I need to write more (12/22/2020)

Usually and the end of the year, or sometimes at the beginning of the new year I take stock of what happened during the year that has just gone by. Well’ I am not sure if this is my definitive blog for 2020, but I somehow feel like writing and excusing myself for not writing as much as a should, have been in the past, etc.

I am finding that it is more difficult to be creative after having to be creative for my job day-in, day-out and having to create on-line classes that keep people’s interest. In addition, being stuck at home and looking from my perch is somewhat boring and I do not get the inspiration that I usually get from traveling, listening to the radio and meeting people. Do I have the COVID blues? I do not know, but look at the graph below and you can see what funk I am in in my blogging (the 17 includes today’s blog). 

Previously, I wrote about inspiration in which I debunked this idea of not being inspired or not having a creative mind (somehow, the illustration was lost). Therefore, I cannot blame it on that. Am I depressed? Not really, in the sense of the word. Maybe slightly depressed, but I think we all are in a bit of a funk having that Sword of Damocles (the sword of COVID) hanging above our head on that tenuous string. When will I get it or a loved one, like my almost 94-year-old father-in-law get it? And how will I or they react to getting it? Yes, I can finally say that people in my direct orbit have gotten COVID. One survived; she reported that when her husband brought home her favorite ice-cream, it just tasted wet and cold. Esther, the 90 year-old (ex?) girlfriend of my father-in-law who has Alzheimer is currently in the hospital with COVID. We fear the worst. But by now, we are all waiting until it is our turn to get the vaccine, at least when you are not an anti-vaxxer.

What is my daily routine like? I usually wake up around 6:20. After getting dressed, I put on the coffee and get the newspaper with the dogs. They get their morning snack when we come back in, and we read the paper. Then it is breakfast and a dog walk, followed by “hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to the office we go” and that is just one flight of stairs away. Coffee around 10:30 and lunch at 12. We walk the dogs again, and I may spend a few minutes out back with my trees (bonsais). Back to work, which is interrupted by coffee around 3. I usually quit around 4:30 and take a shower. The shower is a great ritual for me to end the work day. Then it is time to make dinner and settle down for the evening. Boring isn’t it? Thank goodness, I still enjoy cooking, and at least once a week, the monotony is broken up by the need to bake bread. Baking bread requires more frequent trips down the stairs to fold the dough and to do something to it (“hey Google, set the timer for a half hour”).

COVID weekends are not any more exciting. One of the days is a dog park visit (Waller Mill in Williamsburg) and a walk in the woods (one of three trails). If the weather is good, we may stop for a brief visit for a beer at one of the microbreweries (usually the Brass Cannon, we sit outside of course). The other day is spent around the home. It is all very inspirational and I am sure, something many of you also spend your COVID year. Listening to my colleagues during our staff meetings that is about right.

So how should I get my writing mojo back and again write at least 30 posts per year? Maybe for next year I just need to take a word out of the dictionary and write a blog post around it. Just what comes to mind, but that would be crazy, wouldn’t it? At least now, I still have room to write my review of 2020.

The creative mind (1/29/19)

I was sitting through an online class on creativity the other day. The instructor was trying to convince the class that there were no specially creative or non-creative people in the world (sorry Picasso), but that we all could learn to be creative. Learning to be creative that is an interesting concept, especially for someone like me who develops classes for people who need continuing education credits; writes a blog; works on bonsai; bakes bread; and actually likes to garden (although it does not show, partially thanks to the darn deer). But then, I think there is a difference between creative and artistic, so maybe Picasso still rules.

The instructor had a few interesting points. One was that when you need to come up with ideas you go through a cycle. He used an example of designing a toy to be inserted in a cereal box for a western town, in the time of cowboys and Indians (150 years ago). First, folks came up with ideas that everybody seems to come up with, then they hit a slump. At that point it seems, you can only break through the slump by coming up with some ridiculous or hilarious idea that does not make any sense at all. You dismiss it, and then all the sudden the creative juices are supposed to start to flow and novel, creative ideas pop up.

Another interesting point was not to shy away from criticism or from criticizing an idea or thought. It seems only then can you grow and come up with even better, stronger and more creative ideas. Be especially critical of yourself.

I forgot the other lessons (there were four) but these two stuck with me.

This last point in particular is very interesting since a quick search on the web gave me these four points to become more creative:

1. Give yourself permission to create junk
2. Create on a schedule
3. Finish something
4. Stop judging your own work

It is particular this last point which seems to contradict the point I learned in this online class.

I’ll throw out one more list I found:

1. Train yourself to make original associations
2. Be open to new experiences
3. Make time to go for a walk
4. Add more green to your life
5. Keep a cluttered desk
6. Don’t be afraid to stand out
7. Refine your ideas: Clarify, ideate, develop, implement
8. Know the importance of setting time to relax
9. Practice, practice, practice

I get a number of emails from “news or blog” websites that send you a summary of things in which they think you might be interested. One of them bombards me with writing tips (“things you may like”), and the number one tip is to write every day, even if you have nothing to say. Just write! This is what seems to make you a better writer. I guess that gives you permission to practice and create junk. It might even open up some pathways to new, original associations and help you refine ideas. In the sermon writing group I joined early last year, we started out with just writing something for the first 20 minutes.  It could just be words, junk or a story, you were even allowed to draw pictures; it did not matter, and you did not have to read it out loud, share it, or even talk about it.

