I’m writing about regret and time travel again. Will I ever move beyond that trope? I’ve always been obsessed with time, with its passing.
I’m reading The Power of Now. Again. I want to shift this obsession with time, memories and regret. All my works in progress deal with regret…
And I want to lose myself in the present moment. I get that a little when I’m writing, when I’m with my nieces, when I’m laughing and talking with friends. But I am so aware of time passing all the time. I’m busy, I fill up my days and weeks. Is it that time already? Is it Friday again already?
“time is what keeps the light from reaching us. There is no greater obstacle to god than time: and not only time but temporalities, not only temporal things but temporal affections, not only temporal affections but the very taint and smell of time.
MEISTER ECKHART ~ German Roman Catholic theologian and mystic (1260-1327)
Right now, like everyone I think, I’m wavering between just getting through each moment (isn’t that what we’re supposed to do, always? I never could get the hang of it!) and dreaming of better times to come. When I was in Bali in February I saw a meditation offered at the Yoga Barn called Your Future Self . I was too busy lying by the pool at the time and missed it, but hey. I guarantee I would not have pictured the way this year has unfolded!
Who knows what the future will bring. We can plan and plot but our only real opportunity lies in the moment, this moment…now. Life is made up of millions of nows.
I’ve always been a goal-setter and sometimes that’s been my Achilles Heel. Too much time spent thinking about the future, in my head, and not enough being in the moment, in my body. I mean we have to plan for the future, surely… It’s a real fine line to walk. Expect the best, plan for the worst…
All this plodding towards…what? What am I working towards? With every word written, a ‘career’ as a writer seems closer, yet right now, further away than ever. We have to be ‘in the moment’, but I can’t get too ‘in the moment’ that I lose sight of the point of all this, my WHY. Everything I’ve been doing for the last couple of years, the meditation, the yoga, the writing, the journaling, the deep work with my teacher and alone… this has given me a glimpse of Future-Me.
Who is the future-me? She’s happy, she’s healthy, she’s a writer, maybe she can hold a forearm balance… She attends yoga retreats and writer’s festivals. She travels, even if it’s just within Australia. She has great relationships, she loves her family. She cares for the environment and she eats plant-based. She learns something new every day. She survives. She’s honing her priorities. Amazing how a world-wide pandemic and economic melt-down can help with perspective, what’s important and what simply is not even on the radar any more. I’m happy to say Future Me looks a bit like Now me.
These days, are we allowed to brag a little? Are we allowed to be keen and motivated? In some spaces yes, but so often the culture still celebrates mediocrity and laziness. Now I’ve written about this before but I’m in a few writers’ groups on Facebook and the self-deprecating memes and tropes bandied about in those groups annoy the crap out of me. There’s the one about the dozens of empty journals all writers have. Not this writer! Boring…write in the damn journals. Scribble in them. Draw something every day for a year. Get some skin in the game!
Last week I saw this and it annoyed me so much.
I mean it’s funny and all but why do we celebrate self-sabotage? I mean we don’t want to shame people but lordy, it annoys me. It doesn’t happen in all groups (I love lurking about on 20booksto50K and seeing all the amazing writer putting it out there, balls to the wall, warts and all.)
Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.
Rumi
I am convinced some ‘writers’ just hang out in Facebook groups all day, talking about their empty journals, file saving mishaps, and their self-defeating adorableness.
I want to scream, “Stop it. Just go write something.”
I’m gonna go write something…
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