Richard Pierce

Richard Pierce – author, poet, painter

Life, Writing

Day 111

This may seem sad, but it’s my reality. I have really struggled the last two or so months to put my writing ahead of work first thing in the morning, and yesterday, after days of feeling totally out of sorts, I came to the conclusion that I can’t actually function properly if I don’t start off my day with some work rather than with writing. What that says about my relationship to my writing (and my day job) I don’t know. So this morning I have already done two hours of work and feel ready to put some moments aside to write. I think this is what happens when your life is dedicated almost equally to two vocations, because, in truth, my day job is as much a vocation (and I’m lucky in that) as writing is. When my writing starts being able to pay my mortgage, then will be the time to reconsider the hours I give my day job. But now, here, this morning, I already feel much more at peace having got some work hours under my belt (and it’s just gone 9am as I start writing this).

The real highlight of yesterday was sitting in my second 5E treatment, talking to my practitioner, and hearing her tell me that I had inspired her, with the conversation we had when we first met last week, to bring more 5E treatments into her interactions with other patients (she practices 5E and TCM), and that she felt that she and her patients were really benefitting from that. This made me so happy, and, for me, reinforced what so many people tell me – that I am really good at mentoring and bringing out the best in people. I’ll settle for that – for a man constantly beset by doubts and low self-esteem that’s such a positive, and I’ll carry it around with me for some time.

Like last week, my night after my treatment was interrupted by not being able to sleep, by feeling very hot, mind racing with ideas (for writing and work). I think it’s been so long since I’ve had 5E acupuncture that my body had got to the stage where it was craving the therapy, where so many channels of my constitution have been blocked, that now the channels are clearing, I have this massive surge in energy and creativity and just being alive, that the first night after treatment is always going to be restless. However, unlike in earlier days, I’m not going downstairs, pouring myself a glass of wine and indulging the romantic fantasy that this is what writers do. I have been doing my meditation breathing in bed instead, managing to somehow revel in the fact that I’m awake when everyone else is asleep and the knowledge that sleep will come, has to come. And when that doesn’t work, I pop downstairs for some fresh water out of the tap, a quick smoke and some fresh cool air, and the back to the meditative breathing. It may not always work, but it’s progress from previous self-destructive insomnia behaviours. And that’s a good thing.

14:49 – I’ve just finished Aggie on my late lunch break.

 

AGGIE’S ART OF HAPPINESS – CHAPTER 68

 

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2 Comments

  1. Ren Powell

    22nd April 2022 at 08:10

    I am trying to shake off all those ideas about what “serious” writers do.
    I am going to think of you “filling the well” in the mornings before you write the things that make us all better people.

    1. Richard Pierce

      22nd April 2022 at 15:15

      It’s good to know people think what I write makes them better people. I will leave that there and count it as another one of my many blessings recently.

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