What journeys preceded yours?
What journeys did your parents, grandparents, great grandparents take so that you might take the ones you have taken?
My material grandfather walked many miles to find work when he was a young man to Kirkcaldy, Scotland. There he met my maternal grand mother. Together the had 9 children, 5 girls and 4 boys.
My paternal grandparents were decendents of people from Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. They started their family in Blythe, England. My grandfather worked on ships as had his father, his grandfather and his great grandfather. His father, my great grandfather owned his own ship. My grandfather worked mostly as a mechanic, engineer, a general repairman on ships.
My mother left Scotland to come to the United States. My father left England to come to the United States. Both lived in a couple places before coming to Detroit, Michigan where they met, fell in love, married and started their family of three sons. Me, I was the youngest.
Each generation has been preceded by the journeys of other generations. Each of their trips have had impact or could very easily have impact on the travels of the following and future generations.
What about your families and their journeys?
Did they travel across their villages, towns, cities, states, country on their journeys that preceded yours?
Take some time and jot down some notes of the types of journeys they may have taken. Don’t consider whether their individual journeys might have affected your life travel. Just list them. You can examine them for clues and patterns later.
List all the relatives you can.
Where were they born?
Where were they educated?
What kinds of schools did they go to?
Did they finish school?
How high did they go? HS, College, Technical School, Masters, Doctorate?
What type of work journeys did they take?
Occupations
Jobs
Careers
What types of travelers were they?
Did they travel within a limited range or distance?
Did they travel a great deal?
Did they travel for their livings?
Did they travel over seas?
Did they live in different towns, cities, states, countries?
Did they take later dreams that helped fulfill lost or dead dreams?
I just watched the movie, The Rookie. It is about a man in his early to middle 30s who had tried out as a professional baseball pitcher but was hurt in the first year and had to give up his dream. 8 to 10 years later while teaching high school science and coaching the school’s baseball team he challenges the players to chase a dream, winning the state championship, or at least get into the regional championship. They in turn challenge him to try out once again if they do win.
In the movie they do win, they win 16 games after 3 or 4 years of winning only 1 game each year. The players then turned to their coach and say “Now it’s your turn coach!” After much thought and anxiety he does and he is picked up by a farm club, where he is the old man. The old man who can throw a pitch at 98 miles an hour over and over. He plays most of the summer with the team making very little money. Back home his wife and 3 kids are going into debt more and more each week. With two weeks left he wants to quit and come home. He had come close but still didn’t reach his true dream. She convinces him to hang in two more weeks. He does and is brought up to the majors where is successful at achieving his dream, pitching in the major leagues. As the movie credits start the last line on the screen says Jimmy Morris did pitch and he pitched for two sessions before retiring.
He had completed his dream journey.
Have any of your relatives completed such dream journeys?
Have you? Do you have any yet to travel?
Most family histories have such stories. Perhaps not worthy of blockbuster movie plots yet still worthy of making a difference in your life.
Because so many people before me took their life journeys I have been able to take mine.
One of my observations and learnings is that there were many other journeys I might have taken had I thought or felt different at particular times in my life. More confidence, less self-doubt, more belief in myself, less laziness, more work and so many journeys might have been taken.
Yet knowing that I can’t have done something different because I have done what I did already. “If only” is a nice game of fantasy to play. If the “If only’s” can not be still done then spending time and mental energy on them may be either a waste of time or detrimental to you today and in your future.
We are where we are, where we stand or sit. We can’t have been somewhere else. We can move. We can leave. We can work at changing our lives.
I believe the first step is accepting the life we have led. Then focus on the good to great to absolutely fantastic trips we have taken. Enjoy those. Relish those. Then examine what other trips we might take.
If you were to go back to school might you be able to prepare for other journeys? New career? New job? A brighter future? More fun? More excitement?
Where and how might you go back to school now?
Thanks to technology: world wide web, the internet, computers, CDs or DVDs we can access so many more ways to obtain an education from technical to college degrees. With distance learning and many other forms of life long learning available to us now we can nearly live anywhere and still complete our educations.
We might even work completely from our homes today.
Thanks to technology we can travel virtually to nearly any place on earth and in time without leaving our homes.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Wandering the World in Search of Creativity
Wandering the World in Search of Creativity
For 73 days this summer I wandered completely around the world in search of creative thinking, creativity and creative people, while challenging myself to be creative every day. What started out as simply a dream trip to fulfill a fantasy of a life-time: travel around the world like Philleas T. Boggs did in Around the World in Eighty Days; became partially a research project.
My initial attempts at preparing this article for this edition of Creativity’s Global Correspondents 2002 were more like Alan’s attempts at out writing Bill Bryson and Rick Steve, both excellent travel authors or Charles Kuralt and Peter Jenkins, both excellent authors of the human experience based on their travels throughout the world. To read that I invite you to visit my wanderings journal website: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/alan2001. The following is based on learnings and relearnings based on my 73 days of wanderings this summer.
S.P.R.E.A.D.ng Creative Thinking
Since 1976 I have focused much to most of my efforts (personally and professionally) on the application and development of creativity: mine and others. Over the 26 years, professionally, I have slowly refined my focus to S.P.R.E.A.D.ng™ creative thinking throughout workplaces. S.P.R.E.A.D.ng ™ is the acronym I use to demonstrate to people what I believe needs to be done within workplaces to enhance, expand and enrich the creative thinking of all employees (SUPPORT, PROMOTE, RECOGNIZE, ENCOURAGE, APPLY and DEVELOP).
Overall Approach to My Wanderings
During my 73 days traveling around the world the summer of 2001, through New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, India, Dubai, Turkey, Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, England and France; I sought to find examples of creativity everywhere I went and to interview people about their own creativity and creativity in general in their country.
Structure of My Post Review of My Wanderings
As a skeleton structure for this article I have chosen to use two lists of traits of creative people. The first list comes from the TTCT™ (Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking) and the second comes from an on-going project I have been working on since I was a doctoral student studying with Paul Torrance in 1980. The 20 traits from the TTCT™ represent 20 traits that are examined by the TTCT™ tests based on over 40 years of E. Paul Torrance's scientific study with subjects around the world. The 32 traits from my, "Are You a Crayon Breaker?" exercise, come from a survey study I did of articles on the traits of creative people written from 1950 to 1980. I have used the survey as part of over 2100 professional speeches and workshops since 1981 to suggest the existence of creative thinking potential in all people and also to indicate different styles of creative thinking.
The Initial Process
During my trip I often had people I met and interviewed complete the 32 traits survey to share which they believed fit them. While we talked together I introduced them to the work and ideas of E. Paul Torrance and the 20 traits from the TTCT ™. In addition as a post trip survey I have reviewed my daily journal notes using both the list of 20 from the TTCT™ and my 32 "Crayon Breaker" exercise traits for potential understandings of what I experienced and discovered.
The Traits
TTCT™ Traits
1. Fluency - many ideas
2. Flexibility - different types of ideas
3. Elaboration - addition of details
4. Originality - uniqueness
5. Abstractness of approach moving from reality
6. Openness-resisting early closure or completion
7. Change of Context (cross-interpretation)
8. Combination of Ideas/Facts - synthesis
9. Breakthrough from Current Limits
10. Unusual Viewpoint
11. Internal Perspective
12. Humorous Perspective
13. Richness & Colorful Detail
14. Feelings & Emotions
15. Fantasy
16. Movement & Sound - sense change
17. Multiple Idea Combinations
18. Macro Scale Perspective - seeing from larger view
19. Provocative Viewpoint
20. Future orientation
Are You’re a Crayon Breaker™
1. sensitive
2. not motivated by money
3. sense of destiny
4. adaptable
5. tolerant of ambiguity
6. observant
7. perceive world differently
8. see possibilities
9. question asker
10. can synthesize correctly often intuitively
11. able to fantacise
12. flexible
13. fluent
14. imaginative
15. intuitive
16. original
17. ingenious
18. energetic
19. sense of humor
20. self-actualizing
21. self-disciplined
22. self-knowledgeable
23. specific interests
24. divergent thinker
25. curious
26. open-ended
27. independent
28. severely critical
29. non-conforming
30. confident
31. risk taker
32. Persistent
The Beginning of My Creative Wanderings
From 3:30 pm in Athens, Georgia on June 25th to 5:30 am in Auckland and finally 11:00 am June 27th in Christchurch I began my first trip around the world.
After I arrived in New Zealand: in Christchurch, on the train to Dunedin, in Wellington and in Auckland I asked architects, designers, advertising art directors and account executives, landscape architects and theater people I met and/or stayed with to complete my “Crayon Breaker” survey.
Discovery
Initially I discovered that the lowest number of traits checked off by the people was 15 with a few marking all 32, including #28, severely critical.
Over the 20+ years I have been using the exercise the people in my programs or audiences have generally marked between 5 and 15 with a few, most times, who mark over 15.
Severely Critical as a Trait
Most people usually do not openly admit to this trait in themselves in public. It is the one trait I discover in personal interviews and reviews of biographies and autobiographies of highly creative people, living and dead. My assessment is that the “higher” creative people are severely critical of 3 things and are accused on being severely critical of a 4th. They tend to be severely critical of 1) themselves, 2) their work, 3) the potential of their fields of passion. Because of these three people who are much less creative as them see the “higher” creatives as being severely critical of other people. My experiences and on-going study does not support that anywhere in the 53 countries I have traveled in during my life.
Deliberately Developing Creative Thinking in New Zealand companies
During my interviews in New Zealand after the 32 traits survey was completed and reviewed, I discussed the TTCT ™ traits as trainable/learnable traits, asking the people who were company owners or managers, if they actually, consciously, strived to increase the creative thinking abilities and skills of their people. Except in a few isolated cases where the interviewees were creative thinking consultants the answer was always no and generally the people were unaware that creative thinking could be increased or taught.
Australia Clockwise from Sydney to Brisbane
My four-week journey around Australia (6 states and 2 territories) took me to Sydney, Canberra, small towns and a self-sufficiency site on a mountain in the Snowy Mountains, Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide, Uluru, Alice Springs, Perth, Darwin and a couple small towns in the Northern Territory, Cairns and finally Brisbane.
My Australian and New Zealand Hosts Were Chosen as Subjects Too
In most of the cities and towns I stayed with SERVAS members, an international travel organization who’s members open their homes to other members as their guests. Using the SERVAS Australia directory as I had in New Zealand I hand selected a mix of creative people to stay with in each city with no repeats of professions or occupations. They consisted of creative thinking consultants, designers, theatre promoters/directors, therapists, ceramic artists, counselors, writers, fabric artists, sculptors and teachers or trainers.
Researcher Becomes Searcher
As my trip continued I became less systematic with my data collection primarily because I became much more involved in getting to know my hosts and the people I met along the way instead of playing scientific researcher and also I become more involved in simply the various experiences day by day.
Study continues in Australia
Periodically in Australia I had people complete the “Crayon Breaker” survey The results were the same: very high numbers of traits selected. I continued my sharing information about E. Paul Torrance’s work and some about my own and other creative thinking consultants I have gotten to know from various countries and ones I got to meet along the way during the journey.
A Primary Creative Learning: Dealing with Daily Frustrations
One learning that kept coming back again and again throughout my trip was one I learned from Joel Goodman from the Humor Project many years ago: “If when something happens you can say ‘some day I’ll laugh about this’ then why not start now!” When frustrating and highly stress producing or simply very negative things happened during my travels around Australia and then in other countries later I would “step out of my shoes, boots or saddles” and remind myself of Joel’s bit of wisdom and within a few moments I was smiling and laughing and making notes of how to turn the experience or situation into material for a future article or speech.
Learning from the Weather
Have you ever thought that it takes more creativeness
to enjoy a rainy day than a sunny one?
Instead of becoming frustrated by the many days of rain I experienced in the southern states and territories of Australia I chose to use my creativeness to turn them into wandering adventures.
One example would be my third day in Sydney. It had rained off and on, mostly on, for the entire three days making it difficult to capture the beautiful sites and experiences with my point and shoot Fuji camera. That day after the first couple of hours of riding one harbour boat after another, there are a series of boat lines that crisscross Sydney Harbour from one end to the other, I noticed that the streets were becoming extremely crowded of people. All the while it began raining harder and harder.
Most of my life I have experienced claustraphobic like reactions in crowds of people, especially when the people all seem to have gotten up that morning with the sole intention of getting in my way. That day by noon it had gotten worse and worse. I felt like a young chicken stuffed into an extremely wet and overly crowded chicken growing house with chickens all around and over me, so packed in a can of sardines would seem vastly loose.
I pushed my way through the crowd and found a train station under one of the high-rise blocks of buildings. On the spot I had decided to go out to the 2000 Olympic Site just to get away from the mobs of people. As I pushed my way through I asked person after person how to get to the Olympic Site. After seven or eight different answers I just got on a train heading out of town and asked the conductor once I sat down. My luck was with me. The train I had run onto was the right one.
In about 20 mintues I was walking in the vast, very, very open area of the Olympic Site enjoying the environment and architecture. One person per 20 acres instead of the thousands per 200 square feet I had just left behind in Sydney. After enjoying the openness and viewing many of the contemporary sports arenas I realized that the only building, way off in the distance, almost to the horizon, that was open had a very long line wrapping nearly around it. So I decided to head back to Sydney to catch the bus from downtown Sydney, near the Opera House, to my creative thinking consultant friends’ home in the northern suburbs and end my day of wandering in Sydney.
I slowly walked back to the empty train station. There was a good reason it was empty. The last train back to Sydney that evening was leaving in 3 mintues.
Learning: Trust Your Subconscious
Once again my subconsicous or intuition had taken control and I had unknowingly trusted it to guide me.
That was another learning/re-learning I discovered as I traveled throughout the journey: trust my subsconscious and intuitive skills.
Learning: Trusting Some Natural Creative Traits
In Hobart, Tasmania, while staying with Helen and Andre, two very successful and accomplished ceramic artists , I experienced the value of trusting the natural creative traits of curiosity, exploration, divergence, openness to premature closure, independence, imagination and others. Because I was trying to experience something of each of the 8 states and territories all within 4 weeks I had only planned to be in Hobart and Tasmania 3 days and 2 nights.
Tasmania is an absolutely beautiful island state, which until this summer I mistakenly had thought it was a separate nation. By only planning to be there for such a short time I was not going to see or experience much of the natural beauty of the island on the ground: the vast forests, valleys, rivers, mountains, snowy peaks, etc. Add to that it was raining most of the time as well.
