This past weekend found me at Wilbur Hotsprings for a 3 day yoga retreat led by Thomas Fortel. SaWeet! Life condensed to the essentials: soak in hot mineral water, do yoga, eat, read, repeat twice, then bedtime. Do same the next day. Fascinating how quickly that lifestyle became the “norm”. How quickly the lack of 2nd brain (laptop) was forgotten.

Brain reprogramming. When my mind gets clogged up, spun out, freaked out, or goes into perma-monkey chatter brain, I know it’s time to hit the reset button—aka brain reprogramming. It’s like a looping program needs to get wiped out of memory.

I read Stephen King’s On Writing. Fascinating! While I don’t particularly care for his novel genre, I truly enjoyed this memoir/writing tips book—a storyteller to the core. He reveals quite a bit about his life and what led to his current popular fiction icon status. I was happy to read that he writes for the love of writing. For the love of discovering how a character will get out of a predicament.

Sounds to me like he has a love of the creative process and mystery—trusting that the story will work itself eventually and surrendering to that process. There is an implicit understanding that micro-managing will only get in the way or stop the process entirely. The only allowable control freak tendency being to sit his butt down every day to write.

And isn’t that why so many people don’t do what they claim to have a passion for? They don’t make the time for it? That says to me, “not enough passion” and that it’s time to re-evaluate what you think you want. That’s one of the most valuable things you can do for yourself. If you really want it, you’ll figure out how to make it happen.