Seeking Time: Begin Again

I said recently that back during the fourteen years that I was writing about time regularly, "I was
hungry for ways to get things done and sometimes even finding a few." 

One of my favorite fews is begin again.

Yes, Begin Again Comes from Meditation, Not Time Management

Begin Again is a concept from meditation. In Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics authors Dan Harris, Jeff Warren, and Carlyle Adler describe beginning again as the most important step in meditation. "The whole game is to notice when you're distracted, and begin again. And again. And again." Kelly McGonigal says In The Willpower Instinct that having to keep bringing your wandering mind back to your breath (beginning again) while meditating develops the brain. 

In my dabbling in meditation I have never seen begin again used as anything but a positive. 

That's Right. We've Done Nothing Wrong

I consider beginning again on a par with the writing advice to keep your butt-in-chair or write every day. The main difference is that beginning again doesn't involve guilt. Butt-in-chair and write every day carry with them a sense of othering. "Keeping your butt in a chair is what we writers do." "To be a writer, you have to write every day." 

But, remember, most of us are the kinds of writers who can't support ourselves with our writing. We've got a day job to keep us alive. For many of us, there are kids, sick relatives, moves to be made, newly diagnosed illness, depression over our lousy careers, existential dread...Those things are all going to happen and keep us, at least at times, from keeping those butts in chairs and writing every day. Kelly McGonigal has said (again In The Willpower Instinct) that self-criticism undermines motivation and self-control, leading us to give in, to give up. Feeling we are less than because we're being judged for not being able to live like writers are supposed to live is unlikely to be a positive for us.

Beginning again can be. We can get past those life issues or find a way to deal with them and then we can begin again.   

You Can Look Forward to Beginning Again

When we've done the begin again thing a few times, we find ourselves looking forward to it. Maybe it's because beginning again means whatever was standing in the way of our writing is over or we're managing it now. Maybe it's because we like sitting at our laptop in whatever passes as our workspace and know we'll enjoy getting back there again. Maybe it's because we're writers, and writers like nothing better than being able to begin writing again.

To paraphrase Dan Harris and company, "The whole game is to begin again. And again. And again."