Regarding the things you need to do but don't want to do

Don’t trouble yourself with questions like:
Do I feel like it?
Or, do I want to do it?
We already know the answer.
It’s “no”.

And do not trouble yourself with - why?
Why don’t I feel like it?
Why don’t I want to get out of bed?
Why was I made this way?

And god forbid you start that comparison game
with questions such as:
Why is it so much easier for her?
How come they feel excitement
while al I feel is dread?

Friend,
I have asked those questions a thousand times
and have yet to find an answer.
I don’t know.
But may I suggest these questions instead:
How do you feel once your doing it?
What’s it like after?
What do notice when you’re putting stitches into fabric
and no longer obsessing
over unanswerable questions?

What I know is this.
For some of us it will always feel like work,
but to not do it is to wilt.
And so we water our earth
whether we want to or not,
because that’s the only way
we come back to life.

I wrote this little poem or reminder to myself last Winter in the bathtub when I realized that my longing to feel interested in life was getting in the of movement. I was always waiting for a ‘feeling’ to arrive that would spur me into action and became aware that at this rate of thinking I was doomed.

Yes, ‘feelings’ used to fuel my drive to cook and make music and garden and socialize and get out the door. But now longing and waiting for emotive ignitions to return only perpetuated my sense of loss and that popular shamed-based thought ‘what’s wrong with me?’

If I’m completely honest, once immobile I rarely feel like moving. Like if I sit down, I never FEEL like getting up. Hence why I find it impossible to get out of bed - even on a good day. Getting going is like paddling a stationary canoe against wind. But once I start it inevitably gets easier. And sometimes the wind even dies down, or I turn a corner and the current is in my favour.

For the most part I have made my peace with this current reality; that the things I need to do because they are good for me, I won’t feel like doing. But I must do them anyway, with heaps of compassion of course for the days my efforts don’t move me far. xoxo.