Month: July 2019

Complete waffle day

Neera 3 Comments

Today is a ‘complete waffle day’. A day to intentionally write meaningless, useless, off-the-cuff post just for the sake of it. If you don’t want to waste your time reading it, I understand. You can stop right now. But if you want to go on a journey to find out where it will take me, you are welcome. Keep reading.

Idea of this post came from Austin Kleon’s Book Keep Going:

“Another trick: When nothing’s fun anymore, try to make the worst thing you can. The ugliest drawing. The crummiest poem. The most obnoxious song. Making intentionally bad art is a ton of fun.”

Today is my day to write the worst post. Aimless writing, without any subject matter. Reminds me of the days when I would wake up five in the morning, open the 750Words (a website based on a writing exercise introduced by Julia Cameron in her book The Artist’s Way) site and stare at the blank screen. I was supposed to write 750 words in forty minutes before getting ready for work. Nothing would come to mind. Absolutely nothing. The dread of the blank page, new writes call it.

Then, out of complete frustration, I would type a few words, something like, I feel like sh*t… when will I have something to say… And off I would go, on and on, pouring out my frustration, filling the page with useless, meaningless writing.

Soon the blank page of 750Words became my friend. I could write anything on it and next day it would disappear. I could go back to them if I wanted and salvage if there was anything worth salvaging, usually there was none, so I didn’t bother. That was my akin to what Kurt Vonnegut wrote in a letter to a group of high school students assigning them this homework:

Write a poem and don’t show it to anybody. Tear it up into little pieces and throw them into the trash can. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow. That was the whole purpose of making art: Practicing an art no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.

From Keep Going by Austin Kleon

Vonnegut would suggest his daughter Nanette that she should make a piece of art and burn it” as a spiritual exercise. “There is something cathartic about burning your work,” writes Austin, “Artist John Baldessari, disgusted by his previous work, had it all cremated and put in a ceremonial urn.”

I need a ceremonial urn too, to keep all my old journals and notebooks, may be to be cremated with me. At the moment I am not ready to burn my old notebooks and journals. However shitty they are, they are part of me. Each page reminds me of the day I lived. Daily writing is so addictive, the day you don’t write feels like the day not lived.

Somewhere along the line I developed the habit of dating each time I put pen to paper. Now I have started a project to put all those writings – some on pieces of paper, some on computer, some on the backside of to-do lists – and compile them in chronological order. It is taking time, too much time, because it takes me back to the memory lane. Many writers can’t bear to read their old journal, I enjoy mine, laughing at absurdity of my thoughts, fears and plans. That is all I have in them, my thoughts, fears and plans.

The biggest dilemma new writers have is what to write, as I have observed at various writing workshops, particularly if given the freedom to write anything. They stare at the blank page and wonder for hours. But give them a topic and they write pages and pages. I am an exact opposite. Give me a topic and I freeze. I need to do research, analyze, evaluate, form my opinion and then figure out how I am going to structure my response. But give me the freedom to write anything and I can waffle for hours. That could be due to training on 750Words or it could be due to fact that after twenty years of writing practice I still don’t have anything to say.

I pause to check my word score. It is exactly 747 words. Three more words and I am done for today’s writing. Then I will put it the ‘ceremonial urn’ to be burned with me.

So many books, so little time

Neera 2 Comments

There are so many books I want to read but it doesn’t matter how much I try I can’t seem to go through them fast enough. My reading buddies are always ahead of me. Today I decided to find a way to get ahead, and thus began the search for strategies.

One of my problems is that ever since I started writing (which was more than two decades ago) I have become a slow reader. I call it ‘deliberate reading,’ when I am savoring the good writing, mulling it over in my head, responding to it mentally, thinking how I can use this sentence structure or even the idea in my own writing. It frustrates me but I can’t get rid of this annoying habit. Then I found out that it is a universal problem for all writers. Amit Chaudhuri wrote in an essay in The Paris Review:

The number of books we buy far outnumber those we read. Again, the reasons for not reading are multiple—deferral, because of the paucity of time, is a common one. But a powerful cause for not reading is because the writer in us—I use the word “writer” not for one who’s produced books, but for whoever is possessed by the possibility of writing—takes over from the reader. This might happen when we’re transfixed by the jacket and keep studying it, unable to proceed to the first page. The image on the cover, its design, the lettering—these have thrown us into the realm of possibility. Once we’ve entered the story which that possibility engenders, reading the novel itself becomes redundant. We may not write a word, but the writer in us predominates. A version of the novel emerging from the jacket—or even the title—holds us in its spell. That’s why the crowd of unread books on our shelves is never, generally, a burden. They signal a possibility—not that we will one day read them but of how the idea, and moment, of writing is constantly with us.

