Archive for the ‘From The Heart’ Category

(Forgive me if this blog isn’t 100% about writing anymore. I’ve never been that purely striated anyways; my life leaks color, and the shades blur into one another like ink in the ocean.)

Once upon a time, autumn came, and all the trees turned to dying colors. Rain fell; the skies faded to marbled grey. The leaves fell; the trees were naked with only their shadows for cloaks. The ground drowned as the sunlight waned, and the frost came to drape everything in shining blankness. All the color, the movement, the life had slipped away to hibernate until the warmth could return.

Happens every year. And every year, my heart slides down into dormancy, eyes heavy-lidded with weary darkness.

And every year, after the longest night right before Christmas, I say hello to the sun and welcome it home.

And every year, it isn’t until early February or thereabouts that I manage to rekindle the fire in my own spirit.

Doing anything of worth requires fire. Passion. Some form of love, some form of desire, some driving force that animates and fuels you. Even if your motivation is only survival, it is still your passion for life that keeps your heart beating and your hands working. If you didn’t care about life, you wouldn’t bother prolonging and improving it.

If you didn’t care about anything, you’d do nothing. It’s called apathy.

Passion enflames; passion propels. Writers write because they’re passionate about their stories and their characters. Artists paint or draw or sculpt because they’re passionate; musicians create and play music; athletes move their bodies; craftsmen create; everyone breathes. Nothing worth doing lacks passion from the doer.

When the sunlight is brief and the outside world is cold and bleak, it’s easy to lose sight of passion, of our reasons for doing things, of the source of our fuel. It’s cyclical, and not necessarily in such a large arc as the wheel of the year. It can happen in a month, or a week, or a day, or a lifetime.

But losing passion is only one part of the cycle. Shove through it and reach the next stage to recover yourself and reignite your heart. However many times you do it, it’s always necessary, and always worth the effort.

How do you keep the passion flowing in your life?

Image Credit: Crestock Creative Photos.

You. Yes, you. No, not the spectre behind you. You.

You’re important.

I’ve been taking these first few weeks of the new year to let go of the old and breathe the new. I’m finding out I’ve let go of a few too many things, like my beloved sources of inspiration, and now I get to reconnect.

I’ve been reading things – sites, blogs, stories, journals. Trying to remember what got me stirred up. Figuring out why I came here and started building this house. I forget very easily – I live in the moment – and I had to go back, through written words, to re-realize a lot of my driving forces.

Most of those written words weren’t my own. They were yours. Your dreams, hopes, goals, ambitions. I draw strength and inspiration from the people who dare to follow their hearts, who push through the hard times to make better ones, who try to manifest their desires, whether those desires parallel my own or not.

Don’t ever doubt your own importance, even to people you’ve never personally spoken with. The internet lets us connect, but even when we don’t connect one-on-one, you influence people. You inspire them.

You inspire me. And for that, I thank you. I’ll try to return the favor as best I can, and I won’t waste the hope grown by your words.

February 2nd has long been a Day of Fire for me – to melt down the old in order to forge the new. It’s almost here, and I think I’ll be ready for it, now that I’ve remembered all I have to recycle and cultivate.

Oh, I have neglected this blog. Friends and readers, I apologize.

I have really enjoyed keeping this blog for the past few months, tossing up a variety of fiction, worldbuilding/critterbuilding, meta-writing, and slice-of-life posts. I have no intention of letting myself linger into infinite idleness. I confess, however, I have a bit of a quandary. You may have even tackled this one before, or you might be in the process of doing so now.

As a totally unknown author who’s trying to build a community of readers and creative folk, I can’t afford to walk away from the computer for weeks at a time. Networking via blogs, forums, Twitter, and other virtual gathering-places is vital to getting my name out and meeting great people. I’m a certified internet marketer, to boot – I know the ins and outs of self-marketing and social media, even if I happen to shun certain venues (like MySpace). If I want any kind of online community, I need to be interactive, dynamic, genuine, and present.

However, I want to unplug.

I’m finding myself feeling a little ungrounded these days. I’d love little more than to acquire an old electric typewriter – the new ones are too computer-like for my tastes – and an mp3 player that can hold some 20,000 songs, and simply turn the computers off for a week. The typewriter will let me continue to write, journal, and worldbuild, and the mp3 player will let me have all my music outside of my overloaded harddrives. My cell phone can keep me in touch with my good friends and family. I want, and need, a break from the overwhelming virtual side of my life.

I want to go outside, bundled up, and walk through the falling snow at dusk. I want to pick up the training sword that’s leaning against my bo in the corner of the room and practice until my arms want to fall off. I want to have hard copy of my creative works, and I want to hear the solid click-click-thud of a typewriter again. (I started on a manual typewriter, later got an electric, and got my first computer in 2000.) I want to play my guitar until my calluses are tough again. I want to sprawl in a pile of sleeping cats and read new books.

