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The Power of Daily Practice

It’s NaNoWriMo, Week 2 … and what a week it has been.

NaNoWriMo is about connecting those writing urges with the physical space and action to write. It was an invitation I was excited to engage in. Writing daily this past week started in joy, was prompted by joy. But it didn’t take long for joy to become chore. I’m good at that. So good and so committed am I to that particular pattern that in the moment I’m blind as to why I do it. I had never thought to question it. Stop to ask the intelligence of it. Query whether this pattern continues to serve me.

Today is the day. This moment is the moment.

That’s often why writing is so intriguing, and then so avoided. Words are a straight line to our signal, our very essence of self and in the daily act of engaging the flow, so much comes to light that was once buried deeply.

I had a full day planned. Morning meeting, lunch meeting, tea meeting, afternoon meeting, all crafted in a careful day to be on the road. Then I awoke before dawn to stomach churning, intestines growling and venting fire like an angry dragon. It was not the shifting fire that awakened me. It was a weather alert on my phone, warning of snow squalls later in the day, at the time I would be driving home. A weather alert that persisted on my home screen, yet failed to show up in my weather app itself. Strange, only when viewed from the left side of the dotted line. From the quantum realm, it all made sense.

I lay in the dark, curled in on my choice point. The stomach churning I was prepared to push through, to watch what I ate and hang close to a bathroom, and the day would unfold as planned. Snow squalls, though, were a trigger. I hold the belief that road travel is to be avoided in bad weather, that I do not belong on a road slogging through blinding snow or rain unless what awaits me is a clear and aligned choice. This weather alert appearing as it did was at just the right time for me to choose: is today the day for me to be on the road? Or is it a day to be listening to my churning gut as it calls for an all stop on the routine, and an all clear on the day ahead in terms of commitments, outcomes, and expectations. Dropping beneath the story of snow or no snow, breathing into the churning and allowing the intelligence in all of it, the choice was clear. All stop. Clear the day and allow it to unfold moment by moment.

I felt my body relax, the congruency of being heard and heeded. I crafted and sent emails, one by one, releasing myself from the commitments of the day. Then I braced against the onslaught of stories. Giving in to my every whim. Lazy. Breaking promises. Flighty. Unreliable. Who was I if not someone I could be counted on to show up?

Who am I, indeed. I am becoming someone who honours her inner cues, surrenders to her divine signal, and keeps her promise to be authentically herself in the moment as it presents. I can be counted on to show up when it is internally aligned with myself. When there is no internal alignment, there is no need for me to be wherever it is I said I would be. There is only the need to maintain patterns and external reference points. Useful to me in an externally-referenced life. Not useful to me in the exploration of an evolving life. Keeping myself in place, running familiar patterns, is like rereading a book. It’s enjoyable when mindfully chosen as an oasis. It’s useful when mindfully present for new lessons that emerge. Otherwise, it’s mindless distraction rooted in the past while hoping for different in the future. No presence in the present. No power. No change.

I am reliable to my emerging awareness, to what I know I know, and what I know I don’t know, trusting in my impulses even when I am unclear where they will lead. Allowing my choice to reschedule my meetings today then allowed awareness of how I was running patterns mindlessly, overlooking my intention to allow space and awareness for creation, to rewire my nervous system and continue in creation of the life I want.

Trying to be in two worlds at once: the world run by my beliefs, and the world I am mindfully creating.

For three days I have felt edgy, disjointed, burning from the inside out. Three days ago, striving to complete my daily writing session, I felt like my head was under a faucet that kept opening, words flowing faster than I could write them. Choking, breathless, panicked, I typed faster and faster until my arms gave out and I screamed in frustration. Sitting there, struggling to breathe, chest clamped and back spasming, I knew this was why I didn’t work on my manuscript, my memoir, the story I’ve been struggling to write for six years. Writing was physically painful, words straining to emerge or streaming out untapped, constipation or diarrhea, both agonizing and disgusting, nothing I wanted to experience. In rare moments I touched my greatness, words gliding in order as imagined, powerful and energizing to write, to read, and to read again. Nailed it. Yet those moments of alignment were fleeting, uncontrollable, unpredictable, and rare. Like a lottery win.

I am divine creator. What did I choose to create?

Victimhood. A constipated, irritable-bowelled victim unwilling to own her power of creativity.

What’s the intelligence in that?

Nailing it streamlines and fast-tracks my evolution, leaving the landscape of my past as a blur behind me, plunging me into a realm infinite and unfamiliar. The ‘I don’t know I don’t know’, where evolution takes flight, where lives unfold in nanoseconds.