I am not a professional writer, nor do I have the ambition of even becoming one. Would I want to make money with my writing? As some of you know, I have been and still are struggling with the idea of allowing advertising on my blog and making a few bucks. I watch a number of vlogs (also known as video blogs) and the other day I read that this 30+ year old guy can actually live comfortably in the Philippines of his vlog (I actually don’t watch his). There seem to be many more that are able to do that. I have always assumed that you cannot do that from blogs and I do not think anyone would want to see my ugly face on their computer screen or tablet.

It was just interesting to see and learn the other day that creativity is a thing that can learned and cultivated. Artistry on the other hand may be a different thing. Where does my creativity come from? Most of my blog posts come from associations. I read something, hear an item on the news and it just bounces back and forth in that big empty skull of mine. Many of my posts may be the result of something green in my life. Bullet 3 and 4 in that last list are very significant to me. A lot of my ideas come to me in nature, during my walks. The woods are my inspiration, the source of my creativity. Moreover, during those walks in the woods I also often think about what I am writing about at the time; I edit those things in my mind, I rewrite them over and over.

Walking in the woods behind our home really serves as an inspiration and meditation for me.  It gets me away from day-to-day life.  It allows me to focus on my creativity, to think up ideas, to allow my mind to work through ideas and even to write posts and parts of my classes in my head.

I often write my blogs, stories, and responses to the news in my head, edit it and rewrite it a couple of times up there. I do the same thing with the courses I develop. As I explained it to my supervisor one time: “Then, all the sudden, I barf it out onto the computer screen or on paper.”

So what is my suggestion? Cultivate your creativity. Have fun, throw enough at the wall and something will stick. I have had months of drought and then all the sudden it will come again, but it only comes when you do it even if you do not feel creative at the time.

This was one of the assignments in the creativity class I watched on LinkedIn.  The assignment was to come up with two complete sentences in 7 minutes to put in the middle of these two sentences to make a story that somehow make sense.  It is allowed to be ridiculous and there is no correct answer!  I have gotten a lot of value from LinkedIn, relationships, posts, but also these types of free classes.

Taking stock (12/29/2016)

On January 3, 2016 I posted a New Year’s resolution on this blog.  I decided to bring more culture in my life.  Well, I can report that although I am bookending 2016 with museum visits, I failed miserably.  But then 2016 failed me miserably, as well. 

First my latest museum visit.  I had the pleasure to go to the Richmond Fine Arts Museum and visited the “Jasper Johns and Edvard Munch: Love, Loss and the Cycle of Life” exhibition.  It was an impressive exhibit, an eye opener that show the interconnectedness that we all have; whether it is conscious or subconscious, as we later discovered.  For example my wife is a painter and as a 16 year-old she visited the Munch museum in Oslo.  Now finally, more than 45 years later looking again at Munch’s work does she and I realize his influence on her work, very much like Munch’s strong influence on Johns’ work.  But then there is no way of living in a bubble and escaping extraneous impressions we gather throughout our lives. 

I am sure I have all kinds of extraneous influences that have guided me through my adult life and are still guiding me.  It probably ranges from what I saw at home and what I saw around me as a child and teenager, to the things I experienced later on in my life, but in particular when living and working in Uganda.

I do not think that this why I failed my resolution of 2016.  But I do think these things are part of the reason why I write this blog and the philosophy I try to put down in words.  I want to bet that my love for nature was formed by my wandering in the kunuku or the bush almost every day after school when I was a kid.  I was observing and looking at things; the cacti that were blooming, the lizards, the humming birds flying from tree to tree, the troupial birds calling out, you name it.  When I was not there, I was either sailing or snorkeling at the beach.  I can still vividly remember the angry protest demonstrators (black minimum wage laborers) marching by our high school on their way downtown and later that day watching the smoke rising from above town when it was burning, set aflame by the rioters.  The island was under marshal law for a week and the whites were panic stricken.  We were among a group of white settlers who eventually left the island, remembering what happened in Congo (the country of my birth) a few years earlier.  It never happened on the island and from what I hear it is still pleasant there.  I did not understand the fear of my parents, it fascinated me and I resented them for having to leave the island.  It all made me who I am today and the one I'll be tomorrow, not only as a person, but my hobbies, my interests and my passions. 

So what was 2016 like?  I visited the two museums, but for the rest I did not do much more culturally.  I went to one opera and two classical concerts.  As I mention in a previous blog, I try to read, but that is difficult after a hard day’s work, after a commute, with tired eyes and tired mind, and a slight case of dyslexia.  I did finish one masterpiece of literature: Hemingway’s: The Old Man and the Sea, and boy that was a thick book (just kidding), but a masterpiece none-the-less!

