Tag: Living creatively

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What’s your Printery?

I love everything this video reveals about this man, his vision, his spirit, his work in the world… Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr, please take my money!

You will not get a degree
You will not go into extraordinary debt
You will print all day, every day
You will clean type
Wipe up ink
Smell the scent of grinding heavy metal night and day
You will not move back in with your parents
Nor struggle to have a quote/unquote “career”

You can give him money too, via his latest IndieGoGo campaign. Hat tip to Austin Kleon for alerting me (and thousands of other e-newsletter subscribers) to the existence of this inspirational being!

If a contribution isn’t in your budget right now, Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr offers an alternative to “join[ing] the growing movement of people who are taking control of their own damn lives.”

OtherWays

May we all find our own version of The Printery, which is, as Amos describes,

another path, a community that will assist you in achieving your dreams.

Not someone else’s dreams; YOUR dreams.

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What’s your crystal shop? A lesson from The Alchemist

The Alchemist.jpgTonight I’m thinking about the crystal shop in Paolo Coelho’s book The Alchemist. It’s been over twenty years since I read the copy I “borrowed” from my cousin Matthew (!!!) so I’m a bit fuzzy on the details, but here’s what I remember: the protagonist is on his journey (the Hero’s Journey, the monomyth), and at some point he ends up asking a crystal merchant for a job.

It turns out he’s pretty good at selling crystals. Not only that, but he ends up coming up with all sorts of excellent business ideas, and things are going great.

…except that our hero didn’t set out from home to do a great job selling crystals. If anything, hanging out with the crystal merchant has made him a bit complacent, and the reader wonders if he’s completely lost sight of his goal.

At one point the protagonist is trying to figure out why his boss, who keeps talking about his big dream of going to Mecca, isn’t doing anything that would help him actually get there:

“Well, why don’t you go to Mecca now?” asked the boy. “Because it’s the thought of Mecca that keeps me alive. That’s what helps me face these days that are all the same, these mute crystals on the shelves, and lunch and dinner at that same horrible café. I’m afraid that if my dream is realized, I’ll have no reason to go on living.”

Of course you want to just shake the guy: “What are you waiting for?! You’re not getting any younger, Mecca isn’t going to come to you!”

But you can’t very well judge, because you know that you’ve been in that exact place yourself.  Continue reading “What’s your crystal shop? A lesson from The Alchemist”

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If the Buddha wrote a bio

If the Buddha Dated.jpgYou might have seen these books: If the Buddha Dated, If the Buddha Married? I loved the section in If the Buddha Dated on writing a dating profile that might attract an appropriate mate. Author Charlotte Kasl takes the reader through the various versions that you might write, starting with one that’s basically a laundry list of all the qualities you are seeking in your would-be partner. As she continues, the profiles get a little more “enlightened” and more and more interesting, and you start realizing that perhaps describing your values, and asking questions, might be more effective than presenting an impossible checklist of criteria and scenarios that might not ultimately lead to a mutually-fulfilling relationship, anyway.

The final sample profile simply reads,

Who are you? Who am I?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this because it’s now been exactly 27 days since I was asked to write a bio for the Order members of my Buddhist community, or sangha, as Buddhist communities are known.

Now I am nothing if not a writer, and I have no problem writing bios; I’ve written gobs of them. Bios for online dating profiles (at least four different ones I am sure about, and probably more, all partially inspired by Charlotte Kasl, if decidedly more verbose). Bios for speaking gig programs. Bios for job applications, for teaching yoga, for the inside of my book, for websites, for fellowship directories, for high school and grad school alumni journals. 20 word bios. 120 word bios. 250 word bios, one-pagers. The list goes on and on.

So why is this one stumping me?!

The thought process goes something like this: “I’d better do this one properly. Wait, no, I’d better make it seem like I wasn’t worried about it at all, that’s more ‘spiritual.’ Continue reading “If the Buddha wrote a bio”

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Your Money Or Your Life: one of the most influential books of my life

vicki
Of course this woman is one of my role models (Source: yourmoneyoryourlife.com)

I finally had a chance to read the new edition of Your Money Or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence, a book that had a huge influence on me when I first discovered it back in the late ’90s.

With this book, co-author (and now friend!) Vicki Robin sparked the FIRE, or  “Financial Independence, Retire Early” movement… though few people were aware of this until relatively recently. She is a huge inspiration to me, and I definitely aim to be like her when I grow up!

The new edition includes a wider range of examples from Millennial types, and the chapter on investing is FAR better aligned to today’s investing climate.

YMOYLIntrigued? Vicki has generously shared a VERY detailed summary on the fancy new YMOYL website, but I still suggest you buy the book, and spend some time with it!