So I played tourist and gathered up maps, went to the Chamber of Commerce plus the Tasmanian Tourist Agency offices to pick up information of what I might see in less than 48 hours by bus (commercial or tour), bicycle or foot.
After a couple hours of frustration of trying to make my time work I simply decided to enjoy Hobart by foot and plan on returning to Tasmania in the future for a much longer time. I was scheduled to speak in the afternoon on adding creative thinking to your life and I wasn’t using my own.
I threw away all but a simple street map of the downtown area of Hobart and began to “wander”. It became another “re-learning”—allow yourself to creatively experience life instead of always trying to create it. That day and the next 1/2 day became fantastic. I experienced many people, the streets of Hobart, the interiors of many shops, restaurants, much urban art and toured several artist studios enjoying a great variety of art.
“Letting go and experience the creativeness and creativity that surrounds you”, became a creative tool throughout the remainder of my 73-Wandering Journey because of my time Hobart.
Learning: Wandering Without a Predetermined Plan
A learning that I often share with participants and students is that of simply “wandering” and letting the creativity that surrounds them remove the “clouds” or blocks of creativity that prevent them from being creative at any given moment. This I did in shops, malls, streets, banks watching the customers, waiting around ATM machines, in ceramic, painting, fabric, sculpture studios, toy stores, grocery stores, along piers, in restaurants.
Wandering: My Greatest Creative Tool
After Hobart it was Adelaide, Uluru (Ayers Rock, Alice Springs, Indian-Pacific train across from Adelaide to Perth, flights to Darwin, Cairns and Brisbane. The experiences and lessons during those 3 weeks continued to reinforce what I had already lived.
Learning: Experiencing Varied and Many Cultures to Expand Creativeness
By the time I reached Brisbane, my last destination in Australia, located in Queensland, I had already experienced many cultures and sub-cultures. That was one of my earliest creative learnings from 1977 when I first took an extended trip involving visiting 20+ countries in Europe, Eastern Europe and North Africa. Learning: to expand and enrich our creativeness and creative thinking skills we need only expose ourselves to varied cultures and peoples.
From Athens, Georgia on June 25th until August 8th in Brisbane I had experienced New Zealanders, natives and immigrants, from the very northern part of the North island to the southern section of the South Island, Maori natives who live in a variety of ways from very old custom to very cotemporary. I had traveled thousands of miles by train, bus, cab, foot and plane experiencing Australians from all eight states and territories: New South Walves, Victoria, Canberra, Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland. They ranged from very contemporary residents of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane. Throw in hedonistis who enjoy their lives in Darwin, Cairns or along the Gold Coast between Cairns and Brisbane, some making their livings as scuba diving instructors or street artists. Also they included self-sufficiency living people from the Snowny Mountains who work only when the money runs out plus country people from each of the 8 areas. Add to that were outbackers who spend days and weeks totally alone in the barren outback. Plus include a mix of Aborigines from those who live as their forefathers and mothers have lived from 40,000 years to college educated professionals who had been trained by both their native cultures and the white culture of modern Australia.
Varied Traits Provoked Through Culutral Immersion
The learnings from such immersion in varied cultures help to expand, enrich and provoke increased creativeness through the following traits:
Abstractness of approach moving from reality—seen through the art and thinking of so many different peoples.
Adaptable—experiencing how so many different Australians live their lives.
Breakthrough from Current Limits—caused by the contrast of my culture with so many others.
Change of Context (cross-interpretation)—continually exposing my self to daily to by the hour changes of context and culture.
Combination of Ideas/Facts (synthesis)—trying to create a synthesis of everything I was learning and experiencing.
Synthesize correctly often intuitively—trusting these abilities in myself by the hour and day.
Curiousity—pushing this to extreme limits everywhere I went whether flying by helicopter to the top of a glacier in Franz Joseph, New Zealand or a seaplane over the skyline of Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia or walking around the famous Uluru Rock.
Divergent thinking—being open to experiencing this everywhere I went.
Open-endedness—reminding myself no to go to premature closure quickly
Elaboration - learning to see through the eyes of others
Fantasy—trying to experience the fantasy lives of other cultures
Multiple orientations: past, present, future, virtual
Internal Perspective-trying to experience these in others and myself
Question asker-being willing to ask and be asked
Richness & Colorful Detail-experience vast varieties everywhere I went
Risk taker-opening myself to risk taking daily or by the hour.
See possibilities-opening myself to possibilities everywhere.
Unusual & Provocative Viewpoints-opening myself to these everywhere.
Changing Cultures
During the first six weeks I traveled where English, at least some version of English, was spoken wherever I was.
When I left Brisbane for Kuala Lumpur I left that security blanket behind me at least part of the time each day.
The Physical Environment and It’s Creativity
Kuala Lumpur and Singapore have much in common. Both have worked very hard to enter the 20th and 21st centuries in less than 40 years each. Both skylines are filled with the most contemporary buildings any architect could dream of. Each of the major cities I had been in so far in New Zealand and Australia also were filled with many relatively new buildings, with Brisbane having the largest concentration, mostly built in the 1990s and Sydney slightly behind it because of it hosting the 2000 Olympics.
What Kuala Lumpur and Singapore still possess that neither New Zealand nor Australia do not is also the ancient. NZ and Australia are barely 200 years old. Both KL and Singapore are also ancient countries filled with temples, shrines, and slums, by today’s standards, that use construction types and living styles that people have lived for over 3,000 years.
Learnings: Western Creative Meets Eastern Creativity
The learnings for me as an outsider with little to no knowledge of the many cultures that have lived and died in Malaysia and Singapore were that of watching the contrasts which produce the richness along with the vast confusion and stress that appear to exists in both of these cultures.
Seeing the simple lines, colors and forms of the newest contemporary buildings and developments contrasted against the extremely complex, ornately detailed and poly-colored Hindu temples caused me to recognize the need for juxtapositioning of our thinking.
Onto Sri Lanka to Learn More: Creativity During Revolution
From Singapore after about 10 days spent traveling back and forth between KL and Singapore off I went to rebel torn Sri Lanka, the paradise that has drawn many people from around the world. Less than two weeks before I arrived, rebel forces blew up 5 commercial airplanes on the runways at the airport. I was traveling to Colombo, Sri Lanka with the purpose of presenting professional programs on creative thinking in their workplaces and touring a little.
From my arrival at 12:30 am to be picked up by a total stranger to be driven through totally dark streets to a hotel, that I only knew was located somewhere in Colombo, the capital city where I would sleep and finally meet my formally unmet client in the morning, I needed to use my creative skills to learn to accept and let go of my growing fears.
Learning: Our Cultures as Blocks to Our Creativity
The greatest learning for me among many from my 4 days and 3 nights in Sri Lanka was the power of blocks upon the creativity of a complete culture of people. With all the road blocks, checkpoints, military personnel, nightly curfews, daily required power outages; I saw creativity everywhere I went from how to drive effectively in a non-geometric fashion to get from point a to point b through absolute chaos without traffic lights or electric auto turn signals to some of the greatest creative lunch and dinner buffets I have ever experienced. True I felt like a dragon with a flaming mouth most of the time I was eating but I did learn how to enjoy even the pain of spice as long as I had a glass of fresh orange juice, something sweet or ice cream to contrast the spices in my mouth with.
When I reacted to my driver’s actions by putting up my hands to cover my eyes from the possible car crashes at every turn I was laughingly warned to watch out for the drivers in India.
The warning was truly well given.
Going Deeper into the East like Marco Polo in Reverse
From Colombo I went onto Chennai, India (once Madras) located near the southeastern tip of the Indian pennisula.
Chennai is a very ancient city that too tries to mix the ancient and the near contemporary. Ancient construction techniques are used to build the local EDS office building or the local Dominoes Pizza delivery shop.
Learning from the East
Visiting countries such as Sri Lanka and India as a citizen of the United States of America is a learning in itself. From our nearly anal obcession with geometrically laid out streets and driving laws to the totally amorphic conditions on their streets and aparently non-existent driving laws you truly experience the contrast between focused convergence and seemingly aimless divergence.
Going Home Again to Istanbul
From Chennai I traveled to Istanbul, Turkey stopping for a few hours in Dubai, the most modern convention/conference mecca of the world. In the 140 degree desert of Dubai lies the most modern airport with the largest and most contemporary duty-free mall, not shop or shops, a full-range mall. One lesson from those two hours was that creativity can occur in any environment no matter how harse or repressive to human existence.
Arriving in Istanbul was a pleasure, partly because I was being picked up by a friend I would spend much of my time with in her beautiful city and, because I had been their 3 times before. I was not going to experience the shocks of the unknown or simply imagined environments and cultures of Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka and India. Instead I was returning to a favorite city that I have traveled extensively about with friends and alone.
Learning: Integration of Ancient, Old, Current and Future
One of the extensive creative learnings that Istanbul provided was the integration of ancient, old, current, future cultures, religions and peoples. The most distinct difference at first for westerners is that the populuation is over 90 percent Muslim with a very small minority of Christains or Jews. Yet there is a sense of peace that exists in the initially appearing chaos.
Wandering to Replenish My Creative Soul
This time in Istanbul I chose to walk or boat most places when I wasn’t riding in my friend’s car. Wandering through the streets basically unnoticed was a pleasure. It enabled me to explore, experience and examine the on-going creativity that surrounded me in the Bazaar, the commercial areas where the wholesale trading goes on or some of the most contemporary and pricey malls I have ever seen in the world. Combined with that were several strolls along the Bosphorus Straits on both sides, European and Asian.
Learning: Integrating Contrasts
A significant learning Istanbul comes from the fact that it is a city of over 20 to 24 million people and is the only city that exists in two separate continents connected by bridges. The learning is the value of contrasts and integration of contrasts to produce creativity and innovative ideas and solutions.
Revolving Back to Western World
Time to contrast again, a flight from Istanbul to Copenhagen. From ancient chaos to modern and contemporary highly controlled order. From high contrasts in nearly every aspect of life to sameness and uniformity, much by law and culture.
Learning: Control and Orderliness Can Produce Creativity
My first learning from returning to Copenhagen after 24 years was how controlled and orderly it is and apparently lacking in spontaneity and creativity. It took about a day to clear up my creative blinders from Istanbul, Chennai, Colombo and Kuala Lumpur and to begin to see the wonderful creativity in Copenhagen and the countryside of Denmark.
The learning…no matter how much control and systemization a culture may generate the natural desire for creativity will show through. In Copenhagen individual creativity does not seem to exist initially until you begin to look for it and become more open to experiencing it. Doors, doorways, entrances, window flower boxes, personal window displays, gardens, graphics, furniture, silverware, artwork, ceramics from artistic to everyday chinaware; these are what demonstrates the creativity of the Danish people as individuals and not just members of a highly refined creative nation. After once again seeing their creativity I felt more relaxed. Then I went with an Italian friend, who had arranged to be in Copenhagen while I was there, out to dinner to walk the streets at night and to visit Tivoli, one of the oldest amusement parks in the world. Viola, the internal creativity and desire for independence and divergency showed inside Tivoli even until 2 or 3 in the am.
From Refined Control to Refined Individualism with Control
From Copenhagen by train, boat, bus, foot and car I traveled for an entire day to Delft in the Netherlands across northern Germany to be welcomed by my cyberspace friend, Marc Tassoul, professor of creativity and industrial design plus a consultant and creator of the first creativity focused internet email discussion list, CREA-CPS.
Prior to this trip I had the pleasure of visiting and staying in Delft several times beginning in 1977. Delft is a walking town, medieval architecture and design combined with the most contemporary available in the world. Each integrated beautifully at a human scale. No high rise buildings within the city. Everything is located a few minutes away by foot.
Learning: Vary the Scale and Speed to Rejuvenate Creativity
The learning for me was in the need to vary the scale and speed of our lives to help expose, expand and enrich our natural and developable creative thinking traits and skills.
Delft is an example of a completely designed and integrated community. All that is built new is integrated to create a harmony that is rarely experienced in any other community, town, city or country.
Off to the Center of the British Empire: Shakespear’s Home
After an abundance of sensory enjoyment and ample time with friends I was off to England, Stratford specifically, to experience another small scale integrately designed community. What Stratford lacks in contemporary design it relishes in historic and singularly focused creatively. It is an entire community devoted to the creativity of one man, William Shakespear. Yet within and among all the curios and tourist attractions is the love of the beauty of the landscape and the blending of the architecture and contemporary life.
Learning: Change of Scenery Can Relish and Replenish Creative Spirit
A learning for me from Stratford is that I can enjoy intensely crowded streets and parks during the mid afternoon while being able to jump on my rented bicycle to travel off to the countryside in a very few minutes getting lost in the beauty of a travel along the Avon that William and Anne and their children probably walked hundreds of years ago. I can also bicycle or walk the same busy streets at dawn or late at night after the evening’s Shakespeare Theater performance as if I was the only person on earth.
Learning: Juxtapositioning Imagination
Added to that learning is the ease with which I can play with my imagination in a town like Stratford-on-Avon juxtapositioning my thoughts from contemporary life, talking with a political cartoonist I met on the train ride to Stratford to pretending I am a citizen of midevial time Statford walking to experiencing William’s latest creation at the theater.
Juxtapositioning in Time
From Stratford on Avon I traveled by train to Salisbury to meet a recently meet a cyberspace creativity friend, John Thomas, a retired teacher and creativity author and to return again for the third time to the time of the Druids at Stonehenge.
Every Town Possesses Vast Contrasts of Creativity
Salisbury provided a sampling for contrasting time comparing the famous Salisbury Cathedral to the Druid Circle of Stones at Stonehenge to experience distinctly different spiritual expressions of creativity. Walking the now controlled, physically and electronically, route around the world famous stones, then walking slowly around the famous cathedral both at midnight under the spotlights and in the early morning at day break simply experiencing both provided me a “creative soul” fill up.
Back to Modern Times
Off to London next, not really wanting to be there, except to meet up with some highly creative people at a creative consultant firm and St. Luke’s advertising agency, reported to be one of the most creative in the world today was my next planned destination.
Letting Go Once Again to Learn
Thank you goes to Joel Goodman again. I chose to laugh and to enjoy the on and off rain and chose to walk aimlessly the first day before meeting my contact at What If?!. From my visit at the offices of What If?! I received several tips for what to see in London today. I combined that with on and off rides around London via a constantly available series of double bus tour busses around the entire city. Instead of being frustrated by the scale and density of London I fell in love with experiencing parks from small squares to Hyde Park in size, art galleries with the work of Picasso, Dali, and many yet to be known as famous artists, the British Air Eye gigantic ferris wheel, etc.
