Morning pages, a month later

I'm here to report that, one month later, I'm still doing morning pages, although I've allowed myself to stop at two pages (they are, as I mentioned before, 9 x 11, so that counts for something, right?). Something about always being able to start on the fresh side of the page every day as opposed to every other day makes a difference for silly people like me.

I've also concluded that for me, morning pages are simply a discipline that doesn't usually result in anything in and of itself, but allows everything else in the rest of the day to flow much more smoothly.

I kind of see it like turning on a water tap after being away for a while - it sputters and spits out for a bit, but after a little time running, it then flows clean and smoothly.

The exercise is the crappy first scribble before the crappy first draft.

On the days I don't do them (I've skipped a couple weekend mornings), I've found myself stumbling on one thing or another because I haven't gotten "it" out there, whatever "it" is.

Essentially, it's free therapy, so for now I am going to keep plugging along.

Everything in its place

My kid desk (but "corner office" with a window!) that has worked for 5 years.

You know how when organizing your home, people always say to make sure you have "a place for everything, and everything in its place"?

During Morning Pages on Wednesday I had this random thought. We know this principle as it pertains to stuff, but what about in the way we spend our time?

As you know from all my posts, I have been working hard to carve out space and time for "creative" pursuits. But honestly, it sometimes feels rigid to say I must do morning pages in the mornings, and I must work on my blog in the afternoons.

But I can also see that if I don't make "a home" to work on writing, then other, less-fulfilling things will inevitably fill in those pockets of time.

Before this recent energy around producing/creating/doing, I think I inadvertently spent a lot of my time trying to stay on top of the dishes as a way to feel successful about my day. Hint: I can never keep up, I will never win the battle.

So, technically, as I am now using less of my time cleaning up (perhaps the cleaning is now more consolidated to the evenings, once David is home, ha), my house is actually not that much worse for the neglect - it was already bad - and now I'm using what limited free time I have to create, and create stuff that no one is going to undo (but maybe myself).

I still only have 168 hours a week. But using a few of these hours each week specifically for creativity has filled a place in my spirit which more than makes up for the sinking feeling I would experience when I looked at how un-picked up our house was.

It's weird; the mess is still there, but it doesn't matter as much anymore.

Creating art and living out art has become more important than the blank canvas I use to covet.

David brought up this desk that we built (!) together when we first got married because there was no room for an office in our one-bedroom apartment. Now we are using it again to create a living room office.

This season of diving into blogging/writing without a defined plan - but with clear discipline - feels very different for me. I'm trying to focus more on input than output, but I am, of course, anxious to see how things will turn out. In the meantime, I shall keep plugging along, trying my best to remain open and curious.

Something tells me that if I follow inspiration, it will follow me.

***

And now for the randoms:

1. A new (to me) writer/blogger whose writing is inspiring.
2. An interesting article David sent me on happiness.
3. Tsh Oxenreider's "On Making Friends and Partial Solutions"
4. This looks good, and, as I've already asked Stephanie, can someone please make this for me already? (And Happy Chinese New Year!)
5. Did you know about the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows? Found this through encountering the word "sonder" somewhere.

Seven days of morning pages

"What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while." 
--Gretchen Rubin

I talked last week about committing to Morning Pages (tl;dr: handwriting three full pages, every single day). I plan to go at this for a month and see what happens. So far it's been a week.

I've been finding it challenging to get to three full pages on some days, but at least there's a production/output goal and I know when I'm done.

(It kind of surprises me how I can run out of things to say.)

(...but here I am, generating things to say about it. Ta da!)

Here are some things that helped me with it:

1. Finding the right notebook.

It helped to find a notebook that is nice enough that I want to write in it, but not so nice that I'm afraid of sullying it with my silly thoughts.

I mentioned the irony of me going out to Target to buy a notebook the other day because most people have half-finished spiral notebooks from college that would be perfect for the job. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I had gotten rid of all these things in the Purge.

I found the perfect-for-this-purpose notebook at Target: the Yoobi college-ruled spiral notebook. It was $2.29, which back when I was going to school seems kind of expensive, but it's still significantly cheaper than a $8-10 journal.

I love it because it's not stupidly sized (8"x10.5" anyone?), although, ha!, I just realized this is actually 9"x11" (so weird) and thus I've actually been forced to write more than three 8.5"x11" pages. Insert sideways glance emoji.

It has a firm cover and lays nicely, so whether you're writing on the left side or the right side, it's very sturdy. (Side note: every other day you will get to start on the "nice" side. Ha!)

