I have not been consistent in my posting lately, which is not to say I have not been writing. I have been in a deep and serious state of mind, yet I have fought against publicizing that to write something witty and entertaining.
This usually makes for bad writing, this constipation of my thoughts, and I am therefore in a creative funk.
Yesterday I wrote about the trainer at my club that I busted eating a candy bar as she walked from her car through the parking lot. That had potential to be funny if I was really into it, but it was crap so I filed it away in my drafts folder to look at later.
I considered writing about the junk mail delivered to me via UPS, as if the importance of ripping open a cardboard envelope would increase my potential to refinance my home. Again, it felt forced.
Even this morning I heard a funny conversation on the radio about the obsession of eating Captain Crunch even as the roof of your mouth is bleeding. THAT made me laugh, but not enough to go with it.
Life has stabilized, allowing me to look deeply into my imperfections without falling apart emotionally or ripping apart my husband and children.
I think I need to go with this, funny or not funny.
This weekend I met a group of women who amazed me – women that I have known to varying degrees before, but in this setting my eyes were opened to a new strength, a new vulnerability, and this gave me tremendous hope for change in my own life.
After many months of waking up each morning vowing to have a better day, promising to suppress my temper, hoping to bring order to my disordered life, I now see my inability to do any of this on my own.
This realization has been freeing.
I don’t know where to go with this from here. Even this morning I feel like bagging my attempts at writing because this seems random and cryptic. Or perhaps I should allow you to hitchhike on my quest to embrace the imperfection of The Draft. Annie Lammott talks in her book, Bird By Bird, about her fear of getting hit by a bus before she had the opportunity to perfect her “shitty first drafts.â€
But if I have learned anything from ‘Jack,’ who is LOST on a mysterious island with other crash victims, it’s to allow our fears to well up in us for a moment so they may give us strength to push through.
So here it goes:
One… two… three… four… five….