Back to Blog/Back to Boston

Seems I have been cheating on this blog with my MelissaClarkWrites website. But now that it's up and running, the affair is over and I'm back to this blog.

Emerson Building on Boylston

I had a soulful and active trip to Boston last week. It helps that my friend is a professor at my Alma Mater, Emerson College. She was able to negotiate a speaking engagement for me -- on writing and creativity. It was really fun preparing it, and even more fun delivering it. The current Emerson students are still very creative and ambitious. I loved meeting with various kids to talk about life after Emerson. I was interviewed by a bunch of them, and then filmed for a documentary. I believe when I was there the school was about 2,500 people, but it has now swelled to over 6,000. To add to the fun, thanks to Fbook, I connected with a bunch of friends from my past who were able to come to the talk as well. I can't express the joy I felt at seeing everyone - Andrea, from elementary school (she claims I marched right up to her on the first day of school, introduced myself and invited her over to play. Was I that bold as a child? I remember myself as a super shy kid - like, painfully so), Julie from my first college, Liz, from college, and Margaret from graduate school. And of course, Miranda, who hosted me and organized the whole event.

Had a blast later in the week, visiting the studios of WGBH and meeting Marco Werman, host of The World (Produced by friend Andrea Crossan), eating a great meal with Miranda at Alden & Harlow, discovering a fantastic art show at a gallery at Harvard, breakfasting with old friend Leslie-Anne Copes, seeing Howard Jones in concert in Natick, MA in a hotel lobby, and marveling at the fluffy, white snowflakes as they fell from the sky.

It meant the world to visit The World

Lovely ladies of Boston

Boston will always have my heart.

Practice Makes...Practice

I learned a new word in yoga over the weekend: Santosha. Maybe I'd heard it before, but I never connected with it the way I did the other night. Santosha is Sanskrit for  contentment.  I have been experiencing santosha on a deep level lately. Perhaps it is knowing that practice doesn't make perfect - that 'perfect' is an illusion - practice breeds practice - in all disciplines - for me, in yoga, and writing, and keeping gratitude lists, and valued time spent in therapy. These practices have slowly, but certainly, lead me to a place of santosha. It is a place "between effort and ease", as the yogi's say - a sweet spot. Not joy, not elation, certainly not sadness or depression. Whatever it is, however one explains it, I am there - breathing in, breathing out, in the moment, and open to all possibilities.