Back to Free Form

I’m excited to get back to using this blog as a forum for free form writing and idea capture. Yesterday’s post was planned for a while. One of the lessons I learned from it is that trying to “get it right” can be paralyzing and exhausting to an extent. I say this knowing how important “getting it right” needs to be in many aspects of my life. One reason I started this blog was to have an outlet for writing and expression that didn’t have any preconceived notions about what was “right”. I found that yesterday’s post was an exception to that rule. While I’m happy with the results, I didn’t feel the same release and relief from ideas building in my mind as I had when writing for this blog before yesterday.

So that’s what I’d like to get back to today. I’m back on the schedule that allow me to write early in the morning, before the demands of the day begin to require my attention. This schedule seems to be working. I feel less mentally drained at the end of the day, for example, when I follow this schedule. I find that writing first thing in the morning also helps me resist falling back into other, more familiar patterns, that I’m working on adjusting.

Now that I’m back from vacation for almost two full weeks, I notice that the pull of a familiar environment makes it easier for me to move toward familiar patterns. As a result, the different thinking and planning I was able to do while on vacation, and put into place to some extent upon returning, can be harder to remember and stick to as the vacation begins to fade from memory. Fortunately I wrote a lot down and have the beginnings of a plan written, to make it easier to recall how I was thinking while on vacation. I changed the screensaver on my phone to a great picture of a sunny Puerto Rico sky to help as well. In a small way, I’m surprised at what a nice reminder that’s become to me, especially as temperatures in NYC drop to the teens and single digits.

It’s nice to be back on my bike and pursuing my first training program again. I’m trying to save most of my bike related writing for my other blog, cjrcycl.es. For the purposes of just rolling with it, I resisted the initial impulse to avoid mentioning the biking at all in this blog and decided to mention it to make the point that the bike workouts have been a great way to clear my mind. I really can’t wait to get outside on the bike again, as I find that being outside only enhances the mind clearing and expansion I experience while riding.

(As an aside, I find myself watching the word count in the Ghost drafting screen, chasing 500 words. Not quite sure why 500 words sounds right and I know that chasing a word count isn’t true to just rolling with it!)

So I think that’s it for now. Rather than chase a word count, I’m starting to feel the mental release and energy I was looking for again and am starting to use that to feel energized to start rolling into the rest of the day.