Learning: Changing Perspectives Without Specific Plan
A learning from London this time came in the enjoyment and creative potential of constantly changing perspective and scale both deliberately and spontaneously as the spirit moved me. From the reconstructed Globe Theatre to walking along both sides of the Thames to the Tate Gallery to a seafood festival to a street musician playing an ancient Chinese instrument to a mix of varied food cultures.
What started out as depressing 3 days turned into fantastic and richly creative days.
It Can’t Be done!: Tunneling to Even More Creativity
Then it was off through one of the greatest examples of engineering creativity in Europe, the England to France tunnel under the English Channel. The learning: what seems impossible with today’s abilities can become easy with tomorrow’s.
Arriving in Paris is always fun. This was my 7th visit to Paris. My goal was to complete my trip in a beautiful city and give a speech to the newly formed French Speakers Association in Paris on my last night at the American Church along the Seine on creative thinking as a professional speaker.
Learning: Complete Openness to Experience Breeds Creativity
My 4 days and 3 nights in Paris and the surrounding area including Paris, many of its suburbs, Chartres and Disneyland Paris were nearly completely spontaneous filled with creative adventure and complete openness to experiences as they happened, minute by minute, hour by hour, person and experience by experience. Included was walking from the front door of my hotel with a complete view of the Eiffel Tower only a few blocks away, a view I would experience many times throughout the time I was there day and night.
The overall learning from my time in Paris this time was to remind myself to set basic goals, targets, that fulfill my mission and fit my vision while being open to experiencing life as fullly as possible at all times during the day each day.
Returning Home Once Again
73 Days in search of creativity, creative thinking and creative people from Athens, Georgia to Auckland to Paris and back to Athens again. I found and experience each of the three everywhere I went and so will all of use if we simply apply the natural traits of creative people and creative learnings that appear throughout our lives.
For 73 days this summer I wandered completely around the world in search of creative thinking, creativity and creative people, while challenging myself to be creative every day. What started out as simply a dream trip to fulfill a fantasy of a life-time: travel around the world like Philleas T. Boggs did in Around the World in Eighty Days; became partially a research project.
My initial attempts at preparing this article for this edition of Creativity’s Global Correspondents 2002 were more like Alan’s attempts at out writing Bill Bryson and Rick Steve, both excellent travel authors or Charles Kuralt and Peter Jenkins, both excellent authors of the human experience based on their travels throughout the world. To read that I invite you to visit my wanderings journal website: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/alan2001. The following is based on learnings and relearnings based on my 73 days of wanderings this summer.
S.P.R.E.A.D.ng Creative Thinking
Since 1976 I have focused much to most of my efforts (personally and professionally) on the application and development of creativity: mine and others. Over the 26 years, professionally, I have slowly refined my focus to S.P.R.E.A.D.ng™ creative thinking throughout workplaces. S.P.R.E.A.D.ng ™ is the acronym I use to demonstrate to people what I believe needs to be done within workplaces to enhance, expand and enrich the creative thinking of all employees (SUPPORT, PROMOTE, RECOGNIZE, ENCOURAGE, APPLY and DEVELOP).
Overall Approach to My Wanderings
During my 73 days traveling around the world the summer of 2001, through New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, India, Dubai, Turkey, Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, England and France; I sought to find examples of creativity everywhere I went and to interview people about their own creativity and creativity in general in their country.
Structure of My Post Review of My Wanderings
As a skeleton structure for this article I have chosen to use two lists of traits of creative people. The first list comes from the TTCT™ (Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking) and the second comes from an on-going project I have been working on since I was a doctoral student studying with Paul Torrance in 1980. The 20 traits from the TTCT™ represent 20 traits that are examined by the TTCT™ tests based on over 40 years of E. Paul Torrance's scientific study with subjects around the world. The 32 traits from my, "Are You a Crayon Breaker?" exercise, come from a survey study I did of articles on the traits of creative people written from 1950 to 1980. I have used the survey as part of over 2100 professional speeches and workshops since 1981 to suggest the existence of creative thinking potential in all people and also to indicate different styles of creative thinking.
The Initial Process
During my trip I often had people I met and interviewed complete the 32 traits survey to share which they believed fit them. While we talked together I introduced them to the work and ideas of E. Paul Torrance and the 20 traits from the TTCT ™. In addition as a post trip survey I have reviewed my daily journal notes using both the list of 20 from the TTCT™ and my 32 "Crayon Breaker" exercise traits for potential understandings of what I experienced and discovered.
The Traits
TTCT™ Traits
1. Fluency - many ideas
2. Flexibility - different types of ideas
3. Elaboration - addition of details
4. Originality - uniqueness
5. Abstractness of approach moving from reality
6. Openness-resisting early closure or completion
7. Change of Context (cross-interpretation)
8. Combination of Ideas/Facts - synthesis
9. Breakthrough from Current Limits
10. Unusual Viewpoint
11. Internal Perspective
12. Humorous Perspective
13. Richness & Colorful Detail
14. Feelings & Emotions
15. Fantasy
16. Movement & Sound - sense change
17. Multiple Idea Combinations
18. Macro Scale Perspective - seeing from larger view
19. Provocative Viewpoint
20. Future orientation
Are You’re a Crayon Breaker™
1. sensitive
2. not motivated by money
3. sense of destiny
4. adaptable
5. tolerant of ambiguity
6. observant
7. perceive world differently
8. see possibilities
9. question asker
10. can synthesize correctly often intuitively
11. able to fantacise
12. flexible
13. fluent
14. imaginative
15. intuitive
16. original
17. ingenious
18. energetic
19. sense of humor
20. self-actualizing
21. self-disciplined
22. self-knowledgeable
23. specific interests
24. divergent thinker
25. curious
26. open-ended
27. independent
28. severely critical
29. non-conforming
30. confident
31. risk taker
32. Persistent
The Beginning of My Creative Wanderings
From 3:30 pm in Athens, Georgia on June 25th to 5:30 am in Auckland and finally 11:00 am June 27th in Christchurch I began my first trip around the world.
After I arrived in New Zealand: in Christchurch, on the train to Dunedin, in Wellington and in Auckland I asked architects, designers, advertising art directors and account executives, landscape architects and theater people I met and/or stayed with to complete my “Crayon Breaker” survey.
Discovery
Initially I discovered that the lowest number of traits checked off by the people was 15 with a few marking all 32, including #28, severely critical.
Over the 20+ years I have been using the exercise the people in my programs or audiences have generally marked between 5 and 15 with a few, most times, who mark over 15.
Severely Critical as a Trait
Most people usually do not openly admit to this trait in themselves in public. It is the one trait I discover in personal interviews and reviews of biographies and autobiographies of highly creative people, living and dead. My assessment is that the “higher” creative people are severely critical of 3 things and are accused on being severely critical of a 4th. They tend to be severely critical of 1) themselves, 2) their work, 3) the potential of their fields of passion. Because of these three people who are much less creative as them see the “higher” creatives as being severely critical of other people. My experiences and on-going study does not support that anywhere in the 53 countries I have traveled in during my life.
Deliberately Developing Creative Thinking in New Zealand companies
During my interviews in New Zealand after the 32 traits survey was completed and reviewed, I discussed the TTCT ™ traits as trainable/learnable traits, asking the people who were company owners or managers, if they actually, consciously, strived to increase the creative thinking abilities and skills of their people. Except in a few isolated cases where the interviewees were creative thinking consultants the answer was always no and generally the people were unaware that creative thinking could be increased or taught.
Australia Clockwise from Sydney to Brisbane
My four-week journey around Australia (6 states and 2 territories) took me to Sydney, Canberra, small towns and a self-sufficiency site on a mountain in the Snowy Mountains, Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide, Uluru, Alice Springs, Perth, Darwin and a couple small towns in the Northern Territory, Cairns and finally Brisbane.
My Australian and New Zealand Hosts Were Chosen as Subjects Too
In most of the cities and towns I stayed with SERVAS members, an international travel organization who’s members open their homes to other members as their guests. Using the SERVAS Australia directory as I had in New Zealand I hand selected a mix of creative people to stay with in each city with no repeats of professions or occupations. They consisted of creative thinking consultants, designers, theatre promoters/directors, therapists, ceramic artists, counselors, writers, fabric artists, sculptors and teachers or trainers.
Researcher Becomes Searcher
As my trip continued I became less systematic with my data collection primarily because I became much more involved in getting to know my hosts and the people I met along the way instead of playing scientific researcher and also I become more involved in simply the various experiences day by day.
Study continues in Australia
Periodically in Australia I had people complete the “Crayon Breaker” survey The results were the same: very high numbers of traits selected. I continued my sharing information about E. Paul Torrance’s work and some about my own and other creative thinking consultants I have gotten to know from various countries and ones I got to meet along the way during the journey.
A Primary Creative Learning: Dealing with Daily Frustrations
One learning that kept coming back again and again throughout my trip was one I learned from Joel Goodman from the Humor Project many years ago: “If when something happens you can say ‘some day I’ll laugh about this’ then why not start now!” When frustrating and highly stress producing or simply very negative things happened during my travels around Australia and then in other countries later I would “step out of my shoes, boots or saddles” and remind myself of Joel’s bit of wisdom and within a few moments I was smiling and laughing and making notes of how to turn the experience or situation into material for a future article or speech.
Learning from the Weather
Have you ever thought that it takes more creativeness
to enjoy a rainy day than a sunny one?
Instead of becoming frustrated by the many days of rain I experienced in the southern states and territories of Australia I chose to use my creativeness to turn them into wandering adventures.
One example would be my third day in Sydney. It had rained off and on, mostly on, for the entire three days making it difficult to capture the beautiful sites and experiences with my point and shoot Fuji camera. That day after the first couple of hours of riding one harbour boat after another, there are a series of boat lines that crisscross Sydney Harbour from one end to the other, I noticed that the streets were becoming extremely crowded of people. All the while it began raining harder and harder.
Most of my life I have experienced claustraphobic like reactions in crowds of people, especially when the people all seem to have gotten up that morning with the sole intention of getting in my way. That day by noon it had gotten worse and worse. I felt like a young chicken stuffed into an extremely wet and overly crowded chicken growing house with chickens all around and over me, so packed in a can of sardines would seem vastly loose.
I pushed my way through the crowd and found a train station under one of the high-rise blocks of buildings. On the spot I had decided to go out to the 2000 Olympic Site just to get away from the mobs of people. As I pushed my way through I asked person after person how to get to the Olympic Site. After seven or eight different answers I just got on a train heading out of town and asked the conductor once I sat down. My luck was with me. The train I had run onto was the right one.
In about 20 mintues I was walking in the vast, very, very open area of the Olympic Site enjoying the environment and architecture. One person per 20 acres instead of the thousands per 200 square feet I had just left behind in Sydney. After enjoying the openness and viewing many of the contemporary sports arenas I realized that the only building, way off in the distance, almost to the horizon, that was open had a very long line wrapping nearly around it. So I decided to head back to Sydney to catch the bus from downtown Sydney, near the Opera House, to my creative thinking consultant friends’ home in the northern suburbs and end my day of wandering in Sydney.
I slowly walked back to the empty train station. There was a good reason it was empty. The last train back to Sydney that evening was leaving in 3 mintues.
Learning: Trust Your Subconscious
Once again my subconsicous or intuition had taken control and I had unknowingly trusted it to guide me.
That was another learning/re-learning I discovered as I traveled throughout the journey: trust my subsconscious and intuitive skills.
Learning: Trusting Some Natural Creative Traits
In Hobart, Tasmania, while staying with Helen and Andre, two very successful and accomplished ceramic artists , I experienced the value of trusting the natural creative traits of curiosity, exploration, divergence, openness to premature closure, independence, imagination and others. Because I was trying to experience something of each of the 8 states and territories all within 4 weeks I had only planned to be in Hobart and Tasmania 3 days and 2 nights.
Tasmania is an absolutely beautiful island state, which until this summer I mistakenly had thought it was a separate nation. By only planning to be there for such a short time I was not going to see or experience much of the natural beauty of the island on the ground: the vast forests, valleys, rivers, mountains, snowy peaks, etc. Add to that it was raining most of the time as well.
So I played tourist and gathered up maps, went to the Chamber of Commerce plus the Tasmanian Tourist Agency offices to pick up information of what I might see in less than 48 hours by bus (commercial or tour), bicycle or foot.
After a couple hours of frustration of trying to make my time work I simply decided to enjoy Hobart by foot and plan on returning to Tasmania in the future for a much longer time. I was scheduled to speak in the afternoon on adding creative thinking to your life and I wasn’t using my own.
I threw away all but a simple street map of the downtown area of Hobart and began to “wander”. It became another “re-learning”—allow yourself to creatively experience life instead of always trying to create it. That day and the next 1/2 day became fantastic. I experienced many people, the streets of Hobart, the interiors of many shops, restaurants, much urban art and toured several artist studios enjoying a great variety of art.
“Letting go and experience the creativeness and creativity that surrounds you”, became a creative tool throughout the remainder of my 73-Wandering Journey because of my time Hobart.
Learning: Wandering Without a Predetermined Plan
A learning that I often share with participants and students is that of simply “wandering” and letting the creativity that surrounds them remove the “clouds” or blocks of creativity that prevent them from being creative at any given moment. This I did in shops, malls, streets, banks watching the customers, waiting around ATM machines, in ceramic, painting, fabric, sculpture studios, toy stores, grocery stores, along piers, in restaurants.
Wandering: My Greatest Creative Tool
After Hobart it was Adelaide, Uluru (Ayers Rock, Alice Springs, Indian-Pacific train across from Adelaide to Perth, flights to Darwin, Cairns and Brisbane. The experiences and lessons during those 3 weeks continued to reinforce what I had already lived.
Learning: Experiencing Varied and Many Cultures to Expand Creativeness
By the time I reached Brisbane, my last destination in Australia, located in Queensland, I had already experienced many cultures and sub-cultures. That was one of my earliest creative learnings from 1977 when I first took an extended trip involving visiting 20+ countries in Europe, Eastern Europe and North Africa. Learning: to expand and enrich our creativeness and creative thinking skills we need only expose ourselves to varied cultures and peoples.
