Pushing and Relaxing

I'm working on a novel. Like, really, for reals. 

Know how I know? I'm throwing things away and enjoying that process.  

Also: when I sit with fingers on the keyboard, I'm excited and a little nervous. I know what will happen, what actually HAS to happen, but I don't know how it happens until my fingers start moving. 

I've been working on this novel for a long time, through many drafts. I've also carried it with me at times when I couldn't work on it because logistics, because energy, because anxiety, because perfectionism, because reasons.

It's all very Ecclesiastes: times for this, times for that; fallow and fecund; lean and large. Metaphor-for-less and metaphor-for-more. I'm trying to remember that the fallow times have helped make the fecund times possible, and be grateful for them.

Through the years, through the times and family and country and culture I grew up in, I've learned (perhaps too well) to keep pushing myself, to keep trying. To persist, if you will, regardless of opposition. Tired? Push harder. 

As I age, my body is teaching me that rest is also important. Relaxing is also the body's "work." Rest is necessary. Only with rest can I push again. (Maybe if I'd delivered a child I'd have already learned that, but I did not. I am at least learning on a book.)

Without sounding too woo-woo (after Ecclesiastes!), things happen in their own time.

On a different project--also a novel, though not my own--I had a conversation this morning. We have had this conversation in the past. I have presented my perspective several times. This morning, another opening came up to present my perspective, and the conversation took a different direction. 

The final product will be better because it has been delayed--by pandemic, by perfectionism, by energy, by reasons.

Things happen in their own time.