I Was Looking at My Work

“I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.”

Claude Monet

I was looking at some of my blogs tonight and I was amazed.  Wow!  I don’t mean to sound immodest, but this has been some pretty good work and I’m not finished yet.  I wish I could apply some sort of formula to this.  For example, “If you choose a productive work and do it as much as possible, every day preferably, then your life will change for the better.”  Yes, that is what happened to me.  But it didn’t happen right away.  About six months before I started writing my blogs, I was writing in a journal every day for 30 minutes.  I was fairly dedicated to it, too.  In fact, one day I was falling asleep while writing, so I blasted Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven in order to stay awake and finish.  I did both.  I had the dedication and desire.  But it didn’t seem to change anything.

Or maybe it did.  That was around the time I knew my Muse was calling me.  I remember where I was, sitting in my garage on a Saturday afternoon, when I knew I belonged to her.  But I still didn’t write my first blog for almost two more months.  Why not?

Maybe I was being lazy.  Maybe I didn’t know what to do.  Or maybe, just maybe, a little time had to pass before I realized that I needed my Muse.  Maybe I had to realize that without my Muse, without Purpose, I was just marking time, and not very well.  Maybe I had to realize how unhappy and unfulfilled I would be.

What drove me to Get Started?  Why did I Get Started, but only after years of false starts and faltering?  Why do some never get started?  Was I chosen?  Why me?  Is there something special about me?  Isn’t there something special about everybody?  Did my pain drive me forward?  Did I simply make a choice?  What makes me so special?  Couldn’t anyone choose their calling?  Couldn’t anyone follow that leading inside to be something more, to do something more?  Is this about me?  Is it bigger than me?  I think it is.  But why me?

I don’t consider myself any more special or talented than anyone else.  For years, in fact, I believed completely the opposite, that I wasn’t special or talented at all.  I realize now that that belief was simply a means of self-sabotage, a way to keep me from my Purpose.  It didn’t keep me from my Muse though.   More accurately, it didn’t keep her from me.   She believed in me before I ever believed in myself.  She believes in me on the days today that I don’t believe in myself.  She feeds me ideas and she tells me to start working with those ideas.   So I got started because my Muse told me she loved me and I wanted to follow her.  It was almost accidental.  I just started writing one morning and she told me I was hers.

Because I am hers, I Keep Going.  This is my 536^th blog.  I Keep Going because I don’t ever want to go back.  To quote a line from a Dilbert comic strip, “I’m not going back!  I can’t!  I won’t!”

It’s not that my life has been easy or free of problems since I met my Muse; it’s just that I’m having more of the problems that I’m supposed to be having, for example, how can I get more writing time or what books should I be reading and where can I find the time?  I get tired and stressed and frustrated.  I feel like I never have enough time and that I don’t use the time I have well enough.  I face fear and resistance and fatigue.  I’m not self-disciplined enough and I fight that every day.  I have to spend most of my time alone and when my Muse isn’t here, I have to keep working until she returns.

So why do I Keep Going?   I Keep Going partly for one reason:  I am afraid.  I am afraid of going back to being the man I was.  I am afraid of being afraid and of letting fear run my life.

I do this because it’s fun, even when it’s not.  It’s hard work sometimes, but it’s still fun.

I do this because it’s healing.  I’ve shared this before, so I won’t elaborate, but I’ve had more inner healing in the last year and a half than I can even describe and I attribute it all to God and my Muse.  It is good to be free.  Like Monet’s debt to flowers, so is my debt to God and my Muse.

I do this because I’m contributing something.  I’m making the world, or at least my corner of the world, a better place.  My hope is that my influence will grow to make more of the world a better and happier place. 

Mostly, I’m doing this because I want to.  I want to write.  I want to Keep Going.  I already have an amazing body of work behind me and I look forward to having more.  This whole experience has been a privilege.  It is a privilege to spend every moment I can with my Muse and seeing what she has for me.  I am so grateful for her.  I’m grateful for this writing. 

Amen.