Finding flow

...when everything feels determined to stop me!

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Recently, I’ve felt like I’ve been swimming upstream through concrete. Virtually everything has felt like a struggle and it’s been tricky to stay motivated when at every turn, there seems to be a hurdle that’s been purposefully placed in my path.

Let’s take my name, for example. I got married almost a decade ago and at the time, I changed my name from my maiden name to my married one. That was my first mistake. Because as anyone who has decided to follow their romantic instincts and change their surname out of love, they soon discover that it is an incredibly lengthy process and that even when you think you’ve ticked everything off your list, three months (or even three years!) later a random document will appear as if from nowhere that requires you to provide evidence of this shift in identity. It’s painful. It’s also pricey. And in my experience, it’s made infinitely more complicated when you live overseas and were not married in the same place you now call home.

For years, I have gone by my married name. And despite 99 percent of all documents requiring my name having been updated many moons ago, even now, my maiden name springs from the woodwork from time to time to pile its mental load on my plate. Having recently started a business and having to provide administrative access to some of my tax profiles, it seems that my humanity is once again in question. See, swimming through concrete.

Similarly, work has felt stilted, rather than easeful and as a writer who craves flow above all else, it has been a challenge to try and surrender control and wait in the wings while things get moving. Working as a freelancer, you quickly become accustomed to the ebbs and flows of working with clients, but there’s something about the December-January period that can feel quite laboured. Nobody is really back at their desks with their full selves or sanity until at least mid-February and after splashing cash over the holiday break, we’re all inclined to tighten our purse-strings a little. While on a personal level, this is great. Professionally-speaking, it can mean that any sense of flow feels just out of reach.

And parenting, well… On some level I feel like parenting always feels a little bit like trying to escape quicksand. Just when you feel like you’ve managed to crawl out of the sludge, a little hand appears from beneath to drag you back under. Still, despite this, parenting is funnily enough the one area of my life where I’m far more willing to surrender control. I’ve discovered that just like quicksand, if you just stop struggling, soon enough you’ll work out that you do in fact have the strength to pull yourself back from the brink.

But as for flow. I’m craving it. And while I can feel my creativity beginning to bloom deep beneath the surface of my skin, I’m just hoping that as the days and weeks continue to unfold, that elusive feeling of flow will once again return to my life. And to yours, too.

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