Two Foot in Front of You

Two Foot in Front of You

This is how far I ought to look according to the SO. He said: ‘It’s like mountain biking. You do not look at the mountain. You do not look up the hill you have to cycle up. You look at the two foot in front of you.’

This was part of our dinner conversation when I had a moment of feeling overwhelmed with today’s deadlines. My input filter is broken so everything coming in is as heightened as everything else. So if I do not pay attention and don’t exercise enough my CPU crashes and I become physically ill. The last couple of days I have not paid attention and I seriously miss ‘pumping iron’. There is nothing quite like cold steel across my shoulders. This resulted in a mini meltdown at dinner, and we were talking about how to refocus attention.

So maybe someone else needs this reminder today.

One step at a time. Look at the space right in front of you and focus moving there. Refocus your attention to the immediate, to the now. And breathe. You can do one step. And once you have done one step. You can do another. But first do that one step.

So my one step is usually writing–Just write everything down, emotions, to do lists, events, comments someone made, reflections on incoming information et cetera et infinitum.

I have been engaging in reflexive practice for a long time, and to me reflective writing is an integral and significant part of this, usually using a mix of media. I have physical note books, write poetry on phone apps, with pen and paper or directly into my poetry blog: https://storyfae.blog/. Or I write here, in a mind-map app, or in a word document if it’s writing I am not (yet) ready to share. Maybe it would be better to have writing in one place? What do you do for your reflective writing?

To me it feels the different spaces I write in have different purpose and create a variety of anchor points to hold the meandering mind. Hm … thinking out loud today. I would appreciate to hear what other people do.