Wait...why did I do this?

 I'm working through The Arist's Way by Julia Cameron. I'm finding it helpful, though dated. It was published in 1992, so I'm not really surprised that it's a bit lacking. But so far, while the exercises may be difficult in that "I have to examine myself and I don't waaaaaant tooooo" sort of way they have worked in generally the way she said they should, there's been slow progress, I feel accomplished, all that.

But last week, Week 4: Recovering a Sense of Integrity, required a Reading Deprivation. It made me more than slightly annoyed, both in how it should be done and the reasons why and the reasons people have given her for why they couldn't do it. This lady, bless her successful, encouraging heart, has a lotta upper-middle class privilege going on with her.

I won't go in to all the reasons I didn't want to do this particular thing, they were not the reasons other people had given, I just did the week of reading deprivation, which threw off my fragile, newly formed routine set up to help me maintain healthy productive work habits. So I'm a wee bit cranky 'bout dat. And the Reading Deprivation didn't even do what it was supposed to, I think because the problem it's supposed to fix isn't a problem I had. So now I'm playing catch up and that's taking time away from my writing course work. Also, I had to take time off the writing course work, because even though it's an online video course, there's still reading and exercises involved, so I have to catch up on that too.

Listen to the Inner Voice when it rawrs. It knows things.

MY POINT IS....just because a smart person says a thing will do a thing for you, it may not and the voice in my head that said, "We don't have this problem. In fact, we have the opposite of this problem so we should skip this, it's just going to throw us off and we worked really hard to get here." I should have listened to that voice.

Several, a couple, a few, some, and none: A possible series, but no promises.

TWO is meant by a couple. A couple is always two. There is always two separate and distinct but occasionally exactly the same things in a couple. Do we have that down now? A couple is two things. They don't have to be the exact things and they don't have to be different, the only thing that they have to be is that however many things they are, when you count them, there is two, only two. And don't think you can make a couple by having three things but only counting two of them. That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works.

Okay, that's not truly my desk in the second picture, it's a free stock photo but I do actually have a pen and paper on my desk. Trust me.

Also, I do not own those galaxies, I don't care what that guy said, I am not responsible for the collision.

So endth the lesson. Go forth and...count a couple of things.

Old School

Letter writing is old school. Ollllld Schoooool. Writing a letter by hand on a piece of paper, putting it in the envelope, filling out the address, putting the stamp on. 

So much nostalgia. I haven't done it in so long. I have a lot of hand drawn blank greeting cards, cards I made myself, to sell as hand crafted items, you know? Well, they are just sitting there (not collecting dust, because I stored them properly, in sleeves) and I have a mission to write to a few people by snail mail. 

See, when every-modern-day-body communicates through social media, and you make a decision to cut out social media because it's heavily contributing to your poor mental health, you kind of lose communication with people.

Of course, this helps you realize who you really like communicating with because those will be the people you really, really miss. You miss their likes and comments and DMs and their own posts. 

And because I downgraded my phone to a flip phone to help keep me off the internet, texting is....problematic. If you've never had to text on an old style cell phone (as opposed to the ubiquitous smart phones of today) you would lose you're mind trying to do it. 

So...as I'm officially a classic this year (fifty years old) and can remember how people communicated before even cell phones and email...I decided to do that. Honestly I don't like talking on the phone. I prefer writing letters, even if I get nothing back. 

So I wrote a letter today to my very best friend, on a card I had made myself, and I wrote out her name and address and my name and return address, and looked up the postage to make sure, and put the stamps on (it was a larger card), and walked outside.

Yes, yes, I walked outside. I know. Oh, it is a really beautiful day today, it's so mild out...71 degrees F and sunny and my moss roses and nasturtiums are blooming. I walked down the driveway and put the letter in the mailbox and put the flag up.

Do you kids know about the flag? The little red flag on the mailbox that lets the postal carrier know you have outgoing mail? Before I walked out there I was unsure if mailboxes even still came with flags and was thinking I would have to walk down to the post office. Yeah, I'll walk down the driveway happily toda, but going to the post office...I might have to talk to people...(shudder).

But the flag was there and when I put it up I had such a wave of nostalgia and quiet satisfaction.

Hm.