Growth Spurts VS Resistance

Resistance. 

According the the Borg. It is futile. 

And as any hard core Trekkie knows, this is not true. At least not for Captain Jean Luc Picard and crew.

For the rest of us, the reality is that resistance is literally futile. It is pointless. Is does not serve us. It keeps us from our dreams. It is the nasty voice in our head that speaks over everything else and says, "You suck, why bother, someone else already did that and did it better than you ever could." 

Steven Pressfield calls Resistance "an impartial force of nature, like gravity or the laws of thermodynamics." It's not OUR voice speaking to us, it is not self-talk, it is Resistance talking. And Resistance is a totally indifferent asshole and is completely full of shit!

Something else....

The magnitude of Resistance we feel is directly proportional to the size of our Dreams/Goals/Evolution of our Soul.

I have BIG dreams and goals right now. And the resistance that I am currently feeling is ALL-CONSUMING. It's involuntarily tear-inducing, terrifyingly paralyzing, curl-up-in-a-ball-in-the-corner-and-rock-back-and-forth, MAMMOTH-sized, capital R, Resistance.

And speaking of dreams, I've had some doozies this week. Apparently this might  have something to do with the intense solar flares and storms happening on the sun at this time (and the reason we are seeing such amazing auroras for the past few weeks).

In one of my dreams a few nights ago, two of my writing SHE-roes were with me and we were all at a book tour event. I was in a room with Jenny Lawson (@thebloggess) and Heather Armstrong (@dooce) and one of us was about to go out to do a reading. Practical/awake me says that of course it was one of them - Jenny is currently on a book tour and I keep seeing all her photos and updates online - but dreamer me thinks that maybe it was me, and they were my cheering squad. (Talk about #squadgoals!) Could it be that my dreams are sending me a message through two women who I KNOW have struggled through and written about their own epic levels of resistance?

In the Seen and Heard In Edmonton podcast a few weeks ago, Karen Unland and I talked all about blogging and what is next for "The Stay at Home Feminist". I told her how I feel like I am in a transition phase with my writing. With Karen I spoke more about where I want my writing to go, but the truth is that this transition is not so much about where my writing will end up, but about how and why my writing has to grow. 

And growing up is hard.

Growth spurts are never graceful or easy. Have you seen a baby or toddler going through one? They fall down all the time, they are fussy as hell, they cry constantly, their sleep patterns are all messed up and NO ONE in the family is happy! The exact same thing happens to teenagers and apparently, to 40-something writers as well.

This is hard for me to write... 

For the past few years I have prided myself on being a "voice of reason" in the sea of noise on the internet. I've been the moderate. The more-chewy-than-crunchy mama, the not-too-far-left leftist, the small f-feminist, the advocate-not the activist. I've been wading into the shallow end of issues, but only so far that I can still stand on my tippy-toes and keep my head out of the murky waters. The harsh truth is that I've been steeping myself in mediocrity, because I thought this is what would make everyone happy, including myself. I was wrong. 

I am not happy like this.

I made a decision last night. And my stomach clenches and I start to cry just thinking about it, it terrifies me that much (Hellooooo Resistance!). As it turns out, mediocrity is not serving me as well as I thought it would. It is not the example of living that I espouse online or that I want to show my children and yet, it is what I am doing. And it is an option. I could go on like this. I could keep on talking the talk, and just barely walking the walk. Or I could just shut up, stand up, and WALK. Be terrified, bawl my eyes out, and still put one foot in front of the other and will myself to live my dreams.

the war of art by Steven Pressfield - Get it. Read it. memorize it. 

Fear never goes away. Resistance never sleeps. We have to wake up and fight the battle against it every day. 

So fight I will. 

Every fucking day. 

In the best way I know how. 

With my voice.

The one that somehow got lost in the shallow end. 

Excuse me while I dive down headfirst, ruin my make up and hair, and get it back. 

N~