November 2. Day of the Dead.

While walking on the beach in Galveston, TX today I started thinking about “Day of the Dead” or in Spanish “Dia de los Muertos”. Not the holiday. Just the fact that for far too long I’ve felt “dead” in the realm of creativity. Ideas come and go. Sometimes they merge into a super-idea or sometimes break off into other ideas. Stories from the past mix with current events and a random idea is born. But then it “dies”. Not that it goes away, although sometimes it does for awhile, but more often than not it “dies” because I don’t do anything to make it come alive.

Soucre: clipart.mrdonn.org

I procrastinate because it’s easier than sitting down and typing. It’s easier than doing something and diving in, wondering if it will even matter. Perhaps I want too much too soon. Perhaps the sin of the day is being able to get anything, anytime, with little effort. Maybe I don’t want to put the effort in. There’s probably some fear of opening my innermost thoughts and fears, hopes and dreams, and then being laughed at. Or maybe worse, ignored.

But the one thing that’s true in all of this is if I do nothing, nothing will happen. So, today on this Day of the Dead, the only thing that is dying is my procrastination. My fear. My fence-sitting. My hoping the universe will come find me and say it wants to hear from me. The universe won’t come to me. I have to go to it.