I’m at a mid-day break between two projects; an interlude, an intermission; and a concept has been bubbling for a day or two in my head that I want to kind of grab and wrangle and deconstruct and see if I can make some sense out of it.

The concept is “the muse”.  A (the?) source of inspiration.  I’m not sure if the definite or indefinite article is appropriate, because I’m not sure if there can be more than one source active at any one time.  Can creativity spring forth from two foreheads simultaneously?  I’m not sure.  People talk about the creative spark, singular, definite article; it’s never “sparks.”  Are we snipers, bringing ideas down to the ground with a single shot; or machine gunners, unloading everything we have during the creative impulse?

I’m pretty sure I’m a sniper.

Who’s your muse?  Who is mine?  I get struck by ideas and inspiration from a lot of angles, but at any given point I get enveloped by a single idea, a single source, a single Other, a single Muse; and it’s very clear to me what the source is, and the source is intertwined with my output in ways that are complex and hard to tease apart.  I described this to a friend last night – I like to open my mouth and suck the inspiration out of the air; it sort of floats around, ready to be commandeered, shaped, molded, and repurposed; and 99% of the time, the source – the muse – is unaware of the inspirational theft.  Or perhaps I should say “borrowing.”  It’s not theft because I don’t think inspiration is anywhere near a zero-sum game, and my experience working with startup types here in Seattle has convinced me of exactly the opposite: that inspiration, shared, drives even more inspiration in those around you; that collaboration is recursively fulfilling; that when I play Muse to you and you play Muse to me, we have created something spectacular and otherworldly.

By implication – and I’m not sure if this is true or not, but bear with me – the solo Muse, the unheralded, unacknowledged Source – is sort of a one-legged racer.  Without the sharing, the collaboration, the close and intimate exchange, the batting-back-and-forth of ideas, you’re not really living as deep and resourcefully as you could be.

But then – aha, we’re starting to get to the heart of that tickle in my brain from earlier – you need to find a way to find a Muse, or Muses, plural; and acknowledge it, out it, make it visible, and that is a hard thing.  If someone inspires you, there’s not a great framework in place for you to say “You inspire me,” without seeming odd or archaic or just plain weird.  Yet, each of us goes through the day being more or less inspired, so why not?

Inspiration is a bad fit for the language we normally use for relationships: “acquaintance”, “friend”, “lover”, “partner”.  These terms all refer to the degree of physical and emotional intimacy we share with someone; but in some ways, inspiring, and being inspired by, someone else can be a VERY intimate thing, even though no physical intimacy takes place.  “Muse” thus is orthogonal, odd, and a troublesome concept to try to shoehorn in.

Yet, there it is.  It exists.  It means we (I) have to find a way to seek out and acknowledge those that inspire me, and share, and not feel awkward.  So as I would be; so as I must therefore do.

Fascinated this morning by the concept of “locus” (plural: loci), which is Latin for “place”.  Unlike the English word “place”,  however, there’s an element of centrality, of axis-ish-ness, of focusing-on and revolving-around, that I think of when I think of locus.  Like an asteroid, you circle around your loci, observing, safe and secure in the closeness; sometimes perhaps pulled in by impulse or by natural forces to be present with the locus, the thing-focused-on.

Further: locus implies importance.  Arbitrary blips on one’s journey are not loci; they’re blips.  Gas stations, speed traps, sandy turnouts where you change your flats; none of these are the point of the journey.  The places in your life that have meaning to you, that you repeatedly look to for comfort, for joy, for home-ness; these are loci. The family cabin waiting at the end of your two-day road trip?  That’s a locus.

I like to think of locus as having both physical and virtual meanings.  Physical places are fine, but we spend far more time journeying to other places, or pseudo-places, in our heads.  Right at the moment I’m in a coffee shop in Seattle, sipping a too-wet cappuccino, but my head is elsewhere – a different locus has caught me up, captured my focus, and drawn my attention.  I’ve journeyed, but only virtually.  I’m focusing, which is the important thing about loci.  They are things you like/want/need to focus on.

