WordPress Daily Writing Prompt
DWP June 22, 2024 – How do you waste the most time every day?
Is there any time wasted really? I’m alive and content. I’ll just take the first example of wasted time though that comes to mind. I waste time by not writing. I think about it a lot, thinking that words are all I have to leave really after I’m gone from this place. I mean I’m not an artist who has created something exhibited in a museum or published any books. I haven’t created any buildings, what is my legacy? Do I need a legacy? We’re all just a blip anyway, right? For instance just know, after I typed the title, I started checking out the settings on this ipad to make it brighter but then I had to stop myself because that’s just another way I’m mini-procrastinating. Maybe I just think I’m not good enough to write. That is a big waste of time overall — Thinking I’m not good enough. Today though I told myself, this is the day, JUST WRITE.
It takes a minute after starting to write that thoughts come, doesn’t it? Things need to ripen just a bit before plucking the words from the ether. I remind myself though as I’m putting this together to write as if no one will read this. Write to record not to try and impress. Like that saying, dance like no one is watching, I need to write like no one is reading. That helps get me out of my head.
Ok back to the question in a practical way. As I sit outside here in the local neighborhood park at 6am, this is something that I think I waste my time NOT doing. I spend way too little time outdoors. This is central Arizona though and this early in the morning, it’s already in the 90s. That really is just an excuse though because I could get up even earlier and come out here or to my lush backyard, enjoy the outdoors and get some writing in just before the glow of sunrise. How is that being outdoors feeds me? I don’t know, I’ll have to think about that but it does something good to my soul in the same way it does when I walk through an art museum. Maybe it just makes me more present, in the here and now, not thinking about the past and not thinking of the future.
That’s a conscious decision though while I’m outdoors because for a moment I stopped writing and my mind started to wander about the possible future which right now gives me a sort of Sword of Damocles feeling. Do I have breast metastases in my spine? This week I had a nuclear bone scan because of some back pain I’ve been having and it showed something going on in my L4 vertebrae so I need another test. It recommended a CT or MRI but because I have a tissue expander in my left breast, I can’t get an MRI. I have a tissue expander in to keep the breast pocket open as I went through radiation last year. I went through radiation last year after I had chemotherapy. I had chemotherapy after I was diagnosed a second time with breast cancer, the same disease that killed my mother. That kills so many. It’s real. Very real but I have to remember that death has not taken me yet so I can still leave my words while I have time (not to waste). It’s a part of myself I can leave behind. Anyway, the CT is scheduled a few days from now.
So in the meantime, I’ll spend more time outdoors. Early in the coming mornings. Watch the sunrise, a gift that comes everyday like how every day is a gift. I can unwrap it in the present under the luminescence of morning
Well that’s all for now and I leave this with my attempt at a Haiku:
Words from woken fingertips
Like a magic wand
Pulling thoughts from the ether
WhatsHerName Writes 