In the past ten years, the entries in the Spiral Notebook journal that are really just entries about why I'm not writing more entries have steadily increased. This is a pattern I am none too happy with.* Writing about writing is one kind of writing, but writing about not writing is something else altogether. Occasionally, though, some bit of useful insight pops up, which is kind of like finding a lint-covered gold nugget while studiously cataloging the contents of one's navel.
Earlier on in the entry excerpted here, I wrote: "It came to me that it might be helpful to list any specific fears I could pinpoint. Just getting to this point has caused me some anxiety--I've gotten up and wandered off a couple of times...to eat breakfast, to run some stuff to Hubby at a job site (not self-initiated but accepted a little too eagerly to be purely innocent)...My point is, I'm afraid to even list the fears, so that's fear number one--"
So, it started out innocently and rationally enough. As so often happens when I put pen to paper, though, I ended up in a place I didn't entirely anticipate.
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Monday, June 13, 2011
...6. Having too much to say--and this is probably the biggest issue--that I will be led down the rabbit hole of my psyche--and it is no mere burrow, but a warren of interconnected tunnels looping back on themselves, dead ending in darkness, full of debris, rotted leaves and globs of toxic mud. I know and I'm knowing more and more that there are things down there that I don't really relish the idea of digging around in. And here is the rational response to that (gigantic) semi-rational fear: that stuff is down there REGARDLESS of whether I'm digging around in it. It is down there and it is polluting the groundwater in my psyche. It is down there, in the dark, and it is impacting my quality of life, whether I pay conscious attention to it or not. Paying attention here--the kind of random, roundabout, half-assed, hit-or-miss attention I am likely to pay here--is an imperfect solution, but it is better than no solution at all. I think. I hope.
*In fact, it is likely that the mere mention of this phenomenon will lead to yet another entry full of that sweet-and-sour combination of admonishment and encouragement that I've come to expect from myself.
Wow! I just wrote a poem about this very thing the other day. I didn't really mean to, it just came out. Hmmmm...
ReplyDeleteI'm endlessly surprised by the stuff I find in there while I'm digging around. ;)
DeleteWhat I have learned is that it takes a lot of courage to muck around in that stuff - most people won't do it. For me, it has been valuable. It has helped me to be more alive. But I am older and maybe willing to risk the messy stuff because why not? Anything was better than where I was.
ReplyDeleteI am starting to see that even though mucking is harder, there's a strong possibility that it's more energy efficient than what I've been doing up to this point. Like you said, it's hard to imagine it being worse than where I'm at with some people/situations in my life at the moment.
DeleteInteresting! That muck is down there whether we start digging into it or not....this is giving me some food for thought!
ReplyDeleteThoughts spread like a virus out here in the wilds of the internet, don't they? :)
DeleteYou know what my issue is? Figuring out whether or not and/or when to let other people in on the muck. And I have the same rationale. It's there and its going to affect the relationship anyway whether I let them in on that or not. I'm often far less afraid of the muck itself, than I am about losing people I care about. So I stuff down muck and hide it. Not from me, but from everyone else, for as long as possible. Which sometimes isn't nearly long enough.
ReplyDeleteOh--you hit a nail right on its shiny little head with this one. I am in that exact space right now with at least one person in my life. And I've been wondering for a little while now how much more energy I'm going to be able to muster for stuffing down the muck.
DeleteYeah. Me too. I'm having a hard time accepting a loss in my life from exactly this. But I know I have to somehow. I hope we both find ways through.
DeleteYou are one smart lady, you know? Very, very smart. As self-revealing as my blog is, I often think if I wrote out the contents of my heart without censor, my writing would be much stronger and my friendships much fewer. ;)
ReplyDeleteOh, me, too Tara. I actually have a passage in the Spiral Notebook from many years before this one in which I talk about the way suspension of disbelief plays such a huge part in so many of my personal relationships. That there are whole parts of others--and ourselves--that we have to pretend aren't there with certain people in order to maintain those relationships.
DeleteI am on the edge of that right now. Wanting to keep a friendship that will take a tremendous amount of "pretending parts aren't there" for it to work. I can pretend things didn't happen. I can't pretend they don't keep happening.
DeleteExactly! I am (and have been, unfortunately, for quite a long time) in the process of trying to decide where the lines are or should be.
DeleteYES! It is down there whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. I don't like spending much time down in the cess pool but wading in and out from time to time really has helped free up a lot of creative energy I didn't know I had.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I'm hoping for.
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