The eternal question

I take frequent writing breaks. I find that if I just write I get stale. I won't be able to make the word quota. I need to refresh my mental screen. I don't let myself get caught up in too prolonged a reading break but I do take that break.

I also take music breaks. Man, is there is a pattern here? A pattern of staccato breaking? Maybe. I love not doing writing for a ten minute break and then coming back with a new image, a new thought and a new line. I'm not pilfering from other sources. I'm stimulated by the other sources into thoughts of my own. Refreshed, I can continue writing for the entire word count.

I also take tea breaks. I don't actually need the tea, the cookies or the extra calories. What I'm doing is just getting away from thoughts.

Most of writing is really thinking and most of this thinking is superficial, painting over the surface type jobs. We cover the surfaces of what we are and make it pretty. When the writing works, we aren't painting, we are doing a demolition job. We are taking a construct apart and remaking it. I think much of our lives is spent doing this type of construction work on our lives, ourselves and our particular life stories.

It takes time to do this deconstruction and making up again. Most of us don't have time for this type of thinking until we just stop doing other things and come to the decision to make the time. We are all so busy. Doing stupid regular works of our daily lives. Cleaning toilets. Working. Making money to pay bills. Cooking, making love and rearing children. We are all endlessly occupied and we do not have the energies left after the doing of all these tasks to do what is necessary in our lives to make ourselves plain to ourselves - thinking, writing, pondering and defining.

When we decide to spend time with ourselves, to define ourselves and to write some of these definitions out - so that we can recognize who we are by writing it out - then we are liberating who we are to the exterior. We are revealing our inner selves to ourselves first. That is the most important part of the business. The revelation of ourselves to others is always optional.

I don't believe this is being self absorbed. I think the world could do with a lot more of this self absorption. When I go on my tramping trips in the forest, no one is alone. They are all with a human being or an animal. On rare occasions, there is a person walking alone, with something in his hand such as a camera or binoculars. I rarely just see someone just walking in his own world. Sometimes, I see a runner is running into his own world. It is important to be in these solitary, individual worlds in order to learn about ourselves. I'm not sure why there aren't more of us individuals doing the solitary thing of finding ourselves in the wilderness out there. Maybe we are doing it in the isolation of our little locked and padded rooms at home.

It is a good practice to go outside away from the dark and shadow spaces in one's home and into the light outside and read the stories of one's life to oneself. It is wise to sit with them simmering in one and learn to accept them for what they are - stories that made you and influenced you and still shape you. It is important to write your stories down. I do this on my Life Practice blog. I'm recording my stories. For myself. Sometimes, our memories are funny and lose events easily and so porously that we never get them back unless they are written someplace. I record anything I remember about my past (which isn't a great deal) and the present events in excruciating detail. Why do this? Well, the present events and the past events are my stories. They explain me. And it takes a lot of such stories to explain even one woman to herself.

For that is what we do all through our lives really. We try to learn who we are. We try to reveal ourselves to ourselves as clearly as we can even though we are plagued by our own weaknesses, lack of courage and doubts. We try to learn our history and our characters. Every day we work, in one way or another, to some extent or another to make sense of who we are.

Some of us do this work in poetry, some of us do this in our songs and yet others struggle with this task in our jobs. Whatever the medium we work in, the motivation is still the same -we are all asking the same question - "Who am I?" and we work daily in the job of trying to find the answer.