Tag Archives: Writing

Transcendental Meditation amid a Torrent

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It started in Houston, a small drizzle, preceded by a ridiculously bumpy landing.
From Houston, a layover of 45 minutes and a decent sandwich from an airport vendor, we boarded for New Orleans.
It was our first vacation without the kids and we’d she’d only seen The Crescent City in a mad rush through the Quarter and didn’t see the beauty the city held, only what at 19, she was really allowed by her parents.
Arriving at our hotel too early for check-in, we left our luggage with their bellperson and headed for Jackson Square.
Stepping on the street, we saw the usual New Orleans panhandlers, though there were less than there’d been when I visited the city 17 years prior.
The chill of an early spring rain and the smell of spices and Creole seasonings drifted from the restaurants we passed.
Our stomachs were soon growling and though we weren’t quite hungry we perused menus searching for dinner, but nothing sounded good and we made our way to Jackson Square, it was then as the chill and scents of New Orleans ran through our senses the heavens opened.
It wasn’t the rain we were used to. It was a southern downpour.
We ran from awning to awning and sidewalk to sidewalk dodging the torrent unleashed upon us.
We stepped in puddles as our clothes became drenched and then we decided to sit, eat and take in the flavors of New Orleans.
I’d only been doing TM a week, but after our meal we returned to our hotel for my second meditation of the day.
My wife thought it was a phase at that point, or that I couldn’t be experiencing the things I told her, but now that it’s been months later, she understands that it’s not a fluke and she’s closer to learning the TM technique.

How Transcendental Meditation changed my Writing Fears Into Confidence

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He strode across the floor, his walk more of a glide than I’d anticipated, but there was confidence in it. He looked past the veil of flesh of my exterior, seeing only the soul within.
The look scared me.

Before Transcendental Meditation, I felt like I’d create a new blog post, start a new story, I’d always have that thought, just before I’d finish, “Can I really show this to anyone? How would they feel about who I really am?”

With TM came a new understanding of who I am, not just as a person, but as a writer. I no longer worry about whether someone judges what I write. For my fiction, I write for myself, for my blog posts I write to free myself and hopefully help others, which is extremely gratifying.

I’ve sat, staring at my monitor, my finger twitching, my hand on the publish button before, but now, publishing a blog post is a given. There are posts which don’t get the words out right and they may never be published, but I wrote them.

Sometimes getting past the fear of judgement is the greatest fear we deal with. It can be writing, performing or it can be our day job, but the fear of judgement dissipates.

Fear is the only thing which held me back from writing what I wanted. Fear is the only thing holding any of us back from becoming who we want to be and who we deserve to be. TM has truly been a blessing to me, one I intend to share with my wife and kids.

My fear of judgement on my writing and personal life is considerably less than before TM.

 

Why I Rethought The Way I Look at My Writing.

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Each day we’re stuck living someone else’s dream.

We go to a job where oftentimes, we’re creating something for someone else, because it pays the bills.

What if we decided to live our dream, pay the bills and still keep people happy?

This was something I thought about the other day when I was writing.

I work a day job, which I had considered my main job, obviously neglecting my writing and anything creative in the process.

That was until this past week, when I was struck with something, I’m not a writer. I’m pretending to be a writer.

What I realized in that “moment of clarity” is that I’ve been looking at my writing as a second job, sure it doesn’t pay the bills right now, but as long as I treat my writing as the second job and not the first, it will always suffer.

In this realization I thought, “Damn, if I think this way, others do as well.”

What do we do about it?

We rethink our creative side, redo the way we look at our day and come up with ways to put our creative efforts first, and other things second.

I say this as a husband and father, “If your creative side isn’t in first place, it will never win.”

I have obligations, it’s not like I’m going to quit my day job, not right now. I see the time coming when that will happen, but it’s not right now.

The thing is, we all have things we want to do, but we put them in second place out of fear, shame or other reasons.

