Part 8. Dirt Off Your Journal: my 39 word manifesto

One day a few months ago, it happened just like that.  I put down the mop and picked up my pen.  I was hearing song lyrics, stanzas, paragraphs, ideas about where to send work, first lines of cover letters.  Words were coming and so I sat at their knees to listen and write.  

It might be colors for you, or melodies, or recipes, maybe a beading pattern, or a dance.  I don’t know.  There is something that drives you.  Drives me.  Moves me out of this time and this space into a perfect place where there is only me and words.  I’ve been living in this place lately and so let’s just say that my actual physical world turned upside down.  Listen, the kids still ate three home cooked meals a day and they enjoyed healthy snacks, we all had clean clothes to wear, I hung out with friends, and laughed with Dominique and our apartment was upside down.  I really didn’t notice—well, okay, I noticed but I had other priorities.  

Our landlord, a cool and inspiring man, had to come by to fix a few things in the apartment and he ended up going into a number of rooms.  Let’s just say that he was a bit overwhelmed by the topsy turviness of it all.  He left and came back with “a few cleaning products that were laying around the garage.”  Hint, hint.  I laughed.  Really, I did.  The place wasn’t funky, just crazy.  I thanked him for the products and invited him to come through and clean anytime he felt the urge because my hands were rather full.  It was liberating.  I was on the verge of finishing a project that I had been working on for a year.  I had let go of “perfection.” I had embraced “perfection.”  The perfection of me where I was standing (ankle deep in toys) in that very second.  In my crazy apartment with three, yes three completed manuscripts, two healthy children and a multitude of dreams.

What I’m saying is this: there are women and men who manage to do everything and do it all well.  I have accepted that I am not one of those people.  If you are anything like me, don’t be ashamed, embarrassed, guilty or hard on yourself.  There are enough forces out there who will be quick with the criticism.  This is my 39 word manifesto:
Do you.  Forget the kitchen floor, get that dirt off your journal!  Enjoy.  Do like Joseph Campbell said, “Follow your bliss.”  Take a nap.  Take another one. Put some lavender in the tub and soak. Revel in your creativity.
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After I had finished my writing projects, gotten my fill of sleep, given myself a pedicure, and combed my hair for the first time in—um, a long time—I looked at the apartment and I grabbed the mop.  I wanted calm after the storm.  I wanted to create an open sky where the clouds could gather and words could rain/reign again.  That’s me.  That’s my story.  Yours is bound to be different, but whatever it is, let it truly be yours and honor it.  I don’t know how it will go for me the next time.  Actually, I do.  And if the mop gets lonely in that corner all by itself, I will not be sorry.

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