things we can and cannot keep

There are points in our lives when we can feel the change coming.  Viscerally.  We're wrapped in a swirl, sensing that the things around us and in us don't mean what they used to, and we begin taking stock of what we still want and what we don't want anymore.  

In times of change, we're forced to make the hard choices.  

What to keep?  

What to let go?  

What to knock down and what to rebuild?  

Where to plant?  

Where to let the ground lie fallow?

I'm going to post a few things about this topic, because I'm feeling & learning a lot about it right now.  Here's the first piece -- from The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard.  Yup, some of this is just going to be other people's words on the topic.

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When you write, you lay out a line of words.  The line of words is a miner's pick, a wood-carver's gouge, a surgeon's probe.  You wield it, and it digs a path you follow.  Soon you find yourself deep in new territory.  Is it a dead end, or have you located the real subject?  You will know tomorrow, or this time next year.

You make the path boldly and follow it fearfully.  You go where the path leads.  At the end of the path, you find a box canyon.  You hammer out reports, dispatch bulletins.

The writing has changed, in your hands, and in a twinkling... The new place interests you because it is not clear.  You attend.  In your humility, you lay down the words carefully, watching all the angles.  Now the earlier writing looks soft and careless.  Process is nothing; erase your tracks.  The path is not the work.  I hope your tracks have grown over; I hope the birds ate the crumbs; I hope you will toss it all and not look back.