You know, there was a time wherein I spent my days in domestic success nesting and finding true contentedness without needing the external stimulation of work to feel purposeful.  It was hard work, actually.  Not to mention, it took me several months to find my way.

Many of you have friends and family (like I do) who stay home and make their own living.  It is quite tempting to assume their lives are carefree and eternally vacation-like.  Yes, they could stay in their PJs all day, eat Bon Bons, and watch Days of Our Lives, but the ones I know - they just don't.  Yes, they can go shopping or to coffee on a whim, but what they don't mention is just how hard it is to give themselves the excuse to do these things when self-employed, how hard it is to leave the house.  The glamour of PJs wears off after a few days, Bon Bons start making you sick, Days of Our Lives becomes a sad reflection of this mentally-lazy culture, and the financial need to making your own way results in a ridiculous amount of pressure and way more than 8-hours/day in the studio.

I took myself out for a long-overdue writing date this last week.  I needed to brain dump in a very bad way.  After 4 pages and one sore middle finger, I realized that I was beginning to feel desperately empty in my own home.  In between the lines of going back to work, and then the fiasco of trying to get pregnant, the depression of months of infertility, and then the joyus but subsequent pregnancy wherein I could do naught but sleep and vegetate to Star Trek, I lost my practice at home-making.

Recently I began to fear this lack of self-motivation because I know there is a little lady forming inside of me who will take over my life here shortly.  It is very tempting to continue to be status quo in home-making because I know she will fill me with purpose and busy-ness anew.  Dears, I do not want her to be the only reason I get out bed come August.  And to be honest, right now - little else but the thought of her does.  I decided I needed to mentally slap myself and remember the things I used to do to bring me internal stimulation and give my day structure and meaning outside of an external job.

The Madame's Formula for Domestic Bliss:

To jump start us back to a slower, more mentally-awake life, Joel and I are having a no-media week.  No TV at night.  We instead linger over dinner and shop together online and read books on the couch and listen to and talk about music, and as I suspected, go to bed early.  

Today, I decided it was high-time to bring out the daffodils.  Even IF I had to buy them instead of grow them, even IF they are a bit wilted, even IF I won't be here to enjoy them all day, even IF they are a superfluous expense. 

There is so much to say, so much I don't want to see in writing, so much I want to birth. I'm beginning with 30-min a day until this poetry books gets finished. I love breaking down big projects into tiny little chew-able pieces, but it's not the scheduling that's the difficult part.  It's all the questions I ask myself about the project that distract me from the purity of art I'm aiming for.  Why am I doing this?  Maybe it is as simple as needing an external deadline to truly push myself into the practice, which will push myself into the poet I know I am inside somewhere.  Maybe it's because I want to have a sense of accomplishment, maybe I want to self-destruct, maybe I want to live for your approval.  

It's true, I've found it hard to put pen to paper lately. Upon the opening of my journal today, Octavia immediately decided to welcome it back by gracing my lap with her presence.  She's missed me writing, too.  I am not sure what it is...something about that stark black line permanently defining that minute, solidifying feelings and people.  I hadn't put two and two together, my recent lack of writing and my recently undefined sense of self, but as is the result of my time with Jess, sipping wine in front of a fire at a historic hotel, I realized their correlation.

For those of you who cannot read my scribble, "Once the moment is gone, the inspiration fleeting, I find it hard to go back and edit my poems.  They are so momentary in nature, meant to store the tone of one particular feeling.  It's as if the muse blindfolds me, then uses my hands.  Later, when I'm more objective and the tone of the moment is no longer, I see that the writing simply isn't as good.  So now, I'm defining a process for myself.  It's time to do the work, remove the blindfold, and see what I'm actually made of."

Currently:

Fear = 72%

Bravado = 23%

Good Poetry =  5%

Goal:

Fear = 20%

Bravado = 20%

(damn) Good Poetry = 60%"

Here's to taking the next step with only the courage of NOW in my pocket, 

Apparently August has come and gone.  The traffic on the bridge can only be explained by the influx of students and parents back to the daily grind.  I've noticed myself looking back a lot these last few days, trying to assimlate new information, new faces, and new feelings into my daily doings.

