Alexandersmap

    Category: Writing

    • The Steady Ascent

      “The main reason to produce something every day is that you must throw away a lot of good work to reach the good stuff. To let it all go easily, you need to be convinced that there is ‘more where that came from’. You get that in steady production.”
      — Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living

      Amusement parks may have Lightning Pass lanes, and tourist attractions may have a “Skip the Line” scheme (there’s always a line, it’s just a little shorter), but the work that we produce in a lifetime has no such option. Getting to the good stuff isn’t accomplished without putting in the time.

      Sure, I hear the call of Artificial Intelligence (AI) filling the gap between apprenticeship and mastery. Maybe research and first drafts don’t have to be so tedious. But there are lessons in the grind, and the willing student reaches wisdom not found in AI efficiency.

      The Mona Lisa wasn’t painted in a couple of days. Leonardo da Vinci carried that portrait with him for the rest of his life, adding touches, refining the work, ignoring it and coming back to it. It was never really completed before he passed, it simply reached its final state of being. That state happens to be masterful; A pet project that became the most famous painting in the world.

      Writing every day is sometimes a grind, but it teaches and informs the writer. We may publish regularly or be forever polishing our master work. Unlike our friend da Vinci, we ought to ship our work regularly, that we may move on to something else. The good stuff is earned daily. The great stuff is just over the next rise, awaiting our ascent. If we keep climbing.

    • Call It Inspiration

      “The composer does not sit around and wait for an inspiration to walk up and introduce itself…Making music is actually little else than a matter of invention aided and abetted by emotion. In composing we combine what we know of music with what we feel.” — George Gershwin

      I once wrestled with time. Once I called it time management, and then productivity, and maybe a few other names along the way. The way itself is time, and within it, we produce something or we do not. It was never really time at all, it was how we use our lives. And how we use our lives is who we are, and who we will become, and how we will be remembered one day.

      That’s a lot of wrestling.

      Perhaps that effort is better applied towards discovery. I write every day to discover what will stroll into the room next. We go back and forth a bit, I takes notes as quickly as I can, and the muse exits once again. Who saw that coming? And thanks for the, uh, time.

      Yesterday I finished a delightful book I’d never have read but for the fact that I said yes to it at the exclusion of a lot of great options I said no to. And then I immediately started reading another. The more books we read, the less we’re staring at a screen. That seems like a great trade-off to me. What does that have to do with productivity? Everything. And nothing at all.

      All that we do in our lives is derived from the experiences we make for ourselves. Writing, reading, travel, work, coexisting with these characters in our lives… it all accumulates into something larger than where we began this journey. And growth is where it’s at, friend. We are alive, and life is forever growing into something more than we started as. Just keep heading towards the light, wherever it takes us. Call it inspiration if it helps.

    • Difference Awaits

      “Normality is a paved road: it’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.” — Vincent Van Gogh

      What do you dream about? Who knows? Some people seem to remember all of their dreams. For some of us, the world of dreams is slammed shut upon waking. Is there a metaphor in there somewhere about waking up to finally begin living one’s dreams? Wouldn’t that be the obvious path to take right about now?

      My own dreams, such that they are, usually end with me waking up trying to figure a way out of some maze I’d wandered into, or to find a solution to some problem that doesn’t exist in reality. Ah, you dream interpreters, there’s nothing to see here! We’re all figuring things out as we go. Every day is a winding road.

      We may choose to wander off the beaten path any time we want to, for it’s our story to write. That beaten path laying up ahead is beaten for a reason. It’s tried and true, and won’t make our mothers lie awake at night in worry. Taking the road less traveled makes all the difference, right? Ask a poet:

      Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
      I took the one less traveled by,
      And that has made all the difference.
      — Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

      The thing is, most of us aren’t choosing poetry or painting as a career path. We’re figuring things out as we go, not wandering off into the wilderness. Maybe that means fewer flowers, but it also helps pay the mortgage. And so paths less traveled by remain in our dreams.

      Then again, we may opt to stray further and further from the beaten path each day, returning to pay the bills and such, but building those wandering muscles and stretching our inclinations in new directions. Our path is simply where we are heading at the moment. Perhaps it’s paved, perhaps it’s full of wildflowers or thistle or perilous beasts that make us break into a cold sweat for the terror of it all.

      Fear not! Our path is meant to be figured out. Like an Andy Weir novel, there’s always a way out of the maze. We just need to wake up to see it. And having seen it, to take that path to where difference awaits.

    • Coffee Collaboration

      “As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move…similes arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle.”
      — Honoré de Balzac, The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee

      May I take a moment to dwell on the mug of coffee recently departed from this world? Now, the typical time to dwell on coffee is while it is still with you, but mine seemingly evaporated before my eyes. One moment I’m having my first sip, the next? Empty cuppa. Our time is fleeting, isn’t it? Surely a reminder to slow down, stop rushing through life and savor what we have in the moment. Sure. This is coffee, and coffee demands we get going already.

