In which I reflect on a week without posting. Which I really might do more often from now on.
It’s just all a bit too much sometimes
I’m still wrestling with divergent opinions about how often one should post on one’s blog. If you don’t have anything worth hearing, then don’t say anything at all, right? Last week I read one of those banal list posts that identified 12 reasons why people stop following your blog. I knew I shouldn’t have clicked on the link when I saw it there in my feed reader. The title, for a start, featured my bete noire of blogging: a number, indicating a list of items to be identified (I just think list posts are dull, boring and lazy writing).
But that’s coming from a writer that hasn’t written all week, so who’s calling who lazy now?
Well, I clicked it anyway. Read now and cope with the consequences later. My favoured motto for all things in life. Curiosity killed the cat but it hasn’t done me too much harm so far.
To my pleasant surprise, the number one reason stated for why people stop following blogs they’ve already subscribed to, was frequency of posting. And we’re not talking about blogs that didn’t post enough. Readers stated that they sometimes stopped following blogs where the blogger posted too often, because they felt swamped by the amount of material they felt they had to keep up with.
Be daring, do something wild for once and skip some pages
Has anyone told these people that it’s not school, and it’s not homework? You don’t have to read every post that Joe Blogger writes, even if you are getting their feed on a daily basis. Or maybe these are the people that never like to skip a page or a chapter of a book if it starts to get a bit slow, a bit boring.
Perhaps it’s just me. I say, Writing is sacrosanct. Reading is not. It’s up to the reader to decide what they take from you and what they choose to digest. I’m not expecting anyone to read everything I ever write about. In fact, please don’t.
I’m going all ‘Charlotte Bronte’ now
One problem I tend to have with my writing is an over-awareness of the reader. They say, write with your audience in mind, but in my experience, too much thought for the ones on the receiving end can seriously impede your flow. I get all caught up in anticipating what someone’s response might be to what I’ve written, and it’s generally worse when I know the people that I think are going to be reading this.
Call it an over-tendency to try to please. Brought on by my English good-girl sensibility, imbibed through regular deliveries of guilt and coercion throughout my childhood. Don’t laugh now – most women have it. A terrible thing indeed. It’s the Virtue Trap again; rampaging through my life and art with full knowledge of the devastation that it brings.
Julia Cameron, in The Artist’s Way, defines this as a deadly situation for an artist:
The urge toward respectability and maturity can be stultifying, even fatal. We strive to be good, to be nice, to be helpful, to be unselfish. We want to be generous, of service, of the world. But what we really want is to be left alone.
When we can’t get others to leave us alone, we eventually abandon ourselves. To others, we may look like we’re there. We may act like we’re there. But our true self has gone to ground. What’s left is a shell of our whole self… Our artist has checked out.
Balance has nothing to do with it
I haven’t told you this, but there’s a new man in my life. No, it’s not a quip or a joke. He’s been around for a month or so and I’m willing to out our relationship now. It’s fab, he’s great, I feel wonderful. You know how it goes. I’m not going to get all gushy and embarrassing now. Please, remember my English-girl reserve. Hanging by a thread, but still there, for a little while longer.
Anyway, we found each other through our writing, and he’s been a true Believing Mirror to me. I feel enormously blessed about this. But today I asked him to drop my feeds for a while and stop reading my stuff.
Why, you might ask? I write on the internet anyway, so it’s totally public. Difficult for me to claim privacy rights now. But part of me has been becoming aware that I’m struggling to flow with all the changes that are taking place in my life at the moment.
Butterfly fears, getting ready to fly
My writer’s mind has become so conscious of him reading my words that my writing starts to feel like an extension of our private life and conversations. That would be fine, and could be fine, in a little more time. But at the moment it’s coupled with my emerging sense of the purpose of this new space, and the newly-emerging sense of my own dreams, visions and goals that are linked to this website. Too much outside influence can intefere with my ability to hear my own quiet inner voice, which I so very badly need to pay attention to at the moment.
The point is, sometimes you need to take some time to nurture your new wings, alone, before you can spread them out to dry and glisten in the sun. Before you can take flight. Every caterpillar knows this, I’m sure.
Finding spaces in my momentum
It’s been hard to carve out any pockets of creative solitude lately, and my well is running dry again. Time that I once spent reading and writing has been beautifully filled by the presence of another human being in my life. And if he’s not here with me, we’ve been on the phone for long hours. All part of the process of starting a relationship, and for the last month or so, it wouldn’t have crossed my mind to do anything else.
But now my inner artist is starting to shuffle her feet and complain in my ear, “When are you gonna make some time for me, Sam?” and “When are we gonna do some painting, or some really great writing? Huh? Huh? Huh?” (she can get pretty whiny).
