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Writing your Book is an Endurance Sport
Build your Stamina I have written stories and essays my whole life. For years, I’ve journaled and blogged regularly. I’ve established a small daily writing habit, so my goal for this year was to get my idea for a novel written. On Halloween 2018, I saw a young woman dressed in an elf costume and ever since I’ve wanted to write a story involving elves. The idea has been kicking around my head for years and for my writing goals for 2022, I put down writing my elf novel. Warming up For Christmas Eve, in my family, we each get a book to read. My book was Save the Cat!…
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Want to be more creative? Maybe go for a run.
I started exercising regularly when my youngest baby started sleeping through the night. I took a Crystal Paine’s online course about reworking your morning routine. My new morning routine began with a tiny bit of exercise. Soon after, I also started a journaling practice and then started getting more intentional about creativity. I found the exercise woke up my brain and helped me have more energy throughout the day. I started small and then built up to a couch to 5k program. I have been running for 5 years now and have done several running races and triathlons. What does fitness have to do with a creative practice? For me,…
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Nailing the Basics in Everyday Life
Matt Dixon coaches professional triathletes to prepare them for international competition. In his Purple Patch podcast, which discusses maximizing performance in sport and life, he talks about the importance of “nailing the basics.” For his triathlon team, that means the athletes should eat well, hydrate well, and sleep well before they worry about trying new supplements or the latest training fad. Most of performance success comes from doing the simple foundational steps on a consistent basis. This concept got me thinking about what “nailing the basics” might mean in relation to living a full-color life. What are the key components of intentional living that we should focus on? If we…
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Getting Out of My Head and Recharging
In the book, Breathing Under Water, Fr. Richard Rohr states that most people spend too much time in our head space and need to connect more with our heart space. The head space encompasses our logical brain where we think and plan. The other aspect of being human is to be connected with the heart space. He says “the heart space is often opened by ‘right brain’ activities such as music, art, dance, nature, fasting, poetry games, life-affirming sexuality, and, of course, the art of relationships itself.” The book discusses that many people are only in their head space but rarely in touch with the heart space. This disconnect can…
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You never regret swimming in a lake
I love to swim, but I don’t have much tolerance for cold water. At the ocean or a cold mountain lake, I stick my foot in and feel the bone chilling cold. It makes me step back and question if it’s really worth it to get in the water or not. Maybe it would just be easier to go for a walk along the beach or stay on the blanket. Once I get myself into the the water, it’s always a fresh thrill. I love swimming in the open water and I never regret pushing past that initial discomfort and getting my whole self in. I’ve made myself my own…
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A Model of the Creative Life
When I started running a few years ago, I did it for myself, but it has had a side benefit of making my kids interested in trying fitness too. They see me go for a run or a bike ride and they want to come too. They are all under 10 years old and three out of four have already run a 5k race, which wasn’t something I could do when I was younger. My youngest daughter wanted her own set of hand weights because she likes to do yoga and strength work on the mat with me. You often hear about how it’s important to model healthy eating and…
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Outside in the Fresh Air – Smells matter too
This winter I have been doing most of my bike rides on the indoor trainer. Riding indoors is nice because I can do it while I watch my Continuing Education units for work. I can do it while the kids are playing video games and still keep an ear out for anything going wrong. I can ride the trainer before or after the sun comes up. It’s not cold or wet on the trainer inside. Dogs never chase me on the trainer, although sometimes I think my cat is going to get her whiskers caught in my spokes. Because it was the New Years and I wanted to start the…
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Chasing flow
I work as an interpreter between American Sign Language and English. When I am working, my mind and body are fully engaged. My mental chatter falls away and I become fully immersed in the challenge of working between two languages. My head gets “in the zone” and it’s one of the reasons my job is so rewarding. Psychology researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls these immersive experiences “flow states.” He describes a flow state as a time of intense concentration involving both your mind and body. During these work periods, people feel an appropriate amount of challenge and they feel like the way they experience time is altered. These states of flow…
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Running Out of my Comfort Zone
When I started running, just walking out of the front door was a stretch for me. My default mode was to stay in the house. When I was in survival mode with four young kids, staying inside was much easier than dealing with getting four sets of little shoes and socks on the kids. I needed to get out of the house a few times a week. I needed to see the sunshine. I needed to breathe fresh air and soak up some vitamin D. The nice thing about running is that I could do it by myself. I started working out on summer mornings, so I would get out…
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Taking tiny steps
I started exercising by accident 2 years ago. I was coming out of a year of the infant survival mode and I realized I was tired of being woken up by someone screaming for Mommy. I wanted to have a morning routine that was more peaceful and allowed me to wake up before I needed to be “on” as a parent. I started cruising Pinterest for morning routine ideas and I stumbled across Crystal Paine’s “Make Over Your Mornings” online course. I love online courses now, but at that time I had never tried one. This one was short and cheap so I thought it was worth the money…