Presence

I’ve been thinking a lot about presence lately. With so much going on in life we often need this reminder. We miss so much by being preoccupied with the future or the past. We have to live in the moment, soak it all in, and enjoy the now.

It would be impossible to practice this every moment of every day. Especially for me since I really like having a plan and being organized, but I can totally go with the flow too & I love surprises.

These weeks have been getting away from me lately. One day it’s Monday and I feel like its taking forever, but then before I know it, it’s Thursday and I’ve barely gotten done what I needed to.

I’m sure that happens to most of us, especially if we are busy, or parents with kids that are involved in sports and things. The analogy above came to mind while I was sitting at my two daughters’ softball game. They both played awesomely by the way…Hahaha!  There have been times when I wasn’t onw hundred percent present during their games and wished that I had been.

So, how do we practice being more mindful and present in our every day life? We pay attention. It sounds pretty simple, but it’s not. We get so used to thinking ahead, or behind us that we forget that we drank an entire cup of coffee, or drove to work for that matter. How many times while you’re driving do you reach your destination and realize you don’t remember anything from the drive there? I’ve done it countless times. You can chalk that up to there not being anything that stood out to you to grab your attention, or it could just be that  you weren’t paying close enough attention to see anything worth while.

It could be a mom going for a walk with her toddler, holding his little hand while he bends down to pick a dandelion for her. I know that would bring a smile to my face. There are so many little moments of joy that we miss out on because we aren’t paying attention.

When we focus on something then more of the same will come into our lives. So focusing on joy will bring more joy. However, even the bad moments in life should be felt & paid attention to. We must feel it all or we won’t be able to move past it. We must move past it. We cannot stay stuck in the past. There can be no forward momentum in our life if we are only looking behind us.

An update on my goal to stop doing research and just sit and write… the part where I stop doing research is going well. I’ve not been so obsessed with the research of marketing, formatting, book covers, and editing. I have not had as much time to just sit and write as I’d like though. I had an awesome day last week where I wrote over 1,400 words – it felt amazing. I wish every day could be like that. I also extended my total word count to 150,000. I’m figuring three books for the series around two hundred pages each or fifty thousand words. We’ll see once everything is said and done, but it’s a good goal for now. I like the idea of having them all written and ready to be released within a short time frame of one another. I, as a reader, always hate waiting for the next book in a series to come out and I wouldn’t want to do that to my readers.

I hope you all have an amazing weekend!! Be present, mindful, and just take it all in!!

Much Love,

J.S. Wik

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