Start the Day, Write

Each day, I tumble out of bed and start a ritual of trying to “start my day right.” What that says to me is that, on some level at least, the internal Judge who’s ever… well, judging me is right there, even before my head’s off the pillow.

Julia Cameron wants me to do my “morning pages.” Rodney Ye, because the body is “rested, but stiff from inactivity” admonishes me to start each day with yoga. The 12 steppers would like me to, “on awakening…take a look at the 24 hours ahead” and Tony Robbins is convinced that I can have the life I want if I’ll only jump into my running shoes, waiting bedside, and start down the street sniffing in and puffing out four short breaths while chanting an “incantation” of “I! Love! My! Life! I! Love! My! Life!” which is absolutely fine with Willie who was the one who woke me up in the first place by placing his snout between my face and the pillow and tossing my head up in the air until finally I say “Alright, alright” and get out of bed to feed him, Sydney and Dennis and take the dogs out to poop.

I know that Mr. Robbins probably had something more like a mantra-centric powerwalk in mind and not the reality of the situation, which has me bending my body, “still stiff from inactivity” over to pick up the expensive cereal filler my dogs have been nice enough to warm up for me with their bodies. I may be hopefully chanting “I! Love! My! Life!” but the momentum of the whole thing is sort of interrupted by my dogs chanting “We! Shit! Right! Here!”

Back inside I resign myself to be more like former Marine and The War of Art author Steven Pressfield and get right to work doing battle against Resistance who surely has been deployed by the Devil himself and has it in for me in a big way.

I go to the cupboard to select just the right coffee mug. Will it be the “Legend” cup that Joan Baez gave me to remind me that even crazy, eccentric, hypersensitive artists can be successful or my black, Raising-of-the-Flag-at-Iwo-Jima mug that Adam gave me? Nah, thoughts of Adam are rarely empowering for me these days. “Legend” it is. Thanks, Joan.

I took the “JST WRTE” personalized license plate on that BMW I saw last week to be a personal note from God so I’ve decided to try again on the blog which I’m convinced can somehow come to support me financially and is, if nothing else, an action in faith showing the Universe my willingness while I write and re-write and re-re-write this next play, which I consider to be a shoe-in for the Pulitzer.

But after all, it’s Serenity’s I’m really going for here so best to do a little meditating first before I really get cranking. That’s what all the real serenity experts do– but dammit, the incense charcoal I lit to burn my white sage, bear root, sweet grass and cedar has already turned to cold ash and I’m feeling like I need a nap.