Creative Toolkit

“While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die -- whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness.” Gilda Radner

I’m not a traveler. I’d rather read a book about a place than actually go there. I like to take care of my cats, sleep in my own bed and have my things around me, all things that are not possible (unless you’re in a motor home) when traveling.

It is odd, therefore, that an ebook called a Creative Toolkit for Travelers caught my eye. Written and sold by Cynthia Morris, a writing and creativity coach based in Boulder, CO. I’ve subscribed to her newsletter for several years and enjoyed her book, Create Your Writer’s Life, which is a visual delight as well as a source of information and inspiration. I figured I could benefit from using her tools for travelers right here in Denver as I wander the city.

The ebook didn’t disappoint me. The first tool I want to use is a postcards, in fact dozens of postcards. These days of email overload, everybody I know is thrilled to get an actual physical letter or card in the mail. You can make your own cards or use commercial cards.

Another tool she recommends is the Moleskin Japanese Accordion book. You can buy one for $9.95 at Amazon, but I think I’ll make my own. It’s all part of the creative process.

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Discovering Fun

“All I want to do is have some fun. I’ve got a feeling I’m not the only one.” Sheryl Crow

Stumbleupon.com is the best website I’ve run across in years. I learned about it at Barbara Sher’s message board for scanners. Scanners are people (like moi) who have too many interests to focus on just one. This website adds a tool to your browser. You enter a list of your interests, and when you click the button, it takes you to a website based on one of your interests. I just started using it over the weekend (our fifth weekend of snow and cold weather) and I’ve found sites of funny cat pictures, a site that recommends new books based on previous books I’ve liked and an online MP3 player. Very cool.

When I first started surfing the internet, I could spend hours exploring websites. Lately, though, I seem to go to the same old places day after day. StumbleUpon takes me back to the good old days when the internet was a source of constant wonder and entertainment. Great stuff.

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

A Little Help from my Friends

1. Be discoverers. 2. Be ready helpers. 3. Be friend makers.

The Brownie "B's” (Girl Scouts)

I’ve been trying to get together with my friends Kathy and Jane for over a month, and the crappy weather or our weird schedules have kept us from meeting. Until yesterday. The sun was shining on the snow-covered mountains as I drove northwest to the Mimi’s Café at Flat Irons mall. I look forward to these meetings because they are always fun, the food is good and we swap information and ideas for our various businesses. Kathy is a trainer in conflict management and juggler; Jane is a software engineer and filmmaker; I’m a writer and teacher.

In addition to my buttermilk spice muffin, I got an idea from Jane for my next newspaper column. She was showing a short film last night at the Bug Theater Emerging Filmmakers Project and suggested that, since it is in my neighborhood, I could write about that. Great idea, Jane. I hope your viewing went well last night. Kathy was feeling overwhelmed by her book project and had realized that it would help to start at the end goal and work backwards. Jane and I told her about Barbara Sher’s backward planning flowchart from the book, Refuse to Choose. I made sure Jane knew about the new reality show, On the Lot, for filmmakers, created by Mark Burnett and Steven Spielberg.

We left fortified by the friendship and inspiration and looking forward to our next time together.

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Fun With Work and Learning

"By being flexible, open, creative, and downright audacious, you may find that life has more to offer than you ever dreamed." Susan Sully The Late Bloomer's Guide to Success at Any Age

I just finished teaching my best class in a long time. This was the first time I had taught cultural diversity and I was dreading it for two reasons:

1. It is always a lot of work to prepare for and teach a new class, and this one straddled the Christmas season which added more stress.

2. I had talked to another teacher, whom I greatly admire, about the class and she warned me that it wasn’t a very good one.

I admit that it wasn’t much fun at first, but I had a remarkable group of students who pushed me to be creative. I dreamed up some classroom activities that everybody enjoyed and changed their final project from the typical paper and presentation into a game they would design and demonstrate to the class. We even had a potluck in the last class where everybody brought food from their culture. They brought tamales, homemade pizza, lefsa, and a wonderful Chinese stuffed chicken dish. For dessert we had a Black Forest torte, homemade macadamia nut ice cream (from a Hawaiian woman), chocolate chip cookies and a Puerto Rican ice treat.

The games they designed were patterned after Family Feud, Jeopardy, 1 vs. 100 and Go Fish. They were all fun learning experiences and provided me with great resources for the next time I teach this class.

I learned as much from my students as they did from me, and that’s what makes teaching a fun job. We all contributed something. The students pushed me by telling me when they thought something was boring, and I was flexible enough to change directions mid-stream. A good time was had by all.

When you do anything for as long as I have been teaching (20+ years) things can get stale and you need to shake it up a little. This class reminded me that my work is a creative outlet, not just a way to pay the bills. We should all be so lucky.

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Organization Woman

"Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life."

