Radiate the Dance: Better Now Than Never

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Better Now Than Never

I'm taking a crash course in the Do It Now philosophy. If I have a spare moment or more, I'm learning to do those things I need to do NOW. If I wait, the moment's gone, so gather ye rosebuds, eat breakfast, write a thought, etc. while ye may.

This has necessitated a clarity about my priorities that I sometimes don't have. Such as: do I eat or sleep or spent time on facebook connecting with friends? It's not always an easy choice (I need both for sanity).

Our latest sleep book tells us that chronically lacking sleep can bring on an overtired state, in which adrenaline not only keeps one moving past fatigue, but then prevents one from resting or sleeping when such time is available.

Oh, I can feel it. Last night, I lay awake for nearly half an hour, even though I had been craving sleep for the previous 24 hours. Similar things have happened to me when I was in school, where coffee made it impossible for me to take advantage of the time I was awake. I need to use every moment I can get my hands on!

So I'm practicing using those moments where ever and whenever I find them, and using them for what I really need. What I need is always sleep, but it's also wiping down the kitchen table, washing another bottle, getting dressed, getting a bite to eat, sweeping the floor.

Here I am talking about my routines again. Heck, yes, I'm also talking about maintenance! But my usual routines are fragmented. My time is shredded. Instead of an hour or fifteen minutes, I'm working with three minutes or a half hour that may end at any moment.

And even beyond routines, how much of a post can I write in one minute? How much can I edit images in 5 minutes? How quickly can I set up the sewing machine-calculator-desktop-kitchen so that I am ready to undertake something creative the next time a spare five minutes appears?

It's a daily version of living your life as if you may die any day. I can eat now, but at any moment, the baby may wake up and demand attention.

Seize the moment! Write that post!*

*Yes, even if it takes you all week.
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Quotes of Creativity & Inspiration (& Humor):

"When the wolf is chasing the sleigh, throw him a raisin cookie, but don't stop to bake him a cake."

-Banacek

"Without chaos, there can't be magic."

"If you don't know what to do, try *something*."

-Dean Storelli

"If it works, keep on doing it.

If it doesn't, stop.

Stop worrying about why it does (or doesn't) work, unless you really need a grant."

-Ted Klein

"Don't wait for inspiration; it comes while working."

-Henri Matisse

"Writing is like running a delicate jackhammer, like pounding surf leaving behind a trail of lace."

-Clarisa Pinkola Estes

"We remember wholeness so readily, because we don't have very far to look for it. It is always within us, usually as a vague feeling or memory left over from when we were children. But it is a deeply familiar memory, one you recognize immediately as soon as you feel it again, like coming home after being away a long time.

When you are immerse in doing without being centered, it feels like being away from home. And when you reconnect with being, even for a few moments, you know it immediately. You feel like you are at home no matter where you are and what problems you face."

-Jon Kabbat-Zinn, Ph.D.
from Full Catastrophe Living

"Expanding, contracting, expanding, contracting, your mind moves like your lungs or heart; widening as it opens to digest and create new patterns in your unconscious mind, contracting as it concentrates to express them through your conscious mind."

-Dawna Markova, Ph.D.
from The Open Mind

"In story, there's an ebb and flow that is life moving. It make sense of the past and carried us into the future. It connects people to people, invents, heartens us, passes information on how to live, helps us see our lives as a wonderful adventure."

-Maxine Hong Kingston

"Write every day, even if it's just for a few minutes. Keep alive as a writer. ... Regardless of the fad, it's important to write one's own life and the life of all people around you."

-Maxine Hong Kingston

"I would die immediately if I could not create daily."

-Luc de Groot

"I find myself looking back on the Golden Days in Yosemite with supreme envy. I think I came closer to really living then than at any other time in my life, because I was closer to elemental things... Now I long to get back to it all - to fuel the contact of everyday, commonplace material, primitive things - Rock - Water - Wood - and unanalyzed love and friendship.... I want to write - I want to take pictures. "

-Ansel Adams

"Everything that's alive is going somewhere."

-Robin Hobb

"The world is green!

Lots of mosquitos!"

-Skip Nodler

"Writing is like exercising. You got to do it often and it's not always divine."

-Daniel Colvin

Quotes of Humor

"Feeding two newborns at once is a little like trying to catch two feral cats simultaneously and dress them in tiny roller disco costumes. The satin jackets aren't so bad, but the eight tiny roller skates will fucking kill you."
-Akeeyu

"I just don't buy the idea that men and women are light years apart and we need someone to explain us to each other. We all want the same things. Attention. Understanding. Support. Oral. Four things, basically. We want someone to grok us, we want to feel special, we want encouragement in our endeavors, and we want oral. And possibly pizza."

- Marrit Ingman

"Listen, just because something is zeitgeist-fully prominent does not mean that it is "new.""

- mimi smartypants