A creativity reboot

The cable guy’s ladder clatters outside and the connection disappears again. I can tell because the TV, which is turned on as an indicator, goes silent. This intermittent, chaotic connection-disconnection is symptomatic of my life this month.

Yesterday I felt unaccountably sad, today I feel unaccountably happy. I lose things and find them in strange places (Poltergeist, are you back?) I had several tense talks with my husband but I now miss him terribly and he has been gone only two hours.

Is it me or is it something in the air? I read the shamanic forecast for June. The themes of this month are creativity and vision.

The vision has certainly happened; I can date it to June 7, when I began to take seriously the idea of writing about Mennonites in Congo. And on June 8 I started to make it happen by setting in motion plans to attend the church’s centennial in July. Creativity.

Along with creativity comes chaos, according to the forecast. I am creating this chaos myself and it is driving me nuts. I can’t find things, the technology is out of whack (hence the cable guy), the cat gets sick, I can’t keep track of my schedule. I am overbooked—but enhancing social contacts is what I need to do right now, also according to the forecast, and I am sure doing it. Chatting on FB with the Mukendi kids in Kinshasa, throwing a small African dinner party last Saturday, helping with a move and spending time with both our children and spouses and the granddaughter and at a family wedding, taking Vic up on his offer of a July 4 retirement party, right before driving to a family reunion in Pennsylvania July 7, right before going back to Congo July 12. It has been a very social month and it has been great.

I have felt lots of support for this creative move and transition (including contributions to the Mimi fund, only $95 to go as of today). One theme of this transition, according to the forecast, is taking charge of your own life. What is more charge-taking than retiring from one very good thing and starting another very good but quite different thing? It requires some explanation and openness, especially as I move from more secular circles to more religious ones. I am not exactly breaking ties but I am reknotting them, saying this is who I am, both secular and religious.

The temptations of the period, according to the forecast, are also real. The cable connection is back up momentarily so I go online and copy those that have applied to me in the last few days:

·      Feeling scattered and unable to handle the chaos

·      Depression, lethargy or feeling unmotivated

·      Anxiety related to lack of control

·      Extreme sadness or nostalgia over perceived loss

·      Feeling alone, lonely, flat, weird and disconnected

·      Fear and dread of how the future may unfold

But here are the opportunities that come with this month of creativity and vision:

·      Finally letting go of some really old baggage, patterns and imprints

·      Rebooting your creativity

·      Accessing a whole new level of information, wisdom and downloads

·      Finding new solutions that were not there before to old problems

·      Manifesting previously unimaginable things (keep them positive)

·      Higher centered experiences of love, beauty, awe

·      Miracles, new vision, ideas and bursts of creativity

·      A heightened sense of wellbeing and inspired excitement about what the future holds

I do indeed have "a heightened sense of wellbeing and inspired excitement about what the future holds."

But the forecast is not just for me. It applies to you, too. And to the cable guy. He comes in and tells me he climbed all the poles, found the problem, and solved it. He is beaming. "It was fun," he says.