Wonderful Weirdos Day

Today is Wonderful Weirdos Day.

According to National Today, “Wonderful Weirdos Day is celebrated across America on September 9.” ¹

Why is it celebrated during an ordinary unit of time such as a day. Isn’t that boring and totally not weird? Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to designate it as Wonderful Weirdos Nychthemeron? ^{2, 3}

¹ https://nationaltoday.com/wonderful-weirdos-day/

² https://english.stackexchange.com/a/595618

³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nychthemeron

M&M -- Mindful & Mad

When I eat M&Ms or other colorful candies, I like to eat all one color first. This introduces some mindfulness to the process and slows me down; otherwise I’d be shoveling a palm-load of candy every minute or so.

But the real reason I "eat-by-color" is for the aesthetic pleasure of it. A bag of regular M&Ms has too many colors, which creates some discordance. So I eat any colors that clash with the season first.

For example, this being Spring, I start with the Autumn colors Orange and Brown, which totally do not belong in Spring. This leaves Yellow, Blue, Green, Red.  This set of colors could represent Sun, Sky, Grass, Poppies.

But then I might continue with either Red and Yellow, which would leave Blue and Green for Earth Day. Or I might eat the Blue and Red next, which would leave Yellow and Green (the colors of one of the schools I attended). Or, I’d eat the Red and Green next, which would leave Blue and Yellow to show support for Ukraine.

In Autumn, I’d do the reverse, eating Blue and Green first, to leave the Autumn colors of Orange, Brown, Yellow, Red. I might also eliminate Red if I can’t stop myself.

In Winter, all but Red and Green would be eaten first. (In fact, you can buy them this way in November and December.)

Valentines Day, Easter, Flag Day and Independence Day all are difficult holidays to celebrate this way with the regular M&Ms because of the lack of White candies. But Mars puts out sets of Red, White and Pink in January and February, or Pastels in March, or Red, White and Blue in June to appease.

Do you do this? Do you have another food consumption quirk?

Halloween 2019 -- The Litterbox Costume

I dressed up as a litterbox yesterday.  This was an easy, low-cost outfit.

• Cardboard box – free (with a delivery from Petco)
• Okocat non-clumping paper litter¹ – about $3 (It was marked down and I had a coupon)
• New pooper-scooper – 97 cents
• Safety glasses – free (Household item)
• Dust mask -- free (Household item)
• Zip-Lock bag – free (Household item)
• Tootsie Rolls -- about $3
• Other Assorted Chocolate -- free (Household items)

The Okocat paper litter was a good choice for this project.  It’s extremely light weight, and the granules aren’t so small as to leak through any gaps in the box or in my pants.  I had some lying around because I tried it out with the cats, and I found that it would quickly get saturated with pee.  The entire litterbox had to be emptied and refilled with fresh litter about once a week.  This reminds me, I’m planning on writing a review of cat litters soon.

So, did you dress up for Halloween?  What was your costume?

#NaBloPoMo2019

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¹ https://www.healthy-pet.com/products/dust-free-paper-natural-litter
² Photo credit: anonymous coworker

Does Getting Paid to Do Something Take Away the Enjoyment of That Thing?

Does it seem to you that when you get paid to do something that you love to do, the activity then becomes less enjoyable?

Here's an excerpt from "Swearing is good for you: the amazing science of bad language," by Emma Byrne:

Give most children crayons and paper and they'll happily draw for the fun of it; the intrinsic reward of doing something creative keeps them happy and interested.  But as soon as you pay children for their art, their drawings get sloppy and less detailed.  They also don't seem to enjoy the process of drawing anywhere near as much as when they are offered a treat in return for each piece produced.  In studies, children who know they will be rewarded for their drawings spend only about half as much time playing with crayons as those children who aren't offered a reward.

-page 124

The author references M. R. Lepper, D. Greene, and R. E. Nisbett, "Undermining Children's Intrinsic Interest with Extrinsic Reward: A Test of the "Overjustification" Hypothesis.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 28 (1973), 129-137. doi:10.1037/hoo35519

Confessions of a Quirky Shopper

Sometimes a product's container influences me to buy the product that's in it.  There are a few different reasons for this.