I flipped open my journal from the summer, serendipitously, at the page of notes I’d made about this very issue:
An artist must have downtime, time to do nothing. Defending our right to such time takes courage, conviction, and resiliency… Such time, space, and quiet will strike our family and friends as a withdrawal from them. It is. For an artist, withdrawal is necessary. An artist requires the upkeep of creative solitude. An artist requires the healing of time alone. Without this period of recharging, our artist becomes depleted.
(Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way)
Postcards from the edge
I’m thinking that with the holiday season really coming upon us now, many of us, the sensitive artistic souls out there, will be finding it hard to meet the demands of family time and creative solitude. And then there’s the hustle and bustle of shopping for gifts; the daily jams of traffic that seem so much worse at this time of year, and the extra-specially long queue in Marks & Spencer’s cafe for my latte and triple-decker slice of Victoria sponge. It’s enough to drive a woman to insanity, and that’s before she’s wrapped the presents and stuffed the turkey and boiled the Brussels sprouts to within an inch of their Goddess-given life.
I’ve decided that this arse-end of the year is a perfect time to do a little Spiritual Housekeeping, and I wondered if anyone else would care to join me?
Soul Coaching
I’m going to keep this short and sweet now. Listen up and ask me questions if I haven’t said enough.
When I work with someone who wants some spiritual coaching or healing, I look at the balance of the four elements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) in their lives and in their bodies. It’s natural for me, as it matches well with my Pagan Goddess path and my Shamanic and Native American paths.
Each element corresponds to an aspect of your being. Earth corresponds to the Physical body; Air corresponds to your Mental faculty; Water corresponds to your Emotions and Fire relates to your Spiritual or Creative expression. If one of these elements is disempowered in you, you will experience a sensation of being out of balance, somewhere in your life.
There are simple techniques and activities that anyone can do to cleanse and recharge each of the elements in their own being. I call it balancing your personal shield. And I guarantee you will feel a whole lot better when you attend to any imbalances there.
Preparing for the after-shock resolve and resolutions
So, Christmas and New Year are about the most likely time in the year for me to go out of balance. I can embrace that, in the name of Yule, and family fun. And to a large extent, I will. I’m not saying I’m not going to indulge in pudding and cheese and cream and mince pies. That would be daft, and unrealistic.
My intention here is to bring a little more balance into my being before the blowout takes place, and thereby, perhaps, to reduce the effects to a smaller degree of wobble by January 1st. I also like to think that I might approach the New Year with a greater degree of serenity and readiness for all that it will bring. I’m looking forward to 2010 immensely, and this seems like a little act of self-respect and honouring for what I’m planning to do next.
Number One: Let’s get Physical
Starting Monday 30th November, I’m going to be dedicating a week to balancing the Earth element of my personal shield, and listening to what my Physical body is asking me to do. I’ll post some prompts and ideas here, if you care to join me, and feedback on my received impressions of the week.
Monday 7th December, I’m going to move on to balancing the Water element of my shield, and tuning in to all things to do with my Emotions. Then Monday 14th December, I’ll move on to balancing the Air element of my shield, and listening to what my Mental body has to say to me.
I’ve decided to finish up with balancing my Fire element, and looking into my spiritual and creative needs, which I intend to begin Monday 21st December. But, you know, I might want to cut a little slack by then.
I’m combining my own techniques with the programme that Denise Linn created in her loveliest little book, “Soul Coaching”. So if you’re interested in joining in with the process more wholeheartedly, you might want to see if you can grab a copy of that. But it’s not that important, because you can just follow the stuff that I post, if you like.
Keeping it sensible and simple
Denise takes the elements in a different order to the one I’m going to follow, finishing with the Earth element and the Physical body, but I figure it would just be too too much to try to do that over the heart of Christmas, with all that slothery and indulgence around. So that’s why I’m going to start with Earth, and move up to the more ethereal layers as the energy of the wheel gets more dense and intense.
It also means we get to do stuff like Facing the Present Moment, and having a Ceremonial Fire right in the depths of the time when I think we might appreciate it most. And as my homefire burns almost constantly between 24th December and January 4th, it means I don’t have to go to any trouble to do a small Fire Ceremony in my own home. Yippee. Are you with me?
If you’re going to join in with me, please feel free to leave a comment and let me know, and to comment liberally or link a post or two throughout the process. If there’s a few of us, maybe I’ll fire up Mister Linky’s Magic Widget, or whatever. Gosh, that sounds a bit grand. But it won’t be. Honest. Simple, humble cleansing stuff, is all I intend to do.
Today’s post was sponsored by Sainsbury’s Butter-Enriched Puff Mince Pies and Percol Fairtrade Colombia Arabica Coffee.
Good stuff.
