Alexandersmap

    Category: Writing

    • Reaching Your Creative State

      “Do you want to do intellectual work? Begin by creating within you a zone of silence, a habit of recollection, a will to renunciation and detachment which puts you entirely at the disposal of the work; acquire that state of soul unburdened by desire and self-will which is the state of grace of the intellectual worker. Without that you will do nothing, at least nothing worth while.”
      – A.G. Sertillanges, O.P. The Intellectual Life

      Every day is a reinvention, a chance to be reborn into whatever you wish to become in this life. For me, this becoming is the whole point of living. But it begs the question—becoming what? Not an easy question, one most people immerse themselves in distraction to avoid answering (present company accepted). Blogging is a public sorting of this becoming bit. The messier work happens behind the scenes.

      When you have a general idea where your compass is pointing, you must put yourself in a state where you might execute on that vision for yourself. And this is where it gets tricky. All those skills you’ve learned to distract yourself from figuring out what you want to be when you grow up work equally well at keeping you from getting things done.

      “Creative people organize their lives according to repetitive, disciplined routines. They think like artists but work like accountants.” – David Brooks, “The Good Order” The New York Times

      And there lies the secret sauce to doing anything worthwhile: Repetitive, disciplined routines applied daily from now until… ad infinitum. Sertillanges calls this productive place your state of soul. A place where we can actualize the spirit of our deepest work and bring it to the world. What a gift. When you’re in this state, why would you ever want it to end?

      The trick to reaching this state of soul is hidden in plain sight: Establish routines and have the discipline to stick with them. Repeat. None of this is revelatory, what’s required is consistency of effort. So get to it. The world awaits your best work.

    • What Shapes Us

      All that passes descends,
      and ascends again unseen
      into the light: the river
      coming down from sky
      to hills, from hills to sea,
      and carving as it moves,
      to rise invisible,
      gathered to light, to return
      again. “The river’s injury
      is its shape.” I’ve learned no more.
      We are what we are given
      and what is taken away;
      blessed be the name
      of the giver and taker.
      For everything that comes
      is a gift, the meaning always
      carried out of sight
      to renew our whereabouts,
      always a starting place.
      And every gift is perfect
      in its beginning, for it
      is “from above, and cometh down
      from the Father of lights.”
      Gravity is grace.
      – Wendell Berry, The Gift of Gravity

      Splitting firewood over the weekend, I swung the axe down upon a log with a previous split running partially down the oak fibers. The axe shattered the log into three pieces, one of which flew directly into my shin just below my right knee. Ouch! Of course it was the right leg–its never the left leg that gets injured. The list of “gifts” is long: Broken leg (car), sprained ankle (basalt), bruised heel (beach), torn calf (crosswalk) and a previous shin injury (steel pole on a wet deck) that looked like a second knee all assaulted the right leg. The left? Blissfully spared such assaults. By comparison this latest incident was just a small bruise and another story to tell.

      We all work to make sense of the gifts we’re given, welcome or not, they shape us. We’re molded by the world, branded by others, given a big break now and again, twisted by fate, fallen in love and gutted by loss. Our shape is our injury, accumulated over a lifetime.

      It’s not just injuries that shape us, but travel and poetry and great books and a song at just the right moment, by quiet persistence and chance encounters and dumb luck. In quiet moments I linger on conversations I had years ago with people I haven’t spoken with since. The way I see the world, phrases that I use to this day, all came as a gift from a place long ago, silt and debris carried in the current of my life and washing over others before continuing onward to eternity. We carry more than we ever realize, and reveal it to the world one small splash at a time.

      A blog is accretive. We observe the world and the gifts we receive–like a snippet from a long Wendell Berry poem–turn them in our minds and release them to wash over others. Some make an impact, most flow unobserved to eternity. Such is the way.

    • Creating Something, Daily

      “All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.” – John Ruskin

      The great thing about writing every morning is that feeling of creating something out of nothing. Reinforcing long term habits you once told yourself you ought to have with a little discipline. Discovering new things and figuring out a bit of yourself one post at a time. Blogging is similar to painting every day and sticking the finished work in the barn. Every now and then someone actually sees what you produced, but mostly you do it for yourself.

      When you think about it, could it be any other way? We are all in the business of creating our better selves. Bloggers just document it for the world to see.

