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On good news
It’s really difficult for me to dedicate mental energy towards my Internet life when I’m buried in good news. The same thing happens in my journals. There is a need to document broken hearts and irritation and anger and annoyance, but I let the good things drift off into the aether. Maybe it’s easier to […]
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On vision boards and manifesting
‘Tis the season for goal-planning, new years resolutions, words of the year, and vision boards. Got Austin Kleon’s newsletter today and he talked about this thing called Dead Week (a term he borrowed from another writer): that bit of dead air between Christmas and New Year’s Day where you’ve done what you’ve done for the […]
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On doing things consistently
…which has never really been my strong point, to be frank. My diaries, a large stack that dates back to to 2004, are essentially a long record of my inability to commit, see things through, to be consistent. I ride on the high of new years and new habits and new goals and crash within […]
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On doing things badly
I really struggle with allowing myself to do things badly. I don’t know if this older child syndrome, or a product of emotionally immature parenting, or if it’s just a stew of infractions on the part of my parents, teachers and community, but my Inner Critic wins out more often than not when it comes […]
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Get out of your child’s way
I think one of the key things I learned about raising and teaching a child is that I, as an adult, get in the way more than I do help. I see it at home with my own child, and I see it with the kids I work with as a classroom assistant. The best […]
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On magical thinking
Designer Milton Glaser taught a summer class at the School of Visual Arts geared towards people mid-career would need a kick in the pants: motivation, inspiration, a reboot, whatever. On the second to last day of the class, he asked his students to write an essay about what they wanted their life to look like […]
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On trajectories
Thinking a lot about my trajectory in life today, especially where my career is concerned. My life has very much been in limbo for the past 8-ish years, falling pregnant in April of 2015 and devoting every ounce of my willpower towards motherhood ever since then. My daughter is almost 7 years old now, halfway […]
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The Bradbury Challenge
I discovered, via Austin Kleon, this video of a talk given by Ray Bradbury, and in it he gave some interesting advice to writers regarding generating ideas. He challenged them to read, every night, for 1000 days: Julia Cameron, in her seminal book The Artist’s Way, referred to this as stocking your pond/filling the well, […]
Jenny Mikac 