Friday, June 22, 2012

Resistance

Anything but writing. And I mean anything. Shoot, I 'll crawl under the sub floor of someone else's house to look for potential leaks, even though there is no indication of one, before I will sit down and get my work done. This, in the book The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, is called "resistance." I have all flavors. It started when I was 9 and I realized I was a writer. I wrote a poem in class and that was that. I was a writer. That it was a relatively deep poem for a nine year old is true. But of greater significance is that upon completing it, I knew - and I mean KNEW - that I had just discovered something - a part of myself - that was as important and air and water. I had found my voice. What followed this "realization" was a series of distractions. I was to be the first female President of the United States. Next, a doctor. An attorney. A teacher. A writer again (heavily medicated with alcohol and consequentially, unable to do anything with the writing that I actually did), a bar-tender, a waitress (these last two only AFTER receiving a BA in English Literature and a MFA in Poetics), a sales rep., and finally, a Realtor. A gal who sells a lot of houses and writes just a little bit of poetry. The book suggests that if we were all taking up our callings, and doing what we know in our hearts we were put on this planet to do - that one genius about us that is ours only - there's be no more war, addiction, mental health problems, etc. Sounds good. I, of course, want to chain smoke cigarettes while I am writing and since that feels like a recipe for an early death - I don't. Also, I don't write. This is the resistance Pressfield is talking about. I wonder what all the people I love are not doing. And all the just so-so friends - what is it that they are not doing that they were born to do? And how, when we really like someone, finding out this gold morsel of what is under all the doing-ness and the busy-busy and the roles - how they are even more like-able, how suddenly they are fascinating. I am going to put it out there - on Facebook. I am going to ask. What are you NOT doing that is your true calling, your forever dream, your heart's desire? See what shakes loose. Maybe it will give me something to write about. And, if not me, then maybe you.