I’ve had a weird year energetically. Everytime I want to be flying forwards with a project, something slows it down. Whether it’s proof copies of books getting lost in the post and delaying book 2 release day by 2 months, or hot weather making me disinclined to create and crack on with writing book 3. It doesn’t feel like an ebb, more a really slow flow – like a river that, rather than dashing to the sea, is meandering gently, no rush. If I were in a boat on that river, I would have time to examine every bit of scenery as we passed slowly by.
Honestly, it’s slightly infuriating…I’d much rather be riding the rapids of the flow. But it is what it is, so I’m trying to go with it. I have to keep telling myself “don’t rush the river”. And as the theme for this month in the Fall in Love With Life group is “energy” I’m doing my best to honour both my energy and the energy of life. Even if life is flowing like a tortoise with a gammy leg!
I do know (from years of bitter experience) that fighting the energy of life is a waste of your energy. Resisting an ebb or trying to rush the river do not get you forward faster, you just end up exhausted, irritated, frustrated and stressed out!
Much better to accept it, to go with the slow flow, to embrace the ebb. At some point, the energy will change, the flow will return or speed up, and if you’re not exhausted by having fought the ebb or slow flow, you can throw yourself into enjoying and going with the faster flow.
Before I learned to accept an ebb, I would fight it tooth and nail, until I was so frazzled and drained that I didn’t have the energy left to go with the flow when it returned! Looks like life has a new lesson for me now – instead of rushing towards the next ‘to do’, I appear to need to learn to meander, gently in that general direction.
Life as we know it makes that harder – you have to show up for work every day and give your best. You have to take care of yourself and your family. And maybe you see other people flying forward in their lives and you just want to follow them, to rush, to keep up.
That’s a big thing for me – I’m in a group of indie authors and a lot of them write multiple books every year. Me? 2 books over 4 and a half years. Ok, that’s not the full story (for them or for me), but the temptation is still to race to keep up with the front runners.
But you have to live your life. With your energy, and the energy of the world as it is showing up for you. Different parts of the same river will run at different speeds. Sometimes there’s an ebb and you seem to be going backwards, or nowhere. Sometimes there’s a s l o w f l o w, moving but not moving very fast. And sometimes the river is running so fast you don’t know which way is up!
Wherever you are on the river of life right now, do your best to accept it and go with the flow. Be grateful for the slow times and the ebbs, they allow you to stop and smell the roses, to rest and mull and ponder…and they help you conserve your energy for the inevitable return of flow, for those times when all you can do is hang on and try to enjoy the ride!
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