Canyons

My muse is holding me hostage again. She’s demanding I talk about a bunch of uncomfortable stuff. So here’s my trek through the canyon of the past week. (I just want it noted for the record that I’m doing this under duress.)

When I was working on The Sailboat Kit, I felt propelled forward the whole way. Every step was clear, as if I were following rock cairns in my brain. It was such a totally organic process. There is so much joy in that little kit.

And people are buying it! (and liking it!) Which is crazy gratifying and humbling, and just plain awesome. (Thank you!)

…

But immediately following that shiny-easy rightness came its exact opposite. I’m here at SxSW, where there is just a lot of hard.*

The hard of feeling like a non-participant in a popularity contest (and just like in high school–it’s not so much that I want to be super-popular, I could just do without the whats-wrong-with-me feeling. Oh but also I secretly do want to be super-popular.)

The hard of receiving a piece of (well-intentioned, but still) criticism that has me questioning everything about my writing. The kind of comment that has me thinking why do I even need to be here?

I don’t have the answer to that yet.

My (clever, insightful) husband accuses me of wanting to fast-forward through the learning part of processing the criticism. I just want to be past it, doing the looking-back, able to wrap it up in some wise, happy-ending kind of story.

Totally true.

As much as I adore the concept of holding tension it would be crazy to say that I like doing it. It’s more than a little excruciating (and I also hate that I know Jung would say that the more excruciating the tension, the more likely the vessel for the tension–ie, yours truly–will be transformed. To that right now I say bah!)

Anyway, tomorrow I head down into a real Canyon. Where I know when I’m going down, and the exact path I need to take to get back up again.

Odds and sods

• This is my first post composed on the iPhone. I don’t like it at all, but it does encourage precision. I was testing it out to see if maybe I’ll be able to post some photos from the Grand Canyon.

• I started a Facebook page for Soul Sleuthing so please join me if you like spending time on FB. I’m not quite sure what we’ll use if for yet, but I would love to connect with you there.

*Plenty of good too, don’t get me wrong (big smooches to everyone I have connected with here!)… it’s just I’m right smack in the middle of processing the hard at the moment.