3/15/2014 2 Comments 40 Days of Giving Up: Day Ten![]() I’ve hit a wall. I can’t think of anything I necessarily want to give up...at least not right now. There I times when my brain just doesn’t work and when I started this blog about giving up various things during Lent, I knew it was a possibility. I knew there might come a day when I was just plain uninspired. It wouldn’t be the first time, it surely won’t be the last. But oh my goodness, it just hit me while I was writing. Inspiration. Sometimes you just have to give up waiting for inspiration and push through it. So that is what I am doing: pushing through it. No inspiration required. Ironically, I just realized, not having inspiration was my inspiration for today’s blog. So it has long been a truism that all creative endeavors are 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Yipes. Well, I guess ideas are a dime a dozen. And they do come and go quickly. Sometimes they come in the middle of the night. I remember many times I am struck with inspiration in the middle of the night. The strike hits me and I know I should get up and write it down. But I don’t. And by morning it is gone, somewhere in the dark of night like a thief. So there you have it. Inspiration must be paid attention to. But it cannot be the do all and end all of every endeavor. It takes picking up the tools and cobbling together the product. Work. Again, yipes. Work, though, has gotten a bad rap. I know if something seems like work, though, it probably is something I don’t want to do. Inspiration or not, I just don’t feel like it. Do I listen to those feelings? Or do I work through it? Does inspiration ignite the fire in the belly or does it sometimes misfire and die before catching on? Sigh. I guess that’s the problem and the solution of feeling inspired. Today I felt inspired to clean the house. Yet I surely didn’t feel like it. So I did what would “inspire” me to get down to it. I hired a friend to help me. And the job got done. My house is clean. I am content and inspired by my environment. It supports my creativity, which, it seems is now flowing again. Who knew? So maybe giving up inspiration is not the answer. Giving up acting on the inspiration is not the answer, either. Finding a way to support the inspiration and do the work in a necessary without feeling burdened or riddled with guilt by not doing it, is the answer. Okay, here is where I start to wonder if this really is a blog that anyone will actually read and get anything out of. Is it a blog that says anything? Maybe. Maybe not. But sometimes I just need to move through the blocks and let inspiration light the way. No matter how uninspired it may seem sometimes. Got inspiration? Hallelujah! *************** Note: I just ran an auto-edit on this piece and it reported that I began a number of sentences with “But” or “And”. That is the informal the editor tells me. I have an informal manner of writing. But (intentional use) maybe I should pay attention to that. I hear the voices of my early English teachers in my head saying, “Don’t begin a sentence with “but” or “and”. And I still do it. So there, I guess. That’s just the way it is. But I will pay attention and try to alter the habit. And that’s the truth.
2 Comments
I did read it and it occurs to me that you didn't give up inspiration...you gave up giving up and kept writing!
3/16/2014 01:40:48 pm
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BETTE
3/17/2014 02:04:38 am
BUT I NEED TO TELL YOU SOMETHING.
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