January 14, 2016 - Daily Notes

"So basically you are doing two full-time jobs plus another part-time job," said my primary care physician.

It was my annual visit and she is thorough. This came at the end of a series of questions designed to get at the possible underlying cause of the edgy feeling I've had for two weeks. My blood pressure is perfectly calm. Pulse strong and vibrant. Lungs working beautifully. Nothing a doctor can measure is imbalanced. My body is healthy. 

This tense anxious feeling? Apparently it does not originate in my heart. I started to explain where exactly I feel it. In my head. The vibration travels down my spinal column before it branches to my limbs. My ears constantly hear it, a high-pitched ring.

"Let's keep an eye on it, if it doesn't resolve in a couple of weeks then give me a call," she smiled. "I think it's stress. See if you can reduce it."

Today and tomorrow I hope to write the marketing and business plan for the launch of Issue Two of Lucia. I am beyond excited. I don't know exactly how it will get done, though. The likelihood is I will spend Saturday and Sunday working on Lucia because today I have PR clients to attend to. Media to pitch. Research to do. Calls to make. A living to procure for myself. Or at least, February's rent. Then there are taxes. Bills to pay. Emails to answer. And it's my night to teach yoga at the women's shelter, one of my favorite things. I know you know. We all have things.

The independent magazine business is wholly different than I envisioned it being one year ago today, when Lucia was an idea beginning to take form. I am still finding my feet. This struggle to be creative during the week while needing to manage the practical, the organizational, the tangible, the everyday work--I am not alone in it. I find comfort in my artist friends who tell me their experience is similar. "Managing" time requires headspace. "Creative" time requires heart space. One must be like a ninja during the week if she is to jump between to the two and not lose her footing.

This morning I looked at the watercolors I've been painting since August. When I painted them, I was not in my head at all, I was painting from a deeper place. I put my hand on my heart, closed my eyes, and listened. 

"Work with me," heart said. "I am here for you."

The exquisite tool that is my brain has been trying to run the show for the past two weeks. Gathering momentum, the juggling act of plans, schedules, ideas, dreams...it does so much. It's quite an instrument, but it can not work alone. It needs heart to ground, shelter, feel, and guide. Heart is what can make everything brain imagines into real.

I am teaching the two to work in tandem. It is a practice.

How do you do it?

xo
laura