Thoughts Happen

For Every Blog There Is a Season: The Evolution of Thoughts Happen

When I started Thoughts Happen in September of 2008, I had no idea where it would take me, but I knew I needed to write, and write often — for an audience. Magazine articles, my first love, are wonderful, and it’s great to see those bylines, but I had too many things I wanted to get into words and not enough places to publish them. 

 And writing in what I lovingly refer to as my Notebooks Full of Crap wasn’t quite fulfilling enough. Because I am no Emily Dickinson, squirreling my best work away to be discovered after I’m dead — I need an audience to keep me honest.

 Lucky for me I live in the Blog Age. Under the wide umbrella of Kindness, Curiosity and Humor, I claimed my domain and started writing. Everything from Star Trek to colonoscopies were fair game for my posts, with a smattering of Shambhala Meditation, Girl Scouts and tennis thrown in for good measure (not to mention my turtle Littlefoot, who's a muse of sorts). 

 But along the way I found that the lack of a clear focus, instead of being freeing, was becoming a burden. More often than not I woke up on Wednesday mornings — my designated posting day — thinking, “Oh God, what am I going to write about today?” 

 Wasn’t I doing this for fun? 

 Ironically, something from my latest post, about Lionel Poilane, the baker who created a bread sculpture of a bird in a cage, came back to me. "The bird is inside the cage. He is trapped and he can feed himself with his own barrier. ... After you are nourished with your own limits, you can fly to freedom." 

I needed a boundary to push against to feed my creativity again, to get me excited about blogging. But the whole reason I started Thoughts Happen as a generalist was because there wasn’t any one topic I felt I could sustain with the necessary enthusiasm or authority. There are plenty of good creativity blogs and Buddhist meditation blogs, the most likely candidates.

 But I came to realize that I’ve had a life-long curiosity about our relationship to Stuff. Recycling, garbage, finding novel ways to use things that are commonly discarded — these things fascinate me. How do we interact with the objects of daily life, particularly with things that are normally thrown away? And how are the ways we interact with our Stuff informed by our spiritual and community values?

 The spark of an idea for a new blog was born, and immediately a flood of new post topics rushed to my mind. 

 So Thoughts Happen will go into semi-retirement, and a new blog with a refined focus will take its place as soon as its design and functionality are fleshed out enough for public consumption. 

 When I started Thoughts Happen three years ago, writing was something I did, but I did not yet identify myself as a writer. Three years later, I’ve got 144 posts under my belt (wow), and my commercial writing business has grown alongside it as well. I’ve developed a small but loyal readership and met some interesting, thoughtful people through the blog’s Facebook page and my Twitter followers. 

 Thoughts Happen has served me well. I hope as readers of mine you will join me in the next leg of the creative journey ahead. Watch this space for what’s go come. 

Photo of Path In Winter courtesy Jennifer R. Graevell Photography, Some rights reserved  

Even Billie Jean King needs help getting motivated: Fixing Bad Habits

I ran across an article a few weeks ago by Scott Young on the99percent about replacing bad habits, and I keep thinking about it. 

"We all have lousy habits. Things we’d like to do, or know we should, but just don’t seem to happen: exercise, diet, productivity or flossing longer than a week after the visit to the dentist.In that sense, I’m like most people - still a work in progress.But, unlike most people, I’ve had on ongoing obsession with figuring out how to fix those lousy habits. I've spent thousands of hours being an experimental guinea pig, uncovering surprising findings, such as:

• Implementing a daily exercise plan is easier than exercising 3 times per week
• Changing 10 meals will change 90% of your eating habits
• Learning a new skill or language can be accomplished with 5 minutes a day"

See the full article at the99percent.com

I particularly like the last step in his process, "Begin with the start in mind," focusing on committing to only the first 5-15 minutes of your habit. Even the great Billie Jean King does this. She was quoted recently regarding her exercise routine:

"On days I'm not motivated, I will say, 'OK, just get on the bike or walk for 5 minutes, and if you want to stop, fine.' I give myself permission. I've only once in my whole lifetime stopped, when I realized I was sick. Every other time I end up doing at least 25-30 minutes. So then it's done for the day, it's great. I would go without exercising if I wasn't careful."

Read more: http://www.nctimes.com/ap/lifestyles/article_f772d8d3-8ecb-5b51-aecf-986dda3884b0.html#ixzz1TMGvlTgW

This made me feel a little better about the cheats and tricks I need to break my own bad habits. I mean, if Billie Jean King needs a cheat to get her motivation going, I don't have to feel so bad. 

What's your experience with replacing bad habits?

Photo of Billie Jean King with Sheryl Crow and Wendell Crow courtesy smays on flickr.Some rights reserved

The Periodic Table of Me

The small, rectangular piece of formerly white paper is folded into thirds, its photocopied letters and numbers disappearing at the creases from years of friction. The top edge is smudged and crumpled; the paper feels soft, like a broken-in slipper.  

