Author: Nick Kempinski

When you’ve got lemons you make lemonade. And if you’re Scottish and those royals keep taking the best part of the sheep, you make haggis.
Yes, Robby Burns Day is long gone, yet this weekend at Egmont Marina, it was January 25th. Pipers and fiddles and kilts and beer and haggis, oh my! Everything was there to make a great ceilidh night. And as my tribute, here’s a copy of “Address To A Haggis” by Robert Burns.

Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o’ the puddin-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy of a grace
As lang’s my arm.

The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o’ need,
While thro’ your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.

His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An’ cut ye up wi’ ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright
Like onie ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!

Then, horn for horn, they strech an’ strive:
Deil tak the hindmost! on they drive,
Till a’ their weel-swall’d kytes belyve,
Are bent like drums;
Then auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
‘Bethankit!’ hums.

Is there that owre his French ragout
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi’ perfect sconner,
Looks down wi’ sneering, scornfu’ view
On sic a dinner?

Poor devil! see him owre his trash,
As feckless as a wither’d rash,
His spindle shank, a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit;
Thro’ bluidy flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!

But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread.
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He’ll make it whissle;
An’ legs, an’ arms, an’ heads will sned,
Like taps o’ thrissle.

Ye Pow’rs wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o ‘fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies;
But, if ye wish her gratefu’ prayer,
Gie her a Haggis!

I might not have any Scottish blood in my veins but this weekend, I was a Scott!

For those of you like me, who are naturally creative and mildly A.D.D. oriented, a calendar is the death of any passion whatsoever.
I’ve been following an interesting experiment for the past 2 weeks and trying to schedule absolutely everything. I thought that because of my random nature, this would give me more productivity and the ability to allow myself to be scattered. I planned various 1-2 hour tasks ranging from music composition, blog reading, t.v. time, even down to those moments where I like to let me brain drift away ( my “Dream” time ). The first week, I just followed it, no questions asked. The second week I decided log my my true actions as I was doing them and then alter the calendar at the end of the day to show a more accurate picture. It seems that after the first day, I noticed that I “diverted” from the plan. As this week went by I realized that I did this a lot, too much as a matter of fact. So much so, that all the tasks and activities that were the “important” ones, would be the ones I’ve skimped on. I noticed is the more structured I tried to make the day, the more I “diverted”.

I knew that I was having difficulties with the calendar but I didn’t realize it’s full impact until this morning.

After following the advice of Shakti Gawain, thanks to a post by Curt, I decided to go for breakfast and write away in my Moleskine. It was intended just to be something out of the ordinary and since it was a random impulse I decided to follow it. I figured I haven’t really been following my calendar anyway so, why not.

I followed some of the ideas brought forth by today’s posts, about discovering passion and enjoying the journey. I started by categorizing my Needs, Talents, Passion and Purpose. Which was definitely insightful. And then followed it as a trigger to write my fantasies. And once completed I had realized that nowhere, did I have what I was doing currently in there. Hmm, considering I quit my job for this and I’m dwindling away my resources to complete this, this picture has caused a little bit of concern for me.

This calendar has killed my passion. Well … not really killed, I think maybe more like seriously wounded it. As I mentioned in my first sentence, I’m a creative and slightly A.D.D.individual. Chaos is my friend because if you were to look into my mind, that’s what you would see. I’ve been trying to fight it because somewhere along the way, I got the idea that to be an entrepreneur you need to have some semblance of order. You need to have goals and plans, and plans within plans. Structure, structure structure, blah, blah, blah. Well, #!@% that! Goals and plans are one thing, but screw structure!

This is a prime example of when what you are doing conflicts with a fundamental character of who you are. I think all of us have intrinsic characteristics that define us, it’s like the story of the frog and the scorpion. Regardless of how much we learn, or how we change, those characteristics will still continue to be underlying values and core beliefs. Organized people will always organize. Giving people will always give. And, like me, dreamers need to dream. When you fight that fundamental core, the fire starts to fade. You can’t feed a fire with water, or dirt, or rock. So, by forcing myself to a pattern, I was fighting my chaotic nature, which directly resulted in dwindling my passion, regardless of what it was.

Another scary thought is that I’m simply not doing what it is that truly lights my fire. I’m eating leaves when I should be eating logs. But unless I go through this process, and stay open to the possibilities, I’ll never really truly find out.

So, now that I’ve come to these conclusion, what am I going to do next? I have no clue.

It seems that I’ve fallen a little far from my theological roots. You see, when I was younger you could say I grew up in the Ojibwa faith. I’m not native, although my dad looks the part. I’m a full blown white blooded cracker. Yet, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to follow the faith with a rogue teacher of sorts. I learned various rituals and right of passage. I even got a few native names along the way.

Funny thing is, here I am, 10 years later, trying to figure out my purpose in life. What makes me really resonate? If you’re read my
previous posts you’ll know that I’ve come up with

To be at home with my head in the clouds and music in my heart.

What you don’t know are my native names. I can’t really tell you all of them because they are so sacred that only me and my teacher can know. But what I can say is that I looked at them and when you put them together they pretty much spell out this phrase. Coincidence?

Native names are intended to be pointers and goals. Things that you should learn and understand. A way for you to reflect those lessons on your life to make meaning. Take one of my names, “Walks in the Sky”. What does that mean? How should I be learning? Well I should definitely be having my head in the clouds to do that shouldn’t I? Maybe I should learn something about astrology, or weather patterns? Maybe learn a thing or 2 about the physics of flying? What kind of animals are up there. How do they hunt? Well you have to be able to look far away and with great accuracy to see your prey if you’re flying so high. Hmm, maybe life is like that, maybe it’s a metaphor with how I should be looking at the world from a higher perspective, more globally …. see how this works? It’s like your guide or purpose. And the best part was, you couldn’t forget it because it’s your name! Everyone in the tribe said it. Talk about setting goals.

