Write 100 words, take a nap, and share your mantra.

I love apps.  I've downloaded dozens over the years.  Some I keep, some I don't, but I love seeing what's out there.  Games are fun.  I'm partial to Jumbline2. Functional apps that help with things I do during any given day like colornote, stopwatch/timer, calculator, buddhify, sattva, allrecipies, and cheftap (to name a few) are all good.  My favorites though are apps that let me capture articles/websites like keep, pocket, feedly and evernote and apps that are news and social media aggregators like flipboard, news360, pulse, digg and mashable.  There are many others in these categories but sometimes I have to tell myself to stop.

My new discovery is Medium.  It's actually not new at all, being developed by the Twitter founders several years ago. And it isn't just an app, but that's how I found it. No idea why I didn't find it sooner!  It's a publishing platform and full of wildly interesting writings.  If you like to write...or read...you must go there.  But set a timer app on your phone.  Otherwise you can get lost in it.

A couple of days ago I read a small article by David Kadavy. (https://medium.com/100-words-about/100-words-about-100-words-4b902d946265#.3jqiqj572) His "what if" challenge was to get as many users as possible to start publishing 100(ish) word stories every day.  Here are my first three.

---

​100 words. Do it quickly. Do it now.

While I’ve seen this concept before, reading it this morning here in medium…https://medium.com/100-words-about by David Kadavy…I thought both “yikes!” and “what fun!” So, here it is: day 1.

I sit in my oversized captain’s chair, like every morning, with coffee and journal, to write. Journal writing every day is easy. It’s how I keep up with my life. Remember details; think about things, evaluate the day’s accomplishments. This last thing is more important to me than it should be. (I write about that too.)
​
It’s the other kind of writing that tries me. Writing for someone else to read. I love writing, but after years of practice, I’m still learning about its discipline. I always want it to be spontaneous and from the heart, so feel intimidated by the days that it isn’t. So the challenge: 100ish words a day for a 100ish days. Go.

---

---

100 words or so, day 2. Listen to the sanity voice and take a nap.
Resting is weak. Just ask the voice in my head. A waste of perfectly good productive time. My to-do lists are long. Make: earrings and necklaces for etsy shop, finish knitting blanket, design new kitchen island top. Write: next blog post, new website text. Do laundry. Go to gym. Learn: this list is infinite. And all of this is surely urgent.
​
Sometimes though, the sanity voice in my head says “oh for god’s sake, just take a nap. It’s Sunday afternoon. Your creative spirit is already asleep, can’t you tell? You’ve been thinking about blog posts and earring designs and what do you have? Nothing! The house is clean (enough). You know you’re not going to the gym. So really…just stop…read, sit and stare, take a bath, or completely end this conversation with me and take a freaking nap.

---

---

100 words (or so is always implied). Day 3. My mantra.
Mantra: late 18th century: Sanskrit, literally ‘a thought’, thought behind speech or action.

Mantra: a group of words in Sanskrit believed by practitioners to have psychological and spiritual powers.

My mantra is this: Create. Sweat. Be kind. Give back. Listen. These words remind me who I am and how I live, at least sometimes, and who I want to be and how I want to live, all the time.
These 7 words became my mantra because they rise to the top of 1) things that I’m passionate about: create and sweat, 2) the things that if all humans did it the world would be a magical place: be kind and give back, and 3) the thing that if I did it better and more often, to both the other people and the Universe, I would be a better person: listen.

I think that my mantra words are powerful because they expose who I think I am and write the meditation of who I want to be at the same time.
​
Share your mantra?

---

I'm going to attempt to write and post on medium, about 100 words a day for about 100 days, I'll re-post them here a few at a time, but treat yourself, wander on over to medium.com and look around...