Write, create, innovate! – Page 7

It takes only 10 minutes (exercise)

April 8, 2016April 8, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Read, write, lead!, Write, create, innovate!

While you are studying at a Faculty, many of the courses you encounter (obligatory) you don’t like or you don’t recognize at that particular time you do really need certain knowledge and skills they offer. And on the other hand, there are subjects you simply adore and you are always excited about.

When you are young and full of energy you simply don’t want to waste your time on something you don’t like when there is bunch of other stuff you’d rather do. So I made a little pact with myself that everyday, at least for 10 minutes I will do seminars and projects that I’m excited about. Every day, consistently! Why I did this and how it helped me? It helped me in two ways:

Since I had to devote my time also to courses I didn’t like that much, by doing what I liked for at least 10 minutes a day, I made sure I wasn’t behind with what I really wanted to learn;
By doing what I liked, the good feeling generated made it easier for me to do things I didn’t like that much.

At the end, I managed to graduate a year before anticipated time.

These principles we can also apply to our creative projects and make ourselves more productive and exited about what we are doing.

Now, here is a little exercise I have for you today:

Make an agreement with yourself that you will work on a project you are passionate about, every day for at least 10 minutes. It can be in the morning, your lunch break or evening – it doesn’t matter. The key word here is consistency.
Decide on which project you will work tomorrow. If you are a writer, choose a poem, story or essay you are excited about and that you are eager to finish. Skip those “I must do this one, but I hate it”! That feeling of resistance only leads to more procrastination and that is something we want to avoid. Choose a project that brings smile on your face and that you simply love.
Tomorrow, at your convenient time, set a timer for 10 – 15 minutes and work on your favorite project. Don’t pay attention to the quality of your work. The progress you make each day while working on what you love will generate such good feelings that it will make much easer for you to jump-start the project you were postponing and avoiding.
When the time’s up, stop! Even if you would like to continue working, stop and leave yourself a reminder where to continue tomorrow.
Tomorrow, repeat your newly established routine.
After a couple of days you might consider prolonging your working time intervals and see how it goes. If it doesn’t and it makes you nervous and worried you won’t have time for things “I must do”, then just stick to those 10 minutes. It’s important for us to have fun while we are creating.
If you skip some of the days, it’s Ok. Continue the next day where you previously stopped.

I hope you find this exercise fun and applicable to your creative routine. By being persistent it can eventually help you enjoy more your creativity and writing.

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How poetry enhances development of explicit organizational knowledge

April 5, 2016June 23, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Read, write, lead!, Write, create, innovate!

In this article, I have in depth described how poetry can be closely related to accessing our tacit knowledge, which in our business world can bring us lot of advantage. Tacit knowledge is represented by all our skills that are not only shaped by our education, but mostly through our life conditions, environment, culture, ext. We could say that tacit knowledge is everything undefined, inexplicable, unknown yet perceived knowledge by one person – usually rooted deeply in the subconsciousness and its largely based on any internalized information.

In the paper “Cooking up a storm: Flavoring organizational learning with poetry” author Grisoni L., argues that poetry can go a step further and actually

create a fusion between tangible, rational and explicit knowledge and tacit or implicit knowledge, providing opportunities to access new organizational knowledge; emotional richness, texture and flavored nuance to organizational knowledge and learning.”

In the mentioned paper, poetry is used as a creative research method and as such it contributes to development of new forms of knowledge. Poetry reveals what is hidden, beneath the ordinary organizational behavior, procedures and policies.

The case study for the paper is based on a group of 60 middle and senior managers from a single organization and they were asked to form small groups of three, share their stories and experiences from their working environment. Listeners would capture key words from these stories and together the small group would develop short poems using the haiku poetic form.

Here are some of the presented haikus:

Change risk move frightened

Thought safe, hidden fear revealed

Moved, sparkling sunshine

Ongoing concern – always

People in need, a start

Towards positive change!

Member of team

Develop role, career

Encouraged, valued.

After successful presentation of hauikus, conclusions that emerged are that working with poetry holds the potential to capture emotion and express the un-sayable with passion, truth and intensity. It provides a supportive underpinning to discussions relating to emotions, which form an important part of the organizational learning literature, surfacing and facilitating dialogue about these issues in a way that other processes may not access.

