I learned yesterday from listening to an Elizabeth Gilbert podcast that, most writers fear writing because they fight it. When one writes, one has to participate in the act of writing, and stop fighting it, lest it’ll feel like a bitter gourd pushed into your mouth to eat.

I think I have started participating again in this thing called writing. This has become my meditation activity for each day, more like a “life simplification” project which is a list I started recently about how I can simplify my life. That sounds like Gretchen Rubin‘s The Happiness Project. So far, I’ve noted down:
  1. You don’t have to put up with difficult people
  2. You don’t have to put up with people who refuse to use their head (read: stupid)
  3. Go ahead and choose friends this time
  4. Clean clutter
  5. Make bed

Now that I’ll be in Apeldoorn for a little while, I have decided to simplify my every day here, with three things — work online, babysit, write — sandwiched by a 50-rep curl up exercise in the morning and a sitting-up prayer at night. With emphasis on sitting up.

I resolved to pray sitting up and not lying down because the latter is just lazy and lame. I remember asking my dad when I was little what’s the difference between praying sitting up and praying lying down and I think the answer I got was, if I was too lazy to sit up and pray, God might be too lazy as well to answer my prayers. Fair enough. Tit for tat.

I just started on this “life simplification project Apeldoorn edition” two days ago and I still have 19 days to go for this to become a habit. I need nothing else but Good luck!

easy as pie

Life is easy as pie.

*This is part of a 68-Day Travel Diary called Reflections of a Nearly Thirty. Read the full Reflections Series here.

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About hellopenville

Writing is my one true north. (The other is eating spaghetti. I make the best pastas in the whole world I swear!) I have been writing since age 10. I remember being in another school a lot because of Campus Journalism contests. I was a grade-school copyreader, headline-writer, and feature writer, who emerged to be a college editorial writer and eventually a TV news writer. However, I have always been an insecure artist. These constant condescending thoughts always stopped me from creating: “No one would read this.” “This has been written before and therefore no one would read this.” “This is not interesting enough and therefore no one would read this.” “This is not relevant, or factual, or trendy enough and therefore no one would read this.” But I learned to risk to write even if no one reads it, than not to have written anything at all. To resist writing is to resist truth itself, to betray that which comes freely to you when you do not allow it to be manifested through you. I didn’t think writing was serious work. But every time I thought about writing, it would make me nervous. It would rattle me and frighten me. I would shake the ground under me. Aren’t dreams like that too? Read more at penville.net.

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Travel Reflections Series (3 months in Europe)

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