It’s the splat that kills

A concept raised for Renaissance Souls is that you don’t need to do everything. Don’t go for a massive ice cream cone with one flavour. Don’t even go for a massive double scoop with a combo. For us Renaissance Souls, the idea is to have a sampler. This allows us to taste a little bit of everything: a bit of Sewing, a bit of Writing, a bit of time on the Car, etc…. Part of this is to keep our always wandering attention. Instead of allotting time to just one activity, only to feel drained when we do it. We do “one of…” something. We don’t plan until we are in the moment.

Bring in a phrase “Energy Management“. I read this from Worthwhile. And while I don’t think we need to “ruthlessly manage” our energy like Anita believes. I do think more then the number of tasks on our plate needs to be in consideration for whether or not we are overwhelmed.

Example: I’ve been working on a project to combine and relaunch a couple of sites into one. The project had some pretty tight timelines. But do you know what I did for the first 3 months? Picture a lot of reading, and a lot of filler. It’s not that my time was poorly managed, it was that people didn’t feel the need to rush. But now the project is getting to the end, people are running around like their hands and hair were on fire. Some people are seriously snapping from the stress. The project could have gone more smoothly simply by taking the amount of panic energy they have, and divide that by the number of months this project has been going.

Solution: Work energy should be managed like diabetes. It’s not always the level of sugar, it’s the spikes that cause the damage. The same goes for energy. We should be able to have a reading maybe twice or 3 times a day that tells us how are energy is doing. And our job is to make sure it’s a steady as possible. Spikes in energy could cause psychological damage like diabetes causes to the body.

The Writer Within

I have the pleasure of working with an insightful and talented woman. Darylynn Rank entered my life in a weekend of coincidences where I met a man who went to the same high-school as I did, and graduated the same year I started. We never met until about a year ago. This might have been not so strange except for the fact that we were at his creative camp in Caltus Lake BC, and went to high-school in Guelph ON on the other side of the county. Darylynn was a workshop presenter for “finding your creative voice”.

Since then the course title has changed, however I have be privately working with Dari for some time. She is an exquisite navigator of the tides of experience, and is helping me find my own boat and ore to sail mine.

Now to the point….

For those of you living in BC; are willing to travel to Langara College; and have a desire to get through writer’s block or simply need to find the creative power to start hitting the keyboard, she is open to share her insight with you. Check out langara.bc.ca for her course Discovering The Writer Within.

Avatar – The Renaissance Soul

I love cartoons. I don’t love every cartoon, but there is always at least one or two that peak my curiosity. Lately, the top on my list is Avatar: The Last Airbender.

The premiss is simple. Take a world where there are four nations: Earth, Air, Water Fire. In these nations there are those born who can mould the element or “Bend” it. But there is one, The Avatar, who can Bend all four.

There are loads of great lessons that come out of a 30 minute story. But today I made a connection. The Avatar is a Renaissance Soul ( or for some of you a generalist) . Here is a society that is built on specializing in one element. And here comes a single individual that is looked up in this world to be able to bend several elements.

Unlike the story, I think that we have thousands of Avatars walking our streets and roaming our world. They have in them the ability to bend more than elements. One might bend Music and Math; another Leadership and Sewing. The combinations are endless. What can you bend?

Back in inaction

I’ve been quiet, Mainly because I’ve been in TO working crazy hours in a room they call the “War Room”. With that name, you know it’s going to be crazy. However, A long flight, and I’m back home in Vancouver.

I’m sure I’ve got reams of emails and voicemails waiting, and I’ll get to them, one by one. But in the meantime I’ll share a drunk time poem.

Words flow like Leffe
Sweet with a cinnamon taste
Hints of Valentines
Blurred by consumption
One line dulls the heart
One more the mind
Verse after verse the
Words mix and blur
Eventually
Creating only your desires
My Key and strokes are
Not my own
Until the day after
A trail of garments
And a naked stranger
Under your arm.