Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Once each day

I started this blog to advocate for personal meditation practice.  That topic got to be a bit boring to write about while more and more other authors, videographers, teachers, professors, trainers and others wrote about the same topic.  There still are unexplored avenues related to meditation but excellent sources and classes abound that can help.  

Meanwhile, I realized I could take note of what I experienced, what I felt, what I thought and topics that emerge during each day and write about them.  I like to read powerful, well-written books, both stories that someone made up and accounts and explanations of real events and sciences, can fill my mind and inflame my enthusiasm on each page.  It turns out that a practice of writing one blog post a day is both too hard and too easy.  

Many days, I have so many wonderful leads and prompts and inspirations that I could be a real pest.  At the same time, both for the problem of an oversupply as well as the problem of deciding what is salient, it can be challenging to find a topic to write about.  I have too much while having too little.

I try to find five themes that seem valuable to write about and sufficiently helpful or novel or inspiring that they seem to have a chance of being valuable to those who read an email I send or look at the blog web page.  I have about 2200 prompts and notes that have seemed worth writing down.  When I read something catchy or notable or surprising or validating in my Kindle reader, I highlight it.  Most books that I read have a file of at least a few highlights.  Some have many.

Admittedly, any book by Jack Kornfield is not ordinary, since he is not an ordinary writer or teacher or thinker.  However, here is an example of a file that comes from highlighting striking parts of a text:

https://sites.google.com/site/kirbyvariety/kornfield-highlights-from-bringing-home-the-darma

I think it is surprising that writing once a day can be both too limiting and too big a job to accomplish.  

Popular Posts

Follow @olderkirby