From Athens, Georgia on June 25th until August 8th in Brisbane I had experienced New Zealanders, natives and immigrants, from the very northern part of the North island to the southern section of the South Island, Maori natives who live in a variety of ways from very old custom to very cotemporary. I had traveled thousands of miles by train, bus, cab, foot and plane experiencing Australians from all eight states and territories: New South Walves, Victoria, Canberra, Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland. They ranged from very contemporary residents of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane. Throw in hedonistis who enjoy their lives in Darwin, Cairns or along the Gold Coast between Cairns and Brisbane, some making their livings as scuba diving instructors or street artists. Also they included self-sufficiency living people from the Snowny Mountains who work only when the money runs out plus country people from each of the 8 areas. Add to that were outbackers who spend days and weeks totally alone in the barren outback. Plus include a mix of Aborigines from those who live as their forefathers and mothers have lived from 40,000 years to college educated professionals who had been trained by both their native cultures and the white culture of modern Australia.
Varied Traits Provoked Through Culutral Immersion
The learnings from such immersion in varied cultures help to expand, enrich and provoke increased creativeness through the following traits:
Abstractness of approach moving from reality—seen through the art and thinking of so many different peoples.
Adaptable—experiencing how so many different Australians live their lives.
Breakthrough from Current Limits—caused by the contrast of my culture with so many others.
Change of Context (cross-interpretation)—continually exposing my self to daily to by the hour changes of context and culture.
Combination of Ideas/Facts (synthesis)—trying to create a synthesis of everything I was learning and experiencing.
Synthesize correctly often intuitively—trusting these abilities in myself by the hour and day.
Curiousity—pushing this to extreme limits everywhere I went whether flying by helicopter to the top of a glacier in Franz Joseph, New Zealand or a seaplane over the skyline of Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia or walking around the famous Uluru Rock.
Divergent thinking—being open to experiencing this everywhere I went.
Open-endedness—reminding myself no to go to premature closure quickly
Elaboration - learning to see through the eyes of others
Fantasy—trying to experience the fantasy lives of other cultures
Multiple orientations: past, present, future, virtual
Internal Perspective-trying to experience these in others and myself
Question asker-being willing to ask and be asked
Richness & Colorful Detail-experience vast varieties everywhere I went
Risk taker-opening myself to risk taking daily or by the hour.
See possibilities-opening myself to possibilities everywhere.
Unusual & Provocative Viewpoints-opening myself to these everywhere.
Changing Cultures
During the first six weeks I traveled where English, at least some version of English, was spoken wherever I was.
When I left Brisbane for Kuala Lumpur I left that security blanket behind me at least part of the time each day.
The Physical Environment and It’s Creativity
Kuala Lumpur and Singapore have much in common. Both have worked very hard to enter the 20th and 21st centuries in less than 40 years each. Both skylines are filled with the most contemporary buildings any architect could dream of. Each of the major cities I had been in so far in New Zealand and Australia also were filled with many relatively new buildings, with Brisbane having the largest concentration, mostly built in the 1990s and Sydney slightly behind it because of it hosting the 2000 Olympics.
What Kuala Lumpur and Singapore still possess that neither New Zealand nor Australia do not is also the ancient. NZ and Australia are barely 200 years old. Both KL and Singapore are also ancient countries filled with temples, shrines, and slums, by today’s standards, that use construction types and living styles that people have lived for over 3,000 years.
Learnings: Western Creative Meets Eastern Creativity
The learnings for me as an outsider with little to no knowledge of the many cultures that have lived and died in Malaysia and Singapore were that of watching the contrasts which produce the richness along with the vast confusion and stress that appear to exists in both of these cultures.
Seeing the simple lines, colors and forms of the newest contemporary buildings and developments contrasted against the extremely complex, ornately detailed and poly-colored Hindu temples caused me to recognize the need for juxtapositioning of our thinking.
Onto Sri Lanka to Learn More: Creativity During Revolution
From Singapore after about 10 days spent traveling back and forth between KL and Singapore off I went to rebel torn Sri Lanka, the paradise that has drawn many people from around the world. Less than two weeks before I arrived, rebel forces blew up 5 commercial airplanes on the runways at the airport. I was traveling to Colombo, Sri Lanka with the purpose of presenting professional programs on creative thinking in their workplaces and touring a little.
From my arrival at 12:30 am to be picked up by a total stranger to be driven through totally dark streets to a hotel, that I only knew was located somewhere in Colombo, the capital city where I would sleep and finally meet my formally unmet client in the morning, I needed to use my creative skills to learn to accept and let go of my growing fears.
Learning: Our Cultures as Blocks to Our Creativity
The greatest learning for me among many from my 4 days and 3 nights in Sri Lanka was the power of blocks upon the creativity of a complete culture of people. With all the road blocks, checkpoints, military personnel, nightly curfews, daily required power outages; I saw creativity everywhere I went from how to drive effectively in a non-geometric fashion to get from point a to point b through absolute chaos without traffic lights or electric auto turn signals to some of the greatest creative lunch and dinner buffets I have ever experienced. True I felt like a dragon with a flaming mouth most of the time I was eating but I did learn how to enjoy even the pain of spice as long as I had a glass of fresh orange juice, something sweet or ice cream to contrast the spices in my mouth with.
When I reacted to my driver’s actions by putting up my hands to cover my eyes from the possible car crashes at every turn I was laughingly warned to watch out for the drivers in India.
The warning was truly well given.
Going Deeper into the East like Marco Polo in Reverse
From Colombo I went onto Chennai, India (once Madras) located near the southeastern tip of the Indian pennisula.
Chennai is a very ancient city that too tries to mix the ancient and the near contemporary. Ancient construction techniques are used to build the local EDS office building or the local Dominoes Pizza delivery shop.
Learning from the East
Visiting countries such as Sri Lanka and India as a citizen of the United States of America is a learning in itself. From our nearly anal obcession with geometrically laid out streets and driving laws to the totally amorphic conditions on their streets and aparently non-existent driving laws you truly experience the contrast between focused convergence and seemingly aimless divergence.
Going Home Again to Istanbul
From Chennai I traveled to Istanbul, Turkey stopping for a few hours in Dubai, the most modern convention/conference mecca of the world. In the 140 degree desert of Dubai lies the most modern airport with the largest and most contemporary duty-free mall, not shop or shops, a full-range mall. One lesson from those two hours was that creativity can occur in any environment no matter how harse or repressive to human existence.
Arriving in Istanbul was a pleasure, partly because I was being picked up by a friend I would spend much of my time with in her beautiful city and, because I had been their 3 times before. I was not going to experience the shocks of the unknown or simply imagined environments and cultures of Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka and India. Instead I was returning to a favorite city that I have traveled extensively about with friends and alone.
Learning: Integration of Ancient, Old, Current and Future
One of the extensive creative learnings that Istanbul provided was the integration of ancient, old, current, future cultures, religions and peoples. The most distinct difference at first for westerners is that the populuation is over 90 percent Muslim with a very small minority of Christains or Jews. Yet there is a sense of peace that exists in the initially appearing chaos.
Wandering to Replenish My Creative Soul
This time in Istanbul I chose to walk or boat most places when I wasn’t riding in my friend’s car. Wandering through the streets basically unnoticed was a pleasure. It enabled me to explore, experience and examine the on-going creativity that surrounded me in the Bazaar, the commercial areas where the wholesale trading goes on or some of the most contemporary and pricey malls I have ever seen in the world. Combined with that were several strolls along the Bosphorus Straits on both sides, European and Asian.
Learning: Integrating Contrasts
A significant learning Istanbul comes from the fact that it is a city of over 20 to 24 million people and is the only city that exists in two separate continents connected by bridges. The learning is the value of contrasts and integration of contrasts to produce creativity and innovative ideas and solutions.
Revolving Back to Western World
Time to contrast again, a flight from Istanbul to Copenhagen. From ancient chaos to modern and contemporary highly controlled order. From high contrasts in nearly every aspect of life to sameness and uniformity, much by law and culture.
Learning: Control and Orderliness Can Produce Creativity
My first learning from returning to Copenhagen after 24 years was how controlled and orderly it is and apparently lacking in spontaneity and creativity. It took about a day to clear up my creative blinders from Istanbul, Chennai, Colombo and Kuala Lumpur and to begin to see the wonderful creativity in Copenhagen and the countryside of Denmark.
The learning…no matter how much control and systemization a culture may generate the natural desire for creativity will show through. In Copenhagen individual creativity does not seem to exist initially until you begin to look for it and become more open to experiencing it. Doors, doorways, entrances, window flower boxes, personal window displays, gardens, graphics, furniture, silverware, artwork, ceramics from artistic to everyday chinaware; these are what demonstrates the creativity of the Danish people as individuals and not just members of a highly refined creative nation. After once again seeing their creativity I felt more relaxed. Then I went with an Italian friend, who had arranged to be in Copenhagen while I was there, out to dinner to walk the streets at night and to visit Tivoli, one of the oldest amusement parks in the world. Viola, the internal creativity and desire for independence and divergency showed inside Tivoli even until 2 or 3 in the am.
From Refined Control to Refined Individualism with Control
From Copenhagen by train, boat, bus, foot and car I traveled for an entire day to Delft in the Netherlands across northern Germany to be welcomed by my cyberspace friend, Marc Tassoul, professor of creativity and industrial design plus a consultant and creator of the first creativity focused internet email discussion list, CREA-CPS.
Prior to this trip I had the pleasure of visiting and staying in Delft several times beginning in 1977. Delft is a walking town, medieval architecture and design combined with the most contemporary available in the world. Each integrated beautifully at a human scale. No high rise buildings within the city. Everything is located a few minutes away by foot.
Learning: Vary the Scale and Speed to Rejuvenate Creativity
The learning for me was in the need to vary the scale and speed of our lives to help expose, expand and enrich our natural and developable creative thinking traits and skills.
Delft is an example of a completely designed and integrated community. All that is built new is integrated to create a harmony that is rarely experienced in any other community, town, city or country.
Off to the Center of the British Empire: Shakespear’s Home
After an abundance of sensory enjoyment and ample time with friends I was off to England, Stratford specifically, to experience another small scale integrately designed community. What Stratford lacks in contemporary design it relishes in historic and singularly focused creatively. It is an entire community devoted to the creativity of one man, William Shakespear. Yet within and among all the curios and tourist attractions is the love of the beauty of the landscape and the blending of the architecture and contemporary life.
Learning: Change of Scenery Can Relish and Replenish Creative Spirit
A learning for me from Stratford is that I can enjoy intensely crowded streets and parks during the mid afternoon while being able to jump on my rented bicycle to travel off to the countryside in a very few minutes getting lost in the beauty of a travel along the Avon that William and Anne and their children probably walked hundreds of years ago. I can also bicycle or walk the same busy streets at dawn or late at night after the evening’s Shakespeare Theater performance as if I was the only person on earth.
Learning: Juxtapositioning Imagination
Added to that learning is the ease with which I can play with my imagination in a town like Stratford-on-Avon juxtapositioning my thoughts from contemporary life, talking with a political cartoonist I met on the train ride to Stratford to pretending I am a citizen of midevial time Statford walking to experiencing William’s latest creation at the theater.
Juxtapositioning in Time
From Stratford on Avon I traveled by train to Salisbury to meet a recently meet a cyberspace creativity friend, John Thomas, a retired teacher and creativity author and to return again for the third time to the time of the Druids at Stonehenge.
Every Town Possesses Vast Contrasts of Creativity
Salisbury provided a sampling for contrasting time comparing the famous Salisbury Cathedral to the Druid Circle of Stones at Stonehenge to experience distinctly different spiritual expressions of creativity. Walking the now controlled, physically and electronically, route around the world famous stones, then walking slowly around the famous cathedral both at midnight under the spotlights and in the early morning at day break simply experiencing both provided me a “creative soul” fill up.
Back to Modern Times
Off to London next, not really wanting to be there, except to meet up with some highly creative people at a creative consultant firm and St. Luke’s advertising agency, reported to be one of the most creative in the world today was my next planned destination.
Letting Go Once Again to Learn
Thank you goes to Joel Goodman again. I chose to laugh and to enjoy the on and off rain and chose to walk aimlessly the first day before meeting my contact at What If?!. From my visit at the offices of What If?! I received several tips for what to see in London today. I combined that with on and off rides around London via a constantly available series of double bus tour busses around the entire city. Instead of being frustrated by the scale and density of London I fell in love with experiencing parks from small squares to Hyde Park in size, art galleries with the work of Picasso, Dali, and many yet to be known as famous artists, the British Air Eye gigantic ferris wheel, etc.
Learning: Changing Perspectives Without Specific Plan
A learning from London this time came in the enjoyment and creative potential of constantly changing perspective and scale both deliberately and spontaneously as the spirit moved me. From the reconstructed Globe Theatre to walking along both sides of the Thames to the Tate Gallery to a seafood festival to a street musician playing an ancient Chinese instrument to a mix of varied food cultures.
What started out as depressing 3 days turned into fantastic and richly creative days.
It Can’t Be done!: Tunneling to Even More Creativity
Then it was off through one of the greatest examples of engineering creativity in Europe, the England to France tunnel under the English Channel. The learning: what seems impossible with today’s abilities can become easy with tomorrow’s.
Arriving in Paris is always fun. This was my 7th visit to Paris. My goal was to complete my trip in a beautiful city and give a speech to the newly formed French Speakers Association in Paris on my last night at the American Church along the Seine on creative thinking as a professional speaker.
Learning: Complete Openness to Experience Breeds Creativity
My 4 days and 3 nights in Paris and the surrounding area including Paris, many of its suburbs, Chartres and Disneyland Paris were nearly completely spontaneous filled with creative adventure and complete openness to experiences as they happened, minute by minute, hour by hour, person and experience by experience. Included was walking from the front door of my hotel with a complete view of the Eiffel Tower only a few blocks away, a view I would experience many times throughout the time I was there day and night.
The overall learning from my time in Paris this time was to remind myself to set basic goals, targets, that fulfill my mission and fit my vision while being open to experiencing life as fullly as possible at all times during the day each day.
Returning Home Once Again
73 Days in search of creativity, creative thinking and creative people from Athens, Georgia to Auckland to Paris and back to Athens again. I found and experience each of the three everywhere I went and so will all of use if we simply apply the natural traits of creative people and creative learnings that appear throughout our lives.
