I am amazed today. It’s been getting a bit sloggy in the past few days with the writing. I get a good critique, get excited, and then get overwhelmed. So I write and then look at what I write and wonder, “Should I give up?” (I’m blushing to confess this.) Why do we try to give up so fast? Writing takes stamina.
Then a Friday night workshop and I enjoyed some inspirational help from the class on adding layers to my novel in progress (we figured out a leitmotif!) and I drove home in barely visible rain/wind conditions feeling exhausted, but good.
I was up early Saturday and rushing around. I had asked my friend K if I could stay at her place and then another friend A asked if we could do lunch. I was feeling rushed and frantic and exhausted and worn out. I drove through more wind/rain, hydroplaning my way through Everett and north to Bellingham. I felt like I couldn’t give anything to anyone. I was too tired.
And then A welcomed me into her place and we laughed and talked. I felt the tension of the drive and all my exhaustion fall off. Then K showed up and we all drove to the Olive Garden. I could wax poetic about the bread sticks and soup and salad and Italian platter of appetizers we got to eat. We laughed, everyone shared, A teased the waiter, we laughed some more, then dashed back out into the rain.
We said goodbye to A and then I followed K to her house. We curled up on the couches under blankets and talked about goals and dreams and writing and how scary it was and how much it would take of us. But something happened in that talking and sharing. The anxiety, doldrums, fear, exhaustion just fell off. It was a chance for my brain to reset, recharge, and reconfigure and wow, was it good.
In the middle of devastating news about a friend, I felt myself getting energy. I didn’t have to demand it from K (she didn’t have to demand it from me either), but we both felt stronger, more sure, more righteous anger at the devastation that hounds our friend. It’s good. Sometimes you have to get pumped up and righteously angry in order to move forward. In order to help. In order to heal.
If this sounds like I’m talking in circles and not being truthful, I’m sorry. For all the parties involved, I must be more secretive, but don’t you know the feeling?
Haven’t you also been in a place where you are so rung out you don’t think you have anything left? And then you meet a kindred spirit and you agree to move forward with her help and she agrees to move forward with your help and then that experience is welded by another friend who can’t help herself or anyone else.
Sounds mystical, probably, sounds like I’ve thought about it too much. Maybe so, but it’s powerful. It recharged me. No longer does my writing work seem sloggy. It matters. So very much. And maybe just to me. Maybe to just one other person that it can help. I don’t know yet.
But I am ready to go again. I am recharged. Thanks, K and A. Thank you, God.
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