Summer is spent. Mornings are
chill. The days feel shorter. I’ve started running in the afternoon instead of
the morning to soak up the afternoon sun. It’s late in the day as I write, and
the sun is gone. A wall of clouds hovers high above. My kitchen window offers a
view of the trees with more yellow leaves than green. In fact the branches of
the tree have shed most of their leaves. The tree looks sickly. Fall is in the
air.
In a way I, too, feel like I’m
spent. It’s been a sort of sluggish period for me. While I’m showing up daily
to practice my art —
writing, painting, music —
it feels like I’ve been doing the Texas two-step with depression. When I wake
up in the morning, getting out of bed seems like a monumental task. My body
weighs a ton, and I have to curb my desire to pull the bedcovers over my head
and stay there. But I talk myself out of that, and get showered and dressed.
Hoping to sidestep depression and
the lethargy it summons, I write my Morning
Pages. Without fail. I’ve done my Morning
Pages faithfully for over ten years. They keep me grounded, let me lay down
all my hopes and fears in black and white. But that doesn’t mean that the day
at hand is easy. Some days feel hard.
Do you know what I mean? It feels like I’m writing uphill. When I sit down at
the piano, my fingers are stiff and uncooperative. There’s a constant and constricting
heaviness in my heart that morphs into, what can be debilitating, a sense of
loneliness. But I do my best to remain hopeful.
I have to just keep on keeping
on.
And so I write. I’ve set a modest
daily quota. I’ve set up a grid that helps me to manage my day so that it doesn’t
run away from me. When the loneliness overwhelms, when my concentration flees,
when the tears rush towards the levees, I do my best to remain calm. I reach
out to those friends who have seen me through previous depressive episodes, and
there is support all around me.
A phone call a few days ago with
my good friend, Heather-Anne, reminded me that I am not alone. From the East
Coast, she encourages me to keep writing. I try not to worry about whether the
writing is good or bad. I just write. And then life feels like less of a
struggle. I’ve walked back from the cliff and now stand on the edge of a bold
new vista.
Sticking to my simple grid, I’ve
had a good week. I made it out running several times. My time at the piano this
week gave way to a new song. I painted. I made two submissions. I’ve completed
the rewrite of a difficult chapter. I’ve gone on artist dates. And I’m making
my way through what I hope will be the final revisions to another novel that,
soon enough, I’ll start shopping around.
The week started off bleak, and I
wasn’t quite sure how it would turn out. When I stopped looking ahead to an
uncertain future and focused on the day at hand, life came into focus again. What
had seemed monumental doesn’t anymore. So I will stick to my mantra, “Easy does
it,” and leave the dark days of this week behind me and look forward, with
great anticipation, to the brighter days that lie ahead.
I am very proud of your artistic endeavours! You are a very talented artist, and I am so happy that you are pursuing them.
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