Denial

That day in high school when I took out my No. 2 pencil and filled in the bubbles on the career aptitude Scantron sheet, the last word I expected to see on the paper which came in the mail was the word, "nun".

What the fuck? 

That is what I would have thought had that been in my vocabulary in 1986. 

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I didn't write during the recent long holiday weekend.  I didn't listen to the Creative Nonfiction Podcast and I didn't think about where my story was going.  As I drove to my neighborhood Starbucks I didn't acknowledge, though I felt the presence of a hitch hiker I'd picked up somewhere along the way.  The hitch hiker named, Doubt.    

I'd had a rotten night sleep.  My dog, Ike, kept jumping on and then off the bed at 5:30 am, just close enough to my 7 am alarm that the pressure I felt to get back to sleep quickly, made it impossible to do just that so it wasn't surprising that I argued with myself as I approached the turn towards home. 

Maybe you should just go home, get a good night sleep and start fresh tomorrow.

No, no.  You know how that goes.  You break the habit one day and then one day becomes two, then three, then you never really had the habit at all.  How long has it been?  2 weeks?  

I drove on.  There was a jam outside the Starbucks, cars waiting for other cars to pull out of their coveted spot.  

Forget it.  

I drove to a smaller Starbucks a mile away.  I wanted to sit in a cozy armchair but the one I wanted was facing a twenty something Asian boy-man who was leaning forward watching something on his laptop he'd set up on a side table stationed in front of his chair.  

Too tete a tete.  

I opted for the wood chair at the large wood table but the chair was too hard, the table - too unoccupied.  I looked at the smaller tables meant for one or two souls but they sat next to cold windows.  

Too drafty.  

I looked back at the armchair and the boy-man. 

What the hell?

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When I think about the writing sessions which have produced my best work, the thing they have in common is flow - that state of tapping into what I like to call, "Source".  Like the well of everlasting life, it is the well of creativity.  It contains internal truths.  No, I didn't mean "eternal" truths.  I meant the internal ones.  The ones inside of ourselves.  Our truths.  It is a soup containing kernels of stories waiting to be written.  To touch nib to paper is to tap Source. 

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Doubt got the better of me.  I wanted to continue writing Naked in the Hallway, but I didn't know how I'd gotten where I was and I was afraid I couldn't find my way back into the story.  I couldn't match what I'd started.  I was lost.  I told myself to just put pen to paper.  If I write long enough, sooner or later material from Source will start to flow.  It may take a few minutes or 30 but I believe that it will come.  It doesn't matter that I don't know the way.  Source knows.   

If I didn't believe these things, what is the point?  I don't know what I'm doing.  I'm lost in the dark without a road map.  Isn't that also true in life?  When we are at our lowest and we cannot see the way forward, what is it but a leap of faith that enables us to take one more step though we are afraid and know not how it will end?  

This brings me back to high school, back to the career aptitude test, to the number 1. followed by the word, "nun".  

I am one who seeks the well.

Desires to know truth.

To touch and 

To share the universal.  

It doesn't matter what I do.  

It is who I am.  

I am a seeker.

I am a writer.

I am a nun.