What’s also interesting is that we do create explicit form of knowledge where our skilled performance is delivered in new ways through social interaction. In this research paper has been shown that poetry is a wonderful medium for doing that. But, how else can poetry help us in business setting? Any thoughts? Please share in the comments below.

Knowledge

Now that I know

That passion warms little

Of flesh in the mold,

And treasure is brittle,

I’ll lie here and learn

How, over their ground,

Trees make a long shadow

And a light sound.

Louise Bogan

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5 ways you can reconnect with your own creativity

April 1, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Read, write, lead!, Write, create, innovate!

Being creative is not only doing, making stuff or problem solving. Creativity originates from our deepest desires and most sincere aspirations. For me personally, actual act of creating is an act of self-love. It might sound weird to some of you, but if you think more clearly it is true. Any creative expression is an expression of Self in given time and place. The more we show appreciation and kindness towards ourselves, the more creative we become.

Now, I’m not talking about vanity and pretentious, selfish self-love where you neglect and disrespect other people in order to fulfill some personal gains. I’m talking about just being gentle and kind in our thoughts and actions towards ourselves.

When you have problem to connect with your creative side, it’s like pushing away from us the part that needs the most attention; that needs to be understood and nurtured.

Personally when I’m experiencing something like this, usually there is some other underlying cause that distracts me and keeps me from having that intimate encounter with creativity.

There are few things you can do in order to reestablish that connection we all need:

1.Stop criticizing yourself and your work.

As I said, every creative work is a result of our self-expression in given moment and place. Just accept it like that. Once you approve of your own work, your positive changes can start to happen.

2. Stop comparing yourself to others.

You are unique and everything you do is unique. Don’t try to ‘fit in’.You don’t have to belong to any movement, style, group…just be yourself. Work on being better for your own sake, not to be approved by others.

3. Stop sabotaging yourself and start forgiving instead.

You made mistakes in the past. You could’ve done, planned, executed, written, painted, composed, sung, danced, calculated… better, but that’s in the past. You gave your best at the time, considering the understanding, awareness, knowledge that you had and the conditions you were in. Only by letting go we can allow fresh creativity to enter.

4. As you are kind to you mind, be kind to your body.

For long time I didn’t recognize the connection between the foods we eat and how we feel and create. Apparently there is a huge influence of what we are eating on how we are able to perform in any part of our lives. Learn more about your own body, what it needs to feel invigorated, vital and full of energy. Incorporate your favorite movements, walks, dance or exercise.

5. Don’t take everything too seriously.

Now, I’m not saying being reckless or irresponsible. But it’s important to have fun at least in some moments, because by being more joyful we become more open to new ideas, and opportunists.Creativity has that therapeutic quality and once we leave behind all ‘musts and shoulds’, it’s easier to approach our problem differently. And by looking at the world differently, creativity finds its way towards us – when you least expect it.

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What’s the future of poetry? ~ conclusions from the Belgrade Poetry Festival 2016

March 28, 2016June 23, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Read, write, lead!, Write, create, innovate!

This year I happened to be in Belgrade while traditional poetry ceremony “World Poetry Day(s) 2016” was taking place. This event has been organized by the Belgrade Cultural Center and it was announced that this year’s festival will be dedicated to the relationship between contemporary poetry and society, and the possibility of cooperation of poets, visual artists, and film and theater authors.

Under the name “Republic of Poetry” festival has demonstrated that poetry has once again become an autonomous symbolic territory within which it is possible to develop creative potentials in the wider field of poetry practice.

The festival hosted many diverse participants from around the world like: Jerome Rothenberg, Gerhard Falkner, Maria Grazia Kalandrone, Jaka Zeleznikar, Ursula Kiesling and many others.

Through performances and debates, festival has proven that poetry hasn’t been immune to the phenomenon of globalization and that it is transforming poetry extensively in comparison to previous decades. One of the main conclusions of the festival is that poetry is turning again to experiment, revitalizing thus historical avant garde and neo-avant garde. Poets and artists do have a need for more complex response to the events we are all exposed to and in order to share their experiences they strive to multimedia expressions combining different resources. As a result, the prevailing poetic practices are transforming under this occurrence. Poets are incorporating some structural elements of other art forms (music, visual arts, theater and dance) while erasing the visible bounders among artistic expressions. Some new literary phenomena are emerging, such as new media poem, which is being created with help of new technologies. Also, the transnational poetic practice can be seen today as one of those emancipatory practices, even though is on the margins of the cultural scene.

