Day 33: Bioluminescence

It's a hot, still night and the cars aren't moving and my tummy is rumbling and I have nothing to get up for tomorrow. I'm going really easy tonight. No pressure tonight. Loved writing that last post, the most alive I've felt in ages, but it took everything to grind it finally out. I'll burn myself out with too much of that. I don't want to burn out I want to be a glowworm in deep caverns converting enzymes from the dirt and matter around me into light. A soft light, a pale light, but one that shows the way down into depths we could never find alone.

Wrote yesterday's piece during the day, then went to work at 5 for the close, back at 1am and sat in my room at the top of the house on the top of the hill with a ginger and lemon tea typing frantically to get the post finished before bed. Hit publish around 4am, a few hours sleep and back up for the pub open this morning. Worked through till 5.

So here I am tonight with a pot of Sri Lankan ready meal and my feet snug in slippers and no forcing anything to come. I will be the branch that doesn't push away its blossom before it's ready nor cling to the blossom when it's time for it to fall. I'll be a copper pot stained in silence. I'll be runner beans saved for winter. I'll be a cabin creaking lonely in the rain.

No energy to make a theme around this, rewrite the post with this as the through-line, but here's something I think I'm learning, in case it's of any use to you: It is so much better to tap meaning in your life from a process than from results. Find something that is worthwhile to do, that sets your bones singing with the holy music, and force yourself to do it over and over, to please no one but the solemn ghosts. When not one other human gives a shit: just go and do it. When they love you and throw parades in your honour: go and do it. Success brings as many difficulties as failure, it's all the bubbling river, there is nothing that matters save the work.

I'm too tired to write. There's nothing coming out. That's fine, I'm happy, I'm going to go and pass out in bed.