Photocopied onto the paper is a miniature Periodic Table of the Elements. It has been in my possession for over 25 years, since I was a sophomore in high school taking Chemistry 1X from a lanky, excitable teacher named Mr. Douglas who gesticulated dramatically during class and liked to tell dorky chemistry jokes; a favorite: “Chemistry takes al-kynes.” 

For years the photocopy resided in the plastic pocket of the holder for a credit card-sized calculator that was my constant companion through high school and into my college years at Georgia Tech, even after I acquired my trusty HP-41CX. And though I rarely needed to calculate a molecular weight after the first quarter of my freshman year, I still kept it with me.  

I kept it through my 13 quarters sweating through an Electrical Engineering degree at Tech and then moving out to California. I kept it through my job hunt before landing a spot at a Navy research facility here, and I kept it through the next seven years trying to be a good engineer while gradually coming to the realization that contrary to what I had thought since I was 12, this was not what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, so now what?  

I kept it through my pregnancy and subsequent resignation from the Navy and my years as a stay-at-home mom, and I kept it through the first shaky steps I took towards testing the waters as a writer.  

I even kept it through the years I spent since then putting as much distance from my engineering past as I could while I established my writing career, firmly telling anyone who suggested it that no, I didn’t want to be a technical writer and write software documentation.  

But when the familiar worn paper surfaced recently, as it does every so often when I am sorting through a pile of stuff after cleaning out my desk, I greeted its appearance as I would an old friend, and was glad that I had never been able to bring myself to toss it in the recycling bin.  

That I am the kind of person who has a miniature Periodic Table of the Elements says something about me, something I am finally ready to acknowledge again. It says I am analytical, organized in my way, and like to be prepared for all circumstances. That yes, a part of me is still an engineer, and proud of it. 

As a teenager must push away her parents to claim her own identity before being willing to acknowledge the parts of them she carries in herself, I had to separate myself from those elements that seemed so constraining before being ready to acknowledge that I’m glad they are here.  

My Periodic Table says that I am more than I appear to be on the surface. 

And, as a bonus, I can look up the molecular weight of strontium any time I need to at a moment’s notice.

 

I apologize for the radio silence since my last post at the end of May. I should just declare a mini-sabatical every year during June, as it seems to be the month when all hell breaks loose, so to speak, and I have difficulty keeping top of everything. 

Changing the Channel, or: How to Draw a Horse, with Artist Rick Stitch

Rick Stitch, of Santa Barbara, is a real, live working artist. He's also approachable, creative and practical, as I recently discovered when my daughter and I dropped in at the Lux Art Institute where he is the current resident artist.

We were taking in his water-inspired paintings on exhibit and enjoying the mini pier that he created right in the gallery (complete with water), when in he walked and said hello. 

He asked my daughter if she liked art, and when she said yes, he imparted some of the most practical advice for creatives I've heard. 

"I found this piece of advice in a book I read," he said, "and I tell it to all my students." 

"First of all, I'm always reading things about drawing and painting. Anytime I see something I pick it up, because you never know where you'll find something good."

He then proceeded to tell us that he'd picked up a book for a buck at a garage sale called something like, "How to Draw a Horse," (I don't know if Stitch is a Buddhist or not, but being open to advice from a book called, "How to Draw a Horse," sounds very Beginner Mind to me), and in it was this piece of advice:

"When you're starting out on making something, it's very important to listen to your inner dialogue as you're making it," he said. "And if your inner dialogue is telling you, 'This isn't coming out right, this is so frustrating, I'm never going to be able to draw this horse,' the thing you've got to do is to change the channel.

Change the channel on your inner dialogue to something that says, 'I'm really excited about drawing this horse,' because the only thing you can have any control over is what you put into it. You don't really have any control over the outcome, but you can control the input."

This reminded me of Anne Lamott's chapter on Radio Station KFKD in her classic book on writing, "Bird by Bird." She says, "KFKD is on every single morning when I sit down at my desk. So I sit for a moment and say a small prayer — please help me get out of the way so I can write what wants to be written."

Even though I know I have other channels to listen to, station KFKD is sometimes the strongest, so I was glad to hear Stitch's advice, because it bears repeating.

So tune into that other channel, no matter how faint, set a pushbutton, and go create. The outcome will have to work itself out from there.   

View more photos and a video of Stitch at  www.voiceofsandiego.org

Mating for Life

The pelicans streamed in front of our boat in a single-file line, skimming the surface of the water so closely and so gracefully that they would make any surfer envious. They kept coming, in a stream — a ribbon of birds floating above the waves, heading south. Over a hundred of them there must have been.  

There was one place where they rose up and came down again, making a bell curve of  birds catching some unseen updraft off the surface.

It was a perfect day for sailing off the Oceanside coast, with a steady breeze giving us good speed, none of the rain we had feared and just enough swell to make it interesting. The pelicans put it over the top.