Immanuel Kant

I switched to a computer calendar several years ago and it works great. The recurring appointment feature makes it very easy to schedule my classes and other regular activities, and the reminder feature comes in very handy. I don’t have to carry a big clunky paper calendar around with me, which lightens my purse or briefcase considerably.

For my contacts, though, I still use a good old-fashioned Rolodex. It is much faster to access a phone number or address on my (real) desktop than having to click through several options to reach them on my computer. I have a special little hole punch that lets me fit business cards into the rolodex and I also use it to record my usernames and passwords for various websites.

Periodically, I go through it and remove out-of-date or no longer needed cards. January is National Organization Month, so it may be time to do that again. It’s also time to buy a new package of blank cards for all the new contacts I will make this year.

In the spirit of getting organized, I am also cleaning out closets and getting rid of unused Christmas ornaments, old clothes and linens. The hardest thing for me to part with is books, although I have made great progress in using the library instead of buying every book I want to read. It’s been so long since I bought a book of fiction that my Amazon account no longer recommends them to me.

People tell me that being organized brings greater freedom, so I’m giving it a try. Wish me luck.

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Just Call Me Crafty

"The best hope of success lies in having numerous projects percolating at once; this ups the odds of one of them boiling over." Tom Peters, The Pursuit of Wow

I’ll bet you’ve been wondering what you can do with all those old floppy disks that no longer fit into your computer, right? WikiHow to the rescue. Turn a floppy disk into a starship with these directions. This site will also tell you how to turn a CD into a coaster, but that’s a no brainer. Simply glue felt or cork on one side and voilà, it’s a coaster. I prefer the projects at HGTV, where you can learn to turn a CD into a clock or, with higher level skills, a lapel pin.

These projects interest me because I have finally set up my long-neglected back bedroom as a craft room. The room isn’t finished yet, but I used it last night to start a handmade book. Collages are another big interest of mine and I have been collecting bits of ephemera to use in collages and handmade cards for years. Maybe now I will finally use some of that stuff.

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

The Creativity Muscle

"For the longest time I didn't realize I was creative—I just thought I was strange. Diane Ackerman

Creativity, like any other skill, needs both practice and intention to improve. If you think you are not creative, chances are, you’re right. As author Richard Bach said in his classic book, Illusions, “Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they’re yours.”

You can change things, though, by changing your thinking. The Bible tells us that we were created in God’s image, and God is, above all, a creator. So we were born to create. In fact, we do create, whether we acknowledge it or not. We have all created our lives, be they fabulous or miserable.

Nita Leland’s book, The Creative Artist, suggests several ways to increase your creativity.

Emphasize the joy of creating, rather than the achievement of results. You don’t have to be a best-selling author to enjoy writing. Every activity doesn’t have to make money to be successful. You can take pleasure in making art that nobody else will ever see.

Develop your skills. Practice and take classes. Almost communities offer short adult education classes in drawing, painting, photography, woodworking, knitting or just about anything else you might want to pursue. You can find classes in local schools, colleges and shops. You could also read a book, subscribe to a magazine, join a club, or apprentice yourself to a master.

Expand your horizons. Check out galleries, museums, and crafts fairs. Don’t limit your curiosity to the discipline you want to study. You can learn about composition from paintings and apply that knowledge to photographs. You can learn how to tell a story by watching a movie or listening to your family and friends at the dinner table. Venture outside your normal scope of interests by browsing the magazines at a newsstand.

Make creative thinking a part of your daily life. Turn off the television and stretch those creative muscles. Vary your routines. Try something new. For a whole day, say Yes to everything instead of No.

Smash creative blocks. When you run into a dead end, try looking at your dilemma from a different perspective. How would Benjamin Franklin solve your problem? How is it like an egg? Pretend that it is the best thing that could happen to you and make a list of the gifts you receive by having this problem.

Remember the well-known Abraham Maslow quotation, "When all you own is a hammer, every problem starts looking like a nail." Make sure you have plenty of tools in your toolbox.

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Diversify

"One of the shining qualities that heroes possess is the willingness to be educated by all things. Gregg Levoy, Callings

Last month I started teaching a course in cultural diversity for the first time and was surprised to realize that my students (mostly in their 20s and 30s) had lived their whole life under anti-discrimination laws. Their world view is much different from mine.

Although they can’t really imagine a world where discrimination is legal, they came up with this impressive list of the benefits of working in a multi-cultural group:

• Creativity
• New Ideas
• International Relations
• New Skills
• New Technology
• Becoming Encultured
• Learning New Languages
• New Communication Skills
• Different Values
• Backgrounds
• Work Ethics
• Different Opinions
• Experience
• Potlucks
• Friendships & Socialization
• Being more interesting
• Teamwork
• Developing Social Skills
• Conflict Resolution
• Free Channels of Communication
• Advancement
• Knowledge from Different Cultures
• Equal Opportunity
• Employee Empowerment
• Increased productivity
• Adaptability
• Mentoring
• Self-Growth
• Work/Life Balance

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Possibilities

“Life is an experiment to discover what's possible.”
Margaret J. Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers,A Simpler Way

Scheduling when we do our work can be a challenge for those of us who work at home. At breakfast with a group of writers last week, we talked about the typical advice that we need to write something every day. One woman with young children explained that she has to snatch a few minutes for her writing here and there between her responsibilities to her children.

