Stoking the reality I want to live in

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Have you gone missing from your own life for awhile? That’s what it feels like in part, upon returning from a month-long working vacation.

It was adventure, for sure. Road trip, family time, meeting creatives in their lairs . . . Upon returning though it feels like a hole has been blown in my forward progress, as I wrestle to get all the parts of my life working again.

Big events can blow our routines apart.

Has this happened to you?

What were you were working on before you went away? What were you engaged in before you were interrupted by vacation or crisis or a wedding or a funeral?

Work life is easiest to get back into. You show up, you survey the avalanche of demands, you prioritize and you get on with it.

This is what’s happening with me at the art gallery.

It’s the creative projects and the personal routines I’m struggling with.


Want to know what I’m doing to enter that slipstream of engaged living?

I’m stoking the reality I want to live in.

I want rich relationships.

So I’ve scheduled time with friends.

I want health and vitality.

So I’m inserting something physical daily.

In fact, I’m following the dictum my son blurted out years ago while acrobating around the top of our metal-framed, four-poster bed: Fun exercise works!

If it’s fun and active, I’m in.

. . . . . . .

I also want my creative work to begin in earnest again.

So I’m simply beginning. Today.

. . . . . . .

We made campfires while camping on this trip. It turns out it’s easy.

You start small. You gather the smallest elements first. You light it. You stoke the fire.

You feed it. It burns.

It’s the same with the ingredients of a well-lived life. You gather the experiences you want into your day. Your present day. This day you’re living. Today!

Each brief experience in the direction of the greater life you want to live is an ember in your fire. You blow on it by living it today. Stoke the reality you want to live in by living it in the smallest increments you can muster . . . and watch it catch fire.

(Sooner or later your biggest problem will be controlling the blaze : )

A busking mermaid
Trusting the release