I just left a comment at a lovely writing blog that came to my attention via Google Alerts. In it she quotes from my first book, WISHCRAFT. You can see the post here:
http://writingnag.blogspot.com/2008/12/my-favorite-christmas-gift.html
and here's the relevant segment to my post today:
.........................
Possibilities, opportunities, the unknown, the power everyone has to change their life, here's hoping that 2009 is the year you achieve your goals!
In Barbara Sher's book Wishcraft How to Get What You Really Want Barbara writes that "your true goal, or target, has to be a concrete action or event, not only so you'll know for sure when you get there, but so that you can make that date with success in advance!"
Today, instead of making New Year's resolutions that your enthusiasm might wane for by January 30th what goals can you set with dates?
......................
I left a brief comment which might take a few days to go through the monitoring process, so I'd like to repeat it here because I think you ought to know about it before you start making your New Year's Resolutions -- about anything, not just writing. Here's my comment:
Great blog, writing nag. And thanks for mentioning Wishcraft. 2009 will be its 30th anniversary, if you can believe that. (I can't.)
I've found that setting a date changes everything, but be prepared: setting a date can make your goal so real that you get scared. Never underestimate fear as a deterrent to action. It's a bear.
It's like the difference between saying 'Marry me,' and saying 'Marry me on Mar 5.'
The first one just means 'I love you.' Yummy.
The second one will scare you out of your wits. Be prepared for Resistance to rear its head, in one form or another.
One way to avoid too much fear is to lower the danger level. Maybe make the goal very small at first, and the date closer. Then do it again. Then see if you can get away with setting a date for completing a chapter, or whatever might awaken your Inner Ambulance again.
Good luck and keep up the good work,
Your fellow writer,
Barbara Sher
http://writeyourownsuccessstory.com/
Friday, December 26, 2008
Sunday, December 14, 2008
The Langue of Oc vs. Oil and Croissant
All credits here at the outset to Graham Robb and his fine book, The Discovery of France. He studied in libraries and rode his bike through the countryside of France for 14 years and one of the fascinating things he mentions is the sharp line that demarcates the areas that grow wheat and speak one language from the areas that are forested and speak another, and the areas that have vineyards and speak yet another.
If you've ever heard of the area in France just north of the Pyrenees called 'Languedoc' (that's where I'm running the Scanner's Retreat in April of 2009, described at 'www.geniuspress.com) or seen the words 'l'Occitaine' on a smart shop in the downtown area of your city, you might not know that they're talking about languages that are defined and differentiated from one another by the way they say the word 'Yes.'
They could have picked any word, but they picked this one. Nice touch.
After the revolution it became important to the leaders in Paris that everyone should speak one language. At the time, French was already the 'lingua franca' (as English is today), that is, the international language for all cultivated Europeans (including Russians) -- all of them, that is, excepting those in France itself. In France, a name which most of us (and many of the French) take to mean 'Paris,' this international language is really just the Parisian dialect -- and until recently (and even in some places, to this day) most of the people in France neither spoke, nor understood it.
p 51: (ca. 1794) "The fringes of France were already known to be dominated by languages quite different from French: Basquie, Breton, Flemish and Alsatian. But the two Romantic languages that covered most of the country -- French in the north, Occitan in the south -- also turned out to be a muddle of incomprehensible dialects...'Such disorder reigns that the prayer recited by fathers when the family is together at evening can be understood only by the Supreme Being.'
When the great writer, Jean Racine (who was to later write plays that would be 'hailed as the purest expression of classical French), went to visit relatives in Provence he said 'I cannot understand the French of this region and no one can understand mine.'
What he didn't know is that the language of his relatives home wasn't a form of French at all. "Long before reaching [his uncle's village], he had crossed the great divide between the northern 'oil' or French languages and the southern 'oc' or Occitan languages (so named in the Middle Ages after the words for 'yes').
Here's a little more fun and clarity from Robb: The word for 'bird' in English, Latin, Occitan and French is, in that order, 'bird,' 'aucellus, 'aucel,' and 'oisearu. 'Horse,' in the same order is: 'horse,' 'cabullus,' 'caval,' and 'cheval,' and so on.
But there's an unusually sharp divide between them that can't be explained away by the lines of old feudal holdings, and since I'm trying to see where the crops differ, I read the following words with much interest:
"The curiously sharp division of Oc and Oil does appear to follow the boundaries of medieval provinces for part of its course, but it also matches several other ancient divisions. North of the line, roofs usually have a slope of forty-five degrees and are made of flat tiles or slate; to the south, they slope at thirty degrees and are made of rounded tiles." North of the line, farmers planted 3 times a year and used a plough, where farmers in the south planted twice a year and used a primitive, wheel-less plough called an 'araire'.
I forgot that part about the roofs when I was there last fall, and kept my eyes peeled for the different crops (which I never found, of course) but today I'm looking for the passage that speaks of the different crops, right next to each other. I mean, you could step from one to the other.
"A major Roman road, the Via Agrippa ... follows the language divide quite closely. Like most Roman roads it was almost certainly build on a much earlier route...This line can still be followed on the ground. In 2005, I cycled along sections of the Oc-Oil...frontier for a total of about 50 miles [Oh, lord, gotta do that!!] ...
"By using the 1873 data, it is possible to find the point at which Oc, Oil and [a third language] Croissant, intersected [!]"
Exclamation point is mine, and if you don't think that sentence deserves an exclamation point, you might not really be a Scanner. What follows actually makes my heart beat a little faster, no kidding:
"This watershed of three language groups is one of the most obscure and significant locations in the historical geography of France. It lies on a tiny road north-east of Angouleme where the Braconne Forest ends abruptly and opens out onto the plains and valley of the Charente. By chance, the landscape has arranged itself in a textbook illustration of the north-south divide: the Croissant is marked by the forest, the northern, Oil side by a wheat field, and the southern, Oc side by a vineyard."
Okay. That's what I was trying to say. See?!
Feeling like a child who has brought in a worm to show her Mommy, I leave you to ponder what you have read and find your own delight or boredom. I am smiling happily, feeling great satisfaction and delight. And now I shall contentedly return to doing my work.
If you've ever heard of the area in France just north of the Pyrenees called 'Languedoc' (that's where I'm running the Scanner's Retreat in April of 2009, described at 'www.geniuspress.com) or seen the words 'l'Occitaine' on a smart shop in the downtown area of your city, you might not know that they're talking about languages that are defined and differentiated from one another by the way they say the word 'Yes.'
They could have picked any word, but they picked this one. Nice touch.
After the revolution it became important to the leaders in Paris that everyone should speak one language. At the time, French was already the 'lingua franca' (as English is today), that is, the international language for all cultivated Europeans (including Russians) -- all of them, that is, excepting those in France itself. In France, a name which most of us (and many of the French) take to mean 'Paris,' this international language is really just the Parisian dialect -- and until recently (and even in some places, to this day) most of the people in France neither spoke, nor understood it.
p 51: (ca. 1794) "The fringes of France were already known to be dominated by languages quite different from French: Basquie, Breton, Flemish and Alsatian. But the two Romantic languages that covered most of the country -- French in the north, Occitan in the south -- also turned out to be a muddle of incomprehensible dialects...'Such disorder reigns that the prayer recited by fathers when the family is together at evening can be understood only by the Supreme Being.'
When the great writer, Jean Racine (who was to later write plays that would be 'hailed as the purest expression of classical French), went to visit relatives in Provence he said 'I cannot understand the French of this region and no one can understand mine.'
What he didn't know is that the language of his relatives home wasn't a form of French at all. "Long before reaching [his uncle's village], he had crossed the great divide between the northern 'oil' or French languages and the southern 'oc' or Occitan languages (so named in the Middle Ages after the words for 'yes').
Here's a little more fun and clarity from Robb: The word for 'bird' in English, Latin, Occitan and French is, in that order, 'bird,' 'aucellus, 'aucel,' and 'oisearu. 'Horse,' in the same order is: 'horse,' 'cabullus,' 'caval,' and 'cheval,' and so on.
But there's an unusually sharp divide between them that can't be explained away by the lines of old feudal holdings, and since I'm trying to see where the crops differ, I read the following words with much interest:
"The curiously sharp division of Oc and Oil does appear to follow the boundaries of medieval provinces for part of its course, but it also matches several other ancient divisions. North of the line, roofs usually have a slope of forty-five degrees and are made of flat tiles or slate; to the south, they slope at thirty degrees and are made of rounded tiles." North of the line, farmers planted 3 times a year and used a plough, where farmers in the south planted twice a year and used a primitive, wheel-less plough called an 'araire'.
I forgot that part about the roofs when I was there last fall, and kept my eyes peeled for the different crops (which I never found, of course) but today I'm looking for the passage that speaks of the different crops, right next to each other. I mean, you could step from one to the other.
"A major Roman road, the Via Agrippa ... follows the language divide quite closely. Like most Roman roads it was almost certainly build on a much earlier route...This line can still be followed on the ground. In 2005, I cycled along sections of the Oc-Oil...frontier for a total of about 50 miles [Oh, lord, gotta do that!!] ...
"By using the 1873 data, it is possible to find the point at which Oc, Oil and [a third language] Croissant, intersected [!]"
Exclamation point is mine, and if you don't think that sentence deserves an exclamation point, you might not really be a Scanner. What follows actually makes my heart beat a little faster, no kidding:
"This watershed of three language groups is one of the most obscure and significant locations in the historical geography of France. It lies on a tiny road north-east of Angouleme where the Braconne Forest ends abruptly and opens out onto the plains and valley of the Charente. By chance, the landscape has arranged itself in a textbook illustration of the north-south divide: the Croissant is marked by the forest, the northern, Oil side by a wheat field, and the southern, Oc side by a vineyard."
Okay. That's what I was trying to say.
