“Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.”
Elizabeth Bishop From the poem ONE ART. Click this link to read the entire text of the poem at the Poetry Foundation website.
I can feel annoyance rise up my spine at the thought of losing something every day. Perhaps this is why I have more clutter than I need. The thought of losing is painful, abhorrent even.
Why would I want to lose something every day?
I settle back into my breath and stop debating the poem itself.
This morning I lost some of my usually most valuable time: early in the day, most productive, flowing space of openness and I was busily searching for Instagram challenges for March as it is only days away.
I managed to pull myself out of the rabbit hole of interesting people and images but not before I allowed time that could have been used to make my present and future and (I’m lost now trying to find the just right word) frittered away the moments that might have been the best of my day.
That says it.
Did I lose my best in search of mediocre?
My hands reach off the keyboard as if I had set fire to it.
How dare I consider such a thing!
Why would I purposefully lose my best in search of mediocrity?
(If I was a biblical sort of person, shouting “Get behind me Satan!” would be appropriate here.)
I rub my hands together, a sort of stimming learned perhaps from my father or brother or from myself. My palms are dry and need lotion. My hair which dried naturally looks completely strange and my eyes… are doing the drowsy difficult to stay open routine.
The timer goes off and I think “Wow, that is five minutes I’m never getting back” but when I peruse what I wrote, I see value. And if I didn’t? I would see loss. So we’re all good. We’re all good.
This is an exploration of self via free flowing personal narrative: this specifically is sharing everyday, in the now. A sort of 5 minute meditation upon that day or the day before…. we’ll see how each day shapes up without insisting it conform to any particular shape beyond writing for 5 minutes… go. write. now.
I’m using the “5for5BrainDump” model which grants a person the gift of 5 minutes of timed writing to dump whatever comes onto the page without editing, forethought or judgment. What appears on the page and out of the rambling mind is remarkable.
These thoughts are posted unedited and will occasionally include an extra session or two to get to the depth the person feels necessary. Sometimes, the person (in many cases myself) backs away from the writing because… it is uncomfortable, she feels like something is about to crack open or she becomes bored and drifts away momentarily.
It is important to give license to stop and continue, stumble and continue, rant and scream and cry… and continue. This continuing is where the transformation happens.
Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!
To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.
