the head as encouragement to get back to writing. The “signs” have been coming fast and furious, each more obvious and hard hitting than the last. This level of “violence” has only been necessary, you understand, because I’ve spent… oh, let’s say…. 2.5 months or so, ignoring the much more gentle and loving signs that writing is somehow part of my own personal movement forward as well as being a good tool for connecting with HHP’s greater community and forwarding my own personal purpose in the world of helping people to recover authority in their own lives…
What can I say? I’m stubborn… and a little thick, sometimes. I’m pretty sure that at one time or another all of us have avoided taking action in a direction that we know full well would set us free. I personally will avoid taking an aspirin for hours in the face of a blinding headache even though said aspirin has been proven over and over again to be 100% effective… stupid, right?
But in the end, as always, the Universe wins and here I am – contented just to start and not worry so much about being brilliant… at least not THIS time… 😉
To be honest, it’s a complete and total relief to be here. It feels good to be tapping away, the rapid-fire sound of productivity, the slick texture of the keys comforting beneath my fingers. In a way, it’s akin to the feeling you get when you are finally underway again on some long journey. The stop and the rest were nice – but forward motion towards the goal….
Bliss!
“We should all start to live before we get too old. Fear is stupid. So are regrets.” ~ Marilyn Monroe
“I keep turning over new leaves, and spoiling them, as I used to spoil my copybooks; and I make so many beginnings there never will be an end.” ~ Louisa May Alcott (Jo March from Little Women)