Memory and Time & One Super-Engaged Parent

Posted on June 2, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

I’m not sure what I had for breakfast yesterday but let me tell you what I had last Sunday– crepes slathered with Nutella, hand-curled into a cone of sorts, filled with fresh-picked strawberries.  Also tabbouleh salad (it was brunch) and small fruit tarts shiny with butter. I can go on and on because this was an extraordinary meal.  Regarding yesterday, I must have had my default breakfast of cereal and an egg.

I just finished Jonah Foer’s new book on memory, Moonwalking with Einstein. Foer points out you remember most easily moments of total engagement. This makes intuitive sense. But Foer also found the more engaged you are in your own life (because its super-interesting and extraordinary– like my Sunday brunch), the longer your life seems to you.  The idea that time flies when you’re having a good time may mean your “good time”  really is not that interesting.  Cognitive scientist Ed Cooke says,

The more we pack our lives with memories, the slower time seems to fly. Our subjective experience of time is highly variable.

I love this idea! Older parents catch me and my children at Trader Joe’s or the UPS Store to say, Enjoy this time when your kids are little, because it flies by.  This advice comes my way at least twice a month and its been coming for over a decade now so it’s gotten old. But it has also prompted me to check how I experience time with my small children. My time with small children does not feel fast in any way.  I could be exaggerating here but I did use the subjective word feels. Time with me feels mostly very, very slow.  After reading Foer’s book I can just assume those old-timer parents were bored silly when their kids where young. And I can pat myself on the back for being so super-engaged with my life.  Nice all around.

 

 

 

Filed under: Feelings, Making Time, Parents | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Lessons from The Music Room No. 2: “Just Do” Cold Showers and Write Short Lists

Posted on March 21, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

For one year– from Spring 2010 to Spring 2011,  I turned my growing family into a laboratory.  My purpose– to set each of us on a Creative path of our own.  We began in the grand central space we call The Music Room.  Our old piano is here and our shelves are stuffed with great books.  There are Kapla blocks to build with and a wooden castle with queens and kings to play with. For one week I’m writing about what I’ve learned this year– about Creativity and what it takes to live it. Yesterday I wrote The Creative Life is a Struggle.

The Nike slogan Just Do It works well enough as my family’s current task-accomplishment (including all things creativity-related) plan.  I hope this is only temporary because I’m a big fan of the perfectly tuned schedule.

When my first daughter arrived my mother said,  She’ll take over your life until you get a good schedule.  But once you’ve got a schedule you’ll have time for anything you want.  And so it was.  At six months my tiny girl woke at 6 a.m.  I bundled her up, strapped her into a jogger-stroller and ran several miles before breakfast.  We ate at 7:30.   Then I sat her facing the bathroom shower on a bouncy chair with toys so I could shower in peace.  We took walks, sang songs, giggled and read books.  I made her baby food from scratch and tried complicated recipes (i.e., Shitake-mushroom fried polenta topped with tomatoes, slivered almonds and parmigiano-reggiano) for dinner and she watched me.  Twice a week my lovely mother-in-law took over, while I took off for grad school.  I’m barely scratching the surface here.  More than a decade later (I may not be young), I still believe a perfectly tuned schedule is best.

That’s why I’ve tried all sorts of plans and schedules this year to put this creativity thing on rails. But all of them required more energy than they generated.  I nixed each plan when it turned more needy than a child.  Who wants a needy schedule?  I don’t.  Real kid voices (expressing human needs) filter into my dreams at day-break Sunday through Saturday. Check out my current (not-so-needy) 5 item schedule:

  1. I nurse the baby.
  2. I head for my semi-private wake-up chamber–  the cold shower.  (Did I use the word “cold’?  Freezing is more appropriate this time of year– Freezing showers are perfectly safe. I choose to do this, OK?)
  3. I dry my body with the available clean towel.
  4. I pull on my best jeans, dab on the lipstick.
  5. I run the rest of the day (it’s kind of a blur– except when I follow my two-year-old outside and read at the same time, or when I drive to kid-classes or when I lecture at the University. And all running stops when I write.  Which I do almost every day. Some days I even write three pages of long-hand free thought.

