What is and isn't working
The Muse Letter No. 182
I have started this Muse Letter over a hundred times since I’ve arrived in Mexico last week, changed it’s title, it’s tone but this morning as I was sitting on the terrace, drinking té de limón and the sun was still lurking behind the hills, I realised that before I do anything, before I write, re-write and start another essay, I need to be honest with myself about: what is and isn’t working.
It’s a practice I’ve started implementing whenever life feels strangely hard. And I mean strangely hard because there’s a sense – a little voice that tells me – that it doesn’t have to be this way. That I might have been digging myself in a hole, that perhaps I am the cause of my suffering and that if in fact I have been the one who did the digging, the only way to get out is to stop.
So I make a list. On one side I write: what is working. On the other: what isn’t. And then I am honest. I sit with the discomfort. Admitting to myself what isn’t working is usually harder. There’s fear involved and …