For my best friend who requested a blog entry... and so I write for you despite my own misgivings

I am sitting in my bathroom on the floor on top of the red shag rug with my back against the bathtub. The fan is humming above me. My journal sits next to me--full of three pages of garbage from this morning's initial ramblings. This has been my routine for the last couple of weeks--I wake up, grab journal and laptop, and creep into the bathroom so as not to disturb the yorkie-poo sleeping in my studio apartment. I perch on the ledge of the tub to scribble in my journal for 20 minutes, then I shift to the floor, sit cross-legged, and work on my real writing. 

For the past two weeks I have had specific projects to work on-projects due for my graduate classes. I have felt comfortable in at least knowing what I had to work on even if the business of writing it filled me with the usual anxiety and self-doubt that accompanies so many writers. Now I am projectless and I find I have nothing to say.

Absolutely nada. I have no idea what to write in this blog.

I usually write blog entries with a sense of direction--after walking the yorkie poo, working out, and showering an idea will have worked itself out. I will have a plan. A direction. A question to ponder in my work and an image to jump start the essay. Now I got zilch. No image. No question--I am working on this on the fly. 

I suppose I could write about any one of the topics I wandered over in my mind--the anxiety of feeling lonely as I did last night after my last class of the semester, the tension I felt with a friend over opposite political views, the undergrads I read about online who discovered a planet and who looked like fifth graders at a history day project, or the incredible occurrence of a former classmate requesting me as a friend on facebook, a woman who I have not seen or heard of in 12 years, who was definitely part of the cool crowd, and who rumor said worked as a stripper during our senior year. Any of these topics might make for a good blog--

instead I'd like to talk about flying without a net.

Plans make me feel good. Direction comforts me. Without either one, anxiety creeps into the periphery.

As a teacher I crave an organized lesson plan. I still quake when life throws a wrench in the works and the computers in the lab all go offline, or the movie I had planned to show is missing from its spot in the English office. This sort of occurrence unhinges me, despite the fact that I have been in the classroom for seven years, despite the fact that unplanned lesson plans are often the best, despite the fact that I am not such a bad teacher and always manage to pull it off. 

It still rattles me to be without plan.

Why is this? Why can't I trust myself? The process? Realize that life takes care of itself really with very little push-pull on my part. 

Hmm... even as I write this I see the work I have been doing for the past year, I see the serenity prayer, I see the effort it takes for me to be present in the present, not dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, I see the very concept I have been trying to learn--that we are all on a journey and that we are all exactly where we need to be at this moment. I want to be able to have faith in myself. I want to be able to worry less. To forgive myself flaws. To unclench the core muscles in my stomach that hold me together throughout the day. 

i want to feel safe flying with or without a net.

I guess I am still trying to learn how to relax my heart and trust God.