65-A Writer's Seafaring Journey To Awareness

I also saw something that I know to be true. Sometimes with the disconnecting from the people who are normally in our day-to-day lives that makes the space for us to reach out to someone new. A void that allows us to fill it with the unknown.

For many of the students, it was truly an expansion of their comfort zone. They weren’t traveling with anyone they actually knew. Solo travelers on a joint quest to unlock their most hidden talents and dreams… writing. It took an even stronger will and commitment for these writers to show up on a trip where they didn’t have a friend or family member to lean on. For these individuals, their journey to self started the minute they made the decision to come on this trip alone/solo. It was their belief that their dreams deserved to be honored that empowered them to book this event.

This particular trip was quite the adventure for all of us. It was the first travel for many of the group since BC- before Covid. The ship had protocols in place to make everyone stay safe. Our entire group was vaccinated and Covid tested before we could board. Actually, the whole ship was except the children aboard. There wasn’t a question that it took time to shed the fear to stand next to someone, or talk to them without a mask on, to sit in a classroom and just breathe. As the days progressed the obvious care that the ship took to keep everyone safe caused this beautiful thing I call a peeling of the onion. I watched everyone slowly find comfort in their surroundings. I watched them start to enjoy the ship. And with that came the connections to each other. I watched the nerves fade away and the creativity start bursting out from all of them. I watched the seasoned travelers who had taken previous Writing Excuses cruises gently lead their fellow newbies to find comfort in everything from the classes to the ship. They too did it with no egos, just a desire to be there for their fellow writers.

I believe this all could happen because the Group Leaders, the Instructors had given them a safe haven to ask questions, not be perfect, expand their capabilities with no judgment, and more importantly they welcomed them with the most genuine warm smiles every time they met. I witnessed how the instructors left their egos aside to share the wisdom and the passion they had for and about writing. And the beauty was they made it clear that just because they are saying something doesn’t mean it’s necessarily true. I watched as the instructor's own perceptions about writing grew from their interactions with the students. There is something freeing that comes from remembering that even those teachers around us that we think are bigger or better or more accomplished than we are, are also on their own journey. And it may be that today you teach them something about themselves.

On this cruise, the Writing Excuses Instructors, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Erin Roberts, and DongWong Song made space for each student's own creativity to be sparked. And they let them all know that they too, were once newbies. And even though this group was made up of students… they were more than that…they were WRITERS!

It’s funny when you are given permission from others to be exactly where you are in life. Permission to not judge yourself but still open your consciousness for growth. In a perfect world, we should all be like this every day without permission from someone else. But we fight these voices in our heads. The ones that tell us we are not good enough. The ones that compare ourselves to others. The ones that squash our own dreams because that critical voice in our heads is louder than the nurturing one. When I talk in my other podcast episodes about being in the present this is exactly where present-based thinking helps most. It is acknowledging where I am today and that it took a helluva lot of living to get here. And I am grateful for every lesson that taught me along the way. And I love myself for surviving them. And today I am grateful for just being here. And today with gratitude and honoring my self I will learn the lessons that today brings me with no judgment. I will embrace today exactly how I woke up! You know that morning innocence where we open our eyes and see the morning light and then remember that it’s a new day.

We are all struggling with that even more in these Covid times. Because there is a weird feeling of Groundhog day. So it is even more important for us to wake up and see that the light is different outside today and my body feels different today and the opportunities I give myself today can be…if I let it… totally different than yesterday!

In one of the discussions, I heard a few of the writers say that they had loved the beginning of lockdown because they had written so much. Then as time went by they just stopped. They didn’t know why. It wasn’t writer’s block it was a lack of motivation. And the choice to come on this cruise was their first step to