On the practical end of the spectrum, a certain container might be easier to grip, operate or store.  One example is stick deodorant.  I prefer containers whose covers are flat on top so that I can store them upside-down on the shelf.  When there's only a small amount of deodorant left, the upside-down orientation has a lower center of gravity, so it is less prone to toppling over.  Mennen Speed Stick gets this.  Secondarily, the mechanism to advance the deodorant needs to be easy to turn.  Most containers provide a round knob that's shrouded by the base of the container.  However, a few, such as Degree or Dove for men, are set up so that the entire base can be turned to advance the deodorant.

More quirky is my habit of buying things in order to get a container to reuse for another purpose.  I prefer to buy food that comes in glass jars whose openings are as wide as the jar itself.  It's easy to fill jars like this with leftovers or homemade ghee, or to use them as vases.  The Bonne Maman fruit preserve jars (see picture) are ideal.  There are sauerkraut jars that are just as wide on top yet twice as tall to hold more.  (In fact, the lids are interchangeable.)  The jars for almond butter are pretty good, too.  They are just large enough for a batch of ghee made from one pound of butter.  So I keep on hand a small collection of empty jars from jam, sauerkraut and almond butter.

Empty soda bottles are easy to "repurpose," too.  You can cut one in half and use the top as a funnel, and the bottom can be used under a small houseplant to catch excess water.  Make the cut angled, and the bottom becomes a scoop.  An even better scoop can be fashioned from an empty gallon (or half-gallon) jug from milk, water or bleach.  Here's how: Hold it upside-down by the handle. Then lower it as you would a clothes iron so it's horizontal.  Cut away the part that's now the top.  The Instructables website shows many ways to repurpose ordinary throw-away items.  Altoid mint tins seem to be favorite boxes for projects -- they're the ideal size for a set of AA or AAA batteries plus some small electrical components.

Even those annoying blister packs can be useful.  The frustrating slipperiness and seeming indestructibility of of the material can be exploited for use as shims, drawer slides or furniture glides.

What are your favorite containers and what do you use them for?

Key to the Past

I'm about to open a briefcase that I haven't opened in over twenty years.

It's a briefcase that has stewed in the juices of my childhood.  It served first as my brother's school bag, and later, mine after he got too cool to use one.  If this briefcase could talk, it would reminisce about former teachers, bullying on the school bus, the numerous girls I've had fleeting crushes on.

In a sense this briefcase can talk -- it contains over one hundred memo pads, dating back to when I was thirteen, that I used for my Diary.

Wow.

And when I dig up old stuff like this, feelings of foreboding and dread fill me.  And mostly Sadness.

The motivation for this expedition is to find some old poetry that I wrote but don't fully remember.  I want to publish it, but not here.

The first step was finding this key, which could very well be older than me.

The Other Washing Machine Idea

The other washing machine idea I had was this: I wish my washing machine didn't have an automatic transmission.

Here's the context, in case you don't want to read the previous post that this is a continuation of.  My washing machine's spin cycle is weak due to a faulty transmission.  So I was using my bare hands to wring water from my freshly washed clothes before I put them into the dryer.

I wouldn't mind a simple transmission design that would let me choose the gear or pulley for the cycle that needed to run.  Sure, I wouldn't be able to start a load of laundry, go out for an hour, and then just come back and expect to transfer the completed load over to the dryer.  But I'd expect such a machine to last much longer than eight years, or at least be much easier to repair and maintain.

Actually, this wasn't the first thought I had along these lines.  I was actually wishing for a simple wringer that I could use to easily squeeze out excess water from my clothes.  Then I thought of the manual transmission.

Lastly my thought was this: why bother with a machine at all?  Why couldn't I revert back to the days when we would agitate the tub of clothes with a large wooden paddle or a hand crank?  Then I'd be able to wash clothes and get in a good workout at the same time.

But today, things are different.  We buy time-saving appliances that enable us to go off to work at a job to earn enough money to pay for them and repair them.  Now I know why today's typical household needs two wage earners to make ends meet, whereas fifty years ago, a single income was all that was needed.

