WHY WRITE – HOW RIGHT
… wishful thinking vs. purposeful doing
Monday Aug. 18, 2014
I have attempted so many things – realizing too many have been ‘I plan to’ things rather than ‘do things’ things.
Yesterday, not being pompous but probably running-on too long with someone I speculated was doing just that – talking about doing rather than doing.
Wishful thinking and purposeful doing are not always suitable bed-fellows; it seems we do what we need to do when we are darned good and ready.
Not a moment before.
Sometimes, not a moment too soon.
Until that moment, struggling continues.
Which brings me to my newest, latest, greatest-yet attempts at early morning starts to foster marvelous days.
How else to have another day in paradise?
Starting days in a new-flow, a new regimen.
Ritual.
Routine.
But I’ve not thrown out the old one . . .
Which means getting up early to face a growing list of things, each struggles against it’s neighbour for priority on that list. Facing the list each morning, I struggle with which to do first, which to do second. In the earliest items facing me each morning is ‘read something inspirational’. It would be easy to allocate that tick mark to something I’m doing anyway – Seth Godin’s blog, Louise Gallagher’s blog, my own column, something I find on an op-ed page – but that would seem like a cheat – because I’m going to read all of those anyway. Those are already part of my routine – as much as breakfast, as much as brushing my teeth.
But this is new. So, I search online for an inspirational reading. This morning I hit paydirt. I hit a deep zone of pay. A seam of gold in life’s rubble – a piece by Joan Didion called Why I Write. I read it and headed out for my walk. In my ear memory, Gordon Lightfoot’s Minstral of the Dawn ringing in my memory.
What connects these? I don’t know. Maybe nothing beyond being shoulder-to-shoulder items in my morning. Maybe everything.
Answers don’t blow in the wind.
They collide.
In our mind.
Mark Kolke
P.S.: some mornings I nearly slip up … because in my Musing column template, there is a spot where it says ‘PASTE TITLE HERE’. In red. And bold. Reminder to me that I need a title for my piece. Some days I nearly forget - and I’ve always wondered how reader might react. Today I have a title, composed as I often do, by simply lifting some words from my column – trying to choose words which, once you’ve read the column, will resonate as appropriate. Sometimes I play with puns. Sometimes I just think them ..
column written/ published from Calgary
morning walk: 13C/55F, scarcely a cloud, city lights mute the stars – streets open their mouths to yell-out how quiet it is, but they cannot speak. Silence grips me, while the trail of something along a fence, along a building, pull Gusta’s nose off-track like iron filings to a magnet. We jog-walk, celebrating night’s end folding into week’s start. Now off to the gym.
Reader feedback / comments always welcome:
Great article, RT, Vancouver, BC
