Sparks to light your wild idea
A Herd of Words: Frivolous and Frivolously Defined
A Herd of Words One of the wild ideas I'm working on is shaping a section of my doctoral dissertation. I wrote on frivolity, and the point of pointlessness (because, dissertation in mythology!). My dissertation was a wild idea itself, in many ways. I was both embracing and whacking away at the ideas of academic seriousness. As a result, I included a variety of elements you don't usually find in dissertations. My thesis advisor convinced me that a 'fun with footnotes' section was too much. As was the game where you write messages on random pages like you did when you [...]
Friends Help Bring Wild Ideas to Life: First Thoughts
Friends Help Bring Wild Ideas to Life The Solitude of Our Imaginations We dream big, wild, wonderful ideas in the solitude of our own imaginations. (Most of the time, at least.) It's a pretty glorious thing to ride what philosopher Gaston Bachelard calls 'the voyage into the land of the infinite.' The seas can be as wide and deep as we wish, and the voyage as truly infinite as we'll allow ourselves, with no one injecting deadly practicality into the mix. Infinity can be so intoxicating, such a marvelous ride. But there's a point in that voyage (the vanishing point, maybe?) [...]
Beautiful Thugs: Gardening Your Wild Idea
"Je sais aussi, dit Candide, qu'il faut cultiver notre jardin." - Voltaire, Candide Cultivating My Own Garden Last week, I wrote about the power of getting to those pesky tasks that can bog us down fast, when we think of them, to get them out of the way. This week, because I am a contrarian (and continue to learn that the process of chasing and taming wild ideas is inherently contrarian in many ways!), I didn't follow my own advice. I didn't get the post done for this week's email on Tuesday, my self-imposed 'day of sending.' An effort, [...]
Doing: When You Think of a Task, Do It
When You Think of a Task, Do It When you think of a task, do it as it occurs to you. Here’s the logic behind this thought. There are going to be more things that you are going to need to do per day by a factor of a number with more zeroes than I know how to pronounce, and I can last until about a kajillion. (Or was that bazillion?) Anyway, lots. And lots. And a lot of them are just bits of things that you need to do to keep momentum towards making your wild idea come to life. [...]
Finding Allies: Even the Color Blue
"We have so many allies in this world, including just the color blue in the sky." - David Whyte When Aloneness Sucks There are moments when you're going after a wild idea when it feels as if you are slogging it alone. After all, most of the time, when we're gripped by the energy - the daimon, as the ancient Greeks would say - of an idea, we're there in a dance with the idea and ourselves. The rest of the world often looks upon us with disinterest, sometimes benign and sometimes destructive. Part of going after what we dream of [...]
On the Power of Symbols: Notre Dame
On the Power of Symbols: Notre Dame The Fire at Notre Dame Like millions of people, I am viscerally feeling the loss of the Notre Dame fire. I felt that throb in the solar plexus of a heart hurt, a soul hurt, when I saw the first pictures of the spire engulfed. I stand at a distance from Notre Dame as a place and as a religious structure. And yet, I felt gutted as the fire gutted the cathedral, just as so many others are around the world. I got into a conversation on social media (not a fight; I was [...]
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