I'm
addicted ... to a meditation app. every morning right after waking up, and I set
the alarm clock for it, I meditate for anything between 10 minutes and an hour.
It makes me calm and happy and I get a yellow star in the app each time I have
meditated 10 successive days and 5 yellow stars turn into a red start and lots
of red stars become a green star, but I haven’t reached that stage yet.
However, this does mean that I do not want to stop, and that's a good thing
because I absolutely need that moment of peace before my day begins with a lot
of noise and chaos in my head.
Because I do
create a lot of have to do’s in my life ... although it has to be said that most
of these ‘have to do’s’ are in fact great fun to spend time on, but I do seem to
have very little of the latter. So I try and convince myself that I have all
the time in the world. They say that what you think creates your reality so the
' I have all the time in the world ' is a keeper in my brain.
In the
meantime I spread my attention between contacting guest-writers because they
have not yet sent the promised article, locate or create hopefully beautiful
photos, invent and prepare a dish every week and make photos of it – which
means you know exactly what I am serving my Spanish husband for lunch – I look
for special people for interviews, interesting topics for an article, and much
more. The result is not one but two web magazines, respectively www.laherradura-cultural.eu,
about the special seaside village in southern Spain where I live, and www.almunecar-cultural.eu about the wonderful Spanish town of Almuñécar which La Herradura is part of.
And the feedback is fantastic. That makes me happy again.
It is a lot
of work but a lot of fun to do as well. It started as a platform to promote my
latest book, Reflections from La Herradura, but has grown into a serious
culture and tourism information source with nice pictures and interesting
facts.
And the ‘I
have enough time’ concept seems to work as well as I have found the time to
design a tattoo for someone, to design the labels for three handmade flamenco
guitars that were created here in the village and I am finding the time to
create a few paintings because I need some new work for my upcoming
exhibitions. The first in
Moreover, I
found the time to be interviewed by Costa Women, and the interview has now been
published on their site where I am introduced to a large group of women on the Spanish
Costas. You can read it here if you want to get to know me even better!
Talking
about reading ... my book ‘Reflections from La Herradura’ sells steadily and
most importantly, I get really nice reactions. It is in fact a book you can
read anywhere. You don't have to necessarily have to be in La Herradura to
enjoy it, but there might be a risk that you would like to visit it after
you've read it. Curious? Just click here.
So it seems
to ‘flow’ as far as my books are concerned and I am even getting a little bit
famous! When, a few weeks ago, the doctor called my name to invite me in to
take a look at my sore knee I was approached by a Spanish English teacher. His
English was excellent and he asked whether I was the writer Renate van Nijen.
He had bought and read my book Secret Thoughts and asked if he could purchase
25 copies of it – it had to be really cheap – for his 18 and 19 year old students
so that they could read it as part of their literature class and then ask me
questions about it when I'm going to give a talk about the book on November 23rd
in the school. I have to say that this does slightly feels like a visit to the gynaecologist
and I will have to put myself in a similar frame of mind. I don't know exactly what
it is to have an outer body experience, but I can fairly easily convince myself
that I'm not really there and it then feels as if I watching from a distance.
It is both scary and challenging having to talk about Secret Thoughts to a
large group of young people, but also fun and a compliment for my work.
There is
some news for my book Cheers too as I met someone who has offered to promote it
via the social media as a practice for her, and hopefully this will soon bear some
fruit, because it is really a book that can help people and to be honest, all
that tweeting, instagramming, buffering, linkedinning, etc. remains a bit of abracadabra
for me. In case
you are looking for some ideas for Christmas presents, all the books mentioned
above are for sale via Amazon.
And there is more good news. My mandala and
flamenco images on bags, t-shirts and other products can now also be purchased
much closer to home for those living in Europe. Previously, the products were
printed on the other side of the world which resulted in very expensive
shipment costs, but now you can order products with my images on it in
Redbubble.com/es (in Spain) and Redbubble.com/de (In Germany). Considerably cheaper so
quickly take a look as they are all good quality and super original. For
example... great shopping bags with your own horoscope. A great present don’t
you think? No more plastic shopping bags
so it is also fantastic for the environment!
Yes it is
almost Christmas. Does time fly or do I have enough time to make all my
self-imposed deadlines? Time will tell. Meanwhile, it's already half an hour
past midnight, early morning in fact. Time for some peace and quiet in my head.
Time for my meditation app.
