Presence

Dear Creator,

Before we do anything else, let's pause long enough to arrive.

If you're anything like me, your mind probably showed up before the rest of you did. Maybe it's already scanning ahead, wondering what's coming, how this will work, or whether you're doing it right. That's okay. That's human. Presence doesn't ask you to be ready. It only asks you to be here.

Most of us spend a surprising amount of our lives slightly absent. We move from one thing to the next while our attention is somewhere ahead of us, behind us, or buried inside whatever is loudest in our heads. I know this because my own brain has spent a great deal of its life trying to arrive at tomorrow before my body has finished today.

There is a particular feeling that tells me I've drifted away from myself. Life starts to feel slightly distant, like I'm managing my days instead of inhabiting them. My creativity starts skimming along the surface of my life instead of coming from somewhere inside it.

Presence is how I return. It isn't a test of how calm, focused, spiritual, or evolved you can become. I think of it more like a relationship with your own life. You wander. You notice. You come back. Then you wander again.

So if you've felt scattered, overthought, creatively flat, or like you've been escaping your life more than living it, begin here. You don't need better ideas yet. Let's make a little room for the one who receives them.

Creatively yours,
Ansley