Writing Exercise #1

I have decided that I need to keep writing. So every day, I am going to write. I want to avoid keeping an online journal though. This is going to just be an every day effort to write. I hope you enjoy it. If you don't, that's all right too.

Writing Exercise #1 August 16, 2016

Sitting in a moving vehicle is this strange combination of stillness and speed. Stillness in speed. My little boy tries to get comfortable in his booster seat and sits quietly, as the world outside zooms by. My feet don’t need to touch the pedals as there’s no need for a brake on this long stretch of Interestate 80, and the cruise control is set to 83 miles per hour. I hold the steering wheel steady as we zoom forward along the highway. If I don’t hold the car steady, the speed will break us open.

The planet hurtles itself through space at the alarming speed of 1,000 miles per hour. And yet, I am completely sedentary in my leather chair.

Summers fly by. Days creep along.

Stillness in speed.

What would happen if I explored things differently?

 Do I want speed in my stillness? Do I want to be carried away with thoughts of hurtling forward through time and space? Do I want to feel the earth careening round and round and forward through space?

Or how would it feel if I forgot about speed and imagined that the world was as still as I am?

I am sitting in this chair. Typing words, one at a time. And nothing ever changes. Nothing ever happens. I hear the old air conditioner chugging along. I feel my chapped lips. I peer through dirty glasses. I feel a heaviness in my body and in my spirit. I look over at my water bottle and see … Never mind. The phone keeps ringing. This effort at ignoring speed and living in stillness is destroyed by the joys of customer service.

But I realize something. I believe that this balance between stillness and speed is an important one. If I am caught up in speed, I am anxious and carried away. If I am lost in the stillness, I am hopeless and depressed.

I guess I could compare it to living one day at a time, while having faith that I am a part of a grand celestial plan.

Sometimes, we live only for the celestial and forget about the tertiary daily efforts. Sometimes, we poison ourselves through one toxic choice after another, hardly recognizing how it might throw us off course.

These are my thoughts for today. This has been writing exercise #1.