I should have known this the whole time! Question is, how could I forget these very important pieces of information? How could I forget my names? How can we forget our spirit?

This is time for my midnight rant! I love these sometimes.

Well somehow society and life have a tendency of pushing it away. I’m not sure why, but I think it’s part of the same reason why so many people out their put on a suit only on Sunday; pray only on Sunday; and have only 2 spiritual hours of the week, which is on Sunday. They feel that they can’t be spiritual during the week, so they reserve this one day to repent for all the bad things that life makes them do during the week. Sorry, to those of you, this isn’t spiritual. But why is it our lives and spirituality can’t mix? It’s almost like oil and water. I think I know, it’s because to live in todays society people feel that they need to conform. They feel that they need to do things that they don’t want to. Society has made the majority of people fight their internal beliefs and values to do the “rational” thing, which I’ve found always conflicts with the “passionate” thing. I’ve been conflicted with this my life. Do you know why I work with computers and programming, why I learn about the internet? It’s not really because I love it. Matter of fact, I don’t. I’m good at it, yes. But it’s a rational thing to do. Which would I rather be, a “dreamer” or a “computer programmer”, a “musician” or a “internet consultant”. Answer a “dreaming musician”. Following that heart and desire is at the cornerstone of so many spiritual journeys, and so many people fail because they are afraid, because it’s “silly”. I know I’m afraid. How can I make money at being a “dreaming musician”?

We need to change that. This is why it’s so great to have people like Curt,
and now Steve, working with people on how to rekindle their passions. Because it’s much more than just a passion they are helping you with. They in fact are bringing back your spiritual understanding. They might call it something different, have different tactics to foil and cloud the logical mind into submission, but they in essence are helping you find your name. And, thanks to them, they are helping me remember about mine.

I’ve just received the approval for Google’s AdSense Program. I finished reading
their legal agreements, which for some reason reminded me of the first 2 rules of
Fight Club. And after a few clicks, and some javascript pasting…voila! So for those
of you seeing the site, and not reading through some sort of aggregator, down the
left you’ll see the difference. I’m not exactly sure how beneficial for me or how
it will turn out but we’ll see wont we. But why should I add advertising? There
are a few of reasons:

1. Why not?
2. Why not ( ah, fight club )?
3. I had the space for it.

It’s a win-win when it comes to the money part. It’s free for me, and could
translate into dollars in the pocket. After all, I pay good coin for my hosting,
and this will help towards it.

So click away my friend, click away!

Steve
has raised an interesting point about our goals and the daily pitfalls we
run into. How do we reach our goal and not let them accidentally slip through our
finger tips? How can we make sure another year goes buy and we don’t say “What if…?”
He has created his Personal Accountability System (PAS)
to help him.

Funny about the timing of this post. I’m in the process of figuring out my system.
How can I make sure I get everything done that I want? I saw a show on PBS
( I’m trying to hunt down more details. ) about an engineer who decided to schedule
every moment of his life. It was interesting and it displayed the ups and downs of
the process. It lead me to think and realize my lack of planning. I haven’t really
lead my life, so to speak. Once in a while I decide to leap, but other than those
moments I just lay back to the flow. Will that help me ultimately obtain my goals?
I don’t know anymore. Maybe when I was younger, but I think as we get older the flow
of life gets stronger. Which makes sense considering the older we get the more
influences we have. When we were children it was our parents, and that was pretty
much it. As we age the influences mount: our family, our job, bills, cars, rent,
and more and more things pop up. So if we don’t stand up and decide to navigate
our path, it’s easy for it to become lost in the forest of our influences. The
path less travelled could easily become the path not seen.

So, this is week 2 of my calendar days. I’m setting regular intervals to plan, to
dream, to write, to learn, to program, and of course for daily review. Right now,
I’m not exactly hitting the mark, but I’m getting pretty darn close. Which for me
is a great thing to celebrate. So, for tonight’s review, I’m going to look at
Steve’s methods, and see what I can do to make sure I don’t lose sight of those
big goals.

It just makes sense. It’s honest. If only everything was like this.

Hmmm, maybe all these internet networking portals could have down falls? Maybe I
should re-evaluate my little “digital networking” experiment? Christopher Allen,
at Life with Alacrity,
is warning us all about the hazards to internet networking
and how when it gets to be too large, how can we actually keep up with it? I believe,
it comes down to a great point about quality vs. quantity.

Our current breed of social networking services have focused on amplifying our
contacts not only because it serves us, but because it serves them. The more
contacts that you make, the more people they potentially have in their service.
However, in the long run this is unsustainable — a social networking service also
has to be useful — merely amplifying your contacts isn’t enough.

Also I believe that the digital network from what I’m seeing has an impersonal
element to it. And for me the personal connection is really what makes the
connection tick. I guess that give’s MeetUp an star in my book, for trying to
use the digital to enhance the tangible.

Note: from this there was mention of Spoke,
so I’m adding it to my networking links, to give a try

Back in my post Crying With Purpose I found that with the exercise Steve had
discussed, the message of purpose that got to me was:

To be at home with my head in the clouds and music in my heart.

But after almost a month of thought, I’m stuck with one simple question. What
the @$#! does that mean? I mean, why couldn’t I have shed some tears over
something that made more sense! I’m sure with some more work I can translate this
into something, but for now I’m completely at a loss.

In my walk away, I came across this. 100% Flash Magazines Nice!

Arghhh! It’s just one of those day’s where nothing you do seems to work. Everything I try backfires or I get “error”. Deep breath and walk away. Yeah, walking away is sometimes exactly what we need. And I need it.

On the note of backyards
check this one. Be sure to check out the Directors portfolios.