Part of festival program was performed on some unconventional locations in Belgrade like clubs, city streets and public transport – with aim to promote more poetry among citizens.

Great focus has been also on discussions about poetry like it’s relations to politics and aesthetics and where is the place of feminism and women’s voices in poetry.

This festival as it tried to answer some questions, it has also opened many new discussions that need to be addressed in the future.

What are your thoughts on future of poetry?

In the Silver Mines

Life in the silver mines nears its end
and soon the time will come
for everyone to take responsibility
for what they didn’t say
the people passing by
touched my cotton shirts
swinging on the line
and my window smashed a thousand times
and Franz Kafka
who sat next to me
in the classroom overlooking the playground
I remember him each time
I fall drunk upon a feather pillow
and put my arms around the fields of grain
swaying in the wind
silently and soundlessly
I will escape people one day
into the forest
that will never become a flooring mill
into the sky
sending rain for eyelashes stuck shut

Zvonko Karanovic

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Conquer your next creative adventure in 5 easy steps

March 25, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Read, write, lead!, Write, create, innovate!

If you have many diverse interests like me, you know how is sometimes hard to stick just to one thing you are doing and it’s so easy to get distracted when something new or more attractive appears. There are certain practices you can employ in order to stay on track with your project: meaning you will finish your project – not postpone it for “some better days”.

Step 1: Sign a ‘contract’ with yourself

First what you want to do is to make a pact with your self that you will try to follow your creative endeavor till the end. You might not be satisfied with the results, but everything we do has a room for improvement so we want to step back from unreachable perfectionism that doesn’t serve us and give our best to finish the project. Try to think from the end, what is it that you would like to achieve? Think also of your reasons for doing this project – you can even write them down and put them where you will read them often as a reminder. They will give you inspiration to deliver your project on time and fuel your passion along the way.

Step 2: Give your project a place to live and breathe

As you need time, you need space where you can get comfy and cozy while enjoying your creativity. It’s of great importance to stage your environment for creativity and allow it to freely come to you, in undisturbed and relaxed space. By secluding that little corner where you can work, it is going to be much easier for you to continue your work, follow up where you previously stopped if you don’t have to move your books, ketches or tools in order to do something else. Your project needs place where to live, breathe and be nourished.

Step 3: Define your achievable goals

Here, you want according to your busy life and routine to set some realistic goals, like time frame in which you would like to finish the project; some milestones maybe you would like to achieve. Keep in mind that as you begin to work, like for example on your new novel, you probably won’t be delighted with your first draft – there will be many trials and errors before you tap into your creative flow and you become satisfied with the end result.

Step 4: Give your project a structure

This is highly linked to a previous step – if your creative adventure is in writing, try to write a synopsis of that initial idea, give it some structure that you can refine along the way and adapt as new ideas and developments come into play. Having that line you want to follow will make sure you don’t drift away from initial idea and get lost in your own creativity.

Step 5: Try to avoid other people mistakes

As you prepare for work, my final advice is to research you creative topic and see what other people have done or are doing. Not because something similar already exists, but we can avoid many pitfalls from gaining wisdom from other people experiences; something may or may not work for us – as long as we are informed and gather information is going to be much easier to make some choices and decisions when it comes to our creative projects.

The last thing I can say is: enjoy creating 🙂

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Are you an introvert? Poetry can help you access your inner treasures

March 7, 2016November 7, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Read, write, lead!, Write, create, innovate!

I presume I’ve always been an introvert. And when I was younger I looked at that as a drawback, a negative side. For many years I’ve silently longed to be one of those cool kids that easily steal affection, that with just small gesture or smile so quickly make new friends and become leaders of ‘ the pack’.

I was kind of opposite of all that: only having few friends at the time, never liked to talk about myself – instead I’ve become an ideal ‘shoulder for crying’. As a highly individualistic, books were my favorite company and I never had a problem to spend time alone, with myself. Also, as an introvert I’m somehow on the constant quest for deeper meanings, understandings and knowing. As a motivation, that can be a great advantage in any research profession for example, but somewhere along the way in the recent years, I’ve noticed my introvert side has even grown. That is something I didn’t expect to happen in my late thirties, but it did. And here is where poetry helped me a lot: to express my feelings, thoughts and experiences which I’m not comfortable to share in classical mundane communication.

