Week one
It has been a strange and wonderful week. After making that big decision on Monday, I felt charged with enthusiasm and focus. You could probably tell by the flurry of posts here, on Facebook, Speed River Journal and even Twitter. So much energy feels almost foreign to me. It made me realize how much I internalize stress, how unresolved problems silence me, and how important it is to keep the air clear. I hear myself chatting away to Danny. I like being this way, not so reserved.
Later in the week we became busy with other things: a day trip to Toronto to pick up two used loom reeds from OCAD, getting my act together for Rainbow Knitters today, and cleaning and cooking for a birthday and housewarming party, which will take place here tomorrow. This has been a long day and I'm zonked.
Balance is important. I probably do not need to be any less active, but the hard part is giving myself the gift of enough sleep. When I'm energized, it's too easy to stay up late.
It is also beneficial to have some kind of morning ritual that stokes the creative coals. Carol Lloyd calls it "ecstatic task" or "fifteen minutes of emptiness within the blur of daily living." It should be directly related to your mode of creative expression without being "too product oriented and therefore tarnished by anxiety about success or failure." My daily action through the winter was knitting for 15 minutes in front of the light box, but now I feel like being verbal again.
Yesterday morning I pulled up some software I downloaded a long time ago called Ommwriter. It's a full-screen writing program that plays ambient music to cut down distractions. I closed my eyes for most of the next 15 minutes and let the words fly: 600 words in fact. At times I swear by writing longhand, but it's better not to stick with any process as a rule of law. Just stick with it long enough to learn what you can about boredom and other forms of resistance. When it's time for a change, use what works. If the past week has made me a slightly different person, so be it.
I plan to take Monday off, but for the rest of the week I have set a daily quota for writing web content. As I keep challenging myself by small increments, the work becomes easier.