people.

I told you awhile ago about how much I love sharing. It always feels so special to me to know that someone else has thought of me. Likewise, it makes me happy to let others know that I thought of them.

I keep lots of files in Evernote of things to watch, things to read, things to listen to. When someone shares something with me, I quickly file it away until I have time to go back and really look at it. So the case with The Underground New York Public Library. My dad forwarded me the link months ago - last summer, I think. I filed it away and somehow it slipped to the bottom of the pile. I was clearing through some of the files last night and found it.

I'm just blown away - it's an incredible visual blog filled with candid pictures of people who are reading on the subway. I couldn't stop looking at it last night.

Here's what I think: people have interesting lives. Every single person. Rich or poor, happy or sad, connected or lonely. There's always something beneath the surface. There's always some history that you don't know. There's always an experience that tells a story.

I love people watching because I crave their stories. We all have stories - that's one thing we have in common.

I've been having a hard time writing lately. Can I make an honest confession? I've been watching TV for an hour most nights. I don't know how I slipped into it, but I've become very aware of the almost drug-like feeling induced by gluing your eyeballs to the screen. It's such an easy way to shut your brain down, especially if you can convince yourself that you deserve it because you've been working hard all day (this is what I convince myself). Well, I'm saying it out loud because I would like it to not become a habit.

It's interesting, isn't it? The judgments we pass, the choices we make, the ways we change and change again.

I haven't been writing 10 minutes a day lately, at least not freewriting. As always, no excuses - at least not ones any of us are interested in hearing.

Sometimes when I know I need to work out, but don't feel like it, I ease my way into it. I tell myself I just have to put on my gym clothes. Then once they're on, I tell myself I only have to work out for five minutes. You get the idea. Once I trick myself into starting, I always feel like continuing.

I've decided to test out a new writing rule this week. Here it is: I just have to sit at my desk for 10 minutes a day (without a computer, obviously). The only assigned task is to sit there - I can write or I can think or I can draw or I can watch a candle flicker. I'm trying out incubation time (I think that's what it is?) just for this week. I'm just curious what I'll actually do when I sit down at the desk without any rules. Maybe I'll start to write?

I haven't sorted out my way yet. And I imagine that my way will change. The way I write now will not be the way I write in five years or ten years. There's some reinvention that must come into the task over and over again. It's unnerving, but it also makes for some excitement. Make a new way. Not better or worse, just new.