Big Magic

It's 4:52 and I sit here, writing.

Over break, I read most of a book by Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. It's about creativity. It's about having a vocation towards your craft, and getting yourself to do it alongside your day job - like actually sit down and do the work.

Waking up at 4:45. Staying up until 11:35. Fitting it into 20 minutes over your lunch break each day. Consistency.

Which got me to wondering if I could wake myself up a little bit earlier every day and commit to writing, even if just for a week. After all, I did set a goal of writing 100 blog posts in 2017, so may as well get to that sooner rather than later. And, no better way to up my accountability than to share it with all of you here to keep me to it.

For a good part of the school year I haven't been sitting down to write, like at all this year. I think about writing all the time, but just don't do it. This year has me stressing myself out, and so I don't write, but the ironic thing is that I *always feel better after writing. It's like sitting down to do the work actually helps me understand things better and gives me a sense of peace. So why don't I just get to it? Maybe in the evenings I'm too distracted. But at 5:08 in the morning, none of my friends are calling or texting, The Bachelor isn't on, and I'm not hungry just yet, so not thinking about food even. Now that I'm in the chair and doing this, I can see that I'm way more focused.

So here I sit, listening
to the wind chime in my neighbors yard
to the light traffic flowing on the highway a block away
to the keys clacking as I put thought to paper.

And I wonder if I can create any kind of big magic here, before work each day.