A Day Off

I took the day off from work today. It's interesting to contemplate life without the rule of necessary labor.

There are so many other pursuits I'd prefer to lasso and wrestle. I guess this is complaining, but it's meant more as affirmation . . . affirmation that what I do for money is not what I do or wish to do, necessarily.

I'm fortunate that the work I have to do for money is not debilitating intellectually or, more importantly, artistically. And it is a veritable comfort to have other work when I am so frequently doubtful about the merits of my artistic efforts.

I've been reading off and on through the day. I went to a bookstore. I haven't written a line of poetry. Nor have I revised anything.

And I did no Christmas shopping.

So it's easy to assess this found day as a squandered day, and probably that's accurate. Though any day has its redemptive aspects. Just being aware and alert is enough perhaps. I've tried to be both of those today.

I'm not sure what to make of the restless ambitions of my ego. I've been very aware of my ego's desires and demands today. It's a beast that can't be satiated, of course, but when it's on the prowl it's hard to deny its power to color a day.

The ambitious ego feels like fighting off a virus. I don't want to succumb. Lots of Vitamin C for the spirit is needed.

It occurs to me that this may just be a variation of the critical function in my being trying to assert itself, at the expense of any creative impulse generating new work.

It's almost as though, when I named the blog-posting software as a sort of muse (in an earlier post), I took its sustenance away. Or, I alerted my critical function to its exclusion from this zone of creativity.

Peculiar what triggers the ego, what stalls the motor of creation. I'll see if I can jumpstart it again before the day ends.