Feeling like a child who has brought in a worm to show her Mommy, I leave you to ponder what you have read and find your own delight or boredom. I am smiling happily, feeling great satisfaction and delight. And now I shall contentedly return to doing my work.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
On Eclectics, critics and how to grow up and quit fooling around.
You and I know we call them/us Scanners, not Eclectics, but google still thinks that's a piece of equipment. In case you're new to this subject, Scanners are people who are interested in so many things they have an awful time choosing just one. They shouldn't try. They're supposed to do everything. But they're given a very hard time when they follow what fascinates them, but don't 'follow through.'
I got a letter some time ago with this comment:
"My mother-in-law regularly tells me that it is not ability that counts, but stickability. I never know how to answer her."
Before I wrote Refuse To Choose (What Do I Do When I Want To Do Everything?) I gathered some interesting stuff on this subject, and went back through my files to dig it up. Truth is, there have been many studies in the past ten years or so that vindicate Scanner behavior. The next few posts will be a brief guide to some very special people who would know exactly how to answer her. I'd like you to hear from three of them in this post.
If you feel foolish because you’re constantly magnetized by mystery instead of applying what you already know, listen to the first one:
"The most beautiful thing is to gaze at a mystery and say why is this here? How does it work? The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity."
You'll know his name: Albert Einstein.
You might not know the second person, a scholar in a field most of us haven't studied. Like most Scanners, I always despaired that I would need an endless, laser-like focus and a huge tolerance for tedium to create work that would make me an authority in any field. Then, one day, after buying a book from a shelf an anthropology major had no business visiting, I found E.R. Curtius, a widely renowned scholar who dedicated his life to writing his masterpiece, 'European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages'.
He wrote something that lifts the heart of any Scanner, but unexpected from the pen of a 'dry as dust' scholar. It changed my opinion of scholars forever:
"Through loving and hating, all intuition and knowledge of value is built up…Applied to the method of scholarship, it means a flair for noticing that certain passages in a text are ‘important’—even if it is not yet clear why…The individual traits that matter cannot be sought out, they must flash upon the mind."
If you're a Scanner, you know what he means; you come upon something exciting, important, wonderful, and you run out and tell everyone and find that your listeners aren't nearly as delighted as you are. Until this year, I was only sympathetic, consoling to my fellow Scanners, and irritated at the ignorance and unkindness of people who refuse to be thrilled by their honest, childlike enthusiasm.
But I'm beginning to change my mind. That scolding, bromide-ridden mother in law above may just be mean, but even people who aren't mean often don't understand why you're so excited about your new discovery. I'm starting to see that this isn't really their fault. They don't see what you see, but no one saw what Curtius saw either, until it clicked in his head, and he understood it -- and then explained it to them.
In fact, even bright, curious people might not be enthused by what you find delightful in your travels because what you saw didn't leap off the page for them. But something else did; something that might make you scratch your head in confusion. I'm convinced that everyone has an inner magnet, different from anyone else's magnet, that pulls only relevant things to them like steel shavings, and those things come to form a pattern that not many people can see. Until, that is, you take the time to explain it to them.
Scanners don't have to keep their thrilling discoveries to themselves. No, they just have to grow up (in certain ways) and quit fooling around (in certain other ways). Here's how I believe you should do that.
First comes respect for what interests you. Curtius has given you permission. No more beating up on yourself. You can't explain anything to anyone unless you first respect, as Curtius did, the fact that if something seems 'important' to you, it is.
It is important whether or not you can justify that importance. You have to respect your own enthusiasm, and understand that it's really good, maybe unerring, in its ability to direct you to exactly the material you need to form your own best insights.
It's important that you don't get discouraged when you're not understood. It's not only important, it's irresponsible to allow yourself to feel demoralized when no one knows or cares what you're up to. Too many Scanners have a voice running in their head that belongs to critics, and that voice stops them from trusting their own enthusiasm. Too many Scanners have belittled themselves to me when there wasn't a critic in sight: "So here, again, I get all excited like some kind of 5 year old idiot, and what can I do with it? I wish I'd just grow up and stop fooling around."
You know what? If you've ever thought something like that I have to say that I, too, wish you'd grow up and stop fooling around, though I have a hunch that I mean something very different from what you think.
Scanners are vulnerable, and in the best ways, like kids: they're eager for new knowledge, they love to share, they're rarely competitive. My experience has shown me that most Scanners seem to be extremely kind, never belittling, often protective of other people's feelings. But they're as hurt by criticism and misunderstanding as a child, too.
But I'd like to make a plea that Scanners must grow up, at least enough to understand that people never understand anybody at the beginning of a new venture. If you're an original thinker, like an artist, you're always ahead of your time. But if you can 'grow up,' you'll develop the patience to forego approval at the beginning and honor the importance of what you're discovering.
And if you quit fooling around, you'll understand that you have to stick to your sleuthing as long as it fascinates you, until it yields the reason it was 'important' in the first place. And then you'll have something important to share with the world. And you must share it. You have to try to help the world understand it. That's your obligation.
See, if you're a true Scanner, when your mystery finally takes shape, you're obliged to try to explain it. And, if you're a true Scanner, you have to do it fast, almost the moment you have that Eureka! moment. Because you're not like an inventor or industrialist or gold miner who considers discovery nothing more than a path to success with all its rewards. To a Scanner, the discovery itself is the good part. But as soon as discovery becomes a commonplace to you, you'll move on to something else. And I say you have to wait a minute. You have unfinished work to do before you leave one scene and look for another.
You have to stop fooling around, and take up the challenge of pulling those important findings together and explaining it clearly and patiently to anyone who needs to know about it. (Don't talk to me about experts and credentials and publishers, either. Just start a blog and start writing, like I'm doing right now.)
And when the work of explaining your discovery is done, then you can get on to the next mystery.
If you do this, you'll be in the company of the best people there are, anywhere. Fortunately, some of them write books for us amateurs. They're usually called scientists or artists or mathematicians, but they're more than that because they're as enthusiastic as children about their interests and they want to tell the world what they've found.
Which brings me to the third very special person you should know about. Head over to TED.com and watch and listen to some amazing people go up on a stage in front of a thousand people and and enthusiastically talk about the NEATEST stuff they just found out!
I think one of the more delightful and wilder of the bunch, and the best for any Scanner to start with is Clifford Stoll.
He's had some exciting adventures; he's famous for finding KGB spies and stopping them from hacking classified information, but In his talk he explains that these days, things that used to interest him have become boring. "The first time you do something, it's science. The second time it's engineering. Third time you're just a technician. I'm a scientist. Once I do something I want to do something else."
He waves his arms and jumps around and changes the subject and reads notes he wrote on his hand, but he's totally wonderful. And he's not just a genius in a tower, enjoying himself, he's a genius who wants to talk to us.
He says, "If you want to know what the future will bring, don't ask me, don't ask a scientist, or someone who's writing code. Ask an experienced kindergarten teacher. She knows."
He says we should all volunteer to teach kids in school.
Stoll has fun and acts like a kid but he's a grownup and he really isn't fooling around anymore, and he'll tell you how to stop fooling around, too. Not only that, he'll show you how to remain a happy, childlike Scanner at the same time, one who has a delicious time just being conscious.
Check him out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj8IA6xOpSk
Be sure to stick around until the end because Stoll says important stuff. The finale is worth waiting for, especially for a Scanner who can't defend your delight with learning new things, and your lack of 'stickability.'
He closes by telling us something he read as a student (actually, it was engraved on a bell in his college campus tower, where he found himself after escaping from a campus riot). I'll write it here, but you really want to hear him say it.
"All truth is one in this light.
May science and religion endeavor here for the steady evolution of mankind,
from darkness to light,
from narrowness to broadmindedness,
from prejudice to tolerance.
It is the voice of Life
which calls us to come and learn."
I got a letter some time ago with this comment:
"My mother-in-law regularly tells me that it is not ability that counts, but stickability. I never know how to answer her."
Before I wrote Refuse To Choose (What Do I Do When I Want To Do Everything?) I gathered some interesting stuff on this subject, and went back through my files to dig it up. Truth is, there have been many studies in the past ten years or so that vindicate Scanner behavior. The next few posts will be a brief guide to some very special people who would know exactly how to answer her. I'd like you to hear from three of them in this post.
If you feel foolish because you’re constantly magnetized by mystery instead of applying what you already know, listen to the first one:
"The most beautiful thing is to gaze at a mystery and say why is this here? How does it work? The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity."
You'll know his name: Albert Einstein.
You might not know the second person, a scholar in a field most of us haven't studied. Like most Scanners, I always despaired that I would need an endless, laser-like focus and a huge tolerance for tedium to create work that would make me an authority in any field. Then, one day, after buying a book from a shelf an anthropology major had no business visiting, I found E.R. Curtius, a widely renowned scholar who dedicated his life to writing his masterpiece, 'European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages'.
He wrote something that lifts the heart of any Scanner, but unexpected from the pen of a 'dry as dust' scholar. It changed my opinion of scholars forever:
"Through loving and hating, all intuition and knowledge of value is built up…Applied to the method of scholarship, it means a flair for noticing that certain passages in a text are ‘important’—even if it is not yet clear why…The individual traits that matter cannot be sought out, they must flash upon the mind."
If you're a Scanner, you know what he means; you come upon something exciting, important, wonderful, and you run out and tell everyone and find that your listeners aren't nearly as delighted as you are. Until this year, I was only sympathetic, consoling to my fellow Scanners, and irritated at the ignorance and unkindness of people who refuse to be thrilled by their honest, childlike enthusiasm.
But I'm beginning to change my mind. That scolding, bromide-ridden mother in law above may just be mean, but even people who aren't mean often don't understand why you're so excited about your new discovery. I'm starting to see that this isn't really their fault. They don't see what you see, but no one saw what Curtius saw either, until it clicked in his head, and he understood it -- and then explained it to them.
