Two Sylvias' Weekly Muse: March 10, 2024

Issue 98

Hello, Muse Readers!

For many of us, we might be in that time of year which T.S. Eliot refers to in his Four Quartets as “midwinter spring”: Midwinter spring is its own season… Suspended in time between pole and tropic… Between melting and freezing…

“Midwinter spring” can cause us to feel “neither here nor there”—in other words, stagnant. In an article for The New York Times, journalist Christina Caron interviewed psychologist and professor, Dr. Adam Alter, who is particularly interested in studying why individuals develop a feeling of “being stuck” in various aspects of their lives—suspended in time, so to speak. Dr. Alter identifies the following as the most common areas in which we might feel stalled and stuck: creative pursuits, career, and relationships.

What causes us to occasionally feel jammed and frozen, especially on a creative level? According to Dr. Alter, when you tackle a long-term goal (for instance, writing a new full-length collection of poetry), you will inevitably come…