At least that is what I can remember of my great cultural effort of 2016.  To me a walk in nature, being one with nature, soothing my nature deficit disorder, that is what I needed most in 2016.  Yes, it can be the same old trail every day, that does not matter. 

This gate symbolizes the entry to 2017 which I am going to enter with great apprehension and with the promise to myself to work more on myself and my personal projects.  To read more, be more cultured, work more on bettering the world and less on just sitting on my ass and being passionless.

This past year failed me as well.  Promises were given and broken.  They ranged from raises; to oh, we would never get this person as president, and now we going to be stuck with him for four years.  It is a year which is showcasing the great divide more than ever.  We have been made more aware that there still is a divide between rich and poor, black and white, and that black lives matter; it is almost becoming increasingly dangerous to admit to be educated or cultured.  This schism in our country and culture is unbelievable, but it feels like the middle ground is lost; it is nothing this blog can solve.  Maybe it is time for me to keep going on my cultural quest and read Huxley’s “Brave New World” again, or some other great novel on how to react or deal with what we have right now.  I am taking suggestions!

To blog or not to blog, that is the question (5/11/2016)

If you are a blogger and read my posts, I have an interesting and a somewhat important (to me that is) question for you.  Why do you blog?  I am not one hundred percent sure why I blog (or actually I have 8 reasons), and that is probably why I have not broken through as this world famous blogger that is making a lot of money with my blogs.  Actually, I don’t even advertise on my blogs, so I have yet to make a penny on them, and really that's not why I do this.  But reading the newspaper this weekend about this famous stay-at-home mom blogging about her trials and tribulations raising kids and everyone following her and making money hand-over-fist, I wonder, am I missing something?  Or should I just quit?  Maybe I miss direction?  I am a dilatant, I know a little bit about a lot of things; l write about nature, training, sailing, stormwater, the environment, human communication and now this kind of stuff.  On top of that I try to show, what I think are pretty pictures that I took during my travels.  On top of that I sometimes mix all these things together together to make my and my reader's heads spin.  Look at the labels on the side of my blog, it is absolutely crazy!  A key word for everyone.  Maybe that's why I have only 100 to 200 or so readers every month.  But who cares?  So why do I do it?  Do I do it for the readers and the followers?  Or am I just egotistical?

To tell you the truth, these are the 8 reasons why I blog:

1. I started out to share my photographs and dig a little deeper, different and more philosophical than what I can do on my Facebook site or my Instagram site,
2. The blog became somewhat of a diary, but not a superficial "what did I do on vacation type diary" like Facebook that I share with friends,
3. I tried to share my passion for sailing and share some of my experiences of fixing up my boat and sailing with the sailing community,
4. I wanted to show the beauty of some of the far out-of-the-way areas in Virginia that I visit during my extensive travels in the state,
5. I wanted to share my passion for the environment,
6. I wanted to share my passion for teaching,
7. In my first writing class I took in college learned that you need to practice writing and for me the blog hopefully is helping me with my writing skills.  I sorely need this, since I am in the process of writing a book, and 
8. Finally, this is a good distraction from all my other writing and creative efforts; it is a different way to let my creative juices flow.

So the question remains, if you are a blogger, do you have similar reasons why you blog or are they different?

But that last point, creativity, that is important isn't it?  Why is it important to be creative?  For me it is one way I can enjoy life; a way to look back on a day, on an event, and be:

1. Grateful for the experiences I have had during the day and during my life.  It is important and fun to record them in words and photographs; to be happy about them and share them,
2. These experiences, the memories and writing about them nourish the soul,
3. I’m having fun writing,
4. It just inspires me,
5. It makes me think, reason and figure out things like sentence structure and logic,
6. In some sense it gives me the feeling of human connectedness with you all out there that read my blog, although I don't known you, and 
7. While it is not part of writing, the getting outside gives me exercise, takes care of my nature deficit disorder, and when I describe it I get to relive it.

Yes,a lot of this harks back to a lot of self improvement books that I've read about purposefull living, such as Dr. Sood's book in my reading list.  But I mean it.  My blog is an expression of gratefulness for being alive (after some of my life experiences), for being in love with my wife, my daughter, and happy the majority of the time!  Yes, I have to remind myself to be grateful when I'm depressed and down.  Dr. Sood teaches us to mention 5 things we are grateful for when we wake up in the morning before we get up out of bed.  Well, I usually write about about them in my blog.
  

On the other hand, if you are a regular reader, why the heck do you come back to this blog?   Because you never know what to expect?  Because of the photography (sorry guys no pictures today)?  Because you are a friend, family or a follower?

I realize that I wrote about blogging before (click <here> to see that entry), and hopefully this is an addendum to that blog and brings it a little further (Just an update, the photography class is well received and I am still having fun).   But yes, there are times I need to soul search,  look inside and try to figure out what I'm doing and why and hope to help you on your way as well!