distracted

This blog is going to be a little personal. Sorry. If you just want to read about signing leases and yoga asana, read a different entry.

The heat in my life has been turned up the last few weeks. (Kind of funny that this perfectly coincides with starting to take yoga in a heated room, something I swore once I would never do.) I've been floating around unaware for a long time and now all the sudden something is making me look. It's awkward and inconvenient and messy.

I went back to therapy a few weeks ago. It got really intense really fast. And then I decided to quit. The therapist annoyed me. She seemed smug. I decided if I just kept going to yoga and focusing on the good things, the right things, then that stuff that's getting stirred up would work itself out.

But I run away. That's my nature. It won't work itself out because I'll find a way to distract myself. I used to distract myself with drinking and smoking and lines. I don't recommend it. It's a deeply destructive way to feel okay.

When I started doing yoga, I settled down a lot, but I got distracted again when I started the business. I became an obsessive multitasker. I email and drive. A lot. Just like when I drank and drove, I feel manically above the law, above reason, super human. It's completely insane, and a symptom of me not being able to sit with myself, despite all my yoga and meditation and holiness. I'm as crazy as ever.

In some ways this activity is wonderful and creative and I'm blessed to be able to do it. In other ways, it's still a distraction, and one that is leading me away from myself rather than closer. I get the sense somehow that I'm missing the point.

When I quit drinking, I was scared that I wouldn't be creative without booze. I have the same fear now. If I slow down, I'll run out of good ideas and the business will fail. I'll quit creating.

But when I stopped drinking, I didn't become any less creative. What I found was that drinking had actually hampered my creativity, and what I did create was small and not very useful. A few paintings. A couple short stories. That's all great, but it came in fits and starts. I never put enough energy into it. I didn't have much energy left over to give to it. I was never able to be consistent enough to create a body of work that I could share. Now I create useful stuff. I created a business, a new career. I created this blog that's really growing on me. And I'm sticking with it. It's way better than a few drunken paintings.

I wonder if slowing down will actually focus my creativity in a new way, like giving up drinking did. Interesting. I think I have to try.

I can't stop the therapy now, even though it's gotten so uncomfortable. In fact, I have to keep at it because it's gotten so uncomfortable. It's hard, that's all. When it gets hard in yoga class, I don't hate the teacher. So maybe it's not the therapist, smug or not. I think I'll give her one more shot.