Tag: writing

A Post, A Podcast, and A Survey

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“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Out of the 1,063 posts I’ve published on this site, the one that generated the most discussion was the one I did where I talked about podcasting and why people do and do not podcast. Which I find interesting on several levels.

First, because I think we all have opinions about how reading versus listening works for us. If I could summarize, some of the comments from that post, it is that they are two different experiences, and sometimes to switch between one and the other is more than we want to do.

Second, because there are so many choices of content that speak to us – words versus photos, prose versus poetry, story-telling versus informative and on and on. We come in to a platform like WordPress, or the blogosphere in general, and then have to sift our way towards it.

When I talk with my friend, Eric, about the podcasts I listen to, he usually rolls his eyes and says they are too much work. I like podcasts about finding meaning, and digging deeper into what parts of our brain and body are running the show, about meditation and mystery. He likes things that are more at the entertainment level. Fair enough – because we meet somewhere in the middle and have really good conversations.

All of this is a prelude to two things. One, Vicki (of the Victoria Ponders blog), Brian ( of the WritingfromtheheartwithBrian blog) and I talk about blogging on the latest episode of the Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast. Episode 17: Building a Base with Brian Hannon if you want to listen on Anchor or search (and subscribe!) for Sharing the Heart of the Matter on Apple, Amazon, Spotify or Pocket Casts.

We explore the questions about whether numbers matter, how we can’t predict what will land with our audience, how Brian’s experience as a newspaper reporter early in his career applies to blogging, and what is meaningful about the blogging experience. If you are a blogger that likes podcasts, you’ll love this fun and interesting episode.

And number two, we’ve put together a short anonymous survey about podcasting to gather feedback about what you like. So, if you want to weigh in on what topics land for you and what you’d like to see more of – please spend 2 minutes to answer these 4 questions on the Sharing the Heart of the Matter Podcast Survey. Or put your thoughts in the comments below.

That’s a lot – a blog post, a podcast (Episode 17: Building a Base with Brian Hannon) and a survey (Sharing the Heart of the Matter Podcast Survey). Yeah, I know. But if you have a few minutes, I’d really appreciate it.

Being a Humble Realist

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“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan

Listening to a Ten Percent Happier podcast with Dr. Valerie Young, an expert on Imposter Syndrome for more than 40 years, I was surprised to hear her say that about 70% of people will experience feelings of being an imposter at some point. She explained Imposter Syndrome as, “explaining away our accomplishments & having a fear of being found out as a fraud.”

Thinking about it in terms of writing, I wondered if writers experienced it even more than others. Dr. Young did affirm that people in creative fields do seem to be more vulnerable because they are “only as good as their last book or their last performance.”

When I’ve managed to write a meaningful post that I feel really good about, how many times have I felt, or heard another blogging friend express, “but now I have to do it again? I’m not sure that I can.”

Dr. Young went on to talk about studying the other 30% – the ones that don’t experience Imposters Syndrome. Not the ones that are narcissist or at the complete opposite end of the Imposter Syndrome, but the ones that have a realistic sense of competence.

“These are people who are genuinely humble but have never felt like an imposter. And the point that I always make is that people who don’t feel like imposters, setting aside that arrogant, narcisstic, smartest-guy in the room, that’s not who we’re going after. But that subset, I call them humble realists, they are no more intelligent, capable, confident that the rest of us – but in the exact same situation, they’re thinking different thoughts. It’s not a pep talk like ‘you’ve got this, you can do it, you deserve to be here’ all of which is true but they think differently (based on my research) about three things:

  1. Competence – what it means to be competent, they have a realistic understanding of competence
  2. Healthy response to failure, mistakes, constructive feedback, even negative feedback
  3. Healthy response to fear”
Dr. Valerie Young

Looking at that list, I think of all the things I’ve failed at. It does get easier to pick myself up after failure – or as Michael Jordan says in the quote for this post, “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

My post for Wise & Shine this morning is about Imposter Syndrome: The Imposter Syndrome in Blogging

(featured photo from Pexels)

The Games We Play

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“Children are great imitators, so give them something great to imitate.” – unknown

Miss O came home from school on Friday with a complaint that one of her classmates was taunting her with “Leon the Lion.” Geez, I thought – it could be way worse than that, but the classmate is one that just knows how to effectively get her goat so I understand how that gets under the skin.

