I wouldn’t say I\u00a0have a talent that’s special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of\u00a0stamina.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – – – John\u00a0Irving<\/p>\n
When I was writing my first book, \u201cAwakening the Healer\u00a0Within,\u201d I faced some problematic issues like continuity, story arcs and\u00a0creating an ebb and flow of \u00a0tension. These things hadn\u2019t come into play when I was writing a story or an article. They were like doing a sprint. Penning an entire book, however, with a theme, characters, and plot lines, one chapter flowing into the next and finally ending up somewhere, was brand new. That was like doing a marathon. I had no idea how to organize such a huge undertaking. Did I have the stamina to get through it?<\/p>\n
If anyone did, I thought it should be me because I had a lot\u00a0of practice. When I was a teenager, touring across the United States with my\u00a0ballet company, we piled into a bus every morning, the principal dancers sitting\u00a0at the front, the soloists were next and finally the corps de ballet, my place\u00a0in the hierarchy, took up the rear, bumping along over the tires. During my\u00a0first tour, about three weeks in, I remember thinking, I can’t do this for one more day. But I did.<\/p>\n
Each day, when we reached our destination \u2013 Chicago, Los\u00a0Angeles, or remote places like Hayes, Kansas, and Muskogee, Oklahoma \u2013 we\u00a0checked into a \u00a0crummy hotel and showed up at the designated performance venue. We warmed up for an hour and we rehearsed that night\u2019s program for musical tempos and stage placement. Then we found a nearby greasy spoon restaurant and it was back to the theater for hair and makeup.<\/p>\n
We conked out hard at night and when the alarm went off in\u00a0the morning, we hauled our suitcases to the elevator, got back on the bus, and headed\u00a0for the next city. If you slept past your alarm, someone went to your room,\u00a0woke you up none too gently, you grabbed all your stuff and you did the walk of\u00a0shame onto the bus where forty dancers were waiting impatiently and giving you\u00a0the evil eye. It went on day after day, we were all sleep deprived and injured
but we didn\u2019t stop.<\/p>\n
Physical activities like ballet or gymnastics require stamina\u00a0if you want to be any good at them, but so do mental and emotional ones. It takes stamina to meditate. To talk out a problem with\u00a0a partner. To write with regularity. To endure loss. To make it through a three\u00a0day power outage in the middle of winter. But whatever it is, you have to be present\u00a0in the moment, move through the resistance, encourage yourself when nobody else\u00a0will and take it slow and steady. And keep on going.<\/p>\n
When I started to write consistently, sometimes I couldn\u2019t\u00a0wait to get to the computer. At other times, I dragged myself there, feeling\u00a0like a victim, resenting my lot in life, forcing myself to do something I
didn\u2019t want to do. As if someone else was making me do it. Sometimes I wrote\u00a0one paragraph for hours, determined to keep doing until I was satisfied. One\u00a0day, when I was completely overwhelmed, I called a published friend who gave me
some valuable guidance. \u201cDon\u2019t look at the book as a whole,\u201d she said. \u201cThink\u00a0of each chapter as a separate story or you\u2019ll end up in bed with the covers\u00a0pulled up over your head.\u201d That was not an unfamiliar posture.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stamina is like a muscle, something you have to keep flexing\u00a0to make it strong and dependable or it will atrophy. You\u00a0can\u2019t meditate for an hour when you start or you\u2019ll get discouraged and stop.\u00a0Try doing it for ten minutes and gradually you can increase your staying power.\u00a0You can\u2019t speak a foreign language when you first enroll in a class. You take\u00a0it in, word by word, phrase by phrase, until you get the hang of it.<\/p>\n
This morning, I spent hours\u00a0trying to figure out why Zoom was acting up. Something had changed in their\u00a0setup, they hadn\u2019t informed their subscribers and there was no customer service\u00a0available. I need Zoom for my classes and I panicked at first. I was put on\u00a0hold for a half hour and eventually I hung up. It was on me. I tried a load of
different ways to get what I needed and I became more and more frustrated. But\u00a0I kept on trying and after a few hours, I figured it out. With a few\u00a0exceptions, I believe we can do anything if we stick with it, have a clear goal\u00a0in mind and find the strength and determination to keep on going\\\u00a0until we get there.<\/p>\n
After so many years of writing daily,\u00a0I see it as my holy calling, a tile in the mosaic of my spiritual path, a \u00a0practice that gets stronger the more I do it. It feels like giving myself a gift. Pema Chodron, my go to spiritual teacher and prolific author, has written several dozen books, but when she started, she says it was difficult for her \u201cto scare up enough stamina to write a book.\u201d Or to be human. She writes, \u201cThe goal is to develop spiritual stamina so when a problem occurs, I don’t react our of emotion but out of wisdom.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I wouldn’t say I\u00a0have a talent that’s special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of\u00a0stamina. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – – – John\u00a0Irving When I was writing my first book, \u201cAwakening the Healer\u00a0Within,\u201d I faced some problematic issues like continuity, story arcs and\u00a0creating an ebb and flow of \u00a0tension. These things hadn\u2019t come into play […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2327,"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-2328","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\/2328","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=2328"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2329,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2328\/revisions\/2329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}