Archive for January, 2010

(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.

Happy New Year, folks! Mine has just begun, and with it comes a recommitment to this blog and what it represents – my efforts at authorship.

My last post was over a month ago and talked about my need to unplug. Well, true to personal form, I hit one extreme after the other and completely abandoned Twitter, instant messaging, most of my email, and this blog in order to get myself together. I focused on things outside of the computer and things inside of my head. I worldbuilt a lot, even finishing the Gurhai starmap. I spent the holidays with J’s family for the first time, enjoyed it, and missed my own people in Colorado and West Virginia.

Now, the year has that just-unpackaged crisp smell to it, and I’m ready to return. While I can’t promise I will immediately swing back into my every-odd-day posting schedule, I will be guiding myself back in that direction and writing here more often. I’ve written out my goals (not resolutions) for the year, and being right here is one of them.It’s going to be a better year than the one we’ve left behind. May everyone have a wonderful 2010!

Image Credit: Crestock Creative Photos.