[An aside here: My friend, Eric, tested the names I picked for my kids before I had them against playground taunts. I’d kinda forgotten about this teasing phase but he did his best to steer me away from anything that rhymed with “farts.” Not that I can remember having an option that did. On the other hand, he thought Lancelot Leon would be a great name for Mr. D so I’m not sure why Eric was even on the committee except for his excellent sense of humor.]

The other thing that seven-year-olds do is that thing where the repeat the thing you said so that when you say, “Please stop copying me,” you get to hear it in maddening echo. We also have the situation when the older sibling says to the younger sibling “Stop copying me!” and then mere minutes later becomes interested in what the younger sibling is doing and starts copying them.

I’m guessing that my description of playground taunts or the echo game is surprising to not a single reader because they were around when we were kids and also when our parents were kids. It makes me wonder – is there anything about human experience that is original? And although we continually invent new ways to hurt each other like online bullying and more deadly bullets, the concept isn’t anything new.

So is it worth speaking about and writing about if it’s all a rehash? Here’s what I found listening to Miss O. The work of relationship and living is about listening to how an experience lands for a person. Even if it is the exact same experience we had a minute ago or forty years before, it will feel differently. It’s the first time Miss O has gone through this so I get to apply any wisdom I’ve been able to glean to the patience and warmth I bring to the situation.

We all need our chance to express the pain of living, the joy of discovery, the pull of love, the singular a-ha moments because it keeps us healthy. It keeps pulling the inner to the outer and even when it’s all familiar, it’s authentic expression. And that has the chance to inspire us all or unlock the doors of our own memories. Sure, none of it is new – and that’s good news because we get the opportunity to do it better each time we play our role as participant, speaker, or guide.

My post on the Heart of the Matter this morning is of a similar theme – Originality. Do we ever write anything new? Please check it out and subscribe!

(featured photo from Pexels)

The Hook

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“Just because they are a story doesn’t mean they’re not real.” – H. M. Bouwman

I was talking to Adam, one of Mr. D’s preschool teachers who was a newspaper writer in one of his previous jobs. (I think there’s a whole post I should write of how lucky Mr. D is to have such interesting and experienced teachers). He told me that he once interviewed Jim and Lou Whittaker, the now 94-year-old legendary Seattle mountain climbing twins and entrepreneurs.

So I asked him what his favorite interview was and he said, without hesitation, Ginger Rogers. Apparently, the arts writer was sick the day Ginger Rogers came to Seattle to promote a book she’d written and Adam said he couldn’t get his hand up fast enough to volunteer. His memory of it was that “It was the closest thing to royalty I’ve ever experienced.”

I bring this up because Vicki Atkinson and I did a Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast interview with Stuart Perkins, of the Storyshucker blog. In my mind, he is part of WordPress community royalty. Part of this is strictly personal because he was the first person to follow me, and most of it is because of his ability as a storyteller. He told us he loves to use a “hook,” something to draw the reader in and it’s a tool he uses to great effect.

Talking with Stuart, we learned about his base – growing up on a plot of land in rural Virginia. His grandmother, “Nannie” had land there and gave each of her 5 kids adjoining plots so Stuart grew up in the rich base of family and garden that he describes so often in his posts. Nannie and that simple life as told in evocative, touching, and rich stories.

A great base, a simpler time, a big family of storytellers – all great hooks. Like Mr D’s preschool teacher, Adam described, I couldn’t have been more thrilled to do this interview with the fantastic and fun Stuart Perkins. I hope you’ll listen and subscribe.

Search for Sharing the Heart of the Matter on Apple, Amazon, Spotify or Pocket Casts or click here to listen to Episode 12: On Storytelling with Stuart M. Perkins on Anchor.

