O.K so as you've probably figured out recently there have been a few days where I haven't blogged. There is no great reason behind this other than my boyfriend is suffering from hay fever and therefore his snoring has reached biblical proportions. I swear I could hear him from 2 rooms away last night so facing the computer screen this morning with eyes like **** holes in the snow I could tell that blogging was not happening. But, I love to blog and I love sharing this space with you so here I am, slightly later than usual, but there we are. This whole lack of sleep and desire to create brings up an interesting thing that's been on my mind for months. How do you tell when it's time to take a break and when it's time to dig and and find your fire? Finding that desire, that connection to passion is a continuous lifelong process. The moment you find your drive and start to actualize it is the exact same moment you grow. As you grow your drive, your passion moves to a brand new emotional and energetic space to be discovered all over again. That's why I tend to have so many projects on the go at once. When I am drawn somewhere new I follow and when I'm done I leave it there to picked up at a later date.
There are those times however when you can't just leave something. You can't just decide to stop raising your kids because you're overly tired no more than you can stop feeding yourself because you have no passion for cooking. Some activities are void of any deep desire to do them but that doesn't mean that they can't be done without compassion, love and fire. As you all know I like to create. I like to write books, make music and do paintings. Although all of these things are passion projects that doesn't mean that I am sat there feverishly working away at them with every spare second I get. There are times when the idea of editing my books makes me want to run and there are times when I want to wrestle my paintings to the ground and bury them. I often get that internal conflict but, I keep plodding along. I do it by finding new ways to express and actualize the passion at my centre. I don't always make it happen. Sometimes I am just too tired to do anything and sometimes the lack of desire is too much to get my bum off the sofa but when these days happen I allow myself a sofa day and start again tomorrow.
What I've realized and what I try to base my intentions within is the difference between my emotional state and my inutitive one. I can emotionally look at my unfinished novel and feel dread or complete apathy but intuitively I can look at it and feel a sense of deep joy and connection. You wouldn't think these two things can go side by side but they do. Even when your kids push you to the point of being homicidal you still intuitively know that you love them more than anything else in the world. Following your passion isn't always about following your emotions. Even though I love my job I'd be lying if I said I jump out of bed each morning raring to sit down and concentrate for 5 hours. But still I get up because the fire I have at my centre is bigger than my emotional understanding of it, and so is yours. We all go through slumps, ups and downs, it's all part of the process. The fire you have within you has the capacity to burn away what isn't necessary. Follow that, it isn't always easy and you won't always feel good. That's O.K. Just reconnect with your centre and keep on going.
Thank you,
Big Love,
Ryan James x