A few more chunks

 WAYS TO INCREASE YOUR CREATIVITY

6. Park in a different spot and walk the rest of the way

7, Walk to work

8. Work at home (A necessity in 2020)

9. Watch what children do.

10. Listen to children

THOUGHTS ON CREATIVE LIVING

6. The aim of life is to be fully born, though its tragedy is that most of us die before we are thus born. To live is to be born every moment. Death occurs when birth stops. The answer is to develop one's awareness, one's reason, one's capacity to love to such a point that one transcends one's egocentric involvement and arrives at a new oneness with the world.            (Erich Fromm - Zen BuddHism and Psychoanalysis.)

7. Perfection is the full development of one's imagination    (N. Frye)

8. Creativeness is correlated with ability to withstand lack of structure, lack of future, lack of predictability, lack of control, A tolerance for ambiguity, for planlessness.
                     (Abraham Maslow - Eupsychian Management)

9. I'd rather than rust.     (F. A. Ruark)

10. May the force be with you. (Obi-Wan Ben Kenobi - Star Wars)

 A new feature on my blog: I have experience helping folks to remove self imposed barriers to their creativity. I will be sharing in small chunks, at least 150 ways to increase creativity.

Also, again, in small chunks, a collection of quotes that see creativity through many different lenses. Hope you enjoy.

And feel free to respond and add to either list. Let's see what happens.

Here's the first chunks

WAYS TO INCREASE YOUR CREATIVITY

1. Read a lot 
2. Read outside your field
3. Read in a different language
4. Take a different route going to work
5. Ride the bus

QUOTES ON CREATIVE LIVING

1. Happiness and beauty are the by-products. Folly is the direct pursuit of happiness      (G.B Shaw)
2. Remorse is to discover just before you die that you have been dead for a long, long time                       (C. Fletcher)
3. When the cannons are silent, heaven can be heard
     (Bicentennial Wagon TRain Show -1976)
4. God is always very subtle, but never capricious.
     (Albert Einstein)
5. W can destroy the earth by ourselves, but we can not save it alone
     (Margaret Mead) 

BECOMING BREFFNI BOOKS

    In 1970, The Beatles sang, “Long and Winding Road” which is a convenient description for my journey starting in that same era.to become a writer and publisher. As a cable repairman for the phone company, I was required to keep a daily journal of the time spent clearing circuit troubles. Later, my job on the Engineering Economics Staff was writing explanations to the Public Service Commission about the reasons the company needed to raise the rates. To escape from the complexities of that job, I would go out of the office for lunch and take notes of the sights on the bustling streets of downtown Baltimore. Over time, those notes became poems.

            In pursuit of a management degree in night school at Johns Hopkins I took an elective course in creative writing. I could feel some deep energy growing inside because for that course, I really enjoyed doing the homework. Both the phone company and my college professors encouraged me to pursue leadership roles in the community, both for my own experience and for the public interest in my company and my school. Being a member of the Jaycees at the time, an opportunity to write led me to becoming the editor of our chapter’s monthly newsletter. In addition to reporting on the activity of the chapter, the newsletter offered a platform for my lunch time ‘people watching’.

            The old “Birds of a feather….’Cliché proved true at Hopkins. A cadre of writers I met in undergrad classes reunited in graduate classes in Advanced Creative Writing. It didn’t take long before we started the first literary magazine in the Hopkins evening college. Most of the founders were anxious to submit some of their work for publishing. Since I was the only member of the group with a BS in management, I was voted in as Managing Editor. Two of my bosses at the phone company where also faculty members at Hopkins night school. Turns out that the Dean of the Evening College was an occasional guest on my boss’s boat. Wasn’t long before the “Nocturne” literary magazine had an office with a typewriter at the Hopkins Homewood campus.

            I was well positioned and lucky, but also qualified to find some shortcuts on “The Long and Winding Road” Also, as I moved up the career ladder with the phone company, more writing opportunities came my way. Concurrent with receiving my MS in Adult Education, the phone company was shifting to centralize their training function. At last a door opened that led to my escape from Engineering Economics and I moved into a position in the newly reorganized training department as a course developer, and then a Management Trainer and Organization Development internal consultant.

            With that on my resume, I retired from the phone company, started my own consulting firm. That led to an opening at the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant doing basically the same kind of work for the next ten years. With a lot of instructional development experience, I was offered a position on the staff of a consulting firm started by three retired AT&T executives, one of them was a former boss when I worked in DC. He was also a neighbor in Southern Maryland.

            Worked mostly from home but traveled a lot. Their firm had no brick and mortar office, so we had many virtual conferences before they became the vouge recently. It was during that period, the 90’s and early 20’s that I was bitten by the historical fiction bug, and wrapped a story involving two of my favorite cultures; the Irish and the Native American indigenous tribes. Thus, was born “The Saints Lost their Way”, published by Breffni Books through Create Space on Amazon.

