January 1st I made a promise to myself that I would write more. I would journal, and I would write more on my blog about where I am in my life.
Have YOU seen me posting? No?
Me either.
Not for lack of things running around in my brain you see. Just lack of...what? Focus? Ambition? Discipline?
I'm not sure. Perhaps it is what Steven Pressfield calls "resistance". We resist the things that are most important for our soul's growth.
I've spent too much time wallowing in my life, worried that I'm doing it "wrong". The experts (and there are MANY of them) would be giving me all sorts of advice and I'm trying to follow it, but it just isn't working for me.
I'm trying to be logical in an emotional body. I'm trying to grasp at my power by looking in the wrong places. I'm trying to be linear where I'm more of a circle or spiral.
I used to think that the ideal life would be to have a job teaching at a university, and have a quaint little house on the south side that was kind of hip and modern, filled with art and books, and that I would spent my free time reading intellectual books and magazines and newspapers and would be very informed about the state of the world, and the middle east, and American politics, and all the rest of it. We would eat organic food and be kind of square in that upwardly-mobile yuppy kind of way. We'd drive a volvo or some other practical kind of car. I'd be liberal in my outlook and yet embody white middle class privelege. I'd be able to carry on in-depth conversations about politics from local to global, and would be responsible, "adult" and, well, kind of beige. A perfect grown up. Comfortable.
Who am I instead?
I'm a maybe-wannabe-was-I-ever-really-a-classical singer, I suck at time-management and have little to no business skills although I am self-employed. Part of me yearns to be accepted and respected as an intelligent, articulate and educated intellectual-type, but really I am more of a slightly neurotic, lives in my head but-wants-to-be-more-of-a-fully-integrated human being with body, mind and spirit all living harmoniously. I strive for and yet also hate too much routine. I am someone who is always seeking balance and then hates living in a static state. I have been raised with a strong Protestant work ethic, and I have intellectually rejected it although not practically or fundamentally. I think somewhere in my secret soul I believe that life has to be hard, I tell myself that I enjoy challenges and that anything that's too easy is a trap. I wish to be a free spirit, but I have too much guilt. (Shoulda been a Catholic...?) I am passionate about social justice, but don't have the stomach for it - too much dissension causes me so much upheaval and throws me way off-kilter. In spite of living in my head, I think I am actually very much a do-er and a make-r, not a thinker. Too much reading bores me. I cringe at myself for even writing that, but as much as I would love to be that person that could curl up on a couch with some tea and read for hours and hours and hours, I'm not. I get too antsy and have to get up and do something. I need to be busy. I have more ideas than I could ever complete in several lifetimes. I have a lot of energy but it's totally scattered, so I rarely finish the things I start, but I also never feel like anything's good enough to be called "finished". I used to find such comfort in singing, and in the exploration of self, and the necessity for self-care it required. Gotta take care of my instrument, right? But it's been feeling a bit hollow for a while now and I don't know if it's because I've lost touch with a fundamental part of myself or if it's time to let go and move on. Am I just too lazy to get back into shape? And if I weren't, what would be the point, since I'm too old now to have a career? I feel like a fraud as a music teacher since all of the things I am advising my students to do are things that I'm not doing. I know in my heart of hearts that my place is elsewhere - since day one I had a strong intuition of "I don't belong here", but I don't know where I DO belong. I'm afraid to give up my identity as a singer because I have invested so much into it and I fear letting people down, as well as fearing that maybe I failed at the thing I was supposed to be doing here. Perhaps if I tried a little harder, gave a little more, tried again - but smarter this time. Do I get a "real" job? Is that giving up or just moving on? Maybe taking some time away from my life would give me perspective and I could re-energize and strategize how to approach things. Or am I just giving up? Will I start a job and get sucked into a life of blandness just to pay the bills? Or will I find the juice my life has been missing? Will the structure of time and the regular paycheck free me from fighting with the least successful elements of myself, and allow me to explore more than I thought I could? Allow me to travel and to enjoy life instead of struggling? What kind of example am I setting for my child? Am I just being a quitter? And how do I know? Do I need to sit still and quietly in the receptive, feminine, yin mode and wait for guidance? Or do I need to take action and then see where it leads me? What is the "right" way to proceed?
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