Where I’ve long told myself I don’t belong. Like a highway in a snowstorm, I should be off the road and home where it’s cozy. In the realm of I don’t know, I should be out of the void and into my cozy space where I know.

That’s the story running my life, deeply and unchallenged until now.

That’s a story I come face to face with today and choose: does this serve who I am, and who I am becoming?

Coming back to a cozy space …

I sit here in a house I used to own, in an office that was once mine and before that, was the nursery for my children. The nook holding my desk once held a crib, where one by one, my babies slept and grew to toddlers, just in time to make way for a new sibling. Except for the youngest, of course. With her ascension to a ‘big girl room’ the crib was dismantled and the nursery dissolved, shelves once lined with stuffed animals replaced by bookcases, the nook filled with a desk and computer. I am back because this youngest of my babies is turning 19, her ‘big girl room’ now a dorm at university and the world she is mindfully creating. Her bedroom remains in the house for special visits like this one. My new home, our former family cottage, is not home for her, for any of my family. One bedroom, all one person needs, except space for guests, and for all of the things I adore. I am in the process of creating a new space as home. I have blueprints. I have a process. I do not have the money. Holding the construct of money as lacking, I cling in fear to the income streams I have, familiar and predictable. My part-time job, for which the day of meetings was organized. My freelance clients, dependable and a function of intellect, for which I’ve been struggling to finish a project. My own company, available for anything I create … and I create little. I allow a tiny space and flow of energy, heeding the undercurrent that tells me to avoid the unknown and ‘I don’t know’ and preserve that which is known. I can do it all, and then some, if I choose to allow it. What is the intelligence is choosing to block it?

Avoiding the ‘I don’t know.’ Yielding to control. Heeding patterns aged and looped. Keeping me in place. Like the place I love yet is too small to support the life I am creating. I run the story that I cannot afford it, can never afford it. The reality is I haven’t tried. I have not applied for a mortgage or business financing or grant programs that could offer the funding I seek. I have told myself no before they could. I have gone with the known rather than step into the unknown. I have stayed as the person who as identity owns a tiny cottage, rather than inviting who else as the person who creates her dream home.

And in this moment, I have run from that conversation with myself to hide in the physical realm and early family system of being mom in the house where I raised my children, the original nest from which they and I have flown.

Why have I come back? There is intelligence in it. To awaken myself in places where I’m still asleep, to shine light on the habits still running my life from the underside, to be authentically myself not just in the solitude of my own comfortable creation, but everywhere, with everyone, with awareness and ease. Dropping the need to fight for my life in the light of an externally-referenced world. To trust in my internal cues regardless of the choices and chaos embraced by others.

And that means owning how my oasis is in truth a distraction. It hurts to come back to this house. It remains my daughter’s home, but is no longer mine. I feel sad for leaving her, angry that I had to. Returning to this space as a guest, I miss my own home, the flow and ease and joy I find there in living my life unapologetically, moment by moment. Here, in the house, to be with my daughter, is incongruent because my life space is incongruent. I am stuck in the past while bracing against my emerging future, the money talk about my new home a story coating it all. It hurts to be here because I no longer belong here, yet I brace against where I belong. Not that my new house is built or not. Within, in my evolved identity as someone who is reliable and good at my job and loves my children not because I comply with expectations and routines, but because I honour myself every moment of the day and trust myself to be my own best teacher, my own best advocate, my own safety, my own infinite power, no matter what that looks like.

In this moment, it looks like letting go of everything, then choosing mindfully, one by one, what to keep and what to release. Of possessions. Of commitments to organizations. Of beliefs. Of creations.

I created today to sit here with the sensations that wracked my body until I noticed, allowed the space, invited the flow. These are the words. They sit, awaiting my mindful reading, choosing whether to keep or release. This is where I belong. There is congruency in that.

And that, my friends, is the power of words. Not sticks and stones. Not word counts and publication rates. Straight line to who you are and who you can become. If you choose to allow the time to write, read, and listen.

Thanks for reading,

  • Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, publishing doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com

To learn more about Decloaking and Living Authentically and other offerings in the WEL-Systems® body of knowledge,
visit https://wel-systems.com/
the brilliant website of its founder, Louise LeBrun, https://louiselebrun.ca/)
and the powerful offerings of CODE Model Coaches™ Stela Murrizi, https://sparkingthesacred.com/
and Sheila Winter Wallace, http://bodygateways.com/

 

 

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NaNoWriMo: Week 1

November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo to those of us who hear the call to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November.  For the math lovers, that’s 1,667 words per day. For the goal-driven creators, it’s a playground of milestones and badges and online encouragement. Regardless of what calls you to put words to paper or screen, NaNoWriMo is a unique way to challenge yourself as a writer, build community with like-minded writers, and a simple way to invite fun into your creative process.

