Tag: 10 16

289 /// Solid Ground is Forming

I’m feeling good this morning. I’m feeling like myself. It’s been so long since I’ve had both motivation and focus that I hardly knew what to do with it all. I spent the morning getting through some minor chores and checking off a few small to-dos before sitting down at my desk. All day I’ve had a strong urge to write but of course, motivation and focus are only 2/3 of the equation. You need inspiration to get anything of value down.

Or do you?

I saw a tweet from Austin Kleon this morning with a simple writing tip: write down every dumb thought that occurs to you and each day simply choose the least dumb thought to write about. Well, I have been filling my notebooks with dumb thoughts for weeks. Hell, I have a dumb thought or two floating around right now! Thinking dumb thoughts is damn near a talent of mine. If that’s all I need to write then I’m in great shape to get started, to keep going, and to get as far as any dumb thought will go!

This might be the extra push I needed, the permission I needed. I don’t have to find a good thing to write about. I just have to choose the least dumb thing I can think of. Hell, I may try choosing the dumb thing and try making it not so dumb. I could choose the most fun thing? Or the most interesting thing. The point is to work with what I have: this brain, these ideas, this blog, and this timeframe. Yes, I like that.

Outside of motivation and focus, a lot of other good things have been happening. There’s been setbacks and stress, but there’s been enough positivity, connection, and kindness that life feels good right now. I feel loved and capable, and the people around me are feeling loved and capable too.

I suppose that’s what happiness, or flourishing, starts with. Being seen and having some say about what happens to you in this world.

I think the COVID pandemic has been a hole that we’ve all been trying to crawl out of for years now. The virus has had such far-reaching and complex impact it’s hard to say what was caused by or made worse by it and what are normal setbacks in a typical human life but between the losses, the economy, the fear and anxiety, the deficits and the changes in belief and perspective we have all gone through I’d say there is no part of society and no one of us that isn’t trying to find that new stability. That new way forward.

Solid ground is forming again, or, at the very least, this new chaos is less scary than it used to be. Our ability to adapt to the worst conditions is both a great flaw and a great strength. No matter what the reason and no matter for better or worse, I’m glad to be rid of some of the bad feelings. I’m happy to hope again.

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Starting fall break a little earlier than I originally planned to and though I regret the lower paycheck already, it was rather nice.

Most of the morning was for tweaking little blog things and setting up some drafts. I joined up with the Cheer Peppers for National Blog Posting Month in November on impulse and I am scrambling to figure out what exactly that means now. I pretty much post here everyday anyway so the challenge should be something more than what I am already doing, right?

In the afternoon I accompanied a loved one on their first therapy appointment for moral and emotional support. That means I spent over an hour and a half sitting in a waiting room alone watching the videos and doing the reading for week 8 of Modern & Contemporary American Poetry. It was a good use of my time. I got some personal goals accomplished, and I got to be a good friend/loved one to someone who I care about and who needed me.

I’ll admit that much of much of my self-worth comes from what I can give to others and who knows that I can be counted on, but I’m ok with that. There are worse things to hinge your sense of self on I suppose.

I spent most of the evening I’ve been playing with collage things and working on little blackout/cut out poems and before I head to bed, I plan to make progress with Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky.

It was a fulfilling day.