Time and Achievement

I love reading the schedules well-known creative people have written down over time; I then try to find similarities and patterns to their life and work balances.  Some types of jobs and lives lend themselves to more routine habits, others seem random and chaotic, yet produce results.  Below is a sampling of schedules, quotes about work habits, etc.  Looking at them, several things become apparent:

• Achievements are not the result of luck - quite the opposite in many cases.  Creative people often face the worst kind of misfortunes - poverty, illnesses, personal tragedy, and yet keep producing.  Work as therapy?  Maybe.  Uncontrollable compulsion to create?  Probably, to some degree.  But all extend effort in the service of their art, and that means...
• Sacrifices must be made - Most, if not all, creative endeavors are solo endeavors.  Even in so-called teamwork, there's usually individuals creating individually and then stitching together the pieces collectively.  Not in all cases, of course, but generally speaking it seems creation and solitude go together.  Therefore, there has to be a sacrifice of time, interactions with friends, and other possibilities.  

Let's see how others do it:

Ben Franklin's Daily Schedule (From the Beanstalk Foundation.org):

Ben's schedule seems congenial enough, but an analysis reveals just how much time Ben devoted to effort, if not literal work.  The Work columns add up to eight hours, and then there are subtle things that indicate additional activity:  "prosecute the the present study," is not the same as chill in front of the TV,  and a two-hour lunch seems pretty sweet, until you realize "overlook my accounts" is not usually conducive to a worry-free meal.  For hours in the evening for "Supper. Music or diversion, or conversation." sound relaxing enough.  What does "Put things in their places" include?  It also seems as if "Examination of the day," is going to involve some mental effort, so maybe Ben's free time isn't as free as we might think.  Seven hours of sleep and right back at it.

RJ Andrews at Info We Trust, applied his engineering talents to create an interesting "wheel of time" diagram showing how a sample of creative people use their time.  First, the key, or legend, to the diagrams:

How it works:

Here's a larger diagram showing a large selection of creative people going about their daily routines.

Andrews' conclusions from his work:

Comparing the routines of these creatives is fascinating. Some work in the early morning, some work better late at night. Many begin their day with coffee and use tobacco and alcohol. Considering that our modern concept of exercise was not developed until the mid-20th century, it is fascinating how many of these people spent their afternoons taking vigorous walks.

There are hundreds, maybe thousands, more.  Probably the main point to leave with is there is not a magic time, place, or situation in which to be creative.  Perfectionists such as myself must always battle the desire to wait until everything in our lives line up like some mystical formation of stars and planets before beginning some great effort.  It's creation that forms the schedule, not the other way around.  E.B. White (from the great site Brain Pickings) said it best:

A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.

How I Got This Way

I'm not a big fan of talking about myself, but I have been getting quite a few questions lately about how I lost so much weight (over 50 pounds as of today, from about 255 - I didn't have the heart to weigh myself at my heaviest -  to 205) and so quickly (around six months).  At 6 feet in height, I am still a little over - my target is 180.  I will get there, I just need to stay focused.  So how did I make this change?  Here's how:

