Notebooks
I buy things when I find myself at loose ends and need a little direction. And, as I am my mother's child, I try to find things on sale. It's the primal hunter set loose in the modern mall.
Mostly I buy notebooks. Blank pages filled with promise and potential. They make me feel like there's so much more to do, so much longer to wander the world and see its wonders.
Project for the rest of the year: fill some of these notebooks. Stop agonizing over the pages and wondering if what I write will be good enough. Some of what I write will be the crap-filled entrails of a gutter snipe, but that's OK. If the bad doesn't come out, how can the good flourish?
I'm writing more, but it's in smaller chunks and mostly on the train. When I thought about being a travel writer, I never imagined interpreting it to mean stealing bits of time to scribble while commuting. But that's fine. Short snippets of time are the best way to jot a little something and fill a page. And after that, fill another. And retire one notebook in favor of a second. And pretty soon, I'll be surrounded by my own words.
The world works in strange and mysterious ways. It's our job to keep saying thank you and honoring the gift of time. Sometimes we all forget. And sometimes we hit our stride and the world falls away in the pure feeling of flow, of losing the self in the river of doing exactly what you were born for.
To quote Billy Joel, "Either way it's OK, you wake up with yourself."
Mostly I buy notebooks. Blank pages filled with promise and potential. They make me feel like there's so much more to do, so much longer to wander the world and see its wonders.
Project for the rest of the year: fill some of these notebooks. Stop agonizing over the pages and wondering if what I write will be good enough. Some of what I write will be the crap-filled entrails of a gutter snipe, but that's OK. If the bad doesn't come out, how can the good flourish?
I'm writing more, but it's in smaller chunks and mostly on the train. When I thought about being a travel writer, I never imagined interpreting it to mean stealing bits of time to scribble while commuting. But that's fine. Short snippets of time are the best way to jot a little something and fill a page. And after that, fill another. And retire one notebook in favor of a second. And pretty soon, I'll be surrounded by my own words.
The world works in strange and mysterious ways. It's our job to keep saying thank you and honoring the gift of time. Sometimes we all forget. And sometimes we hit our stride and the world falls away in the pure feeling of flow, of losing the self in the river of doing exactly what you were born for.
To quote Billy Joel, "Either way it's OK, you wake up with yourself."