Another tries (in vain, usually) to schedule an hour or two every day for working on her novel. This is what Barbara Sher, author of Refuse to Choose, calls the school day model. It is well suited to certain types of what she calls scanners: people with restless, curious minds who want to do many things instead of focusing on just one.

In the school day model, you arrange your day like a day in high school, moving from one activity to another every hour or two. She even suggests setting a timer to remind you when it is time to move on to the next thing.

The physician model is another scanner-friendly schedule, and one that I prefer. Sher explains, “a physician might see patients on Monday and Tuesday, go into the hospital on Wednesday and Thursday, attend conferences a few times a month, and take 2 weeks in the winter to go with Doctors without Borders to Nepal to perform hundreds of cataract operations.”

I haven’t been to Nepal lately (well, ever) but I do tend to focus on one thing for a day or two at a time. Today, for example, I will spend the day grading papers and preparing for the class I teach tonight. The next two days I can work on course outlines and workbooks for my seminars. Saturday is the day I spend with my parents and Sunday is for church activities. Since I always have a variety of activities, even on days with one major focal point, my schedule is really a hybrid of these two life design models.

Kristi, a dhoula, describes her aunt, who schedules her housework to do one major task per day. Every Monday she cleans her floors, Tuesday is laundry day, etc. Kristi thinks this is a perfect schedule, but can’t make it work for her because she may spend 36 hours with a patient, then sleep for a whole day. The point is that we all have to find what works for us. It doesn’t help to try to force ourselves into a preconceived schedule, no matter how well it might work for someone else.

Sher’s book describes many other life design models and stories of people who use them. They will open up your thinking about what is possible.

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Work is Not a Four-Letter Word

“Insist on joy in spite of everything.” Tom Robbins

Steve Erwin, the crocodile hunter, was clearly a man who loved his work. I saw a video of him over the weekend which was taken just hours before he died. He was excited and exuberant and filled with joy. That’s the way I want to work, and ideally, the way I want to die.

The best way to enjoy your work is to work at something that you are very good at, because most of us really like showing our stuff. We are also usually interested in becoming better, becoming the BEST at something. The next step is to treat work like play.

In the book, Work Like Your Dog, authors Matt Weinstein and Luke Barber describe the “work” (running) of their dog, Blue. She leaps in excitement in anticipation of going for her daily run. She finds time to chase squirrels, sniff at children and even take a dip in the lake during her run. We can emulate her by fitting rewards into our workday. For me that would be reading, taking a walk, working on a collage, surfing the internet or playing spider solitaire.

Even better is turning our work itself into a game. Today, I have papers to grade, not my favorite part of my teaching job. I could make it more fun by getting some gold stickers to reward my students when they do something right, instead of focusing on their mistakes. Even though my students are adults, I think they would like getting a gold star.

Last week in one of my classes, a student asked if I couldn’t change their final project because “this is a fun class, but that isn’t a fun assignment.” I agreed with her. Now, instead of writing a research paper and doing a boring PowerPoint presentation (and trust me, most of them are boring) on cultural diversity, they are developing games to teach the concepts of diversity to one another. The bonus in this assignment is that their games will be something they can actually use on the job or with their families. I’m looking forward to seeing what they will come up with.

In their final class before graduation, they get to do their happy dances and give standing ovations to one another.

I have always thought learning was the most fun thing in the world and tried to find ways to make the classroom fun. Weinstein and Barber are giving me renewed energy to have more fun and fresh ideas for making that happen.

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Happy Birthday to Me

Creative Rule of Thumb #1

“The best way to get great ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away.” Charles “Chic” Thompson

Laugh more. That’s one of my resolutions this year, so I was thrilled to receive a very funny email birthday card from my friend, Maureen this morning. It let me start the day by laughing out loud for almost a full minute. I still laugh when I think about it. In fact, I liked it so much that I am thinking about signing up for a joke-a-day email.

Laughter is important for stress-reduction and joie de vivre, but it is also a necessary component for creativity, one of my primary areas of exploration for thirty years. I just ran across a list of five levels of creativity from A. Taylor in a classic book, The Nature of Creative Process.

Level 1: Primitive and intuitive expression found in children and in adults who have not been trained in art.

Level 2: Academic and technical level where the artist learns skills and techniques to master the craft.

