Stop What Doesn’t Work & Restart What Does

This morning I sat in my writing chair, a befuddled sense of non-direction came over me. I had misplaced my phone and I let it stay misplaced. I didn’t want to use find my iphone and wake my daughter. I knew I would find it soon enough.

I sat, still and silent and non-contemplative. I noticed how the sun was piercing into my space in a not so comfortable, slanted sort of way.

“This is how it stops,” I said to myself after a while. “This is how depression or inaction or a funk starts for me and this is how everything else stops.”

I had an impulse I hadn’t followed in a while to re-read my work-in-progress vision plan aloud to myself.

As always, reading it and hearing it energized me.

I went to my blog to read recent content because one of my shortcomings due to my high level of creative output is truly odd. I write so much, I forget what I wrote – even and especially the really quality writing dense with insights.

I saw the last date on my blog was April 7. Tuesday. Somehow it was Friday and I hadn’t blogged since Tuesday during this month I was supposed to be blogging every day.

Somehow in a matter of days I had swept aside my love for sharing my life with others in the pile of stuff on my calendar that isn’t nearly as fulfilling to me. I had fallen off course.

The echo of “this is how it stops” arose in me.

And this is how it restarts, now.

I begin again, re-start< with the knowledge I spent two days doing less of what compels me because I fell into a bit of a cloudy funk. This is natural considering we are in the midst of a first-time-for-any of us pandemic we don’t know when or how it will end. We are mostly sitting in our homes, waiting, attempting to create some feeling of normalcy amidst this unnerving unknown.

I did things during the last few days, but I neglected what I love the most because of duty primarily to other people. It happens, especially to those of us who tend toward people pleasing.

I didn’t nurture my tender spots, I didn’t reach into the audience who reads my words, who looks forward to them. Their words and comments and smiles in response to what I write brings me another layer of nurturing.

Today I may be behind schedule, but neither my heart nor my vision is lost.

I am re-claiming, re-starting and re-storing what fills me up the most.

If you are feeling befuddled or in a funky malaise, this period of time of quarantine and “uncertain times” as I have heard this called eophemistically – is finite – even though we don’t know when it will be over for us or what the outcomes will be. Even in a casual search for quotes about embracing the unknown comes up empty: everything sounds trite and rehearsed in this time when we haven’t rehearsed any of it.

I certainly didn’t want to experience any of this.

I realize now I used to worry about something like this pandemic happening after I died, leaving my children to figure it out without me. It isn’t as if I have all the answers or volumes of wisdom on the subject, but I didn’t like thinking of them suffering without me, suffering too.

I’ll say it, I am re-claiming, re-starting and re-storing what fills me up the most and as a result, others will be filled up, too.

Julie JordanScott is the Creative Life Midwife. She inspires people to live their life as an artform and take action towards their best results. During the 2020 Pandemic she is also leading daily Virtual Coffee Dates, Facilitating Intentional Conversation so people will feel less isolated during this time of social and physical distancing. Join the conversation by registering for free by clicking this link.