It's not always about the miraculous

Sometimes being creative is not a viable option. It just isn't. Inspiration is at a low ebb. Inspiration is like that. Lao Tzu said that, "there is a time for being in motion, a time for being at rest; a time for being safe, a time for taking risks" etc, etc- he said quite a bit more, but you get the idea.

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.

We are subject to natural law and we resist it at our peril. A master does not  try to oppose, she uses the momentum of her adversary to defeat him. A friend reminded me a couple of weeks ago of something Picasso said,"every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction." 

Well I have long thought that symbolic acts are beloved of whatever creative intelligence underlies the totality of being. Either these acts set in motion a chain of events, or they are part of a sequence which is already in motion. Whichever is true, I could care less. But it would be hard.
 
I realised that the most creative thing was to immerse myself in the banal.  I started by giving away a lovely glass desk and a massive magnetic whiteboard. I purged old files, emptied in trays, some for the first time.

Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner. (Lao Tzu)

I carried on to scrub, scour, clear and clean inside and out until my fingers hurt. I found yet more crap that needs to go and began to feel the relief and the virtue of lightening my load. I painted, filled, sanded, painted, filled, swept, hoovered and I hung beautiful pictures on the walls.

I am still between careers with no idea of what will change that. I am still shit scared that my family will end up homeless and it will be my fault. I still feel quite ill equipped to cope with what's on my plate, never mind a second helping or (my just) dessert.

And now I'm sitting not in a builders office, but in a place where I can honour people's dreams, purge and throw away their useless baggage. Where I can join in with creation. So it probably hasn't been a complete waste of time.

As one of my closest and wisest friends, Avril told me, "John Boy, you have to get out of your own way and let it roll."

Lord of all i survey

For 26 years I was a roofer. For about 15 of those I was a specialist lead worker. On site I could earn £30 an hour, take home £1,000 a week. I was physically very strong, highly skilled, relatively personable, very experienced. And what I didn't know I would ask.

You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth

This was because the first lesson I got as a roofing labourer was that if I ever I thought I had arrived it meant that I hadn't arrived at all. Humility, not knowing- the Taoist calls it the beginners mind- is the prerequisite to all learning.

It has taken a long time to apply this lesson to other things.

Roofing is one of the most physically demanding "trades" there is. Traditionally, roofers have bad backs, bad knees and quite a disproportionate number have bad drug habits. Because of the last of these, I managed to ignore the first and after 15 years it brought me to my (still quite good) knees.

Nine times out of ten, two out of three is not bad.

That first humiliation was mental, emotional and spiritual, and I changed a great many bad habits, but I continued to neglect my spine and 5 or 6 years later it said enough. It had been bad for years but two prolapsed discs wasn't something I could just walk off.

So I got off the tools and built a nice office and got a nice computer. Bought a fancy 4 wheel drive.

But if you in your pain call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow, then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow shall wash away that which is written.

For another 5 years I expanded the roofing business,  a great many opportunities came and went and fantastically large (for me) sums of money passed through my bank account. I got busier and busier and the problems and challenges got bigger and bigger. I tried to make big money and took some big risks.

But if I was honest, (which for the most part, especially with myself, I was not) my heart wasn't really in it. And success, like my heart, wasn't in it either. I became a slave to it, I worked hard to pay my overheads and to keep men in work. I lost myself in the stress and the details of it.

A master reputedly once said, "what shall it profit a man who gains the world and loses his soul?" My reply to him would be, "how much more empty then is it for me to lose my soul and not even be able to pay off my overdraft?

And what is it to work with love? It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.

This year I have mercilessly cut my overheads, got rid of the vehicles that weren't already paid for and laid off the guys who worked for me. One by one I have been shedding the excuses I made for not doing what I must do, but which tears me apart and then puts me back together in some hitherto unknown form.

I've made a decision to let inspiration and creativity guide me. To reconnect with my essential nature- Find out if I even possess such a thing.

Every time I stop, get a chance to breathe, tears well up from deep inside of me. I suspect that it's because I have fucked up so badly that there is no way back. Or maybe it's because my heart is calling me to lead me back home.

As my dad might have said, I'll be buggered if I know.

Hitting and bouncing along the bottom

If ever there was a (perceived) need to make money to survive it would be apparent now. Having done almost no work and had almost no income this year, the cries to get productive are becoming louder and more pressing, internally and externally.

Now if I could say that there were a magnus opus about to pop out of the ether, it would be easier to say, "not now, maybe, but soon." But there is none- just a steep, slippery slope to climb.

Anyway enough of my complaints, suffice it to say that the question that is now being asked is, "Is it reasonable for me to pursue a life of creative endeavour, to do what I like and like what I do?" The answer most people would give to such a question would probably be negative.

So maybe what is really being asked is, "do I have the courage of my convictions, after so many false starts, promising as they may have been, to rely on inspiration to save and sustain me and my family. Do I dare to take the idea that I will be supported in doing what makes me happy to its logical conclusion?" That conclusion feels something less than foregone to me, for once I will be happy to be wrong about it.

My beautiful elder daughter Charlotte, in her quest to get the best degree that she can, has lately become somewhat reclusive and withdrawn. I gave her an assignment, to go out and have fun, to mix more, to nurture the friendships she has and to build new ones. This shouldn't be too testing a task for a lovely 20 year old with perfectly adequate social skills, and a great sense of humour, (Excuse me for digressing here).

She promised me that she would and promptly started to make arrangements to meet up with old and new friends. Later that day she cheekily sent me an assignment, to write something little each week, a blog or something. So this small start is dedicated to her although it is really for me.

Rather than pore over this little piece of writing to make sure it looks lovely and sounds perfect and whoever reads it will be impressed and think I'm really clever and I can write, instead I will just define some of the next steps I will take. Not for your benefit, (clearly) but for my own.

eternity to the ungodly is a night that has no sunrise

I resolve to write something in this or one of my other blogs each week (maybe one day something in each of them). Before the next blog comes out I am also going to revive my newsletter. Although it was always meant to be an occasional newsletter, sadly, its publication has become (ever) more seldom and sparsely sporadic is more aptly descriptive.
The blogs and the newsletter are building to the launch of the new website I'm building. Subscribe to this blog to see what happens next.