My significant other is returning to Maui this morning, so I'm scheduling the rest of the day for exercising, writing and painting.

At almost 60, exercise is vital to my body and mind. This year, I am concentrating on Pilates exercises. Last year, it was yoga and walking. The year before that, I paddled with an outrigger canoe team, up every morning at 5:30 a.m. and out into the open ocean with a six member team. 

I'd still be paddling if it weren't for the ocean's reminder that it is big and powerful. A rogue wave appeared before us and we weren't able to steer away from it. We headed straight into the wave, but it already crested and dumped its power on the boat, me especially since I had the first seat. The rush of water shoved me back into the second man behind me. The back of my knees grabbed on to my seat, otherwise I would have been dumped into the ocean.

That would have been fine, but a second wave came up and did the same thing.  This time, I bent down at my waist hoping to avoid the oncoming water, but it landed on my back. I'm not sure how much that water weighed but I felt like my intestines had poured out of its cavity.

I returned to paddling a few weeks later, after my body and mind recovered, but that activity wasn't the same to me. My fear of the ocean is still with me, for good reason.

During the recovery period, I used writing to aid with the healing.

Writing a daily journal takes some effort. A while back, I used Julia Cameron's Morning Pages exercise. Within a few months I accumulated seven notebooks filled with those morning thoughts. When I started, I needed to schedule at least 50 minutes each morning. By the end of that period, my writing time decreased to 20 minutes with the same number of pages. 

It takes practice to synchronize thoughts with fingers. When I first became serious about writing, my thoughts raced on before my fingers could write or type them down. It was frustrating. The process was slow.

I'm now in my ninth year as an author/instructor, and I can safely admit that my thoughts and fingers are synchronized, at least most of the time. 

Before I became a serious writer, I painted for a living. I know that the stop/go attitude that I have about art deters improvement. But seriously, the lessons never go away. The mind and body remembers. Once I dropped painting and swore never to paint again. But who am I to throw away a gift?

So this is my schedule for today-Pilates, manuscript review, and watercolors.