The Party’s Over

April was National Poetry Month and I engaged in a discipline with a poetry blog to write a poem a day (PAD). The blog host would put out an arbitrary prompt and we would all write on that prompt. The cool thing is they figure 700 people wrote every day or almost every day.
Keeping a writing discipline that long with such a random twist to it set up a new neural net. Like any new neural net I can run with it or trash it and go back to what was. In all things I endeavor to go forward. I think it will help with my big project (BP).
BP status check today: I felt springy on my feet today. I went back to the toe stretchers. Now wait. Before I go into the minutiae of my BP routines I keep being struck by the lesson of the PAD. Writing in a challenge made me healthier. I know that being challenged mentally is where new neural pathways come from and I certainly was doing something I hadn’t done before-writing under a stranger’s direction for 30 days in a row. Even though I didn’t write every day’s poem chronologically and I had a couple days that I was either stymied, busy or bagging and I didn’t write, I didn’t quit.
Every day I do a variety of disciplines in pursuit of the BP but I don’t do the same physical things every day. I don’t even do the same walks every day. I usually don’t have the energy and/or balance at the same time to do any more. But in April I was working on my garden stuff so doing a little bit of lifting or planting most days and then at the end of the month I came up with doing deep knee bends while brushing my teeth. So for at least 4 minutes a day I started rolling up and down the wall with the balance ball so it’s several times a day. I need that kind of consistency. I also had a couple extra writing gigs so I was out of my routine and not couching in a book or the tube. I also started using this device that stretches my toes apart and straightens them out.
One more addition to the mix has been the addition of an accomplice in the last month. This is a chance to dissect the buttons that get pushed and trace them back to my youth and to unpack all the garbage I have been stuffing. It is very liberating.
A month of new disciplines seems to have helped to shift my other disciplines in to a different place.
I am whole.