Housekeeping note: This entry used to have images which were lost in migration. Accept my apologies over what this post could have been.

Dear you,

To make up for immediately breaking our deal for me to post every Wednesday, here’s today’s TinyLetter with visual aids.

A few things that have happened:

I’ve been painting a lot, for someone who’s always called myself a “writer” and never really an “artist.” I more than made up for the weeks of painting and sketching by attending a two-day intensive writing workshop this weekend.

What fascinates me about systematic teachings about art forms is how a lot of it is so much about human nature. My officemate gave me a short lecture on acting once to explain how all feelings are just by-products of action. And in today’s lecture, I learned about how each event can be broken down into focal character, objective (where you’re trying to get to), motive (what spurs you into action), the action, and the outcome. The latter of which becomes the motive for the next event.

I don’t want to try and break down my whole life into a sequence of objectives and motives because I might finally break down that way because life and nature can’t possibly be that simplistic. But it’s interesting to imagine it might hold some truth. And I can’t help but see all my stories that way now. It holds true the perspective I’ve been trying to accept: that everything necessarily built up to the moment you are in right now, and that’s enough reason to be grateful for all of it.

My biggest discovery about the writing process is how much trust there is involved. Just trust yourself to know your story best, just trust the story to tell itself to you based on the details that you've already set out for it. I don't know if the story has a life of its own or that's my brain connecting the points and drawing a map of its own, or maybe both. Whatever it is, it's working.

Finally, I discovered that the writing process is so beautiful because it's an interplay of trust and doubt: the trust keeps you moving forward and just writing, while the doubt tells you which direction to go and which direction not to go. Which in a way is trust too; doubt just propels it forward. The key is to give each their individual spaces and time limits in the process: first trust, then re-evaluate, then trust the re-evaluation. Most of all, the key to writing is to start writing and just keep writing until you're done."

― from today’s reflection exercise

I’m manning three Facebook pages this month moving forward (that I would love if you gave a follow. Links below). There’s one on the way if I get this magical apprenticeship I applied for, and I’ve been thinking lately of putting up my own for Moongirl, even if I don’t update it regularly. That’ll be five. I don’t know why this is addicting.

Maybe there’s something about having a place where people can see you without connecting to every part of you there is to offer, or better yet a place where people can reach you. Just one part of you, the part you choose to highlight in that limited space.

There are so many changes taking place at rapid rates, and it’s only February 19. There are more to come, I’m sure of it, and there are no rules to how this thing can play out. It’s just life doing its thing. There’s always that fear that I won’t be able to take it, but today I get to tell myself that so far, I’ve been able to take it.

And that’s another thing to keep moving me forward.

Where feet may fail and fear surrounds me You’ve never failed and You won’t start now

— Oceans, Hillsong United

Let’s make today’s question a challenging one: what event are you currently in the middle of right now, and what’s your motive to keep moving forward?

Write me back,

Apple 🍎