Too Empty and too full

Do you ever feel too empty and too full at the same time? Feeling like doing this Artist's Way thing has suddenly opened up an extra layer of stuff. Funny how sometimes stuff just comes along, and you don't know where it's come from, but it's time to deal with it. Big fat blobs of anger welling up. Sheesh. Where the hell's that from? Dunno. Who knows - maybe it's anger from 1979 or 1986 or 2003 or yesterday. Don't know and not really important, in some ways. What's important is facing that I'm feeling it. Bring it to the light and it gets transformed into light.

I'm too in my head today. Not enough calm, too much ruminating about the past and the future. Not enough being present, right in my body. Too much pretending that I'm not feeling certain things, or that I am feeling certain things, when I'm not. I dislike being dishonest with myself. I despise it in other people but I do it myself. (Which is probably why when I recognise it in other people I despise it, sometimes in a rather overreactive fashion). I don't know why I do some of the things I do.

Then the slowdown, the turning and facing whatever emotion it is I'm feeling. Feeling it in my body. Acknowledging it. Not running. Feeling a certain sense of peace, of resolution. This is how reality is. This, right here, whatever it is. It's dealable, whatever it is. As long as I stay in the now and just live with it instead of wishing for it to be different.

Then 20 minutes later back to square one again.

I'm tired of feeling emotional about things. It's this cleanse, thing, stirred everything up. It's one or two other things stirred everything up too, but I don't even want to go there. (I am tempted at times to start up a blog written by Mary in Kalgoorlie just so I can write completely and utterly honestly about what's going on in my head and heart without thinking about who is reading this, and if I say this then this person will be upset, that person will be offended, that person will be traumatised. That's the problem blogging when some of your readers are people you know in real life :) And this is probably why journals exist. Sometimes in my more cynical moments this whole blogging thing feels like one stupid commodifying of my own thoughts. Why don't I just write in my journal for myself, and be done with it (and occasional opinion pieces, and be paid for it). I have developed a bit of a love/hate relationship with blogging. The limitations of this medium are so many and varied that sometimes I just can't be bothered with the whole stupid thing. It's so far away from reality at times that it makes me want to belch. But hey, tomorrow morning I'll wake up less grumpy than I am right now, with an inkling for a post, and there I shall be once again, scratching the itch.

Anyway, I digressed. I think one of my problems is, after having such a godawful time of it with illness and marriage breakups, sometimes you decide when you get to a plateau and start feeling good again that you never want to feel bad again. Which is just silly. I want to just be with whatever is going on. I don't want to fight whatever life is throwing at me, resisting it. Pointless resistance. Fighting it makes it bigger and uglier and deepens my wrinkles and makes me die just a little bit more. In the bad way, not in the good dying way.

Mocca came and picked up Lester the other day and when Lester knew he was going to his dad's house, and following him out the door, Mark said, "He's going pretty good considering he's the product of a broken home." And we both smiled but it was still a smile through the dull ache. And I thought, I reckon we're both going pretty well considering we're the products of a broken home.

And I am going well. I think that going well can mean that you have periods in your day where you're crying while driving your car because that damn Yesterday's Gone song is playing and it's too painful to listen to it still. And then an hour later you can be fine, on top of the world. I think maybe that this is an okay thing. Life is messy.

And I feel empty creatively. But it feels like a good empty. Like I'm restocking the well. One thing I have realised, when reading aloud my list of "basic principles" each day about creativity: the one which makes me most uncomfortable out of the whole list is this one - "It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity." I'm still not even really sure why it is I'm scared about that. But I am. I think maybe it's because it's just another version of dying to myself. Opening myself up to more creativity means putting myself aside and letting it happen. And even though I love putting myself aside I hate putting myself aside. Because even though I love throwing myself into the void, throwing myself into the void scares the shit out of me.

Hehe. Didn't think there'd be a post without paradox, did ya?