Traveling for Work: Journeys or Wanderings or Trips or Tours
Traveling for Work: Journeys or Wanderings or Trips or Tours
MCI
AMA
When I began my journey towards becoming a creative thinking consultant I started without a plan and far too soon. I had had a job teaching at the University of Georgia in the Interior Design major of the Art Department. Trying to advance myself and to work with more serious and committed students I tried to land a teaching position in the School of Environmental Design where I had taught as an adjunct professor for two summers already. I was passed over initially for a much younger, just graduated candidate. I became very angry and frustrated because I had not expected nor planned for that possible turn in the road. Within a few days the successful candidate turned down the offer and the LAR dean called to offer me the position. I told him the only way I would take it then would be if it was offered as an associate professor position which I did qualify for after having taught for 4 years at the University already and having completed my doctorate in educational psychology majoring in the study of the teaching of creative thinking.
I didn’t get the job. My anger and demands killed any possibility.
Cie le vie. I instantly became a creative thinking consultant.
The next day I began making phone calls, setting up appointments and learning what a creative thinking consultant or any consultant needs to know: prospecting, selling, marketing and all the other tasks, many of which I was definitely not prepared for as an architect, designer, writer or college professor.
One day while I was going to appointments in Atlanta I walked by the Colony Square Complex and saw a sign for the American Management Association’s training center located in the complex. With an unforeseen sense of confidence I went in and asked to see someone to talk about how to become a trainer/speaker for the AMA. I met a wonderful semi-retired man, Reese Inge, who would become a great friend for the next few years until he died. Reese listened to me talk about what I thought I had to offer the AMA. He asked if I could come back at 3:00 that afternoon to meet someone who Reese believed would be interested in meeting me and could help me accomplish my goal. I did. I met Jack Sullivan that afternoon. He too listened. That meeting began a mentor/mentee relationship that lead to a professional friendship over the next 3 or 4 years.
Jack opened so many doors and catapulted or simply pushed me through them trying to help me become the professional marketing trainer he needed and the creative consultant that I dreamed of becoming. Those couple years were filled to the brim with joy, excitement, fleeting phases of confidence, disaster, pain and extreme stress as he tried to teach me from the wings usually, how to become a successful consultant while helping him make money. The first year or so was a mix of pure heaven and hell on earth. Being thrown into a room with 12 experienced sales and marketing people for 3 days to try to teach them Marketing Communication, which I knew very little of. I barely stayed a paragraph ahead of the participants day by day. My scores ranged from 20 out of a possible perfect score of 20 to 6 out of twenty with 3 participants demanding their money back.
I went home totally devastated, beaten, squashed under the roller of a steam roller named complete failure. I called Jack and Joan, his wife, that day and said I could not possibly go to Chicago that coming Sunday evening to teach an entire week-long, 5-day course on the Fundamentals of Marketing after such a failure with a 3-day course on Marketing Communications. They seemed to understand and agree.
By Sunday they had tried to find someone else to do the course the next week. By Sunday they had totally been unsuccessful. They called and said I had to go and tried to pep me up over the phone. My family needed the money desperately at the time so I really needed to go. Merry and Jessica were out of town that weekend. I spent most of Saturday, Saturday night and Sunday until I left for the airport reading, re-reading and re-reading again and again the course book and some other books I found in the UGA library Saturday afternoon. I arrived in Chicago late Sunday evening. I began the second course for Jack’s firm, that one being an overview course: The Fundamentals of Marketing on Monday morning and completed it Friday at lunch time.
My scores ranged from 20 to 12. I averaged 15+ with a group of 27 strangers. I never received a lower average score that 17 after that. I became obsessed in becoming knowledegable about everything to do with the Fundamentals of Marketing as I could over the next few years. Jack even convinced and sold the AMA on me rewriting the manuals for two of their most popular marketing courses that I taught each time for the next couple of years.
I had traveled through Hell on Earth and had survived. I grew throw much pain, frustration, stress and a great deal of committed hard work.
Over those few years I would travel to New York City, Washington, DC, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, Wilmington, Virginia to teach marketing courses.
Why was I successful on these guided tours that I treated initially as wandering trips, then journeys and then a mix of highly planned journeys? I succeeded eventually because I studied other people’s maps, tour notes and triptiks while always creating my own plans, refining them every day as I traveled. If I had followed some of their guided tours it may have been much easier and less stressful but I would not have become as passionate about winning, succeeding and learning to become a knowledgeable and gifted trainer.
I was thrown into a raging river thinking that it was simply a slowly moving stream. I was not aware of the undercurrent that would try to pull me under and cause me to drown.
Have you ever done this? What did you learn from the experience?
My learnings were….
1. Know what you are getting into
2. Be willing to walk away if you fail
3. Learn as much as you can from both your failures and your wins.
4. Ask, ask and ask again for help
5. Give as much as you can and even more if necessary
6. Focus on what you know while learning as much as you can.
7. Be willing to commit 24 hours a day if necessary in the short run
8. Become focused
9. Systemize, systemize, systemize
10. Study every detail of your successes to discover why you succeeded
11. Study every detail of your failures to discover why you failed.
12. Back off once in awhile to relax, reposition and recenter your energies
How, where, when, why and from whom did I learn these in Chicago that week in 1985?
1. Know what you are getting into
I was so desperate that I did not check into what I was about to do when I so naively agreed to do the first Marketing Communications class. I wasn’t really ready. I basically winged it and mostly got away with it.
2. Be willing to walk away if you fail
I did. Yet I was pulled back by someone who desperately needed me and did truly believe in me and was confident that I would do okay.
3. Learn as much as you can from both your failures and your wins.
The weekend between the first failure and the second attempt I started focusing on studying everything I did to try to learn how to capitalize on my rights and to eliminate or improve my wrongs.
4. Ask, ask and ask again for help
I asked, asked and asked again and again from then on. I still do when I realized I need to and I am not at the moment. I try not to suffer from what I have heard called “the Moses Syndrome”. Do you know why Moses traveled for 40 years in the desert? Because he wouldn’t stop and ask for directions.
Now that your thunderous fit of laughter has ended, I had learned to stop and ask for directions. I still stop and ask for directions, even if I might appear foolish, dumb or stupid. I simply ask humbly for help. I discover what I need to know most of the time and also discover that most human beings are good people who want to help each other as much as they can.
5. Give as much as you can and even more if necessary
I gave and gave and gave to the participants in those courses. I became obnoxiously committed to the participants who had paid their money or their employers had while the participants had paid with parts of their lives. I took that payment deserving of more than my best. I continually worked at getting better. Now I didn’t commit every minute of every wakening hour of every day but I did commit a great deal of time to reading many articles, books and scanning many more that I brought home in boxes from the library or piled up in multiple piles on a library table each weekend I was not speaking somewhere. I took the equivalent of any masters of business degree in marketing and marketing management. I probably only earned really a C+ in the minds of sophisticated marketing experts but in the minds of most of the participants I would stand in front of the next few years I had earned more than an A+++.
6. Focus on what you know while learning as much as you can.
After trying to learn everything I could for a few months I slowly began to focus on what I seemed to understand the best and stopped trying to become an expert at everything. I focused on what I thought the actual participants would need and want to learn. I would take time to read magazines and parts of books relevant to each of the businesses, industries or government agencies that were represented by the participants who enrolled in the courses.
7. Be willing to commit 24 hours a day if necessary in the short run
I did simply that some times. I went without sleep or much sleep for most of the days I was on the road teaching or trying to teach the courses.
8. Become focused
I finally did take time to assess the specific courses and focused on the absolutely necessary and key points then studied them to add more and more to my knowledge and understanding of them.
9. Systemize, systemize, systemize
Wherever possible I began to systemize. Initially I set up folders for each topic and sub-topic. Then I set up file boxes for each or clusters or related ones. I ended up with several storage boxes of photo copied articles, chapters and pages along with a couple shelves of nothing but marketing books. I used the original outline order of the courses to set up my systems. The great benefit of doing that besides making it easier when I needed something immediately it also make it extremely easy to rewrite the workbooks for the courses when I was hired to.
10. Study every detail of your successes to discover why you succeeded
Nearly every morning over breakfast I took 30 minutes to a couple hours to think about what I had done successfully so that I could repeat those efforts and actions.
11. Study every detail of your failures to discover why you failed.
Also at breakfast I studied what I screwed up to discover what I could do to not screw up the next time.
12. Back off once in awhile to relax, reposition and recenter your energies
Finally I often would simply close up the books, put away the file folders and simply jump on the “EL” and go into Chicago to Rush Street just to have fun for the evening, sometimes far too late considering I had to start again the next morning by 8:00 and needed to be ready by 7:30 am.
Look at one of your current challenges or recent failures you would like to correct, eliminate or solve. Examine my 12 learnings and write out what you might do to become successful next time.
1. Know what you are getting into
2. Be willing to walk away if you fail
3. Learn as much as you can from both your failures and your wins.
4. Ask, ask and ask again for help
5. Give as much as you can and even more if necessary
6. Focus on what you know while learning as much as you can.
7. Be willing to commit 24 hours a day if necessary in the short run
8. Become focused
9. Systemize, systemize, systemize
10. Study every detail of your successes to discover why you succeeded
11. Study every detail of your failures to discover why you failed.
12. Back off once in awhile to relax, reposition and re-center your energies
List of Working Assignments, speeches, workshops, training programs.
MCI
AMA
New York City
Chicago
Washington, DC
Houston
Los Angeles
Indianapolis
Atlanta
Wilmington, VA
Indiana Food Co-Op
Houston
Los Angeles
Blue Ridge School
GE marketing session
PGA for large company
CertainTeed
Philadelphia
Minneapolis
IFB
Gold Kist
Knoxville -
Carrollton--west Georgia
CertainTeed
Savannah
Shakapee, MN
Cleveland, Ohio
Johnson & Johnson
Gainesville
Royston
Cornelia (?)
Wrigley Gum
Braselton
Flowery Branch
Georgia Pacific
Alabama
Florida
NC
Georgia
Savannah
Palatka
Myrtle Beach, SC
Georgia Pacific Supervisory program
Madison
Pine Mountain
Calloway Gardens
Duck Head
Athens
Winder
Monroe
Washington
Tennessee
Hospitals
Newton
St. Mary’s
Athens Regional
Habersham
Thiele Kaolin
Sandersville
Institute of Government
Athens
Gainesville
Macon
Douglassville
Savannah
Brunswick
Smyrna
Marrietta
Atlanta
Stone Mountain
Dekalb
Avondale
Chatham
GPSTC
Chief’s Association
GPSTC
Command College
Leadership Institute & Programs
Paulding
McDuffie
Chattooga
Habersham
Pickens
Dekalb
Jefferson
Jackson
Rome/Floyd
Cartersville
Cherokee
Rockdale
Forsyth
Athens
HFMA
Alabama twice
MMGA-Natchez
New Orleans
Lafayette
Florida-Ft. Lauderdale
San Diego
Georgia
Buffalo, NY
SRCUS
CU Mississippi
Florida
North Carolina
Georgia?
Atlanta area
MCI
AMA
When I began my journey towards becoming a creative thinking consultant I started without a plan and far too soon. I had had a job teaching at the University of Georgia in the Interior Design major of the Art Department. Trying to advance myself and to work with more serious and committed students I tried to land a teaching position in the School of Environmental Design where I had taught as an adjunct professor for two summers already. I was passed over initially for a much younger, just graduated candidate. I became very angry and frustrated because I had not expected nor planned for that possible turn in the road. Within a few days the successful candidate turned down the offer and the LAR dean called to offer me the position. I told him the only way I would take it then would be if it was offered as an associate professor position which I did qualify for after having taught for 4 years at the University already and having completed my doctorate in educational psychology majoring in the study of the teaching of creative thinking.
I didn’t get the job. My anger and demands killed any possibility.
Cie le vie. I instantly became a creative thinking consultant.
The next day I began making phone calls, setting up appointments and learning what a creative thinking consultant or any consultant needs to know: prospecting, selling, marketing and all the other tasks, many of which I was definitely not prepared for as an architect, designer, writer or college professor.
One day while I was going to appointments in Atlanta I walked by the Colony Square Complex and saw a sign for the American Management Association’s training center located in the complex. With an unforeseen sense of confidence I went in and asked to see someone to talk about how to become a trainer/speaker for the AMA. I met a wonderful semi-retired man, Reese Inge, who would become a great friend for the next few years until he died. Reese listened to me talk about what I thought I had to offer the AMA. He asked if I could come back at 3:00 that afternoon to meet someone who Reese believed would be interested in meeting me and could help me accomplish my goal. I did. I met Jack Sullivan that afternoon. He too listened. That meeting began a mentor/mentee relationship that lead to a professional friendship over the next 3 or 4 years.
Jack opened so many doors and catapulted or simply pushed me through them trying to help me become the professional marketing trainer he needed and the creative consultant that I dreamed of becoming. Those couple years were filled to the brim with joy, excitement, fleeting phases of confidence, disaster, pain and extreme stress as he tried to teach me from the wings usually, how to become a successful consultant while helping him make money. The first year or so was a mix of pure heaven and hell on earth. Being thrown into a room with 12 experienced sales and marketing people for 3 days to try to teach them Marketing Communication, which I knew very little of. I barely stayed a paragraph ahead of the participants day by day. My scores ranged from 20 out of a possible perfect score of 20 to 6 out of twenty with 3 participants demanding their money back.
I went home totally devastated, beaten, squashed under the roller of a steam roller named complete failure. I called Jack and Joan, his wife, that day and said I could not possibly go to Chicago that coming Sunday evening to teach an entire week-long, 5-day course on the Fundamentals of Marketing after such a failure with a 3-day course on Marketing Communications. They seemed to understand and agree.
By Sunday they had tried to find someone else to do the course the next week. By Sunday they had totally been unsuccessful. They called and said I had to go and tried to pep me up over the phone. My family needed the money desperately at the time so I really needed to go. Merry and Jessica were out of town that weekend. I spent most of Saturday, Saturday night and Sunday until I left for the airport reading, re-reading and re-reading again and again the course book and some other books I found in the UGA library Saturday afternoon. I arrived in Chicago late Sunday evening. I began the second course for Jack’s firm, that one being an overview course: The Fundamentals of Marketing on Monday morning and completed it Friday at lunch time.
My scores ranged from 20 to 12. I averaged 15+ with a group of 27 strangers. I never received a lower average score that 17 after that. I became obsessed in becoming knowledegable about everything to do with the Fundamentals of Marketing as I could over the next few years. Jack even convinced and sold the AMA on me rewriting the manuals for two of their most popular marketing courses that I taught each time for the next couple of years.
