Visual DNA and Finding Water Check in, week 3

OK, is this not fun? I got it here, and stole the idea shamelessly from here.

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What a difference a few days of spring like softness and sunshine can make! That’s one of the lessons I need to learn again and again—that sometimes my emotions can spiral so completely out of control that it seems that NOTHING simple can bring me back into any sort of joy. In fact, it’s almost offensive to suggest that such strum und drang can be altered by a little outing, a little free time. And yet…I turn my back on the simple pleasures at my peril, as I proved to myself last week.

TEG gave me a few blessed hours to myself on Saturday, and I took full advantage of an artist’s date, with Jessie! We went out for Indian buffet, chatted, commiserated and dreamed. We did Finding Water homework together. And I even got a book present out of it!

And afterward, I took the Madam out for a long walk in the late afternoon sunshine, and gave us both a good hour of book browsing (and oh, I went a little crazy with the book buying, today and Saturday, but I’ve decided it’s a celebration of Spring).

I found this chapter a little difficult, honestly, because I have been feeling so low as far as support. I have not had the time to put into our lovely blog community, and as such, I feel very disconnected. TEG is working all of the time (and how often do I say that? But it’s always true). But…I am learning to appreciate the sources of support I do have, some who have always been there and some who I am just discovering. And I am learning that it’s fine for my main support right now to come from my beloved books. I asked the question, “what makes me feel important to myself?” and right now, the answer is my compulsive reading. And I am learning to stop berating myself about that, especially when the reading provides me so many unexpected insights.

One thing I learned this week, both from my pages and my reading, is to give myself a BREAK. I don’t always want to write every day, and even though I know that perhaps I SHOULD, in order to establish consistency…I just can’t right now. Madam is still very young and I am tired. And that’s fine. There’s a fear that if I don’t hold onto my writer’s self with both hands, I’ll lose her forever in this enveloping mother-self. But this week, something shifted and I realized that I was strangling her. I was making writing another MUST in a life full of MUSTS. I want to be in love with my writing, and right now, that means not writing every day.

I am making a solemn vow, here, to be more involved with this Finding Water project for the rest of the ride. Not because I MUST, but because I want to do it.

Oh, and I did my pages everyday, but that’s a given for me now.

Onto week four!