What's In a Name?

I am a longtime student of the writer and artist SARK. I have signed up for her latest course offering for writers and know this will eventually lead to blogging, so I'm getting ahead of the game and getting this going today, two whole days before the course starts. I'm a chronic procrastinator, but I want to change the energy of my writing as I embark on this latest attempt to increase the words I'm putting into the world, particularly after the last year has drained me of the energy to do anything but barely survive.

I first discovered SARK in college. I was an English major at the time but had several friends in the art department, and I spent a lot of time hanging out there, listening to music, working on writing assignments in an environment I found inspiring, talking to them while they painted or sculpted or sketched, and just feeling like I was in my element. On the wall near the couches where I often took up residence was SARK's poster "How to Be an Artist," which I painstakingly copied into every journal I kept during those years, trying to replicate the color and style of her hand-written words. 

That poster led to reading her books, and in one of them was this poem from Portia Nelson which I think perfectly sums up where I am in life right now. 

Autobiography in 5 Short Chapters 

I. 

I walk down the street. 
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. 
I fall in. I am lost. I am helpless. 
It isn't my fault. 
It takes forever to find a way out. 

II. 

I walk down the same street. 
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. 
I still don't see it. I fall in again. 
I can't believe I am in the same place. 
It isn't my fault. 
It still takes a long time to get out. 

III. 

I walk down the same street. 
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. 
I see it there. I still fall in. 
It's habit. It's my fault. I know where I am. 
I get out immediately. 

IV. 

I walk down the same street. 
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. 
I walk around it. 

V. 

I walk down a different street. 


One of my biggest challenges in life is that I am a food addict. It has wreaked havoc on my life for decades. I have some other health issues that are not entirely related to this struggle, but it unquestionably makes them worse. (Not the addiction itself, but the weight I have put on from wallowing in the addiction for so long.) 

Right now I'm working my way from III to IV, although I did not get out of that hole immediately. It took way too long. But I'm almost out now. And as Alexander Hamilton - as imagined by Lin-Manuel Miranda - said, "I'll Write My Way Out, write everything down far as I can see, I'll write my way out, overwhelm them with honesty." 

Much of that will not be laid out for public consumption. But the parts I think might be able to help someone else? I'll gladly share that. And I'll hope it resonates with other people who are fighting this fight. Because the alternative is to give in to it, to let it steal what life I still have available to me. And I'm not here for that. Not one bit.

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