I blogged a few weeks ago about how learning is an exercise in mindfulness. At the time, most of the learning I did was via reading. I consumed information through books; I didn’t do anything. I didn’t practice anything new. I often found my mind wandering as I read to learn, and it didn’t feel … Continue reading Handwriting practice
I seem to be having personal problems with calendars and scheduling this week. So much for my 1-day buffer for lining up and editing blog posts. I accidentally published two posts yesterday right on top of each other. One of those – the one about me misreading my calendar — was intended for today, but … Continue reading Oops
I opened my notebook to find a sticky note to myself: “Free write about the benefits of journaling.” I left it the other day when I read a chapter in the Little, Brown Handbook about journaling and felt a thrum of excitement about what I learned there. Until I read this chapter, I’d felt like … Continue reading The benefits of journaling
I have 35 minutes until my food settles enough that I can go for a run. I want to write. I want to write up one of the ideas on my (very short) list of ideas. The list is only three items long. Any one of the items on it would do. Yet. I can’t … Continue reading Avoidance
I am up early. I could not sleep in. I am on fire to write. The cats yowl and walk on my face at 4:45am these days. They are bored and hungry. Rather than rage at them, I just get up and feed them. When I returned to bed this morning, I planned to go … Continue reading I woke with gerunds on my mind
April was a good month for me for reading. I devoured two publications that experiment with form and structure: the novel Ducks, Newburyport and the online magazine Pipewrench. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, Ducks, Newburyport is a 1,000-page sentence. Pipewrench magazine is structured like a dinner party: the main essay is the … Continue reading What makes a work of art resonate?
Butterfly Mind 