The Sound of Paper

I usually don’t go for mushy, self-help-y type books, but given what’s going on in my life at the moment, I felt like doing a bit of guided reflection. For a brief shining moment, I thought I had sorted things out in my head and had started making positive decisions about my future, but this little health scare is making me rethink everything I decided.

So while Mr. Random and I were rambling in the bookstore last Saturday (because you can’t keep me out of a bookstore!), I was unexplainably drawn towards the book, The Sound of Paper: Starting From Scratch, by Julia Cameron. It is a book on how to unlock your creativity as a writer, but in the way it is written it has amazing parallels in rejuvenating the way you think about how you look at life and how you are living in it. After each chapter, there is a suggested writing exercise. So far I have been faithfully doing each exercise and not continuing on reading until the writing is completed. The fact of actually having to think about things and write about them on a piece of paper (not a keyboard) seems to be very . . . reflective? Devotional? Ugh! I can’t think of the correct word right now . . .

Anyway, here was one of the exercises:

Each of us has a different idea of sophistication. Each of us has certain items that speak to us as tokens of success. Sometimes in all of our striving, we overlook treating ourselves symbolically in ways that match our accomplishments. Take a pen in hand and number 1 to 25. List twenty-five things that represent to you sophistication and success . . .

OK, so I’m not going to list 25 things here, but I will list five:

1. Having a room dedicated to being a library
2. Wearing a well-tailored dark suit, with a crisp white shirt
3. Having a cozy house that is comfortable, but good for entertaining family and friends
4. Being able to afford to go to as many plays and concerts as I want
5. Having very nice stationery and journals and a good pen to write with

Having a shiny, clean car that doesn’t have twenty empty water and juice bottles on the floor of the backseat, thus making it impossible not to be embarrassed to carpool with friends and coworkers (oops, that’s six . . .)

So, I ask my faithful readers, what things represent sophistication and success to you?