Timing ~ 4

Using a timer is the next part of my Daily Planning Guidelines. In my blog it is the fifth on that list. On the side of my fridge it is the fourth on that list. Guess I’d best tidy up my refrigerator list! Regardless, using a timer has been a very valuable tool in my entire learning about a writing practice. We have so many beeps, tones and alert sounds foisted upon our ears whether we’re inside or outside, I hesitated when this strategy was suggested to me several years ago. The longer I struggled against the Power of Procrastination the closer I came to resigning myself to one more sound assailing my ears.

My often used analogy with cooking allowed me to see the value of a timer. If I’m baking anything, the recipe always comes with a timed completion. Here is the neat little timer shaped like a garlic head I’ve used for years. Sadly, after those years of faithful timing, my poor little garlic head is not as reliable as it once was. It has created some near misses and some blackened and crispy products from my oven. So now, I just use my cell phone timer for all my daily timing needs. 

How does timing my work within a Daily Plan help? It provides a beginning and an end for me to work within. Editing is not exactly the most inspiring of activities. Revising is also not terribly wonderful, especially if I have attached my heart to certain sentences or words. The timer often ends one of those struggles, reminding me it’s time to get up and restore the circulation in my legs. Shift my brain into a different gear, whether it’s a bit of gardening or taking a walk around the block, taking deep breaths as I go. There is always a point that the timer is silenced. My body clock tells me when I’ve done enough work. I can take the bread out of the oven to let it cool, just as I can stack up any of my written work and let my thoughts settle until the next day.

“The Sun will rise and set regardless. What we choose to do 

with the light while it’s here is up to us. Journey wisely.”

~ Alexandra Elle

Don’t forget!  March is Epilepsy month with Purple Day for Epilepsy on March 26 each year.

Circling

Busy work -

Sputtering not puttering

energy with no place to go

leaking from fingertips and toes, running about on the surface until finding a door to depth and meaning

“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.”

~ Socrates

Don’t forget!  March is Epilepsy month with Purple Day for Epilepsy on March 26 each year.

Bend to the Moment

Flexibility all around in 

the space between words

pause between notes

lift and flow of breaths

movement of muscles

hesitation between ticks of the clock, resting at night before day planning to pivot without notice.

“Develop flexibility and you will be firm; 

cultivate yielding and you will be strong.”

~ Liezi, The Book of Master Lie

Don’t forget!  March is Epilepsy month with Purple Day for Epilepsy on March 26 each year.

Layers of Living

It’s quiet in my little corner of the world right now. Being prepared or getting prepared? Those are my thoughts this morning since awakening when the light was just seeping through my curtains. We spend much of our waking hours getting ready for something. The next meal. The next workday…..and are there clean clothes? Preparing for the lives that we live. Yesterday I reviewed the list of my Daily Planning Guide and found that, although it looked not bad as a list, it just didn’t seem enough. For the next few days, I’m looking a bit deeper into the details on each one. 

As I’ve moved through my morning, I have been preparing food. One of my favourite household jobs. The house smells delicious. French onion soup in my small crock pot - still needs the beef broth added. Honey garlic ribs in my large crock pot. One recipe from online and the other from a cookbook I purchased in Regina in the ’60’s. That last recipe I had to rejig the cooking times to make it a crock pot recipe. No, I’m not having company today and I do live on my own. So who or what am I preparing for?

After all the brain work this morning, I’ve come to the conclusion that preparation comes in layers. Layers that we engage with every day to be ready for each step that we take. I don’t know many clairvoyant enough to be able to see any of the curve balls that show up without notice. We have to be prepared to tap dance or shift quickly so that our plans don’t go completely awry. And of course there are times when some things need to get put on hold until the latest disaster is averted. As preparation is the foundation of each day, unless we learn how to dance or catch that curve ball, we may wind up in the middle of a disaster. On the up-side, if it’s spontaneous fun that comes at me, I have learned to stop what I’m doing and go with the fun whenever possible. Back to the question about my food preparation this morning. It is all about personal preference, enjoyment in the very creation of meals and a more cost effective approach to taking a hot meal to work.  

Preparation can be so much more than tasks on a list. Using these three qualifiers, preference, enjoyment and cost could move preparation out of the flat, literal sense of a list stuck on a fridge door, or shoved in a purse into why we choose to move through each day the way any of us do. For my writing project, preparing a niche amid layers of ordinary living, is key to its completion.

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Don’t forget!  March is Epilepsy month with Purple Day for Epilepsy on March 26 each year.

Progress Report

Just over two weeks ago I set about developing some personal guidelines for Daily Planning. Setting a plan to actually get a particular writing project well on it’s way to completion was my goal. From my blog of March 5, 2018 this is the second draft of daily planning:

Guidelines for Daily Planning

1. Be prepared

2. Allow for flexibility

3. Balance project work with puttering

4. Be alert for busy work

5. Set a timer - begin with 25 to 45 minutes.

The short form of this tongue in cheek report is that, while I did accomplish more on my project from that beginning, the Dreaded Drift set in. Partly because of my own guidelines! After a couple of days - or was it at least a week - I recognized the downward pull of this drift and thought. Always a dangerous thing as it wraps around my legs and feet and ties up my hands. At least the drift stopped. But this time, I decided to eyeball this Dreaded Drift. What the heck was going on? I had good intentions. I’ve had a ton of good intentions in my life. Some have met with a successful outcome. Too many have not.

Number 1 - Be prepared - was not a problem. That is actually something learned in nurses training for doing dressing changes. Know the severity of the wound and the complexity of the dressing. Read the policy and procedure manual, gather the equipment needed for the dressing change. Explain to the patient the procedure…………In this case, the wound is my writing project and still in a very wounded state. I have read many, many books on writing and have learned the procedures needed. I’ve gathered my equipment. As I write this, I am surrounded by my preferred pens, my basket of writing things - not sure of all the contents, and my pile of wounded project pieces.  That last one though - explain to the patient. I guessed the patient would be me and in that light I have spent the last couple of weeks, observing me. Observing my daily habits. Seeing if my guidelines are workable or just a lovely list of words with numbers in front of them.

Number 2 - Allow for flexibility - I am nothing if not flexible. After all I’ve been doing yoga, a very basic yoga, for more than a couple of decades. Can’t touch my toes without bending my knees, but I’m not in bad shape. When flexibility gets as soft as a wet spaghetti noodle, everything slides away and is just mucky. Writing, in my opinion, should never be sitting and grinding through an entire hour or more unless there is inspiration. If there is inspiration, it is not a grind. Just now, I felt stuck on that last sentence, so got up walked toward the window, talked kindly to one of my plants and then returned to the keyboard. Flexibility. 

Number 3 - Balance project work with puttering. Well, I’d be working on some reviewing or some editing and I wanted to tidy the kitchen, or empty the garbage, or any of a number of things. But! I was good. I recognized it as a temptation and a distraction, so I faithfully stayed put at my work table.

Number 4 - Be alert for busy work. This one seemed to be a problem. There does seem to be a difference in puttering and busy work, but so far I’ve been unable to define it for myself. The results of not knowing the difference was that I developed a very, very untidy home! That changed yesterday when I knew my house cleaners were coming in. Not wanting them to have to clean up my untidyness before they did the cleaning we agreed on, I dumped things on my bed, on my card table, on my sofa…..any flat surface that didn’t need dusting. Tidying up after myself is a puttering/busy work task that I won’t procrastinate on.

5. Balance: Do you think I got a little unbalanced in the past couple of weeks? It looked pretty unbalanced in here, and I felt unbalanced as I looked around me each day.

6. Set a timer:  This has always been a good practice for me when I’m hitting the restart button for any project I’m doing. After I get moving, I find it can be an irritant, so I will turn it off. I use the one on my cell phone so I can change the ring tone if I would like a more pleasant or upbeat tone.

I have since added the term ‘anchor habits’ to this grouping. They are daily behaviours connected to my soul. Behaviours and beliefs with the solid feeling of rightness. One of them is this daily blog. I am grateful to all of you that read my musings. 

“I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.”

~ Carl Sandburg

Don’t forget!  March is Epilepsy month with Purple Day for Epilepsy on March 26 each year.

Pivot Point

Exercise

Turning around today

Monday morning movement

Bending into yoga

Walking without talking then ~

A break to sit and talk with friends

then off to fit muscles into watery cardio

Makes a mind happy!

“True enjoyment comes from activity of the mind 

an exercise of the body; the two are ever united.

~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Don’t forget!  March is Epilepsy month with Purple Day for Epilepsy on March 26 each year.

Heart Whispers

‘the meditations of my heart’

from an old family prayer

heart secrets without words.

“A secret is not something unrevealed, 

but something told privately, in a whisper.”

~ Marcel Pagnol

Don’t forget!  March is Epilepsy month with Purple Day for Epilepsy on March 26 each year.