It's a new year...

I know I've spent some time here complaining, but I think I'm over that for the most part. Overall, I'm pretty content with my life. I know I'm making healthy choices and keeping nearly all of the "negative vibe merchants" out of my life. {What I mean by that is that I am no longer giving other people permission to drag me down with them...As someone who is empathetic, I have adopted other people's negative thoughts and attitudes. This especially plagued me in my 20s & 30s. I can't allow this in my life anymore. It has felt good accept responsibility for myself over these last couple of years I have implemented this.}

I'm currently wondering if I will find my creative spark again. It felt like I was really connecting with parts of myself I normally couldn't when I used to write. Naturally, for me, it was partly working in collaboration with others that I felt the most at home. Being part of a team is frustrating, rewarding, fulfilling and fun experience all in one. If it gets too intense and dysfunctional, it can ruin something mystical and good.

I know my personal mental block is 2 prong: 1) working far from home means less time at home to give towards creative ventures; 2) I have been forgetting/neglecting Sinclair's best and most accurate advice on the subject: "apply seat to chair and write!"

It's a new year, a new frame to work with. I'm hopeful I will keep my mind limber enough to be here a couple of nights a week. [Or, if not here, at least go into Word, and capture ideas, story lines, snapshots of scenes.]

I wish you all well and hope your creative muses are truly inspirational.

Here's for quiet and quietude

It is definitely what I miss the most. In this house, I can continually hear the upstairs neighbors. I hear when he stomps around, I hear when he "lectures" his elders, I hear when he squeaks his bed. [That is getting very annoying, as he seems to do it continually when I am awake and in my living room. If I get up in the middle of the night and check my email, he starts that damn bed squeaking again. It's something I really don't want to ponder in any way, shape or form...I am most disturbed by it when I have the kids here. I already presume he's not to be trusted around children and that squeaking further cements it.]

I realize; it's all completely my fault. I picked here to live. The choice in this small town is very slim, as far as affordable rent (with fairly safe location) goes. I know that it is best for me to by as close as possible to where the kids live.

So, I need to find my own ways to cope. I have noticed that my creative process has really closed down since living here. A huge part of it is this house. The feeling of being monitored (even just audibly) has shut me down. I'm trying very hard lately to try to work around this feeling of repression.

I hope I can. It has altered me for the worse to not try to be creative in some way.