I decided to go analog the other day, to jar my brain and get the juices flowing. No computer. No couch. No Masterwriter. Just floor & pen & paper & guitar & iPhone recorder. The effects, 3 hours later, were pleasantly surprising:
Whole point of this post? If you’re in a creative funk, try something drastically different… Change forces us to adjust/react/realign. And that takes creativity. Your brain, by force of change, will immediately jump into creative mode. Don’t believe me? Try it.
I’ve been sleeping incredibly well lately, which is a beautiful experience. Too bad I’m asleep for most of it. 
teeheeee!!
But, there have been–and are–and will be–moments where I’m painfully awake. Mind-racing. Stirring. Wandering. Or specific. Thinking about those things, whatever they are at whatever time, that keeps me awake at night.
For most of these moments, I’m overwhelmed… I’m staring, not at the ceiling, but figuratively at a something that seems impossible–that’s “bigger than me” in some way. And I’m gonna fail in creativity, work, relationships. Those are my big categories. Everything falls into those three importances. And, well… I guess I’m scared. I guess the kid in me who refused to close her eyes for fear that Aliens were going to get her, now looks at the world through grown-up eyes and can’t sleep because of the “monsters” that are out there.
I guess my monster is failure.
What’s your monster? What keeps you up at night?
Drew and I have this silly ritual. And we’ve done this since, gosh, probably the first year or two of our marriage. He’s a reader. And I’m not. And he’s great at positively reinforcing things in my life. And when I decided (nearly in vain) to start reading more, he got this crazy idea that we’d dance, yes, dance, anytime either of us would finish a book. It’s a cheesy shoulder-shaking dance. Nothing special. You don’t even have to stand up for it. But it’s such fun and it’s a mini-celebration of an accomplishment that some might say is rather huge in my non-reading life.
[If I had one, I'd insert an inspirational quote from the person who coined the phrase "Celebrate Your Wins" here.]
We don’t do The Book Dance nearly as much for me as for him, because I might average oh say 4 books completed in a year. Maybe. But sometimes he’ll come out of his home office with a straight face and say “Ready?” I hardly ever know what this is in reference to until the grin cues the shoulders to start going.
This past weekend, we did The Book Dance four times. And none of those times were in celebration of ANY books that I’d finished. He completed four. FOUR. Well, to be even more precise, he finished three of those four books on Friday. The other he finished on Saturday.
Nerd.
So we danced, and laughed, and smiled, and celebrated. And it was fun. And it was in public and we didn’t care.
And it made me want to finish a book–a Particularly Good Book–a memoir, because we all know I luhuhhhvvv memoirs for some strange reason. And when I do finish it, I’ll blog about it–because it’s worthy of recommendation. And I just might try to catch The Book Dance on video so y’all can celebrate with me. But, until then:
What’s the last book you read? And is it a book you’d recommend to others of the memoir persuasion?
I mentioned before that I’m totally into lists right now. And I said that they brought me order in life’s chaos (or something like that)… But, the more I think about it, the more I realize they’re actually bringing me clarity. They are definitive. They are sharp. They are clear. And they are incremental, bite size, digestible. They take big things and make them smaller and more manageable.
Ok. Here’s an example. Let’s say I have a few pet-peeves. I can’t remember them all at once, but I know there are a bunch. So I’ll start listing them, in an effort to clarify what my pet-peeves are:
You’re turn to make a list! What are your top pet-peeves? (Please don’t say run-on sentences.) (Ok you can say run-on sentences… It’s your pet-peeve list.) (But, it’s still my blog.)
(follow me on this long and winding road)
Drew has a blog. It’s worth clicking over to read, if you aren’t aware. He’ll disappoint you with the quantity, but he won’t disappoint you with the quality. I promise.
Anyway, we recently had a good ol’ laughing-fest piled up on the couch flipping through his stats and search terms. Naturally, we wandered over to my slightly-less-unimpressive stat page, and found a few favorites that appear to lure unsuspecting googlers rere again and again:
But the comments, in all their belligerent glory, are worth flipping through.But that’s neither here nor there. What I’m curious about is what do YOU want to read more of here? See, I have this new 3rd day to deal with, and I think I’ll post whenever I want. (yay!!! we’ve come to a decision!!!!) Because it’s my blog & I guess I can. And a lot of y’all said I could, so taadaaaaaa. Rest assured, you’ll always find something new here on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then a smattering of something somewhere else. It’ll be like a surprise. Or something.
But back to my question: What do you wanna read here? Or, better, *why* do you come read here? Yeah… That’s what I’m really interested in knowing. Feel free to comment anonymously, you precious lurkers. I’d love to hear from y’all too. 
Oh but please do answer: why do you come read here?
p.s. This’ll be the last time we drag out any talk about what day to post when. You’ve been beautifully patient with me.
