Absolutely Fabulous
Today was the first evening of a seven week Living Smart course. It was completely inspiring and amazing but then again the serpent had expected no less from the creators of The Painted Fish and The Hulbert Street Sustainability Festival
One half of the crazy couple revealed some of his goal setting secrets. And this guy has gotten to be taken seriously because the stuff they have done is so cool, quirky and inspirational.
They both decided that living the green life would be a more productive and useful path than following the usual route into local politics as a means of changing things.
As Izzie would say - lighting candles rather than cursing the darkness
Tim - our local version of Michael Leunig (his paintings and sculptures are just so whimsical and quirky) brought along his big brown book used for plotting and planning
His ritual is to spend four or five pages just rambling. It seemed to be along the lines of Julia Cameron's 'morning pages' to get the creative juices going and do a sort of mind dump before invoking the inner serpent (what muggles call 'the subconscious')
Then he writes his goals for the week and the month along with three things that he has achieved.
The other big book has lists of three month, one year and five year goals in several different life categories
This whole morning pages thing has a lot going for it. It really is a Muggle version of the Pensieve - a means of sorting and organizing your thoughts and being able to see them objectively as well as creating room in your head for new ideas to come in by dumping and clearing out all the old ones cluttering the place and gathering dust
On the whole goal setting thing, Izzie came out of the broom closet with a certain project involving 50,000 words in 30 days. In fact, that is the real value of nanowrimo. Not the first draft itself but the discipline required to accomplish it. The tips and tricks you learn during November end up infiltrating other areas of life. It turns out that the side effect are more important than the project itself
Today also happened to be the day devoted to finishing this year's plotting and planning. Izzie now has prompts for 260 or so scenes so whatever obstacles may appear in our path, writer's block will not be one of them.
The theory is that 200 words for each will get us past the finishing line. The hope is that while some scenes will be dead ends, others will send the sparks flying and finally provide the golden thread linking the whole story together
While laying out the last of the cards in the Victorian Romantic deck - the very last of the 88 being The Fool, was listening to a fascinating interview on Radio National with one Wade Davis who wrote the fascinating "The Serpent and the Rainbow" about Voodoo in Haiti.
It was so good that not only will Izzie be downloading it but also setting the radio alarm clock for 3am to listen to the repeat
It's back to the mad house on Saturday but tomorrow will be spent once again under the wicked influence of the Fishy folk and their monthly movie night with pizzas. They provide the dough and the oven and you bring along your own toppings. The movie is "The Astroturf Wars"
It was either that or Analakshmi's "Deepavali festival" and Izzie has gone for the crazy and quirky yet again.
One half of the crazy couple revealed some of his goal setting secrets. And this guy has gotten to be taken seriously because the stuff they have done is so cool, quirky and inspirational.
They both decided that living the green life would be a more productive and useful path than following the usual route into local politics as a means of changing things.
As Izzie would say - lighting candles rather than cursing the darkness
Tim - our local version of Michael Leunig (his paintings and sculptures are just so whimsical and quirky) brought along his big brown book used for plotting and planning
His ritual is to spend four or five pages just rambling. It seemed to be along the lines of Julia Cameron's 'morning pages' to get the creative juices going and do a sort of mind dump before invoking the inner serpent (what muggles call 'the subconscious')
Then he writes his goals for the week and the month along with three things that he has achieved.
The other big book has lists of three month, one year and five year goals in several different life categories
This whole morning pages thing has a lot going for it. It really is a Muggle version of the Pensieve - a means of sorting and organizing your thoughts and being able to see them objectively as well as creating room in your head for new ideas to come in by dumping and clearing out all the old ones cluttering the place and gathering dust
On the whole goal setting thing, Izzie came out of the broom closet with a certain project involving 50,000 words in 30 days. In fact, that is the real value of nanowrimo. Not the first draft itself but the discipline required to accomplish it. The tips and tricks you learn during November end up infiltrating other areas of life. It turns out that the side effect are more important than the project itself
Today also happened to be the day devoted to finishing this year's plotting and planning. Izzie now has prompts for 260 or so scenes so whatever obstacles may appear in our path, writer's block will not be one of them.
The theory is that 200 words for each will get us past the finishing line. The hope is that while some scenes will be dead ends, others will send the sparks flying and finally provide the golden thread linking the whole story together
While laying out the last of the cards in the Victorian Romantic deck - the very last of the 88 being The Fool, was listening to a fascinating interview on Radio National with one Wade Davis who wrote the fascinating "The Serpent and the Rainbow" about Voodoo in Haiti.
It was so good that not only will Izzie be downloading it but also setting the radio alarm clock for 3am to listen to the repeat
It's back to the mad house on Saturday but tomorrow will be spent once again under the wicked influence of the Fishy folk and their monthly movie night with pizzas. They provide the dough and the oven and you bring along your own toppings. The movie is "The Astroturf Wars"
It was either that or Analakshmi's "Deepavali festival" and Izzie has gone for the crazy and quirky yet again.