Creating is like breathing – more like exhaling. If I don’t create, my soul suffocates. As I create, I listen to myself. I discover emotions and fears and passions and convictions. I pray soft and subtle prayers. And I give others the words their souls need as well. If I never find a steady lucrative income from writing, I will still write. Making a living is not the same as making a life.

While I want to create for the sake of my soul and for the sake of the message, I also want to create for the sake of creating. I enjoy the process – the challenge – the adventure. I must always hold moments of creating as a discovery, not a job or goal, but as a discovery of what is within me to create. To play. Freely. Without expectation or pressure. And I will find these are my most creative moments. Without inhibition.

To maintain a level of creativity, I need new inspirations and old routines. I always find novel ways to create, whether it be through new tools of creating, or new mediums. Predictability and routine provide the best environments for my soul to have the energy to create. If life demands adaptation and change (both being very creative endeavors) then I will be depleted of my inner creativity.

To foster my creative edge, I must constantly educate and challenge myself: New books, new lessons, new tools, new goals, new creative endeavors. If I don’t grow, I will lose speed and possibly halt. This development is a monster of a task, and I often feel I am hindered by my own limitations. But I will continue to grow. I will continue to climb upwards to new heights of achievement. I may never ascend to the top of this Everest, but I will strive to get above the snow-line.

Each year I will make a creative goal for myself. A goal that both includes songwriting and artistic development/education. These two combined elements will keep me on course – always with an end in sight and a way to monitor progress, and will also fuel me to keep a steady pace with new ideas and tools and challenges.

Instructions for writing your own creativity manifesto can be found HERE

1. Would you rather have no ears OR no thumbs?
2. Would you rather live off of Chicken Noodle Soup and water but be able to read for the rest of your life, OR spend the rest of your life eating/drinking whatever you want but remain illiterate forever?
3. Would you rather have endless money but no traveling out of state, OR unlimited traveling while living off $40,000 a year?
4. Would you rather have 4 inch long fingernails or toenails?

So… Go on. Feel free to answer the questions.

My name is Mandy.

And I spend a lot of time in social media. (There’s a confession in and of itself.)

And sometimes words on a screen can be misunderstood.

By you.

And by me.

I know that I’m not the only one who sometimes struggles to say things clearly. To find words that carry the tone and emotions of what I’m saying. But sometimes there aren’t enough words, and not enough s and s and s to make things come across the way we intend.

Earlier this month, a good friend of mine left a really thoughtful comment on my blog, and I think I may have misread his intentions. I may have missed the tone; and, as you would expect, I responded based on that misunderstanding. (No, I’m not gonna tell you who or when. You’ll just have to wonder.)

It happens sometimes, as hard as we try to be clear and friendly and warm and all that. It still happens. There aren’t enough emoticons to overcome limitations of typing expression-less words in a text-box.

I’d love to learn from your experiences… So, how do you compensate? How do you make up for those limitations?

[I start a timer.]

Why is he mocking me? Because I am about fifty words into using the Dvorak keyboard layout. It is designed for more efficient and healthy computer typing. (Apparently, the traditional design was for typewriters.) I figured that, as much as I use my hands, I need to take good care of them.

The “A” and numbers are the only symbol keys that haven’t moved; and I am having a really hard time remembering where the “K” is.

[Entering the Dvorak link in the post up there.]

124 words so far plus the link in 11 mins, 54 secs = 10+ words per minute.

I used to type 62 wpm… 72 on a good day.

How fast can you type? Test it HERE.

I’ve been thinking about spiritual breathing this week – thinking about how God is the giver of life, by giving us breath. By lowering Himself to a very intimate degree of presence, and breathing life into us. Maybe that’s why the infant cries the most important cry of his life in that first breath- maybe it’s because his baby lungs have just been filled with a God-sized inhalation. Maybe it’s more than he can take in. And so he cries.

I think life does that to us sometimes. In order to truly live, we are taken through different God-sized moments. These moments usually come with intense emotion and discovery. And, well, sometimes the only way to react is to cry – to exhale with the deepest intensity of emotion.