So what?

For me, writing has been all about the reward: client affirmation, audience praise, and good ole money. This year, the NaNoWriMo invitation landed differently. I want to write every day just because. This month’s annual initiative is giving me a playground and a reminder to keep that promise to myself. As part of that promise, I’m committed to sharing what I write in this month, lightly edited, mostly unpolished, definitely unplanned until I sit and type. I offer it up with no expectation, simply an affirmation of me doing what I promised to do, no contracts or payment or deadline required.

All the best in your writing journey!

Thanks for reading.

—

NANOWRIMO Creations 2023: November 1-8
New pieces will be added daily or as completed.

—

None of us was born to be a victim

Yet we’ve been taught it’s the safest place to be

Such rage in the double bind, friction grinding spirits for generations

And now, the world is raging, and we are ready to kill each other over the last doll at Christmas, the last tree standing in the forest, until we are

Raging against humanity itself, preferring dogs to people, and it’s ok to bomb the entire planet into death just to be right,

The last shall be first, so the Bible says

The first would rather see us all dead than let that happen

Victims, all of us

There is a way out

Reclaim who we are, the divine that is us, the world we truly want to create and not the one we were taught we wanted, deserve or are entitled to

Who wants that? Choice, our own. Responsibility, our own. Evolution, our own.

Can’t sleep and evolve at the same time. Can’t pay others to do it for us. Can’t blame anyone for any of it.

A few of us want that.

Over time, maybe a few of us can wake up a few more. And a few more. We find ourselves, then each other in the dark, and the way grows a little brighter.

—

We bought a piano for the house in 2003.

A Yamaha, my dream piano.

Not a top of the line. Our son, after all, was only 5.

Not a bottom of the line, after all, I did play a little.

My parents almost bought a Yamaha in 1974. The company was just breaking in to the North American market. Offering a great deal, yet, still a lot of money and for a id who could quit lessons in a month or a year. So, they acquired me a Willis upright grand for $100, a monster of a thing that cracked all the hallway tiles on the slow arduous journey from the truck to my bedroom. That monster got me through 12 years of lessons, and was moved twice more. Once, to the basement rec room. A second time, when my aunt bought it long after I had left home. The mover for years avoided eye contact whenever he met my mother in the grocery store. When contact was unavoidable, he’d look at her pleadingly: you don’t need that thing moved again, do you?

In 2003, I had my Yamaha, and it was the most beautiful instrument I had ever heard. Clear, crisp resonating tones that flowed from the gentlest touch on its snow-white keys, with bass notes that brought tears to your throat. I would have pitted it against any piano in the world. For nearly 20 years, it offered itself up to two young pianists and my occasional plucking.

Then I saw it. Glimpsed it, actually. Cleaning out a storage room in the church hall, I saw a hint of wood behind stacks of boxes. Stored in an alcove, buried by stuff, for God knows how long. A piano, tall and stately despite its shabby surroundings. A few blobs of hardened wax on its top. A thick layer of dust over the exposed keys. How long was it there? No one knew. A volunteer who attended school in what was now the hall remembered a nun who taught music on a piano like it. That was sixty years ago. There had been two pianos in the hall. One was thrown down the stairs, destroyed and carted away as garbage. A similar fate awaited this instrument unless another home could be found for it.

I shouted YES before I could think. There was something about this piano. What was the attraction?

I attempted to put my finger on it. One afternoon, toting a few cleaning supplies and a couple of music books, I picked my way through the storage room and stood, eyeing the wood through the stacks of old books. I shoved aside piles until the entire front was exposed. Rich wood, the colour of honeyed milk chocolate, with ornate carvings along the front and the pedestals. Stunning cabinetry, even if it couldn’t play a note. I pecked away at the hardened wax, used spray cleaner to brighten the keys, applied a bit of polish to the top and front. It looked gorgeous. How did it sound?

I glanced around. The bench or stool had long ago disappeared. I grab a plastic stacking chair, haul myself to the keyboard, touch middle C. The board was a little stiff, and no sound at first. With a little more force, middle C sang, slightly tinny yet recognizable. A quick scale. Not bad. Upper keys were remarkably in tune, given the assumed age of neglect. Then the lower notes. Resonant, crackly like a bass voice long unused, and YIKES, an entire octave in the bass section was wildly out of tune, but with promise, like a choir long neglected, rusty and enthusiastic, ready to perform with a little guidance and attention.

I tugged out my worn book of Christmas carols, the most familiar music I owned. With selective playing in the left hand, the experience was pleasant to both ear and touch. This piano had nothing wrong with it, and despite the neglect seemed willing to give its best.

