Today is December 1, the moon is fat and white, and I’m dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight. Moondance. Moonshine. Star. The lull is bye.
I’ve heard it said that the moment you most feel like giving up is five seconds before you make it. Seth Godin calls it The Dip. Everyone tells you to be patient. Be still. Wait.
Patience is my struggle. It is always my struggle. I’m a passionista* and I feed on new and juju and vision and go! go! go!.
And yet I knew. This is my thick, constrained, chrysalis moment.
That winged knowledge helped me to ask, to express, to name:
I’m at a decision point career-wise and the right thing to do is just wait. I’m almost there. Persevere. Faith. patience. etc.
Yet I’m finding it tough to wait, and be patient, and trust. There are no sexy progress reports to file on that…I am an action-gal. I find patience and stillness a challenge. I crave the zoom.
waiting. and patience. the courageous thing is not always sexy.
And Randi Buckley, “bringer of hope and compassionate revolution” (in other words, “coach”) asked me:
What would make the stillness easier to bear?
What would make the stillness easier to bear?
It is not the first time I’ve been asked to contemplate and make my peace with quiet. Astarte, my goddess warrior friend, once asked me: How about being still?
Bah. Still. I run from you and all your zen-alicious zombie friends. I kick you straight in the shins and sing can’t touch this. (Hammer-style.)
Yet, everywhere I run, there you are.
And so I tried to answer Randi Buckley’s question with my body instead of language.
I did this because I needed to get out of my head. I needed to not parse and filter and sort and story-tell and make it all mean Something when Something just wasn’t ready to be meaningful yet.
Because that is the space that makes me crazy. The uncertain. My need for certainty leads me to make things certain, now. It makes me abandon projects and people and loves that ought to be sustained. I am more intimate with no than I am with maybe.
And so my mind was a trap. My body was the answer.
I learned this from Nathan Hangen, who writes:
When our times are desperate, our minds will do us more harm than good. So first…stop beating yourself up. Recognize the pain for what it is and know that it will pass. This isn’t the truth.
I knew this from reading World’s Strongest Librarian, where Josh Hanagarne beats up his body to free his mind:
During a squat session, my body is not happy. The next morning, my body is not very happy with me. But my mind is singing because I did something real. I wake up two days later and I know I am stronger. This gives a feeling of confidence and satisfaction that I have a hard time putting into words…
Our minds are busy places. How often do you really get to slow down and clear your head? In my own case, my mind is usually preocuppied with whatever shenanigans my body is getting up to on the Tourette’s front.
But just about everyone I know has a freaking fire drill going off in their head most days. They never get a chance to clear their head, they just add to the clutter. Always reacting, with little time for big picture thinking.
Training can bring clarity because it puts you in the moment. It roots you in the present reality and if your head is anywhere else you’re not working hard enough.
I knew this from my conversations with Lindsey from A Design So Vast. She finds moments of freedom from her “monkey mind” in running and yoga. I get it from sex.
And people. I needed to be with people, to listen to their out-loud words instead of my own frantic, silent chatter.
My friends came over. They brought their own martini glasses, made pretty, approving noises about my house and gave good gossip. About sex. I talked a lot.
I gave myself my friends and I gave myself three days off from writing. I gave myself lunch with women who’ve walked this road a little further than I. And I heard that I’m doing just fine.
And Friday gave me two guest posts on big bad beautiful blogs. The gods of traffic favoured me and so did the ones who make it rain, rain, rain, rain.
And the stillness passed. The moon rose. The New Year looms and shines and shakes her hips.
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passionista: AbiolaTV is a “goddess passionista”. She owns the word but I borrow/steal/appropriate it with abandon and enthusiasm.
Mmm. This was delicious to read.
I explored similar territory in one of my recent paintings, and then did a perfect belly flop when writing an explanation of why LucasFilms, Ltd. should not sue me for appropriating their characters in said painting. I thus recreated a *perfect* example of tangled-head-stupification, when trying to explain what it was that I was painting. (You can witness the painful blog-trappings here, along with the painting: http://bit.ly/23SHEk)
Whether its paintings or push-ups, it does my body/mind a whole lotta good to step outside the cerebrum for morning/afternoon recess.
And who can argue with sex?
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‘The Quiet’ is right where I go when I sit down to write. I like to think of it as a place Cormac McCarthy knows, but without the violence and hardship.
The gym is a haven to drive ideas in and work things out. I believe the place is full of writers, except the guy who kisses his biceps, he’s probably an actor. Or something.
I’ve got this voice, okay my wife’s voice, that says ‘give it up’ all the time. It’s sort of our little joke even when it’s not funny. It’s a tough hurdle to clear. Then I realized I’ve already quit, like the smoker who quits each night only to start again.
With writing, the re-start is a beautiful thing. You punch out another three thousand words and call it one of the best feelings there is. Smoking (not a smoker) is just working up another hack.
A toast to the stillness at five in the morning. Okay, six. Six thirty? Thanks Kelly.
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I don’t know if I’ve heard it put more succinctly than this: “I am more intimate with no than I am with maybe.”
Oh, me too. And I know I’ve shut doors before I needed to – or should have – just because I was too uncomfortable with the not knowing. The stillness, the lack of clear direction, is torture for me. Sheer torture.
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I like to question, when I’m in an uncomfortable place, “what’s possible here?”.
Lovely and generous post. Thank you.
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