I’m happier these days, writing in an in-between space between public and private, spurred on by the tiniest inkling of outside scrutiny, deciding to work on increasingly letting go of practical concepts such as age and time … of notions that I chose the big priorities of my life already and am supposed to make due with what I’ve done rather than starting something new.

In other words, I’m going to keep trying, keeping starting something new.

It is a manner of writing and conversing that I’d like to be more comfortable with, to the end of making place for the kind of thoughtful company I most value.

Elizabeth Gilbert accomplished this I think, with Eat Pray Love.  It was a spiritual book, but it was more so a telling of her personal spiritual story in a way that included foibles and smallness, insights and breakthroughs, without ever giving the impression that she was coercing readers into sure fire a way of being.

Is this the reason I haven’t yet read her more current book, Big Magic, after rushing to read The Signature of All Things? Is it because Big Magic seems like it may be a guide or program, and I feel flooded by those? It might not be that at all. It might be just a longer version of her excellent TED talk on muses and creativity.