New Beginnings (Part 4)

This is the end of the "New Beginnings" posts for me. It's about the final steps to finishing something (anything).

Step 5: Take a day off.
This step has me doing backflips. It's life. It's exhale. It's margins. It's space. It's oxygen. I love, LOVE that this is one of the steps to finishing something because it's as true to me as gravity. Taking a day off is key to keeping life lively and anchored. It's a day to do life-giving things, a day to break from regular routine, a day to be a little more still, a little more reflective, a little more quiet. And it renews in a way that an hour here and there never can. I've been taking a day off each week for most of my life and I can honestly say that I have never once regretted it. The work has always gotten done. The bills have always been paid. The laundry has always been folded. Just not on that day, not on that day of rest. I've read a couple of helpful (although very different) books on this kind of rest: Keeping the Sabbath Wholly by Marva J. Dawn and The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan. Of the two, I liked Buchanan's book better, but they're both good.

Step 6: Have a plan for after the thing is finished.
This step makes me squirm. I barely know what it is I want to finish, much less what I want to do when I finish that thing. I'm really working on being more present and not having to have every bit of my future planned out, so there's some resistance from me on this one. BUT. I think it's a good point and something to be thinking about. The truth is, I don't know what my plan is for after this thing is finished.  And that's okay for now, but I don't want to stay there, so I'm chalking this one up to an "emerging" step.

As for how I'm going with my specific goals, I've been writing most days, started reading Fearless Confessions: A Writer's Guide to Memoir by Sue William Silverman, and have been brainstorming about what to write for an essay contest. I have to think and think and think and then the words usually pour out after that, so I'm thinking. This writing thing is hard business, especially when I feel like I'm fitting it into the nooks and crannies of my life.