The Moment of Writing by Amit Chaudhuri

How many books can one read in a lifetime?

Looking at the number of books being produced every year and the number of books that have been printed since the Gutenberg invented the printing press, there is a very little chance that we can read even a fraction of those.

Let’s say you are an above-average reader and read 52 books a year (although a 2012 study by the Pew Research Center found that adults read an average of 17 books each year.) Assuming you started reading at the age of ten and you continue to read one book a week till you turn 85, that would mean (75 X 52 = 3900) you will be able to read, at the most, 4000 books in your lifetime.

When you come to think of it, it is nothing.

According to Google’s advanced algorithms, there are 130 million books, 129,864,880, to be exact, in the world (reported by Ben Parr).

It means that you need to be awfully selective of what you read.

You need to be strategic about what you read rather than what you can get your hands on i.e. books bought on sale or got from the library because they happen to be displayed when you walked in.

What books should you read?

I found the best strategy to select what books to read in How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, written by the University of Paris literature professor Pierre Bayard.

“There is more than one way not to read, the most radical of which is not to open a book at all.”

Pierre Bayard

In this tongue-in-cheek book, Professor Bayard points out that we think of books in two simple categories “books we have read” and “books we haven’t read.” But in fact, there are several more categories. He suggests the following:

  • books we’ve read
  • books we’ve skimmed
  • books we’ve heard about
  • books we’ve forgotten
  • books we’ve never opened.

Prof Bayard argues that we shouldn’t be ashamed of not having read everything, and that talking about books you only heard about should be more open and natural. It is better to strive to think about the ideas within the books – even if you only heard of them – than being a walking encyclopedia of citations.

He has a classification system to keep track of how he had interacted with the books in the past.

  • UB book unknown to me
  • SB book I have skimmed
  • HB book I have heard about
  • FB book I have forgotten
  • ++ extremely positive opinion
  • + positive opinion
  • – negative opinion
  • – – extremely negative opinion

I find this classification an excellent way to categorize the books on my bookshelves particularly the unread ones and this way figuring out which ones I want to skim through, which ones I want to read and which ones I want to give away to charity.

How fast you can read?

One way to go through more books is to read fast. Staples collected speed reading data as part of an advertising campaign for selling e-readers. The campaign also included a speed reading tool that is still available to try. Go ahead and take the test to see how fast you read.

Kevan Lee in The Art of Reading, Remembering, and Retaining More Books recommends five ways to read more books including speed reading through new technology. Spritz and Blinkist take unique approaches to help you read more — one helps you read faster and the other helps you digest books quicker.

Use eReaders and Audiobooks

For a long time, I remained loyal to physically books giving arguments like, I like to hold a book in hand, I like to underline it, I can easily pull it out from my bookshelf whenever I need to refer to it…

Then a few years ago I bought a Kindle. I have been carrying it with my holidays and have never felt short of books. I can read multiple books on it, just like I do at home, depending upon my mood. Kindle is also a great source of old classic books that you can get for one dollar.

Recently, I took membership of Audible and now I have become a fan of it. I am listening to it in the gym while walking and cooking. I can easily go through a book in five days.

Now I have divided the books into three categories. Books I want to listen to I buy them on Audible, books I want to read I buy them on Kindle or get them from the public library and books I want to keep I buy physical copies.

Strategies to go through more books

John Rampton gives 25 strategies in his post 25 Expert Tips to Reading WAY More Books This Year I picked five out of those to incorporate in my strategy.

  1. Set a dedicated reading time. For me, it is at night. Sleeping with a good book is the best thing in the world.
  2. Read at least 20 pages. This can be done in between chores and whenever I have a few spare minutes.
  3. Read in Sprint. This strategy involves setting up a timer for twenty minutes and read fast. Knowing the timer is on will keep me from distractions.
  4. Quit books you don’t like early on. This is something I really need to do. I keep hanging on to books I know I should let go.
  5. Build a reading list for the year on Goodreads and let it help you reach your goal by prompting you titles related to your previous choices.

