It's one of those work trips that has the feel of a vacation. I'm trying to do more of that with my life - creating a life that I don't need to take a vacation from. So far, I've been able to create some work that shares some of the features we normally associate with vacation. And because I have a day job that enables me to have a bit of stable income, and because I've shaped my life and my expenses so that I am living frugally, I am able to do this gently, learning as I go. I really don't have to worry about how much money I'm making from it, so I have the freedom simply to be creative.
I hadn't actually intended to write about that, but it does fit in with what I'd like to open up today. And so I want to head back to getting ready for the trip.
You'd think I was leaving for a year.
I didn't do this and I haven't done that and I haven't had time to do the other things I wanted to do before I go away so I can leave well. The truth is, before I go away, there's so much I need to do to be able to get away, especially for said day job, sometimes I wonder if it is worth it.
It is.
It enables me to create space for myself. Space to be creative.
I'm not talking about simply making art or poetry or other writing. I'm talking about a whole-life kind of creativity. The kind of creativity that lets you unmake and remake an entire life. That's actually what my life has been about for the last six years - unmaking and remaking my life, so I'm taking the task and running with it. Expanding it. Making it bigger. Broader. Deeper. Wider.
Divorce, then, becomes an opportunity as well as a death. An opportunity to die and rise again. An opportunity to dismember and remember yourself. An opportunity for unmaking and remaking. But you have to create the space for all of that to happen.
It's a total life detox. A clearing. A burning away. A sifting through.
And probably so much more that I'm not able to touch right now in the moments I take to give to this writing.
But all of that will come.
I'm creating space for it.
It's fascinating to look at how this writing practice works. I open a blank page and its emptiness and spaciousness look back at me, daring me to begin. And so I do. With one sentence. One idea. One step forward. That one sentence, idea, step, takes me deeper, farther along and begins to open up a different kind of space, a space within me that longs to be explored. That longs to be brought out. And begins to tell a story.
The story illuminates a life. One that is being unmade and remade simultaneously.
The page is unending. I could write forever on this screen and it would not run out. It is a never-ending resource, limited only by limits I place on myself and my own creativity. I usually curate my ideas and how much space I give to them, but I could go on and on and on if I wanted to.
And just knowing that is magic.
I'm laughing as I'm writing because I often take myself to unexpected places with this writing. Just showing up every day and choosing to be present, to be courageous in the face of the blank page, to be willing to leap empty-handed into the void of the endless screen, all of it is creating space for, for, for what?
I do not know. But my container is open.
The Summer of Self-Love is a daily writing practice birthed on June 1, 2018 as a container for harnessing three months for thriving. The goal at the end is to host a dinner party. Sounds like an odd Hero's Journey, doesn't it? Most of them usually are.
Art: Full Moon Rising (c) 2015 Katherine Cartwright
Photo from the Anza-Borrego Badlands, Anza-Borrego Desert Park, CA, Full Moon reflected on the Salton Sea.
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