I was going through a secret box I keep hidden in the back of the closet in an old wooden chest. I call it my inspiration box.
It’s full of oddities, pictures, poems, sayings, childhood drawings, love notes, letters and everything in between. Sometimes when I’m feeling blocked or unsure, I begin the adventure of pouring through all that I’ve collected.
Today, I found a small (9cmX13CM) booklet from 1916 when my grandmother taught at a school. Inside were three poems meant to encourage its graduates. However, 85 years later, one of the poems by Longfellow is encouraging me.
A Psalm of Life by Longfellow
“Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fat;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.
What I find so profound about that is the fact that not only is he encouraging you to do things, but he’s also encouraging you to be patient with the outcome.
As a writer, you sometimes want to write, have it published, and then have instantaneous feedback. You want to know what’s happening to your piece, where it is in the universe, who is reading it and what they think.
Sometimes, however, all you can do is write something the best that you know how, and then just wait.
With my first magazine article out, a part of me is so curious as to how it’s being received. I want to know whose read it, how many have read it and what they thought of it. But I know that all I can really control is the part where I did the writing. I have to wait for the rest.
Sometimes that’s really hard, to just give up control like that. To release something into the world and just let it be.
The Chronicles of Girl at Play began in April 2001 as a way for me to chronicle my leaving a successful corporate position to become a self-employed writer.
