The Soul Wants Right Action (And I'm Still In Bed)
On commitment, distraction, and the sneaky ways we avoid the work we actually care about If you've ever built an entirely unnecessary project just to avoid the one that actually scares you, welcome. P
I constantly feel the tug of life pulling at my sleeve with obligation.
That’s just life, I tell my kids. Life is full of obligations, suffering, and work, and the key to peace is addressing the tasks the soul needs answers to.
They stare at me like: God, Mom, you’re such a bummer.
They’ll get it one day. Hopefully faster than I did.
The soul wants right action. The hard part is figuring out what right action actually is. That’s the ongoing, never ending, always iterating process that makes up a life. And honestly? Most people never really engage with it. They stay busy, asleep at the wheel, day after day.
I know that sounds judgmental. It’s something I’m working on. But it’s what I see.
And I get it. Because starting anything is genuinely hard.
I’m In Bed Right Now
Literally. Writing this from bed. Ignoring my kids, but in my defense they’re older now and fully capable of making toast. My bed is cozy. My tea is hot. My heat pack is doing its thing. Reading other people’s work is deeply comforting.
Other people’s work is wonderful, isn’t it? I read for inspiration. I read to find my teachers. I read to feel secure in the universe.
But in order to survive life, I need to make my own work. Today and every day.
The commitment to do one thing for one hour is fleeting for me. I am sneaky good at getting out of it. I will invent an entire project out of thin air just to avoid the creative project I’m actually supposed to be working on.
Just last week I had a full Summer Book Club ready to launch. Complete logo, rollout plan, full chapter analysis index. The whole kit and caboodle. Hypomanic much?
Then I realized I’d done all of that to avoid the online singing course I’m supposed to be building, which is for some reason terrifying to me. I texted my girlfriend Daya about it and she was not even a little surprised.
My bipolar 2 tendencies make this particularly spicy, because my brain serves up distractions in the form of genuinely exciting ideas. It’s not laziness. It’s a very enthusiastic form of avoidance.
The Real Problem: Commitment
It’s taken me half a lifetime, depending on how long I live I suppose, to develop anything resembling discipline. I live between so many worlds: mothering, performing, writing, teaching. Switching between them and finding identity in each one is a bit like code switching. Not the same thing, I know, just similar in energy.
The single biggest hindrance to a creative life, in my experience, is commitment.
Because if I commit to this thing, I might miss that thing. And what if THAT thread is the one that makes everything click? What if I’m supposed to be pulling on a completely different thread right now?
And then there’s the shadow stuff. The fame stuff.
I don’t want to be famous. I really don’t. I want to do good work. Stay on a mastery path. Build a sustainable audience that grows with me over time. Feed my soul. Make a living.
But my shadow? My shadow wants fame desperately. Craves it. Needs it. My shadow is always scanning the room, looking for who’s watching, cataloguing praise and envy. She’s chasing a dopamine fix that will never actually satisfy her.
I pull on that thread and it starts to make me sick. There’s a lot to say about this, which is exactly why I’m writing a play about it.
I wake from this particular dream daily and begin again.
If I let all of this accumulate, it adds up like death by a thousand tiny paper cuts, and my soul starts to weep. So I return to what I can do this hour. It’s the only way to combat the very loud strength of my own will.
The irony is not lost on me that the act of writing these words IS the work I’ve been avoiding. Here I am doing it anyway. One hour at a time, one word after another.
Maybe that’s what the soul has been whispering all along. Not to conquer the resistance, but to dance with it. Show up despite it. Let the work happen in the spaces between the fear.
The soul doesn’t need perfection. It just needs presence.
And sometimes presence looks like staying in bed with your tea and finally, finally writing it down.
My Current Obsessions A little treat for making it to the end.
📖 Reading: The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin
🎧 Listening: The Funniest Conversation You’ll Ever Hear About Achieving Inner Peace | Pete Holmes and Dan Harris in conversation