      My morning ritual is two glasses of water while the coffee is brewing, then two cups of coffee while writing. I might get away with one cup of coffee if I were to tolerate room-temperature coffee (or, god forbid, microwaving coffee to reheat it). Alas, I don’t tolerate such things, I savor the first few sips, and guzzle the last few. ’tis not the writing that distracts from the drinking of coffee, ’tis the coffee that lubricates the ritual. One without the other would be possible, but not delightful. Don’t we need to dance with more delight in this life?

      The thing is, we each have our rituals that make our days shine a little brighter, make us more productive in our pursuits, and make us more aware and alive. Writing and coffee go together well, but so do reading and coffee, or catching up with a fellow life-traveler and coffee, or any number of things. Coffee isn’t selective in the habit you pair it with, it goes with the flow. And doesn’t that make it the perfect partner to collaborate with?

    • The Exact Shape

      Why Bother?

      Because right now, there is someone

      out there with

      a wound in the exact shape

      of your words.

      — Sean Thomas Dougherty

      Writing every day has a way of locking us into routine. This is a blessing and a curse, I think, for it produces something tangible while also making us more rigid in our thinking. Discipline has a price, like every other pursuit does. We are always saying no to something for every yes.

      I wish I’d written the poem that kicks off today’s blog, but then again, for all the poetry I read, I rarely attempt to write it myself. I’ve settled into a way of writing where wondrous brevity isn’t as natural. I stray more towards Thoreau’s process of choking the reader with words. I must remind myself to… breathe.

      Space and time are as essential in communication as the words themselves.

      Which makes me wonder…

      If publishing every day

      is the answer.

      Or if the words need

      a little more room

      to grow.

      Exactly what shape

      should these words

      take?

    • Eggs and Tarragon

      We are creatures of routine, and I am no exception. I could begin every morning for the rest of my life eating eggs and tarragon, a scattered bunch of cherry tomatoes with an ice cold glass of water and a hot coffee to wash it all down. Boring? Perhaps. But well above the normal drive-thru breakfast of most Americans.

      The point is, when we find something that works really well for us, it helps to standardize on that thing, if only to eliminate having to think about one more thing in our days. To go on autopilot about breakfast allows me to focus more on the other things I have to get done today. It’s the taco Tuesday of the breakfast hour, and it works for me.

      Similarly, writing this blog first thing is habituated. As I write this I’m contemplating two large events happening later today that require a lot of brain power to execute properly. Now I only have so much of that brain power to offer, don’t I? It may have been better to defer the writing until after my busy day is done, but I’ve found that it has the opposite effect. When we disrupt our positive morning rituals, we move through our day feeling like something is off. And that simply won’t do.

      So what’s for breakfast? And more, how do we spend our golden hour before the day gets away? There’s no telling what the hours ahead will bring, but at least we’ve started with something we love. Bon appetite.

    • Living in Words

      “Write what should not be forgotten.” — Isabel Allende

      I am not gifted with a photographic memory. As a result, I take a lot of notes when I’m in meetings, I also take a lot of pictures to capture people in happy moments I’d like to reflect on one day, and of course, I write. This blog has captured in amber many thoughts of the age at which they were written, captured moods and emotions, captured faraway moments and COVID-era shelter-in-place thoughts. It’s the experience of living in words.

      Writing a daily blog is different from writing a novel or a poem or a song. It’s more akin to writing an editorial for the newspaper. It’s still writing, but it’s also more in the moment, versus the timeless wonder produced in a great novel. Even writing that, I know it to be untrue. If this is the last blog post I ever wrote, wouldn’t I aspire to timeless wonder before publishing it? We want to be remembered for something beyond the average, not for the random post we just mailed in that day.

      Still, writing every day creates an average. Write every day for years and we see trends. And hopefully we see the average rise. Why do it otherwise? Why not simply stop the blog and focus on a novel instead? It doesn’t have to be an either/or proposition, but wouldn’t the time be better served producing something unforgettable? Would a novel look better on a resume than a blog? Perhaps. But who says a blog, done every day for years, doesn’t become wonderful and timeless and maybe even unforgettable as well? It’s something to aspire to, since we’re here anyway.

    • The Doorway

      It doesn’t have to be
      the blue iris, it could be
      weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
      small stones; just
      pay attention, then patch

      a few words together and don’t try
      to make them elaborate, this isn’t
      a contest but a doorway

      into thanks, and a silence in which
      another voice may speak.
      —Mary Oliver, Praying

      I had lunch with a friend earlier this week. She asked me about my writing, wondering when I’d get back to publishing. I mentioned that I’ve been publishing every morning for years now. The blog hides in plain sight. It’s a marketing person’s nightmare I know. Yet here it is, as it always has been, if one should wish to find it. A quiet voice in the storm.