• I stopped lying to myself - I kept looking in the mirror and saying, "not too bad," or when I didn't eat well, I would say, "I'll start tomorrow..." It was all bullshit, and my awakening came when I saw a picture of myself, old and fat, and I couldn't lie to myself anymore.  I also had one good friend who called me out on my bullshit constantly and that helped me start looking at all the areas of my life:
• I did a hardcore self-assessment - I tried to be a brutally honest as I could about everything in my life; what relationships in my life were working, and which were not, and how much did I have to do with both situations?  How did I become this way?  Who was I, really?  What were my core values? What essential parts of my personality and tastes had I given up over the years in attempts to please others?  What self-image did I want to have?  What were my goals, and was I really ready to dedicate time, money, sweat and pain to reach those goals?  These are just some the questions I had, along with compiling a long list of shortcomings and taking ownership of those.
• I changed my appearance to match who I wanted to be - This sounds a little silly and vain, but was really essential.  I didn't want to be overweight, and I didn't want to be stereotypically old.  I'm in my fifties, but I looked 20 years older and was very overweight on top of that.  So I dyed my hair and grew a beard - first steps in becoming the person I wanted to be.
• I became a vegetarian - in one visit to the doctor, he basically told me the tests showed everything bad was too high, and everything good was too low.  I had high blood pressure, high bad cholesterol, high glucose readings (on the way to diabetes), etc, and low good cholesterol, etc.  I didn't want to go on medication (although I consented to a low dose of blood pressure medication), but I wanted to avoid the other issues through diet.  Cutting out animal fat and carbs, and reducing dairy (I will eliminate it soon), sugar and processed food made me feel better and more energetic immediately.
• I started taking garcinia carbogia - My parents were in town for a visit, and my mother is a big Dr. Oz fan.  He is a big promoter of garcinia, but I had my doubts.  I read about it online in some real medical journals, and it seemed to have some validity as a natural weight loss method.  I started taking it and it worked.  Don't worry, this isn't some "sell you pills" kind of thing; take or not, it is up to you.  It may not work for you, I don't know.  All I can say is it worked for me and I started dropping weight immediately.
• I started exercising a lot - Because of the weight loss and increased energy, I started looking at exercise programs that would work for me.  We had a mostly-dormant membership to the YMCA that I started using it regularly.  Just a note: at the start, I couldn't do much of anything.  It was actually pretty discouraging, so I just decided to do what I could and just keep at it, and slowly, very slowly, it started getting easier, and it is still getting better.  But I was so discouraged by my lack of fitness that I almost gave up a few times.  My advice is just keep at it even when it seems nothing is happening.  It is very slow, but it does happen.  Just force yourself to go and workout, and find something online or with a trainer or whatever works for you.  Just-keep-at-it!
• Grace and forgiveness - I routinely fail at all of the above.  Hell, some days I forget to take the blood pressure medicine!  But I learned to forgive myself while not excusing myself.  I may say, "I didn't take garcinia today and I felt especially lazy and skipped the gym, so it happened."  I don't beat myself up, but I also know I have to correct this if I want to reach my goals, so no excuses - I made a poor decision, so now its time to get focused and back on track.
• Lastly, do it for you, and you alone - A lot of these "I lost weight" kind of things talk about the need for support, and while support through these changes is nice, what if you don't have any?  Or even people trying to hold you back (many people fear change in others - it can convict them about their own lifestyle choices).  I say screw them, and screw the need for support.  You have to do this for you, and you have to realize that you might lose people you thought of as friends along the way.  Screw them as well; if they were your friends that would be with you all the way, and not be an anchor in your life.  You'll find the right people for the new you along the way.

So that's it.  It has been hard and painful, both physically and emotionally.  Nothing worthwhile is consequence-free; I've had to be more authentic with myself and other people in my life, and it hasn't always been smooth, to put it mildly.  But the rewards have been worth the pain - I'm healthier than I have been in 25 years, I have a better relationship with others and, in some ways, I feel as if I have been set free from a physical and mental prison of my own making.  I still have a long way to go, but I know without doubt that I will reach my goals.  Believe me, there is nothing special about me, so you can reach your goals as well, just stay committed!

Good Luck - here are some websites I find especially helpful in keeping me focused and moving forward:

• Vegetarian Times
• Mind Body Green
• Psychology Today

Sleepy Hollow

It is hard to feel much more than ambiguity toward the new television program Sleepy Hollow.  It is a modern-day version of the Washington Irving story - except it bares no resemblance to the original tale other than some character names.  First of all,  Icabod Crane 1.0 was not a charming Brit  with flowing locks and a manly scruff of beard.  The Irving character was devoid of any charm whatsoever:

He was tall and exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, and feet that might have served for shovels. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weathercock perched upon his spindle neck, to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.

