"Do it as part of the dance"
wisdom from Ram Dass for trying to create in the midst of ALL THE THINGS
Hi, friends! We’re starting our seasonal Daily Creative Challenge today with the Ass in Chair Collective crew! If you’re a paid subscriber and would like to get on the list, just hit reply to this email to let me know! I’ll add you to the email thread, which will run for two weeks. We’ll do something creative every day for the next two weeks at whatever point in the day we can and in whatever way. It’s very low-key and can serve as an accountability thread for you, or a way to share a few new lines or an image or draft. 📓🎨
You can listen to me read this prompt you if you click on the button below!👇🏼
How do you write and create through the 13 new notifications on the Whatsapp chat for your kid’s class, through migraines, the vicious news cycle, sick kids who need infinite snacks and drinks and snuggles, through hot flashes or sick pets or driving to see a friend who randomly comes into town that you haven’t seen in years on the one day you were going to dedicate fully to your writing?
Sometimes, you don’t.
You just have lunch with your friend, or put some ice packs on your hot flashing feet, or you pour the 6th bowl of goldfish and you don’t think of the perfect image for your draft while you’re pouring said goldfish. You just stare into the void and carry the goldfish to your kid and try to be kind and gentle even though you feel a bit dead inside and would really love to get to your draft.
You take your migraine meds and muddle through your day. You drive across town and sit in traffic to see your friend. You go for a walk with your kid to check out the neighbors’ Halloween decorations and it is enough. It’s more than enough. If you can loosen the grip on your original vision for a little while, you can remember this is your life, this very moment, and you can see the gifts coming at you even when they’re wrapped up in torn wrapping paper or in an old grocery bag.
And, sometimes, you do write or create in the midst of it.
You send yourself a voice note about a few lines that come to you while you’re driving. You jot down the idea onto a stray post-it note while you’re pouring out the 10th bowl of goldfish. You type it into your phone in the bathroom at the restaurant. You catch the shimmering words before they shimmer back to wherever they came from.
It’s a dance, right?
I resist the pressure to harness every possible moment to create and constantly be striving and narrowly focused on my goals.
At the same time, I have a deep capacity to keep worker bee-ing it and caving into my laptop for hours and hours as though it’s a food source.
But there’s no space to breathe in there.
I ran into these lines from Ram Dass again the other day and it felt like the perfect way to distill this:
“Either you do it like it’s a big weight on you, or you do it as part of the dance. When you understand the thought is the thought of the thoughtless, your singing and dancing is no other than the voice of the dharma. Singing and dancing—insurance, savings accounts, jobs, responsibilities —Shiva’s dance of life.
Do you do it from ‘ugh’ or do it like ‘ah?’ Do you surf through it all, or do you carry it around like it’s a load?”
— Ram Dass
A Prompt for you
What strikes you in here? What can you lean into in your own life right now?
What are you currently doing like “ugh” that, if you step back and shift your perspective, you might do like “ahhh?”
Trust that if you can’t get to it today, you will tomorrow. And even if you can’t, maybe you can still keep surfing through it… 🏄🏽♀️
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