Here it is, my strategies to go through more books.

Do you have any more suggestions for me? What are your reading habits? Please share them with me through the comments section.

How to find purpose of your life

Neera 1 Comment

“The purpose of life is a life of purpose.” writer Robert Byrne has summed up such a complex subject in one line.

Ever since humans invented languages and started expressing their thoughts in words they have been asking questions such as – who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of life? Is there any higher purpose I need to fulfill?

Earning a living and raising children can’t be the purpose of life of human life. It could be the purpose of animals’ life. Humans are designed with much more intelligence, much more empathy, much more love, and care. We ought to serve a higher purpose in the universe. That much is clear. What is not clear is what is that purpose.

Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning:

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

In other words, each human being has to find meaning in his own life. No one is going to give it to them, not even the almighty god (although some religious being might beg to differ here, that is fine, they can believe in god’s calling, they still have something to contribute towards it as you will find out later in the article).

What is the difference between the meaning of life and the purpose of life? I am glad you asked because Pablo Picasso answered it about seven decades ago:

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away. – Pablo Picasso

If you want to live a happy, fulfilling and worthy life you need to find the purpose of your life. Without it, your life will be rudderless and incomplete. If you buy that you have some work to do.

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for. – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

But if you don’t, no need to despair. A vast majority of people don’t indulge in philosophy and are perfectly happy chasing the pleasure and satisfaction from their daily activities – however mundane or heroic they may be. You can stop reading right now.

For those of you who believe that self-actualization is an attainable aim and that there is a higher purpose for their existence, you are at the right place. Continue reading. I have good news for you.

Your purpose is not something you don’t need to make up. It’s already there. You only have to uncover it. You can do that by first finding our what are you passionate about. Take out a pen and some paper and start answering some questions.

What do you love to do?

What comes easily to you?

Once you have figured it out you will have an idea what your passion is. Not the purpose yet, just the passion.

Because even when you find out what you love to do and what comes easily to you, it will still take work to develop talent. Most gifted musicians still have to practice. I love to write. It comes easily to me but I have been practicing for years and will continue to do so to get better. If it didn’t come easily to me, if I was suffering in order to do it, it was not my passion.

Effort and courage are not enough without purpose and direction – John F Kennedy

Staying on the topic of passion, ask yourself:

What two qualities you most enjoy expressing in the world? Mine is ‘love of learning’ and ‘can do’ attitude.

And.

What are the two ways you most enjoy expressing these qualities? Mine is by inspiring and empowering people.

Write down the answers.

If the answers these questions don’t come easily, you can take The Passion Test. Developed by Chris and Janet Attwood, it is a simple, yet an elegant process.

Another technique you can use to help you identify your passion is to conduct a joy review. Simply set aside about 30 minutes and make a list of all the times you’ve felt the greatest joy in your life.

Once you have done these exercises you will have enough material to work with. Now the fun part starts.

To find the purpose of your life, let me introduce you to a new technique I learned not so long ago. It is not something new, hot out of the oven and hence untested. Instead, it is an old Japanese technique called which had been used for ages in Japan. It is called Ikigai.

Ikigai is a Japanese concept that means “a reason for being.” The word “ikigai” is usually used to indicate the source of value in one’s life or the things that make one’s life worthwhile. The word translated to English roughly means “thing that you live for” or “the reason for which you wake up in the morning.

To learn more, and before preceding to work on your life’s purpose, I suggest you watch the following 13 minutes Ted Talk by Tim Tamashiro.

How did you like it? Did Tim make it clearer?

Now you get to use it to discover your own purpose with the use of the Ikigai model. Use the answers to the exercises above to fill in the circles.

The sweet spot in the middle is the purpose of your life.

Image Source: dreamtime

My ikigai, the purpose of my life is ‘to inspire with my writings.’ That is why I get out of bed each morning. That is why I spend seven hours a day to write a post. That is why I am awake way past midnight getting better at the craft of writing. And I don’t mind any of it. Rather each moment I spend reading, writing, learning, and sharing makes me immensely happy.

Once you know what your life purpose is, organize all of your activities around it. Everything you do should be an expression of your purpose.

I would love to hear how you went? Please write to me and share your experience with the tools.