Okay, I guess 18th century protagonists needed less in the way of  chiseled good looks.  Icabod's character deficiencies go beyond the physical. He courts the local Bachelorette with an eye to greedily acquiring her considerable inheritance of property and turning it into cold cash.  Furthermore, he proves to be a coward, fleeing in fear from the apparition of the Headless Horseman,

The television series upgrades poor Icabod's looks and motivations while creating a mashup with Irving's other famous tale, Rip Van Winkle.  So, now dreamboat Crane is a Brit spying for George Washington who is mortally wounded after removing the Horseman's head, and his witch wife Katrina puts a spell on him that makes him sleep for 240 years.  Now awake, this Revolutionary War Mulder teams up with a modern Scully to go ghostbusting.

Story needs some clarity, but the narrative is interesting and the cinematography is properly creepy, so it may be worth watching someday.  But I pity those people who pick up the book hoping for a romantic stranger and who encounter "a scarecrow eloped from a cornfield."

San Antonio plans one of the nation's first bookless libraries

Good bye, serendipity.

Just this month I unpacked my late father-in-law's set of World Book Encyclopedias and put them on my home bookshelf, creating a row of slightly worn red and gold books.  I'm not sure the publication date of this set, but I guess they pre-date the moon landing.

That is fine; out of date doesn't mean inaccurate - I'm pretty sure "The Odyssey" is still attributed to Homer (whomever he or she might have been) and Micheangelo still gets credit for the statue of David.  It was these types of basic facts that made encyclopedias indispensable in every middle class home when I was growing up.

I know my own parents went on a payment plan to buy our own set of Colliers, and boy, was that money well-spent!  I and my three siblings spent countless hours pouring through the pages of the dozen or so volumes working on history, biology, and English reports.

But I also found them a source of entertainment as well.  As a young comic book fan, I soon made the link between superhero and the mythological heroes and monsters of old.  So while exporting the connection between the Flash and Hermes,I would also find myself stumbling across something else interesting in a nearby entry - maybe the Hermitage next to Hermes, and off I would go and soon find myself in the midst of the War of 1812.

Library shelves worked the same sort of serendipity, especially given the quirky (to the layman, at least) nature of the Dewey Decimal System. How many times I have plucked a volume from the shelf above or below mt intended book and thought, " hey, I've heard of this book - maybe I'll give ia a try."

It's that sort of exploration that will come to an end when the story linked below becomes common place,   and that will be a great loss indeed.


San Antonio plans one of the nation's first bookless libraries

Searching for the Magic Key

It comes as a surprise to no one that newspapers have long been in trouble. Some would say the format of printing yesterday's news on low quality paper as cheaply as possible began to fade with the advent of radio.  Newspapers began countering the immediacy of radio (how could they compete with Edward R. Murrow announcing "This is London..." as blitzkrieg bombs rained down?) with long, in-depth pieces and a claim to being a daily offering to the nation's historical record.

However, as a report in the Columbia Journalism Review points out, newspapers are having a hard time finding the magic key to the financial maze in which they find themselves.  It seems our Internet generation is disinterested in long-form journalism, and, other than a sprinkling of librarians and historians, not very interested in the historical record.  As the article states:

And it’s pretty to shocking to see what’s become of the time-honored form since the newspaper industry’s great unraveling started a decade ago. 

The Los Angeles Times, for instance, published 256 stories longer than 2,000 words last year, compared to 1,776 in 2003—a drop of 86 percent, according to searches of the Factiva database. The Washington Post published 1,378 stories over 2,000 words last year, about half as many as 2003 when it published 2,755. The Wall Street Journal, which pioneered the longform narrative in American newspapers, published 35 percent fewer stories over 2,000 words last year from a decade ago, 468 from 721.

Click here for the rest of the (relatively brief) article from CJR

Poetry and the Brain

What sort of reading actually stimulates brain activity, according to a recent study? Hint: Vampires are not involved...
This is your brain on verse (via Arts & Letters Daily)