Interesting thought: is it possible to be fully present in one place, one important place, one locus, even if your physical body – meatspace me – is elsewhere?  I’m not sure.  I don’t think so.  Fully present, appropriately defined, implies ALL present – and body is one-half of our presence.  Virtual travel is nice, but it’s complemented by physical travel.

More later.

Last night something pretty awesome happened.  I’m at a little pub in Madrona, doing some work, a little PowerShell here, a little MySQL there, dinking around, drinking a delicious Radeberger Pilsner (or two).

A guy sits down.  We strike up a conversation.  His name’s Mark.  We talk coding, data, academia, girls, sociology, books.  Turns out he’s a big sci-fi fan.  When I was younger, sci-fi was crack berries with crack sugar.  Lately?  Not so much.  Time, constraints, pressure, age, the moronic creeping cynical simmering in disappointing reality, whatever.  But hey, I WAS there.  I had that moment.  I read every word that Robert Heinlein ever published.  I was a grade-A sci-fi nerd.  At one point.

So when this guy – Mark – tells me that there’s this author, China Miéville, has written THE BEST sci-fi book ever, my ears perk up.  I mean, I’m not that jaded that I can’t appreciate somebody else’s infectious enthusiasm, and in fact I’ve sort of made it my mission to seek out people for whom that mode – that mental approach – is the default one.  Happy, motivated, committed, passionate people, doing things they love.  It’s contagious.  Life-affirming.  Makes you think that there’s more in the deck than just the cards you’ve been dealt.

So he goes out for a smoke, I hit the head, and when he comes back he drops a book on the bar next to me.  China Miéville – Perdido Street Station.  It’s worn – “from loaning it out,” he says.  “Like I’m doing now.”  Turns out he lives next door and he went and got the book to loan it to me.  We just met like 45 minutes ago.  He doesn’t seem to be too concerned that he’ll get it back.  Crazy generous.  I take his e-mail address and tell him next time I’m in Madrona I’ll e-mail him and we’ll have a beer and talk sci-fi and China Miéville.

My faith in humanity took a long time to develop, because I wasn’t looking for it.  I carried around assumptions for most of my life about quote-unquote “other people”, and it has only been in the last couple years – well, precisely, since January 28, 2008 – that I’ve realized how awesome people can be.  It’s been incredible to tap into that, to open myself up to that, to share and collaborate and banter and brainstorm and reflect with other people who have a lot of the same interests, or even barring that, a lot of the same thinking about the positive energy that people can give each other.

Along the way?  Road bumps.  Massive ones, in some cases.  I’ve changed.  Some people don’t like change.  I used to be like that – I understand.  However, you put Me, Several Years Ago, next to Me, Now, and I want to beat that first Me like a piñata for being so dumb and clueless about people, humanity, whatever.

And then this random nice guy loans me a book and reconfirms what I’ve learned about people.  And the cool part is that he’s not unique.  Every day, if I look around in the right way, I see positive things.

It’s pretty cool.

Here’s a picture I snapped halfway through my run around Discovery Park this afternoon:

I’m really lucky.  Lucky to live in a wonderful place; lucky to have my health and fitness; lucky to have readers who will appreciate a view like this.

Woe is deceptive.  It tries its best to isolate you; to distract you from the many wonderful things going on right in front of your eyes; blinds you as to all the opportunities around you – stimulating, engaging, or otherwise.

Defy woe.  Defy inertia.  Defy endless rationalization.  Defy your rut(s), whatever they might be.  Let go.  Be present.  Stop saying “no” and learn how to say “yes”.  Life awaits.

Sitting at Voxx coffee, which is one my favorite few coffee shops in Seattle,  and recognizing oh-so-well the blind aimless blundering that made up the bulk of my life in 2008-2009.  Remember Scooby-Doo?  One of the kids’ tricks was to throw something – a blanket, a bucket, a barrel – over the head of the bad guy, and he’d go running around stumbling into posts and walls while the kids made their hasty escape.

I feel like that guy.  In retrospect! Right at the moment my head is less enveloped in fog and I can see forward and backward with a clarity I didn’t have at the time.  I suppose that’s human nature, to be hyper-focused on the critical moment and lose some perspective, only to recognize later the narrow tunnel through which one journeyed.

