About a week ago, I stumbled upon, with the help of a comment on April’s lovely bag post, an instant web-favorite: positivelypresent.com. The premise is simple. I’ll let the author explain:
Positively Present is Dani, a twenty-something who, after years of living under a dark cloud of woe-is-me, has decided this will be the year she focuses on the positive. This will be the year she lives in the present, turning all of her attention toward making her life more positively aware. Dani is a former Eeyore learning to live positively in the present moment. Working hard to embrace the idea of “living happily ever after now,” Positively Present focuses on all things positive — quotes, books, stories, songs, situations, people, blogs, websites, ideas, images, notions, emotions. Anything and everything positive has a home here.
There you have it. A couple days after I started reading, I sent an email to Dani, asking if she’d like to do an ‘interview’ (I’ve never liked the word, especially when it’s me that’s ‘doing’ one. I like conversation better.), and she graciously accepted! Here you have it:
Besides your blog, what do you hope to be remembered for?
When I think about what I would like people to know me as – and to remember me for – one word comes instantly to mind: writer. Ever since I learned to write, I’ve wanted to be a writer in some form. Over the years my idea of what kind of writer I want to be has changed considerably (from journalist to novelist to blogger…), but that desire to communicate with others, to tell stories, via the written word has always been there. When I am gone, I hope to be remembered for what I love to do most, which is taking words and manipulating them into ideas and thoughts and images that people read and then look away from the page and think, “Wow, I can really relate to that.” I want to be remembered for writing things that not only are pleasurable to read, but that are also meaningful. I hope that someday I will be remembered not only for the words I have written but for the way those words have made others feel.
Do you plan out your posts or just sit down and fire away?
The answer to this is quite simply: it depends. More often than not, I write about things that have inspired me. Many of my posts start out with phrases like “on my way to work” or “last night” or “yesterday” which is a sure sign that I just came across an idea and started to write about it. That being said, I do tend to come across more than one idea at a time and, when that happens, I will plan to write about a certain topic on a certain day. As far as the actual writing of a post goes, I never plan out or outline the individual posts. When I find a topic I want to write about, I sit down at my computer and just write until I’m done. Though I do use spell-check, I never edit my posts, which is why sometimes they aren’t as well done as they could be. I know I should probably edit them more, but it’s really a great feeling for me to just write and write and write and then click the publish button without overanalyzing what I’ve written. It’s living in the moment at its finest!
What do you try to do in those times when you feel down? What do you try to remember?
As you know, we all have times when we’re feeling down. Having spent quite a bit of my life feeling pretty down and out, I know the feeling well and, for that reason, I can recognize it when I see it coming. These days, I try to remind myself that I have the power to control the way I think. Hard as it might be to remember sometimes, I know that it’s completely and entirely up to me to have a positive attitude. This simple fact is something that’s taken me a long time (25 years!) to realize. I used to spend all of my time looking outside of myself – at other people, at possessions, at drugs, at alcohol, at experiences, at sex – to make me happy. It is only within in the past year that I’ve realized that I can control how I think. I have the power to make my thoughts positive. I can take a situation – even a horrible one – and ask myself, “What’s good about this situation?” Sometimes I find that the only thing that’s good is that I will learn more about myself by dealing with difficulty, but, when you think about it, that’s a pretty awesome thing.
How do you express yourself creatively?
I consider myself a very creative person and I really enjoy partaking in as many creativity-based activities as I can. One thing I love is art. (And, in fact, I recently had the opportunity to see Tim Burton’s MoMA exhibit in NYC, which was amazing!) I love to paint and to create collages. You can see an example of a collage I’ve made that I featured on my site the day I wrote “Living My Happily Ever After Now.” I have that collage hanging across from my bed so I see it every morning when I wake up. It’s a great reminder to stay positive and to stay in the present. Art is a great creative outlet for me and really works well with my writing because sometimes I can intertwine the two. For example, I’ve written poems and then used them as a basis for creating paintings (and sometimes I’ve done the reverse as well). Any opportunity I have to be creative – even it’s as simple as something like wrapping a present – makes me very, very happy. I know creativity isn’t everyone’s strength, but for me it’s something I feel very passionately about and will do whatever I can to incorporate it into whatever I’m doing.
What do you hope to accomplish?
In my life I hope to accomplish many, many things, but I’ll narrow it down to some specifics for you. One, I hope to maintain the positive attitude that I’ve uncovered this past year throughout the rest of my life. For so long, I was a negative, unhappy person and I truly hope I can continue to see the world the way I do now – as a positive place filled with limitless opportunities. This might seem like an odd thing to want to “accomplish,” but it really has taken a long time, and a lot of work, for me to get to the point in my life where I am able to just be happy. Now for the second thing I’d like to accomplish…I’d like to create and maintain positive, supportive relationships in my life. I have (and hope to continue to have!) a great group of friends and family that encourage and support me. In addition to a positive outlook and positive relationships, I’d, of course, like to become a published author writing about topics that make differences in people’s lives. My greatest accomplishment, I think, would be being able to impact the world with my words.
How do you balance your healthy brand of neuroticism with living in the present?
I’m not sure if the neurotic tendencies I possess are “healthy,” but I do think that, regardless of the adjective that accompanies them, they have to be balanced with living in the present moment. In the past, one of the hardest things for me was focusing on the now. My mind was always revisiting the past or racing ahead to the future, which left little time for me to just be in the moment. (This, of course, caused many problems for me when it came to relationships and even my own writing…) Now, I really try to balance preparing for the future with living in the moment. For the most part, I try to avoid thinking about the past. In some cases (like when I’m in therapy), it can be useful, but I’ve found that going backwards in your mind is usually not helpful. In order to make the most of the present moment, I try to be as prepared as possible. I try to take care of things (especially the things I don’t want to do!) as soon as I can so I am no longer worrying about them. I also find that, despite being as prepared as I can possibly be, I still have to remind myself to live in the moment. When I find myself worrying or overanalyzing (which I’m quite prone to!), I tell myself, “Stay in the moment.” I take a second or two to look around me and appreciate what’s happening right now, right this second. It may sound cliché and like a tired little piece of advice, but it really does help me to stay focused on the now.
Most people would hope to take ‘credit’ for their work, but you seem to maintain a certain level of anonymity. Why?
This is a great question and one that I’m sure is on the minds of many Positively Present readers. Many bloggers have tons and tons of personal information on their sites and seem to have no problem sharing their personal selves (and pictures!) with the world. While I certainly love to share some things, I find that it’s nice to have a distance between who I am in real life and who I am as a blogger. This may or may not have something to do with my trust issues (okay, it definitely has something to do with my trust issues!), but I also feel like it’s nice to know that people are interested in what I say because of what they are reading and not because of what I look like. So often in life physical appearance is a huge factor. Whether we want to admit it or not, what you look like impacts your life a great deal. It’s a factor in who you date, in whether or not you’re hired for a job, in who your friends are. So many elements – including our race, our age, our weight, our gender, our level of beauty – can affect the way others perceive us. When you don’t define yourself by the way you look, you have the ability to be someone that more people can relate to. Because appearance can impact what people think about me as a person, I find it really refreshing to write Positively Present knowing that people like what I am saying not because I look a certain way but because the words have actual meaning for them.
I would like to extend great thanks to Dani for her awesome contribution to SuperForest and the internet as a whole. Her blog really is a great read; a great way to remember that we’re not alone in our ‘present’ endeavors.
Much Love!
Chris
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