When I think of writing, I tend to think in terms of book-length projects. Or the other extreme of short little blog posts.

I just had an “ah ha!” moment while doing my morning journaling. What about working on something in between? Like short stories or essays?

For example, I have a memoir in mind but it’s such a big project, it overwhelms me and I don’t even start. But what if I took one element or one scene and wrote it out as a personal essay? A collection of those could become a book later, but even if they just stand alone, it might be a way to break through the writer’s block that seems to have hit with the memoir idea.

Maybe I’ll go back through past issues of The New Yorker and read their personal essays to get a better sense of what that looks like. I feel encouraged and maybe even a little inspired.

On the topic of memoir, I’m reading the classic memoir A Childhood: A Biography of a Place by Harry Crews. It was recommended to me by someone who claimed it’s the “greatest memoir ever written!” Well, I don’t know about that yet, but it’s definitely good so far. 🙂

My dad asked me to wash his sleeping bag in my new washing machine. It doesn’t have a center post, so it can wash large items like blankets, etc. My dryer didn’t want to dry the sleeping bag so I have the bag flung over a chair.

They let me off work early today (which is weird that it was so slow in the middle of a sale). So, what did I do with my sudden day free?

More laundry.

Blankets, sheets, and more sheets. Now I have another blanket flopped over another chair. I feel like I’m living in a laundry.

And all I want to do is nap. But my bed is torn apart and being laundered.

So that’s my day. Laundry. And no nap. Although the couch is starting to look inviting.

I’ve gotten a lot of work done–between laundry loads–on an outline for the writing class I’m going to teach next month. Did some research, read some of my favorite authors on writing. And it’s amazing how often they all disagree with each other. There definitely isn’t one right way to write.

I’m preparing my notes for a beginning writing class I’ll be teaching next month. I want to share Anne Lamott’s idea of writing really bad first drafts. She calls them sh*tty first drafts. Notice how I didn’t use the “s” word? Yeah, that’s what I decided to write about just now.

Not long ago, a friend told me, “I noticed that you never swear. Why is that?”

Wow. I hadn’t realized I didn’t swear. I’m not particularly prudish about swearing. Other people swearing doesn’t offend me. All I could say in response was, “Sometimes I do.” Or I think I do, anyway. I definitely think swear words. But maybe they don’t come out of my mouth. lol

It gave me food for thought. Had I always been a non-swearer? Was there a time when I stopped swearing? I didn’t know.

To the best of my knowledge, I think I stopped swearing when I became a mother. Setting a good example for the kiddos was a high priority to me. I was surrounded by kids. My own. My kids’ friends. The 4-H Club. The neighbors. Everyone came to my house to play because we had the biggest front yard and the best snacks.

Swearing just wasn’t an option for me with all those impressionable little people running around. And once the non-swearing habit was firmly set, it never became an option again.

So here I sit, a full-grown adult teaching a writing class who can’t type the word sh*tty. I wonder if I’ll be able to say it in the class? Probably not without a bunch of apologizes and excuses and embarrassment.

There’s something that amuses me in this situation. 😃

I’d been reading a book about finding more direction and purpose to your life. Identifying your dreams or discovering the path opening to personal fulfillment. I was at a crossroads—would I move to a new location with all the stresses that come with a move to a new community, or would I stay put with all the stresses I was currently experiencing. But at least those present stresses were known and familiar.

I’d taken some time for a personal retreat to mull over the possible changes I may be facing. A new house, new people, even things as mundane as new grocery stores. So much change is involved with a move.

My personal retreat took place at a former horse camp I’d attended as a child. Over the years, it’d been refurbished and reimagined into a guest ranch for all ages. There were still horses in the field and trails on the hill. I found that so many memories were triggered from the familiar buildings and by talking with the family members of the original owners.

My childhood memories of trail rides, barn dances, and campfires combined with my grownup musings about choices I needed to make. What choices would Horse Camp Girl have made in the current situation? Would her dreams fit in with any of my thoughts or life transitions today?

What were Horse Camp Girl’s dreams? Well, for one thing, she wanted to write. I remember girlhood dreams of the writer’s life. She imagined a room of her own, a typewriter by the window, the room decorated with things she loved, there was at least one cat, a view of something green and relaxing out the window, peace and quiet. My girlhood dreams were pretty simple.

Fast forward to now. I live in a small home all my own with two cats, a view out my writing window of a greenbelt, my grandma’s piano and my grandfather’s rocking chair in places of honor, a table strewn with notebooks, pens, books, and Post-it notes. No typewriter, but more than one computer. Times and writerly equipment change.

I made the choice to move. And suddenly one day I realized that although the details are different, I’d made a choice which actually aligned with my childhood dreams. Writing, housing, cats, a view. While my current house may not be my Dream House, I think it’s a living situation of my dreams.

Making the choice to move rather than stay put was made not just for sensible, logical reasons, but also through meditative, intuitive, thoughtful, prayerful steps. And, also, it was a decision to make the best of the choices I’ve made, realizing that all choices are a mixed bag of good and bad. Of joys and challenges. Although I’m living a life with heartbreak and challenges, in many ways, I am living the dreams of my life. And that’s important to remember during the dark times.

I was reading today and the writer shared about a simple meditation to help determine changes you might want to make in your life.

So I closed my eyes and imagined my happy place. (It’s a secluded beach in the Bahamas.) I asked the Universe what changes would be important to make in my life right now. Basically asked myself, “What isn’t working?”

Having just moved, that pretty much upended my life, so a lot of options for changes weren’t really necessary to consider.