In fact, even bright, curious people might not be enthused by what you find delightful in your travels because what you saw didn't leap off the page for them. But something else did; something that might make you scratch your head in confusion. I'm convinced that everyone has an inner magnet, different from anyone else's magnet, that pulls only relevant things to them like steel shavings, and those things come to form a pattern that not many people can see. Until, that is, you take the time to explain it to them.
Scanners don't have to keep their thrilling discoveries to themselves. No, they just have to grow up (in certain ways) and quit fooling around (in certain other ways). Here's how I believe you should do that.
First comes respect for what interests you. Curtius has given you permission. No more beating up on yourself. You can't explain anything to anyone unless you first respect, as Curtius did, the fact that if something seems 'important' to you, it is.
It is important whether or not you can justify that importance. You have to respect your own enthusiasm, and understand that it's really good, maybe unerring, in its ability to direct you to exactly the material you need to form your own best insights.
It's important that you don't get discouraged when you're not understood. It's not only important, it's irresponsible to allow yourself to feel demoralized when no one knows or cares what you're up to. Too many Scanners have a voice running in their head that belongs to critics, and that voice stops them from trusting their own enthusiasm. Too many Scanners have belittled themselves to me when there wasn't a critic in sight: "So here, again, I get all excited like some kind of 5 year old idiot, and what can I do with it? I wish I'd just grow up and stop fooling around."
You know what? If you've ever thought something like that I have to say that I, too, wish you'd grow up and stop fooling around, though I have a hunch that I mean something very different from what you think.
Scanners are vulnerable, and in the best ways, like kids: they're eager for new knowledge, they love to share, they're rarely competitive. My experience has shown me that most Scanners seem to be extremely kind, never belittling, often protective of other people's feelings. But they're as hurt by criticism and misunderstanding as a child, too.
But I'd like to make a plea that Scanners must grow up, at least enough to understand that people never understand anybody at the beginning of a new venture. If you're an original thinker, like an artist, you're always ahead of your time. But if you can 'grow up,' you'll develop the patience to forego approval at the beginning and honor the importance of what you're discovering.
And if you quit fooling around, you'll understand that you have to stick to your sleuthing as long as it fascinates you, until it yields the reason it was 'important' in the first place. And then you'll have something important to share with the world. And you must share it. You have to try to help the world understand it. That's your obligation.
See, if you're a true Scanner, when your mystery finally takes shape, you're obliged to try to explain it. And, if you're a true Scanner, you have to do it fast, almost the moment you have that Eureka! moment. Because you're not like an inventor or industrialist or gold miner who considers discovery nothing more than a path to success with all its rewards. To a Scanner, the discovery itself is the good part. But as soon as discovery becomes a commonplace to you, you'll move on to something else. And I say you have to wait a minute. You have unfinished work to do before you leave one scene and look for another.
You have to stop fooling around, and take up the challenge of pulling those important findings together and explaining it clearly and patiently to anyone who needs to know about it. (Don't talk to me about experts and credentials and publishers, either. Just start a blog and start writing, like I'm doing right now.)
And when the work of explaining your discovery is done, then you can get on to the next mystery.
If you do this, you'll be in the company of the best people there are, anywhere. Fortunately, some of them write books for us amateurs. They're usually called scientists or artists or mathematicians, but they're more than that because they're as enthusiastic as children about their interests and they want to tell the world what they've found.
Which brings me to the third very special person you should know about. Head over to TED.com and watch and listen to some amazing people go up on a stage in front of a thousand people and and enthusiastically talk about the NEATEST stuff they just found out!
I think one of the more delightful and wilder of the bunch, and the best for any Scanner to start with is Clifford Stoll.
He's had some exciting adventures; he's famous for finding KGB spies and stopping them from hacking classified information, but In his talk he explains that these days, things that used to interest him have become boring. "The first time you do something, it's science. The second time it's engineering. Third time you're just a technician. I'm a scientist. Once I do something I want to do something else."
He waves his arms and jumps around and changes the subject and reads notes he wrote on his hand, but he's totally wonderful. And he's not just a genius in a tower, enjoying himself, he's a genius who wants to talk to us.
He says, "If you want to know what the future will bring, don't ask me, don't ask a scientist, or someone who's writing code. Ask an experienced kindergarten teacher. She knows."
He says we should all volunteer to teach kids in school.
Stoll has fun and acts like a kid but he's a grownup and he really isn't fooling around anymore, and he'll tell you how to stop fooling around, too. Not only that, he'll show you how to remain a happy, childlike Scanner at the same time, one who has a delicious time just being conscious.
Check him out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj8IA6xOpSk
Be sure to stick around until the end because Stoll says important stuff. The finale is worth waiting for, especially for a Scanner who can't defend your delight with learning new things, and your lack of 'stickability.'
He closes by telling us something he read as a student (actually, it was engraved on a bell in his college campus tower, where he found himself after escaping from a campus riot). I'll write it here, but you really want to hear him say it.
"All truth is one in this light.
May science and religion endeavor here for the steady evolution of mankind,
from darkness to light,
from narrowness to broadmindedness,
from prejudice to tolerance.
It is the voice of Life
which calls us to come and learn."
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Do Scanners Have Bad Memories?
This exchange just took place on my bulletin board (at www.barbarasher.com/boards):
Do Scanners Have Bad Memories?
shparks on Sun Oct 26, 2008 4:01
I have always had a crummy memory. I don't recall a lot of specific details about my childhood. I am always forgetting to do things, or forgetting ideas that I had, or forgetting why I walked into a room. I have been wondering if the reason I have so much trouble with remembering things is because, as a Scanner, I always have too many things on my mind to keep straight.
Do other Scanners have that problem?
......................
skannie on Sun Oct 26, 2008 3:23
Yes, I do. It's otherwise known as absent-mindedness, and is supposed to be a sign of great intelligence
shanTRAnex.com
European Life Blog
.........................
I liked that, especially the 'sign of great intelligence' thing, and try to keep it in mind since I too, have a bad memory. Well, about some things. I do happen to know all the words to all the pop songs ever written.
But I can't find things.
I was always like this, even as a kid. I could never find things I was looking for even if they were right in front of me. Especially in closets. And drawers. And on shelves. Later, when I was older I realized this extended to glove compartments and supermarkets. Bookstores, too, but so many books on the shelves are terrifically interesting that you forget what you were looking for and enjoy what you found. Which is not a bad way to live, actually.
But back then, my mom would say, after finding the missing thing, "If it were a snake it would have bitten you," which, as a small child, always gave me pause, though I was never entirely sure why.
My dad would say, 'Take your eyes in your hands!" Now, that fascinated me. I could envision it and would hold out my hands and move them around, pretending I had eyes in my palms. It was very jolly, but as I grew a little older I realized it didn't make much sense. It might have been handy for some people to have their eyes in their hands (especially for looking behind and under things in dark closets, in case there was a mouse or a spider there), but not for me, not with my eyes, because I wouldn't have been able to see what was in front of them no matter where they were stationed. (Now that I'm all grown up I have a hunch he was translating from Russian or Yiddish and it lost something in the translation.)
The discussion on my bulletin board continued:
..........................
kashtanka on Wed Oct 29, 2008 1:20
I'm forgetful, too. I'll get to places and have no memory of driving there. A woman I know was talking about traffic grievances, and I said "I always have too much on my mind to give it much attention."
Another thing. I forget what's on my activity schedule all the time. A friend will ask "Are you looking forward to next Saturday?" There's an awkward silence and then I mumble a few words in hopes that she'll tell me what the activity is. Dangerous business that is.
...........................
Now that's fixable. I'll have to tell kashtanka: Use iCal!! I had the same problem when, years after it appeared on my latest mac, I decided to try iCal. It's super. Sometimes I write thoughts in it, or write something I've already done and check it off and feel very productive. Sometimes I even start a journal, and once I decided to write three things I was happy about, and planned to do that every evening, but I forgot to continue.
Still, it's great. See, you write in it and then later it pops up on your screen to remind you to do something exactly when you told it to. If you click on it, all the details appear as well as long notes you wrote yourself about what to bring or say or do. When it comes to appointments, it's like magic.
Or should be. Actually, the little box that pops up goes in front of whatever you were reading and no matter where you move it, it's always in the way and becomes very irritating. But you do look at it, and if it reminds you of something it would have been disastrous to forget, your irritation is replaced with panic, which is good. Not pleasant, but good.
I'm also fond of Resnooze! It's really nice. You write yourself a memo whenever you have a great idea, or there's something you should do over and over (like, 'remember to look in that other email account,' or 'show up for that teleclass you're running,' or 'write the newsletter already!') and they appear and re-appear in your inbox daily, weekly or monthly until you do them. Or until you stop seeing them. Because when something is in your inbox repeatedly, it sort of becomes a thing and subject to the invisibility problem. You don't even open it after awhile. It turns into wallpaper and when you see it you don't give the subject line your full attention. You wonder faintly if it's spam and you delete it. Over and over. Until you figure out how to turn it off.
So, if you know a system for finding things when you're certain they're right in front of you but you can't see them anyway, just let me know. In the meantime, here's a law of nature that will help you avoid frenzy:
It is only possible to find things when you no longer need them. Give up and do something else.
And its corollary, equally true: Once you no longer need things, you will probably find them. It won't make you feel good, of course, because it's kind of like they're making fun of you. But humiliation fades faster than despair, so it's not all bad.
I'll let you know if we come up with something. Feel free to contribute any good ideas you might have.
Do Scanners Have Bad Memories?
shparks on Sun Oct 26, 2008 4:01
I have always had a crummy memory. I don't recall a lot of specific details about my childhood. I am always forgetting to do things, or forgetting ideas that I had, or forgetting why I walked into a room. I have been wondering if the reason I have so much trouble with remembering things is because, as a Scanner, I always have too many things on my mind to keep straight.
