Back on the Wagon

I have not written much nor published anything new in the last couple of weeks. I have been consumed by work and worry. I should instead be happy, enjoying my life and of course writing. I have “fallen off the wagon” of writing daily. How do I get back on that wagon?

A writer friend of mine, that I also work with, stopped by my office the other day and gave me a nudge. Thank you Todd!!

My dad called the other day and also gave me a poke! Thank you Dad!

I have gotten some of my favorite writers advise books out and am getting inspired.

I am swinging my leg back up on that wagon tonight, look for something new this weekend!

How do you reignite your passion when the flame has flickered?

Who is Charles Wright?

Did you know a new Poet Laureate was just name by the Library of Congress?

What is a poet laureate? Wikipedia describes the United States Library of Congress Poet Laureate, formerly the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress duties and remuneration;

“Laureates receive a US$35,000 stipend and are given the responsibility of overseeing an ongoing series of poetry readings and lectures at the library, and a charge to promote poetry. No other duties are specified, and laureates are not required to compose for government events or in praise of government officials. However, after the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001, the then Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, was asked to write a poem to be read in front of a special joint session of Congress. Collins wrote “The Names” which he read on September 6, 2002, which is available in streaming audio and video..<..> When the $35,000 stipend was instituted, the amount was quite large and was intended to allow the poet laureate to abandon worries about earning a living and devote his or her time entirely to writing poetry. That amount has remained the same, so the intent of making it a nice living for a poet is no longer being fulfilled. Now it functions as a bonus for a poet who usually is teaching at a university and earns the bulk of his or her living that way.”

Charles Wright (Photo from the Poetry Foundation website)

The newly minted American Poet Laureate is Charles Wright from the state of Tennessee. He and previous laureates are described in a New York Times article;

“Mr. Wright, who was born in Pickwick Dam, Tenn., not far from the Civil War battlefield at Shiloh, succeeds another Southerner, Natasha Trethewey. But Mr. Wright’s work — oblique meditations on “language, landscape and the idea of God,” as he once summed up his themes — could not be more different from Ms. Trethewey’s evocations of the forgotten African-American lives, or from the Whitmanesque poems about working-class Detroit by the previous laureate, Philip Levine.”

“Mr. Wright, 78, a retired professor at the University of Virginia, has already won just about every other honor in the poetry world, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Bollingen Prize and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.”

Until now I’ve never read Mr. Wright’s poetry nor to be honest heard of his work, which given his prolific writing and obvious success is sad. But now that I am writing a few poems and rhymes I feel compelled to seek some of his writing out along with that of the previous poet laureate’s. I like that our government is supporting this type of artist, even if it is very modestly in this age of big paychecks. I wish him luck and hope that he inspires a few more poets to start on their writing path.

Do you have a favorite poet?

$600 Well Spent

The repetition begins at an early age,

with competition to make the grades.

It’s early to rise, to knot the ties,

sip your coffee and monetize.

The work is hard, but still we strive,

because a new toy is in our eyes.

Do we love the work we do,

so often only the lucky few.

To pay for the life that we live,

our sweat we must give.

I have gotten on a rhyming bent these last couple weeks. It seems to happen to me when I start reminiscing and thinking about life in a more reflective way. I think the return of my grandfather to Washington, a visit with my parents and sister and then my nieces graduation this weekend all had me thinking more slowly and reflecting on how quickly time passes. Life truly does go by in a blink of an eye and I seem to miss so much of it.

I need to quit working to pay for “things” and rather work to pay for the experiences of life. This week was a great example of what I would like to do more of; I spend time with my beautiful, sweet, talented niece Hailey and her family. I was able to hear her sing in a performance, meet her new college roommate, finally meet her step-dad(who has been in her life for nearly 13 years) and hang out and laugh with my little brother. The four day with airfare, rental car, food, etc cost me $600, for me that was money well spent.

What do you work for and how do you spend money well?

Banning the Snarky

I recently wrote a post about a snarky comment from a reader on one of my “6 Word Memoirs” and even though I wrote about not changing the post because of the comments; if I’m honest my initial reaction was that of having someone yell at me in line at the super market for accidentally brushing into them – apologetic, shrinking away, cowering. I stayed away from that site for a couple of days, even though I was really enjoying the posts and coming up with my own.

When you put yourself out there, show your cards and share yourself, you are not going to please everyone; some people don’t agree with my point of view and some people are just horribly unhappy and want to share that with everyone else.

By nature I am a people pleaser and this is going to be a challenge to my psyche to take the criticism, constructive or destructive, that will inevitably come by putting myself and my thoughts out into the world.

But, this is also making me look at my own behavior and I have to admit I can be snarky and negative with the best of them, though I hope I don’t attack or bully people. But even that, I am sure I have probably done, at some point. I am going to work on that part of myself, what is the saying, “you are what you put into the world” or something like that or maybe its “you get, what you give”? Anyway, I hope you understand what I mean.

I don’t want to perpetuate the negative in the world and my world starts with me and the people around me. From today forward I am “banning the snarking” and a positive approach will be my reaction to every situation even the unhappy or difficult ones, because the only thing I can control is my reaction to what happens around me and to me. I will approach a problem or difficult situation with an eye to solving it in a positive and constructive way. No more negative, bashing, snarky responses that get me and those involved no where.

Now, I know this is easier said than done, as they say, but I am going to consciously try to be more positive in my approach to every situation and I’m “banning the snarky”. Wish me luck.

Do you have any helpful tips for getting through life’s difficulties with a positive approach?

