writing

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Even though there was some sawing going on when I opened the doors, there are two squirrels in the oak tree having a good time and some birdsong too. The morning fog is burning off, but at least we are getting some moisture into the area in the early morning. More is predicted to come tomorrow and into the weekend so the temps will be nice. And then it starts again; a nice tropical summer.

Mocha just landed on the pool umbrella next to me. That umbrella is lower than the other ones so I could get a good glimpse of my friend. Checking the Ring camera for late night early morning visitors, I saw myself - up late enjoying the moon - and Nekko, the feral cat that used to visit quite often. She has come more often lately. Mocha flew to the spillway but didn’t land, she deviated her flight plan to the oak tree … for now. Didn’t take long, she’s now on the spillway, but a noise from the neighbor’s yard alarmed her and she’s flown to the wire.

Reflecting on why I’m writing about mourning doves and squirrels I realize that I have been writing all my life. As a girl I was given a diary - a good Christmas gift from an aunt or mother - and so what they call journaling began. But I was not so connected to diaries. And I remember starting a novel maybe in my pre adolescence. Of course I never finished it but I remember hoisting a half a ream of paper that I was proud to call my writing project! Like all beginners, I began at the beginning with the title page, TOC, before the story began. Now I can’t remember what I might’ve been writing about; maybe even in those days I was more a publisher than a writer.

Writing was quite different in those days: paper, pencil (probably), quiet place to write. I don’t remember any family members talking to me about this project. Maybe I kept it hidden, I really don’t know. But anyway I was writing on my own and outside of school. My teen years I was discovering other kinds of things and so there wasn’t much writing going on. I was sculpting around that time, however. And I remember, maybe as a result of my project of a novel, that I needed experiences to write about and that I didn’t really have enough of those. I worked hard in my teen years to acquire some experience and, looking back, I think I did a masterful job, although my family was not very impressed.

In college I wrote for my classes, and in graduate school I did that some more along with a master’s thesis and one for my PhD. Then as a professor there was a lot of writing involved with my job: syllabus, course descriptions, notes on student’s papers, and such, but I was exhausted and there was little time left for novels. I did write two professional philosophy papers, both of which I delivered to an audience of my peers. It was not something I enjoyed really. Philosophers are trained to be critics which means for a paper giver, a lot of push back from the audience. But I needed support of a different kind. I began a publication and became Editor in Chief of ATM, from the beginning it was a quarterly magazine and then moved to bi-monthly (every 2 months) and so I wrote editorials for all 100 issues of that publication. But I did quite a lot of interviews with people and so it was me that transcribed most of those and then edited them.

Then Ron and I began writing books. We published some of them too. We were editing a lot of other people’s writing along the way. Our little business, our publishing company, enjoyed many phases and was quite productive. We founded a dojo and with that a lot more writing was involved in presenting material around that endeavor: membership agreements, explanatory sheets for students - we were after all philosophy teachers and so we perceived our dojo as an educational institute. Besides teaching technique which is quite effortless, we wanted to cultivate people’s better sides, we wanted to teach students how to be good people which is much more challenging. And so more books were written. I published one last year, but it wasn’t my first.

And now my daily misogi which is over 600 posts. It’s very nice to just let my mind work my fingers and put down what’s before it, probably nicer for me than for my readers. But I stand as an example of how easy it can be and hope that others will follow this practice of mindfulness and being in the moment practice. The benefits are too numerous to count.