After writing and blogging faithfully for seven years now, I thought it’s become second nature for me to write regularly and unceasingly. I thought nothing could keep me from it.
I was wrong.
This week, I felt so tempted to take a rest and not write for a while.
This week, I thought I had nothing left to say. After all, in seven years, I’ve chocked up over 700 blog posts here already. What’s there left to say, right? I’ve more than earned my stripes and covered all the cornerstone content that’s been, well, the cornerstone of my writing here on this blog.
Most of all, with all the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual upheaval my family has had to wrestle with these past three weeks, which writer would have the energy left to still pen stuff down?!
When Life Throws You Lemons
Readers who have been following my blog faithfully would have noticed that I’ve password-protected my last three posts.
That’s because there’s been quite a lot of deeply personal and emotional stuff in there I’m not yet ready to reveal to everyone. I might unlock them some day, when the dust has settled on this trying season of my life. But until then, those password protections will remain.
Suffice to say I’ve had more than one proverbial lemon thrown my way since the start of this now forever-unforgettable month. August 1 in fact. That’s how precise I can peg the time when this storm of life began!
Folks would typically say to just make lemonade from the lemons hurled at me and my family these past three weeks. Well, it’s not quite so simple. Not when it’s potentially a life and death situation.
But this I do want to say. Though the worse of this storm may yet be ahead, for now at least it’s a light rainfall. Given its initial sudden ferocity when it descended upon my home three weeks ago, this current drizzle is more than welcomed.
Still, it did enough to water down any desire for me to blog and to write like I usually do.
And I would have given in to that feeling. But clearly Someone higher up had other plans!
It’s About Quantity, not Quality
Combing through my email inbox yesterday, I stumbled across an anecdote I had heard before.
Here’s how it goes.
A ceramics teacher divided her class into two groups. She told one group they’ll be graded solely on the quantity of pots they produce, and the other, quality. The pots produced by the quantity group would be weighed after the exercise and evaluated based on weight. Everyone in the quality group, however, just had to make one perfect pot.
The best pots apparently came out of the quantity group. While they were churning out piles of work and learning from their mistakes, the quality group was freezing under pressure of making one perfect pot.
Since 2019, one of the tenets of my writing and blogging has been about the churn. No matter the quality, I had to keep exercising my writing muscles every week and churn out a blog post or two. No exceptions (save for December when I usually take my scheduled writing break for year-end festivities).
Just like the above anecdote, the whole point is to keep at my craft in order to strengthen my writing muscles and avoid atrophy.
To stop now, even in the midst of arguably, the worse storm my family and I have ever faced, goes against my writing tenet.
Writing Through, To Pull Through
Going back to that email I mentioned earlier, the writer mentioned a prayer I think I too should seriously consider hanging up above my writing desk.
According to her, Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, has this prayer written above her desk: Great Creator, I will take care of the quantity. You take care of the quality.
What a timely reminder for me. At a time when I am feeling like it’s almost pointless to write. When I’m feeling demotivated.
It’s especially during these times that I must continue to soldier on. To pen down. Even if it is an ugly, hideous, or worse, an unappealing post!
Because writing has been my way of living well these past seven years.
And living well through this current storm in my family’s life has never been more imperative than it is now.
So I’m resolved to keep writing, come what may. And I hope, you my loyal reader, will be with me every step of the way.
