I recently learned that I am an Epicure. Not as in a person with refined taste in food and wine-- although I am that too. The first thing I do when I get stuck on a writing project is wander into the kitchen, open the fridge and cabinet doors and see what inspires me to break out the pots and pans. Getting my creative juices flowing in the kitchen helps feed my writing, as well as stomach. And if I'm stuck because my inner critic is being a bit too vocal, a glass of Prosecco or Bordeaux usually gets her to loosen up enough so that I can get back to work.
No, the kind of Epicure I discovered I am has more to do with the philosopher who lends his name to the term than the website where you can search for recipes from the now defunct Gourmet magazine.
A few Saturdays ago I had the opportunity to attend a one day workshop on the Enneagram. The Enneagram is one of those personality type of tests that is often mentioned in spiritual communities as a helpful tool for understanding one's journey. As the presenter aptly noted, people find out what their Myers-Briggs type is and think, "Oh yeah . . . " but when they find out what their Enneagram type is they say, "Oh shit!" I've taken a few abbreviated on-line Enneagram tests before and thumbed through a book or two on the subject so I wasn't completely unprepared for the experience; however, it definitely wasn't like the warm fuzzy feeling I had about myself when I discovered I was an INFP.
Many of the challenges faced by a 7 (the Epicure or Enthusiast) are already things I know to be true about myself: I like to keep my options open which means I have a hard time making a decision. I am an eternal optimist but get frustrated with people who are negative or blame others for their unhappiness. Of course, this also means I tend to deny or downplay any pain or sadness in my own life. Like Epicurius, my underlying motivation is the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain (or so the Enneagram says). Boredom is something I try to avoid at all costs. Consequently I have an active imagination and many interests to prevent me from ever being bored (another reason I usually have a book with me at all times as well). Unfortunately, because I am interested in so many things, I sometimes. . . okay I usually have trouble focusing on any one thing and I get easily distracted.
Which brings me to how being a 7 impacts my writing. After my dissertation was finished and the dust of graduation and the subsequent celebrations had settled down, I told myself it was time for me to to also settle down and get writing. The problem was that I'd sit down at my desk and spend the next hour trying to decide which project I should tackle first. Should I finish editing one of the essays from the personal essay class I just finished at the Writer's Center or pull out one of the essays I'd started but never finished? Then there's the short story/novella I started a few years ago while on on a retreat at a monastery on the banks of the Hudson River-- the story that came to me in the form of a vivid dream and wouldn't let me sleep until I got up and started writing it down. But then again, the YA novel that I began for last year's "Three Day Novel" contest still needs to be finished. And I have the prologue and some notes from the story I started crafting on holiday in Ireland that lends itself to a novel. But maybe something easier? I could easily knock out a chapter or two of the do-it-yourself retreat book I have outlined. And it wouldn't take much work to turn my dissertation into a book. Hmmm. . . or how about some poetry. Or the children's book about the hedgehog butler, Gustav Prickly?
You see my problem?
When I was a kid whenever we'd have a substitute in elementary school the go to lesson plan seemed to be showing the Disney classic, "Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land." While I didn't love math all that much (and still don't) what I did love was the scene of the chaos and clutter in Donald's mind and how his guide encourages him to clear out the clutter and get organized. Like Donald, my mental energy (and physical and spiritual) is often all over the place. This is my personal mathemagic equation: too many ideas + hard to make a decision x not enough focus = a classic 7.
So I'm trying to find ways to cope-- to do my own virtual mental housekeeping in order to help me focus my energy. Unlike Donald Duck, I'm a visual learner so file folders-- electronic or cardboard, don't really work well for me. Instead, above my desk I've created a patchwork quilt of Post-It notes to try to get my writing projects organized. Each endeavor is color coded by genre and contains a few notes as to the subject. They're then lined up in neat rows on the wall above my desk by level of completion. Ideas that have just started to germinate are on the top row while projects that simply need some final editing are on the bottom, with everything else in between. When something is finished, it then gets moved to the wall beside my desk.
I still have a lot of ideas (I've added a few Post It notes to the top row in the past few weeks) and I still have a hard time trying to decide what to focus on (only one project has moved to the completed wall). Somehow though, as I sit here at my desk staring at the fruit colored pieces of paper lined up on the white wall my mind doesn't race quite as much and I can feel my body settling into my chair as I debate between two pink pieces of paper-- an essay on my obsession with death as a child or one about growing up with an aunt with developmental disabilities.
Of course, as I ponder my choices I notice that the pink is remarkably close to the color of the watermelon I cut up this afternoon and put in the fridge which would go really well with the yellow heirloom tomatoes (which are themselves remarkably close to the color I've assigned to poetry). I think I hear my inner critic starting to grumble about my getting distracted again but there's also a half a bottle of Riesling left from the other night which should appease her.
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