I now walk with my head up, looking forward, and finding lots of interesting life out there to observe and interact with.  Professionally, personally, and in that gray area between the two that I predict will make up more and more of our collective shared space in the years to come.  Work friends who are actually friends, and friend friends who you occasionally get together and work with.  Partners with whom you do business with, either explicitly in the old-school LLC “let’s go into business together” model, or, more likely, with whom you have an implicit, but no less important, relationship, all parties sharing the same goal of supporting and encouraging each other in separate domains.  The sounding boards.  The devil’s advocates.  The constructive criticizers.

Reciprocal muses. Your Zelda to my F. Scott. My Beatrice to your Dante.

Think of this as two possibilities: on the one hand, a tandem bicycle – both riders pedaling the same machine in the same direction at the same pace – vs. two separate bicycles; yes, both going in the same direction at the same speed, but with an acknowledged – I will say necessary – distance between them. 

It’s this distance that fascinates me right now.  Too much – too far — and the other fades into the background noise, part of the cacophony of everyday life; the half-known and the partially-recognized and the almost-important; too close, however, and that slight gap, into which the arc of electricity, the firing of the synapses, the place into which the mysterious alchemy of true collaboration (at all levels) takes place, gets squashed and squeezed and cramped.  It’s like placing a candle snuffer over an incipient flame.

Distance is a funny and confounding thing, though.  I think most of us are hardwired to clutch, to grab, to possess, to hold – not to “see the other whole against the wide sky”, to pull a quote from Rilke – but to see narrowly right through the other’s pupils, as it were.  Some people are conditioned by family or circumstance to feel lonely, dispossessed, and despairing when distance separates them from their desires.  And there’s a certain (illusory?) comfort in falling in to the other, collapsing the gap, willingly giving up individual purpose in pursuit of a more immediately comforting embrace.

Is it possible to develop and carry a new paradigm around in one’s head?  To recognize that some distance – however slight, and in whatever dose is comfortable – is not only valuable, but required? To leave space for the relationship to flower, the collaboration to germinate, the partnership to bear fruit?

I think so.  I hope so.  My curiosity on the matter is waxing strongly.  My personal vectors are all reorienting themselves along the lines of this hypothesis.

It’s funny how your life can tend to be defined as the accretion of decisions made over months and years.  I say “tend to” because I am thoughtfully considering whether or not this is actually the case, or whether it is just habit and expectation and norms that make us the sum of our past.

A friend writes on Twitter:

if you won the lottery, how would you spend $2 million vs. $10 million.

Interesting thought exercise, because it tells you what your true magnetic north might be.  Would you do more of the same – whatever it is you’re doing now?  Would you make radical changes?  Why?  If money defines freedom, what would you use that freedom for?

A famous quote:

You can’t change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.

What direction would you pick?  Would you head to the same place(s) you were heading for yesterday, last month, last year?

A new acquaintance asks me “What is your passion in life?” To which I respond:

Multiple things: innovation, creativity, true love, the pursuits of the intellect, my kids, Liverpool Football Club, positive thinking.

I could add a handful of things to that list if pressed, but another way to look at it is that life represents a series of choices, a series of decisions, a list of opportunity costs.  You can’t be passionate about everything – at some level you choose, every day, by how you spend you time, who and what you think about, what you produce, what you consume, what you share, what you hold back, and by the narrative you carry around in your head about how the world works.

I guess my thesis – if I get to choose – is that we have a lot more freedom to set our direction that one might originally suppose.  As they say about money, everything is fungible.

Is there a missing ingredient?  I would say “thought”.   Thinking.  Reflection.  Don’t assume that you’re destined, fated, preordained, or stuck if some little part of your brain is dissatisfied.  Think about what you can do TODAY to change your direction.   Sample thought exercise: think of one person that would give you the most uplifting, motivational, aligned, engaged, inspiring conversation that will lead to positive change in your life.  E-mail that person and offer to buy them a cup of coffee.

Several years ago, in a team meeting for the small company I was working for at the time, I made the mistake of calling out one individual for some inconsequential thing – breaking the build, I think.  I did it in a joking, teasing way (or so I thought), but that person has not yet forgiven me and in fact hasn’t talked to me in years.

