Creativity doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.*
Seth Godin

The Neighbour as a Stranger bears on the mundane realm of the city. Awareness of, encounters with, addressing others unlike oneself – all constitute the ethics which civilises. Indifference to strangers, because they are incomprehensibly strange, degrades the ethical character of the city.**
Richard Sennett

Our greatest achievements will be those accomplished
together,
Indeed they may well be our
being together:
Variation is the life of prose, in length and in structure^ –
This is true of human life as well as our writings.
And whilst an important human trait is
our individual desire to grow and develop, yet
the truly improved self show itself in its interactions with others.^^
We have a saying:
“They are so into themself,”
But this is ego-waylaid improvement, and life-in-all-its-fullness
is discovered when
we are out of ourselves and into others.

*Seth Godin’s The Practice;
**Richard Sennett’s Building and Dwelling;
^Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several short sentences about writing;
^^Anna Katharina Schaffner’s The Art of Self Improvement.

Ultimately, the goal is to become the best in the world at being you. To bring useful idiosyncrasy to the people you seek to change, and to earn a reputation for what you do and how you do it. The peculiar version of you, your assertions, your art.*
Seth Godin

We tend to write about the things that matter most to us, the things we wish to learn more about. I have always wanted to improve, to understand more deeply what self-improvement entails.**
Anna Katharina Schaffner

I sometimes wish I could do what others do,
And I become disheartened, deflated,
But when I keep focusing on what I love, I realise
I’d make a rubbish someone else, and,
at the same time,
Miss out on being an ebullient me, and encourage
you to be you.

*Seth Godin’s The Practice;
**Anna Katharina’s Schaffner’s The Art of Self Improvement.

The challenge then is to have one superpower. All out of balance to the rest of your being. If, over time, you develop a few more, that’s fine. Begin with one.*
Seth Godin

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones.**
Henry David Thoreau

The early Jesuit novitiates disappeared
for thirty days to explore the
shape of their calling,
Returning with what they believed to be
the most important thing in the world to give themselves to.
During this time, they were paying attention in order to
notice their superpower.
It may not be an intense thirty days, but
deep attention to our
abilities and energies and values
is something we all can do,
And, when we notice one and begin to use it,
There’ll be more to follow.
Or course, we may still be
in denial, claiming that
we have no superpower,
So I’ll keep turning up here, every day, to remind you that
you do and that
the world needs you.

*Seth Godin’s The Practice;
**Ryan Holiday’s Stillness is the Key.

Our negativity bias is part of why we often overlook moments of awe – our brain is so busy trying to help us survive that it overlooks potential sources of awe.*
Jonah Paquette

Inspiration far more often comes during the work than before it, because the largest part of the job of the artist is to listen to the work and to go where it tell him to go.**
Madeleine L’Engle

I wonder if the driver who swerved out and
overtook me at speed on Saturday morning
in their white Range Rover Evoque
happened to notice the dawn sky, big
and painted extravagantly
in oranges and salmons and turquoises and golds and reds and lilacs and purples?
Yet, I know I can miss
what’s all around me in way of possibilities and opportunities
because I am so focused on the task in hand
or the difficulties and problems,
Like getting old and
running out of time, but,
If I lift my head up,
And the game isn’t over yet.

*Jonah Paquette’s Awestruck;
**Madeliene L’Engle’s Walking on Water.

When in doubt, go outside.  Especially when it’s inconvenient.*
Seth Godin

*Seth Godin’s blog: Go outside;
**This is a one line doodle; why not create your own – one line from beginning to end, no lifting the pen off the paper.

Explorers were always lost because they had never been to places before.  They never expected to know where they were.*
Aaron Sachs*

*Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost.

Time does not pass for the infinite player. Each moment of time is a beginning of a period of time. It is the beginning of an event that gives the time within its specific quality.*
James Carse

Enough comes from the inside.**
Ryan Holiday

A conversation is not
fast talk;
We cannot have a conversation in a hurry,
We can throw words at each other quickly,
Or chat, or
have a word with someone,
But a conversation,
created by at least two people, requires
time if it is to be co-created by
equals, regardless of titles, age or seniority.
Beyond sharing information, ideas, facts and opinions,
Conversation is fed by at least two people
sharing the contents of their enoughness, being
increasingly open to surprise and to
the possibility of beginning something new together that had not been
in anyone’s mind before.

*James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games;
**Ryan Holiday’s Stillness is the Key.

Surprise is the great enabler of seeing.*
Alan Jacobs

We care most about the things we have struggled to understand.**
Leon Festinger

It is possible to educate ourselves
for surprise,
according to “infinite player” James Carse;
The opposite is to train ourselves
against surprise:
Surprise causes finite play to end;
it is the reason for infinite play to continue.^
The infinite player
plays to be transformed by surprise.
And not only to be transformed but also
to be transformative.
To be open to surprise,
To see and to understand, is
to become powerful, or strong
as Carse names it:
Power is finite in amount.
Strength cannot be measured,
because it is an opening and not a closing act. …
Power will always be restricted to a relatively small number of selected persons.
Anyone can be strong.^
Power desires to get more,
Strength longs to give more.

*Alan Jacob‘s newsletter: Architectural Thoughts;
**Richard Sennett’s Building and Dwelling:
^James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games.

Each of us is an amalgam of all we have loved and lost and learned, our personal successes and failures, our particular regrets, and our singular joys – and part of that uniqueness is that we think in different ways. Not all of our thinking is right or fully formed, far from it, but there it is, regardless – that flawed and terrifying uniqueness of thought.*
Nick Cave

what we practice, we become**
Krista Tippett

Just go back to the You you were
ten years ago.
Back then, you never imagined yourself
becoming who you are today, doing
what you are doing, thinking
how you are thinking, having
learned and imagined and begun
new things.
And today, you can’t imagine the You you’ll be
ten years from now,
But what an adventure you are going to have.

*Nick Cave’s blog: The Red Hand Files #197;
**Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise.

As a general proposition, people move through a space and dwell in a place.*
Richard Sennett

I don’t wait for inspiration, I’m to, in fact, quite sure what inspiration is, but I’m sure that if it’s going to turn up, my having started work is a precondition of its arrival.**
Quentin Blake

Dwelling primes moving,
moving informs dwelling.
So,
I wondered,
Where do you dwell?
How do you move?

*Richard Sennett’s Building and Dwelling;
**Quentin Blake’s Words and Pictures.