I aspired to focus on mood.

1. I aspired to focus on mood this week, but I find myself thinking about structure.

2. My time is structured for 10 days by working in a new office. A new freelance job. It's day three but I already know my way around, where to get coffee, where the bathroom is. I pride myself on situation--on situating myself in a physical space. It gives me a sense of mastery, even if it's a really rudimentary one.

3. I was just reading an article about how form and limits are necessary in order to find and tap creative freedom. This is true, even though it seems counterintuitive.

4. Yoga is another place where that's become clear to me, maybe the place where it's become most clear. You can't just lengthen out your arm or leg and stretch it--well, you can, but there's a good chance you'll hurt yourself doing it. You have to engage the muscle before you extend it. You have to root yourself.

5. There's something to be said for freewriting, which in its very freedom and stream gives you some form, I guess. This is such a fluid idea, this push and pull.

6. But it always comes back to the push and pull.

7. This article I was reading also talked about motherhood and how having a child gives a women permission to leave nothing for herself, to put it all into this small person you've created. But if you actually did have 24/7 to yourself, to write, say, would that be enough structure for you to actually do it?

8. The pressure and pull of family--whether it's a child or a partner or a sibling or a parent or a friend--that forces you to create a space where there is freedom for yourself.

9. You make a container and then within that you can be free, or fully yourself, your essence. (Is that why cats like boxes so much?)

10. That's the creative feeling we crave, I think, the being with your essence while you're playing with words, or colors, or notes, or images, or whatever our medium is.

​11. I do still want to focus on mood and description and the sound and feel of the words.