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Living to Deadline
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February Rituals of Happiness for Home-Based or Desk-Bound Workers

rose lying on open book with tips for office worker or home-based business during February, the love month

Break out the reds and pinks, February has arrived.

A picture of red shoes with bow ties to signal the 5 sustainable rituals to revisit to care for ourselves at work or at home and to nourish the sparks of energy, calm and creativity during 'the love month' and beyondIn North America, it heralds declarations of love through greeting cards, chocolate, jewelry, flowers, gourmet dinners, and reservations for spa treatments. You’d get the idea that happiness if not full-blown authentic capital L O V E is something exchanged, gifted, and celebrated outwardly. But what about those of us, well most of us now, that are deskbound alongside our automated calendars as we get closer to ‘the official day’ and all that is commercial romance?

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Self-aware Solopreneur Writer or Professional Pastimer?

Our pastimes and choice of leisure pursuits are part of the process of creating a product of value be it writing on deadline, presenting ideas worth sharing or a physical product innovation.

A virtual writers’ group I belong to, has a set check-in at the top of each studio hour we share. Its protocols include a welcome question posed to the writers, directors and managers of mostly film and theatre projects. We beam in from all over North America and sometimes Europe.

Our pastimes and choice of leisure pursuits are part of the process of creating a product of value be it writing on deadline, presenting ideas worth sharing or a physical product innovation.Today, the ask in the last hour block was, “What is your favourite pastime?”

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Writing Writing VS. Journaling & Impact on Your Health

Your journaling can ease you into writing work, emotional clearing or mental clarity. Here are notes on the science behind it.

It’s Sunday. December 28. A lull between the manic, joyful madness of making Christmas merry and the tightening of New Year’s noose of celebration mixed with expectation. Yep… so much preparation and anticipation. Then, it dissipates in hours. 

Lists. We make ’em before the events. To do. To buy. And then we construct a kind of Fantasy Football League of lists of what not to do going forward, in the annual rush to improve our lives in whatever way is important to each of us in 2026. Yet again. 

So, I do feel lists qualify as one form of writing. Bullet points, words next to boxes to check off, and full sentences. Start on a page big enough, and it’ll end up as a journal entry. I used to kind of poo poo ‘journaling’ as not real writing. It wasn’t generally paid, published or impactful on others’ lives. I was wrong. Turns out I have many boxes of archived pages and short-form scribbles. Writer, teacher and big-time meditator, Natalie Goldberg once advised a participant who confessed in our online masterclass to having journals from 10 years ago.

“Oh, just throw those notes out. You don’t need them.” I recoiled in horror. DECADES, I have kept my notes. There are pretty journals, nostalgic covers or businessy books, started and abandoned after a couple or a score of gripping pages. Scrapbooks with notes written LARGE in coloured pens so my deteriorating penmanship could still be deciphered and perhaps seen in a new perspective on the different colours or sizes of paper.  I’ve been a closet journaler for years, not even admitting it to myself, apparently.

Below is an email from Kash Khan, whose health posts, DNA testing and theories I have followed for a while. This is taken from his UNCENSORED email, as it is titled, where he is free to say what he deems necessary. It is a complete piece about the science of the power of expression on our very health. Enjoy. I’m going back to slowly decluttering, the semi-legible brilliance I have hoarded all these years, as my holiday project.

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Write, Move, Flourish: Self-care for Creative Longevity Part 2

Discover simple daily rituals that keep writers healthy, energized, and inspired—mind, body, and creativity working together for a long, vibrant creative life.

Writing to deliver content in text or presentations is a full-contact body experience. We need to be fit, and so we continue from the post Write, Move, Breathe: Self-care for Creative Longevity Part 1

Do tips on the care and feeding of creatives differ from those of ‘regular folks’ pursuing other professions? Possibly, let’s dive in.

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Get Ahead of End of Season Office & Head Clutter

Your journaling can ease you into writing work, emotional clearing or mental clarity. Here are notes on the science behind it.

“A clean desk is the sign of a sick mind” was a silly saying on dime-store bumper stickers that found its way onto novelty plaques and gag gifts of yesteryear. Is it true for anyone you know?

Likely not, yet it was the rallying call for folks protective of their kind of effective, ‘visual filing’. Out of sight, out of mind. So, they must have things accessible and have an uncanny ability to locate any file in any category in what we see as a ‘bless this mess’ situation.

Does the opposite aesthetic offer more? Will a pretty, organised, minimalist-chic office lead to more productivity?

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Write, Move, Breathe: Self-care for Creative Longevity Part 1

woman at desk contemplating Writer wellness and creative longevity are bound to each other. Part 1 in a series of practical steps to sustaining personal health span and creative productivity

In our last post, we explored the nurturing of creative work and how it relates to the nurturing of healthy longevity. Today, we look at writer wellness and creative longevity that helps us reap the rewards found in the moment and the long run, as we live towards the ultimate deadline with both healthspan and creativity.

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Writers’ Routines to Nurture Creative Work and Healthy Longevity

Routines can enrich creative productivity and energy for writers and speakers and anyone seeking healthy longevity going forward in their lives
Life Interruptions and the Call for New Routines

small changes towards an energy and productivity boosting routine, one step, one word at a time Less than 8 years into the launch of my writing career and public relations practice, I had to deal with divorce and, on its stress-bound heels, a diagnosis of chronic illness. Both came with fatigue and frustration. In today’s post, we explore the care and feeding of writers with the practical routines that sustain us into our senior health and working years. We’ve looked at some rituals of writing. So, now we continue with some of the habits of living strong, independent, and creative lives, up until life’s ultimate deadline.

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Secrets Behind Great First Sentences: Routines of Iconic Writers

This post reveals secrets of some famous authors in tackling the blank page and often crafting high impact opening lines to novels and other manuscripts

Do rituals get you to a writing, or otherwise productive, frame of mind? You’re not alone. Today’s post looks at the quirky ways some famous writers began their books. How they faced their blank page and ‘got into’ a writing rhythm to get the job done.

This post reveals secrets of some famous authors in tackling the blank page and often crafting high impact opening lines to novels and other manuscripts
A little book of bigtime author secrets

After reading a book I bought years ago at a fundraising table in the foyer of the YWCA on Hornby, I began to share some of my own quirky starters and writing sparks. The book, which is still in my library, is called “Secret Lives of Great Authors.” It’s a fun, gossipy read. It was more thrilling to me than People Magazine of the day. Fittingly, I was there for the Y pool, where other local writers I knew also swam between drafts of their work to balance all our hours at a desk.

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How to Start Strong: Openings That Grab and Keep Your Audience

How to get started writing a piece for reading or speaking. Proven ways and how to use them

After you conquer the “Blank Page” our next practical focus is how to actually begin a written piece –with impact. “Call me Ishmael”. Well, still Helena here sharing the journey of applying writing skills to sorting out the last, hopefully long, act of my life. But you know that’s how Herman Melville drew us into … Read more

The Blank Page and the Beginning of Life

In writing or any creative presentation, as in life, you never face an opening blank page with a blank mind.

Ta·bu·la ra·sa. A Latin term for the idea that humans are born as a “blank or clean slate” with no innate knowledge. We learn from life experience as we grow. Plausible?

Tabula rasa definitionWell, as writers do, I checked with Merriam-Webster and found a nuanced alternate definition. Their tabula rasa meant “smooth or erased tablet”. Still, it refers to the mind in its original state before outside influences. Do you believe there is a uniform original state that is blank for each of us as we enter this world? 

Is there a totally blank page in writing, and in life?

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