[process, essay]

by Nancy S.M. Waldman

Hi everyone. Welcome to September. Summer here in North America is fast waning—even though where I am in Nova Scotia, September is one of the best weather months.

I’ve been feeling quite ambivalent about the PCQ over the summer. There are lots of new visitors and subscribers and readers which is wonderfully gratifying and fun for me—Welcome to all of you!!—but I haven’t posted frequently or sent out emails which made me feel a little guilty. On the other hand, I’ve had a great summer for creativity so I felt that I was working to recharge my batteries, build up my reserves and just change things up for a while. As we know, it’s easy to get in a rut. Even if it’s a creative one that works for us, it’s still a rut and ruts tend to get deeper and less roomy the longer we’re in them. Sooner or later, we have to climb out, stretch and look around for a renewed way of being.

Summer is the best time for me to do this.

My husband and I have an old Victorian-era house that we’re fixing up (the exterior), so we have a small window of opportunity for working outside. August is prime time. It felt really *right* to be outside doing physical work. I had spent so much time at my computer last year that I was beginning to have nerve pain from too much sitting! I thought the physical strain might be problematic for an old gal like me who’d been so sedentary of late, but not only did it feel great (okay, there were mornings when I woke up in considerable pain—but it was the *good* kind of pain that went away fast!), but it got rid of my sciatica almost immediately!

More than all that, it reminded me that as much as I love the computer—The PCQ, the writing, the digital photo work, the website design, the computer art—I also love other things that I’ve been neglecting. I haven’t been playing the piano and will soon loose what little ability I have if I don’t remember to practice. I love cooking, baking, yoga, gardening, reading, quilting, photography, painting and more. None of those can be done while sitting at the computer.

It’s all about balance, isn’t it? And balance, like most things in life, isn’t static. It requires constant adjustment. Think of a tight-rope walker. A short walk high above the ground requires untold numbers of constant muscular changes to negotiate the span. No matter how many times the acrobat has walked the rope, no matter how talented or experienced, his awareness of balance must be at the forefront of his mind every single time.

As we grow and evolve, we’re the same. We don’t get to a point where balance becomes automatic. Our lives will always be susceptible to being off-kilter. And, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If we come across some new passion, there’s not a thing wrong with throwing ourselves into it even if we neglect certain other things for that new activity! However, when we realize there are beginning to be negative side effects from our tilted world, (like nerve pain from sitting at a computer for hours a day!) we still and always have to stop, take stock and see what we can do to re-achieve balance.

What can get easier over time, is our awareness of the need for balance. For me, the seasons help. While I no longer have kids (in the house) who go back to school, September is a change nonetheless. I like to use the different seasons to trigger my awareness of how I’m spending my time in the context of ALL the things I love to do and want to accomplish.

What about you? What triggers your awareness that it’s time to readjust the balance in your life? Take care all and happy change of seasons wherever you are!

[-crackles!, c-mindfulness-]

by Nancy Waldman

I am in the process of writing an article on using the non-dominant hand in journaling as a way to reach the R-mind. In doing so, I decided that my icon and ’short-hand’ talk of R-mindfulness, based on Betty Edwards work regarding the use of brain hemisphere dominance to teach art, is at the least out-of-date and at the most, offensive to the small percentage of left-sided creative brains out there. The good news is that those people don’t know they’re offended because most of us haven’t had our brains examined.

The traditionally-dubbed *creative side* of the brain is usually but not always the right side. The dominant hemisphere of a person’s brain is not necessarily the left side although research supports an estimate of left brain dominance in at least 70% of people. And in looking at this today, I’m reminded that ‘dominance’ isn’t always about language but frequently about motor skills. Handedness is one of the ways this has been studied and, researchers have found that not all left-handed people (approximately 15% of the population) are right brain dominant even in motor skills. This is an area of research that has no definitive answers but there are some studies that have suggested that the more firmly dominant the left-handedness is, the more likely that person is to be right brain dominant at least in terms of language.