Could I have foreseen that this person would take offense?  In retrospect, sure.  I learned a good lesson that day.

But – to transition to another topic – it’s also within each of our own powers to decide not to take offense.  Which brings me to my day’s quote:

“Individuals who deliberately decide not to take offense lead happier, more productive lives.”

I’ve been struggling with that just a bit recently, as a couple comments I’ve heard and/or overheard have sort of stuck in my craw (ed: must look up the origin of the word “craw”) and I’ve had a hard time not feeling offended.  However, there’s no point in dwelling on it.  By extension, there’s really no point in dwelling on what other people think about me in general, unless they are within a very close circle of absolutely trusted friends and family.  But sometimes, let’s face it, comments can hurt your feelings.  But should you let that happen?  Most people don’t mean to give offense – in fact, they usually have good intentions, or are at the very least oblivious – so why get your back up?  No point.

Which brings me to my third topic, my Saturday wish – to try to focus on things I can control, and not worry so much about what others do or think or say.  This is exceptionally hard for people who are in that trusted circle I mentioned earlier.  If you’ve let someone in, it’s hard to tear them out of that position to the point where their comments and actions and behaviors are no longer privileged in the sense of exerting special influence on you.  So, my thinking continues, why carry around this notion of a “trusted circle” at all?  Why give anyone, no matter how close, the ability to make you happy or sad or exhilarated or desperate depending on what THEY do?

Because the alternative is to give up on life, on love, on meaningful, intimate connections with people, and it’s people – not things, not events, not circumstances – that ultimately give us our greatest joys in life.  Yes, sometimes our greatest despair as well.  But to shield yourself from despair is to shield yourself from love.  And that’s a place I can not, will not go.

While I’m waiting for a 300+ MB CVS update to complete…(drums fingers)….

I’m thinking about gratitude today.  The notion of feeling grateful, of finding things to be grateful for.  The disaster in Haiti has been weighing on me a bit more than I might have expected – perhaps I’m more clued in to the news lately, or maybe I’m searching high and low for perspective and have found a great counter-example in the plight of the Haitian people.  It’s weird, because I’ve never really been one to take on any extra emotional burden from disasters across the world, at least not up until now.

But I look at my life, at arms’ length, and think to myself that things are not so bad.  Today.  Tomorrow I might be struck by lightning, or leukemia, or get hit by the #7 bus, but that’s all abstract, worry-fodder, and takes my attention off of what I should be worried about, which is today.  Now.  What decisions can I make, what attitudes can I cultivate, that make my NOW better than it might otherwise be?

Which brings me to my topic.  I was talking to a friend this afternoon about gratitude and how expressing gratitude is one awesome thing that (a) I can control and (b) makes the world a better place, all around.  Saying “thank you” – and meaning it – is open and available no matter what else is going on in your world.  You can be devastated, blown away, numb, bombed into smithereens, empty as a dry corn husk – yet you can still say thanks.  That’s why the title of my post references the cockroach – it’s a reference to 1980’s pop culture, when we all watched The Day After and worried about mutually assured destruction and kept a wary eye on the Doomsday Clock.  After we started World War III with the Communists and collectively nuked the world into a radioactive pulp, the cockroach would be the last thing to die off.  So it is with gratitude.  I could make the argument that it’s the last of the “good” human emotions to go away.

So I express it.  Or try my best to.  People do amazing, thoughtful, selfless things every day, if you’re looking for it.  You sometimes have to look very carefully, but if you’re tuned in you can find it.  Sometimes it’s a process of realizing it’s right under your nose.  Other times you have to stretch.  But expressing gratitude, deservedly so, is a win-win.  It makes me feel good and it makes the recipient feel good.  It’s good karma, if you’re into that sort of philosophy.  It’s certainly part of Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You, if that’s your bag.

Right now I can rattle off a half-dozen things that people have done just in the last week that I could express gratitude for.  That’s a good feeling.  It lends support to my search for perspective.

What are you grateful for?  To whom could say “thank you” – and mean it?

