Forcing oneself to root and create

“I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here.”
 ― Sylvia Plath

 I've long had a soft spot for deeply depressed, super prolific creators. Almost an envy - except for that thing where their lives often meet an early end - often self-inflicted, but often melancholy just helps make physical ailments screw you over worse.

HOW do they leave such a huge body of work before they go, though? Poe, Plath, Van Gogh, Dickinson... I even start to look at the list and I think... Damn. I'm even bad at being mentally ill, apparently.

My amount of spoons I wake up with is notoriously on the low side. Lately, it seems like some unseen gremlin has been stealing half of them every night.

I was overjoyed when I first moved to Champaign and took this job, because I wasn't used to having a job that left me anything at the end of a day. Actually not loathing most of your waking hours helps with that - who knew? Now that I wasn't constantly fighting with myself to not scream at someone or burst into tears all day every day, I could run errands or go to the gym or go on adventures with David. On a weekday! And on the weekends, it actually didn't take the full two days just to recover!

It was nice while it lasted. September, though, was not so kind. My gym membership fee was basically a donation, because I was sore, exhausted, and fighting to even stay awake enough to safely drive home. And this was hitting me around 2 or 3 p.m. It was miserable. I was completely ungrounded. Forget funsies like going all the way to Chicago to go dancing, or getting in gym time. Writing and reading, two of my favorite things, felt like more extra obligations after a whole day of meeting obligations. So I just didn't do them.

I didn't even go to my Warrior Goddess Training book discussion group, where I had joined to try and make some female friends and get back into some semblance of the restorative routine gifted to me by the Moon Lodge in Indianapolis.

I finally had to force myself to basically sleep-write a press release for a local event, so it wouldn't be too late to keep the promise I'd made to J.L.

I'd already pitched a more in-depth article about the Masquerade D'Vampire and some other local Halloween related goings-on to Smile Politely, so now I had to knuckle down and actually write that before my deadline - which I'd needed help to even set. I worked on this knowing fully that I'd started a series for my own blog, which I was fighting to find the fortitude to even continue. (Turns out the next chapter hadn't come to me because I hadn't seen its conclusion yet, but now I have - so that should come soon if my energy levels permit.)

I was feeling crappy, which tempted to eat crappy food, which just made me feel crappier. So easy for the one-off day to become habitual. You never know when the next upswing is going to come, and I had deadlines, so I borrowed against the next day's spoons and hoped for the best.

I didn't have enough mental focus to effectively meditate, but I have healing frequency videos on Youtube. If I was really super ungrounded, maybe some root chakra would throw me back in the right direction - much like when I listened to heart chakra "healing frequency" videos last year, when everything was falling apart and it felt like the broken pieces wouuld never hold together again.

The article got written. (Edited to add after publication 10/9/18: Here's the link!) I finally read a few more chapters. I've started to come back again. I hope I stay for a while this time. I've got shit to do and life to see.