She Loves to Run. . . That Sandy

A weird thing happened today.  After reading Jeff Goins post on writing about topics that we fear to deeply touch readers enough to shatter their frozen seas, I spent most of my morning looking for the perfect frozen sea breaking topic.  I’ve got gazillions of topics of what I’d like to write about, but I’m bent on finding this perfect one.

I decided to take a  break and go throw some balls for Sandy to fetch.

Our lab, Sandy, is insanely  fast.  I’m not bragging either.  Seriously, why would I brag about something like this?  When you throw her a stick, or a ball or a frisbee, she actually leaves “dog divots”  when she takes off to fetch it.  Yup, divots of grass and dirt right up into your lap.

When Sandy treks over to the neighbors (when we aren’t around and she hears voices over there because she’s such a people dog), our neighbor, Linda, likes to throw things for her and their two labs to race to.  Linda confesses that she often has to fake Sandy out first and give the other dogs a head start to give them a chance.

Sandy still wins.

She is unbeatable in dog running.

“We should enter her in races!” my kids say.

She has this gift, this uncanny freakish speed talent. . . and nothing to do with it but chase balls and hunt in the fall.

Here’s the crazy thing.  I really don’t think she gives a rip if she’s fast or not.  She just loves to run.  She doesn’t care if she’s winning contests or competing with any other dog.  She is just so dang happy to be running.

And then. . . my message sang to me.

Like writing should be, Shari.

I was the frozen sea today.  Stuck in finding perfect writing instead of just writing.

Julia Cameron writes,

“I love when good writing comes out – but mostly, I just love writing.”

And we shouldn’t do it for fame or be “be published” or to get lots of followers or likes. We should do it because it’s like breathing.  It’s being true to our essence and it’s who we are.

Like Sandy has to run.

Shari 🙂

Finding a Focus

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I’m following Jeff Goins in his Intentional Blogging Series.  We are on Lesson 2, which is finding a focus for your writing.

This has always been my problem.  I love too many things and I don’t want to leave anything out!  Even looking at my heading that I have for this blog is daunting.  I wanted this blog to be everything in my life that does not include teaching (that’s on my other blog).

So, hmmmm. . . he advises us to first, choose a subject, second, a theme within this subject and finally, an objective for our writing.  What will our purpose be?

After much pondering, I’ve narrowed my subject down to. . . creativity.  That encompasses a lot.

Now themes.  These are the categories of creativity.  Let’s see, there’s art journaling, painting, cooking, writing, fear, intuition, presence, soul work, photography, books.  How can I choose just one?  Maybe I need to use the process of elimination here.  Or maybe I focus on how creativity feeds your soul.  Could that be a theme? Ughh.  It could be like a creativity manifestation.  Somehow, I need to incorporate intuitiveness in there.  And, being fearless!  Since that’s my biggest issue!!!! I’ll cross off photography, too, since all I have is my iphone and I don’t know how to use my expensive camera very well.  I could take a class.   But, if I became good at that, I’d need another blog.

Okay, so my theme is going to be fearless creativity.

Now, what is my objective?

My objective is to share my creative words and art (along with my thoughts and feelings about it all) with others in hopes to connect to like souls and inspire them to write and share their creative gifts.

Ta-da!  Will that work?

I’ll email it to Jeff Goins and see what he says.  Maybe I’m just beating around the bush.

What do you think?

Shari