Sherri Cornelius

Energy

There’s a certain amount of trust that goes along with putting your art in front of the public. You have to trust is that people will accept the work as your own truth and appreciate your candor, even if they don’t get it. You also have to trust yourself to weather criticism. You have to feel safe in your writing space and in your community and between your ears.

It also takes a certain amount of energy to trust. Trusting is something you can decide to do. You can create pockets of trust within an unsafe environment, if you have enough energy. I’ve been able to do this in the past, but I’m currently undergoing a massive restructuring that I can see now has been going on for a couple of years. Call it a mid-life crisis, or depression or whatever, but both physical and mental energy has been low, and the little I have is going toward figuring out more important stuff. Life stuff.

At the moment I have more energy than I have in a very long time, and I’m shocked to realize how small an amount it is.

However, even that small amount more will make it possible to start allotting a little more energy toward recreating the pocket of trust around writing. It will be a slow build, but I think I can do it. I would at least like to try.

I expect this will be the last post in this series. I figured it out. There’s always been fear and distrust and a reluctance to begin and self-sabotage, but the difference in my production has been the energy. I push and push myself, thinking I have something to prove or someone who’ll be disappointed, and when I don’t produce what I’ve decided I should, I beat myself about the face and neck and call myself a lazy slut. Yeah, that’ll motivate a person. Geez.

You can’t get blood from a turnip, and you can’t use more energy than you are producing. At least I know now that the problem is not with writing itself. That’s a relief. Instead of being angry with myself for failing, I can be compassionate and gentle, conserve my energy, redirect it from worry and concentrate on ways to make my life less stressful. I think that’s pretty good advice for just about any situation.

Hopefully pretty soon I’ll be able to blog about why I can write.

I decided not to delve into my sinus problems publicly, because I don't want illness to be the first thing you think of when you remember ol' Sherri Blossoms. I want you to remember the good energy, so that's what I will focus on. I will say that yesterday was a bad day and today has the potential to be bad, so I will likely be off-line much of the day in order to preserve my eyes.

Despite the intense pain centered between my eyes and radiating over my right eye, I dragged myself up to my writing space in the shed loft. I decided a couple of days ago that I would go up no matter what, even if just to sit and stare at the wall. When I first got up there last night that's exactly what I did, but then I did a meditative visualization meant to activate the chakras, found here. The visualization relaxed my brow enough so that I had about 20 good minutes to work. I would not have done this exercise downstairs, nor would I have had my document open downstairs, so I'm glad I went up. I got a couple of pages edited and made notes for my next session.

I'm tired of life getting in the way of writing. I've been giving it up too easily. DH in a bad mood? New movie from Netflix? Migraine? Kids want me to play? All excuses I've used, along with many others. So to answer Mapelba's last question honestly, I haven't been giving up much of anything for writing lately. I'm ready to change that. It's not a fruitless exercise. It fulfills me. Maybe it's pointless to make a habit of going upstairs in the evening when it will all change when school starts in nine days (yes, I'm counting down), but I don't think so. The commitment will carry over to my new schedule.

Headache aside, lately life has felt generally peaceful, happy, and easy. It's a great feeling, and I want to share it, so here's some ~GOOD ENERGY~ coming your way. :)