Creative Drought
For over 12 years, I've maintained contact with you - my community - through these writings.
About five years ago, I cut myself slack, for the first time ever, by skipping a month. Sitting on the shelf beside my self-judgment (for having failed at executing a single monthly missive), I found a great sense of relief. Relief - that quiet kind of joy that arises from having a burden lifted. In the years since that breakthrough, I've given myself a month off here and there, always ready to pick up and run with the ball again for another long series of months.
When the pandemic shut the world down, rather than hibernate, I launched into uber-create mode. I worked diligently, with my new website guy, to pull together compelling content to update my online presence. I doubled my monthly writings to you. A couple of new offerings emerged: half a dozen podcast episodes and over sixty Third Option Wisdom videos. And, of course, the baking frenzy!
As summer rolled around, my energy started flagging. I needed a time-out. I gifted myself an "at home retreat" with no friends, no clients, no production of any kind, unless I felt rejuvenated and inspired. That brief hiatus served me well, and while I allowed the podcast to slumber, I continued with the videos, albeit at a slower pace, and returned to the monthly newsletters.
In October, around the time I received my "sell the office" message, the imaginative spark barely offered a glimmer.
On November 26th, I shot my last video. I didn't know it would be my last for the foreseeable future, but the inner dimmer switch dictated. Moreover, I published no monthly message for the months of December, January, or February! I realize this may not seem like a big deal to you, but understand, I didn't miss a single month for the first seven years, and maybe only once a year since then. Three months of going dark...whoa!
I did begin a piece of writing, after participating as a Voter Protection volunteer, in Pennsylvania, on election day. The experience offered me a teaching I felt excited to share...until I just could NOT bring myself to finish clacking out one more word on the keyboard. The creative cupboard was bare, so I granted myself the month of December off from publishing. And then, as December drew to a close, still nothing. I willingly extended my writing sabbatical through January. At the start of the new year, I drove, with my husband and two cats, to Florida. This provided a month of different scenery (boy, did I need that!), a breath of sun-soaked salt air, and a bit of R&R.
Permitting myself this time and space, I listened more deeply. I allowed a few doors to open, and with the breeze blowing out the cobwebs, I re-discovered my path forward. The first step, as I mentioned last month, was willingly offering my office for sale. And then I noticed a funny pattern; one I hadn't put together, until a little distance offered me a fresh perspective.
At the start of life, I moved from one apartment with my parents, to another with only my mom and her parents - both in New Jersey.
When my grandparents bought a home in Connecticut, Mom and I went, too. After my parents divorced, Mom remarried and moved to be with her new husband in Delaware. I stayed with my grandparents. Once my mother got things settled in the new apartment - months later - I joined the newlyweds. I was absolutely miserable. Crying jags in the bathroom. Missing my grandfather. Wanting to "go home." So, within a couple of months, I was back on Chalker Beach Road, Old Saybrook, with Nana and Poppa. While relieved to be home, I missed Mom, and absolutely didn't want to go back to school. With my grandfather holding my hand, I returned to finish first grade. Then, at the completion of second grade, I tried the Delaware thing again.
By this time, my mom had formed friendships. One of her friends, Fern, had a daughter the same age as me. Together, Cheryl and I took swimming lessons at the pool of my apartment complex, and became great summer buddies. While she went to a private school, I started third grade in the public system. For the first time ever, I felt successful. The rigors of Delaware schooling paled in comparison to Connecticut, allowing me to shine in a way I'd never experienced in my life. I had school friends and Cheryl in my neighborhood. I acquired the skill to swim. I found academic success, and enough free time, during the school days, to read to the other students and work on little creative projects I enjoyed. I was the proverbial big fish in a small pond, and it suited me very well.
When my mom's second marriage fell apart, we returned to Connecticut.
There, I had the benefit of living with all the people I loved, but Mom's depression sunk to new depths, and my year in Delaware - where a suggestion had been made to bump me up a grade early - left me far behind my Old Saybrook classmates. Like a phoenix - from full plumage to ashes - beginning again.
In total, I called Chalker Beach Road home for ten years. Mom and I bounced around town a bit, after the house was sold, before I moved to Boston at eighteen. Then, I crammed in ten moves within ten years. Once I began living with Mark, my transiting pace slowed. In 2003, we bought our first home together, marking the start of another ten year stint. Then we bought our current home in 2013 - moving exactly ten years, to the month, after our previous move.
So, the longest I've ever lived any place has been ten years. Will that continue? I have no idea, and it may not seem relevant to my creative drought, but here's my odd realization. While this summer will mark my third year of owning my office, it will also be the...wait for it...tenth year I've operated my coaching practice out of that space!
Does this mean I can never stay someplace longer than ten years?
I won't pretend to know. Then, what's the point? I believe it's about surrender...to the unknown...to respecting myself where I am in a given moment, and lovingly honoring that step of my path. When I don't, it seems life gets a little bit harder, until I pause and notice.
When I was offered the opportunity to purchase my office, I wanted it desperately, and I felt lots of fear about the financial commitment. A healing practitioner I worked with at that time foretold, I could have the space, and it would be good for me, and it wouldn't always be easy. There would be some challenges, and I needed to decide if I was up to them.
I got still and listened. Then, with Mark's support, I took the dive. The office is far bigger than my practice requires, so the business plan included renting out the guest office. This didn't seem so farfetched, as I, myself, had rented space in this suite for seven years.
For the first eleven months, I had only one person renting, one day a week, during the school year. My monthly office expenses increased six-fold with the purchase, and there was hardly any rental income to off-set the difference. Yikes! And yet, I managed the finances, while infusing myself into every corner of the space. It felt so good to me. Not so different from that year of expansion and success in Delaware. Then others came to share the container, and they were lovely, seasoning the space with their own energies. Until the pandemic upended everyone's lives in ways no one could have predicted.
I did wonder a few times during the early months of shut-down, whether I would need to sell the office, but it was just a curiosity. Until October, when I received it as a directive - one I promptly ignored. And with that lack of obedience, my creative energies dried and crumbled like autumn leaves. Even my restorative time in Florida didn't independently fuel my inspirational tank. It served me well, because I stepped far enough away from my day-to-day to see the attachment (to the office) was holding me back from other possibilities. And, when I got that, I knew. For as much as it might hurt, for all the grief that might get dredged up with the loss of my beloved space, grasping so tightly caused even greater pain, because I was missing an essential part of myself - both my creative juices and my willingness to walk into the unknown.
Despite YEARS of practicing stepping into the unknown - free of agenda - my control freakery reared its stubborn head.
And that head blocked my view of the possibilities. What might be ahead? I don't know! Here's what I know: in the span of a week, I managed to write two newsletter messages after a three month dry spell, simply by following my voice of inner knowing. (I've spaced the mailings out, so you may not perceive the jolt my creative system received.) Just the act of beginning to get things back in alignment, reconnected me with some of the creative source within.
Long ago, I learned that readiness and willingness must meet for change to happen. The first time I moved to Delaware, I wasn't ready. When I went back, to live my third grade year, the crossroads of my willingness and readiness met. I, then, had one of the most confidence building years of my life. In October, I was unwilling to be with the grief of giving up my office, while simultaneously not ready to take a step toward my next unknown on this path. I wonder...what will open, as I renew my relationship with that cosmic meeting place?
May you, too, find yourself at the center of readiness and willingness, allowing surrender to the unknown to open your heart to magic.
If you're like me, you may need to circle the block a few times, before you finally pause at that crossroads. I think that's okay. It's all part of the journey.
With love and surrender,
Joanne