Poetry can be that articulate tool that gives the voice to those hidden parts of us: sensitive, beautiful, vulnerable, brave, but weak, dark and frightening in the same time. Connection to poetry is always personal and deep that goes to the farthest roots of our being and helps us recognize, accept and communicate who we are: who we truly are. To anyone who is struggling with finding direction in life, self doubt and self acceptance, poetry can help reveal those hidden treasures, strengths that moves us forward; helps us discover our place in the world. In your writing and reading poetry you can find intimacy you might be lacking in an extroverted and often shallow world we are living in.

Having poetry in my life have certainly helped me to better communicate my needs and feelings and generally to cope with pressures of the fast paced world. If you do recognize yourself to be an introvert, introducing more poetry into your life can bring that sensation of nourished soul, that we are taking care of us; that we can find home where ever we are.

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
and before the street begins,
and there the grass grows soft and white,
and there the sun burns crimson bright,
and there the moon-bird rests from his flight
to cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
and the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
we shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow
and watch where the chalk-white arrows go
to the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
and we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
for the children, they mark, and the children, they know,
the place where the sidewalk ends.

Shel Silverstein

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How acquiring entrepreneurial mindset can make you more creative at work

March 2, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Write, create, innovate!

Being entrepreneur is not easy. It might sound attractive, provocative – especially in the rising startup culture, but the risks, sacrifices, stress and uncertainties that entrepreneurs deal with every day leaves you with a kinda bitter-sweet taste in your mouth. Yet entrepreneurship and the experiences that entrepreneurs can offer is a learning path that we can encounter in many facets of our life. Even at your work place, where you have a boss, a coworkers, where you are dependable, have limited resources, deadlines and procedures you must follow – even then you can apply some of the entrepreneurial principles, enrich your creativity and become better employee: you can become an intrapreneur.

I’ve met many people who think they can work for themselves and finally be in control of their career. But sometimes they discover that entrepreneurship is the furthest thing from control in their life, because the realities of being an entrepreneur—the time investment, stress, and unexpected sacrifices—suddenly feels like an insurmountable task and not that much desired lifestyle. Then they become dissatisfied all over again, tired and experiencing crisis that is hard to overcome: instead of solving problems, new just start to generate.

Intrapreneurship borrows principles from entrepreneurship. In intrepreneurship you are developing whole new business and products, while as an intrapreneur you are, within your organization, working on new programs, products, services mostly in a new, creative and innovative form. Working within limitations can actually boost your creativity while developing greater job satisfaction – having your own meaningful impact within your working environment.

An intrapreneurial approach to work can be for someone who wants to make a difference, use his talents, but within rather safe and predictable conditions without making too much risks and career changes.

So what can you actually do?

Be the one who delivers new ideas and solutions.

Get more educated and acquainted with the topic of the project you are working on; offer new ideas and guidance while discussing with your colleagues and co-workers; work on you presentation skills and search for new ways to employ your talents at work; become a source of knowledge and creativity; always have in mind that ‘bigger picture’ that goes beyond organizational policy and bureaucracy.

But be aware of one thing: find a right timing for showing your talents and learn to make suggestions diplomatically. You don’t want your co-workers to see you as a ‘threat’, someone who imposes himself all the time and who knows ‘everything’. If you do go overboard, you might end-up with too much work and with no support.

It does take courage and intuitive knowledge when is the right time to share your passion, talent and inventiveness, yet it’s a learning path, just like entrepreneurship is. It can help you overcome a stagnant feeling you might be holding towards your job and the growing you will experience is going to lead you to even better work and project opportunities.

I saw a Ruler take his stand
And trample on a mighty land;
The People crouched before his beck,
His iron heel was on their neck,
His name shone bright through blood and pain,
His sword flashed back their praise again.

I saw another Ruler rise–
His words were noble, good, and wise;
With the calm sceptre of his pen
He ruled the minds and thoughts of men;
Some scoffed, some praised–while many heard,
Only a few obeyed his word.

