I wake up because my mind clears and starts turning gears. As of yet, I have not found the cause. All I know is that the thoughts in my head start tumbling until I am aware and awake and there is nothing I can do about it. I know people who can go back to sleep on command. They can never wake if they choose. I wonder what that is like. I wonder if it is worth envying.

When I first wake, it is hard to hear my own voice with clarity. More than that, it is hard to hear what I would say or think today. The first few hours of each day always start with the unfinished, unpolished thoughts of yesterday. Things I heard, conversations in which I failed to accurately represent myself, and problems that I have yet to solve. There is no difficulty in remembering for me.

As the day continues, I slowly or quickly fill my mind’s arms with new thoughts and observations. This is the only thing that I have found to get rid of yesterday. If my mind can grab enough of today, it will have to drop yesterday little by little. I would not say that I forget just because I drop a thought though. It often happens but it often does not as well.

So I sit here with my sore throat tea, with the cool air creeping in the open window trying to escape the ever strengthening sun outside, with a pile of old thoughts. I am desperate to start this day, as they say, new. I want to hear my own voice sound in the present, ready and alert, arms empty. But my purpose lies in yesterday. Today does not yet have a purpose. I am trying to knit one, trying to build one, trying to write one. I struggle to grasp today’s helm with both hands, trip and fall straight into tomorrow. So very often do I find myself trying to pilot a ghost ship that I cannot control. I know nothing about tomorrow, but I throw the sum of all of my yesterdays at it hoping to create some meaning.

Somehow I have managed to wake up in the past and go to sleep in the future with only the barest of the middle hours dedicated to the day I am actually living.

I am aware of myself becoming less possessive. What I mean is, I am becoming pickier. That is to say, I am less of dragon who hoards. And by that I am trying to explain that I am changing from someone who wanted to collect dozens (if not hundreds) of beautiful things...really I wanted to own every thing that was pretty...and instead choosing to be someone who has a clutter free, but still lovely life. It is easier now to look at something that is beautiful and say, "but it is not for me." This shouldn't be so revolutionary, but I am aware of the pressures of materialism and the mysterious unnamed forces of social media that leave me always feeling like I need to keep up, live beautifully, and have a picturesque household before I have even chosen a career. It's silly. It's unrealistic. But it's persistent. Ever so slowly, I am peeling back the layers to say, "what I have is enough". Which, in this day and age, is the same as saying "who I am is enough".

Today, I hurt. Profoundly. It's probably my gallbladder they say. I should "eat light" they say. What they don't say is how long I will be like this. So, I am home from work. As it turns out, your gallbladder is the very center of your being. When it hurts, you cannot move any other part of your body save your toes and fingers without causing an eruption of pain. It makes it hard to work on airplanes. It makes it hard to think. It just makes things hard. Except drawing. I have finally made some time to sit down a little and draw.

I was reading an artist's friend's blog recently. On their blog, they had a few time-lapsed videos of their creation of paintings and other works. In watching her work, I suddenly became very aware of a mistake I had been making for awhile now. I was making art more complicated than it needed to be. I had gotten self-conscious, well, about everything since getting fired. In my terrible self-consciousness, I had been trying way too hard to be "creative". Art was no longer a refuge for my brain to wander in. It was now disciplinary ground for me to practice, practice, practice until I could make all of the pictures in my head come out exactly as I saw them. But first, I must find the best images in my head and set the bar high! I was creating with something to prove; and that is a terrible way to create.

While in this awful mindset, I made the following painting. Now, I am not proud of this painting. No amount of encouragement is going to convince that it isn't terrible. The first reason being that I had forgotten entirely how difficult the paints that I chose had been to use. I did not enjoy painting most of this. It was a struggle. When I look at this painting, I feel that struggle all over again. And I feel self-conscious and melodramatically creative.

The next photo is a dandelion I drew today in order to distract myself from the gallbladder pain. When I look at it, I don't remember the gallbladder pain, I just remember thinking intensely about the shapes, the lines, and dandelions. It was magic to watch pen become plant. And I love it. It is simple and ordinary, but I find it lovely.

Strength is a heavy thing. If you have held onto it all of your life, you probably don’t know just how heavy it is. There are those who carry strength for so long that their grasp is stuck. I am not one of those people. Today, I have to pick up my strength up off of the floor. I have to massage it gently into my limbs and legs and chest. I hope that I can rub it deep enough to penetrate the bones, the joints, and my heart. All of these things have been aching with weakness, creaking as if to break.

Strength is such a heavy thing. And it is not as necessary as we have been taught. You think that the opposite of strength is weakness and then draw lines around strength and surviving such that weakness equals death. But it doesn’t. And this is one of the deadliest lies. You think that to embrace weakness is to invite death. But weakness is only weakness, the crying out for rest. Without that cry, rest is slow in coming. Without that cry, without that rest, strength begins to consume weakness.

My strength is trying to consume my weakness. If it does, I will never separate them back out again.

Weakness is a gentle thing that stands guard in the passage between strength and death. It utters warnings and cautions that you have found your limit. You can do no more. Indeed, you do not need to do more. Weakness is a thing that the universe understands. It is a limit which God himself respects.

Weakness is such a gentle thing. And that is different than being fragile. Weakness is what invites me to slough off my strength at the end of the day, let it lay beside the night stand, and rest. Weakness is the respite that makes sure that there is strength enough to finish tomorrow.