In my coaching practice I award gold stars for effort (because you have much more control over your efforts than you have over your results.)
And I have gotten into the habit of awarding *myself* gold stars for sticking with a project, for putting in work on tricky task, or for getting around to something I was dreading.
So here’s my gold star to celebrate my hard work this week.
And it celebrates your hard work, too.
Go Team Us!
Well, it looks like I got out of the habit of writing in here again.
I’ve been doing a lot of writing in other places, but kind of lost track of the fact that I like to write in here.
So here are a few scattered thoughts that I’m putting down in one place to get myself started.
1) Yesterday, I spent a lot of the day writing and I really enjoyed being in that focussed headspace. I need to create more room in my schedule for more focussed time like that. I want to do a lot more writing.
Despite the fact that I know that the more I write, the easier is to write, I always forget that when I’m trying to get started.
And I am going to put that re-realization into practice and put more posts on my professional blog.
2) On to something else, I attended a rehearsal last night for a show that I’m in on Thursday and it was really exciting to be around a different group of creative people.
A lot of these performers are comedians, and it was interesting to see their take on the same issues that storytellers face and to hear their vocabulary around how to re-shape something to make it closer to what you want.
It just reminds me of how much I enjoy getting different types of creative people together to work on things or to give each other information. It’s something I’m planning to do a lot more throughout 2025 and beyond.
3) I’ve also been feeling drawn to making more zines lately and I’m going to actually put that practice into action starting today.
By the end of the day, I’m going to have a series of ideas sketched out for my first zine of this year
This evening, I ended up on a roll and I got a backlog of things done.
That felt great and I was very excited about that until I realized I had forgotten to post here before midnight.
But that highlights a fundamental disagreement I have tracking daily challenges on a device.
To me, I have done something on a given day if I do it between when I get up and when I go to bed.
Using my phone to track the fact that I did something leads to being tied to chronological time so if I do something after midnight it’s actually the next day.
Now, I get that and I understand that it is literally the next day.
However, when it comes to things I want to do daily, I am way more interested in my experience of time than in doing something on a specific date.
I haven’t gone to bed on my Friday so…
like the title says, I’m backdating this.
In the last couple of days, my brain has been absolutely filled with ideas but none of them are finished cooking.
And that makes it really hard to write.
Knowing that all of these cool ideas are simmering makes all of my easily accessible thoughts feel pretty dull and/or makes me feel like I should wait until they are ready before I write.
However, I know better than to fall for that.
Experience has taught me that:
– My current ideas only feel dull in comparison to those simmering ideas because those simmering ideas feel perfect (untested things often do.)
– Waiting until my ideas are ‘ready’ often means that I won’t write at all.
So, here I am writing a post that’s kind of a placeholder but at least it reminds me that any writing I do is helpful in the long term.
I have been doing lots of little bits of writing – blog posts, flash fiction, brainstorming – but I haven’t done any longer form writing in a while and I want to get back to it.
There’s nothing wrong with the writing I have been doing but it doesn’t require a lot of focus beyond the time I spend actually writing. Right now, though, I feel drawn to do something that needs planning, outlines, revision, something tangible that feels like I have said something I really wanted to say.
So, in August, I am going to be working on my novel and on a series of blog posts for my coaching blog.
Off to make some notes!
