Ebbs and flows of process

My process ebbs and flows. Like the tide, like the Duwamish River with the Elliot Bay's pull. Like traffic with commuter hours. There is movement but a lot of repetition as well. For the last week, I have ,without conscious effort, switched to project mind. I have not written creatively this week except for a few lines here and there in my journal. Instead, I have been working on promotion or my Hugo House Class, applying to jobs, working on my cover letter, building out this website, and working with a friend to get together the visual for some poems I have recently recorded. This stuff stuff may not be visible on the surface. But this stuff is what I have to figure out how to do and work into my schedule. There is no one way to success. How I define personal success makes all the difference.

Everything is a full time job. This goes for other artists as well. To be practicing artist, and be part of community, the way I want to be, I must also be the promotional team, the emailer, so many different little aspects of the job. It is ok with me to shift gears for a week to get ahead on projects and stuff like this, but it is when this kind of work stretches longer than a week that I start feeling beat down, and depressed. I write poetry because I love writing poetry. I love the process, the free writing, the editing, everything about it. I am fine doing busy work if it enables me, in the long run, to have more time to just write. But, there are definitely times it feels like I am treading water, that I waking up every day, currently jobless, and going to the desk to write doesn’t feel like I am doing enough. That’s part of the reason I am doing this blog, to put myself out there in a different way.