Writing and Habit

Hello Friends, (aka, those brave souls who may still have me on their Google Reader)

Here's a bit of a catch up.

So, I finished 1L year:

• It took vasty amounts of time, even more than that summer I worked 80 hours a week as a barista and coffee wholesaler and was a full time student at the same time, but it was totally worth it.
• I learned to write in ways I didn't know were possible and loved the process, even though it knocked me down and repeatedly ran over me with a Hummer. Out of two sets of first drafts I set the bottom of the curve. Out of two sets of final drafts I set the top. Here's to learning and not grades right?
• I made friends all over the place. Seriously, law school is like a concentration of diversity and awesomeness.
• I'm stoked for the opportunities that law can open up. Going through the 2011 Summer Job Apps for firms in the Pacific Northwest has opened my eyes to the wide variety of amazing things a law degreed person can do. Stay tuned for updates.

That whole writing experience of 1L year (by far harder than finals) taught me that I love writing and will never give it up. What I'm good at though is letting things slide and be forgotten.

• Like yoga.
• Like pilates.
• Like my running schedule.
• Like taking my vitamins and drinking enough water.
• Like reading instead of bouncing from link to link online.
• Like really learning CSS and HTML5.
• Like writing daily. fiction. articles. dreams. ideas. posts.
• Like maintaining a conscious breath instead of letting the whims of the urgent unimportant rule.
• Like meeting with friends.
• Like responding to my pen pals.

habitus overtake me.

Every Morning

Do you want to know how I wake up every morning?

Listen: http://tinyurl.com/yjrhk4y

What dreams I remember are wild, wooly adventures in a hyper-reality where I can fly, teleport, communicate with multiple people at the same time and understand things as they are in themselves. That accounts for the first two minutes, approximately of the song above.

Having been all sorts of fantastic things, met hoards of fabulous people, and wandered all over the mossy dream world (always mossy, must be the Seattle child in me) around 1:30 I hear the call of the waking world, the world where dreams can become reality, not just for me, but for every one I meet, every one I love, every rich, unique person in their nearly infinite complexity. It's sobering really, but certainly, deeply exciting.

About 2:30 I began to shift to awakeness. The sun is dawning on a world entirely new, a world that didn't have to be there for me to wake to. The earth spins, letting the sun dance up the sky, lighting up the rushing waves as they too hurry to greet us.

Breathe in my friends, Aure Entuluva! Day has come again! Become one with and yet a member of the Great Dance, the Dance we've been a part of from the beginning, not merely because of who we are, but because of the gifts we've been given.

Dance through your day with your brothers, sisters, friends.

Live. Love. Dream.

Day has come again.

The Usual Day

I wake at 6am nearly every day. When I'm caught up on sleep I'm an awesome morning person and get mountains of work/exercise/life done in the wee dark hours when the newspaper persons beat the streets. When I'm not caught up on sleep I kinda sit in the dark and think about being awake. Usually I'll be alive enough to brew a pot of tea/cup of coffee and make some oatmeal. Class starts at either 8:30am (MW) or 10am (TRF) and it takes between 20 and 60 minutes to get to school via school shuttles. While I have a car I hate it (well not it, just the idea of it and using it. it's a pretty cute beastie all told and has seen us all over the USA: Yosemite, Glacier, Chicago, Death Valley, NY...) and never use it unless what we're getting is too heavy or impossible to get to via public transportation... or cycle.

Anyway, I wander off to school glorying in the noises of the city or in the pulsing, throbbing life-that-is-trance in my Skullcandy. Coffee in hand. I've realized that the coffee is very important. I don't need the caffeine; I've tested that theory and have proved that I'm good and awake without it. I need it because it tastes sooo good. It's like my insta-break mid-conversation, drift-off catcher in class, and connection to living things that grow and aren't cement/frozen/gray. I imagine the hills where the coffee is from, the certainly-poor-but-not-really-worse-off-because-they-live-in-green-hills coffee farmers, the journey of the bean, the roastmaster who realizes the potential lying within the bean, and my careful selection and preparation of the end product. Ah. Richness. Bliss. Coffee.

It's good to ride public transportation because you get to talk with other people and make friends... you know, be a social being. Much better than flipping off the honker you just cut off, Dirty Harry raging in your head (You think you're lucky? Well do ya, punk?"). It's fun to take an open mug and ride the wave too. Reminds me of the ocean. I need that.

Anyway, arriving at school the grind of the day begins. The only way I get anything done is by catching it with a net as it passes through my consciousness and writing it down, physically, pen & paper style. No list, nothing gets done, primarily because I believe there is nothing to do. If it wasn't on my list/calendar it doesn't exist. (This is kind of true in a very real sense too. but I won't bore you with that.) So I look at my schedule, the various bitty notes along the side, the homework assignments, the meetings, the classes, the errands: and I jump on the treadmill.

Honestly, I love it. Ideas, applications, intellectual challenge, the vast conversation of understanding going on between me, the professor, my texts, my classmates, and history never ceases to amaze me. I've felt the world change, seen the visual overlay shift just from understanding. Learn, learn, learn all you can. Never stop. Don't learn for your job, for your career, for the letters after your name, because you can't think of anything else to do... learn because it shapes your world, who you are, and what you become in supremely profound ways. Down to the reality you experience.

Around 3:30 (MTW) or 12:30 (RF) classes and meetings are usually done and it's time for homework. Loads of it. It never ends. If I don't have any then I need another list.

Sometimes I'll head the library, other times I'll head home. Both are great places to study but have varying levels of distraction. I think wifeys and good friends are inherently distracting. But that is a good thing.

Three things I've noticed that would really make me feel better about life in general (which is hard to do because life is pretty freaking amazing):

1) Sleep such that I can run/yoga/exercise in the am. I can do it. I have done it. It would be good for me and everyone around me would cease hearing me bitch, therefore it would be good for them.

2) During that late afternoon/evening study time I should head to a cafe once a week, to spice things up, see different places, and read in transit. Mmm need to remember that. Reading in transit is important.

3) Make solid space in the evening for relaxing w/my Love. Often just leaving it "open" makes it seem disposable and therefore overlooked... homework runs into the evening, we'll veg when we don't really need to and could be doing something more interactive... hm. That one warrants more thought.

How do your days run? What ideas do you have that could enrich the flow?

namaste