In researching wringers, I came across this wonderful blog post of a washing machine soul mate.  I would love this, but, of course, my wife would shriek at me with so much intensity, it would blow the clothes right off my body, and there'd be nothing left to wash.

About Washing Machine Water Use

Our washing machine hasn't been spinning out the water too well lately.  The repairman said that the transmission was shot.

We can still use the machine, and we do.  But at the end of the last spin cycle, the clothes are soaked with water.  They're not quite dripping, but I can wring out water from the items.  I get the most water from a towel that's at the bottom of the load.

I was wringing out the clothes last night when I had two ideas about washing machines.  I'll write about just one of them in this post.

The first idea came about because I decided to wring out each article of clothing into a bucket right at the machine rather than at the sink five feet away behind me.  Lately I've been getting dizzy and off balance from making such short abrupt movements.  So at first, I just wanted to eliminate moving back and forth the between the washing machine and the sink.  But then it occurred to me that I could pour the wrung out water back into the washing machine and use it for the next load.  (I already pour in water from the dehumidifier.)

Then it occurred to me that the last tub of water in the machine is essentially clean water or at least a little soapy.  So rather than discharge that water into the drain, it could be diverted into a reservoir near the washer.  Then you could pump that water back into the tub at the start of the next load of laundry.  That would save
one whole tub of water each time.  One caveat is that you wouldn't want to use liquid fabric softener -- it would neutralize the detergent of the next load.

The same idea could work with the dishwasher, too.  But there would need to be a way to heat the water efficiently.  That would entail another hot water heater in the house.

Even if you don't want to reuse the water for your dishwasher or washing machine, it could be used to flush the toilets.  That would also entail an investment in plumbing.

Probably the easiest way to reduce water use is to divert rainwater from the roof and collect it in rain barrels.  And have I done that?  Regrettably I have not.

Wall-Mounted Planter

The wall-mounted planter that my wife bought when we first moved in fell off its nail and smashed into at least a dozen pieces.  I decided to get a replacement rather than glue it together.

Unfortunately wall-mounted planters are not common, at least not those made for indoor use of a certain size and color.  So when I saw a white vase with rectangular base, I decided I'd figure out a way to hang it on the wall.  True it doesn't have drainage holes, but I figured this was a close as I was going to get.  Besides, the previous planter seemed to work out well.

White Vase -- 10" x 4" x 12"

 I shopped around for plate holders, shower caddies, and shelves, but I ended up making my own hanger from the heavy steel wire I saved from a turkey roasting pan, as shown below.

Wire Handles From a Turkey Roasting Pan

The wire is heavier than that of a standard wire coat hanger.  I could bend it properly only by first locking it into a vise.  I knew it would be strong enough to hold the planter.  What I ended up with is something that looks a lot like a plate holder.  But there is a very important extra piece of wire that I bent to clip onto the vase from behind the main piece of wire.  It prevents the vase from toppling away from the wall.  Since the wire is steel, and since it will be used in a bathroom, it will be important to paint it to keep it from rusting.

Wire Bracket For Mounting Rectangular Vase on the Wall

While I was taking pictures, I figured I'd include a shot of a miniature trellis I made from green-dyed bamboo.  I tied the four pieces together with green twisty-ties.  Our first cat's hindquarters can be seen in the upper left of the photo.

Green-Dyed Bamboo Trellis

Here's a shot of the finished result.  I chose to plant several cuttings of Golden Pathos, a plant that I've had in my living areas since the mid 1980s.  The plant is hardy and fast growing.  It will not only tolerate cramped root system, it actually prefers it that way.  Which is important, given that I don't want to repot this planter for a very long time.

There is a white plastic shield juttng out from the bottom of the planter.  I formed this from a large container of cat litter.  It has two purposes.  First, it prevents the wire from scratching the planter.  Second, it hides the wires so that my wife can't tell that I used scrap materials to make the hanger.

Now, actually, my wife's reaction was that it looks like a paper towel holder, especially with the white shield in place.  So I took it off, and she saw the wire, and she actually preferred it that way.  But I had put away the camera, so I don't have that picture handy.

