A place where I can share interesting ideas and maybe get a few things off my chest

Posts tagged ‘Morning Pages’

Ineffable Enoughable

I wrap up my morning journaling sessions by writing out a couple of pertinent affirmations, five times each (why five? I don’t know – it just seems like a goodly number), and then shuffle the current tarot or oracle deck to choose a Card of the Day (COTD).

The deck I’m currently using is Brian Froud and Jessica MacBeth’s The Faeries Oracle, and the card I drew this morning is the Zero, with the words “Faery Guide” across the bottom. The accompanying guidebook tells me that this card represents my very own Faery Guide, and I should draw said guide on the card, or at least some kind of symbol or something. Except the cards are laminated. I would have to use a ballpoint pen, and even if I somehow drew something I was satisfied with, it would inevitably smear and get ink on the other cards. And then there is the whole idea of defacing published media. Just can’t do it.

ANYWAY, I decided that my very own Faery Guide is quite probably as morphable as my moods, with a visage as ephemeral as my attention span, and so could never be adequately captured in two dimensions on a slick-surfaced piece of decorated cardstock.

Ineffable, if you will. (Any Good Omens fans out there?) She sends the message that no matter how I appear (or don’t appear, as the case may be), I am enough, just as I am.

And so are we all.

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Yes. Yes, I am.

My bedroom writing space

My bedroom writing space

Yesterday, I was in the lobby area of the hotel having coffee with my wonderful husband and doing my Morning Pages (aka therapeutic journaling, aka daily brain dump), and a woman stopped at our table. She apologized for interrupting and asked if I was a writer. I looked her straight in the eye and said, “Yes. Yes, I am. And one day I plan on being a professional writer”. She noticed my Florida Writers Association t-shirt and commented on it and I was glad I had worn it.

She asked about my projects. I told her I had a blog that I was trying to pay more loving attention to, and an idea for a non-fiction book that I have established a URL for with the idea of blogging it into existence. She told me she had a screenwriting idea for a complete story arc for a current television show that has had a poor storyline into its latest season. I wrote down my blog URL for her. We exchanged the titles of a couple of books each thought the other might enjoy.

It was so cool!

I would go on and on here for awhile, but Mother keeps looking at her watch and asking when we’re leaving for Wills Point and our family Thanksgiving get-together. I guess I’ll stop making her wait.

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Morning Pages

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Every morning, I write Morning Pages. It’s something I’ve done off and on for almost two decades, starting with the first time I read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. A couple of years ago, I reread it and went through all the exercises and endeavored to make Morning Pages a daily practice. At first, I spent $10-12 on each ruled, wire-bound journal, purchased from the bargain table at Barnes and Noble. When I got to the point where I was actually writing every day and going through one blank book per month, I decided that the $1 composition books from Target or Office Depot worked just as well, and when I watched for the Back-To-School sales, I could pick them up for half-price or less. Now I have dozens of them stashed around the house, ready for me to fill up with what is essentially a daily brain-dump.

Sometimes I sit at an antique secretary in the den, sometimes at my sewing machine/desk in the bedroom, and on the weekends when I feel the need for extra solitude and quiet, I take myself out to the travel trailer that is parked on the side of the house between camping trips. I have taken my current journal with me to early morning doctor’s appointments so that I could stop by the coffee house afterwards and do the writing I hadn’t had time to do before the appointment. As I’ve progressed in this daily writing habit, I have found that I am able to write with more focus in what at one time would have been unbearably distracting conditions.

Some people refer back to their journal/diaries for reference or as a memory aid. I have almost never done so (as if I’d be able to decipher my handwriting anyway). Others keep theirs as some kind of gift to the future or a legacy for their children. Since mine act as both a writing lubricant and therapy tool, I don’t believe that I would want anyone reading them, nor do I think anyone would find them particularly interesting. I do keep them, although I’m not sure why, but I only have them dating back about 6 years, as shortly after I moved to Florida, I had an amazingly cathartic bonfire in my backyard, burning all the pages I had written up until that time.

But, I digress. The original direction I had for this post was that it took me about three years to fully integrate Morning Pages into my daily routine and make it something that I anticipate as I know how it enriches my day. My next step is to make regular blogging so much a part of my routine that it is just the next step in a natural progression after coffee and Morning Pages. Maybe one day, I’ll get yoga in there, too.

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on November 21, 2013