Confessions of a creative working mom
The other kind of morning
This morning started like any other morning; I meditated for 20 minutes, then went downstairs, made the kids sandwiches for school, sat down to write a bit, and created the intentions for the day; I had to tend to a couple of bureaucratic errands. That’s alright, I thought; I can do that in 30 and go on to the new daily blogging habit I started three days ago, no sweat.
I sensed the creepy nervous feeling of “I know how that’ll go, you delay your writing, the whole routine goes down the drain,” I rose from the study to make the morning coffee, decisive about this one thing, no upsets today! You’re going to… be in the moment Orit! I said to myself insistently, enjoy it all while you’re at it, away with the fearful undermining thoughts!
Nothing makes me happier than being in a high level of integrity with myself. I have those minor habit changes that are supposed to change my life in the long run… Like this daily blogging habit I’m trying to get back to, or the kettlebell routine I started last week that goes into my daily training between 8:00 and 9:00 am…
All that’s well and good, but then bureaucracy comes in, and this whole beautiful morning routine, now extended until noon in its latest glorious version with the daily blogging, as it should be, goes a wall. This other kind of morning/ life/ resistance, as Steven Pressfield would have it, make me exactly 4 hours late to the blogging date with myself and you all and entirely out of integrity.
A mom’s integrity
I’ve been thinking about establishing the circus mom’s club for a few years now.
You know when becoming a mother completely disrupts everything you worked for during years of practice for about two years in a row if you’re lucky…
Then you need to find that inhuman power to get back into performance shape and be a mom to your first child, which is tiring and challenging enough… It happened to me with my first son, he was born in 2006, and I went back to perform on the trapeze in 2008, teaching for a whole year as well, when I finally decided in 2009 to quit both and dedicate the part-time job I was left with to creation only… That’s when I started writing and directing full time, even with my kids on my breasts during rehearsals…
There’s still hope, even for me
I am 10 years after that now, writing this blog, committing to writing it daily, and even if I’m late, I still am doing it. Which I learned to pat myself on the back for. Sitting in front of my daily notes this evening, I will be able to mark this as “done.” So, I guess there’s hope, but…
If I want to be gritty, and I do, since writing this blog is my daily writing practice, and since I started reading Angela Duckworth, I am all set and deep into “deliberate practice.” Tomorrow I will try to write closer to 9:30 as planned… Oops, I just remembered my son’s Holocaust commemoration day ceremony in school tomorrow at 9:40…If I want to be in integrity with my mom’s commitments, I’ll have to be there and not write my blog. You’ll be kind enough to wait; I hope blogging will be the next thing I do immediately after returning from school.
Deliberate Practice
says Angela Duckworth in her book Grit. Which I highly recommend to any striving creator 🙂
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