My best buddy is, among many other things, a writer and aspiring novelist.
Like many would be novelists and other creative eclectics she does not currently ‘make her living’ doing her passion.
What to I mean "doing her passion’?
I mean actually making a living, paying the rent, financing her lifestyle, by working as a writer and novelist!
It’s not that she doesn’t write. She does. She writes articles — and gives them away. She ‘pays the rent’ by working as a policy analyst, writing policy briefs.
Like many of my clients she yearns to live a life filled to the brim with work that isn’t work — the work of her creative self expression.
But, the rent must be paid. The food purchased. The car fueled. So, she works at a job that meets some of her creative needs, with people that she likes and that fills her belly BUT not her soul.
And, like so many others she pours her energy into her JOB. She pours the water of her creativity onto what I think of as the Vegetable Garden. It feeds her belly. It sustains her body.
But, she forgets to water the Garden of Her Soul.
NO! All the water of creativity is poured in sustaining the body — BUT not the soul and spirit.
Is the same true for you?
Do you pour all the Water of your Creativity onto your "Job"?
When you don’t water the Garden of Your Soul your spirit withers. My friend finds that she gets SICK! And, her first reaction is to pour even more into her JOB — into the basics. To say, "Oh! I’ll just give up the writing for now. I can’t do it all. I can do the writing later when I feel better!"
WRONG!
She is ILL because she is not watering the RIGHT garden.
What she needs to do is to water her Soul Garden. To sit in front of the computer and write. To pick up a brush and paint. To grab some coloured tiles and make mosaics.
She needs to CREATE.
Only when she waters her Soul Garden will her energy return. Only then will the illness leave.