Level 3: Invention involves experimenting with the craft, breaking rules and challenging the boundaries of academic tradition and becoming increasingly adventurous and experimental.

Level 4: Innovation requires that the artist become more original, using materials and methods that are out of the ordinary.

Level 5: At the genius level are individuals whose ideas and accomplishments defy explanation. This may be the only level that cannot be learned.

Whatever your field, you can probably benefit from increasing your creativity, moving from, say, level 2 to level 3 or level 3 to level 4. Laughter is a good place to start.

©2006 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Finding Success By Giving Up

It’s only after you let go of your plans that you can breathe life into your efforts. Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit.

Hugh McLeod draws cartoons on the back of business cards and gives them away for free. Sounds like an unusual business plan, right? He explains that, after seeing too many of his Big Plans fail to materialize, one night, “I just gave up. Sitting at a bar, feeling a bit burned out by work and life in general, I just started drawing on the back of business cards for no reason. I didn't really need a reason. I just did it because it was there, because it amused me in a kind of random, arbitrary way.

Of course it was stupid. Of course it was uncommercial. Of course it wasn't going to go anywhere. Of course it was a complete and utter waste of time. But in retrospect, it was this built-in futility that gave it its edge.”

He found it liberating to do something just for himself, without trying to impress anybody. “And of course, it was then, and only then, that the outside world started paying attention.”

Check out his blog where you can see more of his cartoons, read all about his peculiar business philosophy or order business cards with his cartoons on the back. I found him through his How to Be Creative manifesto, which I highly recommend. If you like PDF files (I don’t), a slightly different version is available for download at Change This.

©2006 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Heaven, I’m in Heaven

Don't let worry kill you -- let the church help.

Church bulletin blooper

Check out an irreverent look at religion in the online sitcom, God, Inc. Described as The Office in heaven, it portrays heaven as a corporation complete with departments like customer relations, where prayers are filed; population control, the department that gleefully plans disasters; and miracles. “Is that like seeing Jesus on a tortilla?” asks a new intern in episode two. “That’s Publicity,” she learns.

Paradise as a cube farm? Sounds like hell to me.

©2006 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Tell Me a Story

Tell me a fact and I’ll learn. Tell me a truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever. Italian Proverb

The way we communicate with and learn from one another is by telling stories. When we get together with friends, we swap stories. Daniel H. Pink points out in A Whole New Mind that the way we get trained on the job is through stories. The veteran will tell the newbie, “Once I did that and got in a lot of trouble. Mr. Hanks had to call the fire department…” and so on.

One way to improve your communications skills is to learn how to tell stories better. Lucky for you, there are tons of information available to help you do just that. Here are a few of my favorites:

Maybe the best book ever written on crafting stories is Story by Robert McKee, which is actually about screenwriting. His analysis of the minute details that go into putting together a good solid story will also work for writers, speakers, and teachers.

WikiHow, a website filled with free short tutorials on a mind numbing number of topics, offers How to Write a Short Story. Its sister site, eHow, offers advice on How to Generate Short Story Ideas.

Professional storyteller Chris King publishes a free enewsletter and articles about storytelling. If you get interested enough to immerse yourself, check out the Society of the Muse of the Southwest, which offers a storytelling festival in Taos, New Mexico, every fall.

Spend one day writing down all the stories you hear throughout the day and you agree with poet Muriel Rukeyser, who said, “The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.”

©2006 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Telling Stories

“There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.”

Ursula K. LeGuin

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the art of telling stories. At the urging of my writers’ group, I started writing short stories. It isn’t as easy as it looks. Because I couldn’t seem to think up story ideas from my own imagination, I found myself listening more carefully to the stories other people told me about their lives. These became fodder for my attempts at writing fiction.

On Palm Sunday I participated in a performance of the Gospel of Mark at my church. We broke the book into 1-3 minute chunks and more than a dozen of us took turns telling the story of Jesus’ ministry in the oral tradition, much as it must have been told and preserved in the first decades after his crucifixion before it was written down.

In the summer, I took a class in storytelling offered for United Methodist lay speakers. The book we used, Dancing with Words by Ray Buckley, focused on the legacy of storytelling in the Lakota tradition. “Storytelling affirms for us the memory of our people,” he writes. “We are people of the story, and we seek to identify and tell our stories in nearly everything we do.”

In his book, A Whole New Mind, Daniel H. Pink lists telling stories as one of the six competencies we need in the conceptual age, because computers can’t do it for us. This book was so full of good ideas that I had to buy my own copy after I returned the library book.

When I started teaching a course in cultural diversity, I had my students share their culture by telling stories to one another, a very popular activity. Whenever we get together in groups, the way we communicate is by telling stories. Start paying attention to the stories you hear and those you tell. What do they tell about you?

More on stories tomorrow.

