daily motivation Archives - Writing From The Kitchen

Writers Create – Air Plants Breathe

April 30, 2019April 30, 2019by Erika K Rothwell6 Comments

I was where you are once, staring at a blank piece of paper or an empty screen. If I were to be completely transparent, I would admit to still being there at times. So I want you to know what I have discovered while examining the life of a tiny air plant.

Fascination with the botanical world incites my inspiration and motivates my writing this morning. My air plant needed water today. Following instructions given to me, I completely immersed it in water for its bi-monthly drink of water.

This amazing little plant uses air to thrive, not soil, as so many other plants do. I feel this plant. Often, I attempt to put down roots in projects that focus my efforts. Yet whims and fancies pull my attention in other directions, forcing me to recognize my obvious need for air and authenticity more than soil. This airy approach to life satisfies my soul and allows me to thrive. However, a deep ingestion of life-giving water and refreshment is needed to ground my flittering thought process.

Taking the form of deep reflection, my time is spent turning inward, absorbing the results of a meditative process as it nourishes my dreams. The very dreams that propel projects forward in a style that I have come to accept in myself.

While I am not advocating this fragmented approach to production, I am supportive of you finding your own creative style and learning to work within your set of needs. Your story is most likely quite different than me, so it goes to say the structure of your day will look slightly different as well.

The desire for connection eventually culminates in creative action. To spend our days in the sweet spot of inspiration while only drafting artistic expression remains a stagnant dream that will eventually dry up. It is not enough to get a creative job done. We must share our gifts with others.

So if you are like me, find your sweet spot and hydrate. But at the point of saturation, take a step forward and breathe the air, put your pen to paper and simply write.

Connect and Create.

©Erika K Rothwell

hope, inspiration

Hope – Path of Inspiration – Day 29

January 30, 2019by Erika K RothwellLeave a Comment

When inspiration takes you down side roads for a meandering moment, space is opened between what must be done and what is possible. Traveling along the road of life reminds me that we often focus on an endpoint while forgetting to make time for inspiration along the way. Why are we always in such a hurry? Do we actually ever arrive in life?

In a hurried life, paths we choose may not allow time for whimsical detours or perceived frivolities. Likewise, when we travel, our planned arrival time typically sets in motion the fastest and most efficient route to our destination.

I still mourn a missed opportunity during my last road trip to stop for a moment, to capture a “photograph to be” calling to me, once the goal of arriving took over as the priority.

Remember when time seemed to last forever. You didn’t count the minutes or the hours because you didn’t know they even existed. Your days were filled with adventure, entertaining inspiration, while learning and growing.

At what point did we allow a clock to determine our life’s path? When did our accomplishments become measured between numbers and our purpose quantified by a dictated plan on a to-do list?

Once inspiration is lost, motivation fades and energy wanes.

Productivity is a sum of variables and can be looked upon as so much more than a completed checklist of tasks. So, I remind myself to take the time to savor the joys of inspiration. Without it, life seems drab and daily motions become robotic.

Our life may indeed hold a hidden algorithm, but we can always input new variables.

Look around you and sense your current environment. We were meant to do more than simply survive, we were meant to use our senses and dream of possibilities. Anything is possible especially when time is not dictating what is possible. Inspiration changes the clock.

As we head toward a planned destination, the joy of inspiration will expand the frame along the way.

The stars come out every night, but our view of those stars changes with our perspective. On days of hurry or disinterest, we miss them completely. On nights where gloom clouds their view, they may not appear at all. When we make the time to see them, we know the plan is so much bigger than what exists in the 24 hours we are given each day.

Hope lives in the inspiration of living life to its fullest, when we remember to smell the flowers, listen to our hearts, take the pictures, and gaze at the stars.

Take some time to meander down the path of inspiration.

-Erika K Rothwell

courage, encouragement, hope

Hope – The Fuel of Courage

January 19, 2019January 23, 2019by Erika K Rothwell2 Comments

“And one has to understand that braveness is not the absence of fear, but rather the strength to keep on going forward despite the fear.” — Paulo Coelho

Slowly, I trudge on. Fear tries to stop me in my tracks. When I speak of fear, it’s not panic or fright dreading something horrible. Rather, an uneasiness that lightly gnaws at my confidence causing me to believe that perhaps I may be a little too bold to tread in a world of unknown outcomes with only hope in my backpack.

My writing has grown from the seeds of momentary epiphanies to an appreciation so great, I desire to encourage and inspire with insight. This monumental endeavor creates small episodic heart flutters and vague insecurity. From a past of seeking accomplishment for recognition, my concern is remaining authentic on all levels.

Yes, we all write what we know, but some days I feel I just don’t know.

This unknowing creates a stumbling block that could potentially grow into a mountain. It is here where I seek to encourage myself with words of resilience and put fear where it belongs, buried by hope. And so, I have reset courage and continue my journey.

– Erika K Rothwell

encouragement, hope

Hope Lives in Us – Day 10

January 11, 2019January 12, 2019by Erika K Rothwell5 Comments

I woke up day number 10 of the year 2019 to this view out my window.

Hope is a breath of fresh air. A long deep breath I so often forget to take as I allow the shallow breaths of time starvation and self-protective adrenaline to overwhelm my day.

The meditation I focus on is “Each day has its own sufficient amount of concern”. If I magnify the effects of carrying my baggage of worry to the next day, I exponentially escalate negativity causing a snowball effect that only hope can melt.

That glimmer of hope lives within all of us. A bright sunbeam of faith at times only barely sensed or an internal nudge toward a positive belief.

I am reminded, “Choose to breathe in or tune in to to the message of hope.” Sometimes it requires a quiet moment to focus on our breath, at other times we may need to turn up the volume to drown out our negative self-talk.

Either way, we can all light up each new day with hopeful anticipation of that great something that is about to happen, within the world of possibility, as we are granted another sunrise.

As light powerfully destroys darkness, hope breathes life into despair with its promise.

Erika K Rothwell

hope

Hope is Regenerative – Day 8

January 9, 2019January 9, 2019by Erika K Rothwell10 Comments

My apologies for posting a little late. My mom, our Bubby, had a total knee replacement operation and it took the good part of a day to focus on regenerative hope.

Hope is regenerative. Our bodies breakdown from the stress of life and a destined aging process. Our choices can seem futile and our dreams fade with the daylight hours.

Yet, through the example of three amazing human beings, I feel the power of hope surrounding me at the end of this day.

Regenerative hope moved my son to run 22 plus miles through the darkness of negativism after it struck his equilibrium of contentment and drove him to push his physical body to the breaking point as he made it to the other side…positivity, cleansed by exhaustion.

The belief in a better quality of life motivated my mother to overcome her fears, focus on optimism and go through a knee reconstruction surgery in her 80th year of life on this very same day.

I was left in the dust. Yes, I’m focusing on hope this year. However, I was challenged by fear. I lost my father two years ago after surgery. The circumstances were very different, yet the memory is raw and ignited the core of helplessness when you watch your “as is” slip away into an “as was”.

My father “lives” with all of us in our stubborn resolves to not only survive but excel in this life as we continually strive to better ourselves. His ongoing search for the fountain of youth points to the regenerative quality of hope. And as I viewed my mother, his wife, today after difficult reconstructive surgery, I saw evidence of that fountain, as her contagious smile of victory and proof that hope is regenerative lit up the room.

-Erika K Rothwell