Today’s prompt: When do you feel most at ease – carried by something larger than effort?
I grasp. I obsess. I ruminate. I hyperfocus.
When there’s something on my mind, I have a hard time letting it go. I search endlessly for a sense of closure, even when there is none to be found. Simply moving on, letting go – giving up – is difficult for me to accept.
When I’m making something, I can easily find myself in a flow state. My mind builds up ideas, one on top of the other, stacking my brain full of creative blocks. Hours pass. I forget to eat, drink water, and don’t use the toilet. My whole body is redirecting energy toward my creative output.
This is a great place to be when things are going well, when the pieces are all fitting together. It’s an awful place when I’ve run into a problem. My jaws are clamped.
One of the difficulties of my newfound identity as a father is the stifled flow brought on by the interruptions of child rearing. Hannah has been great about affording me time to work through ideas, but my ears are always perked, listening for that cry. I’m not able to immerse myself in a project in the same way. I have to hold on to it, working at it over time, something my impatience makes difficult.
It’s teaching me to think through my ideas more, to assess their practicality and viability more stringently, and consider my objective more closely. Knowing that I won’t have the time to get stuck into an idea, I have to make a decision about which direction I’m going to head in and how far along the path I’m willing to go.
This writing prompt comes from Letters’ Lounge.
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