The Work Has Waited Through Many Seasons

I have heard the voices inside that run alongside everything I make and have not always known how to hold them at the right distance to keep coming,
I have heard the voices and given them a seat at the table that was meant for the hard wok and watched them eat everything on the plate before the hard work had a chance to even taste it,
I have heard the voices and let them rewrite before it was done being made and ended up with a refined version held any of the risk that made it true,
Which voice am I feeding the most energy on the days when the work feels impossible and that particular voice having gotten there first,
I have heard the voices inside and even argued with them and exhausted the only thing I have not tried consistently enough is simply continuing anyway without asking for any of their approval...

I have followed the feeling I knew rather than the thing I could defend every single time by someone who cared about me that I was making the wrong call,
I have followed the feeling I knew and been right about it and still felt the doubt afterward because the world's version have gone louder than the quiet satisfaction of having trusted myself,
I have followed the feeling and then adjusted toward what the room seemed to want and lost something specific, unreplaceable in the adjustment that I cannot always name but always feel the absence of,
How much of what I have built was toward the truest version of what I felt called to make and toward the version that would be easier for other people to receive, understand and accept,
I have followed the thing I knew that were certain with honest difference in what each direction produced, the only evidence I have ever really needed to keep trusting myself...

I have a time that belongs to my deep work and I have let everything else believe it belongs to them too and the double ownership has made the work slower than it needs to be,
I have a time that belongs to my deep work and let it be used by the urgency of other people's timelines and other people's needs and other people's crises but were not mine to carry,
I have a time that belongs to my deep work, yet I have not always guarded it with the seriousness it deserved, not yet certain enough to treat the work as more important than being available,
What am I actually protecting when I make myself easy to interrupt during the hours that were supposed to be the most important and most generative ones I have,
I have a time that belongs to my deep work and has waited for me through so many seasons of being treated as the thing I will get to when everything else has been taken care of first...

I am still learning what it means to show up with everything and not just the polished and prepared part that I have already decided is safe to bring,
I am still learning how to be in the room with my full attention without the familiar retreat into performance or the comfortable distance of watching rather than being inside it,
I am still learning that the thing I keep calling not ready is often just the thing I have not yet given the consistent attentive presence it requires before it can show me what it is,
What would I discover about what I am actually capable of if I stopped dividing my attention for just long enough to find out what happens when it is finally whole,
I am still learning, and the learning is not failure or delay, but the mark of living work inside me, asking me to rise into the attention it deserves...

Watchwords:
The voices ate before the work could taste it,
Adjusted toward the room and lost what was unreplaceable,
Let the work be colonized by other people's timelines,
Treated as the thing to get to when done,
Still becoming capable of giving it what it needs...