Do other Scanners have that problem?
......................
skannie on Sun Oct 26, 2008 3:23
Yes, I do. It's otherwise known as absent-mindedness, and is supposed to be a sign of great intelligence
shanTRAnex.com
European Life Blog
.........................
I liked that, especially the 'sign of great intelligence' thing, and try to keep it in mind since I too, have a bad memory. Well, about some things. I do happen to know all the words to all the pop songs ever written.
But I can't find things.
I was always like this, even as a kid. I could never find things I was looking for even if they were right in front of me. Especially in closets. And drawers. And on shelves. Later, when I was older I realized this extended to glove compartments and supermarkets. Bookstores, too, but so many books on the shelves are terrifically interesting that you forget what you were looking for and enjoy what you found. Which is not a bad way to live, actually.
But back then, my mom would say, after finding the missing thing, "If it were a snake it would have bitten you," which, as a small child, always gave me pause, though I was never entirely sure why.
My dad would say, 'Take your eyes in your hands!" Now, that fascinated me. I could envision it and would hold out my hands and move them around, pretending I had eyes in my palms. It was very jolly, but as I grew a little older I realized it didn't make much sense. It might have been handy for some people to have their eyes in their hands (especially for looking behind and under things in dark closets, in case there was a mouse or a spider there), but not for me, not with my eyes, because I wouldn't have been able to see what was in front of them no matter where they were stationed. (Now that I'm all grown up I have a hunch he was translating from Russian or Yiddish and it lost something in the translation.)
The discussion on my bulletin board continued:
..........................
kashtanka on Wed Oct 29, 2008 1:20
I'm forgetful, too. I'll get to places and have no memory of driving there. A woman I know was talking about traffic grievances, and I said "I always have too much on my mind to give it much attention."
Another thing. I forget what's on my activity schedule all the time. A friend will ask "Are you looking forward to next Saturday?" There's an awkward silence and then I mumble a few words in hopes that she'll tell me what the activity is. Dangerous business that is.
...........................
Now that's fixable. I'll have to tell kashtanka: Use iCal!! I had the same problem when, years after it appeared on my latest mac, I decided to try iCal. It's super. Sometimes I write thoughts in it, or write something I've already done and check it off and feel very productive. Sometimes I even start a journal, and once I decided to write three things I was happy about, and planned to do that every evening, but I forgot to continue.
Still, it's great. See, you write in it and then later it pops up on your screen to remind you to do something exactly when you told it to. If you click on it, all the details appear as well as long notes you wrote yourself about what to bring or say or do. When it comes to appointments, it's like magic.
Or should be. Actually, the little box that pops up goes in front of whatever you were reading and no matter where you move it, it's always in the way and becomes very irritating. But you do look at it, and if it reminds you of something it would have been disastrous to forget, your irritation is replaced with panic, which is good. Not pleasant, but good.
I'm also fond of Resnooze! It's really nice. You write yourself a memo whenever you have a great idea, or there's something you should do over and over (like, 'remember to look in that other email account,' or 'show up for that teleclass you're running,' or 'write the newsletter already!') and they appear and re-appear in your inbox daily, weekly or monthly until you do them. Or until you stop seeing them. Because when something is in your inbox repeatedly, it sort of becomes a thing and subject to the invisibility problem. You don't even open it after awhile. It turns into wallpaper and when you see it you don't give the subject line your full attention. You wonder faintly if it's spam and you delete it. Over and over. Until you figure out how to turn it off.
So, if you know a system for finding things when you're certain they're right in front of you but you can't see them anyway, just let me know. In the meantime, here's a law of nature that will help you avoid frenzy:
It is only possible to find things when you no longer need them. Give up and do something else.
And its corollary, equally true: Once you no longer need things, you will probably find them. It won't make you feel good, of course, because it's kind of like they're making fun of you. But humiliation fades faster than despair, so it's not all bad.
I'll let you know if we come up with something. Feel free to contribute any good ideas you might have.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Solitude, Italy and new good old friends.
Got back from the WriteSpeak retreat in Venice Beach only a month ago but it feels like I've been home a long time -- not long enough to clean up and back up my inbox, but I did a whole lot of organizing and tossing and I'm feeling superbly virtuous.
And now there are suitcases and boxes open and things folded and in baskets and on couches -- all in categories: linen jackets, pants, sandals for the stone masseria in Puglia's warmish weather, classier woolens and knits and shoes for Toulouse (it's France, after all!), and my favorites: down vest and sweatpants and warm socks for the good homey old village in Cappadocia (www.kilimwomen.com). I've never been to Toulouse, and I can remember when I thought anyone who went to Istanbul had probably been to the moon, too. But now, it's a nice place I go. Mystery gone. Familiarity and comfort replace it.
First destination, the retreat for Scanners in Puglia (photos at www.geniuspress.com) - which just about my favorite thing to do. I hope I'll be able to continue doing them overseas, but it gets trickier every year. Still, the emails we've been tossing back and forth indicate that there's going to be another remarkable group of people. One of the unexpected things that come out of retreats are lifelong friendships, and I'm one of the beneficiaries. It's a surprise.
Most of the last 30 years I've worked and lived solo in my home and always loved it. I never feel lonely because I'm in New York, and all you have to do (if you feel like a New Yorker) is go outdoors and you're surrounded by cousins. You get to say hello, of course, they probably do that in Dubuque, but you also get to boss people around. In cold weather I say things like, 'Put your hat on!' to strangers and any time of year I say 'Quit looking for quarters in public phones, Gerald, everyone will think you're crazy!' to people I know by name. People say things to me, too. It's something you either like or you don't.
There's New York when I'm outdoors, and then, for the last 20 years or so, there's been the internet. Well, telnet bulletin boards, and then email and then my own website and bulletin board and then Yahoo groups and now Twitter, I've been in pig heaven, people-wise, with people to communicate with whenever I want, which is pretty much whenever I'm home and awake.
When it comes to interaction, I've never loved the telephone -- when it rang I was wary; when I owed a call I felt burdened -- but I love to write emails. And bulletin boards are better than a crowded theater lobby between acts -- because everybody knows you, and you can listen in or join in to any conversation, and the conversations are usually more interesting than any I ever heard in a theater lobby. And, unlike the theater, this lobby is open whenever I feel like going there. (I can even watch the film of a play first, if I like.) Cocooning has been a personal gift from the universe to me.
But getting to know people face to face in a retreat setting, that's just a jolly thing, unlike other things, especially in an old, stone fortress with secret gardens, and a hidden chapel, and cappuccino & crossants like they don't seem to make it anywhere else. Sitting around the outdoor tables (plastic, I must admit) talking or walking among the short, twisted trunks of ancient olive trees with one person now, someone else later, waking up early and hitching a ride to the pebble beaches and crystal water, or to the internet cafe in the little medieval town nearby -- all the time with this small group of unusual people --is more like being at a reunion than just a vacation, because you sense that these people are going to be old friends.
I'm not the only one who says this. One Scanner retreat is having its second annual reunion in Tuscany this week. The September 07 retreat just had its first reunion in California in August. Just last month, one of our Scanners passed away unexpectedly and we're all grieving because it feels like we knew him all our lives. On Yahoo mail we tell stories of how he had achieved his dream, and pushed everyone to go after theirs.
There are happy things, too. (Our pharmacist from Germany is taking clown lessons!)
I admit the Write-Speak retreats (http://writeyourownsuccessstory.com) are also full of amazing people and they stay together too, working together in teams, cheering each other on to their goals (I'm always returning to snoop in their group emails). But most of the WriteSpeakers confess to being Scanners as well. And Scanners are just plain wonderful people.
If you don't know yet, a Scanner is an eclectic, someone who calls himself-herself a dilettante, a jack of all trades, that sort of derogatory label. I call them multi-talented, generous, intelligent and fascinating people. I wrote a whole book about them and found them to be so amazing, I started the retreats so I could get to know them better. One thing about Scanners (aside from how hard they've been on themselves until now) is that they've rarely been around other Scanners. That's a revelation. But I'll talk about that another time.
Enough socializing. Gotta get back to packing.
And now there are suitcases and boxes open and things folded and in baskets and on couches -- all in categories: linen jackets, pants, sandals for the stone masseria in Puglia's warmish weather, classier woolens and knits and shoes for Toulouse (it's France, after all!), and my favorites: down vest and sweatpants and warm socks for the good homey old village in Cappadocia (www.kilimwomen.com). I've never been to Toulouse, and I can remember when I thought anyone who went to Istanbul had probably been to the moon, too. But now, it's a nice place I go. Mystery gone. Familiarity and comfort replace it.
First destination, the retreat for Scanners in Puglia (photos at www.geniuspress.com) - which just about my favorite thing to do. I hope I'll be able to continue doing them overseas, but it gets trickier every year. Still, the emails we've been tossing back and forth indicate that there's going to be another remarkable group of people. One of the unexpected things that come out of retreats are lifelong friendships, and I'm one of the beneficiaries. It's a surprise.
Most of the last 30 years I've worked and lived solo in my home and always loved it. I never feel lonely because I'm in New York, and all you have to do (if you feel like a New Yorker) is go outdoors and you're surrounded by cousins. You get to say hello, of course, they probably do that in Dubuque, but you also get to boss people around. In cold weather I say things like, 'Put your hat on!' to strangers and any time of year I say 'Quit looking for quarters in public phones, Gerald, everyone will think you're crazy!' to people I know by name. People say things to me, too. It's something you either like or you don't.
There's New York when I'm outdoors, and then, for the last 20 years or so, there's been the internet. Well, telnet bulletin boards, and then email and then my own website and bulletin board and then Yahoo groups and now Twitter, I've been in pig heaven, people-wise, with people to communicate with whenever I want, which is pretty much whenever I'm home and awake.
