The Morning Pages...

I keep running across the book The Artist's Way.  A few months ago I began reading it and watching related videos on youtube. One of the tools the author suggests, is what she refers to as "The Morning Pages". In a nutshell, you write in long hand for 3 pages first thing every morning. The content of your writing is up to you. It doesn't have to be well written or even grammatically correct. That's not the point. The point is to purge all of the mental noise and clutter inside your head. Apparently this chaos can block your creativity.

When I first did this, reluctantly I might add, I was amazed at the results. What started out as a rant about how dumb this whole exercise was, ended with some serious purging of some things that had been deeply troubling to me. I ddn't  know how it happened. I thought it was a fluke. I tried it the next day, same thing. Next day, same thing. It's actually quite a painful excercise, but I am beginning to see it's a necessity if I want to get beyond where I am now....which is stuck, making loops around.

My father was diagnosed with cancer in February and I stopped doing this because life got too hectic. If ever there was a time I needed to do this exercise however, it would have definitely been through this period. So, I have decided it is time to start this back up. I dread it, but I also can't wait to see what unfolds. For the first time in a while, I feel a tiny twinge of excitement again, about what could be ahead. We'll see.