Ultimately, I just want to feel a little more real.

I’m not sure how to balance my authorly, internet-based goals with this desire to unplug and step away. This blog will not be abandoned, and I’ll return to my neglected Twitter account soon. But I need to live in order to write about living, and if I feel like I’m drifting, that’s only going to handicap my ability to create.

A healthy compromise must be found.

How have you managed to balance your internet activity with the rest of your hobbies and responsibilities? I’d be happy to hear about any tips or tricks you’ve found to be helpful.

I have a confession: my brain has been scattered to the sixteen winds lately.

I’ve been doing NaNoWriMo, which has been a blast, but I am unbelievably far behind. This is actually rather typical. I can recall at least two years where I had 20k left in the last week and still managed to finish before midnight on the last day. This month is looking to be similar.

I have been privately attempting to strengthen my flabby, fragile poetry muscle by taking on a friend’s challenge: 100 poems in 100 days. I even raised the bar a notch and found specific prompts to use for each poem. I am far behind on this, as well, but – like NaNoWriMo – I will probably get a surge of inspiration (or just stubbornness) towards the end and finish reasonably on time.

I have been moving. Oh, glorious moving! J and I are the proud new renters of half a duplex – two bedrooms, one bathroom, and one hefty kitchen with enough room for a for-two dining room table. I alone have enough junk to populate a two-bedroom apartment, and J has enough for half a small house, so getting all of our collective stuff moved and unpacked has been an adventure. To my shock, I am actually just about done, barring some pictures that need put up and some knicknacks that need distributed among the places where cats don’t go. I even got all our furniture, books, and DVDs arranged. J, on the other hand, has laid waste to a large portion of the living room and Spare Oom with stuff he has yet to sort and settle. But he put up light-killing curtains, so I forgive him. Still, moving and unpacking have been an enormous time-sink.

(It’s been truly wonderful to have a kitchen to ourselves again, though. I am no chef, but I like being able to have some homemade meals on occasion. I made mediterranean shrimp pasta! J made seafood pizza! There will be chicken stirfry soon!)

I have been job-hunting. Having come to the frustrating and saddening conclusion that communication between myself and my bosses was no longer salvageable, and my abilities did not mesh with their expectations and needs, I cut the cord. I took a few days to busy myself with moving stuff and NaNoWriMo, then leapt into job-hunting again with what might resemble fervor if you tilt your head, close one eye, and squint the other. I’m still incredibly tempted to get a job at the local Trader Joe’s, but I’m being responsible^TM and looking for something with a higher salary first. (Even though our lovely duplex is so affordable that I could pay all my bills and my part of the rent and utilities with a minimum-wage job. I’m trying to forget that fact…)

See, I am not a person who lives to work. I work to live; I spend my energy and time doing what I love. If I can do something I enjoy at work, great! I’ll throw all my passion and enthusiasm into it and happily so – I’ve been known to voluntarily work unpaid overtime just to do right by a company. If I can’t find a passion at my job, I don’t really mind – I’ll find happiness wherever it sprouts, including at a “base-level” job. I surprise people with company loyalty because, unless things are really unpleasant on an interpersonal level, I’m happy to stay at one place and do what I can. And, as a jack-of-all-trades, I don’t mind working outside of my “field,” if one considers professional geekery web and graphic work my field. Honestly, the more I can enjoy myself and have energy for my own pursuits – like this crazy writing gig – the happier I am at any given job, whether I’m the marketing director or a cashier.

And, lastly, I have been doing some personal digging – self-observation and constructive analysis to work towards improving who I am, what I’m doing, and where I’m going. This time of year, during the sun’s descent before the longest night at winter solstice, is always a period of introspection and truths for me. While this is hardly the place to detail such personal work, it deserves mention as something I’ve given my energy and time to and one of the major things occupying my life.

This has been a lengthy and somewhat rambling explanation for why I’ve not been posting regularly. I will probably cook up some posts and back-date them later, just to fill in the gaps, but for now, bear with me – November is a scarce month for more than one reason!

You’ve heard about the daze of my life – what have you been up to recently?

This is a writing blog, so this post doesn’t really belong.

But if it weren’t for the heart behind what I’m writing here, this blog wouldn’t exist.

Welcome to the roots of the tree giving you air.

In early October, I discovered the Freak Revolution, a change-the-world project headed by two self-professed freaks, Pace and Kyeli. They were trying to get a million people to read their Manifesto. I downloaded it, read it, and promptly spread it among my friends. You already know I’m not your normal writer – if such a thing even exists. I could identify with being a freak, especially with the term reclaimed in a more positive and dynamic light.

That site, along with Tiny Buddha, got my wheels spinning. What’s it worth to you to be yourself? What would you give? How hard would you work?

