Surrender: This Is My Life

Williamsburg, Brooklyn: A Journey/Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
An Altered Book, Mixed Media, 2003

writing, left page:
SURRENDER

story/lived/on/story//books/written/lives lived/Born//into the world/wanting love

right page:
some strange impulse of the gods/kissed/laughed//slipped/love/come into/my//self

Let me tell you people. This chapter, 6 years old, sure does come in a proper place in my life, in 2009.

What I struggle with now, lately, is surrender to my own life.

The story that my life is telling in its day to day and its long term living.



The confusion. The hidden, unseen direction that I am flying. The confusion of how to get to the future that I want from where I am now.

writing: This is Life

I think, I think, that by living my life, by accepting it for all its flaws, for all its confusion, for all its sometimes sadness and low points and struggles.

Yes.

Yes.

This is my life.

And you know, sometimes it's okay to be sad. Sometimes it's okay to NOT be productive. Yesterday I was sad, nothing seemed to be working out. It all seemed to be too hard.

So I said to myself, Self, it's okay to be sad. Be sad today. Tomorrow you will get up again and be strong. Tomorrow you will do what you need to do.

And you know what happened?

Instead of being sad the rest of the day, I made my kids dinner and I rearranged their room and I stopped being sad. Well, maybe just a little stuck around, but it didn't take over. And today I got up and did what I have to do and made the phonecalls I needed to make and was much better. All I needed was to accept my state of being for what it was. Isn't that odd? Just let it be, and it let go of its hold on me. I wonder if that would work for other emotions, like fear or anger or frustration or insecurity. I suspect it would.

I'm still a little worried that I won't be able to get my word count up for my nanowrimo book, but you know what, I am definitely living in an imperfect time and space to dedicate all my time and energy to writing a 50k. I just have to accept it for what it is, surrender to my life. Surrender to my desire to write and maybe even surrender to the possible failure in the goal.

But even if I don't make 50k words in November, I will still have written more than I would if I didn't commit to it. I will still have lived my life as it is.