I have been feeling stuck lately. There's a lot of chatter in my brain as I wrestle with staying productive whilst (check me out using "whilst") dealing with IBD. Bad stomach stuff.
I haven't been able to grab on to one direction and go, ya know? When this happens, I usually just percolate until something pops out. Or someone calls and asks me to sing at a holiday event, and that snaps me out of the creative churn. That sort of happened today.
Part of the problem is that I can't seem to name my priorities. One of the hardest parts of being sick most of my life is deciding how to spend my time. Chronically ill people call it spoons: you only get five a day, so how will you use them? Some days I only have two.
I'm marinating on how to set up my life to thrive over the next ten years, which I know will be tough. I need to bring in some income. But I'm such a multidisciplinary artist (or bipolarish) that I have a hard time choosing which road to take.
I think the letting go I wrote about last week is the same letting go I'm working on here. Sometimes sitting in the creative fog is exactly what the universe is asking for. When I'm in a haze, I make something just for the sake of making it. It feeds my soul and gives me something to focus on besides the stool sample I have to collect today. Glamorous, I know.
This week I had breakfast with an old friend who has Crohn's disease. She told me how completely spent she feels, and I felt so seen. Of course I know other chronically ill people struggle with fatigue. But I spend so much of my day in guilt and shame for "once again" being sick that hearing it from someone else made me feel better.
This week I was really not feeling well, and I'm waiting to find out whether this stomach thing is a big deal. It might be or it might not be. So while I wait, I did what I do. I wrote a song.
It's called Open Hand and it's a companion to last week's essay. It's about the grip, letting go, and learning to tell the difference. This is a rough cut, that I put together today. It may end up in a show, a concert, or for someone else to sing…or it will just live here. That’s sort of the point.
I hope it finds you on a day when you need it. ♥️
-Molly
