"Moderation in all things, including moderation" - Oscar Wilde
I'm aware of imbalance in a couple of areas.
Firstly, I've been blogging and vlogging more than anything else. I haven't been playing music, I haven't been facilitating anything, I haven't written anything lately that took more thought than a 500 word blog post (which mostly come out extemporaneously like this one, just babble-babble). These things are important, working with groups, expressing myself in different forms, giving sustained thought to structure a story and an argument are all muscles that I need and need to exercise, but instead I've been doing the quick and easy - take a running jump with a seed of an idea, mix a few metaphors and there, that's me work done for the day. It works, it gets me paid, but it doesn't fully satisfy my soul (which is when I get to notice the rock-pushing I mentioned on Friday.) It's not that I think I shouldn't be pushing a rock uphill all day - it's a good metaphor for the difficulty and futility of life, but I've learned over the years that when my arts are balanced, I fall in love with the rock all over again and I push it up with glee.
The other imbalance is to do with how I work rather than what work I do. Sometimes, I need silence and solitude - sustained logical thinking requires this as does putting something together that's big and complicated. I don't have much silence and solitude at the moment. I have little glimpses of it, but I haven't made a space for myself that is so secure that I can guarantee it for more than an hour or so, and some things just take longer than that. The spaces that I work in lay me vulnerable to interruption by others, for whatever reason. So I'm working on carving out better, longer alone time.
But.
On the other hand, I do have a great need for social engagement, success and approval. I can only really tell good stories if I've been in a warm, chatty atmosphere for a bit. If I did this all the time, I'd never get anything done, but if I shut myself away all the time, I only get smaller things done and my world shrinks down to me and my laptop way too quickly. That way madness lies. That's one of the reasons I invented Tuttle, to give me a structure for being with other stimulating people at least once a week. And it doesn't take long (I've been doing it online for a couple of weeks) if I don't do it for my work to dry up and go stale.
An aide memoire then for me - don't just blog and vlog, make space for more thought through works in other media and take care of your face-to-face interactions as well as protecting your solitary creative time.
Remind me please.