2. Writing at the same time every day.

For me it works out to do it in the morning during Emilyn's first nap and when Theo is in independent play time. Morning pages takes 20-30 minutes for me.

I have been super slacking about my early wake up. (David is probably on to something when I said I should resume with that after our elimination diet is over.) I can't be consistent enough to do this before the kids wake up (and my brain probably wouldn't be awake enough either), so if's going to be during the "work day" I like getting it done at the first moment of free time I have so I can get the most possible benefit from it, and I can check it off my list.

(I think this point may not be universal. Some people may benefit more from not doing it at the same time every day. It's just what works for me.)

If I remember, I lay out my notebook and pen on top of my laptop the night before so I am reminded to do it.

3. Setting the stage for work.

It helps me to be dressed (at least jeans and shoes) and to have my face clean and moisturized. Lately when I've been trying to sit down for work I turn my phone to Do Not Disturb. Some people even go so far as to put their phones in airplane mode. I don't find that necessary for me, but I could see how that could help.

On one morning I was feeling anxious about random stuff and it prevented me from beginning well. I didn't want to do a full-blown meditation and not have enough time to write (sigh), so I set a timer for five minutes and did a self-guided body scan. I finished before the timer rang (obviously not the goal, but just fyi), and I felt way more relaxed and able to begin.

4. Coloring outside the lines.

In college, I frequently took notes on printer paper because I don't love how diagrams look on lined paper and I like to take notes in a non-linear fashion. But for this, I am trying not to freak out about crossing through lines to draw pictures, make lists, sketch mind maps, and chart out matrices.

There are no rules other than filling up three pages!

You can change the subject on yourself every paragraph, or every sentence. I insert a ton of parentheticals (duh), even though I am writing to myself. Some people say you should never go back and read them, but I've been taking a highlighter to the things that are worth referring back to.

5. Using it to hash out whatever is bothering me.

This is related to the previous point. Using non-linear ways of expression often helps me solve a problem. One day I drew a big heart and filled it in with elements/pieces that would help me feel like if they were in place, I would be living out of a whole heart. (To be honest, this exercise was from an assignment I didn't finish during the Known workshop last summer.)

The other day I made chart with three columns: (1) Topic, (2) Fear, (3) When I have acted on this topic, what happened?

That same day, I started lists entitled "What things around the house don't have a home?" and "What overwhelming-to-me things do I need to stop overthinking about, and just execute upon?"

6. Just keep going, even if I feel like I have nothing to say.

I had one day where I felt like I was seriously making up crap the whole time just to get to the finish line and at the very end, I came up with what I really needed to say, and I had to curve up the margin to fit it on the third page.

Highlighted: "You are scared to show/reveal the ways in which you are letting go of the long-held beliefs that you feel are what allow you to belong. BUT you belong. You have tried to combat fear with belief, but the antidote to fear is faith."

7. That completed my list, but I'm not sure how to transition out of a list to my conclusion, and doesn't making this point number seven just work perfectly for this piece?

With this, and in combination with what I said in my last two posts about blogging, I've decided to use my morning nap time for Morning Pages, and my afternoon nap time for working on the blog. I think I need to write specifically for this (i.e., the blog) every day, even if I'm only posting twice a week.

So that's how it's going so far, and these are notes to myself on how I might keep plugging along. I will be sure to keep you posted as things go on!

And tell me: what is your journaling style these days? How many different notebooks (physical and/or digital) do you have and what is each of their purposes?

Nothing to keep me in check

You'd think the pressure would be off, now that my project is officially over, but actually feels more intense on this first day "off." I have nothing to keep me in check, except faith in myself, if I am the secret sauce.

So can we just let Anne Lamott do the talking today?

I couldn't sleep last night so I made two slices of toast and picked up Bird by Bird, in which she has already said what I set out to say yesterday:

"Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do---the actual art of writing---turns out to be the best part. . . . The act of writing turns out to be its own reward." (xxvi)

***

I finally started Essentialism. Um, it's amazing. It's essentially Konmari for your life (pun unintended), if you didn't already make the leap yourself. The audiobook version arrived first from my list of library holds so I'm indulging in listening to the author read it in his British accent, as if the words themselves weren't convincing enough.

He puts so well the conundrum of today's society: that we have so many options it's hard to make the right choices. And when we choose not to choose we end up with more but not better. We can have anything, but probably not everything.

I can't recommend it enough.

