/ Mental Habits

Making things

I recently saw a blog post about making sure that the first thing you do in the morning is produce rather than consume. Now, my typical morning starts with me reaching for my phone and checking mail, or my rss feeds, or Facebook or Twitter . . . or, actually, all of those before even getting out of bed. **Last year I’d gotten into the habit of stretching and exercise first thing in the morning, but then lost the habit when I broke my ankle and never got it back. Yesterday, I switched things up a bit by making tea and sitting down to write my Kiva Han farewell before starting on anything else. Putting off the consumption of information felt quite good and making something, even if only a blog entry, definitely gave the morning a sense of accomplishment that reading email doesn’t offer. Today, because I’m waiting for and worried about an email to do with PodCastle, I did check my email very first thing, but then managed to put the phone down and start composing this entry.

It’s not a lot, this entry. It’s not like I’m getting up and writing a novel (not yet) every morning. But making sure that I get up and produce something, some set of words and thoughts in the morning can only be a good thing. I don’t know that I’ll always write something for the blog. Maybe I’ll get back to working on the half dozen or so stories that I have in various states of un-finish. Or maybe, I’ll work on a paragraph or two of a paper or write an abstract. Or finally get around to working on an essay for DoctorHer. Maybe I’ll take a picture and do some editing and post it. The trick isn’t to necessarily be writing creatively, although if I can get back into that habit, I’d like to. Rather, the trick is to simply make something that wasn’t there before and to step back from the constant craving to know what’s on the other side of the screen.

Small steps, but forward steps.

On this day..