Sloan Creative

I have found, in any project that is important, but not urgent (meaning any project that really moves the action forward in a creative way rather than just being reactive) requires an almost brutal hacking out of time for its pursuit.

Mom is writing her memoirs, in a space I have hacked out for her.

We are encouraging her to keep writing in her own, quirky, exactingly-detailed way and she is worried about making it palatable to a general audience. Her writing style captures so much of her personality it would be unthinkable to wash HER out of the writing by watering it down.

Given that the time is precious (as all our time is) and she is unique in her experience and personality, I think a machete might be needed for both the time and the emotional space, the self-trust, to say what only she can say, exactly as she would naturally, whimsically, say it.

I was reminded of some lines in Emerson’s Self-Reliance:

• Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.
• Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim.

Maybe we are all more like Mom than we realize.Go forth, hack out a place for your Whim.

I came across this wonderful word in Nietzsche’s, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life.

Quisquilia is Latin for “odds and ends”.

Here is a drawing from this morning. It is of a little house with someone standing outside holding a butterfly with a bird flying overhead. What about the cats? They are just up there for decoration.

Peter says, “This is just a little website to make people want to draw more.”

I set up a wiki for our family history project.

I invite viewers and any contributions. Eventually, we hope to create a print version from the information we collect here.

• How to find right livelihood after selling a 12 year business.
• Is Emerson right about history? “… there is properly no history; only biography.” “All that Shakespeare says of the King, yonder slip of a boy that reads in the corner feels to be true of himself. We sympathize and the great moments of history, in the great discoveries, the great resistances, the great propensities of man; — because there law was enacted, the sea was searched, the land was found, or the blow was struck for us, as we ourselves in that place would have done or applauded.”
• How ideas roll and distort across geography and time. I’m especially interested in how the ideas of the Enlightenment, Nietzsche, and Karl Marx rolled across Europe into Hungary, forcing my family from the Hernad valley, near Miskolc, Hungary, in which they had lived for over 800 years.
• I’m curious about democracy and education and the manipulation of masses that has led to so much destruction and waste in the last hundred years. Even longer if you count the Crusades. Of course, the subject is extremely timely both here in the United States with so much manipulation apparent from the current administration and in Hungary with the recent admissions of manipulation of the elections and lies.
• How do mass movements start? Eric Hoffer says lack of self respect is a contributing factor.
• Reading the tea leaves of current events and the swirling historical forces arranging them to see if we are going to be engulfed by another era of tragedy as our grandparents were. Fanaticism unleashed by inequality and systemic failure in the age of Revolution and the Great Depression.

My friend Molly Gordon has found success by writing what is true for her and letting coaching clients who resonate with that find her on the web.

I’ve always come from a much more proactive and hands-on selling culture, but I’m dipping my toe into these waters.

Here are a few early attempts at writing on small business marketing topics.

I wrote this in response to potential clients and who felt that his outdated, a professional website was OK for now.

Sometimes, what we leave out, thinking no one is looking, speaks volumes. Volumes we might not want spoken about us.

Read more here: http://www.scg411.com/articles/EttuBrutus.pdf

Emerson, Self-Reliance

Emerson, History

Tuchman, The Guns of August

Fermore, A Time of Gifts

Lendvai, The Hungarians

Jefferson, Letters

Nietzsche, on the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life

“Permission to contradict, Sir!”

 Somehow, over the years, I’ve been acculturated to value consistency.

I was not conscious of it until last night when I was reading Emerson’s essay, “Self-Reliance”:

 ”A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.  With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.  … To Be Great is to be misunderstood.”

Let the inconsistency and misunderstanding begin! 

Greatness of soul?  Well, history will decide.