Want a 1-page (free) printable to help you plan and track your writing? Here’s one!
I created this several years ago but I’m bringing it back to front-and-center this week because it’s sort of buried in the blog archives.
It’s a one-page .pdf file, there’s nothing to sign up for, and it’s yours if you feel it might be helpful to track your writing goals and progress. Just download the file for the paper size you want to use, and then print it as many times as you need. It covers one week at a time, but it’s not dated.
As we enter into the second half of September, and hot summer temperatures still have a grip on my little corner of the world, and high stress and anxiety still have a grip on me, I continue to find it important to be on the lookout for joy connections.
I try to be aware of them when they come. I try to grab hold of them when I notice them. I try to be grateful for every joy connection that comes my way.
I go looking for them, sometimes even try to create them for myself, because that’s how important they are to me and my well-being and my soul nourishment.
Here are a few recent ones…
Diffusing essential oils while I relax and watch art videos.
Before-breakfast walks – and the nearness of a deer running right past us one gray and cooler-than-usual morning.
Lots of front porch sittin’ before the day turns too hot, just breathing the fresh air and reading…and sometimes looking up at the blue sky, and sometimes looking at the colors of the nearby painted rocks.
A lunch outing with a friend and my husband.
Painting.
And doodling.
Laughing at funny shows.
Spotting the rabbits and butterflies and birds (including hummingbirds) in our yard.
Little things. Sometimes only brief moments. Small pockets of relief in what can otherwise be a blanket of stress.
In my creative play time with art supplies, there are several different things I consider to be on my list of favorites because I can’t choose just one.
Painting with metallic watercolors on a black background definitely has a spot on that list. I sometimes use black paper. Other times I cover a white or cream journal page with black gesso and let it dry.
And then I spend time painting and playing with the metallic watercolors.
And then…sometimes I add outlining and doodling with pens or markers.
It’s how I spent several hours this past week. I opened one of my journals to a page I’d started a few days earlier where I’d used metallic watercolors on black gesso (a part of that page was shown in my last post) and I got out gel pens in white, pink, yellow, green, and blue.
With the white gel pen, I started outlining some of the shapes that had formed from the metallic watercolors. And I doodled – sometimes on top of the watercolors, sometimes on the black gesso – using the white and pink and yellow and green and blue gel pens.
Over the following few days, I picked up my journal and added more bits and bobs and dots and doodles.
Just breathing slowly, letting the pens and colors play on the page, distracting my mind from the worries and fears of life.
Doing this is SO calming and relaxing and distracting.
I filled up the page with hours of something that helped me feel more peace and joy.
I’ll probably add a bit more to this page over the weekend. There are some areas, especially in the lower right, where I’ll spend some time doodling.
And then, eventually, I’ll paint another page with black gesso or I’ll get out my journal filled with black paper, and I’ll open a set of my metallic watercolor paints, and I’ll do some more of this type of creative play.
I’ll do it for more calm, more inner quiet, more peace.
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