©2006 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

A New Year, A New Direction

“Learning a little every day soon puts you far behind whoever’s learning a lot every day.” Ashleigh Brilliant

Acute observer that you are, you probably noticed that I changed the title of my blog from The Art of Self-Employment to The Constant Learner. After much gnashing of teeth and mental anguish, I decided that this name better represents me and what I want to write about.

Even in the first 40-odd postings, I had a hard time sticking with the topic of self-employment. That’s because I am what Barbara Sher calls a scanner—a person who has too many interests to focus on just one thing. Sher’s book, Refuse to Choose and Margaret Lobenstine’s The Renaissance Soul caused me to reconsider and ultimately abandon my quest to find my One True Mission in Life. Instead I embrace the idea that my mission is to learn about a wide variety of topics. The fact that I had six majors* in college before I finally earned my bachelors degree should have been a clue.

So the truth is that I get bored easily and, as passionate as I am about self-employment, that isn’t the only thing I want to write about. Other areas include:

• Writing
• Presentations
• Creativity
• Critical Thinking
• Teaching adults
• Adult College Students
• Non-retirement
• Reading
• Decorating
• Bookbinding
• Spirituality
• Walking
• Weightlifting

to name a few.

I believe that we were all born to learn. Learning is what brings me joy. My favorite activities all have a learning component to them, so in this blog I will suggest many resources for learning because being a resource person is what I do best. But I believe that the whole world is a learning resource and I’m giving myself permission to explore whatever topics strike my fancy and I invite you along for the ride.

Enjoy!

*art, philosophy, sign language, psychology, anthropology and sociology

©2006 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Holiday Diary

Sunday, December 24, 2006. Because of our storm, many malls and stores are opening for extended hours today so people can make up the shopping they missed while stuck at home. The stores pose this as a benefit to the shoppers, which it is, but it is also beneficial to the shopkeeper. I guess this is an example of a win-win situation.

Last week, before the storm, I was at Safeway stocking up on a few essentials (caffeine free diet coke and light popcorn) and the clerk told me that they would be open on Christmas Day. My reaction was not positive. Can’t we have one day a year without shopping?

I made it out on Friday thanks to my wonderful friend, Sheila, who drove her SUV all the way from Highlands Ranch to pick me up for lunch. We made our way downtown to the Buckhorn Exchange.

Unfortunately, the picture doesn’t show the festive Santa hats on all the animal heads for Christmas. We exchanged gifts (mine was the huge Beatles Anthology book) and enjoyed our sandwiches and chocolate cake.

By Saturday, I was heartily sick of my own company. I managed to get out for a walk, but people who hadn’t bothered to shovel their walks made things difficult. Lunch with another friend, Barb, was cancelled. I spent most of the day watching the 2-DVD set of Pride and Prejudice—the original A&E production starring Colin Furth as the quintessential Mr. Darcy. Oh, my.

Sunday morning. Our worship service was cancelled as was our late candlelight communion service. Instead we will have the kid’s pageant combined with candlelight and communion at 6 o’clock. My brother has to drive in from Westminster to pick me up because my car is still stuck in the garage behind several feet of snow in the alley. He will take me and my folks to his house for an early Christmas Eve dinner, and then drop me off at church. I’m counting on someone from my church family to drive me the one mile home from there.

This morning, I need to finish my cranberry-marshmallow-walnut salad, bake focaccia bread and make a batch of microwave peanut brittle.

The ham and scalloped potatoes at my folk’s house will have to wait until Mother Nature clears out my alley and frees me from the house.

Christmas Day. I didn’t make it to church last night after all. It started snowing again and we all panicked. My brother took my folks home. There are SCARY amounts of snow in their mobile home park. The park management plowed one pass down the center of each street and Dad and Fern paid $60 to have their driveway shoveled out, but 5-6 foot banks of snow makes maneuvering very tricky.

Luckily, the snow stopped after an hour and didn’t amount to much. I watched a Christmas Eve service on TV, but it wasn’t the same as taking communion, praying, lighting the candles and singing Silent Night with my church family. I tried not to pout and went to bed early.

They’re predicting slightly warmer temperatures tomorrow, so I am hoping and praying that it will melt enough snow to allow me to finally get out of my garage. My parents and I will have to delay our Christmas dinner of ham and scalloped potatoes until later this week.

©2006 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Blessings

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

Bob Dylan

The sun is finally out and we have two feet of snow on the ground. The city worked all night to plow out the side streets. My problem is that my garage opens onto an unplowed alley, so I have no idea when I will be able to get my car out to the street.

Today, I plan to walk to the local business district two blocks away and try to find an ATM machine. Cash is the only thing I didn’t think to stock up on before the storm. Once I find a machine, I have to hope that the store is open and that it has money in it because the people who stock ATMs haven’t been able to get out, either.

Being snowbound lets you know quickly how much you like your own company. I’ve been fine for two days, but the thought of a few more days of solitude with my cats doesn’t exactly thrill me.

