10 Tiny Minutes

Today I went to the UCSD Women's conference. I normally don't attend events like this, but have been trying to broaden my own horizons. I didn't know what was on the agenda and so sat down in the main auditorium to catch the tail end of a presentation. The topic was "The Miracle of Tiny Habits", about fostering change in yourself one small doable goal at a time. I was intrigued by the thought that one small change would "organically" grow into something bigger if you fed that change correctly. The main concept was "anchoring" the change to a cue, something that would make you remember to complete the task. An example is putting your walking shoes by the door to your office so that when you leave the office you can simply see the shoes and remember that you were going to add a short walk before leaving to go to your car.  I thought about the change that I'd want to enact in my own life, and it would undoubtedly be to begin writing again, if not something structured, at least SOMETHING! There are so many distractions, and every day is so busy, but would it really be so hard to set aside 10 minutes a day to put words to paper? Nearing the end of the presentation I checked the schedule, and to my dismay there was a presentation called " Writing Practice for Personal Expression and Creative Explorations". I couldn't believe it, I had literally just thought to myself if only I could write, and then it slaps me right in the face.

 Judy Reeves author of "A Writer's Book of Days" was the presenter. Her message was essentially  if you are a writer, then write! Easier said than done, right? But then she went on to simplify it even more. You don't have to write to be published, you don't have to write to be read, if you're a writer you need to write simply to write. That inner expression is what makes a writer happy, and if no one ever reads it, you've satisfied your creative urge just by doing the practice. I've thought this so often; I need to just make myself sit down and write, but the computer is my foe. I'll be distracted by Facebook, or who knows what else. Judy's answer to this,  don't use a computer.  The art of writing is so much more that just selecting the next word, you should "write with your whole body", hand to paper thought flowing and just let it happen. When we first sat down she asked us to write down a concrete fact that we had noticed that morning  something that grabbed our senses. My fact was "The ceanothus outside Peet's was extra indigo this morning." This is something that only I would notice, I'm especially obsessive about these beautiful plants.  After a bit Judy asked us to take the tips that she had given to us and use our sentence as a jumping off point, to put pen to paper and just write, this is what the next 7 minutes became:

The color of San Diego is blue. Blue clean crisp skies; deep blue oceans, rarely marred by a graying day, but more than anything, the blue of a ceanothus. Bright blue against a green sagebrush canvas. Each as individual as a snowflake. Some barely leaving the world of gray-scale. Some, robins egg, touching its closest neighbor a deep cerulean blue. Their honeyed fragrance reaching out to the birds and the bees, it is spring after all, finding its way above the salty sea air, the earthy sage and musky sumac. These are the smells that have transgressed ages, same for those first men and women grinding acorns on granite boulders. But most amazing of  all, the most striking, is that deep indigo cone on the rarest California Lilac. 

That was the end of the 7 minutes, I really wish there had been more time, I was just beginning to get immersed in it when the timer went off. So this is my goal to myself, my new "Tiny Habit", I will find 10 minutes a day to write, just for myself, anything, with no story or framework in mind, just for the satisfaction it gives me. I hope that it will grow into something more, but if it doesn't at least I'll have that 10 minutes each day.