What a writer learns by not writing

AWOL. MIA. AFK.

Honestly, as I sit down to write this long-overdue newsletter, I don’t know precisely how overdue it is. So, I check.

And I see that it’s been four weeks since I’ve put fingertip to keypad and sent a THINK email your way.

Did you notice I was gone? Did you miss my missives?

I’ve been otherwise occupied and it’s been a bit of a pop in my balloon that no one seemed to notice that THINK was languishing in a state of un-thunk funk.

So, is it any wonder that as I slogged through 14-plus days of sleep-deprivation and flogged myself upright to respond to clients’ disappointment (at least they noticed I was absent!) and pound through the missed work deadlines and must-do’s … any wonder that in the wee corners of the back of my mind, would come the thought, plaintive and sorry-assed: Does anybody even notice I’ve gone AWOL, that THINK is MIA, and that I’m into my solid fourth week AFK?

So while you, dear reader, do not appear to have noticed my absence, I, on the other hand, have been obsessed with the fact that I haven’t been THINKing.

I’m obsessed about it because, well, you know, this little bit of writing that I do with THINK? — it’s kind of the only thing that keeps me connected at all to the woman/writer I think I was meant to be … and egads, though the prospects are looking dimmer everyday, the woman/writer I still hope to be.

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing."
—- Benjamin Franklin

Last week, I came across that bon mot of wisdom written so long ago. It startled me even in my fatigued state.

I obviously wasn’t writing anything worth reading of late. But I was doing something worth writing about.

I’ve been at someone’s side while they dealt with significant challenges. It’s been mentally and physically depleting for that person and for me. It’s been, in equal parts, the roughest and easiest four weeks of my life.

Rough because, well, I was exhausted, because someone I love was in pain (there’s almost nothing you can do take someone else’s pain away and the frustration of that and of simply being around pain itself, can be enervating). Rough because I wasn’t getting much sleep, and rough because I was in the very unfamiliar position of not delivering 100% on-time for my clients.

But this was also a surprisingly easy time, because I discovered that when you push past the initial knee-jerk first thoughts of “this is too much,” “I can’t do this much longer,” etc. When you stop focusing on being inconvenienced or being detoured off the path of fulfilling your own desires.

When you stop insisting that you or the person you love deserve what isn’t and relax into the reality of what is.

When you slog your way through all that … you find yourself smack in the heart of the only center that holds: love, truth, being present with someone in their life. And with yourself.

Being there not just for another, but for yourself. And not running away, mentally, emotionally, or physically.

Sure, for several days and nights I was stunned by fatigue but for a great many more, I was also surprisingly happy — mostly amazed at the opportunity to be real with someone. (Let’s be honest: most of us spend 24/7 avoiding being real with anyone, including ourselves.)

To be real. Right there in the thick of things.Looking life’s frailty dead-on in the eye, and a little bit through their eyes, and not flinching.

Rolling through the waves of wanting to be there 100% for someone you love and then suddenly fighting the undertow of panic when a client calls asking where a story is, or sleepless at 3 a.m., wondering if the rest of life will be this hard. Keeping your head above the water, just barely, and wondering when you’ll get sucked out to sea again.

And then, miraculously, that center holds and love buoys you up each and every time.

Like a merciful mermaid or purposeful porpoise gliding into your path at precisely the right time. Bringing a laugh, songbirds outside the window, patience, two-way love, kindness of friends who drop off baked breads and salads.

Lifting you up, letting you catch your breath, landing you back on the beach, waterlogged, for sure, but sort of giddy with gratitude — for the chance to learn more viscerally what love is.

It’s an odd and awkward gift in ways — to make space for another human being’s suffering. And it’s supremely hard work to not give that gift everything you’ve got.

Because it’s tempting. To just give yourself over to another. To become so intoxicated by tenderness, by caring, by a profound sense of souls doing souls’ work together in some inextricable, unknowable way.

But, because life is always teaching, because there’s always a twist in the story, because love demands not just love for others but love for self … you’ve got to keep something in reserve. You’ve got to remember that your experience, your life, is just as important, too.

The trick is to not get lost in making that space for someone. To not be subsumed by being present. To not get lost in love. For me, it also meant to recognize that if writing is who I am, I better damn well find time to do it. No, not find time — make time.

And that’s what led yesterday and today back at my keyboard after four weeks away, carving out hours to sit down and create something that matters to me, even if to no one else. So many other things to do, clients to please, bathrooms to clean, teeth to floss, and yet knowing that none of that is more important that writing. Right now.

And, to have that validated. To hear my Mom’s voice on the other end of the phone, when I say I’m not coming over, telling me, “Write, baby. Just write. I’m okay.”

Look, I’m not writing the great American novel. What takes place in THINK isn’t going to win me a Pulitzer Prize or supply an income in my dotage. But it’s me. It’s who I am.

These four weeks have taught me how unavoidably intertwined taking care of yourself and taking care of others is.

How you can think you’re the one that’s giving so much and then you realize, full-stop, it’s the other person who’s giving you something you didn’t even know you needed.

How, in deeply challenging times, if we allow it, what we think is love gets deglossed and demythed and deconstructed from long-held paradigms and tired-out patterns, and how what remains, again, if we allow it, transforms into something even bigger. How love keeps on.

How, the most important thing in the course of other-love is to not compromise self-love.

And how essential it is to recognize that without one, the other has no meaning.

It’s an understanding — a story — worth being absent for.

It’s a story worth writing.

And reading.

And, by the way, I’m BAK.