C.B. Potts's Blog, page 45

Thursday, Early Afternoon

Another article written.  This one took longer than it should have, but I'm writing for surgeons/surgical practice managers, and boy howdy, does that create a set of internal expectations that slow me right the fuck down.  Here is a handy writing tip: try very hard not to be intimidated by your audience.  Even if they went to school more than you ever did, and know things that you don't. That doesn't make them geniuses in all spheres of life.  Everyone can still learn something.  Of course, i...

Tuesday Morning, Thus Far

Things accomplished:


Two articles written
Conversation with Editor, Hooray!
Touch base with contact about future work, Hooray!


Forward, forward, forward.  This is going to be a good day.

Tuesday Morning, Thus Far

I always wanted a happy ending... Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity. - Gilda Radner

The children on the school bus do not look out the window. They're looking at each other, or, with greater intensity, down at small screens, clutched in gloved hands. The...

Monday Morning: Here We Go

B is for beginnings, and that's a good start. And B is for bunnies, bundles, and bling. B is for the most magnificent things. But B is for brilliant, and B is for brutal, and how we glide between them on the most precarious swing.

I do not want to believe in natural talent, and I'm not sure that I do. I'd like to believe in infinite capacity; that any of us, given time, resources, support, influences and opportunity coupled with just enough determination, could shine at whatever we chose. Tha...

Friday Morning

Getting an inch of snow is like winning ten cents in the lottery.

The girls are winners today: there is no school! It snowed, for a bit, and then freezing rain and regular rain: everywhere you look, you see ice and water, water and ice. If I were a penguin, this would probably make me very happy. As it is, it's looking at 10 o'clock in these parts, and I've yet to do any meaningful work.

Progress will come.  Probably after I finish this second cup of coffee and get dressed properly.  Clothes, t...

Wednesday, Early Afternoon

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. - Kierkegaard

I don't know much about Kierkegaard, but I owe him one for that line. Six words to re-frame so much of my existence. I am not anxious because of a million impending perils; I am anxious because every moment holds a million possibilities, and I don't know which one to pick.

It may not seem like a big difference, but between you, me, and the fencepost, that is HUGE.

I've been doing a lot of reading lately; Jung, Campbell, Wilber, More. It's been a...

Wednesday Morning

When I was little, there was a t-shirt lots of people (and particularly people I thought were cool) wore. It read "Question Authority". What a revolutionary concept! (Especially compared to other t-shirts, which were largely about Megadeth.) Now, though, I want a different t-shirt.  This one would read "Question Everything."

You realize, don't you, that the two are one and the same.

Are they? Doesn't matter.  I still want the shirt.

Tim and I, being long-married, have strategically removed ourse...

Monday Morning: Here We Go

“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re...

Friday Morning

I believe a scientist looking at a non-scientific problem is just as dumb as the next guy.

I've just now finished another book and sent it off to the client. It's amazing. It's been about two hours this morning, flying through what I couldn't write in 8 hours yesterday. Sometimes the writing process requires a solid ten hour block of sleep in the middle of it. I don't know why; it's not like I dreamt of this book - and I have dreamed, in great detail, of other books, so such things are surel...

Thursday Morning

We'll do this alphabetically, then, if you're insistent on an order.  It's as good as any, for a system that is, at its root,completely arbitrary.  Think about it. Why is abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz correct at all? Why should not the alphabet be fgtmopsrewqalzxjhuedynbcrv? The same information is contained therein. It shouldn't really matter.

But I forget. You like tradition.  You like order. You believe that on some level, a whole must be more than the sum of its parts: merely assembling the r...