The Third Day

Every new habit has a "honeymoon" period. As I get deeper into this commitment to SUSDAT (Show Up, Sit Down and Type), it starts to have a little less thrill and a little more weight of "What am I going to write about?"

This is a very early morning of a full day and I know if I don't do this practice right now, it won't happen. So I'll take this moment to acknowledge that I already feel good about several of the posts done already, which would not have been written without this commitment. 

My first poetry mentor encouraged me to write a poem a day because statistically, that's how we begin to grow a volume of good work. It might only be 10% of what we've written, but we also have gained experience, tons of salvageable material and the feeling that we can do it. 

Well, this is just showing myself that I can do it. 

The Thought of Something Better

As I "Show Up, Sit Down, and Type" today, I am reminded of the thought of something better that often haunts me as I write. It is part of why it is so easy to be distracted from writing, so easy to judge oneself for any fault whatsoever, real or imagined. 

I will often share with the students in my meditation classes that the mind lives in the realm of ideas and ideals, which is not always connected with the ground of right-here-now. The mind helps us in many ways, especially when we need to use logic to accomplish a task. However, it is not the whole story. 

When you have the thought of something better, whether it be as mundane as an insight in rearranging or the life-changing consideration of what your life would be like with a different partner, see if you can recognize the most crucial truth of all:

It is just a thought. 

It might be a wonderfully indulgent thought, or a thought that makes all sorts of sense. But that doesn't negate that it is a thought. And thoughts are just projections of the mind. And the mind is not the whole story. 

Joan Tollifson beautifully demonstrates in her book, Bare-Bones Meditation, that "Thoughts are not facts," though they make great cases to persuade us to believe they are. 

Next time you recognize a thought of something better, see if you can emphasize the thought part of it, and see if it changes your sense of the something better part. 

Almost a Year

It has been almost a year since I had my last post on here. Ironically, it was about why we have interruptions in writing.

It has been quite a year for sure. Since last August when we opened our first "store" and started to move forward with our vision of the Upward Spiral Center, we've manifested our own space in our home neighborhood of Seminole Heights. We've been building this vision throughout the summer and our now ready for a full Fall season. 

I've been inspired by Seth's Blog post from today on SUSDAT - Show Up, Sit Down, and Type. For someone who teaching the virtue of "just sitting down to write" I could use more of this discipline in my life. 

So let's see if the next year will show more time spent "just writing" on my side and we can see where it gets us. Or I can see where it gets me. Because let's be real, I'm not writing for you (no offense), I'm writing for me.