Courage, Confidence or Crap

Tonight I am awarding myself with the Mediocre Mom award. It's the prize you give yourself when:

• your kid has been home sick and plugged into an electronic device instead of being given any real loving attention.  
• you've been on the phone most of the day, mostly catching up with friends about the confusion you are suffering under after a magical whirlwind weekend that your to-do list couldn't accommodate. 
• You impatiently sprinkle lavender on the pillow and sent the poor kiddo to sleep with a YouTube meditation
• Barely make it to your laptop, glass of grapes in hand, only to find out the Internet is broken because EVERYBODY is trying to stream the season premiere of SCANDAL.

I try not to down the wine like it's last call and give up on the streaming. The soft frustrated teary sniffles of the kiddo summon me. Off of the elliptical (everybody streams TV with wine and a workout, right?), and I report for duty. She cries it out, I suck it up and before you know it, she is super snoozing.

I've got a Godzillion things I could do and be productive or creative or both. But I don't wanna. Getting shit done is not compelling to me tonight. I'm fucking drained. I'm spread thin and flavorless like ketchup and water passing as soup. Long story short- I have to admit that I am keeping myself busy, engaging in fabulous, rewarding, smart-as-shit activities and adventures to be a good mom, a good steward, a good daughter, a good friend, a good employee, while building a handful of careers and feeding my soul with creative pursuits and magic as often as possible- to avoid the potential for finding myself lonely. The rub is that given the opportunity to connect on an adult level, let alone an an intimate sense - I'm burnt. I'm running on cheap fuel and it's low at that. My energy is being rationed.  

Like most red blooded humans with more social media accounts than fingers,  I consume the prayerful, grateful, motivating media so I know what to do: eat organic, run, surf, pray, ask the universe for whatever you want and get over yourself and get out of the way. Guess what? That shit takes time, more than that it requires focus and attention. I'll get to it, just not today.

Thanks for reading all the way through this excuse to feed two birds with one worm - writing and whining with wine.

A Job. My Job.

There are so many different schools of creative thought. How do you do it? Where does it come from? Is it talent? Is it a gift? Is it about the audience or the work or the product or what?
I was given a gift today by a believer- I say believer because it's the belief that something exists that sparks the process that results in the creative product.

This gift was a TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert. I am a fan of hers, and now you could call me a disciple. She preached a creative doctrine that did not just speak to me as a message, it summed up my essence in such a way that I felt understood and an understanding of myself that happens only when I am traversing a precipice, active and conscious of stepping from one evolutionary lily-pad to the next. It has happened before- and like Elizabeth Gilbert, one of these was with Tom Waits... but that's a different story...

so just like when my mentor and inspiration on legs Terry McMillan gave me Po Bronson's WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH MY LIFE? years ago, I watched this Ted talk and felt acknowledgment and reinforcement and understanding sitting side by side next to my muse. In their laps were all of the puzzle pieces for me to assemble the who, what, where, why and how and even the how much of my creative process. 

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

It's no accident that a favorite show of mine- 6 FEET UNDER - Alan Ball of course, spoke to me in one of the final episodes where Claire was directed from beyond the grave to tune out the static and hear the message. Life happens, incessant  drama, rife with clutter and daily messes tugging and dictating and demanding we parcel our hearts and minds out to tackle every little thing to make our moments just so. It's part of my job to say no thank you. I have a date with my muse. I am committed to come correct and bring it, every time. You never know when the visit will be elevated by transcendent magic and effervescence or just something else, sometimes resulting in also terrible.  You don't get to know in advance. It makes sense in the rear view mirror. Like my dad always says- the hardest part is showing up.