What I Didn't Do This Summer
In case you haven’t heard, I’m writing a book. It's a fictionalized version of the story of my mom's diagnosis of a fatal, rare, neurodegenerative dementia. Mostly it's about mother-daughter-sister relationships inside a family and how they change when life turns upside down.
I am 50,000+ words in. I think this is between halfway and two-thirds of the way done. I had planned to finish the "bones" of the story this summer, so that I can start adding context, detail and nuance. But the summer had different plans for me and instead, I wrote nothing until August. Not even journaling or my gratitude practice.
I could feel the resistance and I bet you know what that feels like for you too if you ask yourself about it. Whenever I had time to write, I would distract myself with my phone, laundry, dishes, you know the drill. After a week or so of observing myself doing this, I decided to lean into it and let go of the writing with the deep knowing that it would come to me when I was ready.
The beauty of a personal creative project is that you are directing the ship. I did not know what this resistance was all about, but I knew that forcing myself to write was not going to be the way through it. Instead, I did many things to take care of myself and make me feel good and safe, like:
- walking every day
- meditation
- going into my garden, watering, searching for buds, weeding every day
- reading a million books
- taking my kids for ice cream at every fast food place in town
- watched shows
- visited two dear friends in far away cities
- made serious effort to connect with local friends
- went to the beach with my family (twice! divine!)
- went to several live concerts including The Chicks who were incredible
- took for a workshop course with one of my favorite teachers GG Hill
During the course with GG I started writing in my journal again. I wrote about my novel, without actually writing the story itself. Over several weeks (while doing all of the above), a few terrific ideas came to me about how to approach the section of the book where I was stuck. I sketched them out in my journal, then one morning I opened my laptop, finally opened the google doc for the book, and wrote for 15 minutes.
All that for 15 minutes!?! Well, yes. But damn, didn't I enjoy myself in the process!
Why do you beat yourself up for not doing the thing that is tugging at your heart? Sure, that negative self talk and deprivation might get you there, but you know what? Caring for yourself might get you there too.
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