intensive: living into it

So back in February, I made a post to Facebook that became a series of posts that became a private group, about being intense.

Being an intensive, I called it.

And as intensives are wont to do, I went hell-for-leather for a while, all-in, thinking, writing, totally absorbed.  (It’s part of what we do.)

And then, emerging, I got into a car accident, and then I got sick….

and the shiny wore off.

And so my intensive-ness and my analysis of it moved to the back of the fridge.

But as I emerge from that fog, the question is this: how does one live into intensity?

How is an intensive sick?  How is an intensive tired?  How is an intensive when they’re taking codeine laced cough syrup?

How is an intensive slow?

And the answer seems to be this: either an intensive is INTENSELY slow (slow to the point of stopping, restful to the point of immobility) or an intensive is still going at 3000 or 4000 rpm behind the scenes even if the body can’t keep up.

I tried option one.  I’m on to option two.

But option two puts a lot of pressure on the system, building up thoughts and possibilities, waiting. And waiting.  It puts the focus forward, not in the now.  And I’m not getting to “all better” fast enough to keep up with my brain.  Brain recently decided, for instance, to go see if songwriting is fun.  After 30 years of not writing songs.  And then there’re the two books in the hopper.  And coaching, of course.  And a new circle of friends.  And and and.

So the challenge now, is how to manage the backlog.  It seems to involve measured progress, focusing on something and doing enough of that one thing that my intensity is satisfied, at least a little bit, that there is progress, at least a little bit.

But we shall see.  There’ definitely something here, something with gears and ratios, something with not-stopping that is also not-rushing-forward, something that is useful for moving between the not-intensive and the intensive worlds.  More to follow.