mutiny & promises

Alright, I do not want to write. I don’t know what’s going on this week (month?), but I just haven’t been feeling it!

I am full of mutiny. My mind and body and willingness to stick with it are rebelling. Why are all of my good ideas on strike? Why is it that all I can think of is “life is full of slivers of tiny joys,” “everything is moving fast,” and “what tiny thing can you do today, no matter how tiny the act is, to keep banking your future vision?” These are all things I’ve written about before. Resistance and rituals and routines and consistency and practice and magic joys and tiny delights and the passing of time. Math of small additions making great sums. Not giving up, showing up. And on and on.

“I don’t want to just write the same thing over and over, on repeat!” I tell myself. And the mutiny is rising and swelling strong within me, and I worry and fret that I will only produce weak, non-generous, uninteresting, inauthentic words. That there will be nothing of substance under my surface and no writing worth having done.

Most of the time, I’d like to state for the record, this hasn’t ended up being true. I have been filling this blog with great dedication, creativity, commitment, and joy for almost ten months now, and most of the posts, weeks, months, and seasons of writing have been worthwhile. There are terrible pieces, of course. There will always be duds mixed in, that’s just how the process and practice and clearing goes. You have to clear it all out: the good and the bad. BUT despite the clearings and the days I haven’t felt like writing, almost always, showing up to build something meaningful and lasting over time — something that changes me in the making — is worth it.

So my fear is that I won’t be good enough, this work will all come out stale because my insides feel stale and my love for the writing feels stale, my focus feels pulled to other things right now, I don’t have the itch or desire to write most days, the idea board in my mind is empty, and I doubt that anything good can come from that.

My fear is based in the resistance, in insecurity, and in self-doubt.

The truth is, good can still come — from any situation! If we show up and use whatever we have, play the cards in our hands, work with the ingredients available… we can make something good. If we are committed to seeing through something beautiful, beauty will come, even out of the ugly bits. Sometimes things feel stale and we stick with it anyway, and it keeps getting better and better.

Commitment is an act of love and devotion. Commitment is a promise to stay true and hold fast, even when you don’t feel it or like it or want to right then. Marriage is a commitment that ties you to the bond of love you have decided you want to keep forever, so that even when you can’t quite picture exactly what the best moments feel like, even when they seem so far away, you have a pact that keeps you moving forward for the brighter future and valuing that which you’ve promised to always hold dear. Commitments mean sometimes we go through the ringer. A commitment to anything — your spouse, your art, your act of service, what you believe in — won’t be easy all the time. Sometimes it isn’t fun, and sometimes it feels all wrong.

Still, there’s no denying commitment can build unspeakable depth and richness. My life is more beautiful for the commitment, safety, and love of my marriage. My life is more beautiful for the commitment of writing.

So despite the mutiny — on some days precisely because of the mutiny — I will keep writing. I promise to keep showing up here, even when my mind feels stale and my focus wants to be anywhere but on this, for days at a time, even when all my ideas seem crap.

I’m here because I believe in it, and it hasn’t let me down yet. I’m here because I’m committed, and I’ve seen the joy and the beauty. This is magic, and I’ve experienced it. I’ll keep growing through my writing, and it will always be worth it.