MUSING #5 : Post Break

MUSE: 

My lack of posting for the past three weeks. Without going into too much detail... it’s been a tough month. 

MUSING: 

One reason I started this blog was to give myself a weekly deadline. Though I write every single day, I want to encourage myself to take my writing beyond my personal notes and entries. I can fill my notes books for hours with thoughts, but it takes decisiveness and an organized mind to prepare a piece to be shared. And to be truthful, I have not been feeling decisive or organized. May has been full of hard conversations, tense family dinners, fears about the future, and the physical pain that accompanies emotional distress. I just didn’t feel able to write something I felt comfortable posting. Also during this time, I was stuck on Week 4 of the Artist Way by Julia Cameron. If you do not know about this book, please open a new webpage right now and look it up. I hope to write another post completely on the book and how it feels working through it to heal my creative block. For now take my word that its 100% worth getting and reading/working through yourself. It’s technically a 12 week program, and as I stated above I was stuck on week 4, which I think influenced feeling stuck in my musings: unable to move forward in many aspects of my life. 

Well this week I changed that. Not only did I move on to week 5, but I wrote two mew scenes! And a reason I was able to do so was because of external deadlines. I have joined a virtual gathering of writers to workshop weekly short scenes, and possibly build to an evening of virtual performances. Our first session was Wednesday, for which I wrote a two page scene over the making of a birthday cake. And Friday I wrote a five page scene between two sisters that I deemed good enough to submit for an ABC talent showcase. Since I wrote it that day I knew there was a chance I wouldn’t finish in time for the deadline. But having that set ‘time to end’ in mind did help me push through and finish it. And even though I had less time to edit and nitpick, I also didn’t feel the need to. I felt confident and content with my second/final draft of the scene and submitted it with a minute to spare. I don’t know why it takes an external deadline to make me finish some of my work. Maybe it’s because of the school structures: the pressure to do well in others eyes can encourage me to work hard on an assignment. And even if it felt like a struggle, at least the deadline reminded me that it’d be over soon. Just keep trying. But on my own, it’s easier to say it doesn’t matter when I’m the only one holding myself accountable. Plus I’m working on nurturing my Inner Artist (from the Artist’s Way!) so it’s fine that I chose to take time off rather than stress over an imaginary deadline. More importantly I need to nurture myself to a point of feeling capable to meet my own expectations and commitment to self. And as I become more connected to self each day, I will be more connected to the string of thoughts I post for others. Or is this all just for me? Even if it is, I’m reason enough to commit to posting each week…. when I feel able.