      There are other “ought to” habits I should get better at. I ought to optimize the site to make it easier for people to follow. I ought to be more active in following and liking the work of the wonderful people who follow me. I ought to stick with popular topics that get a lot of attention, things like fitness and travel. But it’s more likely that I’ll continue to write about whatever strikes my fancy, which lends itself to finding more interesting things in this world through travel and reading and putting myself out there a bit more than I might have otherwise.

      Writing became my most consistent habit over the last four years. That pleases me, but no more than the artist who places those paintings in the barn. You might look back on them now and then, but you move on to making new babies. The act of creating every day, and seeing where you might bring yourself next, is why we write. Maybe one day you’ll take all that art out of the barn and do something with it, but the analogy stops there. In blogging you’ve already let it fly.

    • Promises to Keep, Promises Kept

      “Whose woods these are I think I know.
      His house is in the village though;
      He will not see me stopping here
      To watch his woods fill up with snow.

      My little horse must think it queer
      To stop without a farmhouse near
      Between the woods and frozen lake
      The darkest evening of the year.

      He gives his harness bells a shake
      To ask if there is some mistake.
      The only other sound’s the sweep
      Of easy wind and downy flake.

      The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
      But I have promises to keep,
      And miles to go before I sleep,
      And miles to go before I sleep.”
      — Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

      You can’t really live in New Hampshire without hearing the echo of Robert Frost in every stand of trees or old stone fence. I could drive to his old farm in fifteen minutes give or take, should I be inclined to. Some days I’m inclined to. But like so many things, not nearly enough.

      I woke up in the middle of the night with this poem running through my head. It’s been awhile since it’s lingered there, or if it had it didn’t bother to wake me from my slumber. Maybe it’s the cold days and the pleasant thought of woods silently filling with snow that seized my attention. But no, I should think it was the many promises to keep that are waking me in the middle of the night.

      That’s it: promises to keep. Big projects due this week that occupy my mind, and things left undone in my life that nag at me, so much more than the things done in my life that I don’t give myself enough credit for. It’s funny how the promises to keep are so much louder in our heads than the promises kept. We are our own worst critics, aren’t we? But after running through the promises I broke to myself that kept me awake I began listing the ones I kept, and eventually drifted back to sleep.

      To borrow from another Frost poem written in nearby woods, that made all the difference.

    • Thoughts on Get Back

      You and I have memories
      Longer than the road that stretches out ahead
      – John Lennon/Paul McCartney, Two of Us

      Watching close to eight hours of the creative process as The Beatles hash through two album’s worth of material in the Disney+ series Get Back was fascinating and informative. Fascinating as a lifetime Beatles fan watching these four guys work through songs you know by heart from the first basic notes to the arrival at magical songs that became so essential to your own life’s soundtrack. Let It Be and Abbey Road songs developed before your eyes and ears. Informative as you see four guys on the edge of breaking up, still pushing through with the work.

      They knew who they were. The Beatles were the biggest band in the world, the biggest band that ever was, and they recognized that what they released mattered a great deal. That must in turn be both an enormous burden and a cattle prod to get to it already. But then you had this other dynamic at work, with each of them building their own lives, four egos growing increasingly independent of each other. Paul deeply involved and at his peak creatively, pushing for more contribution from the rest of the Beatles. John nonchalant and locked in on the ever-present Yoko. George rising to a higher level and chafing at John and especially Paul’s perceived dismissiveness. Ringo showing up early, ready to go, watching things falling apart and trying to be the glue that kept it together just long enough.

      And then they started playing music preparing for their live rooftop concert. Originally it was going to be an indoor affair, maybe even some exotic location, but they wouldn’t have anything to do with that. They were tired and weren’t going to leave the country for a show, nor were they going to do the same old thing they’d done before. There was a captured moment when they told Paul about the rooftop idea and his eyes lit up, “That’s it!” all over his face.

      Growing up with The Beatles larger than life, you tend to stick each of these four young men into a bucket, representing something in your mind. But each turned out to be much more than you thought they were. Get Back reminds you of this. They were just four guys with a special chemistry that became a force of nature. And you see that as they jam together, mastering the new songs and plucking old ones out to play. Playing music together is when they rose to be The Beatles again. And the room filled with joy.