When it comes to interaction, I've never loved the telephone -- when it rang I was wary; when I owed a call I felt burdened -- but I love to write emails. And bulletin boards are better than a crowded theater lobby between acts -- because everybody knows you, and you can listen in or join in to any conversation, and the conversations are usually more interesting than any I ever heard in a theater lobby. And, unlike the theater, this lobby is open whenever I feel like going there. (I can even watch the film of a play first, if I like.) Cocooning has been a personal gift from the universe to me.
But getting to know people face to face in a retreat setting, that's just a jolly thing, unlike other things, especially in an old, stone fortress with secret gardens, and a hidden chapel, and cappuccino & crossants like they don't seem to make it anywhere else. Sitting around the outdoor tables (plastic, I must admit) talking or walking among the short, twisted trunks of ancient olive trees with one person now, someone else later, waking up early and hitching a ride to the pebble beaches and crystal water, or to the internet cafe in the little medieval town nearby -- all the time with this small group of unusual people --is more like being at a reunion than just a vacation, because you sense that these people are going to be old friends.
I'm not the only one who says this. One Scanner retreat is having its second annual reunion in Tuscany this week. The September 07 retreat just had its first reunion in California in August. Just last month, one of our Scanners passed away unexpectedly and we're all grieving because it feels like we knew him all our lives. On Yahoo mail we tell stories of how he had achieved his dream, and pushed everyone to go after theirs.
There are happy things, too. (Our pharmacist from Germany is taking clown lessons!)
I admit the Write-Speak retreats (http://writeyourownsuccessstory.com) are also full of amazing people and they stay together too, working together in teams, cheering each other on to their goals (I'm always returning to snoop in their group emails). But most of the WriteSpeakers confess to being Scanners as well. And Scanners are just plain wonderful people.
If you don't know yet, a Scanner is an eclectic, someone who calls himself-herself a dilettante, a jack of all trades, that sort of derogatory label. I call them multi-talented, generous, intelligent and fascinating people. I wrote a whole book about them and found them to be so amazing, I started the retreats so I could get to know them better. One thing about Scanners (aside from how hard they've been on themselves until now) is that they've rarely been around other Scanners. That's a revelation. But I'll talk about that another time.
Enough socializing. Gotta get back to packing.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
When summer turns to fall, where do Scanners go?
SUMMER'S OVER
I know a lot of people who are sad about that, but I couldn't be happier. I'm not crazy about the heat and I love action, so fall is my favorite season. Everything wakes up. I was born in Detroit and when the air got crisp and the leaves fell on lawns and streets and we got fresh pencils and new shoes for school, I always got excited.
11 years later, we moved to Los Angeles and there was no way of knowing what season it was. People here in the east say that California is the place where Labor Day never comes. I finally know what they mean. In California I never would have undersstood what that meant. "Labor Day? What's that?"
My first Xmas there was sunny and hot and I was stunned to see huge cardboard cutouts of Santa and the reindeer strung across Wilshire Boulevard between tall, skinny palm trees. My mother was singing with joy, but I was offended. But I couldn't remember cold weather and snow somehow so I couldn't figure out what was wrong. Everything was slow and the same. It was like living indoors.
I kept moving around after college looking for something and when I finally moved to New York as a grown woman. That's when I got it: Los Angeles doesn't do weather, it does climate. I had to figure out as an adult how to adapt to the seasons, watching other people, looking at kids in the playgrounds and windows of department stores. The crisp autumn weather made the child in me happy, and putting away summer clothes and pulling out winter clothes made the grownup in me happy. It was like visiting a beautiful new world and relearning a language I had forgotten.
To my family back in California, this sort of thing just looked like extra work. They're real Californians. Me, I love work. Of course, most of the work I do is work I really enjoy. Which reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, from Spider Robinson, a science fiction writer beloved by many: He said,
"It took me better than a quarter century to learn, the hard way, that hard work at something you want to be doing is the most fun you can have out of bed...to learn that the smart [person] finds ways to make everything he does be work; to learn that 'leisure' time is truly pleasurable (indeed tolerable) only to the extent that is is subconscious grazing for information with which to infuse new, better work."
Which brings me to one of my favorite kinds of work: running retreats.
BACK FROM WS RETREAT
I just got back from my third retreat for Writer-Speakers. Once again it has drawn another amazing group of people who are already supporting each other and moving forward on their plans to have a book and a speaking career within the next year.
In my inbox I find that 3 more people from the previous WriteSpeak programs have finished their books and one has gotten a very big speaking gig (we're holding her hand -- which is shaking -- but she's already done this a dozen times in the class and will be fantastic. And she'll soon be rich enough to take us all out to dinner to thank us :-)
REUNIONS
On a short break I met with Scanners from last spring's Puglia Retreat at their first reunion. We ate at a huge, noisy Italian restaurant and shouted over the music and noise as I heard about their progress and met their partners. I don't remember enjoying any holiday get-togethers with family and friends more. This month I'll regrettably miss another Scanner's reunion, (of the first Scanner retreat ever, from Corfu, Greece in 2006) at its second reunion in Tuscany. (I'll be busy running a new Scanner's Retreat in southern Italy.)
One of the expected rewards from both WriteSpeak and Scanner's retreats is the ongoing, loving, unending enthusiasm and support that come out of the days we work together and the following months and years of emails and monthly conference calls, watching and helping everyone move forward to exciting personal and professional goals. But the unexpected reward is turning out to be the creation of lifelong friendships. I've never seen anything like it.
SCANNER RETREAT IN PUGLIA
SEPT 26 - OCT 1, 2008
LAST CALL!
Now it's almost time to pack again, to head out for the next Scanner's Retreat in Puglia, Italy (Sep 26 - Oct 1). Three spaces have just become available, so if you want to join me and your tribe of Scanners for the experience of a lifetime, be sure to let me know as soon as you can. If you ever want to attend, do it now if you can. I hope to do others in future, but I've got a book that's been waiting for me to write it, and I'm planning to start in October. If the Scanner retreat is right for you, seize the day.
And if, for some reason, you have no idea what I'm talking about and would like to know, head over to GeniusPress and read all about it, see some great photos of the lovely 16th cenury masseria we pretty much have to ourselves, and sign up.
If you want to hear my recent radio show in which producer and Greece/Italy-man-on-the-ground Matt and I talk about Puglia Scanner retreats, click here and listen away: Refuse to Choose! (or What Do I Do When I Want to Do Everything?)
And if you want to hear the song that always goes through my mind when I know I'm heading back to Puglia, listen to this and fall in love.
I've been fighting with a tempermental mail program all of this Labor Day weekend, so first come will be first served. If you're a Scanner who wants to finally become focused and get moving in the best direction your life can take, I'd love to work with you.
FAQ about the Scanner Book: In the states it's called 'Refuse to Choose,' but 'What Do I Do When I Want To Do Everything' is the same book when published in New Zealand, England, Australia, and South Africa. The book is also popular in Germany (called 'Du musst dich nicht entscheiden, wenn du tausend Träume hast'). We've had Scanners from every one of those countries at our retreats. Add to the rich mix of all those cultures all the many interests inside the head of every Scanner, and each retreat is like the best birthday party in the world.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Patty Newbold is half-way through the first-ever telephone Success Team and it's a triumph! You can find out more at. She might invite you to the Idea Party in the seventh week if there's still time.
I'm starting to do teleclasses on Resistance again, and have one scheduled now. The proceeds go to the Kilim e-Commerce School of Ortahisar, Turkey. The details are
Barbara
I know a lot of people who are sad about that, but I couldn't be happier. I'm not crazy about the heat and I love action, so fall is my favorite season. Everything wakes up. I was born in Detroit and when the air got crisp and the leaves fell on lawns and streets and we got fresh pencils and new shoes for school, I always got excited.
11 years later, we moved to Los Angeles and there was no way of knowing what season it was. People here in the east say that California is the place where Labor Day never comes. I finally know what they mean. In California I never would have undersstood what that meant. "Labor Day? What's that?"
My first Xmas there was sunny and hot and I was stunned to see huge cardboard cutouts of Santa and the reindeer strung across Wilshire Boulevard between tall, skinny palm trees. My mother was singing with joy, but I was offended. But I couldn't remember cold weather and snow somehow so I couldn't figure out what was wrong. Everything was slow and the same. It was like living indoors.
I kept moving around after college looking for something and when I finally moved to New York as a grown woman. That's when I got it: Los Angeles doesn't do weather, it does climate. I had to figure out as an adult how to adapt to the seasons, watching other people, looking at kids in the playgrounds and windows of department stores. The crisp autumn weather made the child in me happy, and putting away summer clothes and pulling out winter clothes made the grownup in me happy. It was like visiting a beautiful new world and relearning a language I had forgotten.
To my family back in California, this sort of thing just looked like extra work. They're real Californians. Me, I love work. Of course, most of the work I do is work I really enjoy. Which reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, from Spider Robinson, a science fiction writer beloved by many: He said,
"It took me better than a quarter century to learn, the hard way, that hard work at something you want to be doing is the most fun you can have out of bed...to learn that the smart [person] finds ways to make everything he does be work; to learn that 'leisure' time is truly pleasurable (indeed tolerable) only to the extent that is is subconscious grazing for information with which to infuse new, better work."
Which brings me to one of my favorite kinds of work: running retreats.
BACK FROM WS RETREAT
I just got back from my third retreat for Writer-Speakers. Once again it has drawn another amazing group of people who are already supporting each other and moving forward on their plans to have a book and a speaking career within the next year.
