What Will You Do?

Today tastes like cough drops, ginger ale, and Kleenex ^(TM). I've had this verdammit cold for almost two weeks. I'm ready to be done. Since you can't get better until you've passed it along, I am posting this thing on eBay under "Readymade Excuse for Time Off During the Holidays."

Back before the distractions of breaking parts of me, I was doing a systematic appraisal of a point of stuckitude. The final query: What will you do? My answers now are a little different then they would have been before physical difficulties entered the scene.

Which is good in a way. I've said before (maybe even here) that this has been a valuable lesson in asking for help, in vulnerability, in patience. The lessons will appear, one way or another, until they are learned. While this has not been the way I would have chosen to learn these lessons, at the same time, it's manageable. Perhaps I'll actually get them down this time without the forces that may be having to gear up again to hit me over the head with the inevitable stuff that happens.

Anyway, the point I was stuck on was my art. Not just getting my behind into the studio and creating and moving stuff along that had gotten bogged down, but in determining what was on my gotta list, as differentiated from my wanna list, as opposed to my someday list.

Just sorting those out has helped. I've determined some of the things I used to love have less or no relevance to me now, and so I've weeded out that which does not nourish me. I've cleared the decks of my gotta list--even going so far as to remove myself from active participation for several months while I hunkered down and cleared the decks. No one died, went to jail, or lost their kids.

I'm actually doing things on my someday list. I have limits right now, with my hand in a splint, and I will have limits after I get out and can use all my fingers all the time. (See, Universe? I get it. No more lessons needed, 'k? Thxbai.) However, I am doing them. Maybe not the way I keep thinking they ought to be done, maybe without eternal significance and awe-inspiring perfection, but doing them.

If it ain't a YES, then it's a no. And I can list all the things I've said "no" very softly to; said "no" with a weight on my heart; said "no" reluctantly to. And I can go back to that list any time I want and see if they've turned into "yes" while I wasn't looking.

I've found some new tools. Or perhaps, not new so much as buried under a pile of greasy rags and those newspapers I've been meaning to toss. I need to continue to harness the power of the lists, to keep my "To-Do" short and sweet, and to ignore the voices of guilt about the length of the "Wanna-Do" and "Someday" lists. If I keep moving the last two onto the first, and striking out desires that have fallen away, I should be able to avoid getting mired down in this particular bog again.