Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. As a lifelong insomniac, I looked forward to reading Benjamin Reiss' 2017 book Wild Nights: How Taming Sleep Created Our Restless World. I wasn't disappointed. Wild Nights is not a book about how to get a better night's sleep. Instead, it's a cultural study of the history of…
control
Is Anyone Watching? Should You Care?
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure We've all heard the phrase “Dance like nobody's watching.” It shows up in Facebook memes and on motivational posters. It has been credited to a variety of sources, including Mark Twain (it doesn't sound to me like something Twain would have said). The website Quote Investigator has an…
Creative Credit
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. This post is basically a rant, and doesn't apply to the majority of readers, so my apologies up front. While browsing Twitter recently, I saw a retweet from a writer who included a photograph with her post. Since I'm involved with both writing and photography, I'm always interested…
Concentrate Your Fire
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I've been reading Dr. Maxwell Maltz's 1960 book Psycho-Cybernetics. While the book occasionally strays into the neighborhood I call "crackpottery," there is a lot of useful information. I'm not a fan of the term "self-help," but it's the term that's commonly accepted, so we'll go with that. If…
Rest Like LeBron James
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I'll acknowledge up front that I'm not a sports fan. I'm not a sports fan to such an extent that I would barely know the difference between a 5-iron and a cricket bat. However, I appreciate that athletics have a lot in common with the creative arts. Success…
Embrace Uncertainty
Uncertainty is hard-wired into the creative experience.
The Limits of Planning
All the planning in the world can't guarantee a future outcome.
Quiet, Please
It's hard to understand the value of silence if we never experience it.
Creative Control
Too much creative control can become a kind of prison.