No Use Fighting Spiritual Laws

In Neale Donald Walsch's excellent book, "Bringers of the Light," there is a spiritual principle that states "As soon as you decide who and what you are, everything unlike it will come into the space."  The example offered in the book deals with Peace. Let's say you decide you want to "be Peace."  You want to be calm, centered, and at peace with the world, no matter what's thrown at you.

What happens? As soon as you commit to the decision to "be peace," everything that is NOT peace will come hurling at you.  Noisy kids, chaos at work, time commitments, etc.  Why? In the most elementary of terms, it's God's way of giving Soul what it has asked for. How will you experience yourself as "peace" if there are no "tests" or ways to experience being peace? It's a way of mastering the moment and eventually, less chaos will be pulled to you as you move more fully into who you really are.

So on a slightly more mundane level, I made the decision recently that I was going to focus on book writing this year. There are a few projects I've started that I would like to finish (including--yes!--a sequel humor cat book) and some new projects I'd like to start. So I decided I would continue with my regular magazine columns but would refrain from actively seeking new magazine or corporate work.

Bring in the spiritual law. I made this decision Sunday and this week I've been offered no less than 5 new projects including:

• Write 4 bio's/profiles
• one website content update
• write an e-mail and survey for an up and coming company
• A ghostwriting project from last year has resurfaced
• Edit a non-fiction business book
• Anywhere from 1-4 new article assignments from a magazine I had one of my biggest assignments from last year.

Of course, all these assignments are interesting and well-paying, damn-it-all.

I'm not doing to well in sticking to my resolve and saying "no." In fact, I don't believe that word has issued forth from my mouth yet this week.  And I know why.  I "trick" myself by thinking, "I'll just finish up these assignments and THEN I'll concentrate on writing the books." But you can see it coming that there won't BE a lapse in work and the book projects will just keep getting shoved to the back.

I haven't quite muddled through how I'm going to handle all this. Journaling usually works for me. I need to sit down and work through, in writing, what my goals are, what's important, and what focus will get me where I want to be. 

I'll do that just as soon as I finish working on these few assignments. =) 

Popcorn, Beer, & Changes in Time

Here's a question: Does time differ for you on the weekends than it does during the week?

It surely does for me and I commented on it yesterday to Blair. It seems as if I have all the time in the world on Saturday and Sunday, and even though I sleep in and dawdle over many tasks, I feel like I get so much more done than I do in the same time frame on a weekday. Why is that?

Yesterday (Sunday) for example, we slept in a bit with the time change, got up and leisurely read the paper. Then Blair did some gardening work while I finished up some articles that were due today. Then I went for a run. Then we both showered and blew over 2 hours in front of the TV, watching the ACC championship game (Sorry, Wolfpack). Then we went for a 4 mile walk, then the grocery store, then hung outside with the neighbors.

(I must digress . When we came home from the store, our neighbors were attempting to chainsaw through a dead tree in their front yard and push it into the street and the whole block was standing around watching them. Blair went to help the men and I joked to Pat, the woman's house we were in front of, that a good hostess would provide snacks. I didn't notice Pat disappear, but 10 minutes later she appeared with bowls of hot popcorn. Then M., the homeowner whose tree was being felled, brought out beer for everyone. So we ate popcorn, drank beer, and joked around for 40 minutes while we watched this tree come down. I love, love, love my little town.)

Anyway, after all that we came back and I cooked and Blair did taxes and so on. I felt like the day was slow and leisurely, yet we accomplished a ton. Now it's Monday, I have the same amount of hours, and I feel like I get nowhere close to the same amount of work done. Why??? Does anyone else experience this? I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this.

Close Friends I've Never Met

E-mail can be such an odd thing.

I was sitting with a friend the other day, talking about writing, and she asked what sort of relationship I had with an editor at a magazine.

"It's great," I enthused. "She's funny and open to new ideas and we get along really well."

"How often do you talk to her?" asked my friend, and it hit me. Never. I've never spoken to this woman once in the almost four years I've written for her. She could have walked into the coffee shop and sat at the table beside us and I wouldn't recognize her. We've never talked on the phone. Our entire relationship is, in fact, e-mail based.

That seems like an odd thing to me, especially as I consider her not just an editor but a friend and am pretty sure she feels the same. Then I started counting up "friends," and realized--for better or worse--that I have a whole host of friends comprised of people I've never actually met and probably never will.

I know I'm not alone. With the prevalence of list-servs and My Space boards and e-mail, we're all bonding with cyber friends. Is this a good thing? I don't know. But I know it's not all bad. I have several good writer friends who critique my work and whom I trust implicitly. We all started five years ago on a writers board and then moved to form our own group. I've met one gentleman and one woman from the group, but some members are in Oregon and Wyoming and Texas and all around the nation. We send each other Christmas cards, share personal struggles and achievements (one woman's father passed recently and she's now taking care of her mother with Alzheimer's), and are friends in all aspects except for the fact we've never met.

One man from our group just published his first book and thanked all of us in the acknowledgements page. I did the same with my book, as these were people who were there for the first cat story I ever wrote and critiqued each and every story that followed.

For years, I wrote the humor column for Cats & Kittens magazine. It's a national magazine but based out of Greensboro- the town I drive to at least twice a week. I went almost 3 years before I bothered to stop by and meet the editor, a woman I had exchanged jokes and tips via e-mail with for years.

I must admit, I love e-mail. I'd rather type a message than talk on the phone any day. And it helps me keep in touch with long-distance friends who I used to see in person but now don't have that option.

How about you all? Any e-mail friends out there you've never met? Any plans to meet them?

What's YOur Dream?

I'm part of an informal group of 5 wide-open women writers. We e-mail questions, leads, and support to one another and meet about every 6 weeks for lunch. At our last ladies luncheon (sounds so 1950's, doesn't it?), one of the women posed this question to the group: "What's your dream?"

The question made me pause my fork in mid-air. She was asking about our life's dream. If we were handed the wand of God and told, "Take a wave at this over your life and do what you will," what would that look like?

I was instantly appalled and embarrassed...because I had no answer. As others around the table stated their dreams, my mind was racing. "Think of something noble," I told myself. "Think of something inspiring."  Note: It's challenging to be noble and inspiring when what your brain is really thinking behind the curtain is "Don't say anything stupid."

In the end, I admitted my lack of knowing. I know what I want my life to look like: I want to be successful and admired and fulfilled and giving. I just don't have the specifics down as to what exactly may get me there.

One friend, for example, is a storyteller. Her dream is to write and sell fiction and have millions read her work. Another woman is a writer and health counselor/advocate. Her dream is to reach out across the nation in lectures, workshops and through writing, healing the mind/body gap that denies so many people good health.

The fact that I didn't have an answer bothered me more than I cared to admit at the luncheon. I was mopey when Blair got home from work.

"What's wrong?" he asked later that night.

I sighed. "I have no dream."

"Oh," he said. "I was hoping for something more along the lines of 'there's nothing good on TV.'"

I have no overwhelming dream and yet, I have inklings toward so many dreams: I want to save all the abandoned animals in the world. I want to travel. I want to mentor young women. I want to sell books. I want to lecture. I want a beach home and a mountain home and--hey, why not--a European home. I want to run marathons. I want to help others achieve their dreams. I want it all and the sooner the better. I want to not want anything at all...

I'll end this by posing the same question to you: What's your dream?