Writing Challenge Day 7: Prompt #19

Try out a writing routine. Grab your beverage of choice, prepare a yummy snack, play your favorite music, do a happy dance before you sit to write. Plan actions to do which will let your mind know it’s time to write. 

Fun!

So I am going to interpret this how I want to. I started before I even knew this was going to be the prompt for today!

I had planned to start with a run since before I’d gone to sleep last night. Collect and gather my thoughts together and sift the useful from the less vibrant while getting to know my surroundings a little better. It was perfect. The gently rolling hills offered a challenging landscape. The uphills felt more significant than they were, and the downhills had me shuffle-stepping to keep an even pace. The clouds felt low. I could taste their contents in the damp air surrounding me.

It made me appreciate the steam pouring out of my mouth to warm and then immediately freeze the tip of my nose. Refreshing, not cold. I am learning to embrace cool winter days for what they’ve always been to me.

A challenge and an opportunity all in one eight month little package. A time and place in the yearly roadmap designated to slow down and take stalk, opporating in bursts of productivity to work through puzzles. I am reconditioning myself to adapt and overcome and see all things as a test, a teacher, or a chance to reset.

Chill out.

Sometimes chilling out in the land of mental alchemy can look like a nice long, challenging run.

Honestly, I have no favorite music. I used to only listen to gospel songs and gregorian chants, and Celtic beauties. Then when I was allowed to choose for myself, I thought I was a rock girl, rap girl, pop enthusiast, blues, swing. I went through enough phases to realize I like my music to match my mood or one that I want to assume. Something that compliments me perfectly at the moment. Which means my favorites-list is constantly shifting. What makes me want to dance while doing the dishes and washing cupboards might be completely different than what pumps me up to mopping, dusting, organizing shelves, and vacuuming— and it takes a whole completely different genre, podcasts or stories, I need for something someone’s created to take me away into a beautiful head space, help me sift through and sort, hang tops, and fold the dreaded but oh so soft and fluffy towels.

Sometimes what made me ready to write one day can be as helpful as a handful of screeching angry cats. that’s it. I am going to start asking myself what I want to listen too. What is my mood for the morning, this moment in emoji’s if I must. And then explore it.

Is this healthy?

Is this helpful?

What does it mean and what am I to do with it?

Some days I need silence. Complete quiet for like, five minutes and then I’m ready to make some noise, it’s just getting there that’s difficult and I have allowed it in the past. I see it now, so maybe something will be different.

Most times while writing, I blossom best with music that takes me on a journey. An epic piece created with the intention of telling a story and then let me interpret it freely. Anything that allows me to feel like I’m getting lost in an enchanted forest. A little sage in the making, a vigilante harboring dark and light seeds in my cloak on a mission to find each an ideal composition to reside and grow within.

I like a melody that makes me want to toss those seeds into my mental fields and see where they grow. I like a song that touches my heart just right, harmonies that fall all around me like rain on a rainforest canopy. Warm and wet and life-giving. That’s what I enjoyed writing to recently, so I dig in. I took some time to find something that inspired beautiful mental images. Sometimes these sessions lead into giant tales and all kinds of potential opportunities for heroes to come into being or cowards to uncloak themselves.

I was just listening to one that did all of that. I don’t even know hat exactly I wrote but I’m excited to look back over it.

Music is amazing. But our minds and bodies and spirits coming together to create it or partake in it fully to manifestation in our own movement, song, or mental composition… That is a wonder I’d wander for.

• It’s simple, not easy: I almost became the coward in my story this morning. I had every intention of running, even woke up excited for it. But then by the time I’d finished coffee every excuse not to came-a-knocking and nearly convinced me to wait for a better day. Wait for a time when I could pair running the trail along a river I love, with a grocery day where I’d be bursting two balloons with one dart. Okay, that sounds great for some other day. Run here today. Get to know the area. Every thought has the potential to lead to a new view, which can lead to a new thought which can tie the little thought cluster together in a neat little double knotted bow. Little laces of ideas and desires left to blend in with the daily outcome. Tomorrow I will run. That had been my first directive last night before falling asleep. Today was tomorrow. So I did just that with a little resistance at first, and in the end it was perfect.
  
  
• The frosty chill didn’t stop me from taking off a layer prior to the run I thought I would need. After two hills I couldn’t pull and tug it off fast enough so I wouldn’t over heat.

• Throughout the morning I’ve noticed there are some less friendly notes striking a cord inside of me. On my run and while I was tidying up afterward, I did some sifting and mental dialoguing. Anytime something came up that seemed to be pointing a finger or running me through an incredibly uncomfortable scenario. I would stare into it. And climb my way through it. I pictured how some of the characters I am currently working with might handle the stacked odds and barriers I’m learning to mount and boot my way over.

