creativity

Empty Your Day

10/26/2018 by John 1 Comment

For the first time in many weeks, I have an empty day in front of me. Empty days frighten me. I am afraid I will begin the day with a sense of hope and promise about all I will get done and that I will end the day being disappointed with myself for not doing it. But empty days can also be my best days. They can fill me up at times when I feel drained of vitality.

The problem with empty days occurs when I let the glowing rectangles I’ve surrounded myself with take charge. I go there to “get something done”. But in the midst of accomplishing my task and seemingly without my knowing it, I am led to all sorts of places I never knew I wanted to go. When I get there I often feel frazzled, and the task I set out to do is left undone. The rectangles fill the time, but they rarely fill me.

But why do I feel the need to do so much anyway? Why not be content to let the day remain empty? An empty day need not mean an unfulfilling day. To have an empty day allows the space to be filled with whatever comes my way. The urge to follow that birdsong. Time to just sit and watch the play of light across the landscape. Naps. Naps are good.

The best kind of empty days are the ones when I leave the screens tucked away out of sight, allowing my mind to wander free of their influences. It is not easy to intentionally set out to have an empty day. It is not easy to let go of the urge to be “productive”. But often it is what is needed to recharge, to become full again.

Are you feeling depleted? See if you can fill yourself up by emptying your day. You can start by turning off that screen you’re looking at right now.

Coffee Thoughts

06/22/2018 by John 3 Comments

I sip my coffee and hope that the muse will arrive. I can feel better about this cup of coffee. We spent the extra to make sure that it was organic and fair trade certified. Whether or not this really does much to help or if it just makes someone with too much wealth already a little bit wealthier I cannot know. But it soothes my conscience, a consumer ashamed of my consumption, ashamed that my actions cause harm to others. I see a field far away in a hot, humid place, a life spent picking the beans from the plant one by one, placing them in a canvas sack so that I can sit here thousands of miles away and stimulate my adrenal glands to make up for the lack of sleep my first world worries have caused me.

But I also see that coffee picker at home with his family, joyful and happy. I have experienced this first hand, lying on a cot in Costa Rica, in a home with immaculately clean dirt floors, a gap between the ceiling and the walls to let the mountain breezes blow through, the tin roof singing during the afternoon rains as the creek outside swells and recedes with each passing shower. Though I could barely communicate with them, it was clear they were some of the happiest people I have ever encountered, living a simple life, miles of walking away from anyplace where one could actually buy a bag of coffee.

There is good and bad in this world in equal measure. It is far too easy to get consumed by one or the other. The pursuit of the things we deem “good” can lead to unhappiness just as surely as engaging in what we call “bad”. The urge to wrap this up in some tidy little sentence is strong, but sometimes, often, there is no tidy ending (though it appears I’m still trying to find one). Best sometimes to just let things be.

Journal entry from 6.4.14

Follow Your Curiosity

03/03/2018 by John Leave a Comment

I watched a talk by Elizabeth Gilbert called Flight of The Hummingbird: The Curiosity Driven Life. Ms. Gilbert was in the habit of giving people the advice to “follow your passion”. A Facebook comment had made her realize that unlike her, not everyone has an all-consuming passion, something they would do no matter what. When people without that drive hear the advice to “follow your passion”, it makes them feel deficient in some way. I am one of those people.

So much that I read or listen to says the same thing, to follow my passion, to pour all my energy into that thing that I feel most strongly about. But after years of trying to decipher what it is that I am passionate about, no one thing ever seems to rise to the surface for very long at a time. This has been an ongoing source of frustration for me for most of my adult life.

In her talk, Ms. Gilbert goes on to identify people like myself as hummingbirds. We flitter around from one thing to the next and in so doing, cross-pollinate things, bringing ideas to new places and people. It was comforting to watch the talk and have someone acknowledge that not everyone has an overriding passion that makes clear to them the direction their life should follow. Her advice for people like me is to let curiosity be our guide.

It is good to be a hummingbird. Sometimes following my curiosity leads to a dead end, and sometimes to something that shapes the direction of my life for years to come. Curiosity led me to try skateboarding, which introduced me to fascinating people, exciting music, and different ways of thinking about my life. It was curiosity that brought me back to Outward Bound after my course to see what it was like for the people who work here, and 20 years later, I’m still exploring where that pathway leads. Curiosity led to getting a degree in Web Technologies and though I’m still not certain what role it will ultimately play in my life, I liked learning something new. I am a curious ultra-runner, not super passionate about it, but curious enough to really enjoy it. The list could go on for a while.

My curiosity has not lead to fame, riches, or a lucrative career, but it has taken me on a fascinating journey, one that I could have never imagined before embarking upon it. I’ve lived in the Caribbean, hiked and biked in New Zealand, managed a restaurant, cooked for pilgrims walking across Spain, and so many other things. Curiosity is at the heart of what keeps me on the road, moving forward into a future that is unknown, but more interesting because of it’s uncertainty. When you don’t know what’s beyond the horizon, the possibilities are infinite.

I envy those who have a passion, but I don’t think I want to trade places with them. I have no idea what I’ll be doing even six months from now, and that uncertainty keeps me awake and alive, ever scanning my field of vision for what’s next, ever moving across the landscape of this life, occasionally getting stuck in some valleys, but eventually always finding the next mountaintop. Life is sweet, but I think even sweeter when I drink its nectar like a hummingbird.

If you liked this post, you may be interested in I Am a Multipotentialate

Based on a journal entry from 2.23.16