Tuesday 11 August 2009

Coins under couch cushions


It feels like I have been talking or thinking about personal projects for a long time now. From taking classes, to writing in the mornings, to staring out the window while listening to Almoldovar soundtracks, somehow, I've accumulated satchels of content. I've been so busy sprinting forward that I forgot to stop and look at what I've gathered along the way. Some poems may be discarded or reused or revamped, but they're here.

Penelope Trunk wrote a post about happiness and self-discipline, where she postulates that making a routinized change in behavior, doing one positive thing daily, whether exercising or managing finances, can snowball and spillover into other aspects of your life. She cites a study from Baumeister, who found that students who walked with a book on their head to fix their posture ended up eating better, studying harder, and sleeping more.

If you feel like something is missing, isn't quite right or just looking for a change or investigation inwards, I highly recommend The Artist's Way (the premise being that everyone is creative, you don't have to be a writer, actor, painter, etc.) by Julia Cameron.

One of the 'obligatory' rituals of the self-taught course is writing daily morning pages. This routine purge has has helped me regurgitate lodged subconscious items, expose hidden desires and fears, and clean out the mundane: things to do listed, noted and offloaded. It clears the sea of mental clutter to make room for creative oysters below.

There's always further to travel, but it feels good to know that you're moving forward, and not just turning on a relentless sushi conveyor belt.

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