Stopping to travel

In a book on motor development I have read that the most  sophisticated form of movement is stillness, because that's when it's the hardest to keep the balance. 

It's a bit like with traveling. To really let the traveling experiences sink into you, you need to find the time after the travel to reflect on it, to write, to talk to other people about it.

Such days maybe seem uneventful and slow, and actually hard to fit in the schedule, because when you come back from travel or go on to the next one, there are so many urgent things calling you...

In a way all of my travels have been incomplete because I have been missing up on days like that, the days in-between, where you can be with your head and heart  before you embark on another journey.

This is my travel resolution: to find times to stop in order to travel more fully. 

Loving the process

While doing some procrastination today (though I have been fighting hard!) I read a compelling post by Tara Sophia Mohr on how we look at our career (but other life goals too) mostly through the moments of completion and achievement. Tara notices  that we can have the false impression that these are the moments which constitute our happiness. What about everything that is in between? What about living the present moment? And here comes Tara's important point: if we don't love what we do, if we are not driven by the inner joy and passion the way towards the goal/deadline/completion of project might not be more than blood and tears.

This made me think how I view my work. How sometimes it is so fragmented, bouncing between the moments of completion and maybe achievement and all those days when I cannot get into the process, and then end up doing things last minute, stretching my limits and resilience, fighting off the little voice of imperfection. What does that mean? How can find love for the process of the things I do?

In between writing

I have missed my blog.  It has been waiting here, patient yet eager to be nourished. 

There is some joyfully sweet sadness in me right now. This little blog of mine has become an important part of my life and if I miss it, it's because I want to write here.  I am starting to understand what I have been reading about in the last months that in order to live a creative life you need to make a commitment to it.   For so long I have been struggling to make writing an every day commitment. And this blog is becoming my commitment, my  stepping stone to a creative life.

When I tell people that I started blogging, some of them sigh nostalgically "I tried blogging for some time but didn't manage to keep it up."  It's not about comparing myself with them. Probably blogging was not their way to nourish the creative muse and I am sure that they will find their own path.  But being that  person who could  never stick  to  new habits I can see that little change coming. After my first longer blogging absence I am back. And I want to stay.

Me and my blog  need to build some more trust. It needs a place in my life between my work, travels and thousand of other things. I need to learn how to look after it and make it grow as you grow a garden. Because it promised me that something in my life will bloom.