Project WritingIs…Grounding

Posted on by BAWriting

Life is a little crazier than it’s normal brand of crazy this week, and this morning I got that itchy need-to-write feeling creep up in my chest which made me remember my #WRITINGIS project that, as promised, I have left hanging in the wind, forgotten in only one short week. But it’s nice to have it out there to come back to, so here I am with my ruminations on the page and my desire to write defining my morning while I let some tasks go unfinished for a little while longer.

And why? Why do I need to hastily untangle my ear buds to shove them in my ears and get typing? Why do I need to write right now? Why am I ignoring my phone and my email? And anyone trying to talk to me?

Because WRITING IS grounding.

In this moment, I need to remember who I am and what I am doing. I need to feel the careful pressure of the keys beneath my fingers while I breathe in deeply and remind myself that life swirls all around us and has a way of getting piled up and messy and as unmanageable as a toddlers curls are apt to be, and I need time to sit with it.

Sometimes in the crazy-busy, breathing is a healthy act of resistance, and writing reminds me to breathe.

It makes me stop.

It creates space.

You can only type so fast. You can only think so fast.

And when you write, you have to write something.

For me that something is sometimes

A word-laced root from my heart to the ground beneath my feet.

I watch the words emerge on the page, my breath fueling their creation, my mind settling into the rhythm of creating, my body feeling itself in this moment.

All the distractions and requests and lists pinging into my tired body are held at bay in this brief moment that I have carved out with the practice of putting words on the page.

It is a tiny reprieve, but it is a necessary one that reminds me about the rhythm of life and the need to be intentional about creating space and time and a connection to who I am and to what matters.

Writing does that for me. It lets me own my moment. It lets me use words to remember to feel my feet on the earth underneath me and to breath because #WRITINGIS so much, but for today WRITING IS grounding.

 

What is writing for you today?  Do you find writing to be grounding?  Follow along and let me know here and on instagram and twitter @bawriting with #writingis.

 

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It’s All About Perspective

Posted on by BAWriting

Over the weekend we took a little time to get out in nature and enjoy the quiet. Even though we live in the desert and our corner of it is pretty and peaceful, there is still something about heading down a dirt road into an expanse of untamed land.

The huge boulders are one of the amazing things to love about the desert. They come in a variety of shapes and are scattered in piles all over the landscape like Legos in a toddler’s playroom. While you can drive for miles through crazy Joshua trees with no boulders around, one turn, and you can come up on monstrous rocks ripe for the climbing.

It’s the juxtaposition of huge, smooth boulder piles and flat mesas dotted with spiny yuccas that defines this part of the desert, and we love it. There is nothing like clambering up the grippy rock to chill and watch the view and breathe in the quiet air.

This weekend, I was reminded about much perspective matters. I had climbed up into a shady spot of a boulder pile and was chilling out. It was a 100 degree day, so it was more suited to sitting still and observing than scrambling around on the rocks. In front of me was a view totally filled with other rock piles. Some of the rocks jutted up to the sky like fat arrows and others curved and fit together with the architectural precision brought about by years of weather and erosion. The shadows of the rocks to my back fanned out in front of me providing shade from the heat of the same sun that aided in painting the long grey obelisks at my feet and sending them out across the rocks. For the those moments, my world was filled with rocks.

My hubs headed on a short walk and explored the rocks out in front of me. He climbed some of the piles and then came back to sit with me in the shade. When we walked back to the car, I turned to look at the rocks I had been sitting on, one cluster among many, hardly unique.

It wasn’t until we got home that I saw this picture. He had taken it from the rocks in front of where I was sitting. And the amazing thing about the picture is that it looked completely foreign to me.

I had had no idea that the backdrop to the rock pile I was on was a valley of open space. I didn’t realize that that pile almost sat alone at the edge of the other piles and that there was emptiness all around it. My view into the rocks was cozy and close, but the one behind me was extensive and sweeping.

I could not see a complete view of my place in the world at that moment because of my perspective.

It got me thinking…how much does perspective factor in to the way that I see my life? How does it affect my view of the world, and how does it influence the things that I write?

The stark contrast of what I had seen during my day and the way that this picture captured the moment was a great reminder that my view is only one view. Both what I had seen that day and this picture are valid representations of the afternoon, but maybe sometimes it’s worth considering the way that my perspective is fundamental to what I can see in any moment.

Have you ever seen a picture that challenged your perspective?  In what ways have you experienced perspective shifts in your life?

 

 

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