      They had memories that were longer than the road that stretched out ahead. Together for over 14 years at that point, they were about to break up and go their separate ways, still competing and trying to one-up each other for years to come. But John would be dead in just less than 12 years. This was their famous final scene as a band, something the viewer knows all along. We find ourselves wishing they’d snap out of it and focus on the work a bit more. Squeeze just a little more brilliance out of their time together. But in the end celebrating what they did give us.

      And maybe turning a bit of the spotlight back on yourself, recognizing that you could be producing more too. For if there’s a lesson in Get Back, it’s that even the most brilliant magic starts off as an awkward tune in your head. Put yourself into the work and see what grows from it.

    • Getting to Deeper Work

      “In an age of network tools… knowledge workers increasingly replace deep work with the shallow alternative—constantly sending and receiving e-mail messages like human network routers, with frequent breaks for quick hits of distraction. Larger efforts that would be well served by deep thinking, such as forming a new business strategy or writing an important grant application, get fragmented into distracted dashes that produce muted quality…. Spend enough time in a state of frenetic shallowness and you permanently reduce your capacity to perform deep work.” – Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

      I think the reason I get up early is to think, uninterrupted. And when I am interrupted, by other early risers or by something as simple as the cat meowing for food my own deep thinking is disrupted, often to a point where I have to put away the work and find a way to reset myself. The beautiful thing about posting a blog every day is I’m forced to find a way through the shallow pool I find myself swimming in back to deeper waters, distractions be damned. But the work never feels the same.

      Noise-cancelling headphones help a lot. When I go deep I’ll play the same song on repeat until I’m done with whatever project I’m committed to finishing. For me, two songs work particularly well for this, Mark Knopfler’s Wild Theme (no surprise if you know what my favorite movie is) and Claude Debussy’s Clair de lune because they both quietly soar and have no lyrics to draw me out of my focused state. After years of this trick, playing one of these songs becomes Pavlovian in snapping my mind to attention.

      Long walks in nature help reset the mind when you find yourself in frenetic shallowness, and I have my go-to spots for this too. Walking helps you sort out the puzzle pieces in your subconscious mind, putting all the pieces on the table and shuffling them one step at a time. If the walk goes well you sort things out just enough. But sometimes I find myself dwelling on another puzzle altogether, and realize the distraction wasn’t swimming shallow at all but this elephant in the room that you’ve got to remove before you can properly focus on the original project. Long walks help sift the pieces enough for you to see what you’ve been staring at all along.

      Another trick of the trade that countless brilliant minds subscribe to is strict daily application of Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages. Write whatever comes out of your mind onto the page for three pages in a gushing stream of consciousness until you’ve gotten all the noise out of yourself, and then shift to creative output. I’ve tried this a few times but find myself frustrated by the time spent on Morning Pages that I could be spending on the work itself. The fault isn’t in the process but in my commitment to it. Enough people swear by it that it must work, and to go deeper I might have to recommit to this process myself.

      “The way to live is to create.
      Die Empty.
      Get every idea out of your head and into reality.”
      – Derek Sivers,       How to Live

      Whatever gets you there, deeper work is where we mine the very best of ourselves. Eliminate as many distractions as possible, retreat to your proverbial cabin in the woods and do the work. While there’s still time.

    • Where Are You Parking Yourself?

      “The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces.” – Will Rogers

      “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” – Will Rogers

      A great humorist will kick you in the ass while they make you laugh. You could fill a blog with Will Rogers quotes, and really, I just might someday. But not today. Today I’m thinking about these two quotes of his that pair well together. For who doesn’t contemplate their path to success, and ponder whether they might have stopped a few steps short of a higher peak?

      Last year, wanting to see the starry dome and catch the first glimpse of sunrise from the east coast of the United States, my daughter and I drove to the summit of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park in Maine. It was 3 AM, and there were already people up there watching the celestial show above, but there was plenty of elbow room and more than enough time to find a spot to park ourselves for the big event. We chose a spot next to a large boulder about 200 feet down from the summit parking lot. Over the next two hours a couple of hundred people walked past us to spots further away. When the sun finally rose, I could see that they’d chosen a place more spectacular than the one we’d chosen. And we regretted not going further when we could have.

