I practice guitar pretty much every day. Sometimes I work for ten or fifteen minutes on just two or four measures of the song I’m currently working on. My progress is slow, but it’s there. Sometimes I’ve recorded my playing each day, then there’s a record of my progress. I can hear it.
I practice writing every day too. At the very least, in my journal and, as of late, here in this blog. I can feel this getting easier too. The more and more I practice, the fewer blocks I face. And the more rewards there are. When I’m facing a particularly sticky problem, I know that I can go to my journal and write through it. Even if I don’t always arrive at a solution exactly, I often get a new perspective or a new way of thinking about the situation.
At the very least, these practices (along with a few others including reading, walking, learning something new) give me something to return to when things feel difficult. When I’ve had to wait on a response from a doctor or for a test result this past year, I’ve been able to turn to these practices as a way to calm my mind.
With both writing and guitar playing, they’ve become things that I look forward to each day. And my brain has needed that after this past year. My calendar and days have been full of appointments, treatments, procedures, medications. All of those are things that I had to do, but I dreaded all of them. I dreaded their aftermath. And I think that my brain has been stuck in that mode of dread. Practicing writing and playing guitar has kind of gently nudged my brain out of that one-track thinking and feeling.
Having grown up in a Buddhist and Catholic household, I’m comfortable with practicing religion. But as an adult now living in this modern world with its difficulties and distractions, I don’t so much practice religion as much as I have made my religion practice.
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And as it’s Wednesday, here’s a weekly round up of posts.
My most prized possession? My body, mind, and soul.
What do I collect? On spoons and hurts, words and truths. (A prose poem sort of a thing.)
Who would I like to talk to soon? Myself. (Spoiler alert: I had the chance to meet myself in a lucid dream. This isn’t so much a “how to lucid dream” as much as it is this is how lucid dreaming happened to me.)
“Having it all means” being present to myself.
Practice, Practice, Practice. Clearly this is something that’s been on my mind a lot lately.
Of course I remember life before the internet!
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Rhena Writes 