Confused? Me too. Every time I wade into the marshy bog of *Creative Sides of the Brain* I feel that I’ll soon be up to my elbows in a thick peaty mush of ideas that do not have scientific studies to back them up. So why bother? Because it’s fascinating! Because we all have brains and because conventional wisdom is that we use a fraction of the power of the brain in our everyday life. Because the kinds of exercises that I’ve been calling “R-mindfulness” do work on some level for most people to trick the dominant, organizing, practical side of our brains into letting go for a while, so that we can put the non-verbal, metaphorical, visual sides at the forefront while we’re creating.

But because not everyone accesses the right side of the brain when they do my R-mindfulness exercises, my referring to the R-mind is—what shall I call it?—hemispherism? leftism?

Wikipedia in talking about the historical and cultural bigotry surrounding left-handedness (or just ‘left’) points out:

Even the word “ambidexterity” reflects the bias. Its intended meaning is, “skillful on both sides.” However, since it keeps the Latin root “dexter,” which means “right,” it ends up conveying the idea of being “right-handed at both sides.” This bias is also apparent in the lesser-known antonym “ambisinistrous,” which means “clumsy on both sides” and derives from the Latin root “sinister.”

So from now on, the articles about R-mindfulness will have to reflect my newly raised-consciousness about this. However, the phenomenon discussed in these articles is the same whatever side of the brain is less dominant. The point is to access the lesser used portions in tricky ways so as to circumvent the normal functions. It’s complicated so I have to call it something simple!

How about…full-mindfulness? F-mind? ooh. Not so good. The innocent letter “F” has an undeserved and much more negative bias even than left-handers. There’s mind-fully or, quite appropriate in a metaphorical sense, fully-mined. Well…that probably gets us off-track. Fully-mindful is too fully-mouthful. Whole-mind is used in other ways to teach reading and such. Non-dom, short for non-dominant? That’s a bit negative. Alternate-mind. Alternate-hemisphere? Alt-mind? That sounds like a keystroke shortcut. Oh, there you go: Alt-control! Hmmm. Alt-hemi? Demi-hemi? Semi-demi-hemi?

Okay. This is a total illustration of how my creativity works (or more specifically: does not work).

For now I will settle on C-mind—short for Creative Mind—until, unless, I can think of a better iconic term.

Any suggestions?

June 16: This article was withdrawn and re-written after its first posting, evidently to illustrate more fully my personal brain’s challenges.

For a brief description of what I’m talking about, here’s the first article I wrote about the R-mind.
Here’s another one called Changing States.
Click on C-mind tag to get a full-listing or go to our Topics list and click on C-mindfulness

[-photography, process-]

Originally uploaded by tejana.

This beautiful macro taken at a beach, by tejana, reminds me of the impermanence of … everything.

Sand is one of the most malleable of substances. It’s constantly altered by the tides, the wind, even the small beings living within it. Whether a large wave, a sprinkle of raindrops, or a human foot, each causes a rearrangement and a new design.

Our lives, our creative efforts are no different.

If I had finished my novel last December, for example, instead of waiting until now to do it, the words I chose would have been different. I’m subtly rearranged from the person I was when I put the writing aside. Therefore, what comes out of me now, will be altered from what it would have been then. This isn’t a bad thing, but it is something to acknowledge. It might be a (well-needed ) reason not to put things off if we can help it.

Each new day, we need to attempt to put our mark on something in order to capture what and who we are on that particular day - the way tejana so beautifully preserved the sand’s essence in this spot on this day.

Thank you, tejana ~~~

Here are some links to articles about paying attention to the marks we make:
- doodles by Maureen Shaughnessy
- marks have meaning, about self-promotion
- marks have meaning, an art tutorial
- mark my words, a graphic reminder

Procrastination articles:
- Suze Corte - Mind Space
- a PCQ-QCP - The Imaginary Deadline
- a Practically Mperfect article - Collecting Dust

The other side of NOT finishing things:
- Karen Hatzigeorgiou - You, Me and Leonardo da Vinci

Originally published in the original Practically Creative blog, February 2006

[-graphic reminder-]

All such Graphic Reminders in The PCQ are the playful fault of Nancy S.M. Waldman © 05 - 07 all rights reserved

Originally published in the January 2006 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: alterations