      No matter where we are currently parked, it’s just a pause along the way unless we choose to make it our grave. As we dance with the extraordinary that inspires greatness within us, we’ll be tempted along the way to live with good enough. Shake it off and push on. There’s so much more to experience in life just beyond where we currently find ourselves.

    • Writing to Schubert

      How many hours
      do I sit here
      aching to do

      what I do not do
      when, suddenly,
      he throws a single note

      higher than the others
      so that I feel
      the green field of hope,

      and then, descending,
      all this world’s sorrow,
      so deadly, so beautiful.
      – Mary Oliver, Schubert

      Today is the anniversary of the death of Franz Schubert, who passed away at the shockingly young age of 31 on the 19th of November 1828. It’s shocking because of how much he accomplished in such a short span of time. Not so shocking when you consider the state of modern medicine at the time: he was treated with mercury to cure what was believed to be syphilis. I’m grateful for a lot of things in my life — being born at a time where medical treatment is a bit less hit or miss is right up there on my list. But having better treatment options guarantees nothing. We still must produce while we can.

      The inspiration with Schubert is in the mastery he had reached in his last few years. It’s something we can draw from in our own creative lives, as Mary Oliver clearly did, and I regret not leveraging his soundtrack more often myself. But then again it all comes to us at different times, doesn’t it? We all reach that point of creative inspiration when we wake up and finally see the truth. If Schubert offers any warning from his grave, it’s that we shouldn’t wait. Memento Mori.

      Schubert’s brief and brilliant life informs: we can do a lot in a relatively brief amount of time. And surely, there’s still time to do it today. But maybe not tomorrow. Carpe diem. Now get to work.

    • Do That

      “Ask yourself: What is the best I can do? And then do that.” – Cheryl Strayed

      “The unifying theme is resilience and faith. The unifying theme is being a warrior and a motherfucker. It is not fragility. It’s strength. It’s nerve. And ‘if your Nerve deny you—,’ as Emily Dickinson wrote, ‘Go above your Nerve.’” – Cheryl Strayed

      Borrowing a couple of Cheryl Strayed quotes for this post. This ten hours late in the day post. This can’t get my head back into Eastern Standard Time post. This too busy and distracted to ship the work in the time you promised yourself you’d ship it in post. But perhaps I’m being too hard on myself. Despite it all, I publish every single day that I wake up on this planet with my head screwed on tight. Today will be no exception.

      I’ve recognized that I’m not doing enough, and I’m taking corrective action. Not just with this blog, but in a lot of things. Sometimes you need a bit of a kick in the ass from afar, and I’m grateful to the two ladies quoted above for providing that. I’ve used this Dickinson poem before, and delighted in Strayed quoting it in her own straight-to-the-point way. Her quote above was exactly what I needed to read to get my head out of the clouds and get the damned blog posted already. Save the excuses for another day, thank you.

      We all hear the call in their challenge, don’t we? It’s about the rest of the things we promise ourselves that we’ll do. Writing promises. Fitness promises. Work promises. Project promises. Relationship promises. Things deferred and neglected for too long. Be a warrior and grow beyond your fragility. Do what must be done. Have some nerve, or go above it.

      What’s the best you can do? It’s more than this. So do that.

    • Making it Interesting

      “If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.” – Ray Bradbury

      I’ve read this Bradbury quote before, and it made me smile but didn’t resonate at the time. Now it reads differently. Now I’m deep in it and looking at the wrestling match with the Creative Muse with both dread and delight. Now I’m scheming where I might insert travel and more writing into my days. Now I look at dusty books that have long occupied space on my shelves mocking me for not getting to them, and knowing they hold secrets I’ll never know until I earn them.

      I happen to be slogging through a couple of books that bore me to tears, but now and then drop a wisdom nugget into my shaking hands. Why read two dull books at once? When I grow frustrated with one I turn back to the other, then back again, until some moment when I finish both. My reward will be reading some page-turner fiction that I may finish on one cross-country flight.

      The mission is to make your own writing interesting. To not create one of those dull slogs you get through before you reward yourself with the page-turner. If you live with the naive (even reckless) goal of earning a place at the table with the great writers you must do (and publish!) the work, but you must also create something compelling.

      And that’s the wrestling match, isn’t it? Anyone can throw up a bunch of words, the trick is to make them swing together to the music in your soul. While there’s time.