Nels Lindahl — Functional Journal

A weblog created by Dr. Nels Lindahl featuring writings and thoughts…

Tag: meditation

  • Writing about those writing related thoughts

    Yesterday I was writing about how writing for a prolonged period of time can be like a form of meditation. That focus that comes from being really dialed into the moment cannot be discounted. Finding your voice during the course of prolonged writing can be an interesting element of the equation. Over the last couple of decades my writing style has shifted a bit and hopefully it is a little more refined. My ability to sit down and write with very few grammatical concerns has certainly improved. That is one of the more interesting parts of my stream of consciousness style writing these days. While it is certainly not perfect flowing prose it for the most part requires very little touch up. I very rarely get to the point where I’m producing content at such a pace that words get left out or things are missing from sentences. It has been a long time since I had so many ideas that just needed to get out where that type of racing through the writing process occurs. 

    We are quickly approaching summer here as March is starting. The little weather icon on my smartphone is indicating that it might snow today at some point. I guess that could very well happen here in Colorado. All different types of weather show up here for sure. We have a true 100 degree weather cycle from cold to hot. It appears my thoughts have drifted here a little bit from the start of this missive to where we are right now. Sometimes these morning writing sessions get a little too literal and I end up focusing on the process of writing each and every time. Maybe it just feels like that, but the fact that the writing category on the blog is very full of content suggests it might be a deeper pattern. I don’t work from a backlog during the course of clearing my thoughts at the start of the day. 

    My writing plan generally includes a very specific multi-year backlog. Working on items like that is not really something that I can do at the start of the day. My thoughts are not yet focused and my energy cannot exactly be focused that quickly to creating a work product. On the weekends the first part of the day is generally spent researching the writing item in question. I don’t generally jump in and start producing content that could be published at the very start of the day. That is not a skill that generally can be demonstrated within my writing practices. More or less I have found that sitting down and working on the production of words and typing a whole bunch of things on the screen opens the door to more of that. Writing generally begets more writing. Maybe refining my note taking process a little bit could create a bit of a cheat sheet for topics to consider during these morning writing sessions to give them a little bit more of a focus here as we approach summer.

    At the very start of the day Rocky dog was making dog-like arguments that the alarm clock going off was not a necessary element of starting the day. Rocky dog is tall enough to be snout to face while I’m sleeping during the course of making these arguments. It seemed like a good idea to go ahead and start the day by letting the dogs out. The natural start of the day would have been just a few moments ago when my smartphone alarm went off by vibrating on my desk. It was easily dismissed and I’m already fully awake at the moment. Two shots of espresso have been consumed and a page of prose has been created. Granted it is a writing about those writing related thoughts without much else being included. At this point in the program I have a solid hour right now to shift my now ready to go focus and attention to something in my backlog of things that need solving.

  • Working along and some meditation

    My renewed daily writing project seems to be going well enough. Each morning I’m sitting down in front of my main computer to create a page of prose. That computer was recently moved into a Be Quiet! Dark Base Pro 900 revision 2 case. It is way quieter than the previous one. My typing has been happening on this Corsair K65 mechanical keyboard. It is way louder than my previous one. It has been a long time since I spent a good amount of time with a mechanical keyboard. The only real sound in my office outside of music is the sound of this keyboard and it is a triumphant clickety clacking of productivity. Seriously typing on a mechanical keyboard is much louder than I remember. My office is really just me and some computer so the loudness of the keyboard is not a problem, but it is a new part of the process. It is interesting to get acclimated to working on the right side of a split screen 38 inch monitor. I have resisted moving the Google Doc window to the center of the screen so far, but that would be the more natural way to go about the process of writing at a desk with a keyboard. Having the content straight ahead would be reasonable and an easier way to work vs. always looking to the right. Maybe I’ll give that a shot this morning to see how it goes. My writing this morning has been very tactical and has not transitioned into a higher level of observation and reflection. 

    Today might be one of those days where a higher level of observation and reflection is not going to happen. Things today started very slowly from the moment consciousness of the outside world occurred. Maybe this is one of those days where a bit of meditation and mindfulness might help refocus my energy and effort on more productive things. It is entirely possible that jamming along to a record on my guitar is about to happen. Getting deeply lost in the process of playing music can be just as calming as all out meditation for me these days. It is also a lot easier for me to relax into the mode of playing guitar without thinking vs. trying to relax to the point of zero space. This post is not really about the merits or practices of meditation. That could have been an interesting topic to tackle. Maybe later it will receive the attention it deserves. Part of that would be about getting to a head space where envisioning a path of stones running through a stream would be possible. Each stone in the stream reflects a step and a choice driving things forward to that perfect possible future. Moving from being like water and going with the flow to willfully making a choice to step from stone to stone in that grand flowing river of time would be at the heart of that meditation. 

    Pure stream of consciousness writing can go wherever your thoughts take you. I find the best time to engage in that practice of writing to be right when I wake up at the start of the day. Sometimes at the very end of the day I can also deeply focus on that writing practice. This weblog has been full of stream of consciousness based writing for years. Most of that writing is now reserved into a private section, but new prose is now being generated daily and oddly enough being automatically shared as a Twitter thread. For the most part that Twitter thread feature appears not to really do anything besides place the content of the weblog post on Twitter where it occurs as a thing in the stream just long enough for something else to show up. Within the aggregate the Twitter feed is a never ending stream of the public square come to virtual life in a completely unmanageable sea of utterances. Nobody could sort it all out or review even a single day of the total Twitter stream at this point. Like most of the digital feeds these days the amount of content being generated greatly outpaces our ability to consume them or even acknowledge that they exist.