I had traveled through Hell on Earth and had survived. I grew throw much pain, frustration, stress and a great deal of committed hard work.
Over those few years I would travel to New York City, Washington, DC, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, Wilmington, Virginia to teach marketing courses.
Why was I successful on these guided tours that I treated initially as wandering trips, then journeys and then a mix of highly planned journeys? I succeeded eventually because I studied other people’s maps, tour notes and triptiks while always creating my own plans, refining them every day as I traveled. If I had followed some of their guided tours it may have been much easier and less stressful but I would not have become as passionate about winning, succeeding and learning to become a knowledgeable and gifted trainer.
I was thrown into a raging river thinking that it was simply a slowly moving stream. I was not aware of the undercurrent that would try to pull me under and cause me to drown.
Have you ever done this? What did you learn from the experience?
My learnings were….
1. Know what you are getting into
2. Be willing to walk away if you fail
3. Learn as much as you can from both your failures and your wins.
4. Ask, ask and ask again for help
5. Give as much as you can and even more if necessary
6. Focus on what you know while learning as much as you can.
7. Be willing to commit 24 hours a day if necessary in the short run
8. Become focused
9. Systemize, systemize, systemize
10. Study every detail of your successes to discover why you succeeded
11. Study every detail of your failures to discover why you failed.
12. Back off once in awhile to relax, reposition and recenter your energies
How, where, when, why and from whom did I learn these in Chicago that week in 1985?
1. Know what you are getting into
I was so desperate that I did not check into what I was about to do when I so naively agreed to do the first Marketing Communications class. I wasn’t really ready. I basically winged it and mostly got away with it.
2. Be willing to walk away if you fail
I did. Yet I was pulled back by someone who desperately needed me and did truly believe in me and was confident that I would do okay.
3. Learn as much as you can from both your failures and your wins.
The weekend between the first failure and the second attempt I started focusing on studying everything I did to try to learn how to capitalize on my rights and to eliminate or improve my wrongs.
4. Ask, ask and ask again for help
I asked, asked and asked again and again from then on. I still do when I realized I need to and I am not at the moment. I try not to suffer from what I have heard called “the Moses Syndrome”. Do you know why Moses traveled for 40 years in the desert? Because he wouldn’t stop and ask for directions.
Now that your thunderous fit of laughter has ended, I had learned to stop and ask for directions. I still stop and ask for directions, even if I might appear foolish, dumb or stupid. I simply ask humbly for help. I discover what I need to know most of the time and also discover that most human beings are good people who want to help each other as much as they can.
5. Give as much as you can and even more if necessary
I gave and gave and gave to the participants in those courses. I became obnoxiously committed to the participants who had paid their money or their employers had while the participants had paid with parts of their lives. I took that payment deserving of more than my best. I continually worked at getting better. Now I didn’t commit every minute of every wakening hour of every day but I did commit a great deal of time to reading many articles, books and scanning many more that I brought home in boxes from the library or piled up in multiple piles on a library table each weekend I was not speaking somewhere. I took the equivalent of any masters of business degree in marketing and marketing management. I probably only earned really a C+ in the minds of sophisticated marketing experts but in the minds of most of the participants I would stand in front of the next few years I had earned more than an A+++.
6. Focus on what you know while learning as much as you can.
After trying to learn everything I could for a few months I slowly began to focus on what I seemed to understand the best and stopped trying to become an expert at everything. I focused on what I thought the actual participants would need and want to learn. I would take time to read magazines and parts of books relevant to each of the businesses, industries or government agencies that were represented by the participants who enrolled in the courses.
7. Be willing to commit 24 hours a day if necessary in the short run
I did simply that some times. I went without sleep or much sleep for most of the days I was on the road teaching or trying to teach the courses.
8. Become focused
I finally did take time to assess the specific courses and focused on the absolutely necessary and key points then studied them to add more and more to my knowledge and understanding of them.
9. Systemize, systemize, systemize
Wherever possible I began to systemize. Initially I set up folders for each topic and sub-topic. Then I set up file boxes for each or clusters or related ones. I ended up with several storage boxes of photo copied articles, chapters and pages along with a couple shelves of nothing but marketing books. I used the original outline order of the courses to set up my systems. The great benefit of doing that besides making it easier when I needed something immediately it also make it extremely easy to rewrite the workbooks for the courses when I was hired to.
10. Study every detail of your successes to discover why you succeeded
Nearly every morning over breakfast I took 30 minutes to a couple hours to think about what I had done successfully so that I could repeat those efforts and actions.
11. Study every detail of your failures to discover why you failed.
Also at breakfast I studied what I screwed up to discover what I could do to not screw up the next time.
12. Back off once in awhile to relax, reposition and recenter your energies
Finally I often would simply close up the books, put away the file folders and simply jump on the “EL” and go into Chicago to Rush Street just to have fun for the evening, sometimes far too late considering I had to start again the next morning by 8:00 and needed to be ready by 7:30 am.
Look at one of your current challenges or recent failures you would like to correct, eliminate or solve. Examine my 12 learnings and write out what you might do to become successful next time.
1. Know what you are getting into
2. Be willing to walk away if you fail
3. Learn as much as you can from both your failures and your wins.
4. Ask, ask and ask again for help
5. Give as much as you can and even more if necessary
6. Focus on what you know while learning as much as you can.
7. Be willing to commit 24 hours a day if necessary in the short run
8. Become focused
9. Systemize, systemize, systemize
10. Study every detail of your successes to discover why you succeeded
11. Study every detail of your failures to discover why you failed.
12. Back off once in awhile to relax, reposition and re-center your energies
List of Working Assignments, speeches, workshops, training programs.
MCI
AMA
New York City
Chicago
Washington, DC
Houston
Los Angeles
Indianapolis
Atlanta
Wilmington, VA
Indiana Food Co-Op
Houston
Los Angeles
Blue Ridge School
GE marketing session
PGA for large company
CertainTeed
Philadelphia
Minneapolis
IFB
Gold Kist
Knoxville -
Carrollton--west Georgia
CertainTeed
Savannah
Shakapee, MN
Cleveland, Ohio
Johnson & Johnson
Gainesville
Royston
Cornelia (?)
Wrigley Gum
Braselton
Flowery Branch
Georgia Pacific
Alabama
Florida
NC
Georgia
Savannah
Palatka
Myrtle Beach, SC
Georgia Pacific Supervisory program
Madison
Pine Mountain
Calloway Gardens
Duck Head
Athens
Winder
Monroe
Washington
Tennessee
Hospitals
Newton
St. Mary’s
Athens Regional
Habersham
Thiele Kaolin
Sandersville
Institute of Government
Athens
Gainesville
Macon
Douglassville
Savannah
Brunswick
Smyrna
Marrietta
Atlanta
Stone Mountain
Dekalb
Avondale
Chatham
GPSTC
Chief’s Association
GPSTC
Command College
Leadership Institute & Programs
Paulding
McDuffie
Chattooga
Habersham
Pickens
Dekalb
Jefferson
Jackson
Rome/Floyd
Cartersville
Cherokee
Rockdale
Forsyth
Athens
HFMA
Alabama twice
MMGA-Natchez
New Orleans
Lafayette
Florida-Ft. Lauderdale
San Diego
Georgia
Buffalo, NY
SRCUS
CU Mississippi
Florida
North Carolina
Georgia?
Atlanta area
Travel journey quotes
Travel journey quotes
Here are some opening quotes from books that have greatly inspired many aspects of my life journeys and traveling.
“For the hundredth time I am going to answer someone’s questions about why I’m walking across America. It wasn’t that I minded talking about it or answering questions, it was just that I really didn’t know why myself.”
Peter Jenkins
A Walk Across America
“I would be making a journey, an essentially lonely journey, into myself, in search of something that was meaningful to me alone.”
David Smith
Healing Journey: The Odyssey of an Uncommon Athlete
“I began my pilgrimage on the first of January in 1953. It is my spiritual birthday of sorts. It was a period in which I was merged with the whole. No longer was I a seed buried under the ground, but I felt as a flower reaching out effortlessly toward the sun. On that day I became a wanderer relying upon the goodness of others. It would be a pilgrim’s journey undertaken in the traditional manner: on foot and on faith. I left behind all claims to a name, personal history, possessions and affiliations.
It would be a glorious journey.”
Peace Pilgrim
Peace Pilgrim Her Life and Work in Her Own Words
“We had the world and the roads all to ourselves.”
Peter Jenkins
A Walk Across America
p. 14
“I’m happy to be riding back into this country.”
“Chris and I are traveling to Montana with some friends riding up ahead, and maybe headed father than that. Plans are deliberately indefinite, more to travel than to arrive anywhere. We are just vacationing.
We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on “good” rather than “time” and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes.”
“We saw it and yet we didn’t see it. Or we were trained not to see it.”
Robert Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
“The inspiration for brevity came to me at a gasoline station. I managed to fill an old car’s tank with super deluxe high-octane go-juice. My old hoopy couldn’t handle it and got the willies--kept sputtering out at intersections and belching going downhill. I understood. My mine and my spirit get like that from time to time. Too much high-content information, and I get the existential willies--keep sputterin out at intersections where life choices must be made and I either know too much or not enough. The examined life is no picnic.”
Robert Fulghum
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”
“I don’t much care where…”
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
Cheshire-Puss and Alice
Alice in Wonderland
“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is (a) damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, …. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.”
Ishmael
Moby Dick
Herman Melville
“I’d been poring over maps of the United States in Paterson for months, even reading books about the pioneers and savoring names like Platte and Cimarron and son on, and on the road-map was one long red line called Route 6 that led from the tip of Cape Cod clear to Ely, Nevada, and there dipped down to Los Angeles.”
Jack Kerouac
On the Road
“When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.”
Henry David Thoureau
Walden
Here are some opening quotes from books that have greatly inspired many aspects of my life journeys and traveling.
“For the hundredth time I am going to answer someone’s questions about why I’m walking across America. It wasn’t that I minded talking about it or answering questions, it was just that I really didn’t know why myself.”
Peter Jenkins
A Walk Across America
“I would be making a journey, an essentially lonely journey, into myself, in search of something that was meaningful to me alone.”
David Smith
Healing Journey: The Odyssey of an Uncommon Athlete
“I began my pilgrimage on the first of January in 1953. It is my spiritual birthday of sorts. It was a period in which I was merged with the whole. No longer was I a seed buried under the ground, but I felt as a flower reaching out effortlessly toward the sun. On that day I became a wanderer relying upon the goodness of others. It would be a pilgrim’s journey undertaken in the traditional manner: on foot and on faith. I left behind all claims to a name, personal history, possessions and affiliations.
It would be a glorious journey.”
Peace Pilgrim
Peace Pilgrim Her Life and Work in Her Own Words
“We had the world and the roads all to ourselves.”
Peter Jenkins
A Walk Across America
p. 14
“I’m happy to be riding back into this country.”
“Chris and I are traveling to Montana with some friends riding up ahead, and maybe headed father than that. Plans are deliberately indefinite, more to travel than to arrive anywhere. We are just vacationing.
We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on “good” rather than “time” and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes.”
“We saw it and yet we didn’t see it. Or we were trained not to see it.”
Robert Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
“The inspiration for brevity came to me at a gasoline station. I managed to fill an old car’s tank with super deluxe high-octane go-juice. My old hoopy couldn’t handle it and got the willies--kept sputtering out at intersections and belching going downhill. I understood. My mine and my spirit get like that from time to time. Too much high-content information, and I get the existential willies--keep sputterin out at intersections where life choices must be made and I either know too much or not enough. The examined life is no picnic.”
Robert Fulghum
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”
“I don’t much care where…”
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
Cheshire-Puss and Alice
Alice in Wonderland
“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is (a) damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, …. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.”
Ishmael
Moby Dick
Herman Melville
“I’d been poring over maps of the United States in Paterson for months, even reading books about the pioneers and savoring names like Platte and Cimarron and son on, and on the road-map was one long red line called Route 6 that led from the tip of Cape Cod clear to Ely, Nevada, and there dipped down to Los Angeles.”
Jack Kerouac
On the Road
“When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.”
Henry David Thoureau
Walden
hat journeys have preceded Yours?
What journeys have preceded Yours?
What journeys were taken so that yours could happen?
What journeys were bravely taken to make yours possible?
Imagine you are in the steerage section, the lowest deck on the Queen Mary, like scenes from the movie about the Titantic. You are mixed in with the very poor Irish, German, Slavic, Greek, Russian people, the peasants from many different countries, who have left everything they have known, left their families, their towns, their cultures. They have all left to find their own pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in America that they have heard so much about for so long.
To your left is a very old 16 year old girl, who has had to become a woman before she was done being a child. She is the 5th daughter of a linoleum factory worker and sister of 4 brothers and 4 sisters. She has left her two room home in a slum area of Kirkcaldy, a small town located across the Firth of Fourth from Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, a country of poor yet very proud people. She has begun her journey to America and her new life alone.
What waits for her across the Atlantic? A wealthy family who has agreed to sponsor her in exchange for her working for them for two years in their home in Holyoke, Massachusetts. She has contracted herself to be an indentured servant in exchange for passage to America plus room and board.
She would no longer play in the streets of Kirkcaldy, the town she loved, the town where she played tennis with friends and her sisters until nearly 11:00 pm many summer nights under the glow of the Northern Lights. She would not finish school with her classmates. She would not see her home again for nearly 40 years nor most of her family. Two of her sisters would also make the same journey but to Canada. One would stay there and live her new life in Toronto. The other would begin in Toronto then later move onto Detroit, where our traveler would meet up with her again two years later.
What is she thinking tonight? Is her heart filled with tears of sadness? Is her mind filled with the excitement of the journey she has chosen for herself? Is her soul filled with a passion for adventure?
To your right is a young boy by age but already a man. He has already worked over two years as a cart boy in the coal mines of Blythe, England, his birthplace. He’s 14 and is traveling with his mother and three brothers: 12, 10 and a baby less than 1. They have left their homeland to join her husband, their father in America to begin their new life in search of their pot at the end of the rainbow. They have left their loving families, their friends and neighbors, their town, country and culture, their proud history. He has not finished school either. But that is not important now. What is important is to leave the depression, the poverty, the pain that lies behind them and to start life over together.
