jumping off the hamster wheel

Enthusiasm by Mars Dorian (Trust 30 Prompt 12)

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

• “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” is a great line from Emerson. If there’s no enthusiasm in what you do, it won’t be remarkable and certainly won’t connect with people on an emotional basis. But, if you put that magic energy into all of your work, you can create something that touches people on a deeper level. How can you bring MORE enthusiasm into your work? What do you have to think or believe about your work to be totally excited about it? Answer it now.

And so we come back to where we came from a couple months ago - enthusiasm. Passion. Joie de vivre. I had a great evening chatting with Diva Moe, and this was actually one of the things we covered - how can we - as mothers, lovers/partners, employees, bill payers, in short, women with a wide variety of responsibilities and concerns, hope to have anything left at the end of the day for our creative pursuits? And how can we possibly hope to move forward with those pursuits without energy or enthusiasm? 

Let's not kid ourselves - enthusiasm does take energy. When one is totally spent. Exhausted just be the mere act of getting through the day, enthusiasm is a luxury in short supply. It's not available to those in survival mode. 

And so the conversation moved on to what we could do about that. How can we move ourselves out of survival mode so that we start to restore those reserves of energy, vitality and enthusiasm for what we do - and ultimately for who we are? 

I think  my writing is worth doing, and worth doing well. It's disheartening for me when I finally eke out some time and space to dedicate to writing and find myself without the energy to actually undertake the endeavour. Moe was recently at a song-writing workshop and the hosts had some great suggestions for feeding our creative selves, most of which starts with taking some of the pressure off. And as our friend Hamlet would say 'Ay, there's the rub.' 

If the solution to being under too much pressure is to be under less pressure, well you see where that's going. And so we keep on - doing our best. Nurturing the embers of creativity that continue to promise to spark. Testing and trying and learning and growing and never ever ever giving up on those things that let us express who we really are.