On my desk next to me is a candle called “Oscar Wilde” by a company called Paddywax Library. The scent is cedar wood thyme and basil and the amalgamation of these smells makes me feel like I’m having a weekend tryst with a stranger I’ll never see again. I paid an exorbitant amount of money for such a tiny little candle, but it instantaneously transported me into a part of myself I don’t get to embody often. The woman who smells this candle is an independent free spirit who follows adventure. She definitely doesn’t have cereal stuck to the yoga pants she has yet to do yoga in today.
Ol’ Oscar Wilde cast in wax was the last of its kind on the shelf. Emerson, Steinbeck, Austen, Twain and Dickens hadn’t been moved in ages. My altered state combined with a sense of scarcity and I was a goner for this lump of soy in a tin can.
Writers, creators, artists, we’re constantly looking for the thing outside ourselves that will be the key to consistently unlocking the door to the room where our muse resides. Sometimes, we’re addicts. We have to drink or take mind altering drugs to push ourselves beyond ourselves. Really, the drugs and alcohol are for our inner critic. We’re trying to get her belligerent ass to quiet down and get out of the way. She gets louder before she gets quieter though, which is why this methodology is unsustainable. I never took to this path. I’m a lightweight and I was always scared of drugs because I figured THAT SHIT MUST BE AMAZING if it causes so many people to be helpless to its appeal.
So what is the sustainable path? Listening. What are you avoiding? What are you telling the muse is more important than the thing your heart most desires to bring into the world? If you’re too tired, too sick, too foggy, too sad, what is stopping you from addressing these things and getting them out of the way? I’ve been there. Eventually, the pain of NOT doing the thing was enough to find and ask for help. I had the means. I’m lucky. It took until I was 40 to find the time and the money to dig in and clean up the mess in my mind that kept gagging my muse.
Here’s the secret though. Once I was well, or at least well-er, I figured out there was no muse. There was only me. Committed to sitting in the damn chair and punching my fingers on the keyboard. For myself. And Oscar Wildewax. I’m off to light his fire.