Beautiful things: Words of Wisdom

I always look for inspirational things to keep me pumped up, re-acquaint myself with my love of writing, especially when it begins to feel like a job. Well, it is my job, but it is one I love. Overwhelm is a good thing for a creative. We want to have lots of great story ideas and characters floating around our heads. But sometimes it takes strength to process, order, tame them a bit, and create that quilt of story and connection.

So today, I thought I’d just put links here to some beautiful pieces, or pieces I find motivating. Since you are my readers, I thought our common loves would make them important to you as well.

I’m listing them in no special order…

The Jazz of Physics: Cosmologist and Saxophonist Stephon Alexander on Decoding the Song of the Universe

My love of quilting, disturbing and creating patterns of color is like my writing journey, full of the equasions of emotion and fancy. I love reading this post because it shows me everything from the analysis of falling in love to the long lost love letters of famous people. Like quilting, writing is analytical, not emotional. We arrange the patterns of the story in such a way that at the end it makes a cohesive quilt that touches on the gamut of our fantasies. And everyone has unlimited capacity for those. My job as a writer is to make them interesting to attract like-minded people to my sphere and then deliver like an old friend you would have to lunch.

I enjoyed this talk on Confidence. Benjamin Hardy is a great thinker, and someone I follow (even if I can’t wrap my arms around all his ideas). I find that just trying to use some of them helps me as a person, as well as a writer.

• 

https://medium.com/thrive-global/why-youre-not-as-confident-as-you-could-be-2-reasons-d9accbc00cc4

I find some great material for my heroes in Mark Divine’s Unbeatable Mind podcasts. A former SEAL, Mark brings together masterminds in all fields of business, often those who started out as warriors, and have turned that ethos and energy of the warrior spirit to other endeavors. This one is about Jack Carr, former Navy SEAL, and now successful author. I found it fascinating, especially the part about sticking to his writing, thinking about “it always could be worse” when we think our writing schedule and routine is more than we can handle.

Jack Carr: Warrior and Author

I enjoy listening to new music, and recently discovered Max Richter, and his beautiful album, Sleep. I’ve been known to listen to the same song all day, or while I’m doing a particular scene, to give me the help in reaching out to my emotion/creativity fairy. My Pandora has a Thumbs Up section, where all my favorites can be played all day, especially as I try to wean myself off other social medias, and the television. When I listen to music, like reading a good book, I am transported to another place where all the fun stuff happens. Yes, I live in my fantasy mind more than my “real” one. But what is real, anyway? I submit, it’s that which brings you life…

Hope these bring you interest and inspiration on this sunny Sunday. Just another reminder that when we strive to grow, be better, more decent and learn from others, we are more alive.