• About halfway through my run, while taking count of the thoughts I was harboring, it started to ping outliers in either direction, The really enjoyable thoughts as well as the deeply uncomfortable ones. This allowed me to establish something of a baseline. And some questions started to form.
  • What did they say about how I currently felt about myself?
  • The state of internal conflict or resilution.
  • What did this portray of my learning curve?
  • What will bring this concept into balance or raise potential?
• Each time I felt beaten against by the ideas manifesting in my mind, I took the initiative to soften the blow. Okay, let’s look at this. Why am I harboring this: Residual resentment, fear, doubt, was it something I was told by someone who was able to resinate because they reiterated something I was already moling over? Why was that teacher or lesson brought into my life, if for my benefit, which it always is, what benefit did I neglect to foster or pick up so I might better move forward without residual feelings and tensions blurring my decision making process?
• I’m learning to practice what I preach. I always tell people I care about o be nicer to themselves. I always assume I am being that way to myself but recently I’ve been a little tied and bottled up. What I pick up as nervousness, indecision, uncertainty in the energy sense of things is actually just potential energy being translated into fearful tendencies rather than conditioned to excitement over where the new uncharted territory might take me.
  • My internal conversations start to look alot like this: We both know that isn’t how things went, and this isn’t the end of the world. It’s the beginning of something brand new—an opportunity to get in touch with myself and feel my internal climate. Before I knew it, I was nearly finished with my present task and the sun had peaked from the clouds and poured through the forested hill I’m writing from.

• I’m sure there were a million chemical reasons I felt love at different moments today. The idea of a warm embrace, the enactment of it, the feeling of warm liquid in a cup in my hands then pouring over my lips into my mouth and that continued warmth gathering in my belly region. A quality paragraph of writing that makes me think after re-reading it.
  • The thoughts that come together through the mental alchemy happening behind the scenes and without our understanding or paying attention to the roots is astounding. I’ve been practicing mindful writing and tapping into my inside voice for about 7 days consciously and the things I did naturally without htinking about have exponentially improved since taking up the practice with all my heart I have available.
  • For example: It wasn’t just the act of going for a run that made me feel great. It was navigating the waters of choice and making a decision based on something I’d said within myself. By the time I’d conquered that sneaky maybe good advice of, Maybe wait for a warmer day and a path I’m more familiar with, multitask. After I pushed past the excuses and reasons I should stay put there was nothing but excitement over the possibilities that might extend from getting up and doing it. By the time I finished I had already paved the way to a productive and worthwhile day. The run and beautiful fresh air put me in the mood to try and write something to match.

• It’s incredible how aware I am becoming toward my internal tone of voice, I am only on Day 7 of this challenge and I feel more in touch with my core beliefs, values, insecurities, than ever. I am looking forward to the long term effect. It’s like a mental detox of the unwittingly limiting systems I’ve offered a position to in my composition. A million little chemical triggers and destablizing agents to shake me up and setting me off like a mad bull chasing a red bird.
• Letting these thought cocktails be seen, reminding myself not to judge but to observe whatever comes to mind, no mater how it shows up. Acknowledge it, allowing it to say its piece, state its purpose and then from the broader view offered through seeing myself in this way, I can more compassionately walk the defense or faulty directive to the door and offer it the opportunity to leave and find place elsewhere before I crush it. If the thought is helpful but maybe under developed I am learning to sit with it, walk it out and offer and explore alternative thoughts that create a unifying peace that starts inside myself and bleeds into where I go and what I meet.

• This is why writing is so cool. Everytime I pick up my pen or tap my fingers against the keyboard I’m tuning into myself. Getting to know what’s inside me, and seeing with more clarity through all of my internal and external senses. Even after 7 little days, I am less of an asshole. I realize that holding onto things internally affects how I interact. Letting go of thoughts and impulses that don’t serve me but offer every opportunity for myself to end up serving it leads to something cool as far as I can see. When I release stale or ugly thoughts it eventually causes their attachments to be released as well. My surroundings change if only because how I view them is dirrerent.

For instance: I don’t belong to anyone, and no one belongs to me. We are all unique and valuable for the information specific to our path. Hear and listen how I would like to be heard and listened too. Certain stories belong to me, it is my choice as to who and whether I share them. I agreed to experience and carry their lessons that we agree to before entry. This means, the more I listen to my intuitions, the closer I get to achieving whatever the current goal might be.

• My internal dialogue is refreshing when I’m not on autopilot. It feels good to participate in the direction of where my thoughts take me.

• I’m less of a petty jerk. I am less judgmental of how I and others show up more open to allowing myself and others to express ourselves freely. This doesn’t mean I won’t disagree but I will allow the disagreement to pass through me first. If the new information carries truth then I am available to be conditioned by it to the degree of its merit.

• When I am tuning in and sifting the junk out actively, the bigger picture of who I am internally becomes more clear to me. Less cluttered and devalued by low hanging perceptions. I see less of the single frame I’m in and more of the bigger moving picture surrounding my circumstance.

• I keep imagining a pool with a ton of leaves and trash floating over its surface. It’s like I’m stepping into the pool area with my little extendable skimming net. I’m collecting the garbage and tree skirts. I’m more open to expressing myself and being expressed honestly by my environment. The longer I pay attention, the more I find myself searching out the best possible answer, not just something that sounds right or appropriate. How do I genuinely feel about this or that… That’s what I bring to the table, and in the right company, life leads me into action in harmony with my surroundings. What I get will be valued as equally relevant. I will bring my best. And expect best-case scenarios and the ability to improvise when necessary and as needed.

• So for this prompt, I spent the day paying attention to different things, getting active and relaxed in waves of productivity and rest. It was well worth it. I love how quickly the internal landscape changes when we actively participate with our own best interests in mind. When I am good, I can do more good. I must be and so do good. I also took a bath just before writing this last paragraph. It was glorious and melted the soreness right out of my muscles. I’m telling you, self-care bleeds into everything. I had a great day of writing and researching today. The routine was a great success. Felt like I was playing with myself!