      I don’t write for views and likes—I write to enter that doorway Mary Oliver describes above. I share it because it’s not a journal, but my idea of creative output. The jury may be out on just how creative the output is, and I’m okay with that, simply because I don’t seek them even as I appreciate them. And appreciation is surely one reason to get up every morning to begin filling our blank page.

      There is also attention and awareness. I believe we are all aware as children but grow out of it through formal education, narrowing viewpoints and the hectic lives we embrace in the quest for success (whatever that is). Some never reach that state of wonder again, while some of us spend the rest of our lives working to grow back into it. May we all reach back into wonder before we reach the end.

      I aspire to write as efficiently, as beautifully, as a poet. To convey with brevity and emotional weight all that is encountered in this brief go at things. As this is published, it will be post number 2,850. Is that enough to say, or should I keep entering new doorways? The answer lies in how far we have left to go.

    • The Right Direction

      “A man’s rootage is more important than his leafage.” — Woodrow Wilson

      At some point in life that is hard to pinpoint, filling gaps became more important than reaching upward and outward. Is that a sign of wisdom, or a desire for it? Personally, there are still too many gaps to fill before I’d be considered wise. I should think being curious is enough at this stage of the game.

      Wisdom is not the same thing as being knowledgeable. I know many extremely intelligent people who have no common sense whatsoever. They’re charming and particularly useful on trivia night, but not people you’d seek counsel from if you needed advice on a career move or relationship. For that we seek those who have been there before and lived to tell the tale. And more, are willing to lend an ear or a shoulder as needed.

      How does wisdom develop? Not in leafage—forever blown about in the winds of change, fashion and trendiness. It takes roots to grow wisdom. Stillness of mind, steady in ritual, and deliberate with thought, reading and deeper conversation with those who have seen a few things themselves. The wise are continuously growing more deeply rooted and anchored in first principles.

      The thing is, the less one dwells on the leafage, the more one may look deeper within. This all leads us somewhere. We are all here to solve that greatest of questions, why are we here, in this place and time? It’s far less scary to stay above the surface on such things than it is to dig deeper. But isn’t that a shallow existence?

      So it is that this writer strives to go deeper still. That may make this blog more interesting or less so. But it remains a sincere quest for wisdom and insight. It’s no longer striving for success (whatever that is), it’s seeking deeper meaning. And that, friend, requires growth in the right direction.

    • Flowing Towards the Next

      I would love to live
      like a river flows,
      carried by the surprise
      of its own unfolding.
      — John O’Donohue, Fluent

      This river is unfolding rapidly lately. We think of rivers as quietly predictable. We forget about the rapids and the plunges off of cliffs. Waterfalls are simply rivers with an abrupt change of state. And so it is that life can be exhilarating some days, and utterly exhausting other days. That’s life though, isn’t it? It will level out again one day. We learn to take it as it comes.

      To paraphrase my favorite Navy pilot, I have seen the future, and I don’t have to like it. But we can work to influence that which we can control. It’s our life, such that it is, and we are the only ones who will ever have the front row seat on this journey.

      A confession: I’ve quoted O’Donohue’s poem incorrectly. The original had capitalized the first letter of each line. My inclination to correct that is a weakness in my own way of thinking. He wrote what he wrote, and I ought to leave it well enough alone. So here you go:

      I would love to live
      Like a river flows,
      Carried by the surprise
      Of its own unfolding.

      It doesn’t matter how the poem was written. What mattered was the wisdom captured in a few words placed just so. We get so caught up in the trivial details that we drown ourselves instead of accepting everything as our unique, enthralling story. Here we are, moving through time from here to somewhere. We ought to look around and acknowledge what is.

      Still, those waterfalls. It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the landing. We want to make a splash in our brief time before infinity, but it isn’t always what we expected it to be. It helps in such moments to remember the Serenity Prayer:

      God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

      We learn that wisdom is only useful when it is acquired. We go through life stumbling across bits of wisdom along the way. It’s up to us whether we pick it up or leave it forgotten on the banks of missed opportunity. We are the sum of our parts, and in the end everything we accumulate will carry us somewhere, soon enough.

      Here’s the thing about that poem we might have missed as we (I) focused on the way it was written: O’Donohue wasn’t telling us to live as he lives, he was telling us he’d love to live thusly. We are all figuring it out, forever surprised by life in all its stillness and turbulent moments. Be here, now. That is flow, and it will carry us from this moment onwards towards the next.