My mother was always a mystery to me

I decided that Wandering & Wondering with a Storyteller’s Eye needed a Table of Contents. Simple, huh?

I’ve been through this process enough to know that it would also prompt some revisions. However, that’s all I expected, just revisions, not a whole new chapter, and definitely not some of the deepest writing I’ve ever done about my mother. 

I’ve always somewhat jokingly referred to myself as a motherless child even though I had a mother who did all the right things, who took care of my father and I, who was a good person, a kind and generous person … to strangers and people outside her closest circle. To us inside that circle, she was a prickly mystery, a closed book.

I am still working through the book revisions (and the Table of Contents), and will release the finished-finished book on September 17th, with the final copy sent to everyone who has requested the free version … of course. In the meantime, here’s the page about my mother, beginning the chapter on Wisdom. I will always wonder if I had been wiser earlier, if we might had made that connection that never happened while she was alive. 

To get your free copy of the book ... actually copies ... 
the current version and the new one 
which will be available September 17, 2018 ... 
just click here. 

Here's the page about wisdom and my mother. If you click on the image, you'll get a larger version.

Mindmapping in 8 Easy Steps

Mindmapping is one of the simplest, most powerful, tools a person can have in her creativity toolbox. It is a non-linear way of organizing information and a technique that allows you to capture the natural flow of your ideas. 

Here's a five minute workshop on how to use this flexible tool. Try it the next time you need to write a memo, prepare a meeting agenda, or are trying to get a bird's eye view of a complex (or simple) project. It's great for planning vacations ... use a big sheet of paper and give everyone a crayon.

NOTE: Your maps won’t look like these ... 

neither do mine ... 

these were drawn by a graphic artist. ;-) 

 Step 1: Center First. Our linear, left-brain education system has taught us to start in the upper left- hand corner of a page. However, our mind focuses on the center ... so mindmapping begins with a word or image that symbolizes what you want to think about placed in the middle of the page. As the images get more complicated, you can click on them to bring up a larger version.

Step 2: Lighten Up! Let go of the idea of finding a cure for cancer, ending hunger, solving the problem or writing a report that your boss will love. Mindmapping is simply a brain dumping process that helps stimulate new ideas and connections. Start with an open, playful
attitude ... you can always get serious later. 

 Step 3: Free Associate. As ideas emerge, print one or two word descriptions of the ideas on lines branching from the central focus. Allow the ideas to expand outward into branches and sub-branches. Put down all ideas without judgment or evaluation.

Step 4: Think Fast. Your brain works best in 5-7 minute bursts so capture that explosion of ideas as rapidly as possible. Key words, symbols and images provide a mental short-hand to help you record ideas as quickly as possible.

Step 5: Break Boundaries. Break through the "8 1/2x 11 mentality" that says you have to write on white, letter-size paper with black ink or pencil. Use ledger paper or easel paper or cover an entire wall with butcher paper ... the bigger the paper, the more ideas you'll have. Use wild colors, fat colored markers, crayons, or skinny felt tipped pens. You haven't lived until you've mindmapped a business report with hot pink and day-glo orange crayons.
 

Step 6: Judge Not. Put everything down that comes to mind even if it is completely unrelated. If you're brainstorming ideas for a report on the status of carrots in Texas and you suddenly remember you need to pick-up your cleaning, put down "cleaning." Otherwise your mind will get stuck like a record in that "cleaning" groove and you'll never generate those great ideas.

Step 7: Keep Moving. Keep your hand moving. If ideas slow down, draw empty lines, and watch your brain automatically find ideas to put on them. Or change colors to reenergize your mind. Stand up and mindmap on an easel pad to generate even more energy.

Step 8: Allow Organization. Sometimes you see relationships and connections immediately and you can add sub-branches to a main idea. Sometimes you don't, so you just connect the ideas to the central focus. Organization can always come later; the first requirement is to get the ideas out of your head and onto the paper.



Have fun! And, let your ideas flow.

NOTE: My mindmapping book was published almost 30 years ago and I created this simple workshop almost 15 years ago so everyone could use this powerful technique. A friend wanted to pass it along to her workshop folks so I was delighted to find it still on the internet ... although it had been appropriated by a website that used it verbatim without bothering to attribute it at all. I'm just happy to find it in its original form.

In case you would like to pass it along, please feel free to send this link ... or click here for a pdf if you'd like to print it out and use it.

Book Challenge: Day 7: The Tangled Tree

Sometime after the Big Bang, life on Earth emerged.

That statement summarizes hundreds of years of gathered wisdom about the human condition, while leaving vast oceans of questions still to be answered. I love knowing that brilliant minds around the world are constantly nibbling away at the unknown. Their stories amaze me and make me wonder about life in general and my own life, asking myself the questions that fuel our curiosity:

Who are we?

