“Me too!” I laugh. We’re seated in the kitchen at the table just having finished dinner. Both of just admitted to feeling that we’re each in the middle of some kind of transition. For me, I feel like I’m shedding life as I knew it like a snake would shed it’s skin, or maybe a better comparison would be the way snails and crabs “outgrow” their shells and have to grow new ones. The interim time, the time where the old shell doesn’t fit but the new one is still in the process of forming is the most difficult. It’s when the snail, crab, and me…feel most vulnerable and are susceptible to all kinds of things.
I’m desperate to run and hide. I don’t know what to do with this or how to simply be with it and feel it. In some ways I am hiding. I haven’t really been engaging with the world around me. Only partly, never giving anything my full attention because this other part of me is quickly trying to find out how to build a new, safer foundation to stand on.
I’ve felt really confused lately, trying to put one foot in front of the other, trying to make the next right move but honestly, I feel I’m wandering around in the dark with no clear idea or direction. Leaning on food to fill the void isn’t as interesting as it once was but I’m still engaging in it, hoping that maybe this next bite, or next meal will deliver the relief I think I need.
Dana and I have been in our new place for a month now. In that time, we’ve acquired a new kitty, Noodle, to be a playmate for the cat she’s had all along, Teaspoon. We finally unpacked and cleaned. We’ve cooked some, baked some, and talked a lot. It has been so wonderfully pleasant to come home to a calm, quiet home and feel like I can exhale.
Noodle!
Teaspoon!
I’ve also discovered two (new to me) coffee shops. One is Swim Café on Chicago Ave at Noble and the other is the Knockbox on California at Augusta. My routine has been shifting to where I spend more time at home in the mornings that I work and less time at the Unicorn Café in Evanston. I still lovelovelove it there, I’m for whatever reason in no hurry to take two buses to the train that has gotten me up there for the past year. Instead I take one (very crowded) bus to another train. This take a little longer but I like the views of the city I encounter and the different route.
My artist way course is coming close to ending. I must admit I’ve skipped two classes. One because Dana and I talked straight through it and another because well, I simply didn’t feel like going. I wanted to spend the evening with Jeff, but the following week I was back with bells on.
I haven’t abandoned my artist dates though. One week I made another collage. I spent one morning at Swim Café with a notebook and pen recording all that was going on around me. I wrote and described the people walking in and out, staying and eating and the pieces of conversations I heard to later go back to and use should I need some characters in future writing endeavors. I got this idea from a memory of being in London my first time around with a girl I used to work with. She told me she wished she knew how to draw because if she did she would sit in pubs and draw the people around her. I wish I were better at drawing too but am happy I can “draw” with words so I went with that.
I made a pair of earrings the following week. I really miss doing this. I’ve put away my jewelry making stuff for far too long. I later ended up making a necklace as well.
Last week I wrote a piece of fiction to submit to a contest that will take place on April 21st. I got really squirrelly about this one and got an extra push I needed from two women in the group. One woman opened herself up to us asking that if we needed some prayer surrounding our creative goals (mine being to be a NY Times Bestseller) to email or call her and she’d pray for us. Saying those two words “I need” is the more excruciating than saying “I’m sorry”. Still, like it or not, not only do I need support, I want it. The next day I email her asking for her prayer support and the next day she wrote me the prayer she said for me and I was reduced to a teary puddle of gratitude. I started to write.
Oh but that didn’t last long. I started and stopped three times before I hit some kind of stride with the fiction piece. I wrote another woman, continuing dialogue we already started explaining my seeming inability to write anything worth while. She reminded me that I’m in the middle of a “creative U-turn”. We just learned about these the week I decided to write this piece. A creative U-turn happens when the artist is on the brink of some kind of success and immediately sabotages it out of fear. My new friend reminds me to keep pushing through, don’t stop writing and enter the contest.
My inner critic, sweet lil thing that she is, interrupts any kind of inspiration by telling me that there will be better writers competing, asking what I’m trying to accomplish and I will be embarrassed by my apparent idiocy by doing this. She loves to go on about work and how I won’t be able to even make it to the event because I’m working that night. She rolls her eyes telling me I don’t have the guts to ask for help with grammatical editing and that I don’t have many details about this contest in the first place etc…etc…etc…
To shut her up I take painstakingly difficult steps forward to email the woman running the contest, asking her all my many questions. She answers quickly ending her message with “I look forward to your submission.” which amps up my excitement. (now I have to do it right?J) I then ask a co-worker to edit the piece to which she agrees. I also take yet another step and ask to come into work early on the 21st so I can leave a lil early to show up to this event. Again I am told yes and my excitement continues to build. I’m actually going to get out of the box I force myself to stay in because God forbid anything new happen.
All I have to do now is write the piece. Having a deadline, and guidelines for submission feel constricting but is also a welcome challenge. I tell myself over and over again to simply write and edit later. I have a bad habit of trying to edit while writing then nothing gets done until one day I’m hit with a dose of inspiration and off I go.
This doesn’t last long before I’m standing, packing up my things and going for a walk to get some air. I pray and pray for inspiration, receive it, write with it then freak out and run. I later return to the piece once I’ve caught my breath and finally finish it.
This might result in an epic fail. I could very well win the thing, or nothing at all will happen but I am satisfied knowing I tried. I now have to send it away for editing.
The meantime in between artist dates have been sprinkled with drawing, some work on my novel, loooong walks and one giddy day meandering through vintage stores. I’ve also signed up to run a half marathon in June here in Chicago and will later run my first full marathon in late October in Atlanta. (prayers are welcome!) Training has begun despite the chilliness that is still Chicago right now. Running has been a fabulous reprieve from all the crazy that is buzzing in my head.
The sun has gone down for the day. Dana and I clear our dishes from the table, neither of us having any idea of what this transition is going to mean for us but interested in it nonetheless. I do hope she’s right though about the butterfly thing. I want more than anything for the cocoon to unravel revealing something more sparkly than dull. Until then dark or not, I guess I’ll put one foot in front of the other…
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