The Narrow Part of the Spiral

On Monday morning I give myself space to breathe.

Right there in the morning, when most of the developed world is driving itself aggressively to take on the challenges of the week. It's a way that I work with my own tendencies to over-function at work and sometimes grind myself into circles in ways that give me headaches. 

Sometimes I wake up on Monday mornings with headaches. Bad ones. Like today. They remind me to take time to settle myself in time and space for what will be expected of me in the days to come. And to care for myself. I'm in a caring profession and am no good to others if I am not taking care of myself.

It took me decades to learn this.

Not that the lessons hadn't been there all the time, over time. The life lesson, though, has been like as spiral, as most are. I move around and down, or out, and come to the same point again and again, but differently.

So this morning, while sipping tea and finishing Morning Pages and thinking about the day and the week, my hair wet from about 45 minutes in the shower allowing very warm water to loosen the muscles that tightened overnight and exacerbated the headache, I noticed my writing pattern since my new work began 14 days ago. Night writing. Often the last thing of the day when I was exhausted and had little to give. Showing up, but just barely. Grateful to have shown up, even if it was not my best work, which was being given away with little of me left for the writing. 

Last night may have been the cherry on that cake. I went to bed and then, while settling down for sleep, remembered and got out of bed to take fifteen minutes to quiet myself and allow an image from the day to emerge. Flowers. Joy, The wonder of having too many wonderful things to spend my life on. Family. Friendship. Home and my changing relationship with that. 

So I wrote and then took the joy to bed with me. Woke, and allowed whatever was working its way out of my body to gently release in streams of water and go down the drain. Washed the dishes I'd not gotten to last night. Wrote my morning pages. I notice a pattern of release here on Monday mornings. Clearing up, letting go - in the shower, in the sink, on the page.

Remembering myself as everything else clears away.

Remembering that my best writing happens in the morning. Remembering that the writing is the most important part of my day. Wondering how I could have lost that - again. As I started new work. And then dismissing the part of the thought that held judgment and held on to the part of the thought that holds the lesson and the wisdom. 

I have a little sign on my writing desk. Schedule what is most important first. Always. I've written about this before, and it seems I'm on the narrow part of this spiral, since I'm back here again so soon. There is something deep and focused that I'm meant to learn here. And I'll work with myself around it.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life. 

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