Polarity.
Wine. Water. Whimsy. Substance. Chaotic. Rhythm. Impulse. Logic.
The past few weeks have gone by with fewer posts than usual, and it’s because I’m never home and always busy and I feel like I haven’t hit the ground and I’m already running. But. There isn’t anything more busy about my life than previously. It’s just I’m trying to handle it differently. For one, I’m going to bed earlier, and waking up before the sun to spend an hour writing for real in my studio, with my feet tucked up under me and the cat purring around my chair legs.
I’m trying to undertake a gradual, though massive shift in priorities; really committing to work towards the things I know I want, but haven’t gotten yet: published work, an MFA, more order in my life. I’m a chronic forgetter of small things and not so small things: phone dates, emails, meetings. I can’t plan a week’s worth of menus to save my life. The refrigerator always lacks at least on essential item. Laundry is always piled in my bedroom, not clean.
Because I’m an Aquarius and an artist, an idealist and a creator, I’m struck with wanderlust and whimsy and find it miserably difficult to put things into the tidy square boxes on a calendar, or plan ahead. I’d like to, though. Because I know everything in my small world would run more smoothly.
So I’ve been forcing myself to start somewhere, and that somewhere is painfully, less blogging and more real reading. Less posting, and more time spent revising the half finished application pieces I’m still feeling delusionally semi-optimistic about. I pretty sure my life will always contain a bit of this struggle between necessity and wonderment, between substance and desire.
It’s hard for me to buckle down, but I miss my athletes’ body and my reader’s mind. I miss talking about god, and reading about spiritual practice. I miss devouring books the way I used to in college. And yes, I have excuses now that are legitimate, but if I want to ever get to anywhere further than here, I have to start here, now. So I am. Small step, by smaller step. But still, I’m starting. Do you have any polarities you struggle with? If so, what are they, and how do you find balance?
More black & white self portraits here.