Lately, I've enjoyed observing myself from the outside as I work and move through the day. Separating self from self, paying as much attention to my actions from an external perspective as internal. It's like envisioning Viewpoints training session from a bird's eye view while inside the work, or considering the contours of the body as a whole in Alexander Technique practice. As I write, as I correspond online, as I teach or converse or listen, I can be more aware of the overall sphere when I watch myself watching the world. 

I'm a person who regularly needs to hear, "Get out of your head," either from myself or others. This separating from my skin while being there is a helpful way for me to do this. It sure helps with emotional and mental clarity, and getting refocused on my current task.

I've enjoyed attending more to how I see the world, too, from this perspective. As I watch, and watch myself watching, I feel less judgement toward what happens around me. People are humans, but they are also characters, and so am I. A guy singing a collection from the Stone Temple Pilots repertoire behind me on the BART is more fascinating than annoying. A 4th grader repeatedly asking permission to do the opposite of my assigned activity in a playwriting residency is an interesting phenomenon, not a needle in my teaching or her learning. Another cohort member opening his mouth to cause disruption in class flow is data to record in brain or on page. Something to notice. That's all. 

This distancing self from self, experiences and surroundings (while living within them) helps me take on my comfortable observer role as a participant. I become more of myself - an active onlooker. I feel less limited by my immediate reactions in emotion, thought and body. I am freer to create. I am more present in my relationships and daily life - just by stepping back. How refreshing. In this way, time slows down and I can better connect with what's happening. 

This reminds me of another Viewpoints tool - in whatever we're doing, we can take on a micro, molecular perspective, an everyday perspective from adult human eyes, or a macro, cosmic perspective. Where am I now? And how am I seeing? The more I ask that, the easier it gets for me to step back into the creative process and begin again.

The days have been full, and with my MFA coursework, classes I teach and my MFA project ramping up, this case will only grow truer until late spring.

Some of you know that I post raw, rough content regularly on this tumblr page from writings in the notebooks I read. I fill a notebook a month, Natalie Goldberg style. Then I go back and read them.

The notebooks I read through I wrote in years ago (right now I'm into spring 2014). I go back and look through them to find writing from my morning practice sessions then. When I find sections that stand out, I underline them. These are selections that seem awake, electric and clear, among the bland scribbles. After that first read, I go back again, and type up what I liked for 50 Shades of Kraay.

The thing is, sometimes when I read back through the underlined content to post, I don't like what I find anymore. But because I want to post regular content, I type it out anyway and submit it for public digest. Whether anyone reads it or not, I don't know, but it's out there.

Now, with an extra tight schedule, and wanting to put out material I like, I have less need to put out sentences just because they exist, even if they have a bit of heat or energy. I can skip over more lines. I can reread it, learn from it, discover how to map my brain over the years, yes. But it feels valuable to me to conserve what gets read.

This could be one of those obvious statements, but giving myself permission to only put out work I want seen, and to take less time typing up garbage*, comes as an enormous relief. 

Ah, choice. I can own what I do. What a concept.

So, followers of 50 Kraay Shades may start seeing less original content, but I hope it will be better -- less rushed and more engaging. And I'll reblog interesting quotes or ideas that I find relevant.

*useful garbage, in a composting sense, but refuse nonetheless. I've been a regular devotee of Goldberg's rule, "Allow yourself to write the worst junk in the world," since 2010. For the most part, my notebooks are giant waste beds -- Fresh Kills Landfill before Freshkills Park.

I thought I'd share my plan from last Tuesday's Drop-In Writing Workshop.

If you weren't able to make it to The Cabin last week (or don't live in Boise) and wanted to be there, you can get a sense of what what we did. If you write on this now, or wrote something at the Drop-In and like it, feel free to share in the comments. I may do the same.

And if you REALLY like what you write, definitely submit it to Writers in the Attic before February 26. Happy writing!

Write
Look back over your lists. Your details. Moments.
Look at words that stand out to you, that you like.
 
Now you have a chance to put this all together.
This can be a love poem to water, an ode, or a scene, a story. It can be tragic, horrific.
You can record a story showing a memory of water. Or a moment about water.
Show it how important it is. How much it means to you. By capturing all the details.
Be specific.
 
Use some of the details you’ve listed.
Everything you love about water.
How much you’d miss it if it were gone.

My hope is for us to fall in love with water by writing about it in outrageous specifics.
As you write about water, can you discover something new about it? About yourself?
 
You can write about something specific: a river, a glass of water, an ocean, a raindrop.
It can be to water as a whole.

If you write a love letter or poem to a person that says I love you I love you I love you,
that’s fine, but if you write a letter that shows through details why and how and who they are that makes them so lovable, and why you hope they will love you and why you want them to stick around, that says a lot more.

Do the same with water. Show it how important it is. Get other people to see how important it is. So they’ll help make sure it sticks around.

I found this in a 2014 notebook:

"Process used to be a bigger joy. A need. Sometimes now I feel I'm only filling pages, and the pages will never end, whether I'm writing in them or reading them. Perhaps that's a comfort. Perhaps a dread.

I look at everything I do and I haven't been taking the creative risks I once did. I haven't been making sacrifices for art. That I'm doing the bare minimum. I think I can push myself further, but sometimes my exhaustion is all I hear or notice. And then I zap my brain in front of Netflix. And I destroy my body on chocolate and pizza.

I could be reading instead, I could be writing. Not running the other way to get the night off from meetings or rehearsals. I am a writer. A theater maker. Sometimes the hours may not seem ideal. But resistance is prison. It tarnishes my belly. A cavernous beast. A disloyal terror.

These books, these daunting hours, these reams of paper, these notes. No one said it was easy to write, no matter the medium. So go deeply in. Expose my worst parts. Sharpen my best.

Resistant mind, glow. Stop giving up so fast. I am a significant ball of wax. Move mountains. Heave rocks. Paint Aurora Borealis in my dreams."

Over the last two years, I've learned a lot about my process. How to be friendly with it, and not so punishing. Sometimes I still feel like I did this February day in 2014, but I'm learning more and more to find a kinder, gentler attitude toward myself, my work, life, the world, everything. And creative activity benefits from that.

As the Cohen brothers said when asked about their creative process, "We do a lot of napping."

Sure, I write everyday, I make something new everyday, I read and work with older material, read work by others, and am working on a big play project that does feel difficult and also scary. I'm in school, I teach, I collaborate with new people all the time. It's work.

However, my relationship toward my work doesn't have to be a grueling shuffle. And thankfully, that approach isn't as finger waggling as it was two years ago, or even one year ago, or six months ago. For that I'm grateful. I have the reflective, generous attitude I'm learning from my professors to thank for that, and fellow students in my cohort, and other writers and artists and dear loves in my life. 

Overall, it's a joyous gift to be able to make things. There are actual prisons, beasts and terrors out there in the world. I'm lucky to do this with my time, and I'm discovering how to soften the way I work, so I don't get so easily overwhelmed with dread or panic.