~flow~
Like a current.
[or rather…maybe more like a riptide]
I love being in the flow of things.
I don’t mean necessarily like “going with the flow”—more like getting into a mood & really rolling with it until it breaks.
but the trouble with flow is…it goes both ways.
This past holiday break, perhaps as an overdue act of self-love, or perhaps from deep existential exhaustion (are they not the same?) I really took advantage of some time to power down. Reading, lying about, only changing my clothes to put on increasingly more comfortable versions of the same.
I was committed. No guilt, all pleasure.
They say it’s easy to get sad in the winter, in the dark. I refused. Or I would let it happen, then wait patiently until it passed, then remind myself that taking time to clear my brain was just as “productive” as tangible output. This would be a “taking-in” period.
The best is when you’re in creative flow.
The fleeting moment when you’ve had the exact right amount of strong coffee & the world is nothing but your oyster.
Even your oysters have oysters its so good.
1,000 new projects seem doable, your whole future is before you. There’s nothing in your way.
During this recent “break”, I wanted nothing more than to make a dent in the stack of books I’ve been piling into various strategic cairns around the apartment, with hopes that proximity alone would force their contents into my schedule, into my mind.
I’m proud to report I actually finished a few.
Tho, the ones I gravitated toward weren’t the Glennon Doyles or the Ta-neshi Coateses, but dark humor chick lit centering on various depressed female protagonists’ confrontation with “nothingness”. These stories highlighted the truly fucked up feelings you have when life seems ridiculous & all you want is to sleep for a year, but in the end there’s still hope that this nothingness
[like everything?] can also be temporary state.
That satiety, happiness, contentment with everyday human existence isn’t going anywhere & sometimes you need a friggen’ breaaaak.
That maybe—if you’re lucky, if you want—you can take that break until something in you breaks and chucks you forward into your next phase.
Personally, I prefer to wallow in my depressive states until they pass.
Fighting them not only sounds impossibly futile while I’m in it, but deep down I know that they are just as necessary as “striking while the iron’s hot”.
The trouble with the Gregorian Calendar//modern society//capitalism//what have you
is that everyone’s expected to hit timed goals with approximately the same speed, enthusiasm, unshakable tenacity.
I’m forever ready to relax into the darkness for a little while; to take a minute to take stock of “my accomplishments of the last calendar year”. I count my February birthday as my New Year because its truest for me. January 1 has usually been anticlimactic in my experience, if not downright awful. Plus, I’ve never enjoyed doing things at the same time everyone else does, purely out of spite.
[But that’s a story for another time.]
The beauty of a holiday season, of the winter solstice, is that its one of the few agreed-upon breaks recognized by modern society.
Sometimes I think we slapped Christmas in the middle just to give ourselves something bright
to look forward to in the darkest part of winter.
Things happen when they happen!
[especially when your life is largely dictated by The Muse]
It is true that creativity begets more creativity, and that running a business in the creative field requires work when it feels like worrrk instead of play [yeah yeah] but for me, those are usually the times where I’m emotionally limping along to get me through until the next flow, that next high.
Don’t get me wrong—I love regarding a pile of my own conquests; stacking them up in a row and counting them like loose change “earned” over a period of time.
The mountain justifies the mole who built it.
I am the Mole. I am the Mountain.
Say it again.
I’m not saying we only have one life to live so we need to squeeze the juice from every moment or some bullshit.
I honestly hope that’s not true.
I plan to live multiple incarnations in so many different universes at times we can’t even begin to imagine with our stupid tiny human brains. I may never accomplish everything I set out to do. I will leave this earth with mountains of creations I didn’t ever mole into fruition. Sure I might could’ve done more if I had a stricter routine, a better work ethic, more discipline, less sleep.
But what would be the point? Everything dies. The same creativity in the Ether that I failed to harness into actualization will still exist for someone else, somewhere or sometime else. Maybe they need it more than I do,
maybe they earned it more. Good on them.
~meanwhile…I’m just trying to go with the flow~
Xx—Your Resident Pisces
