Money & Leisure: Do You Deserve Permission?
Here’s the thing:
There’s a good chance that you get a perverse sense of comfort from withholding permission, from dwelling in the realm of “I don’t deserve great things.” Why? Because it’s the realm in which you’ve spent the most time.
The record beneath the needle is the record that plays.
You keep saying you’re not worthy? You keep denying yourself permission?
Repetition breeds reality.
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read moreI Don’t Care If You Feel like It, and I Don’t Care If You Don’t
A big perk of my lifestyle is that if I feel like doing something, I can usually just do it. I’m not talking about helicopter rides over Hawaii, but you know, modest, day-to-day stuff.
If I feel like reading for two hours before getting out of bed, I do. If I want to take some random days off to hide out in a cabin, I do. If I want to have a glass of wine at three in the afternoon, I do.
This mojo in my work life, though, often means that wait until I feel like it to do just about anything.
There’s some seize-the-day in there, but mostly it’s just lack of discipline. If I only write when I feel like it, what about the times when I don’t? How am I training myself here?
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read moreFinding Time to Create When Life Is Full
If I’m not creating the time for creativity, perhaps the question is:
Do I really want to create at all?
Action teaches us about ourselves. You may say you want to be a famous singer or basketball player, but if you never sing or hit the courts, you don’t actually want it.
But wait—there’s something different about creative efforts.
The question isn’t whether you want it or not; creativity is a process. It is both the means and the end. Like physical exercise, it’s a practice, an act of strengthening and rejuvenating the system.
The question is not whether you want to create (be honest—you do), but, why are you not creating? What are you avoiding?
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Hey, I'm Meggan, a nomadic creative & coach on the bumpy path to lifestyle freedom. What does that mean? Where will we go? Subscribe below and come along for the ride.
Friday Roundup: Scary Things Edition . . . Patreon, Music, a Book in a Month, Oh My!
It’s the first week on January and ohhhh goals are so hard! I didn’t even set any goals this year, it’s last year’s hangers-on that are after me.
And they should be after me, because I set them two weeks ago and immediately fell off the goal wagon. It was Christmas, there was a visitor, there was travel . . . I’m giving me a break. Kind of (stop yelling at me, brain!).
I’m back to life that isn’t mostly eating, drinking, and merrymaking, so that means remembering how to behave as a non-paid professional.
Non-paid professional—it’s like the worst game of dress-up.
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Friday Roundup: Exercising Commitment Edition
Remember that time I was trying to do something on a consistent weekly basis? I lasted seven weeks, but . . .
Here I am, trying again! That’s nice, that’s good.
Every once in awhile I get this wild hair saying, “Hey Megg, you should be consistent about things sometimes!”
It’s a pretty crazy thought, I know, but I’m going to give it a go again.
A friend recently told me that he’s going “off-romance” for a year. He’s trying to clean up some emotional habits and addictions, so no dating, no innocent kisses, no porn, no masturbating.
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Most Underrated Use of Friends? Crazy Prevention.
I was just messing around in the kitchen, making fun of myself for something out loud, when I thought,
“If you pretend you’re going crazy for an audience of zero, does it mean you’re maybe actually going crazy?”
Then, I thought, “that was kind of a funny thought.”
But then, I thought, “Wait . . . I actually just had that thought.”
I tell myself that the initial thought crossed my mind only as a sardonic way to make fun of myself for making fun of myself. I mean, just because I’m alone doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try to make someone (me) smile.
But I did have to wonder: would I think such things if I didn’t spend 96% of my time alone?
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The Difference Between Doing Your Best and Doing Better
What do I write about!? Time lately spent rebooting my blog formatting has caused me to revisit the past year’s posts and I don’t want to make this one about complaints. There’s been enough of that. Nor do I want to talk about distraction—enough of that, too.
(If you’re counting, I’m sorry. Kind of.)
But what else is there in my world?!
I’m kidding. I’m kidding . . . but also, I think I did hear that question lightly posed in my mind. Is that who I am? Is Negative Nancy rocking my house?
There’s something easy about sitting in front of this computer and writing things out to a faceless audience. I let my guard down. I think (for some reason) that I can get away with complaining, and that instead of adding negativity to the universe, I’m attracting commiseration and letting other sufferers know they’re not alone.
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Achtung! The Hidden Health Risks of Creative Pursuit
The intent of this quest was to pursue creativity. I was tired of jobs that weren’t fulfilling. But beginning meant releasing things from myself I hadn’t accessed before.
From where would come the words to share? From where the confidence to do so?
And in finding, opening these parts of me, other things escaped, too. Insecurities. Dreams. Curiosities.
Rumbling, resounding echoes that have called me since the day I began this journey seem to originate in the realm of my relationship with relationships.
Relationships. I have been knocking them down, slogging my way through shams, and allowing them to run a parallel path, it seems, to the trajectory of this year’s creative pursuits.
And always what seems to be initially real morphs into a final illusion. Still, something remains when it’s all over: me, but changed.
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How Four Chunks Are Causing You to Stop Yourself RIGHT NOW
“In any particular moment, our conscious awareness can hold on to only approximately four chunks of information. This is called our working memory.”
We are looking at a display of pies.
Vast and interminable, here lie all pies imaginable, every pie known to man. Mom’s cherry pie. Peanut butter chocolate pudding (graham cracker crust). Apple-cinnamon with crumble topping.
And bad pies, too. It’s every pie. Poisonberry pie. Dogshit pie. Grass and nettle pie.
You take four pieces from any pie you want. Four chunks. Whichever you want. You’ll never be full, and you’ll never gain weight. But there must always be four before you.
When you finish one, you must then go get another. Or, you can swap out unfinished pieces. But always four.
And the supply is ever-replenished! You can do this for the rest of your life! Forever pies! Life is amazing!
So….
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The Flight and Funk of Creativity
Last year, I departed Italy on October 31st. This year, I left for Italy on October 31st. I could get really heady about that and talk about it being a day of death and renewal, but it’s likely just coincidence.
Anyway, I’m back in Italy.
My friends are getting married in Rome over Thanksgiving, and not being one to waste an entire ticket to Europe on only a few days of festivity, I contacted the woman for whom I housesat last year and she was happy to have me back for another three weeks.
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Faith or Fool—What’s Fueling Your Work?
We speak of dreams, hope, and expectations. But how does all that relate to faith?
In this year of pursuing a career of creativity, one thing I’ve learned is how to keep working when there are only scraps to feed my hope that all these efforts will actually turn any profit.
This, I suppose, could be called faith.
It’s not blindly hoping that things will turn out well. It’s days, months, even years of exerting and investing time and effort with the relatively baseless belief that it will pay off.
What is that if not faith?
Or, maybe it’s just gambling. Maybe I’m a faithless gambler.
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The Drug of Daydreams
My last post explained why we should avoid expectations.
They provide the disservice of filling up present time with things that often don’t come to pass. It’s filling a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
But what if we’re not “expecting”? What if we’re just weighing options, considering possibilities . . . daydreaming?
Let’s get meta. Let’s think about this philosophically: Why live in a Future when there is a Now?
One exists, one doesn’t.
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