Reentry

 Mother Nature, Father Time, COVID 19 and Trump's term in office, and my wife's fatal illness have ganged up on me, and sapped my energy, my creativity, and my ambition. But I reached down into my core values, awakening the spirit of my Marilyn, with my deepest gratitude for the life we had together, and surrounded by her art work in my apartment, have new energy to get busy. I have an extensive body of work that I want to share. I have published my novel, "The Saints Lost Their Way", the sequel is a work in progress newly ignited. I have 60 years of poetry songs, short stories, essays and opinions that I want to share. With some consulting guidance to promote my work, I feel reenergized, anxious to get to work and resurrect my sleeping Muse.MG_4856.jpg

SNL

 A slight departure from my usual kind of posts. I have many opinions to share, and I will begin with this one. I have been a Saturday Night Live fan since it first began. There have been some great casts, and some years weren't worth watching. Watching tonight, 10/31/2020, a great show with meaningful creativity. Some teetering on the edge of controversy. Yet much of the energy was sucked out of the show by the musical guests, the Stroke. The musicians were talented enough, but they should take a vote and get rid of the guy who ate his mic throughout what he might call a song. I listened to two of his numbers and for the life of me I could not repeat even one of his lyrics. He mumbled through both numbers with the mic in his mouth and as far as I'm concerned ruined the performance for the rest of the band, He is that bad.

From the pages of my novel,  "The Saints Lost Their Way"

Finbar, the patriarch of the fictional O'Doole family reads this poem to his grandchildren as they row across Lough Gill in Leitrim.  As they approach the Parke's castle on the shore of the lough, notes that the castle once belonged to the  O'Ruaraic family.  The tale speaks of the family in the distant past.            

Dermott MacMurchad of Leinster, with heart of wood,

Ruled stolen land with cruel blood

Chieftains of Eire who stood to fight,

If they kept their life, they lost their light

Insulted the Abbess of St. Bridgit's Church grand,

Closed her in a cell in the bed of a man.

Lusted beyond the fjords of Wex and Water

E'en to the walls of Dublin's fine quarter

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In MacLoughlin of Ulster Dermott found a friend

Thought his conquests then would know no end

Set his greedy eyes on Connacht and Meath

O'Connor and O'Ruaraic vowed to stand to the death

The King and the Prince together stood tall

With honor and sword 'neath Breffni's stout wall

Ere the kerns of MacMurchad heard the clarion's call

Had neither stomach nor heart for naught but withdraw

O'Ruaraic's confessor in piety's name

Bade the Prince make a pilgrimage away from war's game

Prince Tiernan, the pilgrim left with the first crow of the cock

Trusting husband saw not the need for a chastity lock

He believed the Bride of Breffni would wait

But the fair Derbforgaill did not lock the gate

MacMurchad came under cover of night

Abducted O'Ruaraic's wife and took flight

T’was a dastardly act, or so it would seem

Yet heard within Breffni's walls, nary a scream

When Tiernan's horse boy gave his account

He swore Derbforgaill was astride the Prince's best mount

And several housemaids reported before the gates closed

She was leading four pack horses carrying all of her clothes

Prince Tiernan returned to find a cold bed

With the fire of vengeance burning his head 

Mustered his army and moved with great haste

Toward a fortress in Leinster with intent to lay waste

Dermott's walls breached, the villain escaped in the end

But in all Erin's Isle he found not a friend

But there were those that owed Dermott an old debt

With his daughter Eva sailed o'er to England without regret

 King Henry had once borrowed Dermott's ships under sails

To suppress a pesky revolution out there in Wales

Finding Henry in England was sure of little chance

Because the King of England spent most of his time in France

But once found, old Henry would not lend a hand

Unless MacMurchad promised fealty and, of course Irish land

Now Henry avowed he could not an English soldier loan

Gave a letter permitting Dermott raise an army on his own

He looked, but could not hire an army anywhere

Until he met a red-haired Earl, Richard de Clare

Now Dermott could not understand, nor would he ever know

How this femme-faced Norman ever earned the title of, 'Strongbow'

 He was far from manly, never mistaken for a swain

Some say of him was written, "His blood is better than his brain"

But 'twas falsely accused, Strongbow had a clever plan

His price for aid, an Irish estate and the daughter Eva's hand

The pact agreed for Irish land and Eva as his bride

Strongbow set out to hire some men to fight for Dermott's side

Dermott for Éireann sailed with Norman knights and gallowglasses

O'Ruaraic and O'Connor greeted him and kicked some Norman asses

 To buy some time and for his kidnap crime Dermott offered Tiernan gold

Tiernan took the bribe and set the stage for history yet untold

Irish troops fell back, laid down their arms hoping to fight no more

But now Strongbow and his Norman knights stormed onto Éireann's shore

With a thousand men at arms to recapture Dermott's land

His promise kept, Strongbow could now claim fair Eva's hand

The wedding assured Strongbow became Dermott's heir

A Norman on the Leinster throne was a curse on all of Eire

Excited to announce a book signing and discussion on March 16 from 11 to 1 at St. Inie's Coffee House, 46915 S. Shangri La Drive in Lexington Park Maryland