In my inbox I find that 3 more people from the previous WriteSpeak programs have finished their books and one has gotten a very big speaking gig (we're holding her hand -- which is shaking -- but she's already done this a dozen times in the class and will be fantastic. And she'll soon be rich enough to take us all out to dinner to thank us :-)
REUNIONS
On a short break I met with Scanners from last spring's Puglia Retreat at their first reunion. We ate at a huge, noisy Italian restaurant and shouted over the music and noise as I heard about their progress and met their partners. I don't remember enjoying any holiday get-togethers with family and friends more. This month I'll regrettably miss another Scanner's reunion, (of the first Scanner retreat ever, from Corfu, Greece in 2006) at its second reunion in Tuscany. (I'll be busy running a new Scanner's Retreat in southern Italy.)
One of the expected rewards from both WriteSpeak and Scanner's retreats is the ongoing, loving, unending enthusiasm and support that come out of the days we work together and the following months and years of emails and monthly conference calls, watching and helping everyone move forward to exciting personal and professional goals. But the unexpected reward is turning out to be the creation of lifelong friendships. I've never seen anything like it.
SCANNER RETREAT IN PUGLIA
SEPT 26 - OCT 1, 2008
LAST CALL!
Now it's almost time to pack again, to head out for the next Scanner's Retreat in Puglia, Italy (Sep 26 - Oct 1). Three spaces have just become available, so if you want to join me and your tribe of Scanners for the experience of a lifetime, be sure to let me know as soon as you can. If you ever want to attend, do it now if you can. I hope to do others in future, but I've got a book that's been waiting for me to write it, and I'm planning to start in October. If the Scanner retreat is right for you, seize the day.
And if, for some reason, you have no idea what I'm talking about and would like to know, head over to GeniusPress and read all about it, see some great photos of the lovely 16th cenury masseria we pretty much have to ourselves, and sign up.
If you want to hear my recent radio show in which producer and Greece/Italy-man-on-the-ground Matt and I talk about Puglia Scanner retreats, click here and listen away: Refuse to Choose! (or What Do I Do When I Want to Do Everything?)
And if you want to hear the song that always goes through my mind when I know I'm heading back to Puglia, listen to this and fall in love.
I've been fighting with a tempermental mail program all of this Labor Day weekend, so first come will be first served. If you're a Scanner who wants to finally become focused and get moving in the best direction your life can take, I'd love to work with you.
FAQ about the Scanner Book: In the states it's called 'Refuse to Choose,' but 'What Do I Do When I Want To Do Everything' is the same book when published in New Zealand, England, Australia, and South Africa. The book is also popular in Germany (called 'Du musst dich nicht entscheiden, wenn du tausend Träume hast'). We've had Scanners from every one of those countries at our retreats. Add to the rich mix of all those cultures all the many interests inside the head of every Scanner, and each retreat is like the best birthday party in the world.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Patty Newbold is half-way through the first-ever telephone Success Team and it's a triumph! You can find out more at
I'm starting to do teleclasses on Resistance again, and have one scheduled now. The proceeds go to the Kilim e-Commerce School of Ortahisar, Turkey. The details are
Barbara
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Where does a Scanner find other Scanners?
It's not easy, witness all the mail I get from readers of Refuse to Choose thanking me because they thought they were the only people as peculiar as they are. When a Scanner is surrounded by other Scanners it's a lovely thing to behold. Imagine: no critics, no one saying you're flakey or lazy.
If you can come to the September retreat, do it. I have a few spaces left and the Masseria in Puglia, Italy is so beautiful. Head over to www.geniuspress.com to see photos and get an explanation of what a Scanner is, and what we do at the retreat. I'm heading out for L.A. where one group from a year ago is having a reunion and we're meeting at the beach in a few days. The first ever Scanner retreat 3 years ago is now having their second reunion in Tuscany. It's like they found their families. Which is good because Scanners aren't only interesting and interested, they're almost always good people. Amazing.
But if you really are in the dark as to what a Scanner is, they call themselves things like:
Eclectic Expert, Magnificent Mind-Changer, Delightful Dilettante, Jolly Jack-of-all-trades, Precocious Plate-Spinner or any victims of repeated hit-and-run obsessions; the intellectual, spiritual & emotional heirs of Aristotle, da Vinci, Goethe, Ben Franklin, Isadora Duncan, and George Plimpton.
Yes, there are great careers for you. I remember a High-Speed Indecisive who got a dream job, some years ago. Leave a comment and I'll be glad to tell you what it was but got to get to sleep to get up to fly out of here in the morning. (He loved it -- for about 2 years -- and then moved on to (I hope) an even better job.
If you can come to the September retreat, do it. I have a few spaces left and the Masseria in Puglia, Italy is so beautiful. Head over to www.geniuspress.com to see photos and get an explanation of what a Scanner is, and what we do at the retreat. I'm heading out for L.A. where one group from a year ago is having a reunion and we're meeting at the beach in a few days. The first ever Scanner retreat 3 years ago is now having their second reunion in Tuscany. It's like they found their families. Which is good because Scanners aren't only interesting and interested, they're almost always good people. Amazing.
But if you really are in the dark as to what a Scanner is, they call themselves things like:
Eclectic Expert, Magnificent Mind-Changer, Delightful Dilettante, Jolly Jack-of-all-trades, Precocious Plate-Spinner or any victims of repeated hit-and-run obsessions; the intellectual, spiritual & emotional heirs of Aristotle, da Vinci, Goethe, Ben Franklin, Isadora Duncan, and George Plimpton.
Yes, there are great careers for you. I remember a High-Speed Indecisive who got a dream job, some years ago. Leave a comment and I'll be glad to tell you what it was but got to get to sleep to get up to fly out of here in the morning. (He loved it -- for about 2 years -- and then moved on to (I hope) an even better job.
Where does a Scanner find other Scanners?
At a book club! (Sound of hand hitting my own forehead).
I'm writing this on September 1, 2014.
Who knew back in '08 that the first book club (it was for I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was) would be so incredible. I was blown away at the depth of understanding members got from doing the exercises together, and the warmth and support that developed over the 16 weeks of that first book club.
That's why I decided the second book club should be about Refuse to Choose:
Scanners are too often alone.
There are places to meet online, I'm happy to say. Facebook is great, and so is my bulletin board (for meeting Scanners, that is) - and LinkedIn and more.
But the 6-day retreats I ran in Greece, Italy and France, where Scanners could really get to know each other, and discuss over long days for almost an entire week the difficulties faced by all Scanners and all people with lots of interests, lots of curiosity and creativity and intelligence are no more. So many of the people who attended them - from 2006 until 2013 - have stayed lifetime friends.
But now, 6 years later, my age and health won't let me run them anymore.
So Where does a Scanner find other Scanners? Ho ho!!! At this book club!!
That's why I'm so excited about the book club! (I'm driving Patty crazy sending announcements before the links are ready!)
You're going to meet other Scanners on a deeper level than you could anywhere else, and you'll be solving your own problems, getting your questions answered, finding out how to wrangle all those interests and talents, worries and difficulties. You'll know like you haven't realized before that you are all right, better than all right. You'll find the people who 'get you.' Why? Because you'll be doing all the Refuse to Choose exercises with them, you'll be commenting and replying to each other, and having discussions right on the page.
And you'll be doing it for 16 weeks.
And you'll spend (including travel and tuition) about 100 times less money than it took to come to a retreat.
You're going to know these people by the time you complete the Refuse to Choose Book Club.
Isolation is the dreamkiller, and Scanners are so often alone. That's got to stop.
It's 7pm on September 1, 2014. If you're on my mailing list, look for the newsletter that will sent you to the site -- any minute.
If you have any problems, come over to barbarasclub.com and holler!
(I'm still waiting to see if I can get notified when you leave a comment on this blog!)
Hi guys. I've missed you.
:-)
I'm writing this on September 1, 2014.
Who knew back in '08 that the first book club (it was for I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was) would be so incredible. I was blown away at the depth of understanding members got from doing the exercises together, and the warmth and support that developed over the 16 weeks of that first book club.
That's why I decided the second book club should be about Refuse to Choose:
Scanners are too often alone.
There are places to meet online, I'm happy to say. Facebook is great, and so is my bulletin board (for meeting Scanners, that is) - and LinkedIn and more.
But the 6-day retreats I ran in Greece, Italy and France, where Scanners could really get to know each other, and discuss over long days for almost an entire week the difficulties faced by all Scanners and all people with lots of interests, lots of curiosity and creativity and intelligence are no more. So many of the people who attended them - from 2006 until 2013 - have stayed lifetime friends.
But now, 6 years later, my age and health won't let me run them anymore.
So Where does a Scanner find other Scanners? Ho ho!!! At this book club!!
That's why I'm so excited about the book club! (I'm driving Patty crazy sending announcements before the links are ready!)
You're going to meet other Scanners on a deeper level than you could anywhere else, and you'll be solving your own problems, getting your questions answered, finding out how to wrangle all those interests and talents, worries and difficulties. You'll know like you haven't realized before that you are all right, better than all right. You'll find the people who 'get you.' Why? Because you'll be doing all the Refuse to Choose exercises with them, you'll be commenting and replying to each other, and having discussions right on the page.
And you'll be doing it for 16 weeks.
And you'll spend (including travel and tuition) about 100 times less money than it took to come to a retreat.
You're going to know these people by the time you complete the Refuse to Choose Book Club.
Isolation is the dreamkiller, and Scanners are so often alone. That's got to stop.
It's 7pm on September 1, 2014. If you're on my mailing list, look for the newsletter that will sent you to the site -- any minute.
If you have any problems, come over to barbarasclub.com and holler!
(I'm still waiting to see if I can get notified when you leave a comment on this blog!)
Hi guys. I've missed you.
