working while heartbroken
I update my blog twice a week, and some days I know exactly what to write. Other days...the words drip as slow as molasses. This post, on this day, is excruciating. I've asked myself the same question over and over again:
how do you work through heartache?
What's left for a writer who runs out of words? Every word I type seems pitiful and not enough in the face of national heartache. And there was so much heartache this week. Everything seems frivolous today. My coffee, my laundry, my putting pen to paper. All of it. My words offer me no satisfaction...no safe space, these phrases are unsure, and my little message feels so ...small.
I worry about coming across as insincere...about this post coming across as inappropriate or disrespectful. And I worry that this job, on this day, seems incredibly shallow. And I'm coming to realize in life there is our job, which we get paid to do, and our work, which we don't. Our jobs may be to write, to paint, to coach, to sculpt, to answer the phones, to teach. That's our job. That's what pays the electric bill each month.
But then there's our work.
The work each of us, as individuals, need to do, more than ever. The work we do to make a society our great-, great-grandchildren can live in. The work we do outside our four walls, for someone who is not us, or our family. The work we can't pretend to do. And we have to do it. A Twitter status doesn't help. Changing your profile picture doesn't help. We have to do the work. Write a letter, make a phone call. Let your voice be heard to the people who make decisions for you.
The best way to get through this life is to stop thinking about the individual 'me' and start thinking about the global 'we'. That goes for you, for me, and for everyone on this beautiful blue planet. On days like these, the days where your heart breaks, do your job, darling.