Morning Pages 1

Julia Cameron, author of the Artist’s Way, encourages writers to write morning pages before their day begins. They’re supposed to be handwritten every day, but I’m a bit of a rebel. They’re also meant to be private, but I’ve been private for quite a while. I think it’s time to reveal some things that want revealing. That’s what morning pages are about. Revealing things that you hide from yourself.

I woke up today excited about this blog! I surprised myself by actually letting go of all of the doubt and fear and starting my blog. I’d been thinking about it for a while, but I kept asking myself, “What exactly do you have to say? Who wants to hear what you think?” Now, as I sit typing, I realize the real question is do I want to hear what I have to say? Do I really want to know what I think?

I feel something moving within me right now. Can’t name it yet, but it doesn’t need a name to exist. It’s time for me to grapple with this idea of comfort, with complacency. I’m starting to realize that comfort thing can be as damaging as discomfort. What do I mean by this?

I remember when I was a little girl, about eight or nine, and I used to watch television commercials. My favorites were those Pizza Hut commercials with the girl sucking down strands of cheese as she laughed and talked with her parents. I told myself, “One day, you’ll eat like that. One day, you’ll sit in a restaurant with your kids and order pans of pizza and drink Coke until you pop.” I’d then go to bed (No need to go to the kitchen because there was nothing there.) and I’d dream, dream about those days when I’d have enough money to never be hungry again. I dreamed about my kids and my future husband and the smiles they’d always wear because they’d never been hungry like me. I’d give my kids names like “Mante, Shante, and DJ,” named after my husband, whose name would be Dante (Sorry Chico! Love you, Baby!). In my dreams we lived happily ever after, forever, despite the discomfort I’d experienced earlier in my life.

Now, I can buy that pizza and coke and I have the kids (not Dante, Mante, and Shante :-)), but I have my three and they are perfect. I got the great husband, the career I didn’t even know I wanted, and the comfort. That, I always knew I wanted, but what is missing? What within me is lacking now?

Maybe comfort, in some ways, smothers the ability to dream. I wonder this because I don’t dream anymore. I don’t have the ability to see that life can be more because I’m too comfortable in what it is.

I know what God has for me is abundantly more than I can imagine. I just don’t know what that abundance is. I wish there was a commercial that I could look at and know there is where I want to be. Then I could prepare for what I know is to come. And this is where the whining begins :-0)! Julia Cameron warns that morning pages will begin to sound like whining sessions and I was always leery of that, but at this time in this space, I really don’t care. Can’t heal what you won’t acknowledge. That’s my new mantra.

That comfort thing is a trip. It can trick you into thinking you’ve arrived when the journey has just begun.