The thing about trying to write every day is you're forced to really pay attention to your thoughts, which on some days, can be quite sparse and uninteresting.

Thoughts I've had so far by 8.30am: 

• can I sleep a little longer
• could I call in sick? No Elle, you're paying extortionate amounts of money to be here, show up. 
• 90% of people on the bus are on their phones
• crap I stood on that woman's foot
• ooh the sun is pretty
• cool, a yellow school bus
• is this bus going to be this packed every single day for the next four months
• I need to go back to my meditation practice
• crap I don't have my bookbinding toolkit yet
• book making is expensive
• what song will I sing at karaoke tonight? 
• have I done Valerie too many times? 

Those are my pre-coffee thoughts. Post-coffee thoughts are a lot more ping-pong like. 

What's your relationship with your thoughts? Are they random? Positive? Negative? Judgemental? Wishful? Observa..tory? (is that a word?) 

Do you try and escape from your thoughts or can you sit with them? 

Humans nowadays spend very little time alone with their thoughts. When was the last time you went on a really long walk without any headphones for music or technology in your pocket? 

When I was walking the Camino de Santiago, I purposely tried to do the majority of it with my thoughts. There was a couple days when my energy was quite low and listening to music gave me the burst I needed to keep going. 

I'm craving another thru hike. I miss the silence, saying hello to every stream I crossed, sitting on hill tops, looking back at the mountains I walked and feeling like I really knew and understood them. A 400km walk will give you lots of opportunities to really experience your own company, see your own strength, of body and mind.

Something that is a lot harder than walking 400km though, is finding ways to carve out time in busy life to sit with your thoughts, to meditate, to go on a no phone walk in the calm of nature- that one is particularly hard if you live in a city. It's all so worth it though. It's moments like these that I have been missing recently and trying to figure out how to balance amongst all of the 'necessary' busyness. 

That bookmaking class that I mentioned a couple posts ago, the one I mentioned potentially dropping.. I LOVE it.

Today we made two books with different binding methods. We learned about Arion Press, the only publisher in the United States to make books entirely by hand. The process had me spellbound.

I'm really excited to be learning more analogue methods. To be embracing a slower practice, in line with how I want to live my life.

My books are still a little wonky.. but that's okay, I kind of love them like that :) 

I do plan to keep practicing to make them a bit less wonky and when I am back doing markets at home, you can expect to find some hand made books at my stall.