There are certain days when I just can’t get it together. The evening rolls around after a busy day of….what? Nothing.
My worst days are the day in which I get to the end of the day and realize that I have squandered my golden energy. Damn.
What is golden energy you ask? It is that zone of the day (for me always the morning) when you are at your peak. You are open and thrumming and usually this is when you are poised to create your best work.
The likelihood of dropping in to “flow” (the state in which you lose track of time and become engaged and thriving) is very high. Makes sense that this is when I do my best writing and creating.
Knowing this to be the case, there are days when I tell myself “Oh, I’ll just send a few quick emails, and check the news.” And the ultimate kiss of death for creative energy…face book.
Then the day gets away from my writing goals, I start to feel sluggish and to guilty it take a nap, then the dogs don’t get walked and dinner doesn’t get made and then I am back on FB and asking myself..”What the hell just happened?”
I know this happen to you too. It is unavoidable. As long as there are celebrity fashions and YouTube’s of hamsters running around on piano keys, there will be the temptation to squander your goldentime.
I admit that there will be days in which this happen, but I am going to make it my mission to make then few and far between.
But how?
I am making the process very simple. One step actually.
It is not easy. In fact a little painful, but here it the step.
“I will not get online until after my goldentime.”
I know you thing that sounds a little dramatic. And maybe it is, but the fact is, time is literally our most valuable asset.
For humans, unlike the universe, time is finite.
Everyday we get out of bed and start the day with out life’s purpose in tact and in our crosshairs is a day worth living to our fullest.
I refuse to let my precious commodity be frittered away on Farmville.
I actually love facebook. I love reading what others are up to. But I can most definitely do this after I get my 2000 words in.
I will probably even enjoy it more because it will feel like I earned it a little. And the chances of getting dinner made and dogs walked is higher too. Honor your golden time, and watch the rest of your day and commitments become golden too.
The day Steve Jobs died, I just happened to listen to an interview with Zen Buddhist and death and dying expert Joan Halifax.
I am not normally this heavy, I just find that real and beautiful human connection intrests me.
If it interests you too, then I invite you to read on.
Halifax described a particularly poignant experience she had with a dying woman, who because of a neurological disorder had tried to commit suicide several times. The last time she was nearly successful having basically destroyed the remainder of her faculties. The family had been holding vigil, awaiting her death, but she hung on in a very agitated, vegetative state. So they called in Halifax.
Halifax knew the woman was unsettled by the harsh way her labored breath sawed in and out. The family suffered along with the dying woman, stricken with helplessness.
Not unfamiliar with this type of situation, what Halifax did next was simple and sublime.
She held the dying woman’s hand and told her that she was ok in this moment. She was loved, and above all, accepted.
Halifax kept repeating this, and within twenty minutes the woman’s breath changed tempo, and slowed until she took her very last.
It occurred to me that Halifax gave her something essential to the human process. What she gave her was ultimately what we all seek. Support, love and acceptance.
I know it seems obvious, but I think so much of my own past self-inflicted suffering was created because I was seeking love and acceptance from others, even though I had yet to do this for myself.
And I think that acceptance is also what humans seek from eachother.
I try to imagine a scenario in which this simple formula of support, love and acceptance wouldn’t be the best option, and I find that I can’t.
I think where we go wrong right out of the gate is that we don’t treat ourselves this way. I would be hard pressed to name someone who accepts themselves completely.
Support, love and acceptance of ourselves and others is what makes our lives meaningful. It is what drives us to connect. It is why we are here. When we don't have it, especially from the ones we love, we despair.
And yet acceptance is a commonly misunderstood concept. I think perhaps many people mistake acceptance for complacent “giving up.”
Here is how I think of acceptance.
Acceptance is the fully present surrender to the truth of the moment. Once the truth of the matter is accepted you may take conscious action. Or not. Sometimes the action that is required is no action at all, but just being with an intense feeling.
Sometimes it is our overzealous and unconscious actions that get in the way of our acceptance. You can’t “busy” your way out of the truth. The truth is the truth whether you choose to accept it or not. The only variable is how much suffering you will experience along the way.
