Creation or Depletion

Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read the lines written by the hands of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots that we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths.

Henry Miller

....................................

What I've learned from meditation and from writing is this: we can treat life as if we are standing on zero on a number line. We have X amount of units to use. We can go to the positive and create, or we can head to the negative side and deplete. Either choice is really ok, because we're really here to learn, after all. We don't have to be perfect. I think that creating begets creating, though, and depleting or exhausting begets the same. In an interview with author Paula Kamen, who wrote All In My Head: An Epic Quest to Cure an Unrelenting, Totally Unreasonable, and Only Slightly Enlightening Headache - I asked her about the difference of writers and artists, their sensitivities, and how it affects our bodies. She told me that what she's found is that writers and artists are more sensitive, they are more empathetic, which is good for brilliant work, but it also affects brain chemistry. What this all leads to is an awareness of a need for balance in my work, play, home life (which is very difficult), and also a need to constantly be aware of my own creative barometer, and how I'm either creating or depleting my energy (units). It takes the same energy to create, as it does to destroy.