muscle memory and creative freedom
(how breaking my monday-only email rule revealed creative transformation)
I sent an email on Monday that subscribers would, henceforth, only receive an emailed post on Monday, and then bam!!! I emailed a post on Wednesday. That means I went one whole day of not emailing a post. Only one whole day.
I had no intention of emailing a post on Wednesday. I was reviewing something and making revisions when, because it was late and intention goes out the window as fatigue sets in, I went with the muscle memory already present in me. I am surprised to discover that I now have the habit of generously sharing my words, whereas I began with such strong resistance to sharing.
I know there are probably countless books that speak to transforming who we are for ourselves, but to witness it within me is such a gift. The practice of daily sitting down to write and then hitting publish regardless of my comfort level or reader engagement has transformed who I am as a writer in the public sphere. My generosity with my writing has begun the process of being separate from the metrics. This is creative freedom!! To have your creativity not dependent on the gaze and also no longer seeking refuge from the gaze is a beautiful place to occupy that I wouldn’t have noticed had I not mistakenly and quickly hit send and then thrown up my hands as technology followed the command of emailing everyone. There was no undoing this.
I give thanks that the friction that surrounded writing publicly has softened. This is the trauma integration process. The friction was not something out there and completely untouchable in a way that I have no agency. No, the friction became something in me that I got to be in relationship with in order to integrate it and, in turn, include in order to transcend.
In returning to my newly declared structure of emailing on Mondays I have now created for myself another way of being with my writing that's like a personal trainer adding on the weights. Can I be with the restraint of not sharing my work daily in inboxes? Personally, every time I write I fall in love with what's on the page. I look back at my writing like, "I did that. I did that." But like a poet writing in form, the constraints of the form serve the development of the creator and the precision of what's created.
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