But then, when you start drawing you can never be quite sure what is going to happen next, can you?* (Quentin Blake)
Paradoxically, a self-centred self cannot become more complex, because all the psychic energy at its disposal is invested in fulfilling its current goals.**
I thought it possible to get there from here but could not and cannot only move directly or outwardly
indirectly and inwardly are my lessons learned am learning
to there replaced
keep exploring old man make maps fill the blank spaces
there are no monsters only wonders to fall into
hope myself from here courage myself to there seek seek seek forward
keep exploring old man make maps fill the blank spaces
falling failing confess begin again
through the wild wrangling wrestling wrenching
keep exploring old man make maps fill the blank spaces
But then, when you start drawing you can never be quite sure what is going to happen next, can you?* (Quentin Blake)
Paradoxically, a self-centred self cannot become more complex, because all the psychic energy at its disposal is invested in fulfilling its current goals.**
I’ve been playing with a single blog that has altered a little each day.
I’ve included the quote that caught my eye and set up the doodle I’ll be working on through the week.
If you’ve tried doodling through the week, how’s yours been working out?
One of the things I’ve been learning is that what I want^ isn’t where I thought it would be, I had to move to somewhere different if I was to get there: physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually – something that I had to learn along the way.
Of course, the place I wanted to go to changed as well.
Who knew what I wanted wasn’t what I wanted?
I’m still learning and moving, with lots of course corrections.
That’s okay, though. T. S. Eliot declared that old men should be explorers. (Women too, please.)
In mapmaking, there was a time when cartographers would fill spaces they didn’t know anything about with sea-monsters.
Then things changed.
A group of map-makers came along who said “we’re just going to leave areas blank that we don’t know anything about and we’ll fill them in as they’re explored and we know what’s there.”
There are three things I realise I need more of, though, if I am to be an explorer.
Hope: to move me from here to somewhere out there.
Courage: to move from the familiar to the unfamiliar.
Seeking: to fall into the exploring life and never stop falling.
Here are three more words I need when things go wrong:
Failing: because I do, time and time again.
Starting over: there’s always the possibility of a new beginning.
Confession: a word to insert between failing and starting over because ‘fessing up not only makes a new beginning possible, but is likely to place us on a mightier way.
*From Quentin Blake’s Angel Pavement: **From Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow; ^I have just been reminded that want can also mean lack.
But then, when you start drawing you can never be quite sure what is going to happen next, can you?* (Quentin Blake)
I’ve been playing with a single blog that has altered a little each day.
I’ve included the quote that caught my eye and set up the doodle I’ll be working on through the week.
If you’ve tried doodling through the week, how’s yours been working out?
One of the things I’ve been learning is that what I want** isn’t where I thought it would be, I had to move to somewhere different if I was to get there: physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually – something that I had to learn along the way.
Of course, the place I wanted to go to changed as well.
Who knew what I wanted wasn’t what I wanted?
I’m still learning and moving, with lots of course corrections.
That’s okay, though. T. S. Eliot declared that old men should be explorers. (Women too, please.)
In mapmaking, there was a time when cartographers would fill spaces they didn’t know anything about with sea-monsters.
Then things changed.
A group of map-makers came along who said “we’re just going to leave areas blank that we don’t know anything about and we’ll fill them in as they’re explored and we know what’s there.”
There are three things I realise I need more of, though, if I am to be an explorer.
Hope: to move me from here to somewhere out there.
Courage: to move from the familiar to the unfamiliar.
Seeking: to fall into the exploring life and never stop falling:
Paradoxically, a self-centred self cannot become more complex, because all the psychic energy at its disposal is invested in fulfilling its current goals.^
*From Quentin Blake’s Angel Pavement: **I have just been reminded that want can also mean lack; ^From Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow.
But then, when you start drawing you can never be quite sure what is going to happen next, can you?* (Quentin Blake)
I am going to be taking some days out, but thought to play with a single blog that will alter a little each day.
