Warren Bluhm's Blog, page 21
June 26, 2021
Pick the right sky
“Your dreams should be as big as the sky,” the weaver said.
The boy looked up from the street corner, surrounded by skyscrapers.
The girl looked up from the forest floor to see the canopy of trees, a patch of far-away blue peeking through the heavily leaved branches.
“The sky isn’t very big,” the boy said.
“That little sky up there?” the girl said.
The weaver finally saw the problem. He winked. And in that wink, the boy and the girl were standing in a meadow. They didn’t see h...
June 25, 2021
Power down, power up
You have heard it said — the prophet of long-ago 1960s said it —
“Tune in, turn on, drop out.”
I say,
“Turn off, tune in, drop what you’re doing.”
Turn off the devices,
relinquish the electronic toys,
clear your mind of debris,
use your eyes and ears and hands
to see and hear and feel.
Open your mind
to the infinite
possibilities.
June 24, 2021
Work, play, and somewhere in between
A box full of FullI did finish that day-job writing I told you about the other day, but I forgot that I told you I was going to try to have fun with it. Not that it was painful or unpleasant; I just didn’t approach it in the spirit of “Wheee! I get to play!” that I try to bring to my not-day-job writing.
There can be a thrill to the idea of “writing the first draft of history,” of telling the community the important stuff you’ve learned and that they probably want or need to know.
Some...
June 23, 2021
Greetings, people of the future
We are all living in the future — in uncharted territory. We are charting it now.
Good morning, fellow cartographers. What will we find around this corner, over this next horizon? Isn’t this exciting?
Today we will go somewhere we’ve never been before. This day has never happened until now. What will we find here? How will we respond?
Only one way to find out: Step forward and take a look. Remember to send a note.
June 22, 2021
It’s still your game
After I spent some time yesterday musing about the relationship between work and play and concluding that “the play must go on,” that we should consider bringing the same enthusiastic approach to our work as to our play, the artificial intelligence at Facebook reminded me that I had written something along the same lines three years ago.
Maybe it’s a “first day of summer” thing — the solstice puts me in a more playful mood.
In any case, here is an encore performance from 2018:
It’s ...June 21, 2021
The play must go on
I have day-job writing to do today, and the inertia is palpable. Perhaps if I approached it with the joy that I try to bring to my creative writing. There is a pattern to day-job writing that can feel restrictive, but there is a pattern to creative work, too. Perhaps …
perhaps … perhaps … perhaps!
“Find me in my next book,” I said in the postscript to my last book. Find me on the next page. Find me with your hands and eyes and ears.
Next.
Steven Pressfield tells the story of fini...
June 20, 2021
The long day
The most bearable part of winter is that the days start getting longer. The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year — sunrise around 7:30 a.m., sunset around 4:15 p.m. in this neck of the woods. As dark and as cold and snowy as it can be, the one constant of winter is that we gain a minute or two of daylight every day, so even as we descend into the cold we literally see more light every day.
The best part of spring is reaching toward this glorious longest day of the year, the fir...
June 19, 2021
The things I cannot change
I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about when I turn 70, even though it’s 21 months away, and what’s the point? It’s going to happen anyway.
After all, I spent a lot of time over the years thinking how devastated I would be when Willow The Best Dog There Is
dies, and it didn’t make me any less devastated when it happened. So why worry about being almost 70? because it will be just as surprising — no, astonishing — as I imagined it would be when it happens.
It means I’ve b...
June 18, 2021
Once
“Today only happens once — Make it amazing.”
I saw the little sign at a craft show Sunday and had to have it — especially when I saw the crafter only wanted 5 bucks for it. The message is priceless.
Today only happens once — make it amazing. Don’t bog down with what could be better or what went wrong yesterday. You’re only going to experience this day once, so concentrate on making it memorable (in a good way, of course).
Why stop there? This lifetime only happens once. Some people ...
June 17, 2021
Love what you write
The people who run the late Ray Bradbury’s Facebook page posted this quote the other day:
“Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.”
Mr. Bradbury made a lot of sense. When I write about people and thoughts and dogs I love (OK, I was a cat man first, so cats, too), the words scamper across the page like a feline chasing a pesky ball filled with tinkle bells, and when th...
