The Next Chapter – Secret #3 Following Your Fascinations

I’m taking part in an online book blogging club called The Next Chapter.  This post is part of our discussion about The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women.  Feel free to jump in to the conversation here or with some of the other posts about Secret #3.

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

-Helen Keller, Activist

My Crazy Little Fascinations

This week is all about taking that leap of faith and following the little tugging sensation in your heart.  I think I sometimes find it difficult to separate my own fascinations from my surroundings.  When people are passionately engaged in something, I tend to get caught up in their energy and enthusiasm about it.  I have to really watch myself after interacting with a particularly passionate person because I might jump on board with what they were doing before I realize that it isn’t something that was truly in my own heart in the first place.

But, when it comes to creativity and fascinations, here are some things that do actually have staying power for me . . .

• literature, both writing and reading
• teaching and helping people
• Asian culture and aesthetics
• spirituality and self-evolution
• geekery

My Crazy Encouragement Toolkit

The prompting post this week encourages us to build our encouragement toolkit – what makes us brave and ready to take risks and follow our fascinations?  Hopefully sharing these will help give others ideas on how to build their toolkits.  So here goes . . .

• My biggest one is my husband.  Good news for me, he’s wonderful!  Bad news for you, I won’t share!  :D
• Having a plan or a list or instructions or something to follow.  It’s essential for me.  Even having a rough template that I can examine and deconstruct is great.  It doesn’t make it feel as risky for me.
• Being part of a community – Hello Wiffers!  Hello NaNoWriMo Vancouverites!  Hello bloggers!
• Writing my thoughts out.  Even if the writing doesn’t make sense, it’s like the confusion transfers to the page instead of being stuck in my head.  I at least find peacefulness if not sensibleness. 
• Having some affirmations.  A couple are original, but most come from somewhere.  The first that really resonated with me said in a Lipgloss and Laptops podcast.  It went something like “sometimes you just have to fly your geek flag.”  Can’t remember the episode or which host actually said it.  But repeating “fly my geek flag”* to myself really affirmed accepting myself.  I suppose now I’m working on “flying my creative flag.”

My Crazy Step

The next part of this Jamie’s challenge to us is to take one brave step towards our dreams.  For me, I think that this is going to involve blocking off an entire day for writing.  I’ve been trying to finish plotting the book that I started during NaNoWriMo this year.  I’d originally intended to get this done in January, but haven’t made much progress yet and time is running out.  So, Monday, I’m going to spend the day writing and working on the plot.  It’s a big step for me to devote an entire day to something like that.  I’m shrugging off all the other responsibilities like laundry and cleaning and I’m just going to write. 

*As an example of flying my geek flag, I actually have all my affirmations embedded on my computer desktop so that they are in front of me in my office.  I love the idea of having some affirmations in my emerging creative space downstairs, something more like Kathryn Antyr has done.