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Why I Intentionally Sabotaged My Morning Ritual

Doodle by Melissa Dinwiddie

I’ve shared before that I’ve got this great daily routine going: I write, draw, meditate, stretch, do a little professional development, and work out — all before I get to work each morning.

But last week all that went completely to hell.

Don’t worry, I was expecting it. In fact, it was by design.

Yes, I knowingly and intentionally wreaked havoc on my morning ritual!

My morning routine went to hell because I was in Florida at Heroic Public Speaking Live, a conference for speakers and aspiring speakers.

Each morning I had to [Read more…]

The Truth About Balance

Watercolor postcard - daily painting by Melissa Dinwiddie
When I was 23, I learned something about balance that I never forgot.

That was the year I taught 3- and 4-year olds at a nursery school in the Berkeley Hills.

I did not know back then that I was an artist. I did not know I was creative in the least. In fact, I thought I was the must uncreative person on the planet.

I was one of those people who, when talking to a professional creative, would say something like, “Oh, I’m not creative. I can’t even draw a straight line.”

(As if drawing a straight line has anything to do with creativity! WTF??)

But I digress. [Read more…]

Bike Crashes, Unicycles and the Secret of Balance

Occasional Imbalance - calligraphy art by Melissa DinwiddieOne summer, when I was maybe 21 years old, I rode my bike to my job as an assistant teacher at a nursery school.

Cruising down the sidewalk (on the left side of the street, I confess), I sped toward an intersection when I saw a car zip up along the cross street, about to take a right turn, directly in my path.

The driver was looking to his left as he rolled right into the crosswalk that I was about to ride through. Since I was approaching him from his right, he never saw me, and I was too close to the cross walk to stop.

I remember a feeling of stubbornness and spite (how dare this driver not look to his right before turning right!), not to mention a fair dose of youthful stupidity, as I thought to myself, “The hell with it, I’m crashing into this car, and it will serve him right for not looking!”

And crash I did. My front wheel slammed right into his right fender, and I flew over the handlebars and landed smack dab on the middle of his hood.

For what seemed like minutes (but was probably a few seconds), I remember being perfectly balanced on my left hip. Seriously — I could not pull myself out of balance! Or at least that’s how it felt. As if the world has ceased turning on its axis in order to keep me stable.

In the adrenaline-charged mental slow-down of those few seconds after the crash, while perched so perfectly on my hip, I remember thinking that I wished I could balance so well doing pirouettes in dance class!

For that brief moment, my body was utterly, perfectly in balance, and nothing could throw me off. Looking back across more than four decades on this planet, I don’t think I’ve experienced another moment of more perfect balance.

There are three important things to note about this:

1) Balancing on one’s left hip on the hood of a car, no matter how perfectly, has limited usefulness in life.

2) In order for my life to proceed in any useful fashion, I had to come out of that state of balance, get off the car, and move on.

3) Even if I had tried to stay in perfect balance on the hood of that car forever, at some point the car would have moved on, and I would have had to move.

The moral of this story

The thing about balance in life is that it’s continually moving. As I was saying in my Time to Glow session the other day, trying to find balance is like riding a unicycle. It just doesn’t work to be stock still — you’ve got to keep moving.

If you’ve ever seen a unicyclist, they’re always in motion, even when not traveling through space. Even the most experienced unicyclists are continually shifting their weight, the position of their limbs, which way they’re leaning. Maybe just in tiny little micro-movements, but movement nonetheless.

Life is like that. It needs continual adjusting to feel “balanced” and good at any given moment. What felt right yesterday may feel totally out of whack today, so it’s no good sticking with yesterday’s plans, strategies and tactics just because they worked at one point.

It’s a moving target, baby.

The other thing to keep in mind is this:

A balanced life — a life of overall balance — is naturally going to include periods of extreme imbalance.

Think about kids. If your dream life includes having a baby (mine doesn’t, but stick with me on this), your life is going to be turned upside down for a time after that baby comes. It just is. Where your energies might have been spread among a zillion other things before, when you have a kid suddenly all of that energy is diverted away from those other things and toward your new baby.

Which is how it should be.

If kids are part of your life plan, then that time of extreme imbalance is part of your overall balanced life.

I’ve kept this truism front of mind over the past couple of weeks as Life, and my “baby” (that being my business), conspired to pull me down off of my Wagon of Balance.

First, MB and I flew to Alabama to visit his parents (and can I say what a treat it is to actually LIKE my boyfriend’s parents! I mean, like, really like. Like truly enjoy spending time with them. This is a Very Good Thing.)

