Freelance Blues, or Gene Kelly is My Co-Pilot

Has it really been almost two weeks since I updated my blog? Time flies when you're busy with work. And....it becomes a blur when you're depressed. I worked like crazy for a while, then nothing...no phone calls, no leads, nothing. I made enough $$ in one week to last a while, but still.... Currently, my emotional life is riding the ups and downs of the freelance rollercoaster. I doubt myself, wonder what in the heck I'm doing, trying to be a freelance writer. Why not just get another corporate gig....work at Starbucks....move to the middle of Iowa and become an organic farmer? On days I don't have "real work", I sit in the coffee shop and stare at my computer, trying to force a work of art to flow out of my head and onto my computer screen. I have the beginnings of a novel rattling around in my brain, and some thoughts for a collection of essays. I last about two hours, and then get restless. My soul is restless, waiting for direction, some sign from God about how I can use my gifts. Who I can serve. Waiting for him to show me the next step on this journey. I try to see the "non-working" weeks as gifts from God....huge expanses of time I have to write things that are important to me. Write things other than direct mail letters and brochures. But then I get this nagging feeling that I should be doing "real work" and so I leave the coffee shop and go home and make a few job-related phone calls. This battle wages inside my head for days. Melancholy, my lifelong companion, shows up and I start sleeping more, and dragging around the house, wearing the same clothes everyday. David tries to cheer me up by playing his new favorite song, "Let's build a home", by White Stripes as loud as possible and doing his weird husband dance (I won't even try to describe it). He makes me laugh and I tell him how weird he is. His crazy dancing cheers me up for about a half an hour, then I go back to the computer and stare at the computer screen some more.

"Is there no way out of the mind?" Sylvia Plath once asked in one of her poems. This war inside my head, my lethargy, depression, self-doubt has haunted me since I was a child. I've learned to cope, and have, in recent years, had long stretches of joy and productivity. I think I have it whipped, that I'm "cured", but then it shows up again, unexpectedly. But I've been in this place so many times before that I know it won't last forever. That in a few days, or weeks, hopefully not longer, I will start to feel better. I will jog on the Lake path and see the sun reflecting on the waves, and see the city skyline in the distance at sunset. I will help a very pregnant friend clean her house, thankful that I'm not working so I can help her get ready for a new baby. I will go to church and hear the liturgy and see the sun shining through the stained glass. I will watch my husband dance, and thank God that I have someone who knows how to make me laugh. And I will pray, and eventually start feeling hopeful again.