From Whence I Blog

I have two answers to "Where is your favorite place to blog?"

My first answer is rather superficial, and it assumes that blogging is the act of typing content into an editor and then uploading it to the blog.  I have no smart phone or tablet.  I blog at a computer.  The computer in my home office is the one I use most often, but I might also use the computer at work or occasionally the one at the library.  So my superficial answer is "My favorite place to blog is in my home office."

But that's not my final answer.  My final answer is more complicated.  I believe the idea for a blog post is just as important as the act of typing it.  My ideas come to me almost everywhere, usually when I'm doing a tedious chore.  I could compose content while preparing breakfast, or folding laundry or driving.  But for some reason, when I scoop the four litterboxes, I do not form ideas for blog entries.  Instead, I think about the "Karate Kid" movies.  So my final answer is "My favorite place to blog is everywhere."

I could end this post at two paragraphs.  But I'd like to mention that I thought about the previous post while brushing my teeth this morning, and I typed it in at the library computer while my daughter was at her karate lesson.

While I was using that library computer, I became aware of four very attractive teenage girls (or perhaps they were young adult women) looking in my direction and having a lively discussion that involved laughter.  I forced myself to remember that I'm nearly 50 years old and that I look much older.  Otherwise I'd lapse into reliving my high school fantasies.

It wasn't until I got up and left that computer that I realized what their commotion was all about.  They walked over to the area I'd just left and started to take photos.  I guess the seat I was in afforded them an ideal vantage point for their shots.  And their discussion was over which of the four was going to get stuck with asking me to move.

Resources for "Your Brain at Work"

Here are links to online resources that are cited in "Your Brain at Work," by David Rock.

For research behind the book: http://www.your-brain-at-work.com/

Neuroscience of leadership: http://www.neuroleadership.org/

Information on brain-based coaching programs: www.ResultsCoaches.com

School for children K - 5: www.TheBlueSchool.org

Online tests and training exercises: www.MyBrainSolutions.com

Author's website: www.DavidRock.net

Creativity Quotes from "Imagine"

Don Lee on inventing the bacon-infused old-fashioned:

"Basically I experimented with fat-washing because I was bored and nobody told me not to," Don says.  "I'm sure most bartenders would have told me it was a terrible idea, that it would never sell, that I was wasting perfectly good bourbon.  But the laws of chemistry told me that it should work, so why not try it?  I guess my only secret was that I didn't know any better."

- from "Imagine," by Jonah Lehrer, page 117

So it's not such a far-fetched thing to add ghee or extra virgin olive oil to hot tea, then, as I do!

The outsider problem affects everyone....

This is one of the central challenges of writing.  A writer has to read his sentences again and again. (Such are the inefficiencies of editing.)  The problem with this process is that he very quickly loses the ability to see his prose as a reader and not as the writer.  He knows exactly what he's trying to say, but that's because he's the one saying it.  In order to construct a clear sentence or a coherent narrative, he needs to edit as if he knows nothing, as if he's never seen these words before.

This is an outsider problem -- the writer must become an outsider to his own work.  When he escapes from the privileged position of the author, he can suddenly see all those imprecise clauses and unnecessary flourishes; he can feel the weak parts of the story and the slow spots in the prose.  That's why the novelist Zadie Smith, in an essay on the craft of writing, stresses the importance of putting aside one's prose and allowing the passage of time to work its amnesiac magic.

When you finish your novel, if money is not a desperate priority, if you do not need to sell it at once or be published that very second -- put it in a drawer.  For as long as you can manage.  A year or more is ideal -- but even three months will do . . .  You need a certain head on your shoulders to edit a novel, and it's not the head of a writer in the thick of it, nor the head of a professional editor who's read it in twelve different versions.  It's the head of a smart stranger, who picks it off a bookshelf and begins to read.  ou need to get the head of that smart stranger somehow.  You need to forget you ever wrote that book.

- from "Imagine," by Jonah Lehrer, page 132 - 133

I'd love to write fiction, but I can't tell if I would get my story across the way I play it out in my head.  I think this outsider problem is part of it.  But I think I also get too caught up in the detail of specific scenes and pay little attention to the overall flow, cadence, pace of the story.