Travel always throws me off my regular routine, of course, but the road to Alabama was paved with good intentions for getting at least a little writing done, maybe on the plane and/or in the evenings. MB even charged up his spare netbook computer for me to bring along. (I, alas, being so impoverished [1st World Joke] that I do not have a laptop or tablet of my own [and if you’d happen to wish to provide me with one, I’d like a MacBook Air, please].)

But the netbook crashed immediately upon boot-up. Every time.

The Universe apparently decided that being on a computer was not how I should spend my time on this trip.

At least that’s what I took it to mean.

So although I did manage to meditate every day, and I even got a tiny bit of exercise (walking Fritz, MB’s parents’ Miniature Schauzer), I did not get any work done.

I decided to be fine with that.

Then after we got home, I found myself in a bit of a work triage, as not just one but three websites required quick conversion from Headway theme (affiliate link)* to Genesis theme (another aff link) as I migrated them from BlueHost (yep, aff) to Synthesis+Genesis premium hosting, and in the middle of this, the admin side of my main e-commerce site, Ketubahworks, suddenly broke and needed urgent rebuilding-from-the-ground-up.

Which I’m still in the middle of…

I’ve been in intense OCD Geek Mode ever since, my butt conforming itself to the outlines of my computer chair as I gnash my teeth over technical gremlins, trying to Get This Done.

It’s crazy. I’ve fallen totally off of my Great Bedtime Experiment wagon, I didn’t get a lick of exercise for two solid days, I’ve been sleeping an average of about 5 1/2 hours a night (due to adrenaline-induced insomnia) and I’ve even kinda forgotten to eat.

Face it, I’ve kinda forgotten I have a body!

I’m exhausted, I’m playing chicken with the migraine fairies, and I am supremely out of balance.

I also feel keenly alive, and intensely happy.

I’m living the life of my dreams, I’m stretching and learning and growing, I’m moving forward.

Balance, my sweets, is not the be-all-and-end-all.

Is it sustainable? Hell no! And I sure as hell don’t want to still be in OCD Geek Mode two weeks from now! But these periods of being supremely out of balance are part of an overall balanced life.

The secret of balance is that it’s an ongoing game of continual adjustments. When you know this, you can enjoy the game.

It also helps to know that staying up til 2am is not the way to treat myself with self-compassion, no matter how much I want to solve out the latest puzzle of website creation.

It’s now 10:07pm, and I am shutting down to get some shut-eye. I’ll be back at it tomorrow, when the balance-target to aim for will no doubt have shifted.

Wish me luck.

xo, Melissa <3

* If you click through one of these links and buy something, I’ll make some money. You have been warned. If you want to buy the something without sending a commission my way, DO NOT CLICK ONE OF THOSE LINKS! I’ll never know the difference, so I won’t be offended.

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

Hey!

Looking for a little help bringing some balance into your own life? Check out my one-on-one coachsulting. I’ve got just a couple of openings at the moment, and am having a sale until those spots are filled. Click here for more info.

Wild Donkeys, Addiction and Circuit Breakers

Journey Into the Unknown - calligraphy art © Melissa Dinwiddie 2011 | Living A Creative Life

It’s ironic that just last Sunday I wrote about slowing down.

No sooner did I click “publish” than I dove straight into what Goddess Leonie refers to as the “Ride Ze Wild Donkey Technique” for getting stuff done.

In other words, I’m heavy into manic creation mode for my newest goodie, the

Creaetive Ignition Kit

I dreamed up the idea for the Creative Ignition Kit back in May, but kept it simmering on the back burner while other projects took priority.

Part of me wondered if I’d ever get it done. There’s a school of thought that if you don’t act on an idea right away, you might as well give up on it altogether, and almost 5 months went by and I still hadn’t brought it to life.

But I knew this was something special. I knew I was still excited about it – it just needed to germinate for awhile before it could sprout.

I also knew I wanted to bring it to life in the fall, maybe in conjunction with my November birthday. And then when I remembered that November was National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short), I had my deadline!

It’s perfect timing: A month-long creative challenge, toolbox and support community all in one, brought to life just in time to surf the wave of NaNoWriMo. But for creatives of all kinds who want to take on a somewhat less-intimidating challenge than writing a 50,000-word novel in 30 days!

Riding the donkey

So now I’m riding the wild donkey, madly creating content, building the website, wrangling the code (who knew I’d end up becoming such a techie geek?).

My M.O. is to power through intense bursts of creativity, then collapse in a heap. After a recuperation period, I’ll usually coast for a bit until the next donkey comes along and I hop on again.

