InnerBliss: Planning versus Spontaneity

From Botanical Gardens, Ann Arbor

Listening to: This amazing guitar solo. Emphasis on solo.

Today's Bliss Formula: A most perfect weather day. A bike ride is in order. With the camera. Today, I am especially grateful for my partner, Frog, who decided yesterday at work to try to rescue a duck and fell out of a "boat" and into the bay, having to then swim in rough water where a boat, at any time, could round the corner. Oye! (The duck is being taken care of.)

I am late posting today, because Blogger decided to be slow and non-responsive. This has thrown off my morning. I like to have my post up by this time. I had already planned on today's topic and am fully aware of the irony of writing about spontaneity and simultaneously worrying about my schedule.

I have admitted before that I am a schedule cat. I know this about myself. I love the iCal that comes with my iMac. I love that I can set alarms and schedule in my walks and yoga and make extensive notes on my virtual stickies about posts and writing ideas and interview potentials.

It's an illness...

So, this weekend I finished reading Sue Monk Kidd's When the Heart Waits.

I came away from the book thinking mainly about playfulness and spontaneity. I think of this every so often...that I need more of both of those things. And then I go back to being ordered and planned.

I know where this comes from, which you would think would be half the battle.

My early life was, to say the least, unpredictable. High to low could happen within seconds and there was never any warning.

So now I like things just so. I like to know that I get up and have an espresso and turn on some music or sit in the yard and then read my blogs with breakfast then another espresso and writing. See...order.

But back to playfulness. How to do it?

First of all, I think that thinking back to what you loved to do when you were a child is key to many things, including finding and living your bliss.

What did I love to do? I loved to draw and read and dance. All loner kinds of activities.

I realize now that maybe I have to redefine playfulness, that for me it doesn't necessarily look like what it looks like for you. In my mind, I am visualizing playfulness as fast and busy and loud and frenetic.

But I have worked so hard to make a life that is calm and thoughtful and mindful and more comfortable for the hermit parts of me.

And I think that perhaps art comes from a lot of order. That as an artist or a writer you need external order in your life so that you can have playfulness and spontaneity in your mind and your work.

As Julia Cameron says, "Save the drama for the page."

Or are these all just excuses for me not allowing myself to explore risk and adventure?

How are you playful? How does spontaneity function in your life?

For now, I am going to spend some of my day working on six month goals, like Hip Tranquil Chick is thinking about doing.

Maybe I'll schedule in some play.