This is a collection of my daily musings. Sometimes they will be incoherent to everyone except for me and god. They are public because some people, I have been told, enjoy them. That pleases me to write more.
The inspiration for this is from
November 24th, 2023
4:47 pm — Notetaking extremes: All thoughts are important and I capture as many as I can. Or I capture nothing — rather trust that I’ll remember everything that’s important. Neither actually matters. Instead I practice the skill of holding one idea in my mind at a time. It’s a meditative skill. With increase capacity — to hold an idea for longer period of time — you create space for wonder. It’s within the wonder of an idea that everything important shows up.
November 20th, 2023
11:03 am — Michael Dean shared his passion with me for ‘the essay’. He said, essays are the only form of writing that combine the play of a poet, the rigor of an academic, and the heart of a memoirist. The poet creates a microcosm of images that make us want to cry and shout and shake. The academic stands on the shoulders of giants before him and shows us the view from those heights. The memoirist changes our perspective of ourselves and our world. A great essay holds the reader’s hand as we adventure those paths.
November 16th, 2023
10:00 am — This year has stirred up a lot like a snow globe being shooken violently. The flakes are settling down and a beautiful world is being revealed. I’ve taken space to watch that unfold and wonder about the god who shook it up.
November 15th, 2023
9:41 am — I was hit up side the head yesterday with a lesson about work. My backstory is I am really good at following rules — the good son. I got approval from doing things the right way, and gosh dang it that still carries in my spine. I was given a project to listen to a podcast and make as much content as I could from it. It was an interview.
The obvious first right step to me was listen to it start to finish and grab every raw quote that could be turned into content — from there I would get creative. An hour later I was 10 minutes into the podcast, had copied over 30 direct quotes, and I was full of misery. I wanted to throw my laptop across my room and never listen to a podcast again. This copy and paste work is for a robot. I want to create.
I looked at the list and all it did was overwhelm me with options. I digital threw the note into the trash, and opened a blank document. I put one quote in there (which I already had saved in my notes). Suddenly creativity poured through me. … [there’s more to tell here but I got a call in 5 min] … It taught me that simplification, a narrowing of my focus, opens the door to creativity and enjoyment in work.
I feel most alive in my work when I’m creating.
November 14th, 2023
1:15 pm — “It’s easier to change directions when you’re moving forward” - Ali
This quote has infected my life, and most specifically my writing life. I’m entering this writers space determined for forward progress. It’s opened me up to imagining the wildest, most exciting way of serving an audience of people. Here’s a guess at this, which I will follow forward —
November 12th, 2023
1:33 pm — Okay, you did that. Now this.
12:23 pm — After 5 years of therapy, I have learned the wisdom of space — letting difficult events, interactions, and emotions breathe for a stretch of time. Today I am sitting with a romantic interest going incognito, a public embarrassment, and an unresolved financial mistake. Each pulls me to do something about it, fix it in some way, and to ease my mind. Each pulls me to run, cover up, and to ease my emotions. You take this! Ease my guilt. And, sometimes, I need that so I don’t get so dang overwhelmed with life. But more recently, I have been able to hold myself in it. It’s in the space, the not-doing, that goodness begins to infect the difficulties. In these difficulties I’ve felt new flavors of emotions: a gentle missing of someone, a child-like “oh, did I do that”, and a tenderness in the face of the mystery of the cosmos.
Space reminds me that I’m okay and loved.
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After my public embarrassment I can’t help but hear this iconic voice