The time my butt was actually in a seat writing was staggeringly low. At the end of the month, I sat down to take stock. And then I filled in a little bubble every time I wrote or revised. No matter the reason, I promptly added an accountability line for writing in the journal. Maybe thinking I was writing, but actually not, was a mechanism for staying sane. I’ve struggled to find a home for a book I love, and I’ve found revising frustrating. It’s been a discouraging year, writing-wise. The second theory is the exact opposite - I wasn’t tracking it because, on some level, I didn’t want to know. It’s like breathing - I do that every day, too, yet didn’t feel the need to track it. One is that, because I spend so much time thinking about writing, reading about writing, and talking about writing, it felt like I was already writing. It’s one of the most important habits of my life, and yet for some reason, it didn’t rate a mention on the “activities that are important for my mental health” section of the journal. Interestingly enough, it took me three weeks to realize what was missing from the habit-tracker: writing. By the end of the month, I can tell at a glance that I’ve walked the dog 10 times, exercised 11, and meditated not at all. Each day that I perform one of those habits, I simply fill in a colored bubble for that date. I also created a habit-tracker - a simple monthly grid that lists the habits I want to create. I’ve found that even though I have duplicate lists/calendars on my phone and computer, there’s something soothing about seeing everything written out in black and white. These pages serve as a kind of “brain dump” for me, so I can put down some of the tasks that are floating around in my head taking up valuable space. (Although I’ll admit, now that I’m three months in, I’ve started jazzing up the pages with cutouts from magazines and inspirational sayings that catch my fancy. No beautiful pencil sketches or intricately decorated text, just a yearly calendar where I list big-ticket items that are happening, a monthly calendar so I can see the overall picture for that month, and a daily calendar that lets me list to-dos. I’d been reading about bullet journals (there’s a great - if slightly salty - explanation of what they are here, and our own Barbara O’Neal talks about her take on them here.) In short, bullet journals are a combination daily planner, journal, to-do list, and goal-setting guide, personalized for your individual situation. So this January, I decided to be more mindful of how I wanted to spend my time. Add in the distraction of social media and time slips away faster than the bubbles in the bath I keep neglecting to take. But who has time for fun these days? Between parenting teenagers, eking out a career as a freelancer, running a household, carpooling, and engaging with my spouse, my days - like everyone else’s - are full. Things like exercise, time in nature, walking the dog (unforgivable, I know!). To be fair, other important activities were being neglected as well. But the words were not making it to the paper. I was thinking about writing all the time. I was reading about the craft of writing. Yet somehow this past year, I found myself not writing. (I was a late bloomer.) Writing is as integral to my identity as my name or my face. I’ve been a writer since I first held a pencil and figured out how to spell, both somewhere around the first grade.
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