So, in the last two days of this Selah – this pause to take a deep breath – I think the proper ending is a moment of exhale. Release what is in there. Journal it out. Talk it out. Blog it out. Cry it out. Whatever it takes for you to process the God-sized inhalation we’ve experienced this week.

Selah, friends.

What do you hear when you really stop to listen?

Related Articles

• 5 Simple Ways To Be A Better Listener (lifehack.org)

Ok, so, this is not about a real train. A figurative train. A train of stress, fatigue, and even sickness. Plus, if we’re walking with others in this life, the train might hit them too – usually in the form of relational stress and all that blah blah.

About the title of this post. There’s no real way to stop a train, unless you’re the conductor. And, those of us who think they’re in the driver’s seat are the ones who are most likely to get hit by that train.

Let’s review: We can’t stop the train. And we’re not on the train. We’re just on track. It may be the right track; it may be the wrong track. But, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’re walking walking walking.

We’re not sitting. We’re not stopping. We’re just walking.

… and here comes the train.

So far this week we’ve focused on having some alone time and getting to know ourselves, but that’s not the point of the Selah. What we’re really supposed to be doing is stopping. Now, as I drag this metaphor out as long as I possibly can, let’s take a minute to stop. Stick our ear to the ground & listen. Or just sit on the tracks to feel the rumble.

Because here’s the point: how close is the train – and do you need to step off the track for a moment to let it pass?

*screenshot of  blank diary entry

For a while now, I haven’t really known what’s going on in my brain. That’s a huge reason why I took a “selah” last week.

To know myself better, I’ve recently started “journaling” – but not like what typical people do when they journal. Been keeping a record of my inner-workings for about two months now, and it’s really helping. It’s helping me pay attention to what happens each day and how it affects me.

My atypical approach is a piece of software called “Chronories.” I stumbled into being the guinea-pig for this German software dev company to re-write a version that would work with my Mac. More on that later…

Back to the journal and how it’s revolutionized my self-awareness.

Among a few other features that help me keep track of my life, these are the seven questions I quickly ask myself at the end of the day. It usually takes about 5 minutes. So, for those of you who are on this Selah journey with me this week, it’s time to answer a few questions. Use the comments, or feel free to turn this into a blog post and link back here, so we can keep track.

• What was your HIGH today? (meaning, what was your highest most exciting experience today)
• Your LOW? (what was your toughest moment)
• What FOOD have you eaten?
• What are you PONDERING?
• Have you had any MOOD SWINGS through the day? (fellas, you can answer this one too)
• How did you SLEEP last night?
• Did you make any personal decisions (or RESOLUTIONS) today?

Related Articles

• Chronories Writes Your Daily Journal Entries for You (pcworld.com)
• The Effortless Journal – For serious journal keepers with little time (becoming-a-writer-seriously.com)
• OhLife helps you maintain a personal diary over e-mail (downloadsquad.com)

Related Articles

• The Value of Time With Oneself (psychologytoday.com)
• How to Enjoy Solitude (thinksimplenow.com)

And these days, I’m blind to reasons why I’m not as introspective now as I used to be. Why I’m not as self-aware. Why I can’t tell you what I think or feel about certain things.

Maybe I should just sit more. Away from the laptop or cell phone or to-do list. Away from productivity and information overload.

Sit.

And listen to my own soul tell me its secrets – tell me stories that I haven’t heard in a while – or stories that I haven’t heard told before. Maybe then I will know myself again. Maybe.

I haven’t forgotten.

In fact, I probably think about that every week – trying to find a way to help this bloggy community (which I dearly love) quiet down from the chatter for a moment. I even asked my Biblical scholar husband what this word means: ”nobody knows for sure what this word means, but it most likely indicates some sort of pause or key change in the singing.”

So… Here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m going to pause for a breath – a long inhale. I’m going to “change keys” on this blog and in my life, and I’m gonna sit. And listen. And try to dig down deeper into my own soul. And I’m going to think about ways we can “selah” together.

And, we’ll start our “Selah” on Monday August 23rd.

See you then.