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Thanks for these insights, Brooke. I have also been thinking of this practice of taking a deep, deep breath and aiming high, high, high, and then exhaling and just letting it go and dancing on. (Or stumbling, if that happens to be the mood of the day . . . :)

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"Just letting it go and dancing on" I love that Kat! Thank you so much for being here and sharing your thoughts. It means so much 💚💚

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It’s nice to find fellow travel companions.💚🐢

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I’m such a fan of this post, Brooke! I love how you’re exploring the energizing tension between a Big Goal and your intention to follow curiosity and creativity. This sounds like an amazing reframe and I’m excited to hear how your process goes. I get a lot out of gamifying things and find it to be a good way to get started and sprint on a goal, but I need to be able to release my grip on perfection. It sounds like you’re going to have a lovely month!

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Thank you Kate! There's a lot to discover in that tension, I think. It's not always easy to articulate though, so I'm glad it came through. So far so good with the writing, I've hit my goal of a paragraph a day and have found it's almost always more. But it's the lack of pressure that seems to help the most. We're such complicated creatures!! 😆

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Nov 2, 2023Liked by Brooke McAlary

Brooke, where is that stunning second image taken? So beautiful!

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Thanks Susan! It was taken near Thredbo Diggings - a campsite in Kosciuszko National Park. Such a beautiful part of the country. 💚

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I often do challenges (art, writing and photography) to set myself a goal and then work loosely within that. One reason I do challenges is to establish / reestablish a creative practice that I've fallen out of. So I guess I am setting a goal and then relaxing into the boundaries of it. Your point about "trying to re-define what writing can be and coming up with ways of both broadening the definition and shrinking our expectations" is so important, and I believe we need to do it for everything that we label ourselves with, so that we can expand those definitions and make them work for us. Thank you for sharing this with us.

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Yes Debs! I really find myself curious about what happens in the grey of things. It's great to have a goal, and I count myself lucky to not ever really feel beholden to the outcome, but at the same time recognise that a challenge is good for me. Not only to push my boundaries, but to learn different ways of existing in that challenge. I'm a huge fan of the idea of experimentation too, it somehow feels freer than goal-setting while letting me go as wild as I want to. It's such a trip to reframe this stuff over and over - I can't believe how much there still is to learn about how my brain works 😆😆

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It is so cool to keep reframing isn't it? As we change and grow, and as circumstances change, we need to keep making sure that how we define ourselves works for who we are now.

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LOVED reading about your writing process - cheering you on!! ✨✍️

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Thank you Claire! So far it's going well. 💚

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