Blogging as a Spiritual Practice

I started doing Morning Pages again.  You know the three pages of writing daily talked about by Julia Cameron in the book The Artists Way. They have been a constant companion in my life.  Sometimes I end up doing them for a couple years and then I stop.  Not sure why I stop, because I see them as a powerful tool, they also help me set things in order and accomplish more of what I want.  I am not sure if the downtime from them is part of the process or not.  I just know in times of flux or when I just feel something is off morning pages bring me back to my true self.

During today's morning page writing, I started thinking about blog posts I might want to write. Often I go through a period where I have some great subjects and I may write several posts in the same day and just schedule them to appear on different days. Its an efficient way to blog but not usually how I end up doing it.  Often its a daily thing I think oh what shall I blog about and something comes to mind and I just go with it.  Or it will be about the art I did that morning or the day before. The more I pondered on this I came up with this posts title.

Blogging is like a daily spiritual practice. If its something you do daily or almost daily I think that qualifies, and then its something that takes you inside yourself. You may show art or photographs or events in your life.  It always follows some kind of introspection. You think about events and how the people who read your post will like them.  Even when showing a journal page you may go inside yourself and explain just what you were thinking at the time. Or you will pick a subject and just write how it makes you feel or has changed your world.

Sometimes blogging can feel like a chore too. Like it is one more thing on your list of to do's. Now if you think of it as a spiritual practice it takes on a whole different flavor doesn't it.  Its more like your gift to the world, a little piece of yourself.

Contest Winner

I finally got around to choosing a winner for my 100th post giveaway and the winner is Kim from Queen of Arts I chose the winner with a random number generator. I will pack up the goodies and send them to you when I am feeling a little better.

Now for my not so great news, I will probably be blogging less and not visiting your blogs as much so if you don't see a comment from me its not that I am not looking or don't care about you I just have to focus my time elsewhere for awhile.

After a little incident at my neighbors house on Tuesday where I was almost turned over in a ditch. I know again already, I am saying the same thing to myself. I thought my neighbors horse was outside the corral and went to look. Anyways a farmer neighbor of mine pulled me out. In looking at things now it was perhaps one to many stressful situations for me.

The past few months I have been doing too much but thought I could do it all but I am realizing now I need to step back a little. To make a long story a little shorter I have developed Bell's palsy which is an inflammation of a nerve that causes paralysis on the right side of my face. Treatment includes taking steroids for a small amount of time.

Usually when I am taking medicine it seems to affect me stronger than most people. So now I don't have the pain in my face but nausea and that cloudy feeling in my head that lets you know you are on heavy meds. I know that will go away in a week as soon as I am done with them. It can take up to two months to really heal this and I have a 20 percent chance of it reoccurring. So I have decided to slow down my life a little. I won't stop blogging but I probably will only blog a few days a week.

I am still in Misty's class which has one more week and in a new one on Revising a Novel which lasts 4 months but they are both self paced so I plan to do what I can and not put any undue pressure on myself. Maybe slowing down a little won't be so bad after all.