None of us had ever seen that many pelicans together at once. Five or six you’ll see, maybe a dozen, but never this many. My husband and I and the crew of the catamaran from BajaSail.net were mesmerized watching them. Finally the line petered out and they became smaller and smaller, an ellipsis disappearing over the crests of the waves.

It was the kind of moment you can’t plan for and are damn lucky you are paying attention enough to notice. Watching them go, I realized that we had just gotten the best anniversary present ever, for it so happens that 18 years ago to the day my husband and I took our vows of for better or worse in front of family and friends and then celebrated with them on a boat docked in San Diego Bay. No pelicans that day, but a stellar April afternoon regardless.

Those intervening years have had their for betters, and indeed their for worses, but I realize I’m pretty lucky to have someone who has rolled with the changes and still wants to be with me.   

Someone who has listened to my career angst as an unhappy engineer, celebrated with me when I got my first article published and reminds me to keep querying when I get a rejection. 

He also thanks me for doing the grocery shopping and laundry, doesn’t mind the “interesting” vegetarian dishes I sometimes spring on the family, and moves the furniture when he vacuums the carpets (I hate vacuuming the carpets). 

He provides free, patient tech support for my parents, claps for me at karaoke as long as I don’t ask him to sing, and knows that I will probably never stop talking to myself even though it bugs him. 

He also reads every one of my blog posts.

So thanks, sweetheart — for opening my eyes to the elegance and grace of pelicans, and so much more.

Photo of Pelican courtesy Elizabeth Haslam via Creative Commons license

My So-Not-A-Sitcom Life

"This room is a disaster." As soon as the words left my mouth I regretted them, and understood in a way I never had before the meaning of hyperbole.

War in Libya. Nuclear meltdown in Japan. Messy office.

"One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong ..."

I guess I am compelled to exaggerate the mundane details of my life so it will feel more important. So I'll feel more important. Like in a sitcom world where everything is hyper-real and shiny and nobody ever has to do the dishes or clean the kitty litter. And if they do, something hiLARious will happen right in the middle. 

Nothing hilarious ever happens when I'm cleaning the kitty litter. (Well technically, that is because my husband cleans the kitty litter, but I've never noticed anything hilarious happen when he does it either.) 

My Buddhist training emphasizes seeing things as they are, without adding anything extra from our own projections. I've noticed this is very hard to do. Because in a way, our projections are a survival technique: we see one saber-toothed tiger and we figure that all of the rest of them are likely to be the same, so we project our fear of being eaten alive onto each saber-tooth that we come across. 

But it gets in the way of experiencing each moment as fresh, unlike any other moment that has ever come before. 

If I walked into my office and said, "This room is kind of messy, but it is messy in a completely new way than it ever has been," it doesn't have the same effect, but is closer to the truth.

And maybe instead of berating myself for not keeping it completely neat and organized, I would see the scattered papers from projects I've been working on, business cards from interesting people I've met and magazines with tons of good reading material in them as opportunities to be grateful for the rich life that I have. 

Complete with dirty dishes and kitty litter.

Photo of old TV courtesy Gonzalo Díaz via Creative Commons

The God I Would Like to Believe In

“This week, in your morning pages, write about the god you do believe in and the god you would like to believe in.” I had to think about that a bit.  

The prompt comes from The Artist’s Way, the 12-week, self-described Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity written by Julia Cameron. I started it right after Christmas, but am taking a little longer since I took a hiatus when I was stressing myself out about it a month ago — I figured that was not the desired outcome.   

When I came back to it, I found this week’s focus is on Abundance, and recovering a sense that god, or God, (or as Cameron puts it, Good Orderly Direction) is not going to punish us for wanting to be artists by condemning us to a life of poverty, that being a creative person does not necessitate lack. There is an infinite number of pies with an infinite number of slices, and if the notion we carry of God is still as a stern authority figure that puts creative ideas in our heads but doesn’t want us to pursue them, maybe we should take another look at that. 

So what about this god I would like to believe in?  

The God I would like to believe in does not have a plan for our lives, but rejoices when we find a path that reduces suffering, our own and others. The god I would like to believe in looks like a very wise and very happy old Indian woman who loves to see us discover new things. 

The god I would like to believe in doesn’t interfere in our lives but can open our eyes to things that were already in front of us the whole time — magic and opportunity and love and fulfillment. 

The God I would like to believe in understands that we need to figure things out for ourselves, and that sometimes this is hard, but when we do it is so much more rewarding than when we are just given the answer. 

The god I would like to believe in doesn’t want to get any credit. 

The god I would like to believe in did not invent money, but rejoices and amplifies well-being when we use the money that we acquire to help others.  

The god I would like to believe in does not protect us.   

The god I would like to believe in knows that what we need is not protection, but bravery and confidence that we will find the path that is right in front of us.

Photo of Indian Woman courtesy of Braden Gunem via Creative Commons license