It has been a long month, it has been dragging. I couldn't avoid it, I was dropping in it again. It started to consume me, again.
Coming out of summer and reaching the autumn equinox, paired with eclipse season, sent me spiraling.
It's the going back to the routine. That feeling of 'going back to school' all those years earlier. Time to restart my strides of achieving and becoming. To work again in those things I left parked up during the kinder summer days, while I enjoyed walks along the coastal paths of Cornwall, resting on hidden trees, and tantra workshops in the hippy summer festivals.
Despite I look forward to the autumn days where I can wear my colourful funky coats, eat chestnuts (a Spanish tradition that reminds me of my grandparents) and walk through forests of english yellow, orange and red leaves; I can feel the sun hidding away earlier each day, the rain prevails and some kind of sadness lingers.
It feels like something dies within. Ironically, at this time of the year when society tells me to restart again, I feel like what was left of me dies. I feel purposless, wandering without meaning. Struggling from the being of the summer to the doing of September, and failing
Failing. Unable to raise early and do the so popular morning routine, which I gave up on, a long time ago. Struggling to find the purpose and motivation to paint, when the painting is seen as a product, and end result, and the love of the process is forgotten. When all the ideas, all that could be, pop and merge in my head. Overwhelm.
Failing. In the eyes of society, in my own viased perception. But who decided that producing and doing is success, while being, creating and loving are only side bussinesses.
A part of me wants to quick me back into motion. Come on! Jump back in the capitalist van wagon. How are you going to feel whole otherwise?
But stop. What is the point of the product, of achieving, of arriving, to an idea in our heads, that soon enough, once achieved, will become a new idea, an endless loop of yearning, wanting and unsatisfaction.
So I welcomed the procrastination, I simmered in it for a while, sitting on the sofa with moody face and a fair amount of shame. Procrastination, floating in the balance between doing and being
She was a bitch. Yes, I felt frustrated, angry, desmotivated, purposless, a failure. But also, she was a bitch! In the good sense of the word.
Could I give myself love when I was floating in the darkness? Going for a walk, having a bath, lighting some incess?
Initially I did it desperately, trying to somehow shift this darkness and feel the light being of the summer again. But that's not how it works. Could I accept the darkness as it was, and love myself through it? So I simmered in procrastination with a sliver of self-love.
And slowly, I started to paint again, I started to write slowly. Somehow finding meaning. But not in the striving and wanting. But in the every day, in the very process, in each brushtroke and in the feeling of the pen sliding on paper.
I can feel something dying within. The old me. And I know it's only the begining of a season of death before the spring of rebirth. But I start feeling the light of hope, even if small and faintly tinkling. A new feeling of purpose, to live the process, the every moment, the being, as it is. In this slow succession of darker days of autumn.
How are you finding the change into autumn? Do you struggle with the balance between doing and being? Between producing and creating? Between the process and the end result?
***
This writing and my painting 'Something Dies Within' are inspired by my own experiences. This piece will be exhibited at the group exhibition 'Drawing Down The Moon' at 54 The Gallery, in Mayfair, London.
When? 21st - 26th of October (next week!)
Where? 54 The Gallery, 54 Shepherd Market, London W1J 7QX
I hope to see you there!
Sending you love,
Raquel
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