What happened to romance?
Welcome to the Mind Your Flow Musings, an open-minded and open-hearted space to connect us across shared themes of living this wild life together.
First, I love to write. Do you? I love the exacting thrill of expressing the nearest meanings of my heart and mind. For a while last winter, I was writing almost every morning, thanks to The Artist’s Way and 750words. I’d wake up around dawn, grab a mug of coffee, and go padding down the creaky hall into our little study, nestled in the eaves of the attic at Hillholm Estate. One or more of the dogs would tap dance eagerly behind me, nipping at my heels, then settle into the bed under my desk. I’d sneak my toes underneath their warm bodies as I woke up.
I bought a wide and deep editor’s desk made of wrought iron and polished walnut: in the apartment I share with Bear, my partner in life and work, it’s one of the only items I really splurged on. That, and a pair of cerulean leather wingback chairs that swallow me up when I read. The jade glow of an inexpensive banker’s lamp presides over my expansive desk—just my laptop, monitor, and that steaming cup of black coffee. The old house creaks knowingly as the heat comes up. When I first started writing daily, I bought myself a lovely leatherbound journal, reaching for some nostalgic ritual. Turns out that my unpracticed hand cramps terribly under my scribbling, so I returned to Devices to make the writing sustainable.
The practice of 750words is simple: every morning, write at least 750 words in a stream of consciousness, without agenda or direction. Write what comes bubbling up. Do not stop; do not edit; just write. Sometimes, my writing sounds more like a journal—such-and-such happened, mundane stuff. Other times, what tumbles out is fiction—riffing off a scene I witnessed at our local gas station the day before, for instance. And other times still, I use the blank page to ask myself incisive questions and answer them as honestly as I will allow. I clear 750 words in 20 minutes, tops, flowing line by line. I stand and stretch at my desk, refill my mug, then head for one of those wingbacks to read for a few minutes before officially starting my day.
In the past few months, my writing has trickled to nothing. Whenever I think that our love project, Santosha, cannot possibly get busier or more complicated, it does. Our gallows humor asks whether we’ll have the first daily emergency before 8 a.m. or not: every day, it’s a coin toss. These days, I’ve been working late nights in the kitchen, then climbing the narrow back stairwell, the one built for nineteenth-century servants, up from the hot kitchen to our little attic, where I collapse into a wingback again, clutching a bowl of microwaved leftovers. For an hour—two?—I engage in revenge bedtime procrastination, reclaiming some “personal time” by watching reruns of (do.not.judge.me) Law & Order: SVU. Most nights, though, that time is anything but personal—“vacant” is more like it. Dead-eyed, I finally head to bed, too late, compelled more by fear of exhaustion than a sincere desire to rest my body and mind. After nights like these, early morning writing doesn’t happen.
The burnout trap is real. We all know it. Even running Santosha, our yoga and meditation center, burnout is real. How do we counter it? How do we re-enter the flow of our lives?
There’s a reel kicking around social media right now. A honeyed voice says: “You’ll never regret romanticizing your life. Take the smallest moments and make them into something beautiful.” That hits home for me. Romance, an antidote to burnout. Call it self-care, call it intentionality, call it ritual. When we imbue the mundane elements of our daily lives with meaning, we create a new reality for ourselves—a reality in which burnout and minutiae do not necessarily rule the day. “Waking up early for work when the damn alarm goes off” becomes “waking up early to write from the heart in quiet moments of peace I create for myself.” A big difference there: worth giving up an episode of SVU to make that change (sorry, Olivia Benson, love you). We only have a short time on this planet, all things considered. Can intentionally romanticizing our lives each day make our minutes on earth matter more?
How do you romanticize your daily life?
Mind your flow,
JennyBess
