The Pregnant Pause

This week, I have felt the need to stop. I have stopped nearly everything. I work in my sketchbook, but not on a painting. I am writing this post, but I have taken a pause from writing the course.

For the past several months, I have been working relentlessly on several projects. They are not projects that are yet visible to those around me. I am creating infrastructure: updating and revising my website, learning how to create a newsletter with buttons to send readers to links, organizing my work into collections, correcting errors, writing the bones of the course I intend to launch in September.

Working on projects at this stage involves one task leading to another, and another, and another, like Russian nesting dolls. Every layer I uncover involves more to learn before I can progress to the next task. I am actually doing this, and progress is happening! Yet, I need to regroup. It is, after all, July.

This period of rest is allowing some insights to come into my awareness. It is so interesting to realize that I don’t have to strive to learn.

The course I am creating has been a long time in the works, in my mind and my heart. I have designed its structure, defined its content, and now I am refining the activities that will support participants. I have been a teacher for a long time, yet preparing this course is triggering a disproportionate amount of anxiety. An insight came to me today, as I was preparing to participate in co-hosting a Journaling Workshop with the Montérégie West Community Network. Today, I remembered.

I remembered that it is easy for me to tap into my wisdom. I have a lot of knowledge and experience to share, and the training to do it. It’s time to stop worrying about the minutia of what I teach. I remembered that a class is a communication setting between the teacher and the students. The students are important participants in the dynamics of the class. My role is not to transmit details, it is to moderate an exchange that will help participants remember what they know, from a different place.

My work now is to scaffold a framework for this process. I can do this. Once the scaffold is ready, the rest is a process that will take on a life of its own.

I am remembering that. It is essential for me to remember that.