On the stove.
Percolating.
It's something I'm noticing lately.
It's something I'm getting better at accepting.
I'm getting better at accepting that, for me, ideas, writings, responses -- so many things -- need to sit on the stove and percolate for a while.
(Which is different from worrying that I'm not ready.)
The Elusive Free Thing
An example: For the past few days, I've wanted to offer you a Free Something to replace 'A Sip of Tea,' which ended on January 31.
I was convinced that I already had the material for this Free Thing somewhere in my notes, too. This Free Thing was simply hiding and needed a little encouragement to take off its dark glasses and reveal itself.
I did Dance of Shiva on it.
I had a Secret Play Date with it.
I Shiva'd on it again today.
And the answer I got from the Elusive Free Thing was:
I'm not ready.
You need to let me percolate.
It's no tragedy to be without a free thing for a couple of weeks. After all, the blog is free.
Come back in a week or so. And keep your eyes and ears open so you know me.
The details.
Another example: I want to offer a group learning get-together in the spring, but I've only had a vague idea of how I want to do it.
I Play-Dated it, and lo: a fantastic description of why we need to do this learning together -- it just poured out of me.
Whoo-hoo!
Secret Play Date FTW!
But the details? Try as I might to pin them down, they're still vague.
Not done.
Percolating.
The flow: it's not flowing.
One more: I wanted to write a post today about flow. Not work-flow, but the kind of flow that happens when, all of a sudden, the barriers to the thing you want to do seem to drop away.
I guess it's the Csikszentmihalyi flavor of flow.
It happens when the words (or shapes or stitches or whatever you do) come so easily and naturally, it's as if you just get out of their way and let them out. A post about the why and the how of it.
Yup, there's a post in my head about this, but it's not ready.
Percolating.
I have to let it be for a while.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
It can be frustrating when you hear about people having all kinds of realizations. Secret Play Daters are having them left and right!
I do, too -- sometimes.
More often, for me, epiphanies need time before they're ready to come out and rock my world. I'm starting to understand that and starting to be okay with it.
How about you? Do your 'Ah-ha's' come fast and furious, or do they need time on the stove?
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Comments
I'm a percolator also. This year I seem to be particularly in sync with the Winter season. Hibernating. I know there is a lot brewing and it's taking a lot of faith to know everything is in right timing.
So true. I have to remember to trust that it's happening behind the scenes.
I am a serious percolator. It is teaching me patience because I am very much a person who wants to know the answers now. Ha. It occurs to me that it is also good practice for my word of the year. :)
I love how you said 'serious percolator.' It sounded like one of those Myers-Briggs categories to me! Maybe we need to make up our own.
Okay, you're starting to freak me out with your timing and subject matter and "apt-ness".
Because I've been reading about flow in the Czemdhdudjli sense and thinking on how to ... facilitate... it. Like, the book is in front of me RIGHT NOW!
AND been thinking to myself that maybe I should just accept that I take a while to warm up, that I'm a slow starter, and that that's okay, it doesn't make me weak, it just makes me who I am.
Whoah.
xx
I'm starting to freak out a bit right along w/ Claire P. So much percolating (I've been calling it gestating) in the past few months - trying to really inhabit that space, and deal w/ my own Your Are A Lazy Butt monster, who hates it.
And flow! It's my word for the year, and just read Cziksentmihalyi's book.
@Claire and @Cindy - Cziksentmihalyi rocks i! And the more I think about it, the more I'm seeing that other things need to percolate for a while.
Love, love, love the term "percolating"! It's so much nicer, and more accurate, than procrastinator, or lazy person, or any of the other nasty negatives!
My ah-has come in a variety of ways - something to do with my being an embodied paradox. Sometimes they just almost pounce -" Here! Right now! Like this!" Other times they lurk in the background like apparitions, deciding for themselves when they will present. Usually they come when I'm doing something that has absolutely nothing to do with them - loading the dishwasher, ringing up someone's items at work, even picking up doggie poo.
I've always been considered a "late bloomer". Sometimes the handle is apt, other times it's not at all. Same thing for my inspired ideas. Sometimes they come in bits in pieces in a "vision". They're swathed in fog, with only one or two things visible at a time. Other times they hit so hard I have to stop and scribble as fast as I can to get down all the information.
I never know for sure when or how they will come to me, which can be very frustrating. It's also kind of fun, though. If nothing else, I'm constantly surprised. And even more surprising are the prompts that will birth the ideas.
Kat, seems like a lot of really useful self-knowledge there. I think one thing's for sure -- you can trust that the ideas will come.
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