This is my birthday week and I got an unexpected gift. A little bit of space.
I’m using it to celebrate as much as possible.
I’m celebrating food and drink and time with loved ones.
I’m celebrating change and growth. While they are painful at times, they pave the way for better things. I don’t like shedding my skin, but I am ready for the next phase.
It’s hard to remember to celebrate every day. There often seems nothing so wonderful about an average day. That’s why I’m trying to look at each one as a unique gift I’ve been given and celebrate it accordingly.
I can’t hope to maintain daily celebrations, but I do hope it will change my attitude toward some of the hard things I’m doing right now. I’m practicing “I get to” rather than “I have to” and it has made a difference.
I can’t seem to get past it. I’m supposed to celebrate, though I don’t know how or why. That’s not entirely true.
I have plenty to celebrate, and I’m getting a lot done. I sometimes feel overwhelmed at all I am fielding, but I had to be reminded today that change is good. That’s what we want right now. Still, change can be painful or hard to grasp.
The trick is seeing the joy in the hard parts, and it’s joy that gives us strength for the hard parts.
So I came up with some reasons to celebrate, starting today. Today is the end of Carnival and the beginning of Lent, but it’s also just today. Today is reason enough to celebrate.
If joy gives us strength, then celebration is my new gym membership.
I am trying to make celebration part of every day this month, but at least I will check in every week here.
What are you celebrating this month? I’d love to hear your ideas.
Thank you for the wonderful life I’ve been provided. Help me approach each new day with gratitude and belief. I am beyond blessed and thankful for my blessings.
I am happy where I am, and I want to grow into more. I know growth is painful and learning is uncomfortable, and while I love the life I have, I believe I can handle more. Here are the things I want:
Speak Teach Read Write Coach Help Love
Bring these opportunities to my door and prepare me to see and accept them.
As we celebrate another New Year and new month today, it seems appropriate to also celebrate the things I love. You, my dear, will always be at the top of that list. This will be our tenth year together, and it sometimes seems like yesterday when I first saw you and knew you belonged with me.
We’ve been through three houses, two states, and countless boyfriends over the years, but you are always my number one girl.
I can count on you to be there. To be happy to see me. To show me the unconditional love I often forget to show myself.
Yes! It’s time to announce that LUKE is actually finished…
We’re doing the line-by-line now. Publication is imminent
Curious?
Here’s a blurb:
Luke Lacroix, a once-promising athlete, lives a blissfully mundane life. Content in his solitude, he meets Jenni, a woman who lives a life of boring excess where excitement comes at the expense of others. Jenni and her husband Tim play games with people as their pieces and the world as their board. These two worlds meet in a tragedy of errors and one of them learns a hard lesson.
Introducing LIVING WRITE a real-life guide to getting your writing life on track.
This is the same method I have used and spoken of often. It includes getting up and doing morning pages, scheduling your writing time, and tracking your progress. These are all things you can do on your own, but sometimes it helps to have an accountability partner.
With that in mind, I’m offering three package deals. Let me know in the COMMENTS which sounds best to you:
😍 PDF VERSION: You can download the PDF version of the course and work through it at your own pace. COMMENT “PDF” if you’re interested in this version.
❤️PDF and JOURNAL: For an additional fee, you can get the PDF version plus the daily journal with writing prompts to help you through the course. COMMENT “Journal” if you’re interested in this package
🦹🏻♀️PDF, JOURNAL, & PERSONALIZED COACHING: With this package, you get to take advantage of both the PDF and Journal AND have personalized, one on one coaching from yours truly, up to three sessions. That’s a huge value and by far the best deal. COMMENT “Coach” if this is the package that caught your eye.
Let me know what you think of my new coaching program and what you’re most excited about. Until next week!
If you’re reading this, you’ve got an inside scoop to my new free resources on linseyewing.com. They’re not up yet, so this is the only way to get access to them (or join my email list by clicking that link^)
Here’s a sneak peek at my favorites:
MONTHLY planner/tracker
NO BULL sprint tracker
To get early access, simply CONTACT ME and I’ll email you all or some of my new FREE resources. Don’t forget to COMMENT BELOW…which is your favorite new resource?
WEEKLY writing schedule
Join my LIVE STREAM on YouTube Tuesday nights at 5PM Central.
This month I’m going to delve into my NEW products so you can see what I’m going to be up to this year.
LIVE STREAMS on YouTube are going to be just what they sound like: Live writing (or reading or knitting, or whatever project you’re working on!) sprints to help you stay productive. Look for those
TUESDAYS @ 5PM CENTRAL TIME
I can’t wait to see you there. Keep reading this month to find out about my other projects and don’t forget to comment below!
LOVE is so much easier to give than to receive, at least in my experience. I spent years doubting the LOVE I was given because I lacked an essential component.
Say you have a flower you’d like to pot. First, you have to put dirt in the pot. Better yet, put some gravel down and then put dirt in the pot. If you just plop the plant in the pot, there’s no way it will grow or thrive. It needs nourishment and a stable environment.
That’s self-love for a writer.
We have to fill our pots with self-LOVE before we can expect to nouish anything else. That includes our writing.
I’ve talked about HOPE being the reason we keep writing (because if we don’t HOPE, we’re lost). Now we need to realize that LOVE is the reason we can write in the first place.
LOVE of words
LOVE of writing
LOVE of communication, or a message, or a medium, or whatever…
Without self-love, we might as well be dry-potting plants.
We have to LOVE ourselves as much as we LOVE writing, and I’ll tell you why:
ZERO other people can do what we do
not because writing is hard or because we put in the time or because we’re special.
No.
I mean, yes, all those things, but also, no.
I mean, no one, absolutely no oneelse, writes what you write, how you write it, and for whom you write it.
No one writes like me. No one writes like you.
In order for you to value your work, you must first value the person who created it.
that’s YOU.
This holiday season, LOVE yourself first and see how much more LOVE you have to give others and, yes, your writing.
Easier said than done? No problem. Drop me a line and I’ll help.
As we approach the new year, I HOPE these ADVENT messages for writers have filled you with PEACE and JOY and, of course, a deeper LOVE of writing.
The day we all remember where we were, what we were doing, and how our lives changed.
This generation will likely remember the outbreak of COVID-19.
Think how blessed they are that this event didn’t spark a war. Think how blessed we all are. We are not in conflict with each other, at least not on a global scale. In theory, anyway, we are “all in this together.”
We are living through a time of relative PEACE, and for that, I am supremely grateful.
PEACE is like health in that we don’t notice it so much as we notice its absence. We notice when it is disrupted.
In talking about PEACE, I want to first talk about grief. Events big or small affect us when we lose something or someone.
Those moments can be extra poignant around the holidays.
We go through denial, anger, bargaining, and finally acceptance.
I think PEACE, especially for writers, especially for this time of year, is about accepting what we can and cannot do. Accepting that this time of year is hard, accepting that we may not be as productive as we want to be, accepting that we may want to murder our family members at some point.
Accepting the dark and scary parts of ourselves as well as those filled with light.
Accepting the PEACE offered by other people, by God, by the universe, or whomever. Accepting that all you have to do is accept.
This year, I challenge you to notice and appreciate all the PEACE in your life.
Cultivate PEACE where it is lacking whether that’s a difficult coworker or a disruptive family member. Lend a hand and you will receive one back. Watch and see if it doesn’t happen.
And finally, accept the PEACE you have in your life, offer it to others, and let it surround you.
litewings.ink 