Newsletter
May 2022 newsletter letter
May 2022
Dear Friend,
Following a day of interruptions and what I might call discombobulation I wrote the following in my journal last week (and posted it to my blog),
It’s been hard to find time to write today. I’m feeling it.
Writing is important to me, very important. I can trace the start of my time putting pen to paper back to when I was traveling in my mid-twenties. I don’t know what made me do it, but I started keeping a journal (or diary as I referred to it then) as a log of places that I was visiting and my impression of them. With time that morphed into more of a reflective journal on what I was thinking about life in general, or what the experiences of that day were bringing up for me.
On returning home, I carried on keeping a journal. It was not necessarily everyday, but fairly often. I would write about what I was doing and things and people who I might be struggling with in that moment. As my meditation practice started, I would keep my journal beside me and if something came up while I was meditating, I would stop and write, free flow, feeling as though I was purging the thoughts from my head and helping me to process what was going on. (I have never been taught that as a practice, but it has helped me - there is a blog post in there!)
The scientifically minded of me would like to understand what is going on, but if I can put that wish aside (maybe I will find the answer one day, but it is not that important right now as I know that the process works for me) and just trust the process, the business of writing becomes an essential part of me. The getting down on paper or in digital format what is in my head. Exploring thoughts or allowing creative description to emerge.
If I have days scheduled ahead of time that take me from writing time, I can comfortably manage that. However, with time that becomes more difficult. I am missing out on something. It is in part why I have set up a method for recording events into a digital journal. It allows me to quickly type some words and save them. It is like slipping in a quick one minute meditation if I simply want to keep the continuity going, but sitting for longer is not possible that day.
So I share with you here a selection of my writing, long and short that appeared on my blog through May. Please do get in touch if you have any comments.
Thank you for reading,
David.
p.s. just writing that felt good 😊
April 2022 newsletter letter
April 2022
Hello Friend,
Welcome to my roundup of posts from April 2022. This is my first newsletter for a couple of months. No sooner had I re-booted my newsletter in the month of February, encouraged by Manton Reece introducing a newsletter feature to Micro.blog, my blogging platform, then I pressed pause for March.
March was a challenge for me, and when it came to putting together the final touches to that month’s newsletter, the process of sharing just felt too vulnerable a move. Ironically, aside from anything that I might have said in the accompanying letter, all other posts are available to view on my website. However, I like to give each newsletter some context and in that moment I felt that I could not, and so I pressed pause and took the subscribe page down from my website.
I write this as April draws to a close. Not all of the challenges of March have passed, but I feel in a clearer space to share another newsletter.
One of the posts shared below speaks to the times in our lives when we consciously cross thresholds into new phases in our lives - March had brought me a change of citizenship as a US naturalized citizen. However pronounced or otherwise that crossing might be, while in that moment we know something has changed, we do not know completely what the change will bring. Only time will tell.
As the the northern hemisphere moves from winter to spring, and the southern hemisphere from summer to autumn, I wish you well in any changes that you are bringing into your life.
Now onto a selection of my posts from April.