I’m participating in Reverb10 and reflecting on the year 2010 as well as preparing for the year 2011. If you want to join this initiative, take a look at Reverb10’s website and sign up!

In this post, I’ll write on the prompts for Day 2 and Day 3: Writing and Moment.

Day 2: Writing

What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?

From January to June, I worked on the Artist’s Way as well as the Vein of Gold. One of the main exercises in these books is the morning pages — as soon as you get up, you write down whatever that comes to your mind for 3 pages. When I was good, I simply woke up and grabbed a pen and a notebook placed right next to my pillow and started writing my morning pages.

But I don’t write morning pages these days.

Now, I tend to take some time to start writing after I get up. This warm up time doesn’t contribute to my writing that much, because I know from my morning page experiences that I can wake up and start writing without any warm ups. In fact, the morning pages can serve as a good warm up for the day.

Let’s eliminate unnecessary warm ups, such as e-mail checking and coffee making, and bring this habit back again.

Day 3: Moment

Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).

There were some beautiful moments that made me feel alive this year. I’m grateful that I experienced them. But I will choose not to pick one moment and describe it in detail. There are two reasons for this: 1) I want to keep those moments private, and 2) I simply can’t choose one moment among those moments.

Instead of picking and describing one moment, I want to describe some common features that underlie those moments.

• When a beautiful moment comes to me, it feels as though time freezes. All I need to do is to ask that moment to stop for seconds and to dance with me.
• When I experience that moment, I feel warm and connected with the world in one way or another. Yes, that was the case even when I was all wet and frozen on top of Mt. Fuji.
• Shortly after I experience that moment, I often think that my future self will randomly remember this moment. This thought makes me feel great as well.

I’m keen on experiencing such beautiful moments again in the year 2011 as well. I will focus on minimizing stuff and maximizing experiences more and more next year.

Are you part of Reverb10 as well? If you are, give me a yell in the comment section below and point me to your blog so I can read your stories! Even if you are not, I’m curious about your experiences in relation to the prompts above or this post in general. Tell me about it!

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Photo: Kyle Kruchok