I flipped down the cover over the keys. Heintzman Upright Grand.

And my new piano. That I knew.

I also knew I had no place for it. Or did I?

I was about to vacate the house with my beloved Yamaha, an evolving transition in an amicable divorce. He would take the house. I would take the cottage in a neighbouring town, a place I loved. A cottage that was 800 square feet. Where would I put a piano the size and weight of this?

A contractor confirmed my floor was solid enough for any piano. A few measurements confirmed ability to move it into the one spot where it would fit, if I removed my entire patio door. YouTube tutorials by my son and his dad had the unit open by the time the movers arrived. In it went, to stand where my couch once sat. The room shrank.

After a few days, it was hard to imagine the room without the piano. I finished polishing it. Flipped up the top, found a serial number. If my online searching is to be trusted, the number matches pianos built in 1896 at the Heintzman factory in Toronto, when the company was still under control of the original Mr. Heintzman, who came from Germany trained as a builder of pianos. One story has him studying with the man who founded Steinway in the United States.

An instrument built in 1896. That alone made it fascinating. And its ornate carpentry.  And ivory keys. I shuddered at that, cringing at the knowledge of majestic elephants slaughtered for their tusks. I couldn’t change the past. Destroying the piano would have made the elephant’s death in vain, an elephant that would have been long dead by now had nature been allowed to take its course. And the keys were in surprisingly good shape for the age and care not received, nothing broken, simply a rich patina of natural shades adding to the unique aura of the instrument.

What about the sound?

A tuner confirmed my crude assessment. There was nothing wrong with this piano that couldn’t be easily fixed. A good tuning. A couple of minor repairs to hammers inside.

And finally, the test. And a realization that this fine instrument has no music holder, no ledge upon which to rest books or sheet music. How do I play without music? I pull over a kitchen chair and run through a scale. My body shivers. I pull out a song, familiar from childhood, and wedge the book best I could between the front of the cabinet and the upturned key cover.

I squint at the notes and play, hesitant. I was out of practice, desperately avoiding wrong notes, until it didn’t matter. The rich bass notes soared through the elegant cabinetry and through my soul, penetrating every cell with energy and release. Bass notes that didn’t just stick in my throat, but moved me to full on tears. If this were any other stringed instrument – a violin or cello, for example, it would be worth thousands of dollars, in its craftmanship and richness of tone. But violins and cellos are portable, easily sold to new owners and transported to new venues. Pianos are built to be stationary, to have the orchestra come to them and that way of life no longer exists. They are given away, ignored or destroyed because they no longer fit into a house, a hall, a life. And that thought moves me to tears far deeper than those evoked by the music. That such a noble instrument could be so summarily discarded because it didn’t fit. How can a life not have room for such beauty, such resonance, such music?

There is a story of a young child racing up and down a beach, tossing starfish and starfish into the water. His grandfather shakes his head, saying ‘why bother? You can’t possibly save them all.’ The boy looks at his grandfather, shrugs and picks up a starfish, ‘Maybe not, but I can save this one.’  I grieved for the piano tossed down the stairs, for all pianos thrown into dumpsters and left to the weather by people with no room for them, no need for them, no awareness of the new life that awaited in keeping or repurposing, rather than demolishing. Such short-sightedness, such frenzy at needing to clean up and clean out. What kind of world does that create for us?

I recently spent some time back in my former house, and I played my beloved Yamaha. In tune and obliging, technically correct yet cool, The notes were shrill, at times hurting my ears; the bass notes still rich, lacking the warm richness of my Heintzman with its hand-crafted attention not only to detail, but the craft itself.   I finished the piece no longer in love with my Yamaha, grateful to it for its service, an evolution not unlike that of the marriage into which it was bought, a marriage now evolved and cooled to gratitude and respect. It was a homecoming on many levels when I returned to my cottage, my piano, my life. I sit down, wedge the sheet music into a spot where I can read most of it, until the breeze from my heater flips it downward and onto the keys. Again. And again, as if telling me Not Happening …

It’s a piece I’ve played for decades. Never from memory. I retrieve the sheets and set them aside, breathe, and play not what I see, but what I know. Parts flow into parts that only one hand moves into parts of complete blankness. I keep going until I reach the end. What came out was gorgeous. What didn’t come out is waiting for another invitation. It becomes my daily practice, playing each night from memory until one night, the entire piece flows, start to finish, my piano resonating richly, my body resonating to match, tears flowing as the notes. The Homecoming, by Canadian composer Hagood Hardy. My piano was home. And now, so was I.