I think the most common sentiment I’ve heard lately is some variation of: “This summer has gone so fast!” or “Where did the time go?”  Personally, I’ve listened to myself utter those words annoyingly often.

Time.  It kills me.

I’d love to just ride the waves, to go with the flow, to stop trying to capture Time as if cupping my hands under a torrent of water as it ceaselessly overflows.

I understand why anxiety has become a common state of being in our society.  We live these lives, full of family and friends and work and obligations and dirty floors and licenses to renew and cards to send and dreams to feed and groceries to buy and emails to return and software to download so we can upload some damn pictures to help us at least remember.

Meanwhile, my Body and Soul magazine teeming with articles on how to slow down and renew and relax sits in the basket in my bathroom unread next to the toilet that needs to be cleaned.

I think about the phenomenon of Time a lot.  I want more of it.  I want it to slow down long enough so I can catch my breath, for God’s sake.

Last week Paul and I took our first vacation together in four years.  For five days, we mountain biked in Colorado and camped in the back of our red rental minivan, turning moments to memories at the speed of light.  As we pulled into to our driveway from the airport, I had the oddest sensation that it was all a dream.  In the time it takes to snap my fingers, the adventure was over.

Being a mother, I have a new barometer with which to measure how fast Time goes–the growth of Oliver and Lucy.  It is so painfully swift, its current threatens to drive me insane.  I want to run outside, raise my arms up, and scream to the sky, “Slow down!”

I was thinking this morning about the relativity of Time–how a year to Oliver is 1/4 of his life, and how a year to Lucy is 1/2 of her life.

A year in my life is now 1/37.  A shrinking proportion.

When I write, however, I am able to slow Time.  As the words uncurl themselves from my Sharpie, it’s like untangling a ball of yarn in my head.  Slowly, I pull the jumbled contents of my thoughts out onto the paper where I can see and feel and organize them. When I write, I dump the random thoughts from my head that keep me from being present in my precious moments.  If I begin my day with even ten minutes of writing, I feel calmer.  When I pin the thoughts that run circles in my mind down on paper, I feel lighter.  I can let them go.  I gain perspective.  I reflect  on my life and come back to myself.

But to write, we must make the time. I doubt a gaping hole of time will ever appear where we can finally begin all of the things we want and need to begin.  We must begin now, today.  We must find a way, our own way, to slow down time to renew and reflect.  It’s a cleansing of our mental and emotional closets.  It helps us to see clearly where our thoughts are going, where we are squandering our time, and where we need to focus.

Right now, close your computer, take out your journal or a piece of paper or a to-go menu, and write for ten minutes.  You very well may end up writing for a longer period of time, but at least give yourself these ten minutes. Begin anywhere in your mind.  You aren’t trying to figure your whole life out.  You are just giving yourself a space of time.

If you have a difficult time facing a blank page, begin with this simple mantra: “I am…” When you run out of things to say, begin again with the words, “I am.”

For example: “I am sitting in Namaste Cafe on Hennepin Avenue writing on my computer.  My masala chai has long since been drained.  I am typing this blog entry because I want to publish something every Wednesday.  I am excited to meet up with my pals from Hamline in St. Paul.  I am trying to live this life as best as I can.  I am breathless at times from living and loving this life.  I am wearing out my welcome at this table as the restaurant fills up and my check waits to be signed…

Take this time to honor yourself, your thoughts, and your moments.  Go to a coffee shop or sit on a park bench or at your kitchen table and give yourself the gift of ten minutes.  Pay attention to how you feel before you write and then after.  Feel free to comment and share how this practice felt for you.

Until next Wednesday when I post another entry on the practice of journaling, enjoy this gift of life.  Enjoy your personal adventure through it all.

Love, me.

Janna Brayman Krawczyk is a writer and a teacher.  She has a B.A. in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Masters in Teaching from Hamline University.  She has been writing in a journal for over half of her life and has finally accepted that life is not easy, yet our struggles and obstacles are what inspire insight and wisdom.  For this reason, she must write as a way to understand herself and her life, stay sane, and dream big dreams.  She feels blessed to share this healing and illuminating practice with as many people as possible in her lifetime…

I am slowly reading bits and pieces of a book called “Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion”  (thus why his quotes are ever-present in my recent entries).  I am enjoying it within the cracks of my larger moments with my family—Paul (my husband), four-year old Oliver, and two-year old Lucy.  It’s quick inspiration.

I came across a series of quotes by him that I love and that illuminate what I am learning in life:

“Follow your bliss.
The heroic life is living the individual adventure.
There is no security
in following the call to adventure.
Nothing is exciting
if you know
what the outcome is going to be.
To refuse the call
means stagnation…”

Sometimes it is so scary to live and not know what lies ahead.  It’s scary to love so much and know that we will not live forever, that all of these moments with our family and friends are quickly becoming memories.  Sometimes it feels so vulnerable just living and hoping and dreaming and loving.

But what can we do but live and hope and dream and love and have faith in it all?

We have to live.  We don’t know anything else.  And since we are living, why not just risk hoping and dreaming and loving and falling and failing and getting back up and doing it over and over again?

Life is a blessed adventure—and an adventure with potential for terrible pain.
I have a lot of fears, some new, and some old.  Since becoming a mother, I gave birth to a very powerful fear—the fear of something happening to someone in my family or something happening to me and missing out on the lives of those I love.  It’s because of this fear that I am moved to understand it, to work through it, and to let it go.  I’m not there yet, but I’m learning.  I call it The Risk of Loving.

