Falling Off the Wagon

A road to an ease-filled life.
Hungarian Countryside.
Copyright Diane Ludeking 2010

 

I have fallen off the writing wagon.

No permanent injuries have been sustained but some bruising is showing itself today as I look at my sparse spreadsheet for daily word counts this month.

I realized this week that my running life is a metaphor for my writer’s life (or vice versa).  I began running again a few weeks ago.  I thought that since I had run three miles easily before my last layup (I most likely quit or forget to run for a few weeks), I could pick up right where I left off.  Day three of returning to the run, my foot said, no way!  I simply cannot take it easy to get back into it.  It’s 150% or nothing.

I have hauled myself back onto the sugar eating wagon.

I am an emotional eater so self sabotage has been the cheer most recently.  I can’t run so I will trash my body.  Sounds like frustration disguised as a temper tantrum at thirty-six.  I gain weight as my book gets heavy from abandonment.

I write at 150% or nothing.  I am willing to write poorly, as long as my writing isn’t poor.  Blah!  I love to write accurately and metaphorically.  But I need to love to write poorly.  I love to write.

I begin a walking/hiking health-style today.  I vow to take it easy, to be gentle, even when I want to run (I am Peter Pan, after all, when I take to the woods).  I love to run!  But I need to love my body more by not abusing it.

I aim to bring my eating life and my writing life into alignment by beginning again.  Mindfully.

So instead of strolling down Sabotage Road, kicking the dust up with my lazy gait, looking for the muse-colored wildflowers, I will embrace every moment given to me in an effort to get back on the writing highway, paved with words and metaphors.

How has your creative life been suffering lately?  How are you keeping it alive?  How is your sanity these days?

What I Claimed I Couldn’t Do

Me in Budapest Imagining the Can-dos

I posted this on Facebook a month ago:

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist when we grow up.” ~ Pablo Picasso.  “Oh, I’m not an artist.” My husband and I get this response from adults a lot when we explain what we do. I write and he sculpts. It’s frustrating to hear people give up on themselves without even trying. How will you embrace the creative life in 2012?

A few weeks ago I heard myself say, “Oh, I can’t sing.”

So, I participated in a community centered singing group last night, going confidently in the direction of my resistance, my lie.

There was a nametag waiting for me at the check-in table as though someone had tipped off my muse, the creative source I had recently denied.  In all, 20-25 people showed up.  I imagined them all to be accomplished singers with melodious tones that taunt the angels.  I sang anyhow.

I threw myself into the folk songs, sang harmony and something called soprano.  My body and voice danced and mingled with others in the room.  By the end of the night, I was hoarse and nobody had arrested me for the sounds that made their way through my chapped lips.  You see, I can sing, I’m just not very good at it.  My melodious tones taunt the laughing hyenas, but I make the noise anyhow.

Don’t speak the creative lie of I can’t, I’m not – defy it.  Your soul wants release through whatever creative means you least want to express.  How will you embrace the creative life in 2012?