Normally on Friday mornings, I walk down to the Tattered Cover bookstore in LoDo (about a mile away) for banana bread from their coffee shop. I can’t get there today with all the snow. I’m reasonably sure they will be open today, but the bakery truck may not have been able to get there, even if the workers were able to get to the bakery to make the bread and other goodies.

This kind of storm affects all businesses, large and small. The malls are reopening today and will try to make up the two days of lost sales. In a week or so the snow will all be gone and forgotten. Meanwhile, I keep reminding myself that I’m much better off than those 4,700 people who were stranded at the airport overnight Wednesday. I’m safe, warm, and well-fed. I have power for my television, DVD, computer, telephone and stereo. Millions of people in the world would die for that.

©2006 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Winter Wonderland

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. Albert Camus

The weather forecasters have been warning us for a week that a potentially BIG snowstorm was headed our way. Now it’s here. It started just after I woke up this morning and will continue until noon tomorrow, bringing us as much as two feet of snow. Not my idea of a good time.

I ran all my errands yesterday in anticipation of having to stay home today. I filled my car with gas, stocked up on caffeine-free diet coke and bought walnuts so I could make some Christmas goodies during the blizzard. I also stopped at the library to pick up the DaVinci Code movie, which will come in handy while the networks show an endless succession of reruns. There’s a stack of firewood in the garage in case my power goes off and my cell phone and laptop are charged. My breakfast with Kathy and Jane will have to wait until another day. Today might be a good day to reread Laura Ingalls Wilder’s stories of winters on the plains during the pioneer days when they had to tie a rope around themselves tethered to the house to avoid getting lost on the way to the barn. That should make me count my blessings.

One of the great things about working at home is that you never have to fight rush hour traffic; the flip side of that is never getting a snow day. I have papers to grade, classes to prepare, and a workbook to write. I am also working on a short story about, ironically, being snowbound at Christmas.

None of this may get done, of course, because like Anne Morrow Lindbergh, I may be part bear. As she said, “the instinct to be half asleep all winter is so strong in me.”

Things will clear up by Friday, although the snow is likely to stick around long enough to bring us an unusual white Christmas. Meanwhile, I’ll settle in with my cats, light a candle and pray that everybody makes it home safe tonight.

©2006 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Overstuffed

"Out of clutter, find simplicity." Albert Einstein

I’m a packrat. I admit it. I save everything and have a hard time getting rid of anything. I still have close to 400 record albums that I haven’t played for many years and I don’t even want to talk about my book collection.

My clutter comes to light when I decorate for Christmas. I have about five times as many ornaments as I can actually use on my little five-foot tree. When I bring out the other decorations – the Santa collection, the teddy bears and the rocking horses, I have to put away vases and toys and knickknacks to make room for them.

This year, I SWEAR, I’m going to use this switching out activity to get organized. I’m tired of living in Dogpatch. I have this vision, if I don’t clean up my act, of people dreading my death not because they’ll miss me, but because they’re afraid they’ll be responsible for disposing of all my STUFF.

People tell me that getting rid of things is a soul-cleansing experience. I’m holding onto that thought. While I don’t think I will ever adopt a minimalist approach to life, I’m remembering these words from Immanuel Kant: "Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life." I’m looking for wisdom.

©2006 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It

The goal is to have your work be the principal expression for your mind and creative talent. Ernie Zelinski

We were put on earth for a reason. Some lucky people seem to be born knowing why they are here. Others spend their lives seeking their mission. You’re never too old to continue the search. As Richard Bach, the author of Illusions said, “Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t.”

On the theory that you teach what you need to learn, I recently taught a class in Finding Your Mission in Life. Here’s what I learned. It’s a popular topic. A Google search resulted in 4,710,000 hits. Amazon shows 67,097 related books. Remember, the Blues Brothers were “on a mission from God.”

Even those who recognize and follow their calling early in life may find that it changes shape at different stages in their lives. One of my students, Diane, spent the first several years of her adult life as a stay-at-home mom, devoting her time and energy to raising her children. As they grew older and more independent, Diane searched for another way to use her care giving talent. Transforming her family home into a group home for developmentally disabled young men allowed her to continue parenting on a different level.

Now in her mid-forties, she is returning to college to earn a nursing degree, learning new skills and credentials, but continuing on her path of providing care to those in need. She and her husband have already started laying the foundation for their non-retirement. They have started a non-profit corporation, Assisted Adventures. "This company integrates my love of travel with my desire to continue to help those less fortunate than me, by providing direct care and assistance to developmentally disabled adults that have the ability to travel with supervision."

This will use all of her previous experiences and allow the couple to continue earning a living while doing the traveling they look forward to.