Show notes are on the Heart of the Matter blog: Episode 12 show notes

Putting Pen to Paper

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“We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.” – John Dewey

As part of the consulting work I do, I have four additional email boxes on top of my work and my personal email boxes. Technically, I have three more work emails than that but with fairly little flow so I don’t check them. So let’s just call it six email boxes that I check more or less every day.

It’s not that bad – I can make a quick round in the morning and evening and button most things up which gives me that sense of completion of having things finished, and if not finished, at least tied down.

But this week, a couple things happened and I got buried under an avalanche of email. First, I volunteered to chaperone a field trip with my daughter’s 2nd grade class. It was wonderful – I wouldn’t have missed riding on a school bus to the Seattle Center, seeing a play, eating lunch, and then playing at a playground with those fantastic kids for anything.

But my daughter left her coat on the playground and I ended up driving back down to Seattle Center and picking it up after the field trip ended. It turned a 4.5 hour commitment into something like 6 and then between picking up and dropping off my kids, I essentially got nothing done for an entire day.

The second thing that happened was that one of my clients had a crisis so all his email flowed into my box and I had to sort out what was a priority and what was not without much context or foundation.

Suffice it to say, I have emails coming out my ears. My nice and tidy practice of at least skimming them has blown up, at least temporarily.

Amidst this electronic mayhem, I sat down to write a thank you card and a birthday letter. Old-fashioned, put the pen to the paper, nothing electronic involved, notes.

It was a wonderful experience for me – the words and images flowed in a different way than if I’d been at the keyboard. Instead, I sat at my dining table late at night after I put the kids to bed and wrote down what was on my mind.

I slowed down and really thought about the words I wanted to choose. And when I’d written my way into a sentence that didn’t work, I had to pause to think if I could weave my way out or if I’d have to take that terrible step and scratch out a word. In that pause, I wondered why I’d used a particular word.

In theory that’s what I do when I write an email as well. Except that other emails come in, I get distracted by a new notification of a WP post, or I want to look up facts and figures to go with some line of thinking. Then the result is more like an edited research paper than a narrative of life.

Sure, I’ll catch up on my email (or I won’t – apologies to anything I’ve missed this week), but I’ve made a note to myself (in long-hand) to remember to keep slowing down and writing something meaningful now and again.

And the timing of this letter writing couldn’t have been more fortuitous because Vicki Atkinson and I talked with artist and writer, Libby Saylor, about journaling, including the benefits of writing things out by hand, in the latest episode of the Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast: Episode 11: How to Journal the Right Way with Libby Saylor.

The Feeding and Nurturing of Life

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“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.” – Dalai Lama

On Wednesday morning this week, I was driving the kids to school on the circuit around the lake and I felt softer and more patient. I appreciated the routine and the little people in my life more. I realized that it was because I’d just finished reading “Grow Damn It: The Feeding and Nurturing of Life” by author and blogger Cheryl Oreglia.

I clipped 23 quotes from my first reading of this book. And that was while trying to be mindful not to clip everything. Then I had the privilege of doing a Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast with Cheryl to talk her journey and this book: Episode 7: Grow Damn It!

One of the stories Cheryl told me on the podcast was the one where she wrote a blog post and Krista Tippett of the On Being project (first aired on public radio, now as a podcast) tweeted about it. Cheryl laughingly said she assumed the technology was broken when she saw her stats after that.

In this great conversation, we got to talk about how the little stories make up the big picture, her journey to create this beautiful book, and asking people all the important questions before they go. I felt softened by reading the book and then I felt enriched after this beautiful conversation with Cheryl.

Cheryl said to me something like, “I know this book is not for everyone.” I agree – it’s only for people who want to feed and nurture their life – and laugh while doing it.

So if you do want to feed and nurture your life, please visit Cheryl’s blog, Living in the Gap, read the book, and listen to this podcast Episode 7: Grow Damn It (link opens the podcast to listen on Anchor). You can also find the podcast on Apple, Amazon, Spotify and Pocket Casts by searching for Sharing the Heart of the Matter.  Please subscribe!

