💚 When one foot is outside the door

Email Read Time: 55 seconds
Pause/Prompt/Practice Time: 15 minutes

Announcements:

—This week’s Daily Nourishment Pauses, Prompts, and Practices are new contributions from Erik Fuhrer. (Thanks, Erik!)

—And, Erik will be featured in February during the Thoughtful Readers Gatherings TSAB Series. Learn more here.

—Join us for our Online Christmastide Retreat on Wednesday, 12/27, and/or Monday, 1/1. Both retreats are identical. Anyone who registers can attend one retreat or both at no additional cost. Learn more and register here. (SDW Members: You get half off!)

—New: Most mother writers wish they had more time to write and fewer interruptions when they are finally able to steal a corner of their day or night for some creative work. Spiritual Direction for Writers® invites you and a guest to honor the struggles, joys, and all of the familiar complexities for those who hold space for these two roles with our Online Seminar for Moms Who Write.

We are thrilled to have Seminar Sessions led by Catherine Ricketts, Tanya Davis, Jamie Quatro, and Marlena Graves.

We’re in this together, so every purchase includes registration for two people. All are welcome. Learn more and register here.

—A new Thoughtful Books Etc. + Five Good Things went out yesterday!

—Thanks so much for subscribing to SDW Daily Nourishment!

“It sure is hard
to dance across
the room when you’ve got
one foot on the floor
and one foot
outside the door”
-Laura Veirs, “Little Deschutes”

Pause.

Listen to Laura Veirs’ “Little Deschutes” at least one time.

Prompt.

Focus on the space around you. Observe how your body feels where you are (are you sitting/standing? what else?).

Observe some of the objects closest to you. What do they look like? Feel like? Do they remind you of anyone? If so, who? What is their relationship to the room? To you?

Freewrite for at least five minutes. Alternatively, you may make a list, a word cloud, or draw pictures. The main goal is to get your observations about the room and your feelings on the page.

Practice.

Read over what you wrote/drew. Did these last five minutes of close observation change how you felt about the space you were in? Why or why not? Did it teach you anything new about the space? If so, what?

Write about what you learned for about three minutes.

Return to this space at least once more today. Try sitting/standing in a slightly different area. Note your observations in your journal.

Want More?
Read about 10 techniques for Mindful Writing.

Erik Fuhrer

Erik Fuhrer is the author of the forthcoming play The Ocean and its Movers (Free Lines Press, 2023), poetry collection Gellar Studies (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023), and memoir, My Buffed Up Life (SD, 2024). They are the author of six other poetry collections and hold a PhD from The University of Glasgow. Learn more at erik-fuhrer.com and follow Erik on Instagram at @erikjfuhrer

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