Sooner rather than later

Today, all day, Problem Solving - the in-class portion, with the paper due June 1. Today, all day, the seedlings of thoughts, resolutions, habits, and knowledge became, at last identifiable. And today, all day, there were the recurring thoughts of "this is what I am supposed to be doing; now how shall I accomplish it?"

Things I need to do, beginning immediately.

1. Morning pages, a la Julia Cameron, and regardless of the parts of the book I didn't like or see myself using. These, I need to do. (She mentions them in nearly every book she's written, I think. I read about them in The Writing Diet, which book I was tempted to hide whilst reading because it's embarrassing - and really irritating! - to be having this much of an issue with general physical malaise and subsequent increase of clothing size.)

2. "Make a note." This was a real gem of an idea from my instructor for my PLA essays. Do NOT follow interesting lines of "new learning." Prior Learning Assessment is about stuff you already know ... it's "prior" learning. If you come across something you want to learn about, make a note, leave it alone, and move on. (clang!!) It's a huge fear for me that when I go back to look at something again, I will not be able to find it. Just typing the sentence describing it makes me twitchy. And so I pursue all leads when I see them. But this has got to stop. I cannot make any progress if I don't just "take a note" and move on.

3. Take notes. That's what I learned today. I have got to start taking notes in the midst of the process I go through, and they need to be notes about the process itself. I kept losing track of my own train of thought today, and it was aggravating. Just like taking notes when there is an instructor, I need to take notes along the way when I work on my own. I suspect this may turn out to be a parallel track I might need for writing in general - a kind of side-bar notepad so I can see what I'm doing and also do it.

So ... that's three notebooks here at my elbow all the time. Or, better yet, here right by the computer monitor where I can see them and remember to use them.

Then there's

4. Take more walks. (Take any walks.) ((Okay... take a walk.)) Everyone from Julia Cameron to Nietzsche says that's where the good creativity is, and today it came up in Problem Solving.

5. Schedule some more emotional processing time. (Watching sad movies helps, but I think the morning pages will help with that too.) I can feel a backlog building. I need a few good cries.

6. Get a Jobs Schedule system on the wall. Dry erase? I think so. Must look into this. This week. It's been awhile since my days needed to be this clocked out ahead of time, but I have to admit to myself that the time has arrived. (And don't laugh at me. Lots of people overschedule themselves and live like that all the time, but I jumped off that ship a long time ago. I don't want to be on board that ship again either. I just need a little dingy. ...yeah, yeah ... write your own joke here.)

And in closing, this poem crossed my path again today. So I'm going to pass it on to you. It was written by Derek Walcott

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.