As is evident in Diane’s story, your mission combines your values and talents with the issues that are important to you. Author Frederick Buechner explains that your calling “is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” So begin your search for mission by defining what you really love to do. If you don’t know, ask a friend or family member what subject makes you light up when you talk about it. Then think about how you can use that talent or interest to make the world a better place.

Some people seem to think they’re here to accumulate as much money or material goods as possible, and that doing what they love means living in poverty. One friend told me, “people who make a lot of money are miserable.” I disagree. I don’t think Bill Gates is miserable, and he certainly seems to be doing what makes him happy. Most movie stars, rock stars, and best-selling writers are doing work they love and making a whole lot of money doing it. We need to remember that it isn’t money, but the LOVE of money that is the root of all evil. Stephen King didn’t get into writing because he heard he could make a lot of money. He started writing because he loved it, couldn’t not do it.

Here’s a test to see if you’ve found your mission. If you won the lottery, would you you’re your job? Answer yes and you’re in the wrong line of work.

©2006 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Stop, Breathe, Listen

“It is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all.” James Thurber

My teaching marathon is almost over until after the holidays, which means I can settle into the Christmas frenzy. Work never seems to let up this time of year to give me a chance to sit back and enjoy the season.

I managed to fit an advent study class at church into my over-stuffed schedule. We talk about the need to rest, meditate, and wait. The whole time we’re there, my mind is racing through my mental to-do list. I’m pretty sure that isn’t the appropriate attitude.

Once I do get some time off, I have several writing, cleaning, organizing and reading projects to keep me busy. First, though I have to finish decorating the house and buying and wrapping gifts. I’m also scheduling several lunches with friends to catch up with each others’ lives and celebrate the birth of Christ. Sometimes it is hard to remember that He is the reason for the season.

©2006 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Winter Surprise

"We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." Walt Disney

I like that quotation because I’m a big fan of curiosity. It’s one of the characteristics of creative people, and Dr. Richard M. Restak calls it “the mental trait most linked with superior brain functioning over the life span.”

Each day brings new things to wonder about. On my walk yesterday morning, I rounded the corner by Our Lady of Guadalupe Church to find the streets barricaded and a festival in full swing. Mexican dancers filled the street, music blasted from loud speakers and food booths prepared for lunch. At 10 a.m. on a Tuesday morning. I don’t know what the occasion was, but don’t these things usually happen on the weekend? And, think about it: December is not a great time to hold an outdoor festival in Denver.

I enjoyed the dancers and their brightly colored costumes and walked on. I was on a tight schedule and had places to go, people to see and things to do. Eventually I will learn what the celebration was all about, but meanwhile, I will just appreciate the fact that it appeared on a day when I needed a little boost.

Now, I’m wondering what astonishing things will happen today. To quote Roseanne Rosannadanna, “It’s always something.”

©2006 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Get Crafty

"(T)he only way ever to have an intelligent understanding of anything, and a true interest in it, whether it is writing or art or aviation, is to do it yourself." Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write

If you like crafts, you’ll love the Craftivity website. Their motto: “We celebrate ingenuity, creativity and the handmade. Make your life better by simply making your life.”

Organized into categories including frugality & living, fibre and fabric, tech and machanics, home & hearth, theory & practice, lost & found and wearable The site also offers short tutorials called alt guides and a section on things you really shouldn’t do yourself. My favorite project in that section is the Hello Kitty Bong. The commentary asks the question, “How can something so cute be so wrong?”

Sponsored by New York design firm, Flat, the site also features a group blog, a message board and a newsletter.

I could spend several happy hours just exploring this site.

©2006 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept it

By Dixie Darr

"It is not our abilities that show what we truly are. It is our choices."
--- Professor Dumbledore (J. K. Rowling)

I recently agreed to teach a class in Finding Your Mission in Life. It’s a subject I’ve been exploring off and on for twenty years or more, because, as the Blues Brothers said, “We’re on a mission from God.” Here’s what I believe and a little of what I’ve learned about the topic.

We were put on earth for a reason and, in some way, that reason involves making the world a better place for our having been here. We seek, acknowledge and accept our missions along a continuum ranging from “never give it a thought” to “wholeheartedly.”

Some lucky people seem to be born knowing why they are here. Others spend their lives searching for their mission in life. Even those who recognize and follow their calling early in life may find that it changes shape at different stages in their lives.

Certain professions, such as ministry, healthcare and teaching, are typically associated with being a calling or vocation, but your mission can be anything you feel you were born to do. Laurie Beth Jones, author of The Path: Creating Your Mission Statement for Work and for Life, is careful to point out that your mission is not your job. “Your job may be and ideally should be part of your mission, but a mission is always larger than a job.” It encompasses your whole life.

There’s a famous story about a man passing by a construction site. He stopped and asked one of the tradesmen what he was doing. The worker replied gruffly, "I'm laying bricks, can't you see that?" The man watched a while longer and then asked another worker what he was doing. "I'm just earning a living," he replied. A third time the man asked a worker and the response was much different, "I'm building a cathedral."

