A Joyous Life...

~Joy on the playground today~

What a Joyous life. There are certainly great highs and lows, an undulating journey on the ebbs and tides of ever moving waves. It is in my best interest (and perhaps yours too) to be as a surfer and gracefully ride them and be present to where you're at on these continuously changing waves, also important, if you're shredding and you suddenly eat it and fall off the wave, find a way to compose yourself, get back on that board and ideally find a way to not fall off in the same way you've done before...

Well, here I am writing words. This is an exercise of sorts as I prepare to embark on a mighty journey in just over 2 days from now in which I will be writing 50,000 words over the course of November. DigiWriMo is a digital challenge in which those who participate attempt to write 50,000 words in 30 days. That is 1,666.66667 of these guys each day. The mediums in which they are written is basically anything digital, I can use this blog, facebook, twitter, instagram, text messages, and even emails if I so choose too, the key is to have them shared and available to be viewed digitally. It is going to be quite a ride. I look forward to it though, it is up to each person involved to decide what they'd like to do with the outcome of their work, whether it is anything at all other than just completing their goal is really something each participant can decide.

I am thinking of a couple options personally. Part of me would like to create a living novel with it all. Something that can be tangibly accessed more or less linearly in one platform on the web, an e-book I guess it would be. Another part of me envisions it actually making it to hard or softcover form in an actual book you can hold. This of course would be quite a process in organization and figuring out something in it that could be considered continuity and graceful form. But there in lies a fun and exciting opportunity to create something rather unique. I could see it coming together as a book format in a really neat kind of way. Imagine, a book that contains many interesting stories, thoughts, communications, and pictures and having all of them be compiled onto actual pages in a way where you are still reading one overall bigger story while following along on a journey through a life and perspective shared by me.

As I bounce on this bouncy chair and type these words it is really amazing to just be present, was just bouncing to Feel Good Inc. by the Gorillaz and now Seven Nation Army by the Whit Stripes is playing. Joy is practicing her letters behind me on a new notebook we scored in a free pile on our walk back from the park, and she is getting good may I add, she is even writing in bubble letters. She actually just asked me what she had written. That is a fun game, for she will basically accept any answer you give her even if it is way more than she has written down or if there are more letters involved than the ones she's written so it's always a fun practice in being imaginative and often really silly. She's got such an incredible imagination. I love this little girl so much, what an absolute blessing to have this remarkable Being in our world.

Just took a moment to see where I was at as far as a word count just out of curiosity, well, I (we) are looking at roughly 600 words above so yeah, uh, if this were a part of the future (that being the month of November) and I were really keeping track I'd still have to create nearly two times the amount of words. That is good though, I feel confident that I can do this. If nothing else it is going to be a great exercise in getting thoughts out of my head and stirring up the ol' kettle that we call the creative process. Oh yeah, that reminds me, I also started the Artist's Way last week so my first week of that will be done soon. For those of you who are familiar with this and for those of you are not it is something I highly recommend you check out. (note: The link I attached is actually to an online version of it I am doing the book form presently) It's funny because it actually has, among many other exercises in writing, a daily morning pages practice in which you start each day freehand writing 3 pages of, yeah you guessed it, words. So, with that thrown in the mix, the month of November is really going to be more like me writing maybe more like 60,000 words or something like that. But who's counting? (oh wait, I am ;)

I titled this blog entry 'A Joyous Life' first because I've shared a nice portion of this day with my daughter Joy and that makes this here NOW a joyous life, and well, although as I mentioned at the beginning the many highs and lows of the ever changing tides of life for the most part I really believe this existence is meant to be a joyous life, it is a grand opportunity to play and be loving, compassionate, joy-filled beings making our way through a dance of diversity back to unity...

~Mahalo yo