Creativity Boot Camp

I like to visit the sites of folks who comment on my posts. One site I visited today featured a badge for Creativity Boot Camp. Anything to do with Creativity turns my head. So naturally I checked it out.

Creativity Boot Camp is two-week course on creativity set in a blog on Blogspot. It was conceived by artist Madeline Bea. The course is still up, and you can go through it, reading one post each day until you graduate.

Check it out!

Getting Paid to Make a Halloween Costume

Every year, my workplace has a Halloween Costume contest. I never dress up, although sometimes I'll halfheartedly wear a clown face or a pirate head wrap with a fake earring. Then after the contest, I get inspired and start planning for next year.

It was the same this year, too. I was shaving this morning, and I had done nothing to prepare. As usual I started getting all kinds of amazing ideas for costumes. This time was a little different, though. I felt strong motivation to do something.

So the last-minute idea I settled on was to wear a homemade Albert Einstein mask, which would go along with my naturally unruly gray (or white) hair. All I had to do was find a suitable picture of Einstein's face, scale it to life size, perhaps crop off any background imagery, print it out, pop eye-holes into the paper, and tape it on my head. I would borrow a lab coat from work and tape a homemade name tag to it to complete the likeness. "I can do this!" I thought to myself.

So before I left for work, I started step one, which was to find a suitable picture. Unfortunately, there were no high resolution pictures of Einstein in which he faces the camera straight on. Also I came across unsettling and disrespectful caricatures of him. That made me depressed, so I abandoned the plan.

But then I had an even better plan -- I would dress as the president of my company. It was a brilliant idea, I thought.

All during my commute, I imagined the plan. And when I got to my desk, I got started right away.

First, I searched the network for pictures of the boss. I found a great picture of him that was taken with his family during a company picnic. I had to crop it and enlarge it greatly, and then rotate the face about 7 degrees. I did all this in The GIMP, an amazing multi-platform, Photoshop-like freeware program that I use to fix up some of my photographs.

Finally done, I printed out his perpetually grinning face, cut the eye-holes out and cut away the excess blank parts around the chin. I affixed the tape to the mask right at eye level. Then I borrowed the boss's lab coat, and taped the mask to the sides of my eyeglasses.

The time came for the contest, so I worked my way to the cafeteria. I had to go slow -- the mask was hard to see through because I made the eye-holes fairly small (about 1/4 inch).

I entered the cafeteria. I cannot describe the effect I had on everyone who turned to look at me!

Jaws dropped in amazement!

Eyes widened with surprise!

Huge smiles formed!

And then the boss walked in. Even he enjoyed the gag. He stood next to me so that we could be photographed together.

The judging commenced. We were vying for one of three prizes, Funniest, Most Scary, and Most Original. The others who dressed up looked great, so I hardly expected to win. After all, most of them put a lot of planning and effort into their costumes. Or they went out and bought an outfit.

Funniest was awarded to SL, whose costume was over-the-top, as usual. He was dressed as a Reno NV sheriff in silk, a la Reno 911.

Most Scary was awarded to JM, aka Moon Man, who wore an astronaut outfit and a plastic ass.

Then I started to worry that I might actually win. Worry? Yes, because most of the other folks aren't paid as well as me. They need the money. They invested a lot more in their costumes and deserved the prize more.

The emcee was looking at the person whom I thought had the most original outfit, but then he called my name. Actually I felt really bad and even considered giving the $100 gift certificate to the other person.

But the amazing thing is that I couldn't detect any hard feelings. And a few folks said that they were glad I won. They talked about how I even had the same mannerisms as the boss. That was mind boggling.

I had completed my costume within 30 minutes after arriving at work, and that includes waiting for the slow computer to log on, searching for the photograph, printing out the image and fetching the lab coat. I even paused to fetch someone a set of three balls that I use for juggling. I didn't have to buy anything -- all the supplies that I used were from work. And I even got paid to work on the costume.

It doesn't get any better than that.