In some ways, it’s a highly productive working style. People frequently remark on how much I seem to get done.

Unfortunately, it can come with a very high price: exhaustion, burnout, even illness.

A kinder, gentler donkey

It doesn’t have to be that way. Since adapting my “Live An Abundant Life NOW” approach, I’m managing to build a little more sanity and humaneness into my (still admittedly somewhat manic) creation process.

Some examples:

  • Yesterday, I took 2 hours to walk to a nearby school and throw the football with my sweetie. (Something that actually deserves its own post; I NEVER thought I’d be doing something so … athletic … and loving it!)
  • When we got home, I took another couple of hours to try out some recipes in The Pink Ribbon Diet (highly recommended) and enjoy a delicious dinner.
  • All week, in fact, I’ve taken time to cook and bake, to excercise, to spend time with my sweetie.
  • Thursday I shut down (shut down) my computer at 6pm and spent the rest of the evening on “Date Night” with my sweetie.
  • I’ve gotten to a yoga class three times this week, and walked or biked (almost) every other day. (Still have to get on the exercise bike tonight…)
  • This morning I capped my 15 Minutes a Day art-making practice with a long, un-timed stretch in which I finished 6 new pieces for my ArtSpark newsletter.

True, I was up wrangling with web code for the Creative Ignition Kit site til after 3am this morning (regular and adequate sleep is one area where I still could use a lot of improvement!), but in general my quality of life is much better than it has been during similar creative bursts.

Creative addiction and circuit breakers

In his new (and highly-recommended) book, Uncertainty, Jonathan Fields spends much of a chapter addressing the syndrome of “creative addiction”: is it necessary to drive oneself into the ground in order to create greatness?

He writes on page 164:

The lure of creative-obsessive behavior pulls you toward a single vehicle of creative output but ends up pushing you away from everything and everyone else in your life. connections you once had to people and activities, even those you claim are the most important things in your universe, wither and eventually die of neglect. Stepping out of your something-from-nothing bubble turns into pain, so you stay in, where you  know your trusted muse will always arrive at some point to offer up the next hit. It becomes a “chicken and egg” thing fairly quickly.

Have you been there? I have. I started making art soon after I married. The relationship was already on shaky ground, and I dove into my art partly in order to escape. Which served to distance me from my (now ex-) husband even further, perpetuating the cycle.

Whether you’re in a love relationship or not, the fact is that this kind of creative-obsessive behavior does not make for an abundant life.

“Never go into that creative-obsessive cave without a rope, a timer, and someone at home who’s been told to alert the authorities if you’re not back at the agreed-upon time,” writes Jonathan Fields.

Here are his specific suggestions for “psychic circuit breakers” (from page 170 of Uncertainty):

  • Define the triggers that signal you’ve been “under” for too long.
  • Create feedback mechanisms that will tell you if and when you’ve been there too long.
  • Define a vehicle that allows you to pull yourself out or alerts others to come looking.
  • Get mutual agreement on these expectations, triggers, and mechanisms from those within the endeavor and those who surround it.

(Mental note to self: Clearly, staying up to work while my sweetie head off to bed at 11pm is a recipe for getting stuck in the aforementioned cave… As if I didn’t already know that…)

Creative abundance

My overall goal – for me, for you, for everyone – is Creative Abundance. Which requires balance.

If your life is out of whack because you’re not doing your creative thing enough, the Creative Ignition Kit is designed to help you bring the scales into balance. (Sign up here if you want first dibs and early-bird pricing.)

If your life is out of whack because you’re stuck in the creative-obsessive cave, try out the circuit breakers above.

And tell me, which do you struggle with more – not enough time in the Creative Zone, or too much time in the obsessive-creative cave?

PS – Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

Priorities, Choices & the Importance of Imbalance

I’m freshly back from an amazing week at music camp, which feels a lot like being freshly back from a trip to Europe.

In other words, seriously jet-lagged.

Except that there were no jets involved. So perhaps, music-camp-lagged?

Whatever. You may sense a rather low-energy, slur-speeched vibe in the video. Take no notice. That’s just normal post-camp lag. I’ll be back to normal sometime next week.

And despite the sleepy, low-energy vibe, the message is what counts. All about priorities, choices, and how living a life of overall balance sometimes requires periods of extreme imbalance.

Hopefully it will all make more sense when you watch the video.

Or maybe not. Let me know either way.

(Only 355 more days til I get to go back to CCMC. Sigh.)

 

Spend 5 Days Creating with Me, and Walk Away Transformed - Come to Creative Sandbox Retreat

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