What was it like for either of them to stand on the deck in the open air as they crossed the mighty Atlantic Ocean traveling towards their unclear dreams? Did they play with the children from all the other lands? Did they laugh, sing, skip and run? Did they stand, shivering, shoulders drooped from the wait of the sadness they each felt? Were they scared? Frightened by their journeys?
The girl ended up in Holyoke. She did work as an upstairs maid and sometimes a babysitter for the children. In two years she left for Toronto to join her two sisters who had also made their journeys away from Scotland and their pasts in search of new and different futures.
The boy landed at Ellis Island with his mother and three brothers. Shortly after arriving they were separated. His mother and his baby brother were taken away. He and his two brothers were left to fend for themselves not knowing what would happen next. In six weeks they were all on another boat returning to Blythe, England. They had been refused entry into the land of golden streets and pots of gold. The mother was found to have TB and denied entrance.
Once again the five of them return to the lowest decks of a ship. No happiness was in their hearts or on their minds any more. Their souls were darkened and saddened. They were going home. They were on a journey they did not want to take.
Within a short time after returning home the mother died. At her death bed the young boy, now even more a man before his time, prayed to God that he and his brothers not be separated. His young heart in an already too old body was broken. Within a few days the four boys were separated among relatives who would raise them: cousins, aunts and uncles. The father was not there. He worked as an engineer or a mechanic on ships and was rarely home, not even for his wife’s funeral.
When the boy was 16, his father and he once again boarded a passenger ship headed for America. They were going to McKeesport, Pennsylvania where the father had set up a home with his new wife and her children and would have each of his sons join him when they were old enough to work in their new land. The older brothers did join them in a couple years each. The baby, the youngest brother, did not join them until he brought his German war bride with him to live in the United States in 1949.
Our young traveler had taken two separate journeys to America. One filled with hope in his young heart. One probably filled with doubt and pain from his broken much older heart. He never returned to England though he earned enough money to afford it in his life. For him, England possessed only painful memories. His pain probably created anger which turned into determination to make something out of his life so no sons or daughters of his would ever have to experience the journeys he had.
These two young people traveled their journeys so that I might travel my own. They were my parents.
To these two people, who I hardly knew when they were alive, at least consciously, Johnann Coleman and James Eric Black, I gratefully devote the stories and messages of this book.
What journeys were taken so that yours could happen?
What journeys were bravely taken to make yours possible?
Imagine you are in the steerage section, the lowest deck on the Queen Mary, like scenes from the movie about the Titantic. You are mixed in with the very poor Irish, German, Slavic, Greek, Russian people, the peasants from many different countries, who have left everything they have known, left their families, their towns, their cultures. They have all left to find their own pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in America that they have heard so much about for so long.
To your left is a very old 16 year old girl, who has had to become a woman before she was done being a child. She is the 5th daughter of a linoleum factory worker and sister of 4 brothers and 4 sisters. She has left her two room home in a slum area of Kirkcaldy, a small town located across the Firth of Fourth from Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, a country of poor yet very proud people. She has begun her journey to America and her new life alone.
What waits for her across the Atlantic? A wealthy family who has agreed to sponsor her in exchange for her working for them for two years in their home in Holyoke, Massachusetts. She has contracted herself to be an indentured servant in exchange for passage to America plus room and board.
She would no longer play in the streets of Kirkcaldy, the town she loved, the town where she played tennis with friends and her sisters until nearly 11:00 pm many summer nights under the glow of the Northern Lights. She would not finish school with her classmates. She would not see her home again for nearly 40 years nor most of her family. Two of her sisters would also make the same journey but to Canada. One would stay there and live her new life in Toronto. The other would begin in Toronto then later move onto Detroit, where our traveler would meet up with her again two years later.
What is she thinking tonight? Is her heart filled with tears of sadness? Is her mind filled with the excitement of the journey she has chosen for herself? Is her soul filled with a passion for adventure?
To your right is a young boy by age but already a man. He has already worked over two years as a cart boy in the coal mines of Blythe, England, his birthplace. He’s 14 and is traveling with his mother and three brothers: 12, 10 and a baby less than 1. They have left their homeland to join her husband, their father in America to begin their new life in search of their pot at the end of the rainbow. They have left their loving families, their friends and neighbors, their town, country and culture, their proud history. He has not finished school either. But that is not important now. What is important is to leave the depression, the poverty, the pain that lies behind them and to start life over together.
What was it like for either of them to stand on the deck in the open air as they crossed the mighty Atlantic Ocean traveling towards their unclear dreams? Did they play with the children from all the other lands? Did they laugh, sing, skip and run? Did they stand, shivering, shoulders drooped from the wait of the sadness they each felt? Were they scared? Frightened by their journeys?
The girl ended up in Holyoke. She did work as an upstairs maid and sometimes a babysitter for the children. In two years she left for Toronto to join her two sisters who had also made their journeys away from Scotland and their pasts in search of new and different futures.
The boy landed at Ellis Island with his mother and three brothers. Shortly after arriving they were separated. His mother and his baby brother were taken away. He and his two brothers were left to fend for themselves not knowing what would happen next. In six weeks they were all on another boat returning to Blythe, England. They had been refused entry into the land of golden streets and pots of gold. The mother was found to have TB and denied entrance.
Once again the five of them return to the lowest decks of a ship. No happiness was in their hearts or on their minds any more. Their souls were darkened and saddened. They were going home. They were on a journey they did not want to take.
Within a short time after returning home the mother died. At her death bed the young boy, now even more a man before his time, prayed to God that he and his brothers not be separated. His young heart in an already too old body was broken. Within a few days the four boys were separated among relatives who would raise them: cousins, aunts and uncles. The father was not there. He worked as an engineer or a mechanic on ships and was rarely home, not even for his wife’s funeral.
When the boy was 16, his father and he once again boarded a passenger ship headed for America. They were going to McKeesport, Pennsylvania where the father had set up a home with his new wife and her children and would have each of his sons join him when they were old enough to work in their new land. The older brothers did join them in a couple years each. The baby, the youngest brother, did not join them until he brought his German war bride with him to live in the United States in 1949.
Our young traveler had taken two separate journeys to America. One filled with hope in his young heart. One probably filled with doubt and pain from his broken much older heart. He never returned to England though he earned enough money to afford it in his life. For him, England possessed only painful memories. His pain probably created anger which turned into determination to make something out of his life so no sons or daughters of his would ever have to experience the journeys he had.
These two young people traveled their journeys so that I might travel my own. They were my parents.
To these two people, who I hardly knew when they were alive, at least consciously, Johnann Coleman and James Eric Black, I gratefully devote the stories and messages of this book.
my life wandering & Merry
my life wandering & Merry
I believe I have spent too much of my life being “un-me” to be accepted or trying desperately to be accepted by others. I have wanted to be accepted by: neighbor children, classmates, fellow workers, teachers, employers, the very few girl friends I had. Most of the time I have felt that I really wasn’t. I felt tolerated.
Merry was the only one whoever seemed to allow me to be the “real me” or at least somewhat the “real me”.
I fell in love with her. There were times it hurt to be away from her. Some times it hurt very bad. During the first few months we were together, especially the first couple after we first consecrated our relationship from constant kissing, embracing, hugging to sex until we had lived together and experienced our first joint high stress challenges.
Looking back now after 4 years time since she made her choice to end her pain I am no longer sure that “I ever really knew what was inside her heart” nor that she ever really knew “what was really inside mine.” In the beginning and over the first 15 or so years I believe that we each saw glimpses or trusted that we knew what was in each other’s heart.
Eventually as our lives changed. My life changed when my son, Jeff, was killed by a DUI. My life changed when all of my major clients decided to end our projects all within a couple weeks. My life changed when I lost enthusiasm for my work and confidence in my created occupation of speaking and consulting. Merry’s life changed due to all the struggle, strain and stress she put herself through to complete her doctorate and finally pass the psychological licensing exam to become a fully licensed psychologist. I lost my dream. Merry acquired hers. I was in daily pain due mostly to my lost dream and low self confidence or no longer seeing much value in anything I did. Merry became tired, burned out, and began experiencing nearly daily frustration even after “jumping all the dam hurdles” and getting what she wanted.
We no longer laid together just to be together. We no longer just laid on our sofa hugging each other sharing our love, releasing our pains knowing that we were each there to help ease the pains. We were not communicating. Without communication we stopped supporting each other or taking the time to try to understand in order to support.
We suffered. We created pain for each other, more pain than either of us needed or really could handle and still show love. We no longer were actively loving each other. Instead of love we just complacently existed or found fault or felt jabs, stabs and hits that hurt each day. We gradually grew more to accept life, to tolerate degrees of the shit that we threw at each other and we were feeling from our separate lives.
We had separated without consciously noticing it. We were no longer a single, loving, caring, devoted couple. Instead we were two hurting people craving without consciously or openly admitting that we need a hug, a kiss, a caress or simply to be warmly held and loved each day.
We would still do things together. We still went out to dinner or had lunch or breakfast together out. We still went out to the movies and enjoyed most of them. We still enjoyed watching good television shows. We still went to storytelling festivals or programs.
Instead of sharing our daily lives and dreams over a fun meal we just were there, much of the time. Me tolerating that this was what our marriage had become and she expressing over and over faults or bad habits I had, which I probably had had all through our relationship. I became more and more sensitive to the hurtful jabs and she continued to sharpen her corrective sword. Instead of accepting, loving, and enjoying we were tolerating, dealing with or trying to change the other.
Merry had begin exciting, fun, beautiful, sexy and very sexually driven. We enjoyed every time together in the beginning. When the shit hit the fan in our marriage we were two injured, hurting people. I was no longer the fanatic creative dreamer with an unlimited future destined, he thought, for fame and to change the world. Instead I was a lazy loser who no longer really tried and had failed to live up to his promise of always providing and taking care of Merry and all her dreams. Merry was no longer the sexy, sex driven, loving person who would kiss, embrace, hug or roll in the hay at any time. She had become a serious, psychologist, who wanted much more than I could than or would work hard enough to provide. I was not the provider she wanted. She was no longer the loving friend, wife, soul mate, sex kitten that had made my life exciting even during the times of shit from lack of money, high bills, no work or too much work, no respect or recognition or appreciation.
I had helped her through her periods of low self-esteem and self-doubt to when she took complete control over her professional life and proved she was as good as any of the licensed psychologists and was not simply a spiritual, New Agey, off-the-wall therapist or counselor who smiled and loved a lot. She was not there to help me through my depressions or manic to depressive moods to help me win over my self-doubt and ever lowering self confidence. Partially this was true because I no longer shared my concerns, my fears, my ever-growing weaknesses with her. I don’t recall believing I could share them with any one and still maintain any friendships, trust or love. I had allowed myself to become a loser, one who barely survived. I had no more highly motivating dreams, no goals, no desire to give a dam any more.
My doctorate hadn’t proved what I thought it would. I had winged it. I had faked it and still got it. It did not prove I was worthy of it. I hadn’t developed abilities to sell myself or my abilities. I didn’t believe in myself. I saw myself as a fraud, shallow, insignificant, a loser. I had chased after a dream like Winnie the Pooh or Willie Loman without a plan without studying what I was doing or would do if something didn’t go as planned. I had lost so much chasing my dream: my son to a drunk driver, my parents before I was mature enough to want to know they as people and friends, the few friends I had had before, respect for myself, respect for most things and people around me. I was play acting, filling my days with activities. Through some degree of luck I and we did not end up on the street with nothing.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Merry & I Wanderings
What lessons did we learn from our travels together?
What styles did we demonstrate when we traveled?
Why was traveling important in our lives, individually and together?
How were her early travels similar or different from mine?
Merry with Clifford: Europe, Israel, hitchhiking across Europe
Me alone in Europe
Us together in England, Scotland, Wales and France
What patterns were there in our travels?
How might our lessons, patterns or styles help other people individually, in their relationships, in their growths or educations?
Chicago & Detroit 1979 Thanksgiving
Ruby Falls
Tampa 1978
Trinidad & Tobago
Jessica sleeping on floor while we danced
American night at the Hilton
Lallo
wedding-bridge and groom showed up 3 hours later
drive through countryside around the island
workshop with Ruth Noller & Bob Johnston and islanders
the Scarlet Ibis Hotel and the knife
the taxi cab drivers, our driver and the knife
the knife and the chair w/ a glass
England, France, Scotland, Wales
Wales and the little train…riding to the pub in Jaguar
Beatrice Potter
Durham
York
London
Tate Gallery
luncheon on the grass
tiny hotel
Chartres
speaker, Malcolm Miller
grocery and picnic
wandering through the town
Versailles
the grounds
searching for a room
Findhorn
Stratford-on-Avon
Willie’s backyard Mulberry tree
Castle
bicycle ride
saucy faggots and bangers
bicycle to theatre
seeing John
drinking the night away w/ John
buying the ceramic w/ no money
taxi home from Miami
walking Paris
Brighton
boat ride across north Atlantic
Middle Ages town
Coventry
Canterbury
Buffalo and CPSI in Baron von Bus
Falling Waters
Pennsylvannia town, classic architecture
Charleston
aircraft carrier
historic walk
Savannah
bicycles
history center
Mrs Wilkes’
expensive house on anniversary (of something?)
walks along the river
Tybee Island
Savannah Beach
Walks in the woods in Georgia
Panther creek
Unicoi
Anna Ruby Falls
Appallation Trail
Trip to NJ at Christmas
Washington, DC
skating
Steve’s house
Mom’s Home
walking around in Upper Montclair
CPSI Springboard and Ft. Lauderdale “honeymoon” week
Ruth Noller
Cam Barth
Bob ?
LeRoy Schneider
Jonesborough, Tennessee
workshop with Sid Leiberman and Barry Tolkien
Storytelling Festival 3 or 4 years?
SOS Winter Festivals
the snow & Jessica
my convening
SOS
the festivals
the members: Chuck, BJ, Fiona, etc.
the Spring Festival 2 or 3 or more
Tell It on the Mountains
Asheville
the Biltmore House
the Biltmore Village
the shops
the tea room
High Point
Nido Qubein’s workshop on Marketing
New Orleans
my speech
riding the street car on Canal street
walking the river
the riverboat
brunch at Commander’s Palace
dinner on way back from Lafayette
dinner at modern restaurant in quarter
the church square
walking the riverfront development/mall
Augusta
last time with passing the kidney stone
one of the first times at the English Pub
walking the river front
touring the historic district
Brunswick
Jeykll Island
Little Cumberland
Kay’s place
the live crabs
fishing on the ocean
crab trapping
Hunting Island
Beaufort, South Carolina
setting up Baron von Buss
going into town
meeting the architects who had worked with Louis I. Kahn
having drinks at the one architect’s concrete house
the French restaurant with Jessica and Robin
Northeast Georgia trip(s)
Dillard restaurant and town
Eating in the restaurant on the square in Cleveland (?)
