A Week of Setting the Context
The Art of Possibility, by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander,* is helping me figure out the week ahead. See, I'm sort of in a limbo moment. Let me lay it out for you:
That is: There's only so much time/so many books that will be published/look at how many books Cynthia Rylant has published/I bet John Green has a kabillion ideas for his next book and I don't have any!!! A little story we tell ourselves about measuring up and achieving that might motivate some, but freeze others right up.
Instead, they say, how about thinking about it this way: "In the measurement world, you set a goal and strive for it. In the universe of possibility, you set the context and let life unfold." (It's a little more complicated than this. If you're at all interested, check out the book. See what you think.)
SO, what I want to do this week is focus on "setting the context." I'd like to play this week. See what possibilities arise. I'd like not to measure or compare. I'd like to be open to the things that are important to me and see what happens.
How about you?
I'll leave you with this quote that I copied from their book. It's something the dancer/choreographer Martha Grahame said:
There is a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist in any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly. To keep the channel open.
Now that's context.
*I love these sorts of books. Craft books, inspirational books, the whole nest of this stuff. I never seem to read them in the same way that reviewers do and I always seem to miss the main point of the book, but I don't care. For me, these sorts of books are a place to bounce my beliefs and practices around and see what happens. I can walk away from a 250 page tome on business marketing with one out-of-context sentence that really makes me sing, and I'm cool with that. I'm saying this because I recommend and really got a lot out of this book -- but the book I read might be very different from what is actually on the page. Does that make sense? Okay.
- I'm about to turn 45. YAY! A big birthday! I love big birthdays for their taking-stock-quality. So this is sort of a taking-stock week.
- Hound Dog True should hit stores at the end of the month. Yeah, the real pub date is September 20, but it is likely to ship to distributors sooner.
- My third novel, which I'm currently calling by the main character's name, Ruby, is with a reader (hey there K & E!!!) and before I can move ahead with further revision, I want to hear back about whether the structural issues have been fixed. So, no touching that.
- No school for the kids for a few more weeks. It's on the horizon of our awareness, though, and we're starting to feel ourselves leaning into it.
That is: There's only so much time/so many books that will be published/look at how many books Cynthia Rylant has published/I bet John Green has a kabillion ideas for his next book and I don't have any!!! A little story we tell ourselves about measuring up and achieving that might motivate some, but freeze others right up.
Instead, they say, how about thinking about it this way: "In the measurement world, you set a goal and strive for it. In the universe of possibility, you set the context and let life unfold." (It's a little more complicated than this. If you're at all interested, check out the book. See what you think.)
SO, what I want to do this week is focus on "setting the context." I'd like to play this week. See what possibilities arise. I'd like not to measure or compare. I'd like to be open to the things that are important to me and see what happens.
How about you?
I'll leave you with this quote that I copied from their book. It's something the dancer/choreographer Martha Grahame said:
There is a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist in any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly. To keep the channel open.
Now that's context.
*I love these sorts of books. Craft books, inspirational books, the whole nest of this stuff. I never seem to read them in the same way that reviewers do and I always seem to miss the main point of the book, but I don't care. For me, these sorts of books are a place to bounce my beliefs and practices around and see what happens. I can walk away from a 250 page tome on business marketing with one out-of-context sentence that really makes me sing, and I'm cool with that. I'm saying this because I recommend and really got a lot out of this book -- but the book I read might be very different from what is actually on the page. Does that make sense? Okay.