Jayne.press

Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Writing is my love, 2 hours a day has never been enough. It easily consumes my life more than riches (not more than my family though). The hours I write daily, may dwindle over the years but for now, writing is my world. My world is writing. I guess I’m catching up for all the years I should have been writing. Funny thing is that I was waiting until I was in a better place but I didn’t find that better place until I started writing.

First do what you feel called to do, then let the better place come to you.

Here’s a great lesson from Steven Furtick. Enjoy.

Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.

William Blake

O William Blake, if you only knew how much I’d love for my life to be as smooth as this quote sounds. Ok ok wait let’s think about this. Something I learned as a writer was that we all have different times when our brains work best. Some brains work best first thing in the morning, some late at night. So this nice tidy order looks great in theory but truth is these aren’t one size fits all. Learning when your brain works best can help you decide your daily schedule. My best writing hour was 11am, so I’d plan my day to allow me to have my butt in the chair by then. Writing before bed is just part of my life but it doesn’t feel the same as writing at night.

This quote also seems to advocate for routine. I like routine. I think it’s important to create routine but I also think it’s important to allow flexibility into my life. There’s something creative about switching things up intuitively.

When’s your best time to write? Can you relate to this quote from a different perspective?

Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.

Rainer Maria Rilke

I don’t know that I could find a quote that better explains my marriage. We are a pair humans who absolutely love our solitude. We really don’t require much as lovers of solitude but we do have our own desires. I don’t think I ever realized how much better my life is when I have solitude. And I don’t think I could understand my husband’s need for solitude until I understood my own need. We will reach our 10 year marriage in Sept and all I can say is that the first ten years has mostly been us learning to trust ourselves and learning to create and support healthy environments throughout our entire lives, not just at home. That’s just a brief reaction to this quote. I think a lot more could be said here so maybe I’ll return to it in the future.

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

Confucius

I’m here with this quote and a story. One time in about 3rd grade, I was riding bikes with my brother, hit a pothole, flipped over the handlebars. I scraped my forehead, got the wind knocked out of me, and ripped my t-shirt. It was no fun. Cried the whole way home. No broken bones. No er visit. For weeks I refused to ride my bike down that hill. Took me some time to go down that hill again but eventually I got my courage back.

The only other time I got the wind knocked out of me was when I was on the monkey bars. I landed just right on my back. That didn’t keep me from climbing the monkey bars a few minutes later.

The point here is to share a relatable story because we all fall down sometimes. Some accidents don’t cause much of a negative impact. Others require more intentional focus and rebuilding.

How about you?

There’s going to be days when you screw up. I don’t like those days, most of us don’t. On those days I want to crawl into a hole and hide until it all blows over.

Believe it or not, I used to shame myself with my own weird self-punishing rituals like not allowing myself my favorite foods, or not allowing myself the tiny joys that I would allow myself to have on good days. But over the last 10 years, I’ve learned to accept myself with all the silly little flaws I come with. Now bad days are the days I treat myself especially if my mistake is really bringing me down.

In order for me to have gotten to that point, I had to realize that sometimes my mistakes feel like giants, when in reality they aren’t as big and bad as I’m making them out to be. Also the toxic environments I allowed myself to stay in, swelled my silly little mistakes to be bigger than they were. These moments can feel very big, but misunderstandings are part of language and communication. So is forgetting. So is accidentally crossing a boundary that’s new to you. Whatever it is, it’s part of learning those around us and learning ourselves. It’s all about what you’re doing to learn from it.

So since learning all this, I do my best to add to environments in positive ways. It took me a long time to unlearn self-punishing. I don’t want to add to anyone else’s overbearing inner disciplinarian. If they have one, great, they don’t need me to punish them.

We are all still worthy of love and acceptance with all our struggles and flaws.