blood and guts

A famous author ( I forget who ) once said, "Writing is easy. I just stare at the page until I begin to sweat blood."

The new semester starts tommorrow. The dread and anxiety sits heavy in my hands and shoulders. "you're going to fall on your face", it says. "The last few years, the last semester, all a fluke. Your ideas are going to dry up, you're going to find yourself in over your head and drown."

These are the voices, the fears that I must overcome, that we must all face when embracing challenge. Truth is, I fall apart inside before every semester of school whether I am teaching, am a student or both. It is difficult to tell if it is my intutition trying to warn me to slow down or whether it is the tumult of new ideas clamoring for attention, defying me all at once. Regardless, it is big. It is overwhelming, deafening.

It will be a few days weeks before I can relax, see it all sort itself out and enjoy the ride.

Art is easy. Fun. Relaxing. Isn't it?

Pfft.