05. All quite comforting

Every day since this project began (i.e., these oh-so-dramatic last five days), I have had to resist the urge to begin every post by typing into the stratosphere, "I don't want to write. I don't want to write. I don't want to write." Liz Gilbert reminds me that it is simply boring to be a creative who complains about how frustrated she feels, because frustration is essential to the creative life. She also talks about how you don't have to be a creative and be a tormented, tragic person. It's all quite comforting.

A lot of what catapulted me into this project is the result of stewing and marinating in the cocktail that is reading Brené Brown's The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are and listening to Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. (Prior to last month I did not know there was a genre for "Creativity" on Amazon. And now for the last few weeks I've been talking David's head off about creativity and the creative process and I'm sure he's like, Yeah, I went to school for this. #arsepoetica)

What I'm taking away from Gilbert's book (besides everything, obviously) is that creative living is a marriage between discipline - the only thing you can control among talent, luck, and discipline - and inspiration. (I'm paraphrasing here, but: "If greatness were to find me, may it find me hard at work.")

Being creative is a gift bestowed on all of us; however, actually creating is a choice. I appreciated how Gilbert acknowledges that having (or making) time to create is a complete and total luxury, but that perhaps instead of seeing creative living as hedonistic, we can instead perceive and then thus receive the ability to create as a divine gift.



P.S. Thank you, Eunice, for introducing me to Overdrive for e-books and audiobooks. It took me about a year to actually try it out but I'm loving it now! And thank you, Christine, for recommending the audiobook version for Gilbert. Totally the perfect medium; except for when I'm driving and I need to pull aside to write down something amazing she said.

04. Before I am anything else

If you've read any Anne Lamott, you are likely familiar with her notion of "[crappy] first drafts." What compelled me most in that essay when I first read it as an 11th grader was the idea that when you're struggling with a blank page out of fear of your inner critic, you should tell your inner critic to be quiet until there's actually something to critique. I needed that humor, that absurdity, to push me past the potential to the real. And while I can definitely relate to this concept when it comes to writing - just making yourself get that first draft out - I am wondering if this principle relates to my project at large as well.

I don't think this project/experiment is simply about me writing; it's about me having the courage to claim that I'm a creative--- which is to say that I'm a person, and a person with agency, and therefore someone with vulnerability. Simply by declaring that I'd do something for thirty days and share it, I am saying that I'm going to be a crappy first draft, before I am anything else.

There are so many ways in which I have spent the last I don't know how many years hiding in my mind, analyzing, holding back, being reserved, hiding from my own inner critic. But what was there to critique if I didn't do anything? So I'm wrestling now with the possibility that the real, the broken, and the imperfect could be better than the theoretical.

And that scares the crap out of me.

01. That notebook

Yesterday, our guest preacher Therin Fenner's opening metaphor was The Notebook of Middle School Girls circa 1997. You know, the spiral Mead notebook decoupaged with magazine cut-outs and the days' musings, which you would deposit in your friends' lockers? At one point I'm sure I had at least five of them going, each with a different friend. It didn't matter what I said, or how I said it; the point was just to write, and wait for her to write back.

That is the perfect metaphor for what I need right now.

I'm not ready for something like #The100DaysProject at the moment but I will attempt my own modification: writing and posting something here every day, for one month, weekends excluded. Without too much thinking or planning I'm going to dive in from today, August 8, 2016, to September 8, 2016. 

If you're lurking out there (I often see at least 15 page views on my posts), would you please drop a comment to let me know you're here? I hope you'll pass back the metaphorical notebook and let me know what you think today and in the next 30ish days. And if you want to jump in on your own creative venture, let me know about it as well!

***

Random (because random is the essence of The Notebook) thoughts on the picture above:

• Pictures at nighttime are considerably horrible. Other than obviously taking pictures in daylight, does anyone have simple/easy tips for pictures and/or even filters? I've been so low-tech in the last eight years that I feel slightly embarrassed to not know any of this. 
• "Just Start" is from Get To Work Book. It's the tear-out from January but I decided to use that with the August calendar taped onto it because it's just what I need. (I'm being creative!) Kathy was surprised to read that Enneagram 6's procrastinate. Oh boy, do we procrastinate. 
• I think all of my posts from the next month are going to mention something about me being the dreaded, horrible, tragic 6. You're probably going to want to vomit and/or stop reading my blog. So sorry. If you want to see into my soul, read this. 
• Yes, that is Eunice's beautiful calligraphy on my bulletin board.