diving deep & resolving

Good morning, my friends — and welcome to 2012! How are you meeting this new year so far?

I have been on some journeys, and am moving into another one with the beginning of this year. Sophie, the Mr., and I all took off on a road trip out to Colorado for the holiday. It’s been two full weeks away from the regular routine, mostly away from the Internet, and during that time, quite a bit has been shaken up.

I’m not sure what I want to say today — there’s so much, and I haven’t been doing enough writing.

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I want to let you know that I’m going to be changing the look of the writing ourselves whole website here soon — I’m going to move the blog to its own separate page, instead of having it on the front page of the site. I want to make the site easier to navigate, and introduce myself and writing ourselves whole more formally to folks who are visiting the site for the first time; so, there’ll be a static page that gives a brief introduction to writing ourselves whole, and will offer links to workshop pages. If you have any input or suggestions, feel welcome to let me know!

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I’m excited about the new workshop that’s beginning this month. Our manuscript/project-focused group, Dive Deep, begins this coming Sunday! I’ve been gathering materials, handouts, articles — we’re going to be working hard together to vision not only our writing projects (book, collection, story, blogging practice, novel, memoir, or…) but also our writing lives. How do we make time and space for our creative practices? How can we support one another in making changes in our lives to open more time for dreaming, wool-gathering, idea formation, deep artistic work?

It’s going to be fun. There’ll be homework, drawings, calendar pages scrawled out on big hang-on-the-wall oversized post-its. I can’t wait.

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The dark time of the year, when the sun is down for more time than it’s out during the day here in our western hemisphere, is certainly a time of diving deep for me. Is it for you? I tend to get reflective, nesty — I want to settle in with a book, make plans, consider possibilities for my creative life.

I’ve started some new programs, and also have my resolutions, of course:

– write every day (that’s on my list every year)

– go dancing at least once a month

– move in more fun ways (might include an exercise class)

– spend more time with my sister

– call more friends and have more friend dates

– read a book a week (it’s easy for me to be in the middle of several books at a time, and thereby drag them all out)

– take a pottery class (part of my goal to heal and recover my full engagement with my hands)

– watch less tv (let’s make this more concrete: watch an hour of tv a day, and no tv if I’ve just watched a movie; watch no more than four movies a week. (I would like to say three, or even two, but that feels unnecessarily harsh, given my current practices))

– publish at least one book

There are more, resolutions that have to do with healing work and recovering trust in myself and my own instincts, listening to and honoring my intuition,  rebuilding what has become quite a fragment relationship with my inside self, looking for a teacher, finding serenity. These are private resolutions. It’s ok to have public and private resolutions, like public and private names.

I love the process of resolution-making: it feels kind of like morning on the first day of school (which I think I always liked) — so much possibility, all these new people around who could become excellent friends, and that person up at the front of the room who was so clear and kind and smart. In making these resolutions, and considering possible paths for their implementation (or just opening space in myself for their manifestation), I get to be both the kid at school and the teacher, both bubbly-bellied excited and deep-breath planner. This is good.

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Have you thought about or written already your resolutions or ideas for the new year? Here are a couple of prompt ideas:

– First, to write out your dreams and visions for your writing or creative life in this new year. Get as detailed as you want to be, about writing space or goals for your work or where you’ll get published or where you’ll go on retreat or anything.

– Second, if you’re working with a project, have you written about your character’s/characters’ resolutions? That could give you some powerful insight about them.

Take the time you want — at least ten minutes, though. Follow your writing wherever it seems to want you to go.

Thanks for being here, in all that being and here can mean. Thanks for your consistent patience and gentleness with yourself and your creative work. Thanks every day for your words.