Pre-checked at Sea-Tac

OK – I don’t know how I was pre-checked at Sea-Tac airport this weekend. But please, please let it happen to me again.

No shoe removal, no liquids out of my bag, didn’t have to take off my coat or my belt. It was freaking awesome!!!!

But I have no idea how I became “Pre-Checked”! It was like being the most beautiful girl in highschool or at least what I imagined that was like; gliding through life without a hassle.

I checked out the Sea-Tac airport website, it seems “Pre-Check” is available for frequent flyers of certain airlines. I love you Alaska Airlines!

Well, I sort of love you Alaska Airlines. Why no pre-check status on my flight home from Walla Walla? I don’t know what it is at that airport, but for some reason, I get screened more there than I do at Heathrow after a security scare. This time they did a chemical analysis of my hands; at least it was something new. I am guessing they get a little bored there and just like to practice.

I love to travel, visit new places, learn something new and just get out of the day-to-day monotony of my daily life. I get to travel a bit these next few weeks; some for work, some for fun and some for family events. This pre-check perk will certainly make the getting there part a bit more enjoyable; as it is, getting through the security at the airport is such a pain in the butt it almost makes you not want to travel at all.

Do you have a travel tip that you always use to make it easier to get from point A to point B?

Do You Meditate? Why Not – Everyone Else Is!

Do you meditate?

I don’t really, but I have been sorta of trying. It seems like every article or blog I read lately has something about meditating and how much it benefits your life.

Gwyneth Paltrow, the actress and lifestyle guru always has something “new age” on her site GOOP. This is from her New Years Resolution to start meditating post and this excerpt is from Mark Epstein, MD the author of a number of books about the interface of Buddhism and psychotherapy.

“Meditation, as taught by the Buddha, was a means of taming the mind by bringing the entire range of thoughts, feelings and physical sensations into awareness, making the unconscious conscious. There were already various forms of meditation widely practiced in the Buddha’s day but they were all techniques of concentration. Buddha mastered each of them but still felt uneasy. It was fine to rest the mind on a single object: a sound (or mantra), a sensation (the breath), an image (a candle flame), a feeling (love or compassion), or an idea. This gave strength to the mind, a feeling of stability, of peace and tranquility, a sense of what Freud came to call the ‘oceanic feeling’. While this could be relaxing, it did not do enough to change the mind’s complexion. Buddha was after something more.”

Another blog I enjoy, Zenhabits, also had an article recently on “The Most Important Two Minutes of Your Life”

“I’ll save you the suspense: it’s two-minute meditation. And it’s extremely simple: take two minutes out of your extremely busy day (cat videos) to sit still and focus on your breath. Just keep the gentle fingertip of your attention on your breath as it comes into your body, and then goes out. When your mind wanders, take note of that, but then gently come back to the breath.“

Almost all of the articles tout the ease as well as the difficulty of meditation, but how much better, uncluttered, relaxed, zen, etc, etc you will feel. And, if you practice often enough it will become a tool you can invoke at anytime.

Another article by Dan Hurley in the New York Times Magazine that had a section that took me a bit by surprise, it includes the work of psychologist Amishi Jha’s with the U.S. military, helping solders learn to meditate to better their performance in combat situations. An excerpt from the article;

“We found that getting as little as 12 minutes of meditation practice a day helped the Marines to keep their attention and working memory — that is, the added ability to pay attention over time — stable,” said Jha, director of the University of Miami’s Contemplative Neuroscience, Mindfulness Research and Practice Initiative. “If they practiced less than 12 minutes or not at all, they degraded in their functioning.”

So much for new age, hippy dippy make yourself and the world more relaxed. The article also talks about some of the down sides of too much mindfulness; that it can inhibit your creativity and stifle your ability to let your mind wander to the benefit of your life. But the final paragraph from the article sums up the “sacrilege” versus using new tools to be better at what ever you do in life.

“After meditating upon such sacrilegious findings, no doubt the Buddha, who taught a middle way between worldly and spiritual concerns, would have agreed that there is a time for using mindfulness to discover inner truths, a time for using it to survive a battle or an exam and a time to let go of mindfulness so that the mind may wander the universe.”

I am generally a skeptic, but I have been so stressed out by almost every aspect of my life lately that a hint of desperation is setting in, I am going to give this a try in earnest. Beginning today, I am going to meditate everyday for at least 2 minutes. I will follow-up on my experience and progress or in my case probable ineptitude in some upcoming posts. namaste.

Do you meditate or practice mindfulness? How does it improve your life or maybe the lives of those around you?

Hope

A new writers hope.

I subscribe to the Daily Good and today’s or maybe it was yesterday’s inbox delivery included a link to the Amtrak promotion for 24 writers in residence. You have to apply, tell them why you want a chance to be a writer in residence, submit a sample of your work and hope that a panel picks you. If you are chosen you get a 2 – 5 day trip on one of their trains so that you can write. Sounds like bliss.

I took my first train trip when I was about 5 years old and have loved trains ever since. I enjoy the relaxed pace of train travel even though many of them travel very fast. It always feel like a lazy, vacation trip whenever I ride one even when I am not on vacation. This would be such a cool experience, so cool, I may have to pay to do it even if I don’t get chosen.

If you want to learn more about writing on trains and how Amtrak’s promotion was started, here is a link to Jessica Gross’s story “Writing the Lake Shore Limited” in the Paris Review where she writes about the experience that Amtrak gave her and how she was inspired to ask on Twitter.

If you are a writer and want to apply or if you want to read more about Amtrak check out their blog post on the residency program.

Random & Rhyme

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