Trying Times

Here’s the thing: I didn’t plan on taking that much of a break.

Seems that somewhere along the way, I got stuck. Maybe I stopped feeling like I had anything to say. I wasn’t sure what was holding me back, so there was no clear plan for getting around it. I thought about the blog, felt guilty for not keeping it up, tried to think of a topic that felt worthy… but nothing came forth.

I am here today because I am on the path to recovery. Recovering my Try.

One day a couple of months ago, I found a Meetup group that was just starting out on The Artist’s Way. This is a book by Julia Cameron that I already had on my shelf from a couple of years ago. I thought it sounded like a good way to spend my Wednesday evenings.

One chapter per week, we read her encouraging words. We tried to do artist dates. We struggled with morning pages. We did some of the exercises in the book. We shared our experiences and learned from each other.

And about eight weeks in, I started to figure it out. I had fallen out of love with myself.

Does this sound corny? Yes. But when we are struggling with lack of motivation, we need to be open to whatever works for us. We need to be able to see things in a different light. We need, most of all, to be willing to commit to something that is more important than anything else in the whole world: ourselves.

Are you about to argue that there are pressing global issues that need attention more than your own self? Well, maybe pressing global issues are caused by people who have forgotten how to love themselves.

How do you fall back in love with yourself? You spend time with yourself, you get to know yourself, you listen carefully to yourself, you plan special days with yourself. And the best part is that you also get to be the recipient of all this attention. It makes you smile.

And when you are ready to make a long-term commitment to yourself, you propose: you ask yourself if you are willing to Try.

And the answer is Yes.

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