The plate, this blog, and an incoherent connection I can't explain

A few weeks ago, a plate shattered in my room. It was a plate I had painted, as part of a friend's Master's degree project exploring the connections between food and community. It had hung up for four years on my bedroom wall. I walked in one day and only after being in my bedroom for some time did I notice that it was in pieces all over the hardwood floor. 

It was on the heels of a few very difficult weeks. Inner struggles, outer strugges, graduate school stress, personal stress, and some interpersonal tension had me super down. All the random self-care I did wasn't cutting it - walks, yoga, a hot bath, time with friends and family, a few journal entries, some good books, more sleep. It all felt like another duty squeezed in between endless hours writing papers, doing research, answering emails, and going to my job, internship, and classes. I really kept asking myself when I would reach the end of my tether and start to feel better.

Then I took my online midterm. God Bless that professor whose midterm was two parts. She gave me the most glorious surprise and unexpected gift. I did the second and hardest part the night previously. Thinking it would take me two hours to write a few quick responses to her questions turned into four or five hours. UGH. So the next night, I hunkered in for what I thought would be an hour-long ordeal at my computer taking her online midterm. Except that it was 8 fairly straightforward multple choice questions. What a shock. I finished in 11 minutes with 100%. This professor is gentler but also expects us to work hard, so I was pretty surprised and grateful. 

That's when I started this blog. I had been feeling the nudge to do so for some weeks but just could not find a minute between everything else - and when I did have a few moments, I didn't want to spend it doing something that felt like work. I spent the next hour writing away on my first few posts. They weren't well-written (neither is this). But it felt so good. I can't even describe the weight that lifted off me once I finished writing. I felt a thousand percent better. It actually didn't feel like work at all. It felt so good. 

I felt like I had had a big cry or a long nap. I felt refreshed. 

Somehow the plate and my writing feel connected in a way I cannot explain. The clear space on my wall now reminds me - things can change, quickly. Sometimes old things need to shatter and break to let more room in for the new.