Chop wood, carry water

Sometimes I wonder why I want to be a writer. It would be so much easier if I didn't. And part of me actually believes that I could just forget all about it and pretend that it doesn't make me feel alive, that it isn't the one thing in my life I know is right.

But it is a small part. Most of me knows that this is what I have to do. Perhaps I am guided by fate and truly have little say in it. I have been reading Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life by Natalie Goldberg. It is a strange little book - bursting with wisdom and throbbing with a sort of dull ache. It makes me sad, even as it releases me. There are many exercises to try but at the moment I am just at the reading and digesting phase.

I seem to be having problems finishing books lately. I did finish The Intuitive Writer by Gail Sher, a book which literally fell apart in my hands as I read it. It is now in about 7 different parts and I am wondering if the librarian will think I have treated the book harshly. I have not. I am looking for a hidden meaning in the book falling paper (I meant to write apart and wrote "paper" so perhaps the book is giving me the hint to write and even supplying the paper!) and after typing this I seem to have found it.

I am interested in Zen thought, but I find it very very very hard to reconcile in my brain that ticks and buzzes and screams and looks for meaning in every. little. thing. Chop wood and carry water. It could take me the rest of my life to live that.

Maybe that is okay.