The past week has been a bit challenging. I haven’t felt well for a couple of weeks, but the fatigue finally took me down. I called the doctor. I’m still waiting on lab results, but I likely have an infection, perhaps a flare-up of Lyme, something chronically auto-immune. It’s my life now. That said, I’m grateful that my illness is invisible and manageable. I’m learning to live with it. I need far more sleep than most people, and I’m learning to allow for that.

The biggest factor in maintaining my mental health is being creative, and that can be evasive when I am tired. You see, I lose my curiosity and become lethargic…or I become lethargic and I lose my curiosity. I’m easily confused. I am less able to still mind and body and less likely to be internally moved; I seek a meaningful distraction.

I have always read voraciously. There is never enough to read that I find compelling. Love memoir, murder mystery, biography, tarot mythology, interior design and more. Since feeling punky the past couple of weeks I have been laying around reading. I’ve read Designing Rooms with Joie De Vivre by Amanda Reynal. I’ve read How To Be Old by Lyn Slater, A Walk Through the Forest of Souls by Rachel Pollack, and It’s Not You by Ramani Durvasula, PhD. All in hard cover, old school. I would recommend each of them. I’m obsessed with the weight and smell and sound of a book. I’ll buy used whenever possible. I dog ear corners, mark pages with handmade and improvised book marks and if I intend to keep the tome and read it again or use it as reference, I scribble thoughts in the margins. I really use my books. I’ve got a Kindle device and the app on my phone, linked to more than one library membership. That just sucks the joy out of reading for me.

But I have not felt creative at all. Friends have tried to call me out, to get me to “do something, Susan, even if it’s wrong,” I hear my Mother say in my head. I ignore their promptings. It has taken an “accidental” discovery of some new idea, and suddenly I am fascinated with soft fascination. Did you know about this? Have you been holding out on me?! Let me introduce you to this lovely artist, Jane Lindsey. She’s my inspiration this week. She will explain soft fascination, and we will all be better off for having met her.

“Unused creativity is not benign. It doesn’t just disappear. It lives within us until it is expressed, neglected to death, or suffocated by resentment and fear. Unexpressed creativity starts to kill us from inside.” – Brene’ Brown