Set a timer for five minutes

and pick up a pencil

or a pen

or start typing.

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This is an exercise I love to do when I need to get something going and the writing juices flowing.

I have many household timers lying around — they’re a must around here for many reasons (you have a timer on your phone, I bet), but I like to use them to challenge myself to get something done. For instance — I will give myself ten minutes to deal with emails. If I know I have only ten minutes, I won’t mess around — I’ll deal with what needs dealing with and delete the bunch of mess I know I won’t ever take time to read, the bunch of mess I know I won’t ever order despite the coupon code staring me in the face, or the bunch of mess to which I simply object for whatever reason.

But using a timer is also a great way to spark creativity. I’ll often set one when I need to get ideas for a certain thing out of my head and down on a document or outline of some sort. It’s also great for letting the words flow from your brain through your fingers.

Set a timer for five minutes and start writing.

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Here’s mine:

I lift my eyes from this screen and the first thing they land on is Arthur, the goat’s head lamp. Or is it a ram? I don’t know, I just saw it on ebay and liked it so I placed a bid. He is white, quite large, and came with no shade. I found one in black that cost almost as much as he did but that’s the thing about chasing down a thing and sometimes getting what you think is a bargain — you end up spending more sprucing it up than you would have if you’d found the whole thing shiny and new and in a box that was specified for it to be shipped in — you know, one of those purpose built boxes with the padding that fits just so. If I remember correctly, Arthur (I don’t know why I named him Arthur, it just fit. He has authority.) came in a box filled with those hateful packing peanuts. I can’t stand packing peanuts. I try to dump them all into a garbage sack from the box they rattle around in without dropping any — if I do it’s as if I’ve failed some sort of neatness test and I get frustrated. The things I do to myself. The tasks I hang on my poor brain. The idiot shit I make up to challenge myself with. I guess I really am out to prove that I’m worthless. I go looking for all the ways in which I am. Good Lord, are any of us okay? We do the mediations, we pray the prayers, we try to be kind and good and do our good deeds but most of us, okay I can only speak for myself here, torture ourselves to death in ways that we wouldn’t dream of torturing another person.

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Y’all have fun with it. Hope you had a happy Tuesday.

AM