A Tepid Cup of Coffee

Life is like that. You are at a restaurant engaged in conversation and your coffee gets cold.  The waitstaff walk by, see your cup is full, and keep going.  You are too shy to stop and ask (nicely) if someone could dump out the tepid coffee so you could start fresh, so you sit and “suffer”.

In other words, we have to make room in our lives for the new. It’s a lesson I am currently (always?) re-learning. To allow the cup to be empty, to make room for the new, and to ask for help, not just from people, but from the Universe.

I’m currently transitioning from my nth career as a college professor to a full-time fiction writer, and it’s a scary transition. As I’m writing this, I pulled a card from Rebecca Campbell’s “Work Your Light” oracle cards. They’re mostly universally applicable, so even though I am not really into crystals and energy healing, I do know that there is something at work in the Universe that is unknowable by us mere mortals.  Anyway, the card was “Council of Light” and the gist of it was that there is a power in the Universe that guides us and supports us and is waiting for us to ask for what we need.

In other words, if your cup is full but no longer potable, ASK for the Universe to empty it and refill it with whatever you are willing to ask for. The Universe is a smorgasbord of abundance. Resources are relatively unlimited compared to what we are willing to ask for and what we feel ready and worthy to receive.

This term, I took on my full course load plus the equivalent of another half load serving as the chair and then another university called and asked me to take on a half load (2 courses) because they were short one full time faculty, so I accepted all that and finished a screenplay and continued to work on getting my current novel to market.  That’s a full cup.  I’ve been teaching for 11 years with no summers off and just that one fall term 2018 when I underwent a massive dose of chemo and a stem cell transplant. Oh, did I mention that my energy level is still suffering from that?

Also, I’m DOING NOTHING WELL (with “well” being = “up to my personal standards/expectations”).

Maybe that old coffee is getting a bit tepid? What my heart longs to do is write.  Not the textbooks and course materials and video scripts that I’ve been writing while I teach full time, but novels and screenplays. That’s been my longing since I read my first novel back in high school. To be an author. I’ve put in the hours, paid the dues. I am ready.

So, I’m officially emptying my cup and asking for a refill.