Reflection is a Good Thing, Even When You’re Not Drinking

As a writer it’s embarrassing. It shouldn’t even happen, but I’m sure all you busy people who value sleep understand.

They sit there on the table or night stand, night after night. Some of them collecting dust. You don’t mean for it to happen. You have good intentions, but that’s what they just end up being: intentions and not actions. Books and reading. As a writer I should be devouring like one or two a month, right? I should be immersing myself in the drama of the characters and the knowledge that the hidden lessons bring. I should be enriching my mind — reflecting –with the creativeness of awesome books. All this reflection, and nice glass of wine to go with it.

Image via http://www.gavilan.edu

But does this happen? No.

Chapter One gets started and then Chapter Two waits … and waits … and waits. After a while Chapter Two just flips you off and sits there feeling rejected and dejected.

I came across some of these crestfallen books on the nightstand and couldn’t even remember when it was that I read Chapter One. But as I opened them up there stood the evidence that I was once there. The bookmark. It stared up at me saying: ‘What the hell? Where you been?’

Sigh.

But then I came across a different kind of bookmark. It was a picture of me taken thirteen years ago. My arms were up in the air and I was truly enjoying myself. I was in the moment! I was at a theme park on Halloween and had just survived my third maze of horror, where people dressed as zombies and ghouls came out of the dark and scared the crap out of you.

I smiled. Sigh. I looked at it and said ‘What the hell? Where you been?’

It was a good discovery. I’ve been down in the dumps lately, so when I came across this photo I was reminded of myself. For some reason I had forgotten that chick in the picture. She’d been missing for a while, but I was glad to have found her by accident in a pile of forgotten books.

This discovery afforded me the opportunity to check myself out and realize that the chick in the picture was still here … underneath the yoga pants and college football shirt, and behind the sleep-deprived eyes that chick who celebrated Halloween with such awesomeness was still here. Tired, but here.

Reflection is a good thing, even when you’re not drinking.

“Reflection is the opposite of ‘trying too hard’ of forcing an answer. Reflection is more a matter of allowing an answer to unfold right before your eyes, often with little or no effort on your part.” — Richard Carlson Ph.D.

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