Buoyancy
Image by Bess Hamiti from Pexels
Buoyancy
To float and rise in a tide
Letting the waves carrying along the stream
Like leaves fluttering in the fall wind
Or snow fluttering through the air
On their descent.
The highs and low that life gives us,
No matter how low you sink, there has to be a rise back to the top
No matter how long it takes.
These past few months have really been a feeling of floating for me. Some days I’m super motivated to work on my stories, other days I don’t even want to read. For a while, I thought I was experiencing burnout from writing, fatigued from working on one story for so long. Coupled with the daily grind of making a living for yourself. But then I realized others were feeling the same way. Perhaps it was a feeling of exhaustion but still pushing forward. One day you’re motivated to work on your personal projects, other days you’re too tired to do anything but scroll on your phone. I’ve been playing a lot of video games and watching YouTube videos. These keep my mind engaged when my body feels too exhausted to do anything else.
Is it recovery from the pandemic? It is the struggle of getting used to a new norm? I realized that in my business as a writer, I can’t do all the things the gurus say to do. Post everyday on social media. Run ads to keep your sales up, write about 1000 words a day. But I’ve realized that rest is just as important for a creative. It’s okay to be on fire one day and having to rest the next. Especially when you have a family to tend to, work a full-time job, or are dealing with some kind of hardship.
I’ve also come to realize that once I let go of this need to be some kind of rich creative, to not engage so heavily in toxic consumerism and Uber-capitalism, I realized there came more peace and serenity. Money is nice to have, especially from a job or career you love, but working yourself to the bone hoping you’ll be able to rest decades from now just doesn’t cut it for me. I want to enjoy life now, and I don’t want to become a millionaire in order to do so.
I’ve started back going through Julia Cameron’s book The Artist's Way. It’s a book that guides others to uncover the creative in them, to get over the fear and judgment of creating art and enjoying life. Writing, singing, sculpting, whatever it may be. There are exercises that force you to go outside, be in nature or around other artworks such as in a museum. I took a break from all writing when I became busy helping in other projects such as a fashion show (it was a lot of fun). But I recently felt the urge to create again, to finally write and revise the story I wrote months ago. The story that I hope will become my third book. But I felt like I hit a wall. I didn’t really get a good grasp of the story. I felt like my writing had stalled somehow. And then I realized what it was, I was judging myself too harshly. I hadn’t given myself enough time to actually write freely again.
Reading through the book again has helped and I feel like I’m climbing back up again. I feel like the waves are lifting me back over the crescent, a steady rhythm. And as the new year approaching, I feel like I’ll have a better understanding and vision of how I want things to go.
But life is an ebb and flow, and it’s all about having a plan for when you're sliding down life again. Sometimes it’s best to sit still, let go, and observe. In the stillness, you may climb back out.
