A Season of Fallowing Fields
Crop Rotations in Creativity
This is Week 3 of my practice following Elizabeth Gilbert’s Letters from Love. Here’s what I wrote myself this morning.
Dear Love, what would you have me know today?
My dearest little monkey nut, my tiny, ambitious squirrel, my upward-reaching lightning rod,
Even as you are trying to rest, you seem to be keeping yourself very very busy. You have been moving house for 49 days, living across different spaces, with your spirit trying to ground whilst traveling between your current home and the gates of the new one.
You are still coming to the close of an intensely kaleidoscopic, utterly consuming three years trying to build things while treading quicksand, and you have been using everything you have to keep yourself from sinking, and supporting others while not being able to meet your own needs. Meanwhile, there’s been a pandemic, not to mention other global catastrophes and war, and you have not had the opportunity to be still with all that has happened in yourself.
So, dearest flickering candle flame, you are considering a sabbatical, and the first thing that comes to your mind is: “All this started with a sabbatical in the first place.” So you question if you can allow yourself to take “yet another” one.
Dearest little conjurer, my inspired manifestation needle, you want so much from yourself, for your life, and for the beings around you. You cannot help but magnetize yourself to people and projects that inspire you. Even now, as you are in the midst of an important transition, you are editing a book, organizing events, applying for grants, residencies, and accelerators, and dreaming up a menu card of offerings for the myriad communities you intersect with.
Dearest intrepid little snail, you seem to still be striving. My invitation to you is this: Before you cast your nets outward in all directions again, ask yourself if you feel rested. Ask yourself if you feel clear with the deepest parts of yourself, if your actions and choices are connected to the same body of truth that you can feel when you are at peace.
My beloved little autumn leaf, it is hard for you to sit still while things are rushing and swirling around you, especially when you believe you must join the dance of colors simply because that is the thing to do. It’s hard to settle into your own gravity when you are anxious to catch the wind, because what if another gust will not come for another season, and then you will be grounded, your brilliance unnoticed and fading in the sand?
I understand, little golden flutter. I understand your need to soar and to reach new vistas. And I invite you to consider times in the past when you’ve pushed yourself to fly when you were not resourced, and when you did not feel resonant with the entire process you were in. You have been using yourself as the fuel to feed unsustainable forces when there was nothing else to draw on, and we simply cannot do this anymore, or be in close relationship with those who do. We will catch fire if we stand too close without protection.
Remember, my ardent baby sea turtle, that sprinting energy is meant to be used sparingly to reach the sea. It is not meant as a daily mode to approach everything you undertake. Little hatchling, you have been rushing from sprint to sprint. You have been laying sprints on top of marathons. Is it any wonder that you feel depleted? It has been so long that you’ve fully recharged, and cultivated a state of consistent resourcedness, that any time you recover a glimmer of energy, you feel compelled to spend it. Can see your energy as a precious resource to save and invest, in the same way you understand this for other resources?
My blazing September sunset, if we want to stop treading the trail of burnout, then let us start very early before this dogged force even shows a shadow of itself upon our path. If we want our rest to be regenerative, then let us rest before we need to rest. Let us drink before we are thirsty. Let us return ourselves to our source before we are starving and strained by its absence. And then, let us not stray so far each time that we forfeit our knowledge, again and again, of what it is to be well.
Most adored field of flowers, most verdant tender new leaf, do you notice that the longest-standing trees are equal parts roots and branches? In order to grow upwards, you must first grow downwards.