Standing at the Corner of Life and You’d Better Get Going

I had an epiphany very early this morning as I was trying to get to sleep—I’ve been suffering from insomnia for about a week and a half and although I sleep when I finally fall asleep, it’s the getting there that’s giving me trouble. Insomnia is a wicked drain on your whole being—physical, mental, and emotional. It leaves you exhausted and dragging, feeling uncomfortable in your own skin and unmotivated. Insomnia sucks, but I hate the thought of taking drugs to fix it. So I read and I binge-watch Netflix on my Kindle and I think . . . I think a lot.

Which leads me to the epiphany. I’ve been doing just about everything except my work sorta half-assed since about this time last year. I don’t need Sigmund Freud to tell me the deeper reason for this—I know it’s grief. That realization isn’t the epiphany. This is: The person I’m mourning, whose loss has me all clenched up inside and sad and feeling lost and basically stopped dead in my creative tracks, would smack me upside the head if she were still here.

Sister Kate was a doer of the first order whether it was her family, her job, her commitment to our church, her marriage . . . she took care of things. Even when she was so sick, she didn’t stop, which was one of the reasons none of us realized how terribly ill she was. She was also one of my biggest supporters when I decided to go indie with my novels. If she knew that I’d allowed my grief to stop my creativity, she’d kick my ass and probably get right in my face to shout, “Snap out of it!”

When I was struggling with body issues several years ago, I came across a fabulous quote from the actress Camryn Manheim. She said, “This is my body. I live in it, I play in it. I can’t deny it anymore. This is my fat body. I’m standing at the corner of Life and You Better Get Going. I stepped off the curb and I never looked back.” That just smacked me right between the eyes. It was life changing… I need to claim it again, but this time in regard to my writing life because I am standing on that corner again. I’ve never imagined not being a writer and maybe that’s the place I need to get back to. Writing because it’s who I am, why I breathe. Writing because I can’t not write even when I don’t feel the inspiration or the motivation. 

It’s time to step off the curb—to reclaim my creativity, to let the stories flow, to write, because my life isn’t going to wait for me to snap out of it. I think it’s time for me to get going . . .