No - I haven't forgotten about my promise to write here daily. And while I certainly have not kept up with it in the way that I envisioned, life is not an all-or-nothing game. Some days you write and share and express, and some days you are quiet and you listen.
I was traveling for a wedding and spending time with my family and while there were so many beautiful things that were both wild and sacred about that trip, I just couldn't bring myself to write - in that moment, I needed to just be experiencing. And then I came home and this first week back has been challenging, to say the least. I have been exhausted mentally and off-balance physically from the irregular sleep and eating patterns that we get into when we leave home. And all of that has felt wild, and if I look closely, I can see glimmers of sacred. But again, I just couldn't bring myself to write about it.
Then last night, a release. Something shifted and I'm not even sure what, but I woke up this morning feeling back to a more 'normal' version of myself and with a renewed commitment to my routines and practices that serve. Funny, how we have to have discipline to stay wildly creating.
As I've been listening into what's been coming up for me in life, in relationships, and in my writing over the last couple of weeks I'm seeing a theme of fully embracing paradox. I have carried a story that to be responsible and trustworthy, we have to be consistent and rational. And there is, of course, some truth to that... but what about laziness and impulse and magic - all the things that just don't make sense? They need room, too. So instead of forcing myself to choose and then vilifying one and worshiping the other, or, hell, vilifying the fact that I have contradictions in the first place, I now choose acceptance.
I choose to accept my desire to connect and my need for solitude, my longing to express and he gift of listening, my discipline and my flowing creativity, my hard work and my laziness, my goals and my reality. No shame hanging over my head or guilt dragging me down - just peace and a beginning over, again and again.
As Walt Whitman says in his Song Of Myself:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)