Once in a while when people ask me how things are going, I answer, “I’m fighting.” They often wonder what. I tell them it’s a battle. That I’m not exactly sure who the monster is or the demons in the war, but that regardless of my surrounding, it’s a battlefield.
I think this afternoon I got some insight into this battle, maybe even a weapon or two. I can now put some faces to my enemy, they all look like me. Steven Pressfield’s, the War of Art, is a blunt kick in the ass as to show who the real demons are. It’s a refreshing word as to the importance and necessity of persistence to our visions and our true selves.
It’s definitely got my brain turning and racing as I look around and see evidence of my losses. As I’m getting closer and closer to the real me, the Resistance ( yes, that’s a capital R) against me, is also increasing. I just need to keep in check with it. I need to look it in the face and keep paddling through it. I need to keep at it regardless of the surroundings. I need to do it, even if I was the last person on earth.
One of my personal battles is with scheduling, as you’ve seen in my previous posts. Yet there was a passage that got me thinking.
Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” He replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.”
It makes me question. Maybe it wasn’t that my passion was being killed by the calendar, but as I got closer to what I needed to do, Resistance was fighting harder. I justified and rationalized this whole thing out of the picture. I looked again at the list of Needs, Talents, Passion and Purpose. And there it was, completely overlooked: Sharing, Creating Community.
I know I haven’t spelled out too much of what I’m trying to do in my posts, but essentially it’s an online event calendar. It’s sharing with others information about what’s going on. And in essence creating communities. So how is it that what I’m building isn’t in that?
Those damn sirens of the sea! Causing hallucinations and madness. And they would have gotten away with it if it were for that darn book!