lightening

I wanted to share this very different take on failure-- both the perception of it, and the fight *not* to internalize. Karri is a painter, but I think this holds true much more largely- and the final part of her post is something that made me go ahhhhh.

So, in my questing for lightness, once again I am coming back around to creativity as something that lightens me. Oh no, not always. A bad writing day, a block, or feeling of overwhelmedness, or a painting that looks entirely unlike what was intended and therefore categorized as "shit"-- these are not lightening moments, but the mere act of partaking in something creative, even if it ends badly is still a kind of soul food.

But these soul feeding things are often the first things I put aside when I am overwhelmed. (Why do I do this??)

Today I had enough energy to clean the toilet, and the bathroom floor, and the sink, and do dishes and laundry (two loads), start to change the bed, vacuum the little rug, flip the sofa pillows, and then I had this moment of realizing that I might be pulling out of the big deep trench of Fatigue- and... if so... maybe this makes possible a return to some of the other things I let go while I was in mere survival mode.

I am excited actually, feel a little jazzy at the idea of cracking open a paint jar or finding the last version of the novel that is so-close-to-done.

And I am thinking again about balance. It is not built in, we must build it. It is so easy for the weight of the day, my work, the long hours, to eat all of my energy and leave nothing for the other half of my brain and the near entirety of my heart.

I LOVE the idea of saying Ok, this isn't working. I'll just paint it over and try again. But how often do we do that? I fiddle, I muck, I poke and prod and smear and fuck it up more and more and more and get more and more upset as it moves farther and farther from what I wanted.

What if I sit still for a moment. Take in what is. Decide what I want to do from here and say, can I Make this Become what I want? Or do I need to do something different?

Sometimes the answer will be one, sometimes the other. But the idea that sometimes putting something aside, or getting out the big brush for a cathartic wash, this feels freeing to me today.