At last, the writing words are starting to come back. The muse of the landscape is starting to awaken things (slowly) that have been asleep and the first smell of autumn has acted like a key unlocking a long-shut door.
I have a lot of different threads that are emerging in my mind about the things I want to write about. In due time, I will get to these various topics — horses, grief, alcoholism and addiction, recovery, running, mountains, dogs, lizards, sky, climate change, money, Silicon Valley, God, yoga, and intimacy. Ya know, the basics ;-)
But the underlying stage work is consistency of effort as a writer.
Whether you’re a new friend or a long-time one, know that writing has always nipping around my edges. I have been writing personal essays since forever, publishing them at a frequency of one piece every three to four years. That infrequency is partly because I have not pushed myself to be consistent and partly because I needed to make a career and living for myself and deal with life-y stuff, and there didn’t seem to be a lot of room leftover.
So now I am making room. I moved here to New Mexico. I moved to New Mexico to have more room in the outdoors and be more of a writer. There I said it.
New Mexico’s population (2 million) is a fraction of New York City (8.8 million) or the Bay Area (7 million) and is spread out over 122,000 square miles.
Literally, I have room. As without, so within.
Of course I still need to earn a living; I need the income and enjoy the connections and contributions I make as a professional. That part, inshallah, will continue to be fruitful, enjoyable, and evolving. I don’t take that for granted.
But outside of my professional life, a big part of this “room-making” is about cutting away the domestic distractions I had with my urban dwelling. I felt as if I was in constant battle in the Mission with noise, with close-dwelling neighbors, with the grind of street grime, with the tech dystopia of Silicon Valley. (Will I write about my adventures deep in the bowels of VC and tech? One day!)
In San Francisco, I also went through the final chapter of wanting to be a mother. The story, as you know, ends with: She never had children of her own. But actually there’s a post-script: She never had children of her own, which opened her life up as a writer and artist. Feel it. I cry, too, when I write that. With remote work, and no need for schools, I have been sprung free in my own way.
So back to the headline: Consistency of effort. In the yoga sutras, Patanjali describes this as “consistent ardent effort,” or abyasa. Doing it every day.
I will keep writing. Every week something will go live. One word or a thousand.
Thank you to everyone who has shared encouraging words with me.
"She never had children of her own, which opened her life up as a writer and artist."
I used to be self-conscious that I was alone as in no kids, no husband. I assumed other women felt sorry for me. Then I learned the truth. To these women weighted down with children and husbands, I was the one to be envied, not pitied. Freedom is a currency. And I am rich.