Fear of rejection, fear of someone not understanding and the fear of failure. And shame, damn, shame is the worst. When we look at the things we’ve failed at there could be a big list, and because we failed at those the shame and fear of it happening again makes us not want to try, not want to do it again.

But, when we come to the realization, as I did, that what we wake up for in the morning should be first. That the thing we want to do most in our life should be first, then, and only then will we discover the will to do it.

I’m not going to lie, it’s going to be hard. There will be people who say you can’t do it, there will be that damn voice in your head and when the voice in your head talks, tell it to F off.

The only way you’re going to do what you want with your life is to put your creative pursuits first and anything else second.

We live someone else’s dream every day, isn’t it about time we live our dream?

Getting Past the Reality of Writing

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The reality of writing is that sometimes we put ourselves into our stories.

I recently sat down with a past story, read through it and saw more things about who I was, what I was and where my mind set was at the time I wrote it.

Whether you’re putting bits and pieces, or entire sections of your life in your story, you may not realize it until after you’ve finished it.

When I read I try not to know too much about the author, but this is sometimes problematic with my favorite authors. I know what they were going through in their lives at the time and I see that in the story when I’m reading and it can get in the way of the reading.

I haven’t finished a novel in a while. I’ve written shorts, blog articles and poetry, but I haven’t finished a story in over a year.

I believe my mind needed a break, and that now that I understand where my writing was going before, I understand how to get it better now and how to put this new journey into the writing.

The one thing I’ve realized is that I have less fear about what I write. I no longer worry about people reading what I write and wondering, “He’s crazy”, that doesn’t cross my mind as often.

When I write, I try to find something in what I’ve learned about things that make it easier to get through the day and discover new things in the writing.

Without trying to make our writing better, what’s the point?

I’ve found that having no fear, has led to discovering new characters, story ideas and ways I could have solved issues with past stories.

Getting Past Who I Thought I Was

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I’m discovering I wasn’t who I thought I was.

When we reach a certain point in our lives, we find that the person we believe ourselves to be, isn’t the one everyone else sees. This is either by accident or design.

I’ve always thought of myself as shy, reserved, but in my family life that’s not how I was.

During my time with TM, I’ve discovered I’m not the person I thought I was, I was much worse.

I believed myself to be a good husband, father and son, though quite a few times it has been the opposite.

I’d been demanding, belittling and sometimes cruel. I write this because I’m doing my best to be better in all the roles I listed above.

A few weeks after I started doing TM I had a self-realization moment.

I watched myself, how I acted towards my wife, kids and parents, and I didn’t like what I saw.

I’ve put up this facade of who I was, what my family life was like and it’s time to tear it down.

I no longer want to be the person who tells stories about his life, I want to write stories about others lives.

Growing up lies were told to me many times about many things, and I’ve found myself doing that to people I care about, not because it was planned, but because it was something I took as normal and in truth, if you love someone you don’t lie to them.

The lies I was told as a kid grew to shape who I am, and what I believed, but in shaping me they’ve allowed me to create this facade and build a wall around myself which I thought protected me from being hurt by others, which was a constant as a child.

My self-realization moment happened and I sat down with my wife, apologized for the man I’d been and promised that I would be a better man, it was a true awakening moment.

When I realized the things I was doing, I was overcome with emotion and had to think about all the things I’d done to people. It was as close as I can get to make amends for the things I’ve done in my life and the way I’ve hurt people.

That I’ve caused pain to my wife, who’s stood by me through everything and put up with my attitude and being an ass, shows how much she cares for me.

I realized that my wife is the best thing to happen to me. She’s never judged me, or anything I’ve done. She’s loved me for who I am and ignored or tolerated the person I was.

I find myself in a new place, devoid of having people who only want me around for their own means and I’m learning that I have more control of things and who I’ll be in the future than I thought possible.

I say these words often to myself, but they ring true every time. Our life is our own, how we deal with it defines who we are to ourselves and others. Who we choose to be is under our control and no one can tell us who we are but ourselves.