Here’s link to the show notes on the HoTM site: Episode 7: Grow Damn It! show notes

I Have No Words

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“Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.” – Orhan Pamuk

When I first started this blog, it was mostly a place for the pictures I took of my dear dog, Biscuit, and the signs he’d pose with. And even though I wrote them, I swear I was channeling his sweet and funny messages, referee calls, and commentary on life. Every once in a while the cat would get to pose with a sign as well. Here’s a slideshow of some of his best signs:

So I felt wordless when Biscuit died six years ago at almost 14-years-old. The day after he passed, all I had was a sign for the cat who seemed equally as lost:

That space and time we need to find our words again after something monumental has happened in our lives is the subject of my Wise & Shine post for today: Writing From The Heart

The Flip Side of Writing

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“You think your pains and your heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive.” – James Baldwin

I think I’ve been ruminating for the past week or so about the idea of reading ever since I saw Davy D’s post What Kind of Reader Are You? Because when I woke up yesterday morning with no idea what I’d write about for my Wise & Shine post today, it popped in my head that what we all have in common on this platform is that we are readers.

Given the descriptions Davy provides, I relate to being a Skim Reader. When I was talking about this with my dear friend, she told me her husband who reads so thoroughly that the Kindle estimates about how much time is left to read a book actually go UP the longer he reads. They joke that the author must still be writing when her husband reads.

But whatever kind of reader we are, we create a space that we inhabit, even if briefly, with the author. My post today for Wise & Shine reflects on what a gift that is: The Ultimate Reader.

Putting a Voice To a Name

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“The art of conversation lies in listening.” – Thomas Jefferson

There is so much to love about this blogging journey – the practice of writing down my stories, the delight of being able to read other people’s offerings, and the friendships that evolve over time when we comment.

And my recent foray into podcasting has just amped up this experience because it’s so fun to put real voices to people who I’ve read. To converse and have dialogue about what’s important and interesting from their point of view is so fun!!

I recently got to have a podcast conversation with Edgerton award winning playwright Jack Canfora about Why Theater Matters. I could gush endlessly about Jack. And I often do. I’ve had a writer’s crush on him for forever because he speaks to my heart. Every time I talk with him, read him, or listen/watch one of his plays, I come away smarter and more human. 

For anyone that has read Jack on Wise & Shine or his personal blog, listened to his audio drama in podcast form, Step 9, or just wants to find out what play Lincoln was watching when he was shot, I’d love for you to tune in to this Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast: Episode 4: Why Theater Matters on Anchor. (you can also find our podcast on Apple, Amazon, Spotify and Pocket Casts by searching for Sharing the Heart of the Matter – and please subscribe)

And here’s a link to the show notes on The Heart of the Matter.

The Way I See It

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“Be sure to taste your words before you spit them out.” – unknown

I’m fascinated by the different ways our brains work. Most recently, I’ve had the chance to watch my kids as they approach the world with their “lantern awareness.” That’s a phrase from Dr. Alison Gopnik, the cognitive psychologist from UC Berkley, who talks about young brains being rewarded for what teaches them the most so they see the world as if they are holding a lantern high and they see everything in their vicinity. Whereas our adult brains have spotlight awareness, which most of the time is like tunnel vision towards our objectives.

In addition to that, it’s things like my friend, Doug, who can remember every route we’ve ever climbed in like a 360 degree view. “Remember that tree when we turn to head up the ridge?” he ‘ll ask. And I shake my head no.

Or my brother who has such great spacial awareness that to work with him to assemble the 300 bars of a jungle gym into a dome is a marvel.

When I was young, I used to memorize license plates which earned me the nickname Rain Man (do you remember that movie?). Fortunately my brain has given that up and now it hangs memories onto my favorite words. So when I hear the word luminous, it reminds me of Julia Preston because of her ability to bring light.

These word associations are the topic of my Wise & Shine post: My Love Affair with Words.

(featured photo from Pexels)