Spread the Magic
Day 12-13: One Month of Magic
Hi friends, since I don’t have childcare on the weekends, Saturday and Sunday prompts will be self-guided. As usual, feel free to post here.
For this weekend, you have a special assignment. Instead of thinking about how to bring magic into your life, take one action each day to bring more magic to others. What small act can you do to help someone see more of the magic that is before them? The kindness and wonder of being connected.
Prompt: Do something magical for someone. Write about the experience. What did you do? How did it change the person? What did it teach you about connectedness? How did it give you a more magical relationship with them? Yourself?
Favor to Ask: I’m going to be sending out a post on Monday, letting people know they can still join the challenge. If you have been participating in One Month of Magic can you let me know how it has been? What has shifted? Has your writing evolved? What about how you see things? You can send me a chat or comment on this post. Thank you!
One Month of Magic guidelines:
For the month of July, post a daily prompt to inspire magical thinking.
Read and respond to the prompt by writing for seven, seventeen, or seventy-seven minutes—whatever you like—exploring what it stirs inside you. That’s it. It’s easy and breezy and designed to make you consider things deeper to search for sparkle.
After you write, post your response in the comments section of that day's post (only available to paid subscribers). Offer feedback to at least two people. Celebrate and clarify what is magical about one another’s work. How it deepened your own awareness and awe.
Posts will NOT be emailed—don’t want to spam people—but they will be posted on chat. So, if you want a daily magical ping, turn the chat feature and notifications on. You can find how in your settings.
I was hoping more people would join in--because Kelly is, in a word, amazing. Her prompts, the poems she finds and shares, her teaching. She draws interesting / talented writers to her, and this time was no different. I know people are busy enjoying the magic of summer. But really the lessons and prompts don't have to be enjoyed chronologically. I'm trying to engage with all of them because I can always use some accountability for myself. And I love magic and am dying to make my poems more magical. I already revised one of my Kelly-magic prompt poems and am confident enough that included it in some submission packets :)
Breakups, the ones that are your choice, bring magic. (The other kind can too, but it’s deeper, harder to mine out of that hard earth.) There’s newness to be uncovered. A new version of you, sorting out what likes were yours and what likes you arrived at via compromise. New routines to sow in new soil. New paths to explore near your new Place Called Home. Curiosity. Hunger. Abundance. Luminosity.
Currently, I’m soaking in this state. Choosing the magic and letting it choose me back, a dry sponge thrown into a full bathtub. Reading by candlelight every evening unless it’s an audiobook night. Bringing home flowers for my kitchen just because. Walking by the river in the morning, my ears taking notes from mourning doves, laughing children, lapping water. Writing, and trading comments with a poetry group.
This Sunday was 33. I invited a friend to a sauna and hot springs complex that offers free entrance on your birthday. He doesn’t enjoy saunas but offered breakfast: in a light-filled café, crisp air, mouth-melting croissants, bursting tomatoes, cheese. Then, mile walk to the sauna. An invitation for ice cream whenever I’ve gotten my fill of temperature-shocking my body. Pure sweat. Ice-massage shower. Honey-rub cleansing. Cold plunge. Rest in a room of meditation-inducing geometric design art. Desert sauna. Steam sauna. Aroma sauna.
With ice cream on the balcony, we talked for two hours. In my state of enchantment and serenity, I could have gotten a stallion near catatonic blood pressure levels, and my friend is more gentle giraffe than raging stallion to begin with. He accepted my invitation to Wonder, and we traded languages and stories and questions about Life and Meaning. Explored possibilities. Floated on the words, wherever they led. Let friendship wrap its arms around us and invite us deeper.
Sometimes you don’t have to go out of your way to bring magic to others. Some days, you just have to bring the current iteration of you and set her loose.