Deadlines, anniversaries and commitments: Meeting them, marking them and making them

“Are you stupid?” asked the teacher of the student who had been doing the same practice for a very long time. “I didn’t mean for you to do it forever. I meant for you to do it until you needed to move on.”

I have been thinking of this story, which a senior yoga teacher told at a workshop I attended a very long time ago. It was told with equanimity, the teacher having been the student to whom that other teacher had been speaking many years earlier. From the vantage point of time and with the wisdom that comes from both distance and experience, the teacher in front of me used the story to illustrate the value of embracing a practice and the importance of knowing when to let it go.

For the past five years, I have written “A Post a Day in May” as part of my writing practice. This year, I am ceasing that practice.

It has been a terrific experience — putting myself through the grind of a daily deadline to put myself out there with my writing every single day for thirty-one days in a row, regardless of all else going on in my life and the larger world. I have gained a tremendous amount from the practice each May: My skills of observation sharpening in order to translate my daily living into (I hope) meaningful writing to share. My writing practice shifting into high gear to produce the daily posts, becoming a habit more easily executed without any margin for faffing around and putting off putting words together coherently. My writing voice, over the five years, has gained both confidence and focus, which serves my readers through sharper perspectives and commentary, now often about the craft, the production and the teaching of writing as it relates to my evolving life in retirement from full-time career work.

All of that I am taking and continuing. Just not every day in May, not this year. The annual 31-day practice has given me everything I had hoped it would. And it’s time for me to move on. I am not stupid.

I will continue with weekly posts on Tuesdays, and occasionally on other days, too, that I want to mark for some reason. I hope you will continue reading.

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In case you missed it last week, you can read my April 26th post on Brevity Blog here. 

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash