I lost my momentum. It’s as simple and as complicated as that. ’m not sure why I just stopped writing after about 18 months of almost weekly outpourings. It isn’t that I got too busy. I’m always busy, and in some ways, since I was taking courses in the doctoral program at the time, I was busier then than I am now. If you take into consideration the fact that I was under constant time pressure to do homework, write papers, and study for exams, it just doesn’t make sense. Despite unwavering deadlines, I managed to carve out time to express what was going on in my head. And then I stopped.
This stopping is familiar territory for me. I have not always been aware of that but this year – no, last year now – it happened often enough to seep in to my consciousness. I finished my coursework in the doctoral program one year ago. Without missing a beat, I studied like mad for one of four comprehensive exams I needed to take. I passed that exam in January. And then I stopped…stopped studying….stopped reading anything related to academics… just stopped.
I picked up my guitar and started practicing again. The last time I played had been the winter my mom passed away – my sister and I had taken our guitars to mom’s home where we were spending half-weeks each while she was in hospice care. We practiced playing Christmas hymns for the Christmas eve service we would conduct in the living room at her bedside. That was December 2005.
I bought a lesson book….relearned the chords, the notes, the runs, one page at a time. I practiced daily no matter how late the hour. I regrew fingertip callouses… nice ones. It felt great. I felt alive – as I have always felt when playing music has been a regular part of my life. Then my long-planned kitchen renovation began. And I stopped playing. Not a gradual miss a day here, miss a day there. I just stopped.
I took a six-week series of tap dancing classes. This required a weekly Sunday night local train trip into Manhattan in the middle of winter. It did not matter to me what I had to do to get there. I loved it. I couldn’t wait from one week to the next. After the series ended, I joined a regular class on Sunday evenings, and never missed a one. I felt alive – as I always have during the “dance period” times of my life. And then in the early autumn, my elderly uncle who lives in western New York state had a stroke. My aunt and uncle have no children so nieces, nephews, and godchildren came together to help out. My presence was needed on a consistent basis on the weekends to provide relief for those closer residing help-givers who were on duty during the week. The 350 mile distance from their home to mine was too far for me to make it back in time for my dance class on Sunday nights. And so I just stopped.
The crisis has passed. My aunt/uncle are in Florida for the winter. He’s playing a better game of golf than he has in years. I am free on Sunday nights. But I am not dancing.
Not dancing. Not making music. Not writing. Three things that feed me, fuel me, give me hope, fulfill my need to create. I should add ‘not studying’ to the mix. Not that studying feeds, fuels, provides hope or makes me feel creative. But it is a necessary ingredient to keep moving toward the doctoral goal that I’ve set for myself.
I’m not one to make New Year’s resolutions as I view them as a set-up for failure. But the passage of 2012 in to 2013 is as good a time as any to resolve to figure out what makes me ‘just stop’ so I can ‘just stop’ letting it happen.
What have you stopped that you need to jumpstart?