I've wanted to show up as the boss for a few Halloweens. I have the hair for it, but I always imagined that I'd have to grow the beard (or make one).

I'm still glowing with amazement that I won. Wow!

SDP: Learn and Create with Processing

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool.

- from http://processing.org/

Art, Computer Programming, Math -- could Processing have most of my favorite topics melded together? I'm not sure I like looking at computer generated art. But you know how sometimes things seem to taste better when you cook or bake them youself? I think the same might be true of this art form.

The Processing website also has links to programming toys for younger folks, specifically Alice, Scratch and Pippy.

So much to explore -- so little time!

TAW: Quotes from "The Artist's Way"

Quotes from Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way" ...

Every creative person has myriad ways to block creativity. Each of us favors one or two ways particularly toxic to us because they block us so effectively.

For some people, food is a creativity issue. Eating sugar or fats or certain carbohydrates may leave them feeling dulled, hung over, unable to focus -- blurry. They use food to block energy and change. (Page 162.)



As an artist, I can literally die from boredom. I kill myself when I fail to nurture my artist child [inner artist] because I am acting like somebody else's idea of an adult. The more I nurture my artist child, the more adult I am able to appear. Spoiling my artist means it will let me type a business letter. Ignoring my artist means a grinding depression.

There is a connection between self-nurturing and self-respect. If I allow myself to be bullied and cowed by other people's urges for me to be more normal or more nice, I sell myself out. They may like me better, feel more comfortable with my more conventional appearance or behavior, but I will hate myself. Hating myself, I may lash out at myself and others.

If I sabotage my artist, I can well expect an eating binge, a sex binge, a temper binge. Check the relationship between these behaviors for yourself. When we are not creating, artists are not always very normal or very nice -- to ourselves or to others. (Page 181.)

Edited on 2010-04-23 to add a title to this post and to replace the Philanthropy tag with the Quotes tag. I was so sleepy when I wrote it, I don't even remember posting it!
Edited on 2011-02-22 to add link to the quoted book.

SDP: Low-Cost Monopods / Tripods

I've been putting off getting a camera tripod or monopod for a long time. Mainly, I can't imagine myself carrying something like that anywhere. I'm sure that by the time I'd get it set up, the cats would have wandered off or stopped being cute, or the sunset would've lost its intensity.

So when I came across a couple of tutorials on Instructables, on how to make a low-cost tripod, I got very excited.

The String Tripod tutorial is very well done and made a lot of sense to me. So I tried it, or something a lot like it. I decided to make use of my SLR's camera strap mounts to connect the string to rather than the eyebolt. I figured this would provide even more stability and prevent the camera from rotating. I used about 14 feet of 20lb fishing line terminated on each end with swivel hooks, which attach to the camera strap mounts. It was a breeze to do. But the testing didn't pan out. I was unable to take clearer pictures using a bipod configuration. In fact, because I was applying an upward force to the camera, my arms shook and caused more camera shake than when I relaxed. The strings didn't prevent the camera from rotating in two axes, resulting in up-down and left-right motion of the lens.

But I think the camera shake could be mitigated by using a weight attached rigidly to the tripod mount. Even attaching a bungie cord between the eyebolt in the camera and the fishing line on the ground would limit the up-down movement of the lens. So I might try that next.

Also interesting is the instructable on making a monopod from a flag pole holder and a broom stick (or other staff or pole). That looks worthwhile. And I do need to replace our flag pole holder anyway, so if it doesn't work out, I won't have wasted anything.

Thinking About Thinking

My daughter tried to contact her spirit guide after reading Sylvia Browne's Contacting Your Spirit Guide. But she wasn't able to. And she asked me to help.

First she wanted me to read a meditation to her¹. But when I did that, she resisted so blatantly, I assumed she was just trying to annoy me. Here's how it went:

"You're on a beach. See the ocean and the blue sky...."
"I can't see anything."
"Just imagine you can see it. Feel the warm sand underneath you."
"I can't imagine it. And I don't feel any sand. It's just the floor."
"You've been on a beach before. Pretend you're at one now. Hear the waves splash onto the shore...."
"All I hear is you."

It wasn't working for her.

