Goodbye Old Friend … Almost
The calendar changes and I find myself facing the realisation that it is time for more than just remembering to write 2011 instead of 2010 on my checks.
If you are one of the few that have been following my writings, I am grateful for your persistence, though it might be just as simple as setting up your RSS feed and not noticing that my posts have been few and far between.
The last couple years have been a time for winter in my spiritual and creative life. A season to be struck by the starkness of my own inner life. Which is not a good thing for someone who is an extreme introvert. During the last year I have finally accepted the reality of my own depression and state of being burned out. That was the easy part.
The hard part is accepting that my old ways of trying to fix it won’t work.
Just waiting passively (I would say patiently, but it was really passively) for the hard parts to go away and a magical world … um, a miraculous outpouring of blessings would just come. Casting Jesus in the part of that Prince who would come someday and sweep me into a fantasy isn’t right.
The other thing I’ve tried is to face the waves of fear and depression like the enemies they are and vanquish them with my own will and wit. Yeah, that has worked as well as if I had tried to go the beach and keep the tide from rising.
I can’t fight my way and no Prince will come to wake me from my long slumber.
These ways haven’t worked yet and never will.
Only grace works. The grace of family, friends and God. But grace comes and is always leading us into a place filled with the spaciousness of hope and new possibilities.
So, Goodbye Old.
So now, what’s new?
Last week I was stuck in the old cave of my deeper shadows wondering what if anything could be done to move me out of my dampened inertia. I found myself looking through some old web sites I had bookmarked and read one written by Cath Duncan on July 3, 2010 called “How to Recover from 10 Types of Demotivation.”
I don’t remember reading it before, but I must have sensed that it had something I was going to need to hear. As I read it, many of the ideas resonated with my personal experience.
One of them really stood out.
7.) You’re demotivated by grief
At the beginning of any change, we go through a phase of wondering if we should or could hang onto the way things were and grieving what we’d be losing if we make significant changes. Confusion, self-doubt, mistrust of the world around us and feeling lost are common symptoms and the bigger the change, the more powerful these symptoms. Sometimes we even go through a bit of depression and social withdrawal. Martha Beck calls this the “Death and Rebirth” phase of change in her book, Finding Your Own North Star. With all the grieving and fearing and feeling lost that goes on in this phase, it’s normal for your motivation to dry up.
Death and Rebirth.
I needed to let go of the idea that I was flawed because I was feeling lost and depressed. I had to redirect the voice of condemnation and fear that is a big part of my own loss of vitality and motivation.
Transformation takes time and energy.
For this expected rebirth to happen, some of the known and comfortable must be retired. Best done with gratitude and grace, but left behind nonetheless.
One of these things to retire is this blog. When I started this 6 years ago, it was a place to just toss out some of my thoughts about life. Most of the time what showed up here was the only draft I would write. I hit publish because I was afraid I would lose the nerve if I sat on something and revise it.
That might have worked 6 years ago, but not today. And not now in my life. My writing needs to mature and become more than just random words tossed out my window into the internet. It is time to practice the craft and art of writing.
I have a new project about ready to start. I will introduce that next. It is coming together as a culmination of many years of thought and reflection.
More to come. I hope you’ll like it.
