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There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together.
-- Josh Billings
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In the new web site (that's still under construction), I'm making free desktop wallpaper of some of my artwork available.  Check it out! |
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 Life is so good. |
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I'm finishing up my work on the new web site and I'm just about done with the new gallery. The gallery is the place for me to showcase whatever it is that I'm doing creatively, be it art or photos or music or writing or whatever. So, I've written the new pages in a way that allows me to automate the display of my work into categories. You'll see what I mean when you visit. The nice thing about this is the automation of my photos gallery. I'm having fun with my photography lately. This is a good way to display them all together. Later, I need to adjust the contact page. That will be more autobiographical eventually. Details to follow. But I'm having fun, and after all, that's the main point of it. |
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 I'm about halfway done with my rework of this web site. You can check out the new blogroll. I don't have everyone on there that I want to list, but you get the idea. (If you don't know what a blogroll is, it's a list of other bloggers you recommend reading.) I wrote recently about the death of the blogroll. I wrote of how I would change it, and I've mostly done that. I figure if I'm going to take the time to list someone on my blogroll, I ought to take the time to tell you why and give you some information about them. I think this is a better approach. It personalizes the blogroll in a way I haven't seen done before. And yes, it takes a few minutes to do each one, but if I'm recommending them, don't they deserve that? I'll also be tagging each entry, so that it's easy to filter the list. I haven't started with the re-work of the Gallery or Archives pages. The rest of what's done is about where I want it to be. The blog, more narrowed than you typically see it here on the web site, looks more clean and focused. And so I go. One of the features of the Gallery is that I'll be opening up my artwork so that anyone can use it. No more watermarked images. More about all that in a later post... |
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Yesterday, I mused on Patricia Ryan Madson's book, Improv Wisdom. I said that maybe, if we're viewing life and people through a negative, critical filter, we need to change our own sight rather than change others. Patricia advocates a "gift" filter - seeing people and life for the gifts that they bring to us. Everyone has their strengths, and if we focus on that, we might be more thankful. Which makes it a matter of correcting our vision.  I've come to believe that anyone can paint. Painting, in my opinion, is not a matter of manual dexterity. If you can forge the signature of someone else, you have all the physical talent that you need. Painting is instead a talent of the eyes. It's a matter of seeing things as they are and not as we think they are. It's not an apple I paint, but a blob of red here and yellow there and spots of white and purple and blue. Shapes and colors... that's it. Tackling the outline of shapes is no more complicated than forging the curves in another's signature. A friend of mine told me that she didn't have the patience to paint. After I convinced her that she might be able to do wonderful things with a brush, she said simply, "I don't have the time or the patience." And it's true that painting takes both - because much of the time is spent getting rid of what I think it looks like. I get a first impression when I view the subject. If I paint only from my first impression, I'll fail and I won't capture it. I have to look at it again and again and again in order to get it right. Now think of people. Do we let our first impressions stick and then approach that person from that perspective only? Or do we look at that person again and again and again to get it right? Everyone has their strengths. Everyone has a gift. Do we allow ourselves the time to see them as they are to enjoy what they can bring to our life? |
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One of my very favorite books is Improv Wisdom: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up. It was written by Patricia Ryan Madson, who applies the lessons she learned in teaching improv at Stanford to life. Just a wonderful, wonderful book, and one that I am re-reading. I read something over lunch that just bears quoting... To the improv professional, the glass is always half full. There is always something there to work with; you just need to see it. There are gifts everywhere if we learn to see them.I am always using some kind of filter when I encounter the world, whether I notice this or not. The light in which something is perceived will determine its value. I can look at a person or event from three vantage points: - To see what's wrong with it
- To see it objectively
- To see the gift in it
How do you look at reality? Which lens do you use? Patricia then details a personal inventory that she was trained to do.- What had I received from others during my life?
- What had I given back to them?
- What trouble or bother had I caused them?
In this process, she writes:What I discovered astounded me - a world that had been there, but was formerly unseen - a place where I was receiving far more than I had been giving; in short, a world of support. I wasn't the star, but one of many players. Why is it that sometimes I am unnoticing and ungrateful of the gifts that others provide? What great gifts in our lives are we missing because we focus on what's wrong?Patricia notes how even the chair on which you sit as you read this was the result of someone's labor that you now enjoy, and perhaps you never noticed. How would the world be different if we first saw everyone and everything for the gifts they bring? Said another way, I've been chewing on the Strengths Finders material put out by Gallup. If we focus on our weaknesses, we marginally improve. If we focus on our strengths, we exponentially improve because we're already in tune with these gifts. What if we view others not in terms of their weaknesses, but in terms of their strengths? Not a matter of what they can't do, but what they can do? How would that change how we interact with them? Would we become thankful for the gifts they provide because we've changed how we view them? Is it not them who needs to change, but us? Is it all just a matter of how we see life? |
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