A pledge to show up here

Lately I've been asking the man of the house, my main and loyal reader, if I'm beginning to sound like I'm running out of things to blog about, that my universe has contracted to include his work-in-progress (the garden), our granddaughter and the less-than-extraordinary things that Mary Poppins (a.k.a. Suzy Lolarga) has uncovered from the house's corners and furniture undersides. Have I turned into a chronicler of home-bound goings-on and found trivia with photos for accompaniment?

I'm aware that I have been more than remiss from a bounden duty to write for a living. I seem to have fallen into the gentle trap of writing for its own pleasure. I promised myself and an editor that I would get back to livelihood writing (a.k.a. the composition of articles that will pay for themselves) in a few weeks.

Last night I discovered Lorianne DiSabato's blog and found comfort, strength in her words. She's an enabler and motivator, indeed, the show-by-example type. She reminds me to just show up.

Detail of a painting showing two women, one at a writing desk, by artist Isoda Koryusai

"Showing up at the page is like keeping watch at the bedside of a comatose relative: you watch, wait, and hold out hope because your patient might be present and alive in there, despite an unresponsive body. Just because your patient doesn’t seem to respond doesn’t mean they aren’t there: as Jesus said of a child he raised from the dead, “She’s not dead; she’s only sleeping.” On days when your own creativity seems dead, you show up and sit by the tomb, expectant. If today should be the miraculous day when your lifeless creativity should stir and then sit up in its shroud, you will be there to see it. There might not be anything you can do to help either the sun or the dead rise, but it is of the last importance that you be present just in case.

"Keeping a blog is a great exercise in showing up at the page. When you start a blog, you make an unspoken contract with your readers that you will show up and say something regularly enough to make their checking in worthwhile: a blog grown cold is like a closed and darkened house where a weary traveler had hoped for hospitality. Many days when you show up to 'feed the blog,' you feel like Old Mother Hubbard reaching into a cupboard that’s sadly bare. When you’re forced to concoct a blog-worthy meal out of meager scraps, you often end up with a stone soup simmered with bits of this and that: nothing fancy, just something simple and savory. Out of the leftovers of your days, what kind of sustenance can you cobble together if you simply continue to show up for your own life?" - Lorianne DiSabato, http://hoardedordinaries.wordpress.com/