I have other fears that are more abstract: Fear that I will not realize my full potential, that I am lazy or incapable or not as good.  Fear that I will not find my way.  What “way” is that?  I don’t know.  This I call the Risk of Living.

To go along with courage and faith and hope and live this life as best as we can really is a heroic journey.  We cannot hide from our fears nor should we hide from our dreams. We must risk loving and we must risk living.
Your journal is a record of this, your journey through it all.

Writing Exercise:

For five minutes, write down your fears, brain-dump style.  Don’t worry about spelling, grammar, and penmanship.  Don’t think.  Just write.

For the next five (or however long you wish) minutes, write down your deepest dreams and desires.  Be as specific as possible—think about what your dreams would look like materialized in your life.  How would your days be spent? They could have to do with where you want to live, what kind of people you surround yourself with, how you want to spend your days, or how you want to feel.  Feel the power of dreams, the energy you feel from simply writing them down and thinking about them.

When you are finished, look at your list of fears.  Circle the ones that have come to be.  Notice how few of them are circled, how many of them are simply questions that have to be lived.  Know them, have compassion for yourself, and then try to let them go and live within a space of gratitude.  This is not easy.

This is an exercise of writing through your fears and into your dreams.

In looking back on my journals over the years, I am still amazed by how the words of my deepest hopes and dreams seem to evaporate into the Universe and grow and gain energy, and come back materializing in my life in clever and profound ways.

Enjoy the writing.  Enjoy life right now, as it is, as you are.

Janna Brayman Krawczyk is a writer and a teacher.  She has a B.A. in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Masters in Teaching from Hamline University.  She has been writing in a journal for over half of her life and has finally accepted that life is not easy, yet our struggles and obstacles are what inspire insight and wisdom.  For this reason, she must write as a way to understand herself and her life, stay sane, and dream big dreams.  She feels blessed to share this healing and illuminating practice with as many people as possible in her lifetime…

In this dance of life, I have recently begun to truly appreciate the necessity of the precarious art of balance in achieving inward harmony. I especially appreciate it when I’m lugging myself through the day, feeling irritable, worn out, pissed off, tired, and uninspired.  Because I believe we are meant to be inspired, to be energized, to be peaceful and compassionate.  I believe these things to be inherent to our being.

When we are not taking care of ourselves and our well-being, these unsavory emotions become some of our greatest teachers.  When we write about our feelings of irritation, exhaustion, frustration and lack of inspiration, it helps us to get to the bottom of ourselves and wake up to our lives. It helps us to see the interconnectedness of all of our actions and the symbiotic relationship our minds, bodies, and spirits share.

For example, this summer I have been camping a lot, both with my girlfriends and with my family.  Last weekend as I was preparing to leave for the third weekend in a row, I noticed I was uninspired, overwhelmed, and crabby.  By Monday, when I woke up to a truckload of dirty laundry, crap piled up in the entryway of our home, and two overtired kids, I was emotionally, mentally, and physically staggering under the weight of my own imbalance.

I realized that for me right now in my life, three weekends in a row of travel throws me so far out of balance it takes the joy and relaxation out of what could be a beautiful weekend away. It’s just too much.

“Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.”

–Robert Fulghum

Writing gives me insight about important things like balance.  It helps me understand that in my darkest hours, I need not run from myself, but rather, go toward myself to figure out what it is that I’m lacking.  I’m finally learning not to quickly label my darkness as depression or anxiety and instead simply realize I’m out of balance and figure out what I need to get it back.

Thinking in this way is tremendously empowering because when I realize what is going on, I can actually do something about it.  I can change my life, both in big and little ways.

Balance is precarious, constantly moving underneath our feet.  In order to hold sway, we must listen to ourselves, our lives, and continually reflect.

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.” -Albert Einstein

Writing exercise: At the top of the next blank page of your journal, write the date and where you are (I always do this because I like to look back and see where I was when the writing took place).  Then write the word “Balance” in large letters in the middle of the page.  Around it, write all of the things you need in your life to be in balance.  For example, I wrote: to write, to exercise, to stretch my body, to spend time with my family, to spend time alone, to spend time with my friends, to read, to eat good food, and to have a clean home.  I do not necessarily need all of these things every day, but some I do. Over a week, I need them all.

As Life and Time ceaselessly flow, all of these things are in constant flux.

After you make your map of balance, freewrite on following questions: What do you need to feel balanced?  What are you missing?  What can you let go of to make space for balance?  When do you feel at peace with yourself and your world?

“There is no secret to balance.  You just have to feel the waves.”

–Frank Herbert

Remember: When you write, you are planting seeds of insight and intention in your conscious and subconscious life.  They will bloom!  Have faith in yourself and your thoughts.

I hope this exercise gives you insight and empowers you to take the hands of your life and dance with the art of balance.

Peace, Janna.

Janna Brayman Krawczyk is a writer and a teacher.  She has a B.A. in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Masters in Teaching from Hamline University.  She has been writing in a journal for over half of her life and has finally accepted that life is not easy, yet our struggles and obstacles are what inspire insight and wisdom.  For this reason, she must write as a way to understand herself and her life, stay sane, and dream big dreams.  She feels blessed to share this healing and illuminating practice with as many people as possible in her lifetime…