Waking Up the Muse

After months upon months of being buried in intense writing work and being absolutely thrown by a peak period in that never-ending work of life-writing, I've recently noticed something:

I've been waking up. And doing so has made me realize that I may have had a bit of a long-ish nap.

Has this sort of thing ever happened to you? You know, when you're busy with a capital B. When life drops orange pylons onto your course and you zig-n-zag all around, missing or barely nicking some but flattening others. When you become so focused on one problem or goal that everything else could blow up — right in front of your face — and you wouldn't know it. Has it?

That's the kind of reality I've been living in for a while. I think it's pretty normal to go through such phases. I hope so, anyway, because I've been through them before. I've always come out the other side, thank goodness. In my current not-quite-middle-age-YET-thank-you era (right? hasn't the lower end of middle age been bumped up?) — I am pretty good at not letting phases like that fully engulf me. When one arises, I still function well, maintain a positive outlook, stay on top of important business, keep up with daily hygiene . . .

But during my present re-re-re-reawakening, I've realized that the one thing I do that I wish I could altogether avoid in the sleepy phase is COAST. To me, coasting means that I'm doing little more than getting by. Things fall off my list. Important things. For example, writing for pleasure — or, to be more precise, taking pleasure in my writing.

I know, I know. We all have to cope with those pylons the best we can. The collision course will always crop up again, and sometimes you really can't do better than coast your way through it. But where my writing is concerned (since that's the only acceptable topic for the blog!), I want to work on not letting other challenges sap my energy for/delight in doing the one thing I'm here to do for myself.

Not sure at all how to accomplish that. Yet today it seems possible. My "muse" is active. Suddenly, any act of writing inspires me to do more writing. Ideas flow, solutions flow, excitement flows, WORDS flow.

At any rate, I'm awake at the moment — and I don't plan to succumb to another nap anytime soon.