Personal identity and Investment in Writing

But here I am writing anyway. It is strange how caught up our personal identities become in our work. Maybe it helps us do a better job, but it can be destructive too. Why can it help us do a better job? Because we are personally invested. But the downside is that it means I have slipped again into letting my happiness depend on something not completely in my control.

But how to escape that? Writing takes up most my waking hours. I use pieces of me in my books. I make myself vulnerable. And I'm making something that depends on me. How can I not be inveested?

On the other hand, everyone has bad writing hours, days, weeks, or even more. My default answer, unfortunately, is to plow through it until I wreck my physical and mental health. Fortunately, I now have someone in my life who won't let me do that to myself.

The answer seems to be allow personal investment without allowing happiness to depend on the success or failure of my work. Small amounts of happiness and failure are probably normal but anything can be taken to extremes. Easier said than done.

How do you manage the ups and downs of writing? How do you manage the balance of personal investment and identity? Or are you likee me and haven't quite figured it out?

Solitude (reblogged)

Solitude.
Posted by someone2b4u in Poem

Sitting here
Takes the time away.
And as time slips, I focus,
Only to become lost in thought.

I cherish this moment,
Steeped in blissful quiescence.
For at this time,
I am not weighed by labels.

At this time,
I am neither student nor boyfriend
Nor the son of my parents, nor Indian
I am human, I am alive.

Reality pervades in intervals, though.
Bringing with it the sum of my problems.
In waves of fractured glass, I am submerged,
Immersed in reflections
And for those moments
I merely exist among myself.

But like the ocean, reality recedes
I stare as it makes its way back into its crevice
As a result, reality becomes clear
I become filled with understanding.

Beginning to lose focus,
Slipping back into objectivity.
As tenses begin to make sense
I tense and assume the proper pretense

Until the next moment comes.

The Light Side: Unleash Your Writing Potential (Anahata)

Anahata chakra symbolizes the consciousness of love, empathy, selflessness and devotion. On the psychic level, this center of force inspires the human being to love, be compassionate, altruistic, devoted and to accept the things that happen in a divine way. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Anahata (heart -level of the spine). unstruck, unhurt, unbeaten. love, empathy, selflessness, and devotion. Compassion, altursism, devotion to and acceptance of things in a divine way. follow your heart-wish (my word), not baser unfulfilled emotions and desires. psychic healing.

• Heart-wish: What is your dearest wish for your writing? If you could reach your full potential, what would it be like? This is your hope. If you are like me, your writing journey has had unexpected twists and turns, ups and downs. Your perceptions and expectations change. Your idea of your potential changes. But keep the hope and you will not be able to give up forever.
• Acceptance: Do you have trouble accepting your current ability and state? Change is inevitable so don't beat yourself up so much over your now. Practice and perseverance needs time to deliver the pay-off. As your skill increases, the pay-offs may seem smaller but they are still improvements and the effects are still cumulative. You can back-slide for a while but the effort will pay off. Accept the bad and remind yourself of the good. If there doesn't seem to be much good lying around, find some or create it.
• Healing: Acceptance is a necessary part of healing. Are you in need of healing? Good! You recognize that a problem exists. That is a great start. Now for the bad news. Healing takes many forms and also takes time. Things might get worse before they get better. But there is always a bottom point and after that you have to improve. When you heal, your writing might be different because of what you have experienced but that is not a bad thing. Your writing is an expression of you and that you may have changed as well. As a person with bipolar, I go through the hurt-heal process X times a year. So I say from experience that if writing is important, you can give up from time to time because you can't “stay given up”. You will write again. But my bipolar has also taught me that the healing comes faster if I don't stop writing completely because for me writing is an essential part of me that needs to be nurtured no matter how I feel that hour or day or month.

Related articles

• The Light Side and Dark Side of Writing (An Introduction) (dragonplume.wordpress.com)
• Chakra balancing and clearing (essenceofnature.co.za)
• 4th Chakra Say . . . (holly-troy.com)