:-)
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
More about the moose
Thought you might want to know why I brought up a moose:
Announcements June 14
Last minute announcements, that is. In a few hours I'm heading out of this hot New York to take a cool cruise up the coast of Alaska. I haven't seen it since I was there on Statehood Day, 1959, and I'm curious to see how it's changed. This time around I won't be bouncing up the gravel washboard Alaska Highway in an old panel truck, camping out on my own private adventure in campgrounds that didn't get dark until 11 pm. (In case anyone wants to know how to find the time to finish Proust, that's how.) My big brother (who couldn't go back then) has been waiting a long time for his part of our childhood dream to come true, and now I've accepted his invitation to join him on a cruise ship 50 years after my first visit. I think it will be quite a trip.
I have no doubt that Alaska's still as beautiful as ever, but I'm certain it has changed. I remember standing on the street in Haines, Alaska - a little village we'd settled down in because we were tired of driving, which is located at the end of one branch of the Alaska Highway and was the only way to get the ferry to Juneau (the capitol at the time).
One afternoon we were standing with a handful of other locals on the very short main street, watching the only notable event in town that day: the arrival of the latest ferry. We gazed quietly at the row of cars that lined the road and curled up and around a short ramp on to the dock, waiting to board. The sun was shining (well, the sun was always shining, day and night, because it was August), the sky was blue, and the ship had brought 'boat eggs' (which meant they were about 6 weeks old which, for some reason, was considered a fine thing), so some people murmered a word or two about how nice the next day's breakfast would be when suddenly we heard a crash of brush and a large moose with a big rack of horns leaped out of the woods across the street right up onto the ramp of the dock and landed loudly and heavily next to the line of cars.
He was not happy to be there. He snorted, half turned, reared up, and, finding a space to exit, jumped off the ramp and landed on the roof of a hapless car stopped five feet below. All four of his hooves punched through the roof (amazingly no one was hurt) which made the moose *really* cranky. We watched, frozen, mouths open, as he wrenched each leg out, one by one, between the terrified faces of the car's occupants, wobbled on the roof of the car, bellowed very loudly, lept on to the hood (I didn't see if he did any damage there, but he was a big moose, so he couldn't have done much good) flew off sideways to gallop right past us and down the main road, throwing his head and snorting indignance as the strollers further down the road carefully backed out of his way.
It was quiet still, for a few moments. Someone noticed that our mouths were hanging open and said amiably, "You don't want to get in the way of a piss-offed moose," by way of explanation, and that was that.
That was in 1959. Now it's 2008. I'm kind of hoping some moose will cavort around when we pull into the docks of the towns on the cruise because I'd really like to see it all over again from a different angle this time. But I'm not counting on it.
Anyway, I did have some announcements, and that wasn't really one of them...
Announcements June 14
Last minute announcements, that is. In a few hours I'm heading out of this hot New York to take a cool cruise up the coast of Alaska. I haven't seen it since I was there on Statehood Day, 1959, and I'm curious to see how it's changed. This time around I won't be bouncing up the gravel washboard Alaska Highway in an old panel truck, camping out on my own private adventure in campgrounds that didn't get dark until 11 pm. (In case anyone wants to know how to find the time to finish Proust, that's how.) My big brother (who couldn't go back then) has been waiting a long time for his part of our childhood dream to come true, and now I've accepted his invitation to join him on a cruise ship 50 years after my first visit. I think it will be quite a trip.
I have no doubt that Alaska's still as beautiful as ever, but I'm certain it has changed. I remember standing on the street in Haines, Alaska - a little village we'd settled down in because we were tired of driving, which is located at the end of one branch of the Alaska Highway and was the only way to get the ferry to Juneau (the capitol at the time).
One afternoon we were standing with a handful of other locals on the very short main street, watching the only notable event in town that day: the arrival of the latest ferry. We gazed quietly at the row of cars that lined the road and curled up and around a short ramp on to the dock, waiting to board. The sun was shining (well, the sun was always shining, day and night, because it was August), the sky was blue, and the ship had brought 'boat eggs' (which meant they were about 6 weeks old which, for some reason, was considered a fine thing), so some people murmered a word or two about how nice the next day's breakfast would be when suddenly we heard a crash of brush and a large moose with a big rack of horns leaped out of the woods across the street right up onto the ramp of the dock and landed loudly and heavily next to the line of cars.
He was not happy to be there. He snorted, half turned, reared up, and, finding a space to exit, jumped off the ramp and landed on the roof of a hapless car stopped five feet below. All four of his hooves punched through the roof (amazingly no one was hurt) which made the moose *really* cranky. We watched, frozen, mouths open, as he wrenched each leg out, one by one, between the terrified faces of the car's occupants, wobbled on the roof of the car, bellowed very loudly, lept on to the hood (I didn't see if he did any damage there, but he was a big moose, so he couldn't have done much good) flew off sideways to gallop right past us and down the main road, throwing his head and snorting indignance as the strollers further down the road carefully backed out of his way.
It was quiet still, for a few moments. Someone noticed that our mouths were hanging open and said amiably, "You don't want to get in the way of a piss-offed moose," by way of explanation, and that was that.
That was in 1959. Now it's 2008. I'm kind of hoping some moose will cavort around when we pull into the docks of the towns on the cruise because I'd really like to see it all over again from a different angle this time. But I'm not counting on it.
Anyway, I did have some announcements, and that wasn't really one of them...
Alaska and the Scanner's Retreat
It occurs to me that everyone on earth is not on my mailing list and I've been asked to make the latest newsletter available online, so here it is (without any of the pretty colors or the html):
Barbara Sher - Back From Alaska & Scanners Retreat
Hi Friends,
I'm back from Alaska and I didn't see one moose, but the ship did get within 500 yards of a glacier which obligingly 'calved' a few times, the front wall cracking audibly, a rush of water falling behind the face of ice, then the whole thing sliding down into the water creating lots of splashing and sending swells of water toward the boat. More exciting, even, at least to me, were the brilliant blue streaks in the glacier and some of the small icebergs floating in the water, where the light was behind them. I fell in love with glaciers.
We watched as some of the crew in their fat, yellow zodiac chased after the smaller icebergs, hoping to gaff some ice to bring on board. It was trickier than it looked and provided us with much entertainment and shouting of instructions. Eventually, a small, easy-chair-sized chunk of iceberg was lifted on to the top deck. There were only a few of us around it at first and I took the opportunity to knock off a small chunk of transparent glacier ice and carry it away, licking it as though it were an ice cream cone. It was better. I never tasted ice water so fresh and clean. And it might have been thousands of years old.
Now, back in reality. I'm sweltering in NY city (actually, hiding in my air-conditioned bedroom with shades drawn like Count Dracula). After a few days of pulling out notes and binders, I did my latest internet radio show yesterday, all about Scanners and the Scanner retreat in Italy, coming up Sept 26 through October 1.
Producer Matthew Pearl had been to the last Scanner retreat in Puglia -- in fact, he and his family scouted out this perfect place earlier last year, and he and I talked on the show about the beautiful area, and the 16th century masseria where we ran the retreat last spring -- a remarkable, stone fortified country estate surrounded by acres of ancient olive trees.
We started remembering the food, of course. It was so good, both at the masseria and at the other restaurants we discovered in nearby towns and hidden country homes. We went on and on about the beauty of the nearby towns with their medieval centers, still alive with markets, still full of people who live there all the time, still not packed with tourists. (Head over to Flickr.com and check out Ostuni and Cisternino and Alberobello if you want to fall in love)
But mostly we talked about how great it is for any Scanner to get away from their own world and join other Scanners at a retreat.
What's a Scanner? Here's how to know if you are one:
If you find you have loads of interests, that you're curious and love learning new things, that the subjects that fascinate you are all over the map; if you hate the idea of being limited to any one thing because you'd miss all the others, you're a Scanner.
If you wish you could find the One Right Thing but you fear you'll never find a career (or a hobby!) that will remain interesting for very long...If you're a sweetheart of a person, kind and friendly and childlike in some ways, and you like to help people or make the world a better place, you're a Scanner.
If you wish you were born rich so you wouldn't have to work at all, just so you could play forever with fascinating ideas and concepts and skills and never again have to do anything boring, If you find yourself wildly enthusiastic about something and you believe you'll stay that way -- but after awhile the enthusiasm dies down and you become excited about something else, If people call you a dilettante or flakey or a 'hectic eclectic,' (as one person wrote me), well then, you're a Scanner.
And if you thought you were the only person like you and often wonder how you got so strange, you're a Scanner.
And that last part -- feeling like you're the one oddball in a world full of specialists -- is exactly what makes a retreat the most unforgettable experience of a lifetime. You see, Scanners are among the best people in the world. And they get the worst rap. But at a 5-day retreat with other Scanners, they discover a perspective that's impossible to get any other way. Surrounded by people who are so familiar, so unjudging, Scanners tell me they feel as though they've come home. It's really something to see.
I get to spend hours each day working with a group of 15 - 17 Scanners, helping them find their goals, organize their interests, create plans, set up support teams, and ferret out and outsmart resistance.
On their own they have fun, go walking and swimming, travel around, shop, talk all night, draw on tablecloths, laugh a lot, and often build what might be lifelong friendships. (Three of the past retreats hold yearly reunions.)
And they write me wonderful letters...
"The most lifechanging thing about this trip for me is that I felt fully accepted for who I was as a scanner - and beyond that PROUD! After reading Refuse To Choose I felt UNDERSTOOD, but adding acceptance and pride in that was an entire new feeling. Being around people who supported my ideas instead of competed with them was entirely new to me. "
"...your work with me was nothing short of miraculous. I have [spent years learning about myself] and NEVER once did the issues come up that you identified so quickly. I really couldn't believe it and it is still sinking in. What I love is that you didn't tell me why I needed to be on the path I am on, you somehow pulled it out of me."
