Just Like Starting Over

Exhibit A: If you've ever loom knitted, you know it's a
ridiculously easy craft. You can loom a hat in an evening.
Or, if you forget about your blanket project for a few months
at a time, you can loom a blanket in approximately 2 years.
The 2 years part is a projection based off of my current rate
of "do 5 rows, get bored, and put it away for a week or ten."

So, after reaching 108 days of continuous writing practice, I skipped a day. I got the journal back out, started up the next day, and then...skipped five days. The sixes-and-sevens poems have been hit-or-miss for a month. And I'm okay with all of that, because...life happens, and it gives me the opportunity to be kind to myself, which is a skill we all need.

I get a LOT of opportunities to be kind to myself. It's one of the side effects of having a teeny tiny attention span.

I blame Buddha.

So, I read a book about 15 years ago called, "The Zen of Eating." I was curious about Buddhism, and one of our trainers said, "If you want to understand Buddhism, read this book." It's a diet book, but it applies the Eightfold Path of Buddhism to eating...making the very abstract concepts of Zen extremely practical...and thus very easy to understand for those with a teeny tiny attention span.

Exhibit B: The jewelry repairs box. It's been there a long time.
Some of these are easy repairs. Some are failed projects or
partly finished projects or things that I kind of like but
have no idea what to do with. Every once in a while,
I go in and fish out a project and do something with it.
Most of the time, I pull each item out, go, "Wow! I
forgot that was in there!" and then put it right back.

One of the key takeaways I got from that book was not to be so hard on myself (which, frankly, may be a recurring life lesson)...that every day, every moment even, is a new opportunity to make better choices. In the context of the book, when you have a crappy day at work and eat a pint of Hagen Daz with a chaser of M&Ms, if you follow that with guilt and recriminations, your diet is going to fail because in a way, you're building your identity around that failure.  You become "a person who failed" rather than "a person who made a bad choice." One of those two is mired in identity; the other has a chance at self-improvement. The goal is to say, "My, that was a bad choice. But tomorrow, when I can once again look at food, I can choose better." Then, as you get more mindful about your choices, as long as you believe you can choose better in any given moment, eventually your choices align with your beliefs.

That practice has become a foundation of my identity: the ability to detach from present failures and acknowledge what went wrong without judging myself paired with a commitment to better future behaviors. So, when I realized I'd skipped a day of journaling, I didn't waste time berating myself for snapping a writing streak. I thought, "Okay, well then. That sucks. Guess I'll start a new streak tomorrow." And when the new streak lasted ten days, I shrugged that one off, too. I enjoy writing in the mornings; I have every confidence I'll do it again.

Highly recommended, even for non-Buddhists and non-dieters. Find it here.

Oddly enough, I've been mesmerized throughout October by watching somebody else's daily routine. I follow Shelby Abrahamsen (Little Coffee Fox), and in October she did a watercolor journal page a day, posting them on her YouTube channel, sped up so that you can watch her create a watercolor journal page in about two minutes. It is mesmerizing, particularly since I have limited artistic ability and it is therefore a bit like magic: watching lines evolve into shapes, colors layer, in surprising ways shadows deepen, highlights crackle on the surface...every day, my routine became watching her routine (which may, in hindsight, have led to me getting sidetracked from my routine, in one of those call-Alanis-Morrisette-THIS-is-what-irony-actually-is realizations).

It gives me a true appreciation for how much complexity is involved in art, which may not seem like it should be that much of a revelation to you, but you don't realize that the main thing I remember from sixth grade art class was getting pops from a coach because I drew a permanent line on the art work of an annoying table mate named Taco. I learned several things from sixth grade art, none of them about color, shading, or perspective.*

At any rate, when your artistic education ended with a loud thwack! approximately mumble-mumble years ago, the basics of watercolors can seem pretty magical. The whole time, you're like, "No, Shelby! Mushed pea green? There? On her face??? Wait. Whoa--that's beautiful! I never would've thought of doing that...which is why I should get out the loom and do another five rows on the 2021 blanket!"

Exhibit C: For someone who's been waiting anxiously at the ol' inbox for 2-3 months for her developmental edits, it sure did take me a long time (3 weeks) to actually open up the redline edits and go through them. Then it took me another 3 days to admit to anyone I'd actually finished. 

So, I'm okay with my lapses from journaling and acknowledge that I have the potential to make new good choices in the future. However, I do have that teeny tiny attention span, so I think that I want to give myself a shiny new challenge or two. I like the idea of building an image library and doing creative free writing based on images. I want to keep the poems and the Tarot, but give myself more flexibility in alternating those. The possibilities are endless; all I need is a brand new day to start over again. And a pint of Hagen Daz.

*Things I learned in sixth grade art: (1) Being a coach affords many opportunities to perfect the art of swinging wooden objects. (2) Sharpies are not an instrument of social justice. (3) "Because he's always annoying me" isn't an acceptable defense for vandalism.