Poetry vs. Strategic Outcomes

| Mac

Earlier this week I acknowledged that there was something lacking in my SMART News Year’s resolution model. By adopting the SMART technique it means that some of the overarching, higher level, bigger picture goals aren’t explicitly captured… these north stars are relegated to the land of the implied.

In my professional world of suits and ties here is how we would tackle this problem. We would take my list of SMART goals and categorize each of them under a heading, probably called a “Strategic Outcome”, so for instance you might do something like this:

Strategic Outcome: Increase Professionalism of Writing

  • Join Victoria Writing Society in January
  • Get published somewhere other than Exploring-Art.com this year
  • Complete a writing portfolio submission… by December

But that would not be very artful! So instead what I did is I wrote a companion poem to go with my SMART goals. Defy pigeonholes, embrace individuality and explore your passions – be brave! Without further ado, here’s my poem:

Three hundred and sixty five days make a year
Fear as always
Is the predominant barrier
Be brave – profess your goals
I must pursue writing with a professional rigour
I will spend effort, resources and time
transforming Exploring-Art
into a noteworthy cultural endeavour
I shall romance my darling wife and will also
pursue a healthy and nonjudgmental life.

Journalling – An App and a Glimpse

| Mac

One of the things not explicitly captured by my SMART New Year’s resolutions was my desire to get more serious about writing. In my next post I will dissect why this overarching desire was absent and present an artful solution. In the meantime I’d like to announce a new practice which I’m adopting – Journalling… As it turns out there is an App for that and it’s called DayOne. I’m very excited about cultivating an ongoing monologue with DayOne. So far my impressions of the $10 app are very very positive. To give you a little glimpse into this private relationship I share with you my inaugural DayOne entry. Good Writing!

“A new year lies ahead, and while I used the SMART principle to create a list of practical to do’s on my blog, at a higher more general level I am interested in pursuing writing with a professional rigour this year. In that light I supposed it would be wise to start journalling as well… this being a nod of recognition to the “practice makes perfect” proverb.

Why maintain a public blog and a private e-journal? In my blog I practice writing with the intention of pleasing others as well as myself. Here I shall write just for the sake of writing with no particular goal in mind… other than to practice the art.

In years gone by I have started and stopped different journalling efforts. I find that my journals from years past read like weepy Shakespearian love treatises and inevitably looking back at journals of yesteryear is a depressing activity for me. So why do it? Previously I answered that question with – don’t do it. But now I divine a new answer which is – do it for the practice. If you don’t want to sound like a moony love sick puppy then don’t. Write about something else, anything else, write about nothing. But for the love of god don’t write poetry about some girl you won’t remember in a years time. Here ends my lecture to my younger self on the critical points of journalling. Wisdom is a gift.

One of my practical to do’s on my public blog was to join the Victoria Writing Society and attend the quarterly general meeting today. That will be the first of my New Year’s resolutions to be delayed. I’m still fighting a miserable cold that encroached ruthlessly on this year’s winter vacation. Gesundheit.

So with a new intuition to start journalling I perused the Mac App store as I was sure there must be an app for that, and here I found DayOne to fill the “need”. So far so good, however it would really benefit from full screen mode. I see from the developer notes they are working on it… well godspeed to you gentlemen; many an aspiring writer depends on it I’m sure.

So with my new app installed on my relatively new MacBook Air I will come to this “space” to write about nothing in particular in a relatively free flowing manner. An exercise that Richard Rhodes was a little terse about in his wonderful book “How to Write”. Alas! Sometimes the collective wisdom of the world is in dissonance and you just have to let intuition, serendipity, and your super conscious lead you… and so I shall, and so I have and so I write here my first entry in my very own private instance of DayOne…”

Book Review: Out of Our Minds (2nd Edition)

| Mac

For me Out of Our Minds (2nd Edition) was not as enrapturing as The Element; however, its pages still contained many gems. Perhaps my growing embrace of Sir Ken Robinson’s material was the reason this book seemed more complementary and less ground breaking than The Element. Regardless, I found the last two chapters, Being A Creative Leader and Learning to be Creative, particularly fresh and insightful. Overall I would recommend this book to anyone who is curious or skeptical of the importance of creativity and the need to transform our 19th Century outmoded education systems.

As with The Element  Sir Robinson masterfully weaves together the thoughts, philosophies and quotes of others to illustrate the pedigree of his own unique assertions. One such quote near the end of the book, which I’m sure many have heard but I had not, was from Socrates:

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”

This quote raises a question of how we went from idolizing the demigods of ancient academia to neglecting how they taught for the sake of focusing solely on what they taught. This neglect is demonstrated in the shift from an individualistic approach to that of a production line. Alas! Marshall McLuhan was born too late! He could have warned our ancestors, the creators of our industrialized public education system, that the medium is the message.