If you want to read more letters and see photos of the masseria or find out the details, the times, what's covered and not covered in the fees, head over to Genius Press and click on the Scanner Retreat page. And if you want to attend the next retreat from Sept. 26 to Oct. 1, this fall, sign up pretty quick because there are only about 7 spaces available as I write this mailer.
If you want to know more about Scanners and about the retreats, listen on your computer to the internet show about Scanners that we did on July 20, Right Here!
Take a look or give a listen and write me a letter. I'd love to hear from you.
Dreaming Scanner dreams,
Barbara
Barbara Sher - Back From Alaska & Scanners Retreat
Hi Friends,
I'm back from Alaska and I didn't see one moose, but the ship did get within 500 yards of a glacier which obligingly 'calved' a few times, the front wall cracking audibly, a rush of water falling behind the face of ice, then the whole thing sliding down into the water creating lots of splashing and sending swells of water toward the boat. More exciting, even, at least to me, were the brilliant blue streaks in the glacier and some of the small icebergs floating in the water, where the light was behind them. I fell in love with glaciers.
We watched as some of the crew in their fat, yellow zodiac chased after the smaller icebergs, hoping to gaff some ice to bring on board. It was trickier than it looked and provided us with much entertainment and shouting of instructions. Eventually, a small, easy-chair-sized chunk of iceberg was lifted on to the top deck. There were only a few of us around it at first and I took the opportunity to knock off a small chunk of transparent glacier ice and carry it away, licking it as though it were an ice cream cone. It was better. I never tasted ice water so fresh and clean. And it might have been thousands of years old.
Now, back in reality. I'm sweltering in NY city (actually, hiding in my air-conditioned bedroom with shades drawn like Count Dracula). After a few days of pulling out notes and binders, I did my latest internet radio show yesterday, all about Scanners and the Scanner retreat in Italy, coming up Sept 26 through October 1.
Producer Matthew Pearl had been to the last Scanner retreat in Puglia -- in fact, he and his family scouted out this perfect place earlier last year, and he and I talked on the show about the beautiful area, and the 16th century masseria where we ran the retreat last spring -- a remarkable, stone fortified country estate surrounded by acres of ancient olive trees.
We started remembering the food, of course. It was so good, both at the masseria and at the other restaurants we discovered in nearby towns and hidden country homes. We went on and on about the beauty of the nearby towns with their medieval centers, still alive with markets, still full of people who live there all the time, still not packed with tourists. (Head over to Flickr.com and check out Ostuni and Cisternino and Alberobello if you want to fall in love)
But mostly we talked about how great it is for any Scanner to get away from their own world and join other Scanners at a retreat.
What's a Scanner? Here's how to know if you are one:
If you find you have loads of interests, that you're curious and love learning new things, that the subjects that fascinate you are all over the map; if you hate the idea of being limited to any one thing because you'd miss all the others, you're a Scanner.
If you wish you could find the One Right Thing but you fear you'll never find a career (or a hobby!) that will remain interesting for very long...If you're a sweetheart of a person, kind and friendly and childlike in some ways, and you like to help people or make the world a better place, you're a Scanner.
If you wish you were born rich so you wouldn't have to work at all, just so you could play forever with fascinating ideas and concepts and skills and never again have to do anything boring, If you find yourself wildly enthusiastic about something and you believe you'll stay that way -- but after awhile the enthusiasm dies down and you become excited about something else, If people call you a dilettante or flakey or a 'hectic eclectic,' (as one person wrote me), well then, you're a Scanner.
And if you thought you were the only person like you and often wonder how you got so strange, you're a Scanner.
And that last part -- feeling like you're the one oddball in a world full of specialists -- is exactly what makes a retreat the most unforgettable experience of a lifetime. You see, Scanners are among the best people in the world. And they get the worst rap. But at a 5-day retreat with other Scanners, they discover a perspective that's impossible to get any other way. Surrounded by people who are so familiar, so unjudging, Scanners tell me they feel as though they've come home. It's really something to see.
I get to spend hours each day working with a group of 15 - 17 Scanners, helping them find their goals, organize their interests, create plans, set up support teams, and ferret out and outsmart resistance.
On their own they have fun, go walking and swimming, travel around, shop, talk all night, draw on tablecloths, laugh a lot, and often build what might be lifelong friendships. (Three of the past retreats hold yearly reunions.)
And they write me wonderful letters...
"The most lifechanging thing about this trip for me is that I felt fully accepted for who I was as a scanner - and beyond that PROUD! After reading Refuse To Choose I felt UNDERSTOOD, but adding acceptance and pride in that was an entire new feeling. Being around people who supported my ideas instead of competed with them was entirely new to me. "
"...your work with me was nothing short of miraculous. I have [spent years learning about myself] and NEVER once did the issues come up that you identified so quickly. I really couldn't believe it and it is still sinking in. What I love is that you didn't tell me why I needed to be on the path I am on, you somehow pulled it out of me."
If you want to read more letters and see photos of the masseria or find out the details, the times, what's covered and not covered in the fees, head over to Genius Press and click on the Scanner Retreat page. And if you want to attend the next retreat from Sept. 26 to Oct. 1, this fall, sign up pretty quick because there are only about 7 spaces available as I write this mailer.
If you want to know more about Scanners and about the retreats, listen on your computer to the internet show about Scanners that we did on July 20, Right Here!
Take a look or give a listen and write me a letter. I'd love to hear from you.
Dreaming Scanner dreams,
Barbara
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Scanner Retreat in Puglia, Italy
Did a radio show today with good producer Matt -- he in Corfu, I in New York City -- all about the wonderful place where the spring and fall retreats take place. Tomorrow I'll add some links to photos of the beautiful masseria on Flickr.com, but right now you can see the shots we took last time at www.geniuspress.com
And here's the long and ugly link, well, not exactly a link, I hear. You should be able to play the thing from here (and I promise to learn how to do tiny urls next -- spent the weekend bouncing around Twitter, one thing at a time...)
Oh my. That looks like a sentence from The Magic Mountain.
(OH MY, NO IT DOESN'T! Will you look at that? :-) Life is good.)
The show went on longer than expected and we didn't have time for callers because I'm obsessive about this issue, and I couldn't stop talking about this remarkable population, this group of people that have so many interests, are so curious, love learning new things, and are torn between the dread that they'll be stuck in some suffocating, dull job and the dread that they'll never amount to anythng because they can't focus.
But Scanners have to know there's not a damn thing wrong with them, first and foremost, if they know nothing else. What a costly and cruel mistake it's been for these smart, multi-talented people to get caught up in the age of specialization that respects only single-minded achievers and doesn't know who they are.
Their families and teachers and communities are bewildered and disappointed in them. But then, these same people would have called Ben Frankiln a dilettante, and told Aristotle he had attention deficit disorder. They'd have been dismayed at the wasted life of Leonardo da Vinci (if they didn't know his name!) because he was so talented and just didn't stick to anythng. and told they're dilettantes, lazy, neurotic -- that they fear success, they're trying to sabotage themselves, or they're just foolish, no ability to concentrate, no character or self-discipline.
It's funny to call them renaissance people, as if it were odd that someone has more than one interest, and most of them shy away from the grandiosity of the term. But I guess that's what they are.
Tomorrow I'll talk about the other thngs Scanners need -- and why I wish I could run more retreats because they make such a huge difference in the lives of these talented people.
Bad enough they're told these things, they believe them! They repeat them when they describe themselves.
And their reactions when they find out it's all been a huge mistake is a level of relief that often brings tears. I'm going to start quoteing some of the letters I've been getting for years now.
Nothing's more important than a Scanner knowing there's nothing wrong with her or him.
But there are a few more essentials Scanners must have. I'll tell you all about them tomorrow. (Of course, if you can make that monster link above work, you can rest your eyes and listen to it.)
Watch this space.
And here's the long and ugly link, well, not exactly a link, I hear. You should be able to play the thing from here (and I promise to learn how to do tiny urls next -- spent the weekend bouncing around Twitter, one thing at a time...)
Oh my. That looks like a sentence from The Magic Mountain.
(OH MY, NO IT DOESN'T! Will you look at that? :-) Life is good.)
The show went on longer than expected and we didn't have time for callers because I'm obsessive about this issue, and I couldn't stop talking about this remarkable population, this group of people that have so many interests, are so curious, love learning new things, and are torn between the dread that they'll be stuck in some suffocating, dull job and the dread that they'll never amount to anythng because they can't focus.
But Scanners have to know there's not a damn thing wrong with them, first and foremost, if they know nothing else. What a costly and cruel mistake it's been for these smart, multi-talented people to get caught up in the age of specialization that respects only single-minded achievers and doesn't know who they are.
Their families and teachers and communities are bewildered and disappointed in them. But then, these same people would have called Ben Frankiln a dilettante, and told Aristotle he had attention deficit disorder. They'd have been dismayed at the wasted life of Leonardo da Vinci (if they didn't know his name!) because he was so talented and just didn't stick to anythng. and told they're dilettantes, lazy, neurotic -- that they fear success, they're trying to sabotage themselves, or they're just foolish, no ability to concentrate, no character or self-discipline.
It's funny to call them renaissance people, as if it were odd that someone has more than one interest, and most of them shy away from the grandiosity of the term. But I guess that's what they are.
Tomorrow I'll talk about the other thngs Scanners need -- and why I wish I could run more retreats because they make such a huge difference in the lives of these talented people.
Bad enough they're told these things, they believe them! They repeat them when they describe themselves.
And their reactions when they find out it's all been a huge mistake is a level of relief that often brings tears. I'm going to start quoteing some of the letters I've been getting for years now.
Nothing's more important than a Scanner knowing there's nothing wrong with her or him.
But there are a few more essentials Scanners must have. I'll tell you all about them tomorrow. (Of course, if you can make that monster link above work, you can rest your eyes and listen to it.)
Watch this space.
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