Two days post-Christmas.
Two days free from pubic places, polite chit-chat, social obligations, sensory overload of all kinds, and holiday music taking over my favorite Sirius Radio stations. Let the joyous detox begin!
I always think of the time before Christmas and New Years as dive into the Underworld. It's a place for introspection (and hibernation), for emptying spaces (both physical and mental), for putting to rest the ghosts of the previous year (the last of the graded papers), and for a spiritual fasting of sorts -- a tilling of the earth before planting the hopes and dreams for the new year.
It's a time when these lines from T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland seem so relevant:
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
The long days of postponing joy, surviving on scraps of "little life", are over -- for now. So much living to be done before Spring Semester, and no time to lose in brushing off the funk of the Fall, but it's not easy to switch gears so quickly. In fact, I'm surprised that inspiration for this site showed up so soon. Or that it showed up at all.
See, I've been stuck. Stuck in the routines of work and life that require an intense expenditure of energy - wearing that social mask that gets more and more difficult to wear as the batteries run low and my patience wears out. I procrastinate, avoid. I get grumpy and impatient. I get resentful of living in "survival mode".
Yesterday, I ran across several articles discussing personality types, specifically on the subject of introversion. Mildly interested, having been and introvert during the first half of my life (you grow out of it, right?), I read this: "Many introverts feel there’s something wrong with them, and try to pass as extroverts. But whenever you try to pass as something you’re not, you lose a part of yourself along the way." That hit a nerve. No wonder I have felt depleted and resentful; I haven't been living my true self. Instead, I've been passing. Hmm.
So, two days after the holiday, I'm still underground embracing the stillness, but I'm not apologizing or feeling guilty for it. I'm planting new seeds that might stretch my boundaries in new directions and in a way, I feel like I'm waking from a zombie apocalypse. This site, Reluctant Crow, is a first step.
It takes effort, but as fearless Dear Sugar herself has said, "This is how you get unstuck. You reach."
Two days free from pubic places, polite chit-chat, social obligations, sensory overload of all kinds, and holiday music taking over my favorite Sirius Radio stations. Let the joyous detox begin!
I always think of the time before Christmas and New Years as dive into the Underworld. It's a place for introspection (and hibernation), for emptying spaces (both physical and mental), for putting to rest the ghosts of the previous year (the last of the graded papers), and for a spiritual fasting of sorts -- a tilling of the earth before planting the hopes and dreams for the new year.
It's a time when these lines from T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland seem so relevant:
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
The long days of postponing joy, surviving on scraps of "little life", are over -- for now. So much living to be done before Spring Semester, and no time to lose in brushing off the funk of the Fall, but it's not easy to switch gears so quickly. In fact, I'm surprised that inspiration for this site showed up so soon. Or that it showed up at all.
See, I've been stuck. Stuck in the routines of work and life that require an intense expenditure of energy - wearing that social mask that gets more and more difficult to wear as the batteries run low and my patience wears out. I procrastinate, avoid. I get grumpy and impatient. I get resentful of living in "survival mode".
Yesterday, I ran across several articles discussing personality types, specifically on the subject of introversion. Mildly interested, having been and introvert during the first half of my life (you grow out of it, right?), I read this: "Many introverts feel there’s something wrong with them, and try to pass as extroverts. But whenever you try to pass as something you’re not, you lose a part of yourself along the way." That hit a nerve. No wonder I have felt depleted and resentful; I haven't been living my true self. Instead, I've been passing. Hmm.
So, two days after the holiday, I'm still underground embracing the stillness, but I'm not apologizing or feeling guilty for it. I'm planting new seeds that might stretch my boundaries in new directions and in a way, I feel like I'm waking from a zombie apocalypse. This site, Reluctant Crow, is a first step.
It takes effort, but as fearless Dear Sugar herself has said, "This is how you get unstuck. You reach."
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