Fewer words, more silence

I’m not feeling so wordy these days. Aside from stuff for clients, I’m not writing whole lot — little notes and ideas here and there, the skeletons of short stories. But blogging has fallen by the wayside. And for years, I’ve journalled almost daily: three pages of longhand, "brain-drain" writing every morning, as mandated by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way. But lately, I’m journalling much less often — once every week or so.

In place of the words, there’s silence. Or, some attempt at it. After years of saying I would, I’m finally embracing a daily meditation practice. Every day, for somewhere between 10 and 25 minutes, I’m sitting still, doing nothing, trying to focus on the spaces between the thoughts rather than getting all the thoughts down. It’s a different mindset for me, the active pursuit of nothing (is that an oxymoron?), but I like it.

In place of the words, there’s also music, or at least the beginnings of it. Two friends have gifted me two different guitars on extended loan and I’ve been teaching myself, slowly (oh God, so achingly slowly), the first chords. I have baby blisters on my fretting (look at me, with the guitar talk) fingers; I am inordinately fond of my calluses in the making.

So: fewer words, more silence, more music. I’m not really worried that the words won’t return. I think they probably need this space to return. Mostly, I’m fine with that.