Ran into a very nice guy today at the crowded coffee shop today who offered me a spot at his table.  Got to talking and found out that he was a coach of “interpersonal relationship skills”.  I asked him “Professional, or personal?” and as it turns out he mostly works with kids who come from dysfunctional family situations.  Really nice guy and I talked to him about about the adoption experience we went through and how the orphanage process worked, and what effect it may have had on the kids, and how good parenting – consistency, clear boundaries, and endless amounts of love – can really overcome just about any external circumstances.  We had a really nice talk.

I titled the post “manifesting” because maybe I was supposed to meet this man today?  Some part of me believes in serendipity, but some part of me doesn’t.  I’ve tried to make some good things happen in my life, and some things have just sort of come my way out of the blue, but I often wonder how much of it is chance and how much of it is due to what I make happen; what choices I make.

These poor people in Haiti certainly didn’t wish for a 7.0 earthquake to beat hell out of Port-au-Prince and send 140,000 of them to the Great Beyond.  This, despite whatever that miserable goofball Pat Robertson says about a “pact with the devil” the Haitians supposedly made back in the 18th century when they achieved their independence from France.  “True story,” he says.  Horseshit.  Sometimes bad things happen – or good things DON’T happen, which, for the sensitive among us, can amount to the same thing – and there’s really no rhyme or reason to it.  It just happens.  I can wish for a flying pony all I want, but it ain’t gonna happen.

I think I’ve talked before in this blog about “happiness is wanting what you have.”  That, my friends, is a very difficult proposition to swallow when you are unhappy.  If you’re happy, you can say “yeah, I’m happy with what I have, therefore it must be easy to make yourself happy by wanting what you have.”  When you’re unhappy?  It doesn’t really work in reverse.  You can be *grateful* for the things that you have, and be *grateful* that you’re not buried under a 3-story concrete building in Haiti, but you can’t really think your way to happiness – at least not at most times.  I think.  I’m not sure.  I’m still struggling with the whole concept and how to apply it.

What do you think?  Can you think your way to happiness?  Is it an intellectual endeavor, after all, or are your heart and gut the prime movers here?

The classic – and metaphorical – advice is, when you get thrown from your horse, jump right back on again.  The moral is that you shouldn’t let temporary setbacks prevent you from continuing to try to get where you want to go and do what you want to do.

The Japanese saying is “fall down seven times, stand up eight.”

Sometimes, though, you have to jump on a different horse.  A horse of a different color, as it were.  You’ve been knocked you so irrevocably off your perch that you feel like you have no choice but to try a different direction.  Maybe you’ve been thrown so often that it just makes perfect, plain sense to try a different route to get somewhere.

You may feel forced to make this decision – to abandon one path, admit defeat, give up, accept failure – but in reality it’s your choice.  No one is whispering directives in your ear.  You can choose.  And failing is not always your fault, because you certainly can’t control everything, or everyone.

Sometimes when I get knocked down I lose perspective, especially when the place I get knocked down from is important – i.e. the place is (or was) part of my overall picture of who I am and what I want and where and where I see myself going.  But we all get knocked down.  And we all lose perspective.  The trick is to take a deep breath, look around, and see what other good things are going on that we can focus on to help us get back on our feet.

For example, just in the past few days:

• I’ve been reminded of how awesome some of my friends are.
• I’ve been told by someone I’m one of the most brilliant people that they know.
• I’ve been invited to several parties.
• I’ve had lots of good signs on the career/work front.
• Despite the holidays, I now weigh less than at any time since 1994.
• I’ve inspired someone to start their own 100-day exercise challenge.
• My kids are wonderful and beautiful and smart and happy.
• Someone else told me they were jealous of me.

So, what can I really complain about?  Not much. So one or two things haven’t worked out and won’t work out.  But I have a lot of good things going on, wonderful things, and I can’t let my happiness (a) depend solely on the outcome of one thing, no matter how important; and (b) depend on what others do, as opposed to what I can do for myself.

This is hard, no question – some things seem so undeniably positive that you just can’t see yourself not being there.  But life is a series of ups and downs, and it’s valuable to understand that life has its hard moments.  Reflect, accept, learn, and be who you are meant to be, stronger and more resilient for having gone through the experience.