I was sitting here pondering why I haven't been coming more often to this place where I can put words down. I'm realizing now it's out of wanting things to be right. You know, the right spelling, the right punctuation, the right sentence structure, saying the right things so as not to offend or alarm anyone.
Is it any fricken wonder I prefer to let the words spill out of me with the flow of my pen across my notebook than coming here where it goes out into internet space where I have no idea who reads it or what becomes of it ?
It's awfully limiting the need to be right, the fear of being judged that we all carry around like a pack on our back. We need to drop that back pack.
Through my many years of working with and writing with people, I've repeated over and over more times than I can count, the importance of kicking that inner critic to the curb and keeping the pen moving on the page in order to not give that little bugger a chance to stop you in your tracks and here I am realizing it's exactly what often limits me from showing up on my blog.
If there's one thing I'm learning and re-learning all the time and especially now with the online course I'm doing with Natalie Goldberg, it's to silence that nasty monkey mind that constantly bombards us with the need for perfection that tells us if we screw up it for surely means we're not worth the paper we write on.
I do let loose on paper but when it comes to the screen and the keyboard, I still need a lot of practice. So here I am practicing the art of imperfection. Just allowing. Just being. Just letting my fingers dance across the keyboard and being okay with what happens.
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I'm doing a lot of writing these days and loving every minute of it. There never seems to be enough time to sit and practice writing but, since the beginning of the year, I've made a promise to myself to make it more of a priority and am I ever reaping the benefits of it.
It's my aim to make this commitment broader and bigger as I move forward through the remainder of the year. It's where I am the happiest, most satisfied, most connected to my inner and outer world, to a sense of something bigger than what I see here. It's my form of meditation, my form of prayer. It's where I need to be.
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