Derring-Do

I'm really stretching myself. I don't think a lot about these things before I do them. I tend to just jump in. If I think too much about something, I'll never do it. 

Starting this blog was like that. So was last year's 100-day The Summer of Self-Love series. So is The Great Summer Writing Retreat, come to think of it. It's a daring thing to commit to showing up every day for 100 days and then actually to show up. It's daring to put your work out into the work. The kayaking course I took, striking out alone in the desert (more than once), signing up for yoga teacher training and then teaching my first yoga workshop at the new studio, getting into the pulpit, writing for the newspaper. Being interviewed for a friend's television show about my book, auditioning to be in an opera premiere at Princeton. There are a lot of things I've done that have stretched me.

So here's the new one. I signed up for Seth Godin's The Podcasting Fellowship. I'm already shaking my head at myself. I am tech-challenged and just the pre-course information has my eyes rolling around in my head. I fell down the rabbit hole for about two hours this evening.

It might be the best thing I've done recently. 

I was poised to say this year, but there was that concert with Sarah Cunningham in Philadelphia and the yoga workshops at Yoga Love in Yardley, and the other workshops I'm teaching, and the invasion of my publisher during Holy Week to get my poetry book back on track. And probably a few other things I'm not calling to mind just now. 

It's important to continue to learn and to grow and to expand yourself. To transform, and to heal the nagging voices within that try to erode your sense of self. Transform all the shadow pieces that hide away deep within and try to undermine. Or hold you back. Keep you from stepping into the world more boldly and expressing your individual genius. 

If you don't do it, no one else will. Essentially, that is the conundrum for the hero. Usually, that person is the one who has the skills or talents to do what needs to be done and is there, where and when the intervention needs to happen.  

Cultivating the spirit for heroically brave exploits in your own life is some of the best spiritual work you can do. It's a muscle that needs exercising in order to be able to pick up your sword and swing it. 

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion. And showing up. Every. Single. Day.