Do you even realize it’s possible?

It took me most of my life to realize that, if I wanted to be truly happy, I needed to stop trying to be some theoretical ideal and start being me. We’re all inherently imperfect – perfection is an impossibility in a dynamic universe – and it felt like defeat to no longer strive to be flawless. As though I should be able to be perfect, and the fact that I wasn’t made me worth less than some anonymous other person who had managed the feat.

Bull.

In truth, the choice to be me instead of trying to be perfect was not failure, but success. I had to acknowledge that who and what I am, with all my quirks and flaws, is not a bad person to be. Instead of going against my own grain, I could strive to be the best me I could be. I had to realize that I’m not responsible for other people’s expectations and perceptions; I’m only responsible for my own actions, words, path, and happiness.

Man, what a load off. I could stop trying to be interested in political history? I didn’t have to pretend to care about pop culture? Suddenly, I felt free. I could opt out of most things considered “the norm” in this society, since the majority of what’s me and mine isn’t in the general pool of common interests and characteristics. I could stop apologizing for being me, once I realized it wasn’t a bad thing to be so individualized. Acknowledging my imperfection, letting go of unrealistic expectation, and looking within to see where I wanted to go – not should go, but wanted to go – have made even the hard things possible.

I let myself believe that it’s not just okay to be me, but that I have a right to it, and I can step up to defend my right to be me, while letting myself be nebulous and transitory, mid-evolution between birth and death.

I’m still imperfect. I still fall back on old habits, outmoded assumptions. I still take the easy way out. I still forget the new and remember the old in its place.

But I surround myself with brilliant, creative people for a reason. I hear them talking, and I remember where I’ve been, where I am, and where I’m going. I remember that I’ve already opted out of the negativity and stress and obligations plaguing me. I have more personal power than I’m laying claim to in this moment.

So I think free, and the burring noise of happiness (a hum, a purr) starts thrumming in my chest again.

And I keep writing, because I want to, because I can, and so I will.

Image Credit: Royalty Free Images.

Not amusement. Not entertainment. Not a brief little flicker of happiness.

I’m talking joy. That effusive, overwhelming feeling of delight and pleasure that makes it impossible not to smile. The kind of emotion that brings a little mist to your eyes because you are just that happy. Elation that lifts you up to the tips of your toes because you feel so light and free. Pure bliss.

I’ve heard it called passion before. But passion has a different flavor – thicker, redder, more driven and focused. Joy is liberated from any kind of ambition and sense of progress. Joy blows with the wind, gusts into you to fill you up until you’re flying, and can be exhaled in one breath if something – internal or external – takes your mind back to what some people call ‘reality’, where worries and stressors and problems dwell.

Personally, I’m not a fan of a ‘reality’ without joy. Mine includes it. Mine thrives on it.

On the long drive to work this morning, as I was waking up, I decided to eschew the thoughts of the stress that’s plagued me lately. I’ve run into a lot of unexpected issues at work; J is sick with H1N1; money is always a concern (especially after a summer of not working); and we’re probably going to be moving in a few weeks – if my job proves stable. I’ve had all of that and much more on my mind, but today, I chose not to dwell on it.

Instead, I fired up the ole cauldron and began simmering ideas.

I thought of Into Fang Wood. I thought of the upcoming NaNoWriMo novel, which is looking to be epic. I thought of the directions I want to take this blog, the people I want to reach out to and connect with, the kind of awesome geofiction resource I hope to create with Oh, The Inhumanity!. I thought of past creativity and future potential.

And I felt that joy bubbling up just beneath my collarbone, pulsing in my lungs.

Creating is my passion and my joy. What’s yours?

How many times have you heard or used the phrase “find the time”? Now, compare that to how often you’ve heard or said “found the time” without “haven’t” in front of it. Pretty poor ratio, isn’t it?

Time is a precious resource. You’re never without it, but it’s not always in a usable form. And trying to use time when it’s already spent is like trying to hand-sculpt marble. You wind up tired and frustrated, your fingertips sanded to the bone.

If you put something off – like writing – until you “find the time,” you might never do it. Even if you do, it won’t be as much or as frequent as you’d like. If you wait until you “find the time” to go to the county fair, it’ll be two weeks past it before you realize you’ve already missed it. Events, and opportunities, wait for no one.

Be proactive. Make the time. If it matters to you, take charge and make it happen. There is never a “can’t” here. Technically, you could skip school to go to that concert or miss work to go on that road trip. Maybe you shouldn’t, but you could. Don’t lose sight of your own ability to choose – you are never as trapped as you feel.

It’s rarely a question of being able to or not, but a question of how much you’re willing to work or sacrifice or both for what you want.

If you want it, make it. Don’t wait for it to wander by.