Misplacing My Muse

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve written in my blog. That’s not like me. To be honest, I just haven’t felt like writing. I thought that I had lost my muse – like it was some real person in my life who had “cut me off”. Whether the reason that I was giving myself for not wanting to write was real or fictionalized – I just didn’t have the desire – so I didn’t. I started writing a couple of years ago, when I would wake up at 4AM with my mind spinning and couldn’t get back to sleep. So, I got out of bed and wrote about whatever was going through my head at the time.

My daughter Erin (and others) will tell you that I’m an extrovert. That’s accurate for the most part, but I also have another side that surfaces every so often that makes me want to withdraw. And that’s when I have the urge to “feed my head”. I read a lot and have conversations with friends who plants seeds in my head that may turn up later in another project. I’m refueling. I’m tuning into myself.

But getting back to the whole “muse” notion. I think I may have been confusing a “muse” as being someone who was real in my life. Someone who would stimulate my mind with fresh ideas and encourage me to pursue them. Sure, I have had people in my life that did just that for me. But what I really think was happening was more subtle – or at least was subtle to my conscious mind. My perceived “muses” were really just causing me to look into my inner voice and myself. In other words the “muse” was inside me.

I’m not sure what is a more frightening thought – to think that a muse is someone tangible who may come into and out of my life leaving me vulnerable to these outside forces – or that a muse is my own inner voice who just doesn’t seem to shut up some days. Maybe a muse is a bit of both – my inner voice but also how I choose to react to outside forces.

Regardless, I have learned to go with the flow of energy that is there in the present. It’s far better than to fight it. That’s not to say that I don’t fight “resistance” and I do not define resistance solely as outside forces. In fact, most resistance comes from my own mind and ego – always trying to rationalize and give me good reasons why I should not pursue something – why I should not confront my fears.

So if there are weeks that go by and I seem to have disappeared – if in fact the disappearances are even noticed amongst the other distractions of life – know that I am taking some time off to feed my own head.

I’m just trying to sing the song I was meant to sing.