End of life stuff sounds intense on so many levels. Even though the eventual outcome is the same, no two deaths are alike. Each person is unique until they breathe their last breath. The last breath is their truth.
I love the notion that I can awaken to this truth now, share this with others, so that each breath I take until my last is replete with support, love and self-acceptance.
I just hope I can not only remember this simple recipe, but also remember to apply it.
If you have actually made it to the end of this article, I think it demonstrates your ability to be able to sit with topics that are uncomfortable. And that is a great thing. Because discomfort is something we as humans typically try to avoid. And this is what Halifax is such a pro at. Sitting with and accepting discomfort. Accepting it doesn’t make it go away, but it expands us so that we are bigger than the sensation.
We are bigger and we are connected.
It addition to being connected by breath we share knowledge that though we take our last breath alone, this last act of acceptance is the most meaningful. And knowing that makes anticipating the last breath bearable.
I love to read. Sometimes I read up to 3 books a week. Romance and erotica books are my guilty pleasure. I sandwich all my well-being reading with lots of delightful lusty romance.
About a year ago I discovered a book by Cara McKenna called Willing Victim. While the subject matter might not be everyone’s cup of tea, it was clear that the voice of the book was the freshest thing going in the romance/erotica genre that I had read in a long time.
I stayed up until like 3 am with a flashlight under the covers (before my hubs got me a much needed light for my kindle..) to finish this book. It was that good.
There are so many romance books in the marketplace and ever more coming all the time. So it makes sense that sometimes books become predictable, cliché, and formulaic. It is not uncommon for me to start a book, get a few chapters into it, then give it up to the dust pile because the hero and heroine are so idiotic and unnatural that suspending disbelief becomes impossible.
So when I read Willing Victim I was utterly blown away. I was amazed how well she tackled what could potentially be intense, heavy subject matter that could go all kinds of wrong in terms of resembling plausible sexual fantasy. I was captivated how Cara managed to not only make the story and characters real, approachable and fun, but defined healthy, honest sexual care and boundaries between two responsible consenting adults, while still making the characters layered, fun and realistic.
Dang.
I was hooked.
So I promptly downloaded all her books. They are all pretty different from each other, but the "realness" of the emotional world of the characters is always substantial and always interesting. No two dimentional nit-wits in the bunch. She seems to really understand on a very primal level what is sexy to women.
The thing about Cara is her men are always that delicious balance of masculine, and sensitive. Animalistic and humanistic. Utterly sexual and emotionally approachable.
She worships at the alter of the everyday hero. She picks out the best parts of men and revels in the really sexy bits, while revealing what vulnerable qualities might matchup with their complexes. She defines the line between sexual fantasy and reality with rugged aplomb.
She is a modern writer breathing fresh paradigms into an old genre.
Don’t get me wrong, I still love my romance classics, but Cara’s work speaks to modern women and makes it ok to embrace our fantasies and sexuality in a way that matches our contemporary ideals.
If you are not sure if you like edgy modern erotica, then definitely give Meg Maguire’s romance line a try. You get the same voice and textured characters with more of the relationship build up.
Honestly all her books are great, but I feel like she comes largest to the page and is really in her element with her erotica.
I like all her books. Here are my faves:
1. Willing Victim. Published by Ellora's Cave.(This is a book about domination and role-play FANTASY, so yeah, not for everyone. But I think it is one of her best.)
All her books offer snapshot bits of life between two people who are facing their authentic emotions and their sexual edge, and how these come into play in terms of relationship potential. Her work gets better and better, I can not wait to see what she does next!
I had the privilege of being able to ask her a few questions. Here is what she had to say.
1. What is your daily routine like? How do you stay disciplined to write?
Unless I have major revisions to tackle, I write new words every morning, Monday through Friday, usually between seven and twelve. By lunchtime I'm usually tapped, creatively, so I switch to other tasks, like edits or web updates or paperwork. If inspiration strikes, I'll write in the evening or on the weekend, but I try to keep that time writing-free, to recharge my brain and to remind myself that there's a greater world outside the one in my head. I stay disciplined simply because writing is the thing I usually want to be doing most, and because I believe if you treat writing like a serious, lucrative, full-time job, eventually it can become just that.
