I have sat down to write everyday this past week and every day I have stared at a blank page. The page’s lines taunting my unmoving hand, judging it’s silence. My heart beats chaning from a steady rhythm to a slow thump. After an hour I closed the book – unable to stare any longer – unable to sit in the silence surrounding me.
I have so much to say. So much has happened in these last two weeks that I feel like I have been on an emotional roller coaster. I have been brought to new heights of happiness and exhilarating joy and also been brought to my lowest, sitting in the corner of our guest room, crying with the door closed struggling to say what needed to be said.
It’s the holidays people say – they have a tendency to make us emotional. They have the ability to transport us to different places in our mind in an instant. Even to pasts long forgotten. That’s what they say anyway. They say that the holidays tend to bring about these moments of emotional exacerbation that clench onto our hearts and sometimes the grip is so tight we stay frozen in that moment until something brings us back to the present.

Today though, finally, the page has begun to fill — my heart spilling out onto the page without caution or a moment of hesitation. I have my wife to thank for that I think. My wife said something to me this morning. I told her my plan for the day and I said I have to write for my blog today. She questioned with her normal attitude, Who said? And I leaned back in my chair with a puzzled look on my face and said I missed posting on Wednesday. Without a moment of hesitation she said oh yeah, another internally mandated deadline and scoffed, rolling her eyes as she looked away. Don’t get me wrong she is my biggest supporter, but she also helps me keep myself grounded. So when she said that I just sat there thinking, damn, and instead of of keeping the momentum of my day I let myself sit and be in the moment. I made breakfast with my best friend who is visiting from Texas, I ate with my wife and brother-in-law, I revisited and reflected on my old poetry and just spent time being. Suddenly I found myself reaching for my notebook and the writing just flowed out of me.

It is a funny thing yanno – when you change the impulse to need to do something back to the pure desire, when you give yourself the time to remember the want of the thing, everything can change. When this morning I took a breather from thinking about my posting schedule and developing a following and all that goes along with it and instead took a minute to reconnect with my love of writing it made all the difference. I gave myself the time to remember the why behind my writing and let the concerns of timing fall away.

It is so easy to get sucked into the hustle of productivity, but some things need time -they need space to evolve naturally. Which has me thinking maybe, sometimes the silence of a blank page is exactly what you need to open not only your mind, but your heart.

Take time to reconnect during this holiday season. Although the feelings to come go and from you. Don’t be afraid to feel them – don’t be afraid to face the silence – stay with it – hold it – every day I am still learning that maybe the blank pages aren’t always a bad thing.