putting what you love at the center of your life

blue-and-green graffiti moths painted on an orange metal bracingGood morning! I’m sorry I missed you yesterday — I was up the coast, hanging out with sea lions and redwoods, with no internet connection. It was bliss, all that sound and space: not just outside, but inside, too, how it opens and grows when you lift off the pressure a little bit.

I want to tell you about the couple of monarch butterflies, about how abalone shells fragment and turn sand iridescent, about seals making a striated rock look more beautiful (thanks, Alice Walker), about hearing sea lion talk from the bedroom, about Halloween shooting stars just when you ask for them, about a red-tailed hawk pushing through the air just when you’re walking through a once cow-pasture to the water, next to the lighthouse compound that you decided not to pay $14 to get into. About the brown-and-black fuzzy caterpillars, about a hot tub in a secluded spot on the deck, about an anniversary picnic at the living room table.

I want to tell  you all about it, more, and today I’m diving back into the very-busy that this weekend was a break from. Today, this week, I’m back to trading writing time for sleep, or, as was the case this morning, vice versa.

So, this is a short short, today: a prompt.  Take a few minutes, and make a list of all the things you love, the things that bring you the most joy and satisfaction. Then write for 10 minutes (or more!) about how your life (or your character’s life!) would look with those things at the center of your life, instead of around the edges. (Maybe what you love is already centered in your life — is there something new you’re wanting to incorporate? A new practice or habit? You could also spend this writing time visualizing that: what does your life look like with that practice or habit established?) Let yourself get into the details: what’s your daily routine like? How do you spend a day? What does your body feel like in this slightly-altered life?

Thank you for the ways you forefront what’s most important to you, and, too, for the ways you have held on gently to what you love, even tucked it away under your liver for protection, during the times when it was safer hidden than expressed. Thank you for your words: always.

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