email from the heart

January 17, 2016 - Daily Notes

Even email can be a practice in giving voice to the heart. These days, especially email. 

Today is Sunday and my to-do list for Lucia is singular: Answer every email. First, the messages I've been saving for days--even weeks--from writers, bloggers, artists and others. Before starting Lucia, I did expect I'd receive a lot more email. Twenty years working in public relations, where it has been my job to get the attention of editors and journalists for my clients, has taught me that an editor's inbox gets outrageously full.

Now I am learning the art of replying.

I have yet to master it. I do read every email that comes. I do not often reply immediately because I do not always know just what I'd like to say. Not at first. Usually I wish for time to linger on someone's blog, peruse her world on Instagram, look up essays he's written before, and gain enough of a sense of who this person is and what they create that my reply will be thoughtful, informed, valuable, authentic and connected.

It's tough to find time for this. I am learning to create time. It is important to me. Communicating with Lucia's readers and future writers is essential. 

It is raining in Seattle and I have one thing only on my list today: Give voice to the heart via emails. All of them. 

How do you manage email? Do you have advice? I am all ears.

xo
laura

"work with me" says heart

January 14, 2016 - Daily Notes

"So basically you are doing two full-time jobs plus another part-time job," said my primary care physician.

It was my annual visit and she is thorough. This came at the end of a series of questions designed to get at the possible underlying cause of the edgy feeling I've had for two weeks. My blood pressure is perfectly calm. Pulse strong and vibrant. Lungs working beautifully. Nothing a doctor can measure is imbalanced. My body is healthy. 

This tense anxious feeling? Apparently it does not originate in my heart. I started to explain where exactly I feel it. In my head. The vibration travels down my spinal column before it branches to my limbs. My ears constantly hear it, a high-pitched ring.

"Let's keep an eye on it, if it doesn't resolve in a couple of weeks then give me a call," she smiled. "I think it's stress. See if you can reduce it."

Today and tomorrow I hope to write the marketing and business plan for the launch of Issue Two of Lucia. I am beyond excited. I don't know exactly how it will get done, though. The likelihood is I will spend Saturday and Sunday working on Lucia because today I have PR clients to attend to. Media to pitch. Research to do. Calls to make. A living to procure for myself. Or at least, February's rent. Then there are taxes. Bills to pay. Emails to answer. And it's my night to teach yoga at the women's shelter, one of my favorite things. I know you know. We all have things.

The independent magazine business is wholly different than I envisioned it being one year ago today, when Lucia was an idea beginning to take form. I am still finding my feet. This struggle to be creative during the week while needing to manage the practical, the organizational, the tangible, the everyday work--I am not alone in it. I find comfort in my artist friends who tell me their experience is similar. "Managing" time requires headspace. "Creative" time requires heart space. One must be like a ninja during the week if she is to jump between to the two and not lose her footing.

This morning I looked at the watercolors I've been painting since August. When I painted them, I was not in my head at all, I was painting from a deeper place. I put my hand on my heart, closed my eyes, and listened. 

"Work with me," heart said. "I am here for you."

The exquisite tool that is my brain has been trying to run the show for the past two weeks. Gathering momentum, the juggling act of plans, schedules, ideas, dreams...it does so much. It's quite an instrument, but it can not work alone. It needs heart to ground, shelter, feel, and guide. Heart is what can make everything brain imagines into real.

I am teaching the two to work in tandem. It is a practice.

How do you do it?

xo
laura

the drive to dance

January 12, 2016 - Daily Notes

Both of my big toes have little bruises. I wouldn't trade them for the world. They come from dancing on Monday nights.

We were born to move. My niece was even dancing in her ultrasound, my sister said. So I guess we do it before we're born, too.

I still miss someone, so last night I took myself back to salsa lessons. Life keeps expanding no matter who shows up or doesn't and we have to keep dancing. It is the only way to live.

This third round of classes (I'm in "2b" now) brings a whole new circle of people, some familiar, others new. We are all learning and what I love most is the diverse experience of dancing with different people each time the instructors say "next partner," and the inner circle shifts clockwise one notch. Everything changes except the music.

Some of the leads I danced with last night were really good. Others are still learning basics. One could barely keep time to four beats in a row, let alone eight. I absolutely loved dancing with him, though, because he smiled the entire time. I smiled back. He was being brave. He was taking "2b" after only having one salsa lesson ever in his life. The drive to dance is strong.

I stayed after class to practice with a new friend who asked me. My toes were starting to feel the pressure of having danced for an hour in barely-broken-in shoes, but I told him "I'll stay for 30 minutes" and he agreed. We practiced the moves we'd just learned. Over and over he would twirl me in close, then lead me into an outside turn, then we'd do a move our instructors call "Macarena Muffintop." You sort of do the Macarena, then the follow (that's me) stands behind the lead and puts her hands on his waist for a few steps, holding on tight before the lead pulls her back out in front of him for a turn. "Muffintop is the shape our waists make after the holidays," the instructor explained. Everyone laughed. 

It is Tuesday now and my toes are tender. Rubbing them gently with arnica and sesame oil, I closed my eyes and felt my heart beat. A small sigh escaped my chest, content that for this moment, I am living fully. I am learning to dance.

xo
laura