How ‘not to’ waste time

Neera 3 Comments

Yesterday I introduced Roman philosopher Seneca’s essay On the Shortness of Life, and David Eagleman’s book Sum. It was a tongue-in-cheek introduction to a very serious question, where does our time goes. Seneca’s two thousand years ago assessment is still correct, we waste most of it.

Today I am going to take it one step further and explore how not to waste time.

Seneca says in a letter to his friend Lucilius:

Continue to act thus, my dear Lucilius – set yourself free for you own sake; gather and save your time, which till lately has been forced from your, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands. Make yourself believe the truth of my words – that certain moments are torn from us, that some are gently removed and that other glide beyond our reach. The most disgraceful kind of loss, however, is that due to carelessness.

The Tao of Seneca – Practical Letters from a Stoic Master

How much of time is actually filched away from us? After all we don’t have all of 24 hours of a day at our disposal. Most of it is already allocated to so called ‘essential’ activities of survival. We only have a small portion of time which we can truly call ours. Lets figure out how much exactly.

By a simple math, on an average we spend 8 hours sleeping; 8 hours working; 1 hour commuting; 2 hour cooking, eating and washing dishes; 1 hour on personal hygiene; 1 hour on household chores; 1 hour on shopping, socialising etc. that leaves just meager two hours to ourselves.

Just two hours! That’s all.

If we squander even that, no wonder our life is wasted.

What can be achieved in two hours?

Should we even bother?

Now, there is no need to be disheartened so quickly. Let do the calculation again, but this time for a week rather than a day.

On weekly basis we spend 56 hours sleeping; 40 hours working; 7 hours commuting; 14 hours cooking, eating and washing dishes; 7 hours on personal hygiene; 7 hour on household chores; 7 hour on shopping, socialising etc. That leaves just twenty two hours to ourselves in a week. That means 1,144 hours in a year, 11,440 hours in a decade.

Now we are talking. That is something.

Now don’t rush on to say that there are other things to do on the weekend which are as necessary the other activities. To keep the maths simple I have not included the public holidays and annual leave etc. which give you extra time to compensate that.

So you practically have 1,144 hours in a year that you can call your own. Are you using them well?

Seneca warns:

The most disgraceful kind of loss, however, is that due to carelessness.

What time we waste by being careless?

Watching TV and being on social media may be.

The research says an average person watches TV for 3 to 4 hours a day and checks the smart phone at least 52 times a day. Even if we say 2 minutes for each check that means 1 hours 44 minutes on smart phone each day. Let do a simple maths again, just 3 hours of TV and 1 hour of smart phone add up to 1,460 hours of screen time, chewing away all of your free time.

Seneca goes on saying:

Furthermore, if you will pay close heed to the problem, you will find that the largest portion of our life passes while we are doing ill, a goodly share while we are doing nothing, and the whole while we are doing that which is not the purpose.

The Tao of Seneca – Letters from Seneca

By ‘doing ill’ Seneca means drinking or any kind of addiction whether it is substance, addiction, materialistic or social addiction, after all gossiping is an addiction too and biggest time killer. Obsessions come in this category too, whether being it is being obsessive about cleaning or perfection or anything in between chews up time.

Procrastination stands for ‘doing nothing’ and we are all guilty of that. We spend more hours thinking about doing the things we want to do rather than actually doing them. And most of worthy things are hard to do anyway so we postpone them for a right moment or right mindset or even for right cosmic alignment.

Therefore, Lucilius, do as you write me that you are doing: hold every hour in your grasp. Lay hold of today’s task, and you will not need to depend so much upon tomorrow’s. While we are postponing, life speeds by.

The Tao of Seneca – Letters from Seneca

‘Doing which is not the purpose’ are the activities that do not contribute to a particular purpose. We can call them ‘purposeless busyness’. Like organizing files on our computers, going through thousands of photos again and again trying to delete some and then keeping them all, checking online and physical stores looking for bargains to save hard earned money. There is good intention behind all these activities but they don’t contribute to any higher purpose.

Having a higher purpose and then doing activities that fulfill that purpose is the whole essence of using your time effectively.

Seneca writes:

Nothing, Lucilius, is ours, except time. We were entrusted by nature with the ownership of this single thing, so fleeting and slippery that anyone who will can oust us from possession. What fools these mortals be! They allow the cheapest and most useless things, which can easily be replace, to be charged in the reckoning, after they have acquired them; but they never regard themselves as in debt when they have received some of the precious commodity – time! And yet time is the one loan which even a grateful recipient cannot repay.

