Thoughts: Living a Small Life in a Big Way

My siblings and colleagues are horrified that I do not have my own car and I do not have a cell phone and I do not eat out all the time, shop at thrift stores and I do not travel. And I live in a sketchy neighborhood. The public library (and Y swimming pool) are essentially my churches.

I live a small life in a big way.

Maybe there's a middle way. Like the Buddhist concept.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Way

Sometimes like Anne Lamott advises in Bird by Bird--- you take a few notes to keep your hand from getting arthritic... and call it a day. Go fill up on the world.

We have all been there, and it feels like end of the world. It’s like a little chickadee being hit by an H-bomb. Here’s the thing, though, I no longer think of it as block. I think that is looking at the problem from the wrong angle. If your wife locks you out of the house, you don’t have a problem with your door.
The word block suggests that you are constipated or stuck, when the truth is that you’re empty. - Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird p177

I just reread this.
https://ideas.ted.com/14-writing-tips-from-beloved-teacher-anne-lamott/

I think May Sarton had a quote poetry is given prose is earned.

Why is it that poetry always seems to me so much more a true work of the soul than prose? I never feel elated after writing a page of prose, though I have written good things on concentrated will, and at least in a novel the imagination is fully engaged. Perhaps it is that prose is earned and poetry is given. Both can be revised almost indefinitely. I do not mean to say that I do not work at poetry. When I am really inspired I can put a poem through a hundred drafts and keep my excitement. But this sustained battle is possible only when I am in a state of grace, when the deep channels are open, and when they are, when I am both profoundly stirred and balanced, then poetry comes as a gift from powers beyond my will.
-May Sarton, Journal of A Solitude, pg 40-41

“I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged, damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room.”
― May Sarton