“Reach your potential!”
“My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.” – Charles F. Kettering Wednesday, May 21 2008
It’s summertime, and that means time for summer reading. This summer, as always, I welcome suggestions on rounding out my reading list. Last summer I was all about the classics. Jack Kerouac. Ernest Hemingway. F. Scott Fitzgerald. This summer I’m focusing on the future, instead of the past. So two things: 1) how our existence will be in the time ahead and 2) bettering myself for the future.
I started, and am nearly halfway through, “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future” by Daniel H. Pink. It’s about how the Industrial Age favored left-brain dominated thinking – analysis, calculation, sequence – and how the new age we’re in, the Conceptual Age, favors right-brain dominated thinking – innovation, creativity, design. Jobs are quickly heading overseas or being replaced by computers, and the way to keep your job is to bring something to the table a computer or underpaid foreigner can’t – creativity.
Don’t worry; it’s not an argument for the dismissal of logic. Rather, it’s a case for both left- and right-brained dominated thinking to be a part of our everyday existence. Not just utility and function, but beauty and experience. This especially appeals to me, as I am part of a generation who doesn’t just want to make a phone call, we want a full experience with our phones – customizing with colors and ringtones and music to our hearts desires. We don’t just want to own a pair of shoes, we want them branded with our own designs and wording.
It’s the future.
Purging Thursday, Jan 10 2008
Growth and New York and Self-Portrait and Wisconsin 2:21 pm
It feels so good to purge your belongings. For me, it’s not just about more closet space, but it’s a cleansing ritual that begins with Chaos and ends with Order. With each item, I am deciding my Destiny. Am I the kind of woman who owns this? Who wears this? Who cares about this? After relocating twelve times in the past 4 years, it has become basic routine to cut down and cut back, then cut out. I was going to move to New York. I was going to be decidedly Poor and decidedly Happy. Now I am back in the trap of Midwest Materialism and I buy t-shirts instead of seeing Broadway plays. My mind strives for Simplicity but fails to find it in the midst of this constant disarray. I vow that with this change of locations will also come a change of Lifestyle. More Creation. Better Nutrition. Stronger Conviction.
Early Riser Thursday, Sep 27 2007
Growth and Self-Portrait 9:35 am
When did I become such an early riser? Seems like in my younger days you couldn’t force me to sleep before 3 am nor coerce me awake before noon. Now, though I rarely have a commitment to rise for, I am functioning hours and hours earlier than ever imagined. (And going to bed hours and hours earlier, I might mention.) Is this the definition of “growing up”?
I’ve always been ready for that next stage in my life long before it actually happened. Sophomore year of high school, when the rest of my older friends were going off to college, I was more ready to be there than half of them. I was sick of teen queens, worthless classes and an 8 to 4 that was governed by bells. I’d visit their universities, edit their latest writing assignments and wonder why I was being punished with two more years of an immature hell. Senior year of college, when my friends and acquaintances were still decorating in “college chic” – John Belushi posters, Corona lights and futons – my apartment was a shrine to Hobby Lobby, with real framed pictures and intricacies that were charming, not chintzy. I cooked real meals, avoided the Walk of Shame and graduated on time. And now, while just-out-of-college yuppies wake up with hang-overs every morning and are busy declaring what they think is their independence, I take walks downtown, attend community events and start book clubs.
I’m tired of feeling like I’m always one step ahead of my environment. I am forever outgrowing my life and will push ahead with zeal for the next adventure. This is probably why I can leave friends, cities and lifestyles behind at the drop of a hat. I’m moving too quickly and you need to keep up.
“I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving…We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