So she urged me to contact her spirit guide for her. She had total confidence in me because of how effortlessly I was able to contact my own spirit guide.

So I asked her to read the meditation to me. While meditating, I briefly saw this very old, short, shriveled woman named Esmeralda. But then she revealed herself as a young Native American girl named Running Wind, although she doesn't mind being called Sally. Sally is about the same size as my daughter, but she's a little leaner and a lot more athletic. Her hair is very dark brown, almost black. It's a bit short, and she keeps it tied in a pony tail in the back, while the sides hang down on either side of her face like the ear flaps of a hunting cap. She's dressed a bit scantily, like a Disney character meant to appeal to grown ups.

Anyway, I wanted to help my daughter understand how to imagine and visualize. I explained how I don't actually see things when I think about them (not exactly, but close). Instead I imagine I see them. Then I turned to Shakti Gawain's Creative Visualization for help. Shakti explains that visualization means different things to different people. Some people do see images. But others don't. Instead they get more of a feeling. She offers a simple exercise -- to imagine a room in your house.

So, while we sat in the living room, I tried to get my daughter to imagine that she's in her bedroom and to describe what's in the room with her. What's the floor like? What furniture is in the room? What color are the walls, and what's hung on the walls? She had a surprising amount of difficulty with this despite having the same bedroom since she was a baby.

It made me wonder how she could do so well in art and creative writing when she couldn't see anything in her Mind's Eye. I wouldn't be able to write creatively² if I couldn't visualize the scene that I'm writing about, and hear dialog, and generally immerse myself. I visualize when I read fiction and even when I listen to some music. My daughter's inability to visualize is alien and frightening to me. It's as if she told me that she's blind. In a sense, I believe she is.

How do you visualize something?

---

¹The book is sold with a CD of all the meditations. However, this was a library book, and it was missing the CD.
²Actually, I can't write creatively very well. What I meant was, "I wouldn't even try to write creatively...." And it would be impossible for me to record my dreams because I "play them back" in my Mind's Eye over and over.

TAW: Morning Pages

I finally started to read Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way or TAW, five and a half years after first hearing about it.

One of the first things she wants readers to do is to write "Morning Pages." This is a writing exercise that you're supposed to do first thing in the morning. It involves writing in long hand three pages of whatever pops into your head.

My first reaction was, "Is that all, three pages? But what if I have more I want to keep writing about?"

Then my thoughts drifted over to how I started a handwritten journal in 1976. At some point I decided to record my dreams, and then I'd expound on the dreams. So it seems to me that I've already been doing Morning Pages for many years. Maybe this is why I consider Creativity to be my greatest asset?

A second thing that Julia writes about is a weekly artist date. Again, that's another thing I used to do naturally, intuitively many years ago. But now, being married, a father, a homeowner and a full-time worker, it's hard to find time for that. Yet I'm always trying to eek out nice things for my Inner Artist to appreciate, even when I just take the dog outside for five minutes at night. Then, the stars, the glittery sparkle of snow in Winter, the furtive sounds of nocturnal creatures in Spring, Summer and Fall, all delight me.

Third, and perhaps most helpful, is the contract that you're supposed to sign at the end of chapter 1. It's not enough to agree to read the book (one chapter per week) and do the exercises. We must also get plenty of rest, eat sensibly, and exercise. This reminded me in a big way that you can't be creative if you're in a daze from sleep deprivation or suffering a letdown from caffeine or a sugar high. That's a motivational trigger for me. I can't seem to control my lifestyle just for the sake of feeling better, losing weight (or keeping it off) or even living longer. But when I realized I'd lose touch with my Muse, I decided to get back on track. Ironically, the time I'd spend blogging (lunchtime and nighttime) I now have to "sacrifice" for taking noontime walks and going to bed at a decent hour.

So I still find this book inspirational, even though I've read only about the first half. The best sentence: "Jump and the net will appear," she writes, quoting another source. Isn't that wonderful?

You can visit The Artist's Way website at http://theartistsway.com/.

Potted Plant of Pens

Check out this functional yet decorative idea for storing pens on Carrie's Unique Journalist blog. I love it!