So there’s this project (related to this post) I’ve been working on for far, far too long that is finally coming together. Granted working may be too strong a word - more like thinking about. I’ve been feeling a bit guilty simply for the sheer amount of time that it’s taken me to get around to this one. Two years since Susan passed away and I’m finishing what I feel should have been done over a year ago. I won’t say I haven’t procrastinated, but also there was a little thing called ‘major renovations’ going on over here and my studio didn’t exist again until just the last few months. That being said, I need to get my ass in gear and finish it. There’s a wee girl waiting with infinite more patience than I’ve ever known for a quilt made of her mama’s things. All I can say is: It’s coming girlie, it’s coming.
As always though, I’m sort of mystified by my creative process, which alternates between lightning speed inspiration-execution-completion and the ever frustrating slow-death-will-it-ever-be-done(?). No matter how much stress it causes me I just can’t seem to predict or influence when my process will take a left turn and decide to meander thru the scenic route. And yet, I always learn something in the process of waiting. Usually, it’s a dilemma of how to execute something and if I wait long enough that how comes into focus and I’m released to go. In this case (notwithstanding the reno) it’s taken about a year to see clearly the how and what of this project.
You can not know the depths of guilt I have felt over this! The phone calls from the family, kindly offering to let me off the hook if this project was too much for me, if I didn’t have time, if I couldn’t get around to it. I have spent hours awake at night feeling heavy laden with the weight of this one perhaps because I know that it means so much to the recipients. Spent hours in anguish beating myself up for not being more productive assuming that surely the delay is a result of my lazy work ethic. It only occurs to me once the creative juices are going that it’s my creative process that is slow.
I’m reading that book Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (yes, I know, an OPRAH! book - I only gagged just a little typing that last bit out, but bare with me, it’s a good point) and it twigs me that during her pray chapter how she struggles to quiet her mind so that she can pray. She recounts how much she fights against her own self in order to find that stillness required to focus on the task at hand. And I am reminded once again of the fact that I am supposed to be still. Such a simple command, and yet so incredibly hard for me to remember, never mind achieve. And also, I’m dazzled by how this simple verse is so multi-layered in it’s application to my life.
Once again I am as much astonished that I didn’t realize that in this too - this creative process - I must sometimes be still and wait for the answer to come. And it does come, in it’s own time, not at all influenced by my fretting.
Today I’m breathing in and slowly exhaling out: Let me absorb that.
Let it sink into my bones and resonate deep within me.
Be still, and know that I AM.
Be still, and know that Things.Will.Work.Out.
Be still, and know that inspiration will come eventually.
Be still, and know that inspiration will be followed by excecution and completion.
Be still, and know that there is an anchor - even though it’s deep below the surface,
and you can’t see it from the boat - It’s there, doing it’s job.
Be still, and trust in these things.
Be still, and stop striving in your own strength.
Be still.
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