Taking Root

Sometimes 'making' feels like too much effort. The creative process requires your heart and soul and everything in between. It needs feeding like a newborn, it needs tending like a newborn. Unlike a newborn, you can detach from this process and I often do. Normally I detach for necessity, to follow the orders of the day. Whenever I return, there is this mixture of guilt and relief and turmoil. It feels so hard but I cannot stay away. Even when it is quiet I hear murmurings in the distance and I know eventually I must respond and see to their needs. Even when the ideas are gathering and the work is shaping it feels fraught, the worry of the outcome and the next step already there tapping me on the shoulder. I read some wonderful words recently, they were simple ones ... 'Try Softer'. I forget now where I read them but they were offered up as the perfect antidote to 'Try Harder'. Music to my ears, my heart rate slowed. I am trying softer, really I am. But I may have to practice but that's ok, practice makes perfect. But I prefer the softer place, so that's where you'll find me. 

'DO' - My Word for the Year 2013

It has taken some time to come here, I haven't known what to say and so I have been waiting. And waiting. I've been doing a lot of thinking, some searching, mostly about what I would like 2013 to look like. I have been clearing, both mentally and practically in my home and finding and making links to ideas that have not yet been born. Some of this work has been tricky and some of it just timely. I discovered something about myself a few days ago, something that perhaps I already knew, something that perhaps I was keeping beneath the surface. I am a procrastinator.

I was talking with my hubby and my friend Roxy when I myself made the discovery. At first I smiled and questioned it, surely I am just a 'thinker' I said to my inner self, 'a deliberator'. But then my heart raced quickly with shock as I determined this truth,  my inner self finally accepting the whispers. 

It has been relief to hear this truth and know that I can change it. This new found truth forced me to laugh at the misguidedness of other words that I had considered as my choice to guide me through the year. I had thought 'Light' was my word but since letting some light in, I now see that I must simply 'DO'. 

So there we have it, my chosen word 'DO' is what I hope will guide me in 2013. Sometimes just a gentle nudge is needed and sometimes a huge push is what's required. Acceptance is everything or so they say, I'd have to agree. Now that I've accepted this, I'm just gonna get on and 'DO' whatever it is that's got to be done. I started yesterday with updating my cv, getting in touch with some old employers and making a short list of places I would like to carry out some voluntary work. Seven years is a long time to have NOT been in full time paid work. I didn't have time to consider this yesterday because I decided to edit and send. I think I like this new method .... for how long I do not know.