Another Ruler then I saw–
Love and sweet Pity were his law:
The greatest and the least had part
(Yet most the unhappy) in his heart–
The People, in a mighty band,
Rose up, and drove him from the land!

This is the poem by Adelaide Anne Procter: “The three rulers”. What I like about this poem is that in its own, intriguing way is telling the importance of innovative thinking, having our own voice that needs to be heard and understood. While reading the poem, we might think that only the sword matters, yet for collective success-it takes another two: noble, wise, love and sweet pity. Besides strength we need wisdom and empathy to make a our ‘business whole’: where we take into account our leaders, workers and customers.

While working on emphasizing and balancing these three qualities in our work we are bringing that needed change: a step towards betterment of our working lives that positively impacts others as well.

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Why people don’t like poetry?

February 29, 2016August 12, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Read, write, lead!, Write, create, innovate!

This essay is inspired by some of the recent comments in this post. And it made me think: why people really don’t like poetry? What is it that keeps them away from maybe not writing, but from reading some really exquisite pieces by poets from all around the world?

The usual answer is something like “Poetry is boring”, “I don’t understand it”, “It’s a waste of time”. So I wanted to explore this topic a bit further.

If we look more deeply around us, we can notice that people have very little time to appreciate art in general. This fast paced, consumer oriented society has trained us to want everything now and here. An instant satisfaction, an instant thrill, an instant experience: not allowing our biological system to perceive with all its senses; truly absorb our emotions and simply feel.

Life usually demands of us high level of practicality, logical and factual thinking in order for us to be functional and productive on a day to day basis. It’s very noticeable in how we are doing business and science. But where are the boundaries? Have we lost our human touch? In our lives when everything is so exact and explicit we have erased some of the basic human traits: ability to feel and empathize. We cannot treat our most intimate relationships, families and ourselves like we are on a business meeting and signing a business contract.

And there is this soft spot where poetry likes to ‘poke’ you. It demands something different from you. It demands your whole being to respond: if you try logically to analyze a poem, it will take you nowhere; if you search for shortcuts, you will be lost; if you need answers, probably you will be disappointed.

A poem is a journey that allows you to escape from typical factual thinking and forces you to question everything: instead of searching for answers on the outside, you need to look deep inside of you.

There lies the true value of poetry – especially for business leaders, as it can be seen as an antidote to typical business interpretations:

poem is associative rather than factual thinking;
poem enforces abstract thinking in comparison to deductive thinking.

Like Clare Morgan implies in “What poetry brings to business”:

reading poetry generates conceptual spaces that maybe different from the spaces usually approached in business and life in general.

As poetry is letting yourself to get familiar with the unknown – it shouldn’t instill fear of ambiguity and uncertainty, but rather to be seen as a vehicle, attractive mystical longing that can transcend us across those conceptual spaces and offer different modes of interpretation: a sure way to enrich our creativity in all aspects of our lives.

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins

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Can poetry help us resolve social issues?

February 15, 2016February 15, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Read, write, lead!, Write, create, innovate!, Writer's creative bites

When I first started this blog, my intention was to explore the benefits that poetry can bring to the world of business; how can we become better in what we do, by improving our creativity, leadership skills, cognitive and strategic thinking, communication, tacit knowledge and ext. With time, blog evolved into something much more and deeper and on a few occasions I’ve also wrote about the transformative power of poetry.

Recently, I came a cross an article, an interview with poet Jane Hirshfield where she shares her view on how poetry can help us move forward in dealing with even bigger social problems:

I think we know the world needs changing. Things are going awry left and right. I firmly believe that in our very practical, technological, and scientific age, the values of all the arts, but of poetry in particular, are necessary for moving the world forward. I’m talking about things like compassion, empathy, permeability, interconnection, and the recognition of how important it is to allow uncertainty in our lives.

One of the current great problems in the world is fundamentalism of every kind – political, spiritual — and poetry is an antidote to fundamentalism. Poetry is about the clarities that you find when you don’t simplify. They’re about complexity, nuance, subtlety. Poems also create larger fields of possibilities. The imagination is limitless, so even when a person is confronted with an unchangeable outer circumstance, one thing poems give you is there is always a changeability, a malleability, of inner circumstance. That’s the beginning of freedom.

