This post stirred something this morning in my heart.  A part of my heart that I have shoved to a back corner.

For about a year now, I have been feeling out of sorts and lost a little bit.  I have been trying to find my way back to a spot where I was experiencing a lot of joy and satisfaction in life and the people in it.  Not that this was necessarily a good thing, depending on people and things to give me joy, given that those things ultimately let me down.

However this post brought to mind a conversation with an artist friend.  She worked non-artistic job and didn’t really produce any sort of art work.  She struggled to find the time to create.

I related, not that I am an artist by profession, (although there are many parts of being a teacher that could be call an art form) but that I had made room for a lot of other things but creating was no longer one of those things.

For much of my life, I found great joy in creating.

Maybe life-giving is the word for it.  

I was never really good, but I loved making crafts, I loved painting and drawing.  I love color and paper, and I loved to design.  I didn’t pursue this as a career because it wasn’t any fun when I made it a job. It remained a part of my life throughout college and beyond. I made things for people, flower pens, cards, valentines, and much more.

However, recently, everything creative has been shoved into a messy corner in my room. (Maybe a metaphor for my life?)

Everyday I have been staring at it, thinking I need to organize it, throw somethings away.   Once there were plans to make a craft corner in my room, a place for me to work and create, now it is just covered with textbooks and piles of mail.

Recently, I have been driven to points of panic and anxiety about my life and my career.  Here I am in grad school and I constantly question whether I am on the right track.  Do I really want to do what I say I want to do?  Do I like where I am headed?  (I tend to over think and over analyze, not the best thing!) I have pressures from inside my head and outside. 

At this point in the summer, with the pressures of grad classes and travels, I haven’t had much time to spend creating or cleaning really.  Any extra time, I spend it sleeping or working out.  I am drained, just as much and maybe more then I was at the end of the school year 4 weeks ago.

What I realized this morning, that those things that truly refresh or give life to my soul, have been put aside because it doesn’t seem as productive as the other pressing things.   

So if I am doing this tangibly, am I doing this intangibly.  Do I shove the life giving parts of my life aside to make room for the things that seem more pressing?