I don't have daily word count goals. I used to, but I found that I beat myself up unnecessarily on days when the words weren't flowing, and stopped short on days with good momentum as soon as I hit my 2,000-word goal, even though I probably could have gone on and maybe doubled that. So now I have weekly goals, usually 10,000 words a week. That's still an average 2,000 per day, but I might write 1,000 on Monday, 500 on Tuesday, 4,500 on Wednesday... My word counts fluctuate like the weather here in New England, so I quit viewing a 500-word day as a failure, because usually a drought one day will mean a flood a day or two later.
2. What is your favorite aspect of male beauty?
Oh, there are as many favorite physical traits as there are lust worthy men! Eyes, hands, arms, voice... But above all, I think charisma is what makes a man truly attractive. And you can't pay a tailor or trainer to give you charisma.
3. Are there any core beliefs that you have that inform your life on an ongoing basis? (Ex. vegetarian, dog is my co-pilot, church of warm baths, etc.)
I guess the closest I'd have to that is, "Trust your gut." I'm a big believer in intuition. Oh and karma, too. I have to believe in the laws of karma, since if karma weren't real, the world would simply be too unfair a place to live in.
4. What are your top three favorite things about being a woman?
a) The aforementioned gift of intuition b) more interesting clothes and accessories than men get c) multiple orgasms
5. What are you most proud of?
Huh. I've never really thought about that question, possibly because I don't have children yet. I guess I'm proud of lots of small things, like having some books out, having no credit card debt, being able to run a few miles without stopping, the volunteer work I've done with penguins, traveling alone to New Zealand, and having cultivated the perfect chocolate chunk cookie recipe.
6. Just for giggles can you tell us what your top five favorite books are?
I'll give you my all-time top five, some of the books I re-read on a nearly yearly basis, in no particular order: 1. The Long Walk by Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King) 2. A Clergyman's Daughter by George Orwell 3. Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann (no, really) 4. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving 5. Geek Love by Katherine Dunn Oh, and 6. anything by David Sedaris
Thank you so much to Cara/ Meg for the quickie interview!
And the most exciting thing is Cara has offered to give away a book to one lucky reader.
So just leave a comment and your name will be entered in a drawing to win the book of your choice!
One of the most prudent and useful things I ever purchased was a hammer I like to affectionately call “The Lady Hammer.”
Let me give you a visual. It is a mini hammer that has a floral print finish on the hammer part, and a grippy handle that unscrews like Russian nesting dolls to reveal several small screwdrivers.
She was an impulse purchase years ago when I was a wardrobe stylist. I thought she would be perfect to go in my kit in case I ever needed her on set.
Almost immediately when I arrived at my latest commercial job there was a need for it. A wayward screw sticking out of a panel threatened to snag some sensitive clothing on any passersby there might have been. I had to avert impending disaster. Never fear. I reached in my handbag, whipped out my girly hammer and was on task! Before I could make the first twist I noticed that men and women alike were glaring silently mouths agape.
I didn’t let the naysayers deter me. I screwed in the offending appendage lickety split. I stood, dusted off my hands and then was met with a torrent of sexist hammer jokes. I chuckled along with them. Oh sure. Make fun of the ladylike tool. But who actually had the goods to get ‘er done?
Now I am not saying you can build a house with her. Or even that a gal shouldn’t invest in a kick ass set of craftsman.
I am just saying don’t hate the lady hammer. She has gotten me out of so many jams.
She is pocket sized, but has a little weight behind her.
She fits neatly into my purse and is decorative to boot.
In fact my hubs-to-be actually asks for her by name when he has a common household task to do. She is always available. Day or night.
Just because she is in a pretty package doesn’t mean she is not ultra functional.
Maybe someday I will break down and buy the whole set of tools, but for now it is just the Lady Hammer and me. Doing repairs, in a pinch, side by side.
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