The Tao of Seneca – Letter from Seneca

To well-spend your most valuable commodity, you need to figure out what is the purpose of your life. What do you want to achieve? What difference you want to make in this world? What do you want to leave behind? How do you want to leave this world a bit better than your found it?

Answer to these questions will determine how you will spend 1,144 hours of this year so that they do not go wasted.

How to find out that purpose? I will try to tackle this question in tomorrow’s post.

I will leave you today with this beautiful quote from Coach Bobbi.

On shortness of time

Neera

“I don’t have time.”

“I want to read so many books but I don’t get any free time.”

“I want to write a book but I am so busy, I don’t know whether I will ever get time to write it.”

“Life is too short.”

“Life sucks and then you die.”

Chances are you have heard all of these excuses some stage and it is quite likely that you have yourself made them now and then.

Do you want to know where your time goes? Watch this short film based on a tale from David Eagleman’s book Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives.

Surprised to find out that you spend two months driving the street in front of your house, thirty years without opening your eyes, five months flipping magazines while sitting on a toilet… And then you wonder where the time has gone.

We are the only generation that is time-poor. Right?

Wrong.

Even 2000 years ago when there was no TV, no mobile phones, no social media, people were complaining about not having enough time. One Roman philosopher Seneca got so sick of hearing people complain about life being short that he lashed out with an essay On the Shortness of Life.

He first summarized their complaints:

The majority of mortals, Paulinus, complain bitterly of the spitefulness of Nature, because we are born for a brief span of life, because even this space that has been granted to us rushes by so speedily and so swiftly that all save a very few find life at an end just when they are getting ready to live.

It was this that made the greatest of physicians exclaim that “life is short, art is long;” it was this that led Aristotle, while expostulating with Nature, to enter an indictment most unbecoming to a wise man—that, in point of age, she has shown such favour to animals that they drag out five or ten lifetimes, but that a much shorter limit is fixed for man, though he is born for so many and such great achievements.

Then he responds:

It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.

Seneca was forthright. He didn’t sugarcoat, he didn’t use politeness, he told people bluntly that they don’t have enough time because they are wasting too much of it. But how did the people who had no TV, no mobile phones, no social media wasted time? Seneca listed that too in his essay in case people don’t realize:

… one man is possessed by an avarice that is insatiable, another by a toilsome devotion to tasks that are useless; one man is besotted with wine, another is paralyzed by sloth; one man is exhausted by an ambition that always hangs upon the decision of others, another, driven on by the greed of the trader, is led over all lands and all seas by the hope of gain; some are tormented by a passion for war and are always either bent upon inflicting danger upon others or concerned about their own; some there are who are worn out by voluntary servitude in a thankless attendance upon the great; many are kept busy either in the pursuit of other men’s fortune or in complaining of their own; many, following no fixed aim, shifting and inconstant and dissatisfied, are plunged by their fickleness into plans that are ever new; some have no fixed principle by which to direct their course, but Fate takes them unawares while they loll and yawn—so surely does it happen that I cannot doubt the truth of that utterance which the greatest of poets delivered with all the seeming of an oracle: “The part of life we really live is small. For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.

You get the picture. People were wasting time then and people are wasting time now, not only at the personal level but at the working level too through Bullshit Jobs. Seneca’s essay On the Shortness of Life is a poignant reminder for introspection that never gets around to do. Seneca lashes out:

“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.”

He then compares our time spending spree with the only thing we understand, money.

“In guarding their fortune men are often closefisted, yet, when it comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most extravagant.”

Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life is something you must spend your time on. Penguin’s pocket-size book and easy read. If you don’t have even that much of time see the five minutes video below and you will get the message.

Writing in the moment

Neera

I was going through my old journals and discovered that my best writing was when I was writing ‘in the moment.’ I was more aware of the my surroundings, was using the senses to feel and was expressing what was going through my mind at the moment. As a result, my writing was much more engaging.