In addition to calculating how much money we’ve earned over our entire lives, and what we have to show for it (aka our net worth; this is Step 1), we’re instructed to calculate our real hourly wage, a function of our life energy, and track every cent that comes into our goes out of our lives (Step 2). And we get into the habit of tallying up our spending by categories that are relevant to our lives, and we regularly convert those monthly spending totals into hours of life energy (Step 3).

But my favorite step by far is Step 4: Three Questions That Will Transform Your Life: Continue reading “Your Money Or Your Life: one of the most influential books of my life”

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How to get your body caftan-ready for summer

The boys at work have been playing (and singing!) this song:

…which will forevermore remind me of the excellent article from which I stole the title of this post, thank you :

1. Select a caftan of your chosen gauge and length. Stroke its gauzy fabric and whisper into its folds.

2. Let your flesh settle into the crevices of your comfortable, comfortable caftan.

3. Crumbs? Let them fall where they may, swaddled in your caftan.

4. Throw out your razor.

5. Throw out your bra.

6. Throw out the aloe vera lotion you bought last summer. You will not be getting sunburned this summer.

7. Release your inhibitions. Feel the rain on your skin.

I’ve been itching to write about, in no particular order: the time I thought I needed to buy all new clothes to be more “feminine” because I had internalized all this male gaze crap and even went so far as to send emails back and forth with a few different personal stylists I was going to spend $$$ with and install a frikken wardrobe app on my phone and almost decided to grow my hair out, and then I randomly stumbled across an article by Cynara Geissler in The Establishment entitled ‘Toddler Grandma Style,’ The Fashion Approach That Will Set You Free: Continue reading “How to get your body caftan-ready for summer”

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Digital Desk + Analog Desk + Day Bed = My Ideal Creating Space

My new workspace arrangement has completely transformed my room from a place I rarely used to a place I can’t wait to come home to / spend all evening / all day getting creative / hanging out in.

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Ever since Scott helped me set it up, I’ve had these words from a Jean LeLoup song stuck in my head:

Mon lit est un navire
Un atelier où je vais pour l’éternité

…which roughly translates to, “my bed is a ship / a studio where I’m going for eternity.”

I had been doing a project that required more space than my little desk could accommodate, and had brought a whole pile of books / post-it notes / big sheets of paper / pens / my computer out to the dining room table. Several days later, it was really bugging me to have all that clutter in our living space, but I still wanted everything to be accessible… so I decided to move my big table from the garage and into my room.

After trying out several configurations of furniture, Scott suggested I leave BOTH desks in there, move my wine-box bookshelves (which hold all my writing and painting tools in addition to books) next to the main desk, and move the bed under the windows. And there’s still tons of room for yoga in between.

Having two desks means that I can now implement an idea Austin Kleon suggests in his book Steal Like An Artist: keep separate digital and analog desks. Continue reading “Digital Desk + Analog Desk + Day Bed = My Ideal Creating Space”

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Creativity = (Stock and Flow) + (Morning Pages)

I’ve been digging Austin Kleon’s work lately. There is so much excellent fodder in both Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work!, and I highly suggest subscribing to his e-newsletters for a regular dose of even more goodies.

The concept he stole-then-shows that intrigues me the most is that of Stock and Flow:

Stock&Flow
A page out of Austin Kleon’s book Show Your Work! 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered; I stole this image from his blog.

Being the nerd that I am, I pored over the original Robin Sloan Stock and Flow article he references, along with its excellent comment thread, which then led me to Continue reading “Creativity = (Stock and Flow) + (Morning Pages)”

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The Journey: a poem by Mary Oliver

Here is a poem that Spring Washam included in her 2017 book, A Fierce Heart: Finding Strength, Courage, And Wisdom in Any Moment. I love how it dovetails with William Stafford’s The Way It Is:

The Journey
by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations —
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Continue reading “The Journey: a poem by Mary Oliver”

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Autobiography in Five Short Chapters: a poem by Portia Nelson

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters
by Portia Nelson

Chapter I

I walk down the street.
            There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
            I fall in.
            I am lost … I am helpless.
                       It isn’t my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.

Chapter II
I walk down the same street.
            There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
            I pretend I don’t see it.
            I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
                        But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter III
I walk down the same street.
            There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
            I see it is there.
            I still fall in … it’s a habit.
                       My eyes are open.
                       I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter IV
I walk down the same street.
            There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
            I walk around it.

Chapter V
I walk down another street.

Continue reading “Autobiography in Five Short Chapters: a poem by Portia Nelson”