Separation Anxiety

I’m not entirely certain what it means – to separate yourself from your writing.

The news about the $500 gig sure made for a good day. Today I revised fiction and felt alive on the page for the first time in ten days. The made for a lovely day as well. And both experiences made me feel like a good person, too.

Are we only supposed to separate ourselves from our work when it goes poorly, but take all the credit when things go well? That doesn’t make any sense.

In meditation practices, we often learn that we are what we think. It may be safe to say that for the past decade, I have identified myself with what I write. I am what I write – literally and figuratively. I have learned how to make sense of the world as I experience it by exploring it on the page. Many of my experiences in life, therefore, feel incomplete until I can write them into coherence.

Where is there room for separation in such a process?