This email is coming late in the day.
You, no doubt, pay close attention to when I send this email on Friday. I imagine you orient your whole day around my creative contribution.
I could tell you I was busy.
I could tell you the timing wasn’t right.
These would all be somewhat true in the way that politicians tell the somewhat truth.
Steven Pressfield writes a lot about what I have experienced this week and every time I attempt to write something. In his book The War of Art, he outlines the enemy to any creative pursuit: Resistance.
Pressfield writes, “Resistance with a capital R is an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential. It’s a repelling force. It’s negative. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.”
This email newsletter is one of my countermoves against Resistance.
It is not enough, dear reader.
I must show up and actually do the work.
Cal Newport once said that writer’s block is simply the experience of being a writer. It is always a battle with Resistance. There is always a force trying to keep new art, new life, new joy from sprouting forth in each of us. There is always inertia and gravity keeping us from floating in the stars.
This week’s poem is the fruit of a week-long wrestling match with Resistance. It is Jacob’s blessing after the night of combat with a Divine Being.
I am grateful for you as a reader. You are sitting on my shoulder as I stare at the blank page and egging me on.
As you read, I wonder what Resistance is working against in your life. What work-in-potential is welling up in you? What do you need to show up to?
If would be so bold, please write in the comments about your potential projects or your experience with Resistance. I’d love to hear it.
15. A dying friend once told me to show up. A dying friend once told me to show up. When excuses make their points with elaborate slide decks, convincing proofs of this and that to obscure the truth that showing up is the whole game, set, match. I have started to write this poem a few times. I have jotted down notes and called that step one. Placeholder phrases like integrity means of one mind trapped on post-its as they float by. My wife tells me I can do all the things I want as long as I show up and do them. Watch me show up and curse the blinking black line that flashes its accusations on the blank page as I create this poem and make something of this life I have been given. When I drift away to rest in a rope hammock in the lush gardens I imagine to be real or fight make-believe tigers or climb cloud cliffs I’ll ask my dying friends and loving wife to call me back to the task at hand. Watch me show up to this moment.
My resistance is in playing guitar in ways I’m still learning our songs that have proven difficult. I can get by and enjoy the sounds I can put together, but get intimidated trying more intermediate or advanced skills so I often fall back to playing the same scale, the same two or three chords, looking songs up instead of trying by ear. This was a great reflection on being present to the work at hand!