It is all too easy to put undue pressure on ourselves and criticize how we use our time. We rush from this to that. We call ourselves “lazy” when we “waste time doing nothing.” We don’t have “enough” time or we have too much. We regret past uses of time— time spent worrying about things beyond our control, time “lost” doing something we didn’t love, or endless obsession over “does he/she love me?” We are trained as a society to “use time wisely” and constantly reminded that time is money, time is short, time is… ultimately ours to shape and use.
It is okay not to know how we want to spend our time at first. We abruptly have more than enough time to pursue our creativity, but that doesn’t necessarily make it easy. In fact, it is at this time— when we have time— that we must be most gentle with ourselves. There is no need to be perfect. It is important to simply take one step after the next and trust that we are led. One of the most powerful things we can do is seek to put structure into our days. Morning Pages are the first step toward building a creative life. Done daily, they create a gentle structure. Daily and cumulatively, they suggest direction, and soon we find ourselves not only doing Morning Pages, but doing what those pages suggest.
