The Trap of Doubt, Delay and "Discipline"

Recently, I met with one of my writing feedback groups. Most of the folks in this small group are working on memoir, which is a supremely difficult genre. One woman in particular is writing a very hard tale about a very small but potent part of her life - a year or so of mental health struggles in which she lost most of her support network. It's a poignant story, and she tells it very directly.

Since she has begun, she's written with great momentum, clear about what comes next, able to pile through very tricky scenes with great ease. Then she hit some doubt - a moment of not being sure where the story was going next, or what the point was in writing/sharing it. And then she hit some stress - way too many external and internal stressors coming together at the wrong time. Her actually writing got delayed - put on the back burner - by a few months, due to illness and literal, physical inability to write. It's also inevitable that such an intense story would bring up doubt, eventually.

Questions I Can Answer

Sometimes, having a spouse who is going through a gender transition (male to female) is a lot.
Sometimes, teaching people how to be there for themselves, how to be aware and in the moment, and how to practice art that takes them there, is a lot.
Sometimes running my own business(es) and traveling for work is a lot.

This is not a surprise, of course, that I get overwhelmed.
But when all of these a lots and more come to fruition at once, I turn to ... Crossword puzzles.

That's right. You thought I was going to say meditation, didn't you? Or yoga. Or walking, or writing, or drawing or reading dharma or eating good food or getting plenty of sleep. Or talking to friends.

Yes. Those are all helpful, essential. They are my "first lines of defense" or even better, of "non-defense."

But sometimes the empowerment I need is to be able to cleverly answer questions, especially when they are puns. To have AHA moments that I can actually access when everything appears to be (and when it needs to remain) made of mysteries my intellect cannot and should not discern.

That's when Crossword Puzzles are the answer.