Maria Popova said she started with core beliefs as notes to herself when she began Brain Pickings a decade ago. This is fascinating, a woman who came to this country as an immigrant from Bulgaria - worked, worked to put herself through college and as she took a class on coding, began to keep an email like journal or website that she wrote in once a week. Soon daily - now we have a volume of work. I quoted her below because it is inspiring to me.
"The site grew as I grew — an unfolding record of my intellectual, creative, and spiritual development. At the time, I had no idea that this small labor of love and learning would animate me with a sense of purpose and become both my life and my living, nor that its seven original readers would swell into several million. I had no idea that this eccentric personal record, which I began keeping in the city where Benjamin Franklin founded the first subscription library in America, would one day be included in the Library of Congress archive of “materials of historical importance.”
As a writer, we all have themes. Being a poet is a commitment, Being a writer is a responsibility. I am listening to Elizabeth Alexander talking about being a writer. But bigger than the writing, it is about being alive. About listening to Aretha from the great beyond, about dancing, about shifting.
Looking back May 2018 was the time I started the Morning Pages daily (almost daily) writing journal. I agree that this simple exercise and almost daily discipline has been transformative. It has been a leveling endeavor. Leveling meaning an exercise that has softened the corners, buffed the surface smoother, and worn away the ridges and grooves that would catch and cling trying to move through.
Add to Write Three Pages, listening to conversations Krista Tippet has had with various people has also contributed to widening my world view - or at least the view from where I am. Where am I? I am lucky, I enjoy Big Pine Lake and that northern Minnesota lifestyle. Rome actually made a video of Buddy the Dog at the lake and it was a testimony to hanging out at the lake.
I also am lucky I have a chance to spend time in Seaside, Oregon. Though this place and time is still a place and time that I view sort of askance. The familiar old, stuff of not committing. I watch and observe and there are some aspects that I like and some, still not certain. Right now it is raining and windy - there were gale wind warnings for today. I know that we have wind, cold, below zero wind chill winds "at home". But this wind is different. Maybe because one still wants to be outside since it is warmer - but the wind and rain limits actually being out there. I did go for a 15 minute walk dressed in rubber, around the "mall" and am mostly disappointed. The place, the neighborhood is trashed. Do people not respect where they live? I don't know if I have ever lived in such a trashy location. We are on the creek - I had such high hopes to paddle the creek - it is filthy. This colors my whole view of the area. I know there are neighborhoods that are not trashed. Why do we live in this trash? I was lucky we got this house instead of the project Rome first submitted an offer on - I should have pushed on "what does the neighborhood look like?"
What did I do today to make a contribution to a good life? I did do art - got some new pens, including a white pen. I wrote in my art journal with the new pens. I wrote three pages, I went to coffee, waited for the gang and decided to go on an "art date". An Art Date, after Julia Cameron, to look for and maybe get new pens and check out the notebooks. I loved finding a white pen and brought it home and wrote and colored in my art journal.
In the morning pages, I have been writing intentions. Lists of lists with a purpose. First intention is to befriend myself, love myself, forgive myself. I will no longer allow family drama take up time.
More on intentions later. At this moment, I want to declare focus for 2019 as far as what is coming. Travel in the spring, planning on travel in December of 2019. Maybe seeing the kids in 2019, going to the lake and perhaps stopping to visit others.
Another thing I am looking forward to is created a writing project plan as part of the Loft class I am taking in two weeks. What do I want to write? What can I do further the writing practice? What does it look like?
No comments:
Post a Comment