Let’s Look Inside
And a peek inside to see the “guts.” Sorry to use the word “guts.” And Now A Word from your Friendly Neighborhood Life Coach:
BUT EVEN THE TERM “FANATIC” used in the same sentence as “TIME” can imply that I am one of those people scheduled down to the last microsecond. I have swaths of time for staring into space, lying on my back in the garden, sniffing the flowers at Whole Foods, reading dumb overcirculated internet jokes from friends from college with whom I haven’t communicated otherwise in twelve years. (And no, I don’t always schedule it in.) Time is the currency of life. Time is life. “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” asks the poet Mary Oliver. What indeed. My parents’ motto (embossed on their scotch glass, naturally) is “Do It Now.” This simple precept is actually incredibly helpful if you put it into action, especially if you are an artist or musician or writer of any kind. Have an idea? Write it down right away, sketch it out or sing it into the telephone answering system, lest you lose the flotsam and jetsam of genius that surely circulates in your orbit. Suddenly remember you need to call the plumber? Do it now before you forget. Think of telling your boyfriend that he looks great in the afternoon sunlight? What are you waiting for? This moment is the exact right time to tell him this!
As an artist, This goes along with my premise that an artist is one part almost preverbal tantrum-throwing wild child So: to wit, I work hard to make sure the adult side of me is creating the absolute best environment for the child side of me. This Day Planner is called Life Composition for a reason. In order for you to make your best idea of yourself the reality of yourself — or, to paraphrase Laverne & Shirley’s theme song, to “make all your dreams come true” by doing it your way, you need to actually, well, do what you set out to do. You need to become a Life Composer and not just the fiddler in the back row.
Any planner or organizing software is a vehicle for you to go where you want to go. As the great Buddhist monk and poet Thich Nhat Hanh writes,
Before starting the car,
I know where I am going. You get to go as fast as you want on this journey — that’s always the truth whether you acknowledge it or not. And if you use a desktop organizer, a Palm Pilot or some other kind of software for organizing your time, you will in fact save time. Most people type faster than they write, and certainly scheduling is much more efficient when it’s computerized than when we laboriously handwrite “guitar lesson” into every 4pm Wednesday slot in our paper calendar. But may I suggest (thanks, because I just did) that you will be enriched by the process of doing just this: putting (colored) pen to (lovely) paper and going over the weeks and months sensuously, taking some time every week to manipulate (man - being the Latin for “hand”) your schedule? In the busyness that is 21st Century life, slowing down might be the closest we get to that state of stillness where we can hear our own heartbeat, or as some of us like to say, hear the voice of God. Wait a Minute, Mr. Postman
Two: After you’ve filled out the menu card, and after I get it, I will send you back your very own daily pages. These consist of a daily check-in and a daily calendar. YOU get to design your own check-in, though I offer you some ideas as to what you might what to check-in about. (Sorry, to quote Winston Churchill, refusing to end a sentence with a preposition is something “up with which I will not put.”)
Three: Wait impatiently for your pages to arrive in the mail. Check your mailbox three times a day and nag your mailperson. If all goes according to plan, and the USPS hasn’t been invaded by the Borg or Homeland Security, they’ll arrive within a week. Four: The pages face each other in a 3-ring binder.
The
check-in will be on the left, and the calendar will be on the right. The check-in will be based on what you wrote, so for example, if you are an artist and want the Version for Artists & Five: I encourage you to fill out a week’s worth of calendar pages (the ones on the right) at a time, so you have a sense at the beginning of the week how much you have to do. The check-in pages (the ones on the left) should be done at night before you go to bed. The last item on the check-in pages (no matter which system you choose) is a commitment for the next day, for example: “I commit to practice my guitar for fifteen minutes tomorrow.” Then you sign your name in blood. Just kidding about the blood.
(Like, for example, when I suggest you go plant a wildflower garden in your back yard. If you don’t have a backyard, plant a Stealth Garden in your neighbor’s yard or in the park.) Sometimes all you’ll need is a pen and paper to do some writing in the pretty journal pages. Sometimes all you’ll need is love.
Seven: Once a month, you will receive an mp3 or essay online; it will be me reading a piece that will motivate you to become a fully actualized Llama of Fabulosity, or maybe it’ll just be me reading something that struck me as interesting and will, it is to be hoped, strike you that way too. Eight: The term “fully actualized” makes my skin crawl. I encourage you to use it often to see if others have a similar reaction. Ten: Join the online community of Life Composers and gossip about Bonnie and me. There will be lots of other goodies. |
In the Life Composition Creative Day Planner, you get a number of different tools to help you organize your days and weeks and months. The best part is, you get to design it. Starting with the menu, which you will find in a pocket on the front cover. 
You fill out the brief questionnaire and mail it to Nerissa who will then create a set of daily pages for you. She will email your personalized check-in pages and daily schedule pages (with 365 inspirational quotations) in either MS Word or PDF, depending on your preference. 
It’s up to you to print these out, and we encourage you to print just one or two weeks at a time. Print on 3-ring binder paper; the check-ins on one side, then flip the paper over in your printer and print the other side with the daily schedule pages. For an additional fee, we will do this for you!
You will get your own deck of weekly exercise cards, which are punched so that you can insert them into the Day Planner and use as a bookmark: 
Although I don’t like the term “time management,” I am fanatic about time consciousness. “Time management” implies we have some control over our time. Well, OK, of course in a sense, we do, and obviously I must think so if I’m trying to sell you a Day Planner. But in truth, no one can really manage time. We can schedule with the best of intentions, but as John Lennon says, life happens to us while we’re busy making other plans. We intend to go for our morning run every day at 7am, but sometimes we have a cold, and to run in December with a howling sore throat is about the worst activity we could choose. We intend to meet “Amy for lunch” as our own handwriting instructs in the Monday 11:30am slot of our Day Planner, but at quarter of, Amy calls to say she’s stuck in a meeting. Thus, “time consciousness. “ When we are conscious of our time, we are awake to truth about life: that unless Ramtha is for real or there’s more out there than meets the eye, we can only count on one of them (lives, that is.) That our minutes really are precious; that if we want to do certain things before life passes on by, now is the only moment we have to do them.
I have found time management a vital skill to develop precisely because, counter intuitively, in order for me to be creative and productive, I need to create the illusion of No Time when I am working. As anyone who has ever had a creative inspiration knows, inspiration can come at lightning speed; a great poem, song, idea for a painting, plot for a novel, can come in a matter of seconds. Most of the songs I’ve written have been 90% complete in a period of 45 minutes. Nevertheless, as Edison famously said, “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”
and one part cagey, calculating adult. 
The work, as I see it, is to unite these two, to let the adult support the child and help to make a space for the child to create, and in turn for the child to trust that the adult is on the child’s side, will support the child and thus feel safe with the adult. 
And that means I make sure that
there is time scheduled every day for creation. 
OK, you say. I am sold. I like the looks of this book. It’s pretty and also heavy. It makes me feel grounded. What do I do now? 
One:
Writers, there will be daily questions about your practicing schedule, your writing schedule and an emotional check-in to see how you are doing. The calendar pages are for you to fill in with your life’s events andactivities: meetings, practice times, your actual job if you have one, which I hope you do because it’s nice
to have an income. 
Nine:
