{"id":1167,"date":"2010-05-05T12:24:20","date_gmt":"2010-05-05T19:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=1167"},"modified":"2010-05-05T12:24:20","modified_gmt":"2010-05-05T19:24:20","slug":"stephen-barnes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=1167","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Barnes"},"content":{"rendered":"

I like this guy. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I first heard him speak at\u00a0 LOSCON<\/a> last November and I couldn’t take notes fast enough.\u00a0 He may not be saying anything new, in any way that is extra special.\u00a0 It may just be I was ready to hear it.\u00a0 In any case, he has some great, solid charisma that spoke to both me as a person and me as a writer.\u00a0 Of course it helps his niche is motivating writers!
\n<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

So I checked out his website LifeWrite<\/a> and saw that he had a blog.\u00a0 I love reading a good blog so I went there, liked the first one, immediately had to give my 2 cents, adding a long-winded comment (hey its ME here.. when have I NOT added to the conversation!)<\/em>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Then, because I like to read things as they developed I went to his first blog and read that.\u00a0 Hee hee.. It was on meditation.\u00a0 And it could have been written exactly for me.\u00a0 I don’t like meditation.\u00a0 It’s always felt like a useless waste of time.\u00a0 I either fall asleep or get WAY<\/em> too in-tuned to that inner nag.\u00a0 And the funny thing was that’s EXACTLY what Stephen said would happen when you’ve got a lot of emotional heart work to do.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And he said you got to keep at it for 20 minutes of calmly trying to hear your heart beat before you might get past all that and hear it.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

So.\u00a0 Since I respect this man I thought about trying it.\u00a0 My first thought was WHEN.\u00a0 When will I have 20 minutes to meditate on my heart beat?\u00a0 Hmmmm… I could get up 20 minutes early in the morning and try it then.\u00a0 But since that would be 4:50 am the chance I’d end up asleep was pretty high!\u00a0 On the other hand the chance of ending up in a trance was also high and maybe I could get to the heart beat hearing faster.\u00a0 The economical me likes that idea.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

But I realized I was putting it off for tomorrow and that’s what he says the inner 6 year old does when she doesn’t want to do something.\u00a0\u00a0 Hmmm… so I decided to do it right then.\u00a0 But wait, WHERE should I do it?\u00a0 Where can I go for 20 minutes of uninterrupted time, at home on a Sunday?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

It was at that point I began to giggle.\u00a0 The Closet?\u00a0 It was the only place I could think of where I’d be away from as much noise as possible and it would take the kids at least 20 minutes to find me!\u00a0 But the closet?\u00a0\u00a0 What the hell, why not.\u00a0 I spend so much time announcing my differences to the world it would be quite a change to GO into the closet instead of out of it!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Update<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Okay.. I’m proud I did what I said I would.\u00a0 And it wasn’t as hard as I imagined.\u00a0 The little nagging pains were easily ignored once I stopped moving to try and relieve the pain.\u00a0 And the random thoughts of distraction were more amusing than really distracting.\u00a0 Once I quieted my breathing and ignored the muffled outside noise I think I did pretty well\u00a0 in hearing my heart beat.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Because I did eventually hear it.\u00a0 I heard it in the rhythmic white noise hum in my ears.\u00a0 And I felt it in the gentle reverberations in my chest.\u00a0 (Probably because I cheated and leaned against a box in the closet!) <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

And just as I was trying to deepen my perceptions I heard the front door slam closed.\u00a0 Then the fast pounding of kid stomps up the stairs and someone trying the locked knob of my bedroom door.\u00a0\u00a0 Followed quickly by, “Mom, you in there!?”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Wow.. less than 10 minutes.\u00a0 A new kid record of interruption.\u00a0 I swear they’re psychic!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe I’ll try again Monday.\u00a0 (Can you put your inner 6 year old in a time-out?)
\n<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I like this guy. I first heard him speak at\u00a0 LOSCON last November and I couldn’t take notes fast enough.\u00a0 He may not be saying anything new, in any way that is extra special.\u00a0 It may just be I was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1167"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3316,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167\/revisions\/3316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}