“The water of the lake is reflecting the blue of the sky. A boat with orange mast is creating ripples on the surface which are travelling all the way to the shore. I am sitting in the back seat of my car which is my sanctuary for the week. I have taken a week off from work to rejuvenate after a very busy winter months both at home and at work. Parked at a secluded spot, I am soaking the sun and taking in the silent beauty of the Black Mountain and Lake Burley Griffin. In front of me is a bare tree with an occasional leave at the branchends. Its trunk is divided into several branches and I have been tracing its curves and bends for some time now. I can draw it in the sketchbook I have brought with me, I should, but I don’t. I feel tired and exhausted. Not physically, but mentally. Emotional roller-coaster ride has taken its toll. Everything demands my time. Work, home, my own hobbies. Drawing a tree will take time, even if it doesn’t have any leaves. And time is something I don’t have. Even though I have five days off work, I have so much to fit in them. A raven comes and sit on a branch making the picture complete. I reach for the pencil.”

‘Writing in the moment’ is like practicing mindfulness. It is a way of being intensely aware of what you’re sensing and feeling, without interpretation or judgment. You can start with simple words like ‘I am…” and off you go. You will not feel stuck because you are writing what you are seeing and feeling at that very moment. Add to it your sense of smell, sound, and touch and your writing will bring your readers into the moment with you.

“I am in heaven, surrounded by rows and rows of old books, music and soft chatter of people in the coffee shop. A friend reminded me of it last week and I decided to spend the day here, writing. Beyond Q is a second-hand bookshop, tucked in a local shopping center. You can easily miss it as it is one flight of stairs down from ground level. As soon as you enter you are hit with the smell of books, the kind which is faintly mixed with dirt. The front counter has a number of tiny-trinkets, you know the painted bookmarks, small boxes, things I like to hold in my hands just to feel their rich texture. I have been here once before, to buy books, but didn’t think of it as a potential place to write. I wonder why. The place has everything – old table and chairs tucked away in corners that can hide you from the view of the lady at the counter and also the new customers, all kind of books for constant inspiration and sweet aroma of coffee. I should come here regularly.”

You can turn a simple excursion into a writing exercise, and when you do that you will enjoy simple things much more and remember them more vividly than you would have.

“It is half-passed two on a balmy Sunday afternoon and we walk from Fiona’s place to the Murrumbidgee river to see the tiny waterfall about 400 meters away. Of all the days, I choose sandals to wear to come to a country property. I borrow a hat from Fiona but there is no way I can borrow her shoes. No one has as small feet as I. The stones and pine-needles at the riverbed looked threatening but there is no way I am going to miss the opportunity to see the waterfall. So off I went.

The grass on the front lawn is soft and cushioning but as soon as we pass the side gate the ground becomes brittle and broken. We slide through the wires of a fence, which is apparently erected to keep the sheep away from the river. It doesn’t seems to be working because we find the riverbed littered with sheep pooh. Walking carefully between the rocks I yell to Fiona who is way ahead of me walking comfortably in her gum shoes, “At some point the river must have been up to here?” “Oh yes, every year, water comes up to here when it rains.” We pass the stones of all shapes and sizes and even colours, soft pink ones with red line and tough grey ones with white liens.

The air started getting heavier, smelling of mist and pine. We hear the waterfall before we see it. Theresa reached there first followed by Moira and for a while we stand still, each one of us poised on a different rock, taking in the little miracle of nature. Gushing muddy Murrumbidgee river falling down just a meter and half, yet so mesmerizing, so beautiful, so loud, drowning every other sound. If you look at running water it always seems like one continuous thing yet it is new water each time. The shape it makes against the rock is always the same. Yet it is new water. It is continuously hammering down, endlessly. If I come here tomorrow, it will still be here, going exactly like this. Even in a month, a year, may be several year.

Each one of us find spot to get comfortable and to write in the moment. The sun is shining through the pine needles which are not able to provide much of a shade, but the dried bulk of them on the floor definitely provides the cushion to sit on. I pick one and break it between my fingers. Dry and brittle, it breaks easily. The river water looked darker and colder when clouds covered the sun, now it looks lighter and little warmer. Little black ants are walking on my bag. Some have even gone inside in search of food. I should have zipped it. They are so fast. A white bird swoops down the river for a drink.

When I finish, I take off my sandals and dip my aching feet in the water. The warm liquid touches the sore bits and takes way the weariness. For a moment I am one with the nature.”

Recently I started using the technique to write about my day in my daily journal. It has made my journal come alive.

I suggest you give it a go. Any time you feel procrastinating or feel stuck, try writing ‘in the moment.’ Just jot down “I am…” or “It is half passed…” and describe where you are and what is going through your mind. And when you are done, share some of your writing here. I would love to hear from you.