A picture of a typewriter.

/

I wrote something today, for somewhere else. I can't meet my goal of writing anything lengthy here to save my life. 

So here's a picture of a typewriter instead. 

I wish I didn't feel like writing is such a chore right now, but I do. Talking about a creative process not working is one of the most boring topics on this earth. Like oh, poor me, I cannot write a story. I mean. But it is frustrating to want to do it more efficiently, professionally, which is to say for money, and to feel like it's not working. Like if this doesn't work, what in the hell will? I can't do equations or fix cars or build anything. Most functional skills are beyond me. The one thing I feel like I can do pretty well, why won't you work? 

I went to a three hour yoga workshop yesterday, involving restorative poses and hot lava stones that the teachers placed on our bodies while we were in various stages of deep stretching and half-conscious relaxation poses. This is the ultimate in self-indulgence, but it was something I wanted to try, so I did. And in those extended poses, when I was trying so hard to clear my mind and not think that I was missing the point, somehow I composed the core of an essay I'd been struggling with. It came to me in a wave and I struggled for the rest of the class to find mnemonics so I'd remember it, because I couldn't politely disrupt the class to turn my phone on and leave a note to myself--not that I didn't think about it, I just knew it was poor form. 

This is what I need to write a cogent essay with a central point? Three hours of restorative yoga in a darkened room with women laying hot stones on my body? This seems extreme. And I still struggled with the thing. 

I hope this gets better, because there isn't another workshop at my studio until January, and I'm not sure I trust myself at home with hot stones straight out of the crockpot to my heart chakras. 

Early Thanksgiving

/

It was a good day. 

I got my life from the recovery process, so I have it to thank for everything from the basic fact that I'm still breathing on up the hierarchy of needs, but one of my favorite things that I have now that I did not previously (at least in my conscious memory) is the capacity for basic contentment, sometimes for sustained periods of time. I always noticed beauty and had a love for it in the most transient and peculiar details. I always had a heart. But I didn't get simple acceptance in my initial go-round. It was in the original operating system, I'm certain, but as I put it together over the years, I did that thing like I do with Ikea furniture. I think it's acceptable to move that FLERKUN screw over there, or to leave the JERKSUN bolt out entirely, then I wonder why my damned dresser falls apart after a month. (That actually happened, false product names notwithstanding.) It's really not. Your FLERKUN and your JERKSUN need all of their screws, like it or not. I'm lucky I figured that out at crunch time.