Bless me, Reader. It’s been three weeks since my last post.
Why? Because my calendar broke. Or more accurately, my introvert calendar broke.
What’s an introvert calendar? A calendar with nothing on it. Clean slate. Empty boxes with no fixed engagements. A fully functioning introvert calendar doesn’t mean I plan to do nothing. It means I have nothing planned. Big difference.
In this, my last year before retirement (T-minus 207 days and counting), there is much to do, and we’ve been doing it. Our calendar—especially during the past two months—has been chockablock with appointments, meetings, consultations, meet-n-greets, follow-ups, examinations, and procedures. We’ve seen doctors, dermatologists, radiologists, phlebotomists, dentists, and oral surgeons (yes, #32 strikes again). We’ve met face-to-face with financial advisors, Medicare consultants, contractors, plumbers, and suppliers. And, somehow, we also managed to squeeze in a birthday (hers), a 40th wedding anniversary (ours), and even a few social engagements.
For anyone it would be a serious course in Advanced Adulting, but for a serious introvert like me, it’s been all that whilst running a marathon, and to be perfectly frank, I simply haven’t had the spoons for anything creative. My brain has been filled with concerns, info, deadlines, questions, and fretfulness both reasonable and un-, so my gardening mode has been “maintenance,” my cooking has been pedestrian, my reading has been limited to emails and current events, and I’ve written little and woven even less.
However (thankfully) September’s schedule has a bit more white space than did July/August, and we’re both counting on October to remain featureless and calm as the doldrums, because come November, it’s a new round of activity, with another birthday (mine), the holiday season, some brief travel, and a bathroom renovation stuck in for good measure.
But here’s the thing I want to pass along: during this time of non-creative busy-ness, I chided myself for avoiding creative endeavors, or at least I did, until I actually looked back at the calendar (the broken calendar) and saw just how busy we’ve actually been. Creativity takes energy, and as an introvert, I need quiet to recharge my batteries, and I haven’t had any of that. All of my energy has gone into what was needed, leaving little (or none) for what was wanted.
So when you find that you haven’t gotten back to that quilting project or written that poem, when you find yourself exhausted at the end of the day with no energy for that new recipe or insufficient focus to get back to that book you’ve been reading, take a breath and admit two things: we all have only so much energy, and we have to prioritize demands on it.
Life is rarely constant; it much prefers cycles, rising and falling, waves and troughs. As long as we keep creativity on the To Do list, there will eventually be time for it.
Just keep it on the list.
k
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Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 