Flow

Flow...oh how did I seriously get flow in the chapter entitled Why did Warren Buffet Prosper?  Susan Cain defines flow as: is an optimal state in which you feel totally engaged in an activity--whether long distance swimming or songwriting, sumo wresting...in the state of flow you are neither bored nor anxious and you do not question your own adequacy. Hours pass without you knowing. It is activity for its own sake.  You could be absorbed for days.  This happens to me.  I don't ever want to get out of the flow because it feels so good to be locked in.  This happens when I am blogging or writing poetry. I went to see Alma Flor Ada, the Spanish poet extraordinaire. She gave a workshop on Spanish poetry and then we wrote some of our own poem in Spanish.  She started us off and then I was hooked. I was literally engulfed in what I was doing.  For the next 5 hours, I didn't pay much attention to anything else but crafting the poem about my daughter.  There was lunch, but I don't remember much about it. I kept thinking I had to get back or lose the words and idea.  I didn't want to break the flow.  Then I had to attend a workshop in the afternoon.  I attended and sat in the chair while a nice woman talked about teaching poetry and ideas to help.  She was more like the teacher in the Charlie Brown classroom. I didn't hear her, because I was in the flow.  I kept on writing and thinking and writing.  When I arrived home, I got on my desktop computer and went to my blog Just Write Baby! and then kept going amid the tears.  I wrote and recrafted and wrote and recrafted until I got it just write.  Then I posted and shared with my daughter what I had wrote about her.  Of course I sent it out and my native Spanish speaking friends helped me with a few things and I edited it over and over and then revised a bit more.  Was I ever proud of it!  It just came to me and flowed.  Did I write it for a reward?  Hardly, I wrote it because it needed to be done.  It had to come out.  When the spirit moves, you have to move with it or never have that idea be realized.  So that brings me back to my introvertedness.  It is easy to post online.  You don't know who is reading, but there are people who do read.  I have no problem posting my work.  It is a joy, especially when I get in the flow.  The problem I have is with people I don't trust or feel truly know me. I cannot, without reservation, express what I think and feel around them.  I trust the small group and the people that I have spent time getting to know.  The people where I feel safe.  When I am around those that I do not have a strong rapport in a bigger setting, forget about the flow.  I get uncomfortable and need to find a place to feel safe and me.  In those instances, during meeting and what not, I tend to search out a 1 on 1 situation or small group, to survive and maybe thrive.  I might just cocoon into my notebook.  As of late my doodles look like art and if I were a tatoo artist, I would be in high demand and filthy rich.  You should see them.  Being an introvert is a gift!  Can't wait to get into more flow and now I am searching out the opportunity!