After some time of just sitting quietly, I suddenly saw myself in my mind’s eye walking around with my nice camera, taking photos of beautiful locations and interesting objects. Wow, I miss my camera. It just never got unpacked when I moved. Definitely a change I want to make.

I also saw myself shutting my computer instead of playing games online. Those games are often just a time waster, but also can be a welcome respite from life’s stresses. Hm. I had the thought, “I could give the games up for Lent.” Which was a funny thought because I don’t usually give things up for Lent. But I was suddenly wondering, how would my life be different if I gave up the games for a while? I’d probably choose other simple activities. Reading. Writing. Cleaning. Photography. Art. Walking. Playing with the cats.

How long is Lent, anyway? 40 days? 46 days if you count Sundays? Anyway, I know it ends on Easter. I’m not even sure when Easter is this year. (I just checked. Easter is March 31st this year.)

So my little trip to my deserted beach in my mind brought out the desire to bring my camera out of the back recesses of the closet, and to take a little break from online games for a bit.

It felt like a worthwhile activity to find those answers.

I was given a file cabinet shortly after I moved. I’d been without a file cabinet for a number of years, so I was totally out of the habit.

I’ve been wanting to set it up, but perfectionism kept getting in the way. If I didn’t know exactly how I was going to set up the files, and if it wasn’t the perfect system, then I wasn’t going to do anything. So I’ve sat here with an empty file cabinet and a couple of piles of paper on my desk that needed to be filed.

Finally, a couple of days ago, I said to myself, “Progress is better than perfection.” So I went over to the first pile of papers, grabbed the first piece of random paper off the top, and made a file for it. And did this with each piece of paper in the pile. If there was already a file where it fit, I’d put it there. Otherwise, I’d create a new file. I just kept putting these random files one behind the other in no particular order. (I’ll sort that out later.)

For now, I have papers in files and no longer have piles on my desk.

Significant progress has been made! I’m quite pleased.

One of the assignments in The Artist’s Way book is to take yourself on a weekly Artist Date. It could be a walk in the park, a visit to a museum, or anything that engages your senses.

Today I took myself to downtown Olympia. The pavement was wet and the rain was falling on my umbrella. I went to several little gift shops and took time to appreciate the scents and sights. There were some beautiful candles in an array of floral scents. One shop had handmade scented lotions. I took time to smell and sample and engage with the items. I looked at the displays of handmade greeting cards in one store. Each card was a little work of art. I bought one to send to my friend in prison.

After smelling and viewing the gift shops, I took myself out to lunch. It’s a date, right? 🙂 I had delicious homemade mac-and-cheese (comfort food) while sitting at a corner table with a view of the rain, the traffic, and the people trying to avoid the rain and the traffic. I didn’t come home with any great artistic ideas, but I think the point of the Artist Dates is to keep the creative well filled with a variety of sights and sounds and smells and textures.

I’ve been feeling blah about how I look for a while. Probably because I don’t do my hair much, never wear makeup anymore, and wear the same few outfits that I don’t even particularly like. That sounds pretty blah, doesn’t it?

I was writing about it in my Morning Pages today and I feel like it’s a combination of a lack of self-esteem and also remnants from a time not that long ago when I would cry off my makeup all the time so it just seemed silly to wear it.

So today for something different, I did my hair, put on makeup, put on a different shirt than I usually wear, and tossed on a colorful scarf. Amazing how much better I feel.

I have a meeting to go to this evening and I’m wondering if I’ll feel better/different at the meeting. I suspect I will.

In the book I’m working through (The Artist’s Way), one of the assignments was to do an artist-brain activity. Roughly described as something monotonous or repetitive. Running, walking, painting a wall. For me, handwashing dishes is my most productive artist-brain activity. Each of my book ideas was birthed while standing at the sink with my arms in warm soapy water, scrubbing things clean.

Today my dishwasher was almost full, but I decided to try handwashing the dishes instead. I didn’t have any earth-shaking creative ideas, but I felt a little more grounded. A little more open to what my creative artist-brain may be speaking to me. And my fingernails are clean. 🙂

I’ve noticed recently that I’m starting to develop little piles around the house. A pile of books/notebooks/papers/pens where I write at the table. A small pile of papers related to meetings I attend that accumulate on the kitchen counter. Assorted things that piled up over the holidays on one of the desks in my office.

As you probably already know, I’m a Piler to the core, but I was really hoping my piles wouldn’t follow me to the new house. But they evidently did. At least it’s just a few small piles and not a houseful.

So I have to take what I know about working with my Piler tendencies and find ways to tame them.

I need to identify what’s in the piles and then either find homes for them or get a “pile container” of some sort to contain the piles. I know I need to keep my writing-related pile close to the table, because otherwise writing won’t be as apt to happen. It’s a fact of my life that as soon as I put things away in a file cabinet, it’s like the things have vanished from my mind and cease to exist. For my writing stuff, I think I might get a nice basket of a size and shape that will hold things well. It’ll look nice enough to keep in a visible area of the house.

Maybe a little basket for the tiny pile on the kitchen counter, too. The pile on my desk is going to take some serious consideration. Real filing is going to take place with some of those items.

Anyone remember the chapter from my A Simple Choice book where I shared about a friend’s techniques for Pilers and why attempting to become a Filer just doesn’t work? I have a nice file cabinet that someone gave me when I moved. Perfectionism stops me in my tracks …. I have to have the perfect filing system. I actually don’t have to have a perfect filing system, but I’m frozen about getting started with the cabinet. I think I might work on it this week while I have some extra time off (and I’m avoiding the cold weather outside).

I think the Pilers/Filers chapter of the book might be online somewhere. I’ll look and see if I can find it.