Lost, 1982.
Did you ever have an experience that crystalized in your memory? I wrote this poem to capture an experience I had when I was thirteen on a vacation with my family.
Follow Your Path Blog
On writing.
Everyone wants to have some kind of legacy: to leave some kind of impact or feel that we have mattered in some way. I don’t feel very confident that anything that I have done or will do will leave that kind of legacy.
Sliding Door
A sliding door separated where we lived from where my father worked. My dad would slide the door open and pass the threshold into a wonderland of sounds and textures and smells; not all of them good smells, but there was no doubt that he had entered a different place. The shelves were full of colorful boxes with letters and numbers. Things hung from the walls all the way up to the ceiling. There was a desk in the front window, swivel chairs at the counter, and an old mahogany cash register behind the counter.
Acknowledging discomfort.
Susan David, author of Emotional Agility, says, “Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life.” But, we prefer a level of comfort and stability in our work lives once we have established ourselves in our field of work: we grow confident that our experiences will help us navigate any ripples that we might encounter.
Still searching.
I grew up believing that the bible was history, that adults knew what was right, and that the world was a beautiful place full of love and wonder and goodness.
Time flies.
Here is a post from my original blog at turnaroundschool.blogspot.com. It’s interesting to me how much of the learning from that time still applies to the learning we are doing in education today. I have been talking about this very thing, the change process and how people react and respond to change, for much of this schoolyear.
Writing to get un-stuck.
A month ago, a writer friend issued a challenge to try and write something outside our comfort zone. She said, “If you usually write poetry, try to write fiction. If you usually write fiction, try to write memoir. Whatever your usual genre is, try and write something different.”
It seemed like a good way to get myself out of feeling pretty stuck in my writing, so I accepted her challenge.
Creativity or productivity?
I dream of a creative life; of a studio in the backyard where I can spend hours in all of my creative pursuits. The reality is that living a creative life does not compensate well in our capitalistic society and so creativity lives in the small spaces around and in between the more mundane, but necessary, day to day adventures in vacuuming.
Filling your own bucket.
There is a great book that elementary educators often use called Have You Filled a Bucket Today by Carol McCloud to teach kids about the power of bucket filling and bucket dipping. When you do something nice or helpful or considerate for someone else, that is filling their bucket. And when you do something inconsiderate or hurtful to someone, that is being a bucket dipper.
This is an overly simplistic look at this concept, but it works for Kindergarten students, and I really believe that everything we need to know we learned in Kindergarten, so I will go with it.
Stolen moments.
I am a creative person: I write, I paint, I make jewelry, I play piano, I write songs. But, that part of me is separate from the part of me that has a “real job.” I have internalized the typical questions that accompany learning that someone is an artist: “Oh, wow! That’s so nice, but can you really make a living doing that?”