Tuesday, February 12, 2019

The UnQuiet Mind

It's another snow day, and I'd hoped to make it as productive as the last.  I brought home grading from school and set to it, planning to get it over with and on with the more enjoyable part of the day: writing.  The problem is, writing requires a certain mindset.  A certain quietness of the mind to let the words and worlds flow.  And my mind, as it so often becomes these days, is far from quiet.

You hear a lot about mindfulness lately, about the importance of thinking and feeling in the moment.  I'd love to live a more mindful life, to shed the buzzing whir of my thoughts that don't seem to want to slow down, to be rid of my desire to be anywhere other than where I am.  I feel a bit like T.S. Eliot's cat the Rum Tum Tugger - when I'm in, then I want to be out, always on the wrong side of any door, when I'm at home then I want to get about.  I have a great deal of difficulty being in the "now."  When my presence at home is mandated by bad weather, as it is today, the feeling only intensifies... I need to get out, to be somewhere other than stuck in the house.  Cabin fever is something that sets in all too quickly for me.

This feeling is not conducive to writing, to say the very least.

So what to do?  I tried stretching... an uncomfortable interlude, to say the least.  I threw in a load of wash.  I did my social media duties, trying to build my "platform."  I'm here right now, updating my blog.  And still my thoughts are all a whir and a whirl, and I want, of all things, to go to the GYM.  This is not like me at all, and only goes to show what an odd place my head is in.  It's as if it's consciously trying to keep me from writing.

I think I may just go haul the space heater into the room, make myself a cup of something warm to drink, and try to muscle my way through it.  Try to get some of the buzzing in my head out onto a page.  Quieting my mind may never work, but perhaps I can find a way to make my unquiet mind work for me.

It's worth a shot.

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