What are you doing today? Are you just laying bricks or are you building a cathedral?

©2006 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

A Journey of a Thousand Miles

"Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you ready or not, to put this plan into action." Napolean Hill

I watch and read movie reviews, but never go to the movies and rarely rent one to watch at home. This seemingly paradoxical behavior results from two conflicting desires. The first is a desire to keep up with popular culture and the second is to protect my time for more productive pursuits. The reviews give me the scoop on movies without my having to spend two or three hours in a theater. I prefer to stay home and read (or write) a book.

We all have these little inconsistencies and idiosyncracies and most of them are harmless. My friend Kathy collects cookbooks, but she doesn’t cook. Many people subscribe to publications that they never get around to reading. And thousands of us plan to pay off all our bills, buy a new car and start a charitable foundation as soon as we hit the lottery, but we never buy a lottery ticket. Humorist and curmudgeon, Fran Lebowitz, insists that "I've done the calculation and your chances of winning the lottery are identical whether you play or not." It’s true that you are extraordinarily unlikely to win millions of dollars, but you definitely will not win if you don’t buy a ticket. You have to get in the game.

Sometimes, though, our contradictory behavior can get us in trouble. I once had a friend who said she longed to have her own business and frequently asked how she could get started. I gave her books to read, exercises to do and tests to take that would get her started on the road to entrepreneurship. I told her about classes she could take and people to talk to in her field and she never followed up on a single thing. Maybe she just liked to hear herself whine, or maybe she was so paralyzed by fear that she just couldn’t take a step toward her dream. Yet, like the lottery, you can’t possibly win if you don’t join the game.

If you have a dream, think of one baby step you can take TODAY—make a phone call, read an article, check a website. Then do it.

©2006 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Reading Lessons

“Most people tell me that their darkest times seeded their most significant growth”. Marsha Sinetar

Today was my first day off in ten days and I took full advantage of it. After a nap this morning to catch up on some lost sleep, I went out to lunch with my parents. I have another tough week of work ahead and then I get two full weeks off for the holidays. I can hardly believe it.

I’m planning to spend some of the time getting things organized in my house (a never-ending project), writing and reading.

I currently have 21 books checked out of the library and 26 on hold. The unread ones on my shelf include most of my favorite topics: creativity, writing, small business, and religion. I also have a couple of mysteries. More of the same is on the way. I’m on track to read a total of 120 books this year, ten per month. Next year, I definitely plan to cut down on reading about other peoples’ lives, so I can devote more time to living my own.

This has been a rough year, and I’m looking forward to a better 2007. The time off will give me a chance to be still and reflect on the lessons I’ve learned. With any luck I will be able to go on to new and better lessons next year.

©2006 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Our Global Village

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Max Ehrman, "Desiderata"

Next time you’re feeling sorry for yourself, check out this slide show. It puts things into perspective. Some nitpickers have pointed out that it isn’t entirely accurate and some of the figures presented are impossible to really know, but the spirit of the ideas is powerful.

©2006 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Peace Like a River Ran Through the City

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals. Anonymous

Last year, one of my favorite Christmas gifts was a set of warm wishes candles from my nieces. The twelve rectangular candles came in rainbow colors and each one represented a wish: wealth, luck, comfort, health, fun, peace, love, joy, adventure, balance, longevity and success. Each month I chose one to focus on. As the candle burned down, a charm representing that concept was revealed.

This month’s wish is for peace. While I’d dearly love to bring about world peace, I’m taking to heart the advice to think globally and act locally. If I can create peace in my own life, that can contribute in a microscopic way to peace on earth.

©2006 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

A Vision for Your Future

"The best way to be ready for the future is to invent it." John Sculley

This is just too good not to pass on. I learned about it from Lee Silber’s newsletter. It’s about a new multimedia way to set your goals for the coming year. Check out the vision statement at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bis6fUSFxY. I’m going to give it a try. It is that time of year again, when I have to reassess 2006, write about it for my Christmas letter and look ahead to what I want to accomplish next year. Doing a vision statement slide show (I’ll use PowerPoint) will be a fun way to do it.

Over the weekend, I drove around in a lot of snow and ended up having breakfast by myself because my friend Barb couldn’t make it in the snowstorm. Normally, when I eat alone in a restaurant, I have a book to read, but Saturday I didn’t take a book because I expected to be with Barb. Luckily, I always have a notebook in my purse, so I used the time to make notes for a short story I want to write.

When I left, I stopped at OfficeMax to buy myself two items on my Christmas list: an external hard drive they had on sale and a PURPLE padfolio. After that, it was time to stop buying things for myself until after Christmas. I need to get serious about buying gifts for others and getting out my holiday decorations.

©2006 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved