Your weekend writing workout is the PERFECT exercise for the New Year. It’s called “Unfinished Business.”
When my father died one of the things I found most depressing was all the projects left undone. Big things, small things, broken things, unopened things . . . but the truth of the matter is, none of us ever leaves this life a completed checklist, inbox empty, all correspondence returned. At some point we’re going to have to let it all go, so why not practice now and lighten your cosmic load.
I feel like I’m dragging myself into this new year, and strangely many of my friends are feeling the same way. So we’re practicing the art of letting go of stuff that’s holding us back and down. Whatever’s left unsaid and undone, that’s been haunting you for weeks, months, years, STILL has a piece of you – your mind and energy – if you let it. And if there’s nothing you can do about it, or you choose to do nothing about it, then the healthier decision is to let it go.*
(One of my favourite quotes on this comes from dear friend Mauri Bernstein who said, “2010, just jiggle the handle and let it go.”)
So in whatever form pleases you in the moment – letter, poetry, flash fiction, collage – create a piece about letting go of some piece of unfinished business, or heck, even ALL your unfinished business if that’s possible!
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
the clouds, the pink bricks. of beauty.
who is going to finish the touches of them?
I am no bowed box. I’ve scattered myself up
but good. especially now since the world
has wound itself so tight.
I’m in Germany. I’m in Lapland.
I’ll soon be in outer space.
have you ever followed the crazy jet paths
of flocks of birds? if I don’t do it who will?
and if they go uncharted,
will the world be a darker place? See,
this is what the brain does,
lies prone to in the “insomniac days.”
youth is a wind. and my firecracker heart
is now melancholy for it.
what’s unwritten, undone, has won.
so I say, into the great open mouth,
that just leaves now, and then, then . . .
*Another good practice after you have done the “letting go” is to replace it with a positive thought. i.e. You let go of the fact that you stopped going to the gym and replace it with thoughts of loving yourself unconditionally.