I’ve included the quote that caught my eye and set up the doodle I’ll be working on through the week.
You also may like to doodle through the week fuelled by the quote.
One of the things I have had to learn is that what I want** wasn’t where I thought it would be.
That’s okay
It turns out I had to move to somewhere else: physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually – something that I had to learn along the way.
So I’m still learning and moving, with lots of course corrections.
That’s okay, though. T. S. Eliot declared that old men should be explorers. (Women too, please.)
In mapmaking, there was a time when cartographers would fill spaces they didn’t know anything about with sea-monsters.
Then things changed.
A group of map-makers came along who said “we’re just going to leave areas blank that we don’t know anything about and we’ll fill them in as they’re explored and we know what’s there.”
*From Quentin Blake’s Angel Pavement: **I have just been reminded that want can also mean lack.
But then, when you start drawing you can never be quite sure what is going to happen next, can you?* (Quentin Blake)
I am going to be taking some days out, but thought to play with a single blog that will alter a little each day. Today I’m including the quote that caught my eye and setting up the doodle I’ll be working on through the week.
You also may like to doodle through the week fuelled by the quote.
From the beginning I have believed the world an amazing place, full of marvels, unheard of, not yet experienced.* (M. C. Richards)
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. As a man is, so he sees.** (William Blake)
Ask, search, knock … enter.
We can grasp the fact that at any moment what seems most certain to us is an illusion. It is an illusion in that it precedes a further revelation of ourselves.*
Copying is how I learn, it’s a way to understand what’s really going on, and drawing is a way of slowing down long enough to really look at something.* (Austin Kleon)
Here’s a doodling idea for the weekend: copy someone else’s work that you enjoy.
Keep copying.
You’ll not only lose yourself in the slow practice but also find the way you want to doodle.
From the beginning I have believed the world a amazing place, full of marvels, unheard of, not yet experienced.* (M. C. Richards)
The capacity to be present to everything without resistance, creates possibility.** (Ben and Roz Zander)
In all our busyness and noise, the call to us quietness comes as a gift.
The world is full of whispers, shy to our need for rush, for busyness busyness, for chatter: longing for our openness, tour playfulness, hoping for co-creation.
I need to be quieter, listen more, reduce resistance, shrink judgement, remove rush, put aside agenda.
This depressing truth – everyone suffers – led to [George] Vaillant’s first revelation, which is that our mental health is defined by how we cope.* (Jonah Lehrer)
The truth is pretty simple: All we do, all we ever do, is trade one set of problems for another. Problems are a feature. They’re the opportunity to see how we can productively move forward. Not to a world with no problems at all, but to a situation with different problems, ones that are worth dancing with.* (Seth Godin)
Problems and suffering are part of life.
No one is immune, no matter how hard we try and be.
It’s how we deal with it that counts, to be able to move forward to what is meaningful and purposeful for us.
Long before George Vaillant‘s work into how people coped with their suffering, the apostle Paul wrote
we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame^.
It seems he was onto something, although we’d be careful to understand that “rejoicing” in suffering has a very specific context.
Here are a couple more thoughts I happened upon again this morning, the first from Rohit Bhargava and the second from Scott McCloud:
Curation is the ultimate method of transforming noise into meaning.^^
Cartooning isn’t just a way of drawing, it’s a way of seeing.*^
They offer two ways of coping or dealing actively rather than passively with problems and with suffering.
Curation for me is another way of creating a story, and journalling becomes a means of pulling together our story and visiting it each day through different themes – for me it includes the writings of others. Cartooning reminds me that doodling allows us to see differently, to draw something out in an alternative way.
Rather than allowing ourselves to be pushed around by problems and suffering, journaling and doodling provide us with a way of anchoring and finding a way through to our hopes and dreams that we find are still there.
Lewis Hyde adds something interesting to this practice of telling our story in words and doodles, when he notices:
Forgetting appears when the story has been so fully told as to wear itself out. Then time begins to flow again; then the future can unfold.^*
THIN|SILENCE 
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