To commit or not: excerpt from a letter to a friend on inertia

I have found that the time after the struggle of keeping life and limb alive, my own and my children's, has been most difficult. Apparently I have needed that struggle as a context for creativity, and finding it gone has precluded to some extent new creations. So when I hear you say you are getting ready to or are in the process of or have indeed found a way to slough off commitments (as Julia might say), I think of King Lear and who loves me best, and wonder about the nature of commitments. I believe I do have mine still, and that creation itself is needed to feed commitment, and vise versa. I would love to read a new epic with Saladin and King Richard as CEOs by you, and even more find myself writing a new epic about the story of my ancestors--and finish the painting, and finish a half-dozen other projects mouldering about in their neatly filed dusty piles.