Category: Writing

When was the last time you spent a day just enjoying yourself?

I was thinking of this over the holidays. Many days are spent just going through the motions. If you have a regular job, you’re probably spending days off catching up on things that need to get done around the house or helping out, or even just spacing out and losing the time altogether.

But what about a presence of mind and active enjoyment of an entire day? For me, I honestly couldn’t tell you the last time that I spent the day that way. So that’s something I will be doing this coming weekend. It’s my last weekend before filming starts, so I think it’ll be important to do that for myself.

It’s at this time of year that I like to take stock of all the aspects of my life – Health, Relationships, Personal, Career, Spiritual/Personal, Family & Friends, and Money. The Wheel of Life, developed by Paul J. Meyer in the 1960s.

Beyond just assigning a value to each of those fields, though, I find it helpful to really dig into the dirt of it. Evaluate my budget. Reach out to people I haven’t spoken with in a while. Look at my career trajectory and see if I need any fine-tuning.

It’s easy to get off course, especially if you’re only diving in once a year (or less). So it’s important to really be honest with yourself.

The problem with a new year carrying so much weight – or for us to assign so much weight to them – is that any faltering is just seen as an overall failure. Another broken resolution.

Yes, the new year comes only once every twelve months. But each day is a new day to start over. To reinvent yourself. And so if you falter today, tomorrow’s a day you can succeed.

The consistent struggle I engage in daily is the battle of stuff. What I identify most with is a collector. I collect things, and as my interests expand, so do my collections. And number of collections.

Sometimes I feel jealous of minimalists. I have a brother who is able to keep an immaculate house. A friend of mine can let go of things just as easily getting his hair cut, and so his apartment is always in flux – new things in, and older things out, even if they aren’t really old at all.

In this post-Christmas season, I think many of us deal with new items in the house. And while of course it’s good to let go if you can, it’s also important to hold onto things that make you happy.

Don Miguel Ruiz wrote a book called The Four Agreements. I was gifted this book about seven years ago, and it was one of several things that got me through a tough time. But I always come back to the four agreements you make with yourself:

• Be impeccable with your word
• Don’t take anything personally
• Don’t make assumptions
• Always do your best

Whether or not I think about these things, I always carry them with me. And that last one, always do your best, is a call to action each and every day. Your best may change from day to day. You might not have as much to give today as you did yesterday. But still do your best.

That’s why each morning is a new baseline for your life, and you can make anything happen. One day at a time.

If you get up everyday and do the same thing, is it habit? Are you in a rut? Is there a way to decide?

Certainly you can find yourself locked into one way of doing things. Maybe that closes you off. Of course, you could just as likely be open to new possibilities. And it may be better to try something new, or the common could work just as well or better.

I’m not sure what a rut is, really. It could be something fundamentally different than habit. Or, one man’s habit could be another man’s rut. I suppose that it is all relative, and how you view your life really dictates whether those habits give you opportunities for fulfillment, or detract from a meaningful life.

One thing that I’ve been focused on since being out in LA has been to flesh out my network. Contacts in the film and television business that I had somewhat in Atlanta, but did not here in Hollywood. So, it’s been all about meeting people.

Or, rather, I’d like to say that was the case. But it hasn’t been that so much… for this and that reason.

So, now in the New Year, it is a large focus of mine to actively pursue new contacts. Not only people I’d like to work with, or who may want to work with me. But a friend network. A support group. A community.

Because no matter where you are, it’s incredibly important to have a supportive community that you can turn to.

Where just days ago it seemed that Grammarly was working on WordPress, now, there’s no spellcheck to be seen. What happened? Did I surreptitiously do an update and messed with it? Or, was it one program or the other or both – deciding that, no, they really didn’t want to play with each other.

One thing to make writing on the platform just a bit easier on the user, and not it’s gone away.

Will it ever come back?

Writing for a daily posting means keeping up with a practice. It also means keeping your eyes and ears open, so that you can come up with topics or posts for every day.

Thankfully, the world is full of potential. If you pay attention, you’ll never run out of things to write about. Then it’s just a matter of doing it.

I used to hate flying. But now, usually, I love it. It’s a promise of a new adventure every time. Sure, it can be cramped. Really, just a bus in the sky.

But… That flying bus is going somewhere maybe you’ve never been before. And that’s worth it.