With one huge, and by huge I mean enormous, gigantic, gargantuan, colossal… cup of hot chocolate in hand, I feel ready to keep the good habits going for this new year. This place is new. Completely new. And I love it. You should try it sometime, especially when feeling blocked. Just say yes to something you would normally turn down, turn up earlier, and find a cozy spot to write in. I will be seeing one of my oldest friends later today, and a ton of her friends (people I don’t normally hang out with) but when she asked me, I had this burning feeling to say yes and to just go with it, so here I am!
I’m sure some of you have made new years resolutions. These may have even been things you were thinking of for a while and wanted to do. You’ve had that scorching desire but no perseverance. No discipline. No something, whatever that something was. And now with the shift from 2016 to 2017, we form new ones decisions and give it another shot. This year I had made the decision to not make a new years resolution. I’ve got the hard will to say ok resolutions can happen any second of any day of the year, but I woke up on the 1st of January, after a really long and pleasant nights sleep, picked up the notebook I write my morning pages in, and started writing. Then I turned to the page on which I have my affirmations (things like I am creative, and can trust people’s compliments) and jotted down something new.
I am true to myself.
Just that. Simple right? Well, yes and no. It’s so easy to let yourself slip away and get lost in the crowds or in the whims of others, and find yourself at the end of the day, the night, the week, the month, the year with a sinking feeling at the pit of your stomach that you’re no longer where you wanted to be. That you did nothing that you wanted to do, nothing that you had set out to do. Or at least not as much as you had hoped. You may find yourself lacking that flare and spice, that drive, that passion. The idea of losing my passion for life and for creativity scares me breathless, so I’ve been pushing it forward with the wild fury of a harpy in heat. I would rather take a step back, feel calmer and more grounded, and keep going from a place of truth and honesty, without letting a single day slip by in which I feel like I’ve deceived myself.
So I’m here, sitting in this coffee shop I have never been to before, looking ahead at a wall the height of three or four men covered in books, with a fireplace to my right warming my arm, and a gigantic cup of hot chocolate beside me, and I’m happy. There is an older man digging into his chocolate muffin, warming himself by the fire too, and reading something on his phone. He smacks his lips after every bite and a smile twitches within his beard. At the next table over are an old man and woman, both with ash white hair, fluffy sweaters and iPads, with two identical, small cups of coffee in front of them. The rest of the room is filled with people typing on keyboards, or sketching and writing freehand. It’s a change of environment and a happy one at that, so I would highly recommend just saying yes once in a while to something you would normally turn down, and using that as a moment to catch your breath, to find some inspiration and to see if you can be an unblocked scribbler for a moment.
Blocked Scribbler 