I believe one of my greatest strengths is in analysis.  Also, as an introvert, my natural tendency is to look back and assess my and others' behaviors and words (read: obsess).  Both of these personality traits combined makes for an anxious aftermath to social events, and I often feel that I severely mirepresented myself, wish I would have not said ___, wish I would have done ___, etc...and suddently, that swift and severe axe of self-judgement comes swinging down upon my head.  Now, I'm bleeding and blind.  I wonder if other people do this?

It reminds me of a year or so ago after a particularly grueling ladies' night.  Lots of wine had us loosed-lipped and  unabashedly weepy.  I remember waking up the next morning not only nursing a nasty headache, but feeling particularly sheepish about my vulnerable behavior and spent a few hours replaying everything I said just in case I needed to apologize to someone.  I desperately wished to go back in time and regain the composure and control I then seemed so eager to rid myself of.  I comforted myself with the notion that the other girls were probably feeling the same way and wrote one of them a letter to that effect, encouraging her not to succumb to false insecurities, to not berate herself for something she may have said,  and to take all parts of the others into her being with willing acceptance, gracious forgiveness, and fierce loyalty.

In the end, there is nothing to do with my analysis of people other than to love them.  This includes myself.  I am human.  You are human.  We can be decidedly virtuous and altruistic. We can be atrociously maleficent and grotesque.  Even the most composed of people have hurt someone else with a flippant, impulsive comment.  Lord knows every single one of us has been hurt by the same.  We can spout off so much of our bull shit and soapbox about our arbitrary opinions that can crush others around us at worst, or (at best) keeps them from sharing their own opinions.  We do not listen well, we do not speak carefully.  We intimidate and dominate and in our eagerness to be known, bulldoze those in our company.

All of this to say that I feel this great need to analyze and obsess and ultimately forgive.  I also feel the need to assure myself of people's affections for me.  But in the end, my acceptance of Candace is what is really in decline.  I could easily demand assurances from others, but I know, oh dears, HOW I KNOW - this is my battle.   It is no one's job but my own to be confident and to trustingly accept people's words at face value without criticism or manipulative self-deprecation.

Speaking of insecurities, I have recently been stopped short by fear.  Many of you know I am working on a humble collection of poems for self-publishing.  I am in the editing stages, and I have to tell someone - the poems are total shit. They are simply not good enough to put out into the world; a world I love, a world of Plath and Rilke and Shakespeare and Donne.  I do not think the world needs another mediocre poet.  For the most part, I am a confident writer and care little about how my work is received (coming from someone who has received only positive feedback, so I realize I am lacking in the character formed by artistic rejection).  Now that I am really looking to put myself out there, fear is taking hold of my throat. I feel it very physcially.

One one hand, the fear makes me pissed and frustrated.  On the other, I see it as a necessary birth pang.  What mother wasn't afraid to give birth?  What artist wasn't terrified to put their canvas on display?  Fear is a right of passage, and I'm beginning to trust its presence and leave it alone.

"Oh hello Fear.  I forgot you were there.  You may go now."

(a small adaptation of Doc Holliday in Tombstone)

I am sick of the portayal of artists and designers and stylists online who chose to convey an overly-white, overly-simple, overly-amiable, overly-clear, and annoyingly overly-painless process to creating.  Even if it sometimes gets muddy for them, it seems they are unable to express the sheer disgusting ugliness that comes from birth.  Have you ever seen a woman deliver a baby?  It's completely violent and gross.  It's also the most naturally beautiful occurance.

What I am saying here is that creating is ugly. I am prepared to work hard on these poems and puke them up and be doubled over in labor pains and fight like holy hell to bring forth that which has been placed inside of me.  I am on the verge of something wanting out and it's gagging me and tearing me and I am not sure I will survive it.  

I've always been more in love with the idea of hard work than with the actuality.  I imagine Plath pouring over her poems in the early morning (Ted got the afternoon to write), blowing on her hands to keep warm in that drafty house in Devon.  I've romanticised the writing life, of course I have.  There is a paradox I possess; two voices battling.  "Work harder. For Hours.  Daily."  Then the other "Enjoy, be less serious, live your art."

Amidst the guilt and the voices saying it wasn't enough, I worked.  Since not much slips my notice, my perpetually-peeled eyes, I consider this a private and profound victory.  Intentionality, I have plenty of.  What's new is the surprise of enjoying the work so much that it feels absolutely nothing at all like work.