Excuses, excuses

I've been in a writing funk lately--where I want to write, but I think "I don't know what to write about," so I just do something else. What the hell? When has not knowing what to write ever stopped me before?

So I'll just write about my life. About what's right in front of me. No agenda. No big reveal. Just writing down the bones.

The kitchen window is open. I turned the heat back on yesterday, and I keep discovering windows open around the house. Last night, I walked into the bedroom and saw the curtains billowing out from the wind. My mind mother scolds me for wasting energy.

I started a new big project yesterday. Last week, I gave up everything I was doing, rolled it all up and handed it to someone else. My status as manager. My client work. One week passes and I am a new person. It's a good experience to have now and then. No one really needs me. The work goes on without me, and people will find their way, not matter what that is.

When my parents retired, they were both so scared to leave their jobs. They didn't know what to do with themselves. But I could hear another question they weren't asking out loud. "Who am I without my job?" I couldn't imagine it. I pitied them for not seeing retirement as a giant gift. Free time to do projects, complete their own work, and follow their own passions. But I can see how it happens. Years and years of being the person with the answers. The person who needs to be at the meeting. It's tricky. You start believing that's why you're important.

When I was going through Lionheart, I had a revalatory moment and wrote this down:
*I* am important.
I am not *important.*

Meaning, there's really no function out in the world that I alone can fill, nothing that is so worth the cost of losing myself. It's my experience on this planet that counts.

It sounds selfish, but actually, it's the opposite of selfish. Thinking you are *important* is actually the selfish thing. That's the ego talking--and it tells you no one can live without you. It adds layers of meaning on top of your identity, to the point where you are no longer you, you're a writer, a creative director, a manager, a leader, an expert, blah blah blah. And those meanings remove you from you.

I like stripping away the meaning now and then. It brings me back to why I am here. Which is maybe why I am writing this morning after all, no longer able to hide behind that curtain of "I'm so busy, so stressed, so important so I don't have time to write/can't think of what to write." I am just me, a person up too early and sitting at the kitchen table, coffee in hand, feeling the itch to write, and taking a moment to scratch.