Practical Spring Magic
As the Sun enters Taurus, I can feel the urge to dig deeper, be a bit more solidly on the ground, and hold damp earth in my hands. To focus on tactile items and tangible actions - books, kissing, taking the garbage out, strumming a guitar, folding clothes, scrubbing the bathroom, being spooned. Practical. Daily practices. I feel the restraints and confusion of Mercury retrograde loosening their hold.While I've been taking time for restful self-care, I'm sensing that there is a new current running beneath me:
"What matters, really, is creating, which is not something I could've said even last week, but it's becoming very clear. Self-care is actually not enough. 'Taking-in' is not enough. I need my own output for my own stuff. But what? Create what? I don't think it matters. All of it is so important - the act of it being the lifeline I think I need. It's not about what I 'have to do'. It's not about 'work'. And it's not about what I create either. I think my soul is freaking out because I'm not giving it time. I'm just not. All week was some good self-care, some stuff I didn't want to do and lots of social output, and yet, no actual creating. I'm still in a shadow phase. I'm still feeding that need with other people's books, podcasts, thoughts, language, songs - even their stories - about songwriting and creating..." (morning pages 4.21.12)
This is the uncomfortable noise running under the past few weeks. I don't feel completely awful and depressed, but I also don't feel at ease - each day is a bit of a struggle in the most boring ways. I'm hiding out, ignoring emails, reading a lot of Harry Potter, and it doesn't seem to be getting better. I'm not moving forward.My self-care is lifting me up, but I'm not using that energy for a personal "greater good". Instead, I think / worry / panic about all the shit I should be doing with this energy - paralyzed by those "productive" items on my To Do list - and not allowing myself to explore my imagination. I've given myself permission to rest but not to create. To quiet my left brain but not receive from my right brain. I'm allowed to save up my energy, but I'm not allowed to use it unless it's to do something "practical" a.k.a "productive".But the most practical thing I can do for myself is to create. And so, I am taking a cue from the cycles of the sun and working to transfer "creating" to the practical side of my life. Small daily actions create change. I've seen it work over the past 2 years, from allowing myself to just be, to not weighing my worth against my work, to taking more self-care and now, to this new phase - filling my days with creating, with the beginnings of a new season, following the patterns of spring, like the birds and the bees and the seeds on the wind.