Soooo…it’s been 7 months since my last confession. I mean blog post. Twelve years of Catholic school just makes that confession phrase pop right out. I wasn’t keeping a tally count of the months of no blogging. Word Press kindly tells you exactly how long you’ve been slacking when you log back in after a brief hiatus. Thanks for that, Word Press People.
I wasn’t exactly counting the months of no blogging, but I sure have felt them. A few of my wonderful friends who so kindly follow my blog and read my writing have asked when I’ll write again. My writing pal has offered to meet up a bunch of times. I’ve thought of things I’d like to write about. But I just haven’t written. The truth is I’ve kind of been in a bit of a slump for a while with writing. And with a few other things. And the slump has lasted longer than I’d like to admit, much longer than comfortable. I thought about bringing back my blog lots of times, but I just did not do it. I even taught my first graders how to blog and they do it every week, but still, I did not do it myself.
One time that I thought a lot about getting back to writing was around the new year. (Is March too late for a New Year’s Resolution?) I took a walk back in December, on New Year’s Eve and, looking for a little inspiration with which to start the new year, I listened to an episode of the “Good Life Project” podcast called “Close the Books.” In that message, Jonathan Fields, the founder of the Good Life Project described a process that business owners would do at the end of each year called “closing the books”. They would note debits and contributions to their financial accounts and try to make sense and balance of their money situation. Where does it make sense to continue spending? What revenue sources filled our accounts? Are we wasting money or resources in any areas? How can we plan to either continue doing what fills the accounts and stop doing what drains the accounts in the year to come? And then, close the old book and open a new one. Jonathan explained how we might apply the same ideas to our everyday lives – work lives, personal lives, habits, activities, relationships. He talked of looking back on the year and thinking about things that were deposits in your life. What added to your account, your life? When I did that, I quickly thought about writing. When I was writing on a regular basis last year (and the year before that when I first started this blog), I felt this positive addition to my days. I got a good energy from creating something. Even if no one else were to ever even read it, I liked the act of creating something. I also liked how writing changed my outlook on things, my attention to my days. Because I was looking for something to write about, I often paid attention to what was happening around me in a different way. If something touched me or was bothering me, I could share it or work it out in my writing. Sometimes writing helped me find a new perspective on something. I liked the days when I was writing on a regular basis, so I thought back in December that I would really start writing again. But I didn’t.
I slumped on through January and February. I mean, who really wants to do anything in January and February? We’re supposed to be hibernating, right? Except hibernating and slumping didn’t feel so good for very long and the friends kept asking and I wanted to write and I kept remembering that I told myself I would write again. But I didn’t. And then one day I just said, “Yes.” I said yes to my writing pal. I said yes, I would do something to try to un-slump myself. I said I would show up and write and so here I am…writing.
I got a new book last week. I buy a lot of books when I’m in a slump. Truth be told, I buy a lot of books all the time, but still, this book helped in my un-slumping. The book is called “The Endless Practice” by Mark Nepo. In the first several pages he tells about how zooplankton make a daily journey from the depths of their water habitat to the surface. It’s a matter of feeding themselves and protecting themselves, and in the process of this, they also filter the water they inhabit and so contribute to the health of the larger world around them. Nepo makes the point that in life we humans do something similar as we go back and forth between nourishing ourselves, filling, gaining energy and being drained, or needing to protect ourselves. It kind of made me feel a little better about drifting away from some things that I know are good for me. That it’s sort of the natural course of things to go back and forth, to hibernate and then wake up, to be down and then get up. Maybe I could drift and return a bit more frequently, like the zooplankton, but still.
So I might not have made that New Year’s Resolution happen, but any time really can be a time to close or open a new or old book, to swim up to the surface, I think. My plan is to try to continue to write on a regular basis again, because it’s one of the things that makes me feel good, that fills me up and helps me filter the world. Here goes again…
I didn’t make the New Year’s resolution, but I did make it to see the New Year sunrise. “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
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