Enjoying a bit of peace and quiet and a much cooler morning. It got so hot during our heat wave that our food processor bowl melted while in use. The round area that has the blade come through is now oblong.
I loved hearing Aaron say, “Oh, that’s why it sounded so funny.”
I was listening to music through headphones at the time and missed all that audio fun. Thankfully, we live in a time when you can get replacement parts easily; you don’t have to buy an entirely new appliance.
As I listen to the sounds of the morning which include enough wildlife I sometimes feel I live in a zoo, I’m mentally sorting through projects in the queue. It isn’t just that there are a number of possibilities it’s the order in which they should be done.
Temporal Awareness. At the start of the pandemic shutdown I wrote about what it felt like having my temporal awareness turned on its ear.
As someone who already worked from home the inability to have any contact with the outside world for months on end was surreal.
I channeled that frustration into writing making it one of the more prolific times of my writing career.
I finished Beacon, Rainmaker, Mirror, and Redemption among other projects in a span of about three months.
It came at a cost.
Burnout.
I know that work burnout was a common problem during the pandemic. I read several articles in which people talked about the effects of being shut in or – if they couldn’t work from home – being completely overwhelmed. And yet I couldn’t relate.
Career burnout wasn’t my burnout.
It took until yesterday to understand that my burnout was related but different. It wasn’t career burnout so much as life burnout.
As someone who has worked from home for twenty-seven years, other than a period of incredible productivity, it wasn’t my career that was impacted.
Outside acknowledging the challenges of going from minimal outside interaction to none, I never considered the impact of total lockdown on my life outside my career.
Work Front and Center. There was a cost to the constant attention on work from home in our community and in the world. It hid the impact of what was happening outside that construct.
When you’re so busy focusing on making something work you can miss all the areas of your life that are being starved of critical energy.
Missing the Signs. Because my productivity was not negatively impacted I missed warning signs that not all was well. Or, if I did sense something wrong I simply channeled it into my work, exacerbating the problem.
Open Is Closed. Regardless of the state of the states I still work from home. Thanks to the delta variant and other unknowns it’s business as usual as far as the pandemic is concerned.
Masks, social distancing, and good health habits.
This lack of real change and the knowledge that it will likely remain so for the foreseeable future had me turning to my de facto approach, writing.
Excuse Me. An interesting thing happened. Somehow the message from the nonwork areas of my life that were suffering got to the productivity camp and, as you can predict, everything shut down.
Few things cause panic for an author. Writer’s block is one of them.
Because my attention was on the impact to my productivity I missed that the symptoms had nothing to do with writing.
There was no writer’s block.
Ignoring the symptoms since I didn’t map them to nonwork issues, I continued focusing on my career.
It never occurred to me it was soul burnout related to the pandemic.
Meet Me Halfway. Apparently, my higher self has a clue. It figured out I’m going to double down on the creative outlet as a coping mechanism – something I’ve done my whole life – so it plugged into that part of the energy spectrum. This led to a series of “coincidences” that got the message through.
That while my body and mind were doing just fine, my spiritual health was in need of some serious TLC.
The Edge of Nowhere. I decided to work with Event Horizon which does an amazing job of pulling me out of myself so I can solve issues unhindered by “noise.” Sure enough I started to see where energy blocks were having a negative impact. As with all Event Horizon sessions, a number of solutions were offered to address the situation.
I Can’t Hear You. It was during one of the better sessions that I realized that while I gave myself suggestions to address issues I wasn’t following up. I kept setting the stuff aside for later after which I would go back to writing. Luckily for me, this time I listened.
One Thing Feeds Another. As I followed through on the suggestions I was inspired to go back and do another EH session during which more insight was gained and more suggestions given. This went on for a few days and I noticed those other energy blocks began to dissolve.
In some cases I didn’t even realize there was a block until it was gone.
Helping Hand. I continued working with Event Horizon and continued to follow through on the suggestions and continued to see improvements including subtle messages from the universe that helped me on my way. And then a funny thing happened. The messages became not so subtle. In fact, they got downright direct.
Read My Lips. The universe has a fun way of getting the message across and I’ve long known that when we ignore the messages, they get louder.
This isn’t always a good thing.
In this case the increased volume was relatively harmless. A book that had appeared in my sphere of awareness months ago reappeared. This time I paid attention and bought it. I also got an email from a dear friend, the right words at the right time. Interestingly, both sources had the same message
Don’t forget the basics!
It was through each of these messages I realized that in all the chaos I had forgotten to nurture my own spirituality.
I was so busy being there for everyone and everything else I forgot to be there for this.
Energy In Bloom. As I read the book and did the exercises which included relaxation, meditation, visualization, grounding, I found the creative whispering increasing in volume.
The voice of the source – what goes into bringing a story to life.
Bruised But Healing. When you are a creative, to create is to feed the soul. The worst thing that can happen is to turn off the spigot but just as damaging, as I’ve learned, is to turn it on full blast. I believe my soul understands this now. I recognize the need to find other ways to nurture that soul. Especially when the avenues open to me are cut off by lockdown.
Elizabeth Maxim 