Then when I hit the page after accomplishing so little, I feel the mountain of work left to be done is just that, a mountain. My friend calls my method of writing "drip drip" - like Chinese water torture.
I'm reading the Dalai Lama's "Art of Happiness at Work" and loved the insights. Flow, defined as the state of losing yourself and track of time through focus on work, is apparently psychologically unachievable on a regular basis. I thought in order to be a proper writer, I had to achieve flow every day. I get frustrated when I don't. But this says that if you achieve flow a mere six to seven times a year, you're going very well.
But it also pointed out that "flow" people can be pretty grumpy curmudgeons. Can you be a people-pleaser and an achiever at the same time? I really struggle with trying to carve the time and space to write while still managing a family, keeping healthy friendships and being energized enough for a successful healing practice. It's a huge balancing act and very often I fall off the beam, frustrated.
What is this frustration? It's fear. Fear that I'll never live up to my pre-kids potential as a writer; that the hiatus I took from a writing career was a full stop, not a comma. Yet I look at the way my work flows now, at the power, the purity, the effortlessness of the language and I know that's due to the time out I took to develop my character, to walk with integrity in every place in my life.
Another insight came from a dialogue between the Dalai Lama and the author Howard C Cutler, MD, on how people see their work: as a job and timeclock, a career with attendant ambition and jealousy, or as a calling.
His description of careerists as ambitious, jealous, and competitive brought to mind my years as a reporter, when I chaired the Women Writers' Network, and wrote my first two novels. I collapsed due to exhaustion and inspirational burnout. After re-orienting myself through growth as a healer and subsequently opening a practice, writing also needed to shift into a calling. But first my healing practice went through a smaller version of the same process after I realized I did not want to be a career healer, making a living from classes, workshops, healings and how-to books.
Writing as a calling sees the body of work. It sees the growth of the writer, through skill, deepened experience, and for me through a broad range of contacts plus cuttings and books that show maturity. It's about curiousity, and other people's stories. It's a celebration of where we are on the planet, in this incredible time to be alive.
During the transition out of career writer, I wished to be able to read other people's books without jealousy, and love them for the light of new ideas they bring into the world. I can. I wished to be hungry to write again for publication. I am.
And now I wish to be able to integrate my calling for writing and publication into a very rich and diverse life that I lead as a person.
I will.
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