Getting Unstuck

When I feel stuck, like I have lost my footing, I immediately reach for Julia Cameron’s Walking in This World: The Practical Art of Creativity. Lately, I’ve been feeling stuck, like a victim, and desperate to change my mindset. In reading the first chapter from Cameron’s book this morning, what struck with me was this: “When we do not act in the direction of our dreams, we are only ‘dreaming.’ […] Dreams coupled with the firm intention to manifest them take on a steely reality. Our dreams come true when we are true to them.”

This has been a difficult year for my creativity. I’ve felt “stuck” for most of it, so caught up in how I’m not writing — blocked in a sense because I feel like procrastination continues to ride roughshod over me. And maybe it’s not necessarily procrastination, but that I’ve lost sight of the long view. My dominant thoughts are more about how I’m not doing and what I’m not doing than what I could be doing.

So today I need to begin again. I need to let myself be a beginner. I simply have to write and commit to it. I cannot worry about where it will lead me or how it will be received. I must simply write and let what needs to be expressed through me manifest itself. I will begin, here, where I am and with who I am.

It is these words of encouragement, courtesy of Goethe, that I come back to often, and today they are the impetus I need to get moving again: “Whatever you think you can do, or believe you can do, begin it, because action has magic, grace and power in it.”