MY WEEKLY BLOG<\/p>\n
\u00a0JUST BECAUSE<\/p>\n
Doing something with purpose has its own built-in\u00a0motivation. You make a list of ingredients you need for a recipe so there\u2019s a\u00a0reason to go to Gelson\u2019s. You want something new to wear to a gathering so there\u2019s\u00a0a reason to go to Bloomingdale\u2019s. You\u2019re on a deadline for a book so there\u2019s a\u00a0reason to sit down at the computer. There is comfort in having purpose.<\/p>\n
But what if there isn\u2019t a reason? What if there is no\u00a0specific purpose? What if you did something \u201cjust because?\u201d You go to the\u00a0grocery store without a list and you walk up and down the aisles to see what looks\u00a0good to you. You browse the racks in a department store to see if anything\u00a0catches your eye. You read a book for the joy of it so you can become engrossed\u00a0in someone else\u2019s story.<\/p>\n
During my writing career, I\u2019ve had obnoxiously tight\u00a0deadlines and I\u2019ve worked diligently to meet them, but these days, I sit down\u00a0and write because I like it and I\u2019m curious to see what’s on my mind. I do my\u00a0best writing when I have nothing tangible to write about. I create this blog\u00a0each week with no idea what I\u2019m going to write about when I start. It’s a free\u00a0flowing experience, alive with anticipation and wonder and I\u2019m surprised to see\u00a0what shows up on the page. I may not like it, sometimes I keep deleting and\u00a0starting over, but it\u2019s always intriguing to become aware of what I want to\u00a0say.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
When we first went into quarantine close to two years ago (can\u00a0you believe it?), I had no professional work projects on my agenda so I started\u00a0looking into my past and writing my stories for no particular reason. It was a\u00a0great distraction from long isolated hours to spend time in a creative mode and\u00a0do what I love. I have some deadline work projects now, but I\u2019m still writing my\u00a0stories about boyfriends, husbands, friends, clients and life challenges with\u00a0no idea where I\u2019m going or why. I\u2019m learning about myself and as the chapters accumulate, they seem to have no obvious themes or connecting threads. My inner critic,\u00a0always on my case, tells me to stop wasting my time writing about nothing. But\u00a0the more I banish him into the background, the more he begins to dissolve, his\u00a0voice becomes faint and my judgments disappear. So does my anxiety and I watch\u00a0in fascination as themes and connecting threads miraculously appear. It\u2019s\u00a0magical and informative and having no purpose becomes my purpose.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Do you ever spend your time doing things \u201cjust because?\u201d It\u2019s\u00a0like taking an unfamiliar path in the forest with no idea where you\u2019re going,\u00a0what you’re going to find along the way and where you\u2019ll end up. But you keep on\u00a0going. You walk with heightened awareness because you\u2019re not focused on the past\u00a0or the future. It\u2019s step by step. It\u2019s being present and noticing things that\u00a0you never saw before. I drove by a house on my street last week, I\u2019ve passed it
hundreds of times, and I was moved by the brilliant colored roses in the front\u00a0garden that I was noticing for the first time. It made me happy and I wondered\u00a0why I never noticed it before.<\/p>\n
I volunteered at Chris Brownlie AIDS Hospice during the eighties
where I learned about having no agenda, no reason for anything besides being\u00a0there. I would ask to come into someone\u2019s room, have a seat on a chair beside his bed,\u00a0take his hand if he wanted me to and I listened. The room got quiet and so did my mind. Time floated, I forgot about myself and I aligned my breathing with\u00a0his. That was all there was and I felt peaceful. Someone once asked me if it\u00a0was depressing to sit with twenty-six men in twenty-six beds who were dying of\u00a0AIDS. I told them that that it was exhilarating. I was tired at the end of a\u00a0day but not depressed. I felt extraordinarily alive because of the depth of connection,\u00a0the conscious breathing and the immediacy of the situation. I didn’t know how\u00a0many breaths the man beside me had left so I made sure to be aware and\u00a0appreciate each one as it happened.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sitting here right now, writing \u201cjust because.\u201d I\u2019ve written\u00a0this blog hundreds of times, it\u2019s become a ritual, and it feels good to lose my
sense of time and allow my thoughts to unravel. No holding on and no pushing\u00a0away. One thought might hold steady as I write or it may exchange places with\u00a0another thought. It\u2019s like putting together a puzzle as you try out pieces\u00a0here and there, you fit them together, and at the end, there is a finished\u00a0product that amazes and delights. This is the essence of mindfulness, a purpose\u00a0in itself, as I let go of being productive, of making sense, and I embrace\u00a0being present, just because.<\/p>\n
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MY WEEKLY BLOG \u00a0JUST BECAUSE Doing something with purpose has its own built-in\u00a0motivation. You make a list of ingredients you need for a recipe so there\u2019s a\u00a0reason to go to Gelson\u2019s. You want something new to wear to a gathering so there\u2019s\u00a0a reason to go to Bloomingdale\u2019s. You\u2019re on a deadline for a book so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}