Storybase word-a-rama November 17, 2006
Posted by Jade Barclay in activites, emotions, NaNoWriMo, software, writing.add a comment
This wicked online tool comes up with more funky cool emotion/action words than you can poke a stick at….. even more than I come up with on long hard night of Vodka and Red Bull! Fantabulous for art and life alike… check it out.
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Emotion? November 16, 2006
Posted by Jade Barclay in activites, emotions, goals, management, mothers, neuroscience, school, values, writing.add a comment
Crap things only feel crap when we make those emotions wrong and try to avoid them in ourselves and others. When we try to avoid making anyone feel hurt or upset or angry or frustrated or confused or overwhelmed. But, what’s so bad about feeling any of those things?
I reckon there oughta be two compulsory things in this world: YOGA and ARTS
YOGA – coz crappy posture = crappy feelings = no oxygen to the brain = no access to the powerhouse of resources you’re dragging around with you every day. If people actually felt great in their bodies and stopped taxing them so bad thru misuse everything would change.
ARTS – coz then you rekindle the love of the dance of life, an innate passion for contrast and curiosity for depth and meaning. Everything you see, hear, feel, notice and observe becomes less about trying to keep the peace or maintain balance (balance schmalance, this is a life of divine extremes, a dance, swinging like a pirate on the pendulum between the furthest points, then swinging even further on the next run), and it all becomes material for your next creative project, regardless of your chosen art form.
Art is myth, and myth is the language of the soul. We all know that a good story has twists and surprises, it isn’t bland and numb and
predictable, so why would we curse our lives to be that way?
My stand-up comedy teacher said: “Personal development is great, but make sure you don’t get too fixed. You’ll run out of material.”
Feeling Delicious November 16, 2006
Posted by Jade Barclay in emotions, goals, love, neuroscience, values.add a comment
A friend wrote me a discourse about depression and such, followed by the PS “I think you would argue that a ‘painful’ emotion is not a ‘bad’ emotion.” hehehe – he was right, that’s exactly what I was thinking!
There ain’t no such thing as negative and positive, good and bad, esp when it comes to emotions. They’re all different colours and tastes and textures. I choose to group emotions into taste categories, like sweet, sour, savoury, bland, tangy, spicy, etc.
I really like the concept of tastes and hungers re: emotions, coz hungers get satiated and return, tastes vary from moment to moment. They’re a message, a calling from deep within us, calling us to go open the fridge and search for meaning, pick up the phone and delivery menu, a call to action to make a change to our biochemistry, our focus, a call to give ourselves a boost of nurturing and nutrition. Emotions are that same call to action.
The biggest issue comes when we misinterpret emotions, or when they get stuck in an inappropriate trigger/anchor loop. And some complement each other, and some clash.
And it’s not just doctors that focus on ‘taking the pain away,” loved ones and bystanders do that too. Often loved ones can be the most potent enablers of all. Empathy is a bad idea if you use it to make people (or yourself) feel more comfortable staying in one emotion or another (even excitement), instead of interpreting those emotions as a call to action. If ANY emotion hangs around too long, you end up stuck and numb.
The key, I feel, is flexibility and interpretation, and not getting stuck on unaware autopilot, salivating on cue like pavlov’s mutts (aware autopilot is way cool, tho).
I fully, fully, fully agree with the inarticulate nature of ‘depression’. After working with some teens earlier this year, I actually did a post on precisely that, with a bunch of emo-vocab to play with…… (my most highly commented/replied-to post to date, btw) http://jdverse.wordpress.com/2006/06/15/make-or-break-words/
Half a Nano-Marathon November 14, 2006
Posted by Jade Barclay in activites, books, NaNoWriMo, quest.add a comment
OMG – ok, so today is smack-bang in the middle of my epic November novelling adventure and I just crossed the halfway line of my wordcount today! I know I was aiming for consistency but this is ridiculous!!!
My City at Dawn November 14, 2006
Posted by Jade Barclay in love, poetry, values, work.add a comment
I love the city when it is pure architecture and design
spirit and beauty incarnate
in the hours between witching and waking
In that mostly forgotten timeless time
when you can feel the city’s heartbeat
before the first alarm clock dictates
the first coffee boils
the walking dead fill the streets
their veil of numbness hanging thick in the air
the real world whirling in the slipstream of their discontent
Neuro-Schooling November 7, 2006
Posted by Jade Barclay in leadership, neuroscience, quest, school, values.add a comment
Why is it that some ideas (memes) get fed IV-style into the bloodstream of society and are expected, nay demanded, to be common knowledge amongst every man woman and child, while other ideas/memes are relegated to be super-specialised knowledge only available to the few with the GPA, time and inclination? Who decides what’s what? Neuroscience is everyone’s business, especially parents and teachers. Everyone has a nervous system to take care of, and everyone (esp parents and teachers) is shaping their own and those around them with every thought and interaction. Surely that’s grounds enough to make the foundations more widely known??? Put em on sesame street? Make a card game? Or a sport? If kids today knew half as much about their insides as they do about their Yu-Gi-Oh cards…… <sigh>
This guy (typical big fish in a puddle) in this book was talking about a synesthesia as if it were a disorder, rather than just divergent neural pathways. When you look at things neurologically they always make sense. And you can play with them. Everyone has synesthesias, it’s how we’re wired. It’s not a kind of person, it’s a kind of neural pathway that everyone has developed to some degree or another. Usually first exposure to a given item or concept will throw out a whole bunch of different neural connections like fireworks, connecting with everything that’s in focus at the time. The connections that stay are the ones that are strengthened by being most consistently reinforced, while the others (equally valid in the first instance, but not reinforced) drop away as though they never existed in the first place. Green carpet. It’s all anchoring, triggers and where they lead to. If a particular trigger or stimulus leads to one place (that is the generally accepted and most popular place) then someone’s granted ‘normality’ but if, through habit or repeated co-incidence, their trigger fires off in two directions at once, that’s a disorder? I don’t think so, Tim!
Latest cool books November 6, 2006
Posted by Jade Barclay in books.1 comment so far
- Quest by Charles Pasternak – intriguing!
- Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer – wow!
- Women’s Way of Knowing: Development of Self, Voice & Mind – omg, I’m sooo into this right now!!! joining lotsa dots
5 Million+ Free Hugs in 41 days November 2, 2006
Posted by Jade Barclay in General.add a comment
In 6 teeny-tiny-little weeks, over 5 million people have shared the love on the Free Hugs vid on YouTube, the chief hugger has been on Oprah, the sick puppies (the Sydney band behind the themesong) are striking record deals, and Free Hugs campaigns have been launched in over 25 countries. I’m sure grandma’s smiling. Just goes to prove 2 of my faves true yet again…
There is no force as powerful as an idea whose time has come & There is no limit to what Juan Mann can accomplish when he doesn’t care who gets the credit!
Write-Off Progress 2006 November 1, 2006
Posted by Jade Barclay in activites, goals, NaNoWriMo, writing.2 comments
Never knew writing parties could be so much fun!
I’d love to do a word-count write-off between my son and I, but the youth program’s on a different server – I’ll see what we can wrangle out of NaNo HQ
Also, seriously stoked – after informing bookstore #7 that they really oughta stock up on these little puppies in October each year, I managed to track down the last copy of No Plot? No Problem! in Sydney! (That’s the guide to the crazy month-long novelling adventure written by the NaNoWriMo founder himself, Chris Baty – and he just launched a novel-writing kit for 2006)