??? House, taking own wine
Thanksgiving in Helen
Helen, Georgia
Dahlonega
Cornelia
Ft. ? , Alabama
visiting Jess at Berry
Visiting Jessica at camp
Highlands
playing miniature golf
the waterfalls, walking behind it visiting Jess at camp
Social Circle
Blue Iris
house and buggy ride on her birthday
Small town near there where we ate in the little restaurant
Lafayette
the dinner
Merry shopping w/ Varnado’s wife
Florida
1979
1980 last time
Hurricane and Jean Houston
week with the kids
Tampa
honeymoon on Singer Island
Cortona
Ian and bathroom tour
Delft and mitt slag
Van Gogh museum
hotel w/ tiny, winding stairs
Sienna no Pallio
Venice
Milano
Sorrento
Capri - no trip to Naples
Swiss border
Cologne
Mittleberg
Amsterdam
our day traveling Netherlands
Enthusen
Hoorn
Amsterdam
Rotterdam
Utrecht
town with the towers
Assissi
Pompei
CPSI
1979
1980
1981 Baron von Bus
trying to meet up w/ Brian, Rosalie and kids
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997 Merry’s first seizure
1998 the service, the people
HFMA - 2nd trip to northwestern tip of Florida
Coca Cola owner’s home and gardens
science fair w/ boys and clown makeup
Macon
I believe I have spent too much of my life being “un-me” to be accepted or trying desperately to be accepted by others. I have wanted to be accepted by: neighbor children, classmates, fellow workers, teachers, employers, the very few girl friends I had. Most of the time I have felt that I really wasn’t. I felt tolerated.
Merry was the only one whoever seemed to allow me to be the “real me” or at least somewhat the “real me”.
I fell in love with her. There were times it hurt to be away from her. Some times it hurt very bad. During the first few months we were together, especially the first couple after we first consecrated our relationship from constant kissing, embracing, hugging to sex until we had lived together and experienced our first joint high stress challenges.
Looking back now after 4 years time since she made her choice to end her pain I am no longer sure that “I ever really knew what was inside her heart” nor that she ever really knew “what was really inside mine.” In the beginning and over the first 15 or so years I believe that we each saw glimpses or trusted that we knew what was in each other’s heart.
Eventually as our lives changed. My life changed when my son, Jeff, was killed by a DUI. My life changed when all of my major clients decided to end our projects all within a couple weeks. My life changed when I lost enthusiasm for my work and confidence in my created occupation of speaking and consulting. Merry’s life changed due to all the struggle, strain and stress she put herself through to complete her doctorate and finally pass the psychological licensing exam to become a fully licensed psychologist. I lost my dream. Merry acquired hers. I was in daily pain due mostly to my lost dream and low self confidence or no longer seeing much value in anything I did. Merry became tired, burned out, and began experiencing nearly daily frustration even after “jumping all the dam hurdles” and getting what she wanted.
We no longer laid together just to be together. We no longer just laid on our sofa hugging each other sharing our love, releasing our pains knowing that we were each there to help ease the pains. We were not communicating. Without communication we stopped supporting each other or taking the time to try to understand in order to support.
We suffered. We created pain for each other, more pain than either of us needed or really could handle and still show love. We no longer were actively loving each other. Instead of love we just complacently existed or found fault or felt jabs, stabs and hits that hurt each day. We gradually grew more to accept life, to tolerate degrees of the shit that we threw at each other and we were feeling from our separate lives.
We had separated without consciously noticing it. We were no longer a single, loving, caring, devoted couple. Instead we were two hurting people craving without consciously or openly admitting that we need a hug, a kiss, a caress or simply to be warmly held and loved each day.
We would still do things together. We still went out to dinner or had lunch or breakfast together out. We still went out to the movies and enjoyed most of them. We still enjoyed watching good television shows. We still went to storytelling festivals or programs.
Instead of sharing our daily lives and dreams over a fun meal we just were there, much of the time. Me tolerating that this was what our marriage had become and she expressing over and over faults or bad habits I had, which I probably had had all through our relationship. I became more and more sensitive to the hurtful jabs and she continued to sharpen her corrective sword. Instead of accepting, loving, and enjoying we were tolerating, dealing with or trying to change the other.
Merry had begin exciting, fun, beautiful, sexy and very sexually driven. We enjoyed every time together in the beginning. When the shit hit the fan in our marriage we were two injured, hurting people. I was no longer the fanatic creative dreamer with an unlimited future destined, he thought, for fame and to change the world. Instead I was a lazy loser who no longer really tried and had failed to live up to his promise of always providing and taking care of Merry and all her dreams. Merry was no longer the sexy, sex driven, loving person who would kiss, embrace, hug or roll in the hay at any time. She had become a serious, psychologist, who wanted much more than I could than or would work hard enough to provide. I was not the provider she wanted. She was no longer the loving friend, wife, soul mate, sex kitten that had made my life exciting even during the times of shit from lack of money, high bills, no work or too much work, no respect or recognition or appreciation.
I had helped her through her periods of low self-esteem and self-doubt to when she took complete control over her professional life and proved she was as good as any of the licensed psychologists and was not simply a spiritual, New Agey, off-the-wall therapist or counselor who smiled and loved a lot. She was not there to help me through my depressions or manic to depressive moods to help me win over my self-doubt and ever lowering self confidence. Partially this was true because I no longer shared my concerns, my fears, my ever-growing weaknesses with her. I don’t recall believing I could share them with any one and still maintain any friendships, trust or love. I had allowed myself to become a loser, one who barely survived. I had no more highly motivating dreams, no goals, no desire to give a dam any more.
My doctorate hadn’t proved what I thought it would. I had winged it. I had faked it and still got it. It did not prove I was worthy of it. I hadn’t developed abilities to sell myself or my abilities. I didn’t believe in myself. I saw myself as a fraud, shallow, insignificant, a loser. I had chased after a dream like Winnie the Pooh or Willie Loman without a plan without studying what I was doing or would do if something didn’t go as planned. I had lost so much chasing my dream: my son to a drunk driver, my parents before I was mature enough to want to know they as people and friends, the few friends I had had before, respect for myself, respect for most things and people around me. I was play acting, filling my days with activities. Through some degree of luck I and we did not end up on the street with nothing.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Merry & I Wanderings
What lessons did we learn from our travels together?
What styles did we demonstrate when we traveled?
Why was traveling important in our lives, individually and together?
How were her early travels similar or different from mine?
Merry with Clifford: Europe, Israel, hitchhiking across Europe
Me alone in Europe
Us together in England, Scotland, Wales and France
What patterns were there in our travels?
How might our lessons, patterns or styles help other people individually, in their relationships, in their growths or educations?
Chicago & Detroit 1979 Thanksgiving
Ruby Falls
Tampa 1978
Trinidad & Tobago
Jessica sleeping on floor while we danced
American night at the Hilton
Lallo
wedding-bridge and groom showed up 3 hours later
drive through countryside around the island
workshop with Ruth Noller & Bob Johnston and islanders
the Scarlet Ibis Hotel and the knife
the taxi cab drivers, our driver and the knife
the knife and the chair w/ a glass
England, France, Scotland, Wales
Wales and the little train…riding to the pub in Jaguar
Beatrice Potter
Durham
York
London
Tate Gallery
luncheon on the grass
tiny hotel
Chartres
speaker, Malcolm Miller
grocery and picnic
wandering through the town
Versailles
the grounds
searching for a room
Findhorn
Stratford-on-Avon
Willie’s backyard Mulberry tree
Castle
bicycle ride
saucy faggots and bangers
bicycle to theatre
seeing John
drinking the night away w/ John
buying the ceramic w/ no money
taxi home from Miami
walking Paris
Brighton
boat ride across north Atlantic
Middle Ages town
Coventry
Canterbury
Buffalo and CPSI in Baron von Bus
Falling Waters
Pennsylvannia town, classic architecture
Charleston
aircraft carrier
historic walk
Savannah
bicycles
history center
Mrs Wilkes’
expensive house on anniversary (of something?)
walks along the river
Tybee Island
Savannah Beach
Walks in the woods in Georgia
Panther creek
Unicoi
Anna Ruby Falls
Appallation Trail
Trip to NJ at Christmas
Washington, DC
skating
Steve’s house
Mom’s Home
walking around in Upper Montclair
CPSI Springboard and Ft. Lauderdale “honeymoon” week
Ruth Noller
Cam Barth
Bob ?
LeRoy Schneider
Jonesborough, Tennessee
workshop with Sid Leiberman and Barry Tolkien
Storytelling Festival 3 or 4 years?
SOS Winter Festivals
the snow & Jessica
my convening
SOS
the festivals
the members: Chuck, BJ, Fiona, etc.
the Spring Festival 2 or 3 or more
Tell It on the Mountains
Asheville
the Biltmore House
the Biltmore Village
the shops
the tea room
High Point
Nido Qubein’s workshop on Marketing
New Orleans
my speech
riding the street car on Canal street
walking the river
the riverboat
brunch at Commander’s Palace
dinner on way back from Lafayette
dinner at modern restaurant in quarter
the church square
walking the riverfront development/mall
Augusta
last time with passing the kidney stone
one of the first times at the English Pub
walking the river front
touring the historic district
Brunswick
Jeykll Island
Little Cumberland
Kay’s place
the live crabs
fishing on the ocean
crab trapping
Hunting Island
Beaufort, South Carolina
setting up Baron von Buss
going into town
meeting the architects who had worked with Louis I. Kahn
having drinks at the one architect’s concrete house
the French restaurant with Jessica and Robin
Northeast Georgia trip(s)
Dillard restaurant and town
Eating in the restaurant on the square in Cleveland (?)
??? House, taking own wine
Thanksgiving in Helen
Helen, Georgia
Dahlonega
Cornelia
Ft. ? , Alabama
visiting Jess at Berry
Visiting Jessica at camp
Highlands
playing miniature golf
the waterfalls, walking behind it visiting Jess at camp
Social Circle
Blue Iris
house and buggy ride on her birthday
Small town near there where we ate in the little restaurant
Lafayette
the dinner
Merry shopping w/ Varnado’s wife
Florida
1979
1980 last time
Hurricane and Jean Houston
week with the kids
Tampa
honeymoon on Singer Island
Cortona
Ian and bathroom tour
Delft and mitt slag
Van Gogh museum
hotel w/ tiny, winding stairs
Sienna no Pallio
Venice
Milano
Sorrento
Capri - no trip to Naples
Swiss border
Cologne
Mittleberg
Amsterdam
our day traveling Netherlands
Enthusen
Hoorn
Amsterdam
Rotterdam
Utrecht
town with the towers
Assissi
Pompei
CPSI
1979
1980
1981 Baron von Bus
trying to meet up w/ Brian, Rosalie and kids
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997 Merry’s first seizure
1998 the service, the people
HFMA - 2nd trip to northwestern tip of Florida
Coca Cola owner’s home and gardens
science fair w/ boys and clown makeup
Macon
Life Is a Creative Journey, If You Choose It To Be
Life Is a Creative Journey, If You Choose It To Be
When you wake in the morning how much of your life is your own choice each day?
Many motivational speakers no matter their background saying….it is all your choice. That is true in principle yet is it what people truly do?
If we are truly financially independent most of our lives can probably become our own choices. If we accept living very simply most of our lives can be the result of our own choices.
In reality we do not make all the decisions or make all the choices. Some choices will and are made by others: our culture, government, family, friends, professions, occupations, employers, employees, All of these make some of the choices that impact and are part of our lives.
If we are married our spouses make many of the choices. This can be good or painful.
I have been married twice. The first time choices that involved my wife and family mostly were made by my wife. I accepted them, expected them and mostly lived with them. That is what I thought a good husband did. During my much longer second marriage my late wife and I made most of the decisions jointly or accepted that when one of two of us did not accept the other’s choice they could make another if it did not prevent the other from making their choice. An example would be going to a particular party or gathering or meeting. We agreed not to force each other into following our choice if they did not, most of the time.
As an employee over 20 years I generally accepted, expected and lived with most of the choices that were made by my employers and supervisors. If I didn’t I moved on. When I didn’t accept or abide by their choices often enough I was invited to move on to other employment (fired, downsized, laid off).
As an independent consultant, self-emplorer, I have generally made my own choices and/or abided by my client choices. When I could not abide by a client’s choice we ended our relationship or contract.
Life is a choice.
Living is a choice.
Working together or with a particular person or company ought to be a choice.
Do we have obligations? Yes. I happen to believe that the obligations ought to be comfortable results of the choices we make, therefore not really obligations.
Obligation…definition
When you wake in the morning how much of your life is your own choice each day?
Many motivational speakers no matter their background saying….it is all your choice. That is true in principle yet is it what people truly do?
If we are truly financially independent most of our lives can probably become our own choices. If we accept living very simply most of our lives can be the result of our own choices.
In reality we do not make all the decisions or make all the choices. Some choices will and are made by others: our culture, government, family, friends, professions, occupations, employers, employees, All of these make some of the choices that impact and are part of our lives.
If we are married our spouses make many of the choices. This can be good or painful.
I have been married twice. The first time choices that involved my wife and family mostly were made by my wife. I accepted them, expected them and mostly lived with them. That is what I thought a good husband did. During my much longer second marriage my late wife and I made most of the decisions jointly or accepted that when one of two of us did not accept the other’s choice they could make another if it did not prevent the other from making their choice. An example would be going to a particular party or gathering or meeting. We agreed not to force each other into following our choice if they did not, most of the time.
As an employee over 20 years I generally accepted, expected and lived with most of the choices that were made by my employers and supervisors. If I didn’t I moved on. When I didn’t accept or abide by their choices often enough I was invited to move on to other employment (fired, downsized, laid off).
As an independent consultant, self-emplorer, I have generally made my own choices and/or abided by my client choices. When I could not abide by a client’s choice we ended our relationship or contract.
Life is a choice.
Living is a choice.
Working together or with a particular person or company ought to be a choice.
Do we have obligations? Yes. I happen to believe that the obligations ought to be comfortable results of the choices we make, therefore not really obligations.
Obligation…definition
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