Where did we come from?

Why are we here?

Currently I'm reading The Tangled Tree which replaces the lovely and comprehensible plant-animal tree-of-life of my childhood with a simple-looking, three-pronged branch of Bacteria-Archaea-Eukarya, based on characteristics that can only be seen in a high-tech lab. (I'm only 39% through the book and the author has already warned me that this, too, might change.)

The "Natural System" tree of Woese, Kandler and Wheelis, 1990.

Like many things in life, it seems as if we can comprehend it, we don't fully understand it. 

I was already prepared for the Bacteria part of this development after reading 10% Human which helped me respect the mass of bacteria that makes up my body and have a better understanding of how to feed and care for that important aspect of myself. And, Bill Bryson's book delighted me with his, as amazon.com states, "sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it."

I am grateful for authors who can simplify and translate science into stories and information that I can understand and relate to.

Book Challenge: Day 6 - Lab Girl

I’ve always been a tree person. Reading this book made me envious of the author’s relationship with trees and plants. Written with a fresh voice, this is a compelling story of a woman's journey through science, a friendship that doesn't fit standard molds, and fascinating insights about plants. A few notes from the book:

"I would study plants in a new way—not from the outside, but from the inside. I would figure out why they did what they did and try to understand their logic, which must serve me better than simply defaulting to my own, I decided.”

"A willow tree loads these used branches with reserves, fattens and strengthens them and then dehydrates their base such that they snap off cleanly and fall into the river. Carried away on the water, one out of millions of these sticks will wash up onto a bank and replant itself, and before long that very same tree is now growing elsewhere.”

"PLANTS HAVE FAR MORE ENEMIES than can be counted. A green leaf is regarded by almost every living thing on Earth as food."

Reading Lab Girl, is like talking to a scientist friend who tells you all the inside stories and all her most embarrassing moments.

New Page for Free Book ... and corrected link

Lost in Technology

Apologies to everyone who had trouble downloading the book. It looks like I created a hiccup in the Wandering & Wondering with a Storyteller's Eye.

This image ... Lost in Technology ... is a bit how I feel about this learning curve.

If you had any trouble, please try this link.

And, below, there is a new page, which will expand to a readable size if you click on it.

It looks like there's going to be a completely new chapter in the final book: Magic!
You will have an opportunity to get the complete, final book, ... Free, of course!

Please click on this image to get a readable size.

Book Challenge, Day #5: Big Magic

Books have always been my guides and teachers. In my early life, Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich opened me up to positive thinking and Alex Osborn’s Applied Imagination led me into a life-long love affair with the mysteries of creativity. 

 

At this stage of life, I’m enchanted by Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic which invites us to live a creative life. While creativity is a word that intimidates many people, Gilbert defines it as being driven more by curiosity than fear.

One form of curiosity she encourages is discovering the hidden jewels within us. Those of us who have lived long tend to think we have discovered all our skills and talents. However, we are endlessly complex creatures, and as long as we have breath, there are things to discover about ourselves.

"The Universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, 

and then stands back to see if we can find them.

"Do you have the courage to bring forth 

the treasures that are hidden within you?”

— Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic, Creative Living Beyond Fear

Book Challenge Day #4: Barbara Kingsolver

What thrills me most about Barbara Kingsolver … now at least ... is that I never know what to expect, but I always know it will be an interesting journey. I started reading her sometime after The Bean Trees came out in 1988 and drifted delightedly through Animal Dreams and Pigs in Heaven. I put her in a neat little box of authors I enjoyed. 

 

And then came The Poisonwood Bible and I didn’t know whether to put it on an altar or spit on it. It wasn’t what I signed up for when I bought the name Kingsolver.

However, after finishing it, I found myself thinking about the characters, thinking about the world they lived in and the challenges of living in such a different culture. Particular passages or events haunted me and still make me think about them. 

 

By the time I got through to Prodigal Summer, The Lacuna, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I had stopped thinking about her as a name on a book, but rather as a woman who was thinking and writing about things that interested me. And then came Flight Behavior, a magical book. All I know now is that whatever she writes, I will read and be transported to a different place and informed about the world and all its wonders.

When I went to her website to write this post, I found some thoughts worth sharing:

"What keeps me awake at the wheel is the thrill of trying something completely new with each book. I’m not a risk-taker in life, generally speaking, but as a writer I definitely choose the fast car, the impossible rock face, the free fall.”

— Barbara Kingsolver

"Literature is one of the few kinds of writing in the world that does not tell you what to buy, want, see, be, or believe. It’s more like conversation, raising new questions and moving you to answer them for yourself.”

— Barbara Kingsolver

"The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. The most you can do is live inside that hope, running down its hallways, touching the walls on both sides.” — from Animal Dreams