Yin and Yang

I haven't posted much recently because I've been caught in an all-consuming chaos of Things to Do. They've included teaching the first session of my high-school speculative-fiction workshop to a new batch of kids, coordinating recording sessions for Outlandish Voices the podcast, editing the absolute spate of paying work that has poured across my desk in the past two weeks (yay!), trying to keep up with my workouts, polishing a new piece and reading it at a poetry open-mic, sending a few things off to new and unusual markets, getting good news about my story "Turcotte's Battle" being accepted by Wet Ink (it's a literary magazine — a literary magazine), riding my horse, feeling wistful that there has been no fencing for a couple of weeks (feeling wistful takes time), thinking up new projects to put in the queue, making food and doing housework and yardwork, and working on a few stories in the moments there are left.

As much as I enjoy a string of echoingly empty days in which to write (and I so do), I'm not complaining. I'm making things happen where I want them to happen, and I've got paying work to do, which is fabulous, bring it on, bring it on! Moreover, the buzz of keeping up with all these projects keeps my brain chunking along, coming up with new ideas and keeping me motivated. It's very yang, this sort of time. Yin takes a lot more self-discipline: it's the time when you have to stare all your ideas down and make them sit still and work. Some people think yin is "soft" and "yielding." Not for me. Yang is where everything flies around in a bright, happy, formless buzz, like that cloud of butterflies my horse and I rode through the other day.

Yin, however, is where I spend most of my time. It is earth, I agree with the tradition that far. It's earth, and determination, and not being able to see very far ahead but still keeping going, slowly, steadily, relentlessly.

I'm enjoying Yang while I'm here. But I know I'm only a visitor.