With these beautiful words, I think she captured the true essence of poetry; its purpose and reason for existence: every poem is like taking a journey to a different world where everything is possible and we can truly chose our experiences and taste liberation in every sense.

In her wonderful book “Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World.” Jane Hirshfield, further explores hidden strength that poetry holds and especially focuses on the beauty of uncertainty, not knowing everything – just enjoying to be.

And today, I invite you when you write, at least for a minute stop asking yourself questions on how, where, why – liberate yourself from any false predicaments and just be present, sink into your own being and feel your inner world; connect with your own subtle energies, where self-acceptance and self-trust takes place – you might be surprised how your reality change.

By allowing ourselves to transform our inner world, we are transforming the world around us as well.

Some stories last many centuries,
others only a moment.
All alter over that lifetime like beach-glass,
grow distant and more beautiful with salt.

Yet even today, to look at a tree
and ask the story Who are you? is to be transformed.

There is a stage in us where each being, each thing, is a mirror.

Then the bees of self pour from the hive-door,
ravenous to enter the sweetness of flowering nettles and thistle.

Next comes the ringing a stone or violin or empty bucket
gives off –
the immeasurable’s continuous singing,
before it goes back into story and feeling.

In Borneo, there are palm trees that walk on their high roots.
Slowly, with effort, they lift one leg then another.

I would like to join that stilted transmigration,
to feel my own skin vertical as theirs:
an ant-road, a highway for beetles.

I would like not minding, whatever travels my heart.
To follow it all the way into leaf-form, bark-furl, root-touch,
and then keep walking, unimaginably further.

Jane Hirshfield

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You are never too late to get creative and fully enjoy it

February 10, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Write, create, innovate!

Most people think that time is our most valuable asset – and in a sense it is. Once is gone, it is irreversible. We can’t make for a lost time, if something so vague and abstract can be lost at all.

Recently I turned 40. When I entered my thirties I felt excited, invigorated about the things that were ahead of me, what I can and will do. But of course not everything always goes the way we plan it and wish. Something similar happened to me in the last couple of years which I described in this post. My life was somehow always on the rush until my health warned me to slow down and pay attention to things I probably have neglected – which also meant that I needed to rearrange my plans and re-prioritize. My 40th birthday made me think about those things again. It felt overwhelming like being stuck ‘in the middle’: you are not old, but hey you entered your 5th decade and that must be something 🙂 So thoughts about how I spent my last couple of years, have I missed something, am I too late for something … began to creep in my mind again. And I must admit I was never fond of birthdays. Especially mine. As born on 31st December is like..how to describe it..it never felt like my day or special day, particularly in my childhood years. Everyone was always too busy with preparation for New Year’s Eve, my friends were busy and I with my birthday was just “lingering” there, not feeling like it belonged to me.

So this birthday turned out too be a little bit heavy too, but then I decided to write a poem about it. It’s something that my subconsciousness just expelled out of my mind and is interesting in what it resulted: You can read it bellow:

I dreaded my 40^th birthday.

That was the day I truly wished there was a time machine

to reverse this number or at least

erase that rounded chubby space

behind the wall of four.

To undo all those wasted tears,

not even spilled, just dried in the corner of my eyes;

to count not years, but smiles that flooded my face

each time his touch, in slow pace traveled across my spine.

to collect less of strange, signed and approved confessions

that I can, may, want and know

and to dance more wrapped in the smoke

of my momentary desires

and just swing from one digit to another.

to admit I am good enough,

to accept this short breathing experience is only mine,

that what ever I do it will be fine.

to decide just to live, in spite of all

imposed societal thrills…

That was the day – time,

conveniently invented unit of remorse

stopped to weigh my loss

stopped to count

stopped.

After writing and reading it, I felt amazingly better. It’s like passing through a gate or reaching some sort of threshold realization that can be summarized in 4 little words: It’s never too late … to get creative, to do what you love, in a way you want to do it. You can be sidetracked, have obstacles, but unless you say it’s late, it isn’t. You can count your time the way you like it and you are old the way you feel inside – not by the numbers in your birth certificate.

With this post I want to encourage you that in what ever phase of your life you are, you can start with what ever your heart desires: to learn, to write, to teach, to play sports, to travel, to get creative…Your phase of life might influence how and where you do it, but the essence is still there, you can do it if you wish for it. You are never late and never old.

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