Someday I’ll return to a perfectly tuned routine– all Highly Creative people fashion favored schedules.  To read some favored routines I’ve come across check out my series: Routines.

But back to now.  Let me tell you, with five children under twelve–  it’s just impossible to follow a perfectly tuned schedule.  For children each little habit expressively worked on (e.i., flushing the toilet after use or signing every piece of artwork) takes thirty days of practice.  Perfectly tuned schedules are built of a thousand little habits.  You do the math.  So instead, we all meet in The Music Room and make short lists (one for each person above five-years-old) and each finds a way to do it.  On Sundays,  I often have only one item on my list– Write.  And I do.  Of course I still bathe the baby, drive the kids to hit tennis balls and make lunch.  But those things tend to get done list or not.  A one-item “To-Do” list makes you happy at the start but turns exhilarating when you’re finished.

Just Do It is the motto of the determined desperate.  The person who came up with the motto (don’t tell Nike)–  a serial killer about to die for his crimes and ready to get dying over-with, was certainly desperate.  I admit I’m not always determined or desperate.  But this post is proof Just Do It is working out for now.

—————————————————————————

Today (March 21, 2011) is…

…The exact One Year Anniversary of Creating Brains!

To my faithful readers:

Thank you for sticking with me. Just knowing you’re there adds intensity and relevance to every word I write. Thank you!

To those who’ve left comments:

A capital THANK YOU!  Your feedback keeps me thinking–  what a gift.

To all my Hitters (is that a word yet?)– Creating Brains has been visited over 9,000 times so far!  Whoop-y! Hurray!

Thank you all for visiting.

Filed under: Lessons from The Music Room, Making Time, Mantras to Increase Creativity | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments »

Dammed Creativity

Posted on March 14, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

Benjamin Franklin had little free time in his old age.  He complained of this cram-packed-with-politics schedule to close friends.  The very new United States– still fighting to survive needed his diplomacy, wit, wisdom and time.  And nobody else could fill his shoes. His science experiments lay unfinished collecting dust in his backyard laboratory.  Like some homeowners in my neighborhood are house poor–  great salaries funneled straight to paying the mortgage and fixing up the house,  Benjamin Franklin was energy poor. State-building sucked every last bit of Franklin’s remarkable energy–  and he felt his soul shrink.

A few days ago, my eight-year-old son asked us all at breakfast, What is the worse possible thing you can imagine happening? I immediately thought of losing my child to scurvy or a car accident.  But my six-year-old daughter said,  Oh.  I think living your entire life and never having done what you were meant to do–  without doing what you love. That would be terrible.

My daughter is right on.  I’m so glad she can say this out loud without a second thought.

But how could you die without ever reaching your potential?  For Franklin a new nation claimed his time, thus suppressing his exuberant creative pursuit.  But energy-claimers are most often historic only in your wildest dreams– masses of urgent incoming e-mails, houses to build, fortunes to lay out for the future. You could die without ever cracking your creative potential by failing to ever decide to start.  You could give up attending to your dreams when the phone starts ringing or when your wife complains about the yard.  If you must choose between keeping bargains you never made or owning your energy and creative potential– well, I think you can guess what I’d say.

Having a choice at all, is a privilege.  If you have no food, many sick children, a husband who beats you, no shelter and no work in sight,  your choices are much, much smaller.  But my guess is,  if you have time enough to read these words– you have at least some (education, time, money, space) options for creation.  The French philosopher Ernest Renan said,

The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.

Ignored creativity–  no matter how plentiful or unruly at the start or how honorable the competition, dries up. And once you decide you’ve got to create come hail or high water, what you do with the truths you know–  that is what makes you Creative or not.

 

 

 

 

How about you?  Is your creativity still dammed up inside you?

Filed under: Choices, Creativity Killer, Making Time, Mistakes, Philosophers, The Child, The Scientist, Truth | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Must Squash Play-dough?

Posted on January 27, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

This morning, while the baby took a nap in her stroller, my two-year-old and I opened our little beach pop-up tent to full size in the Music Room. She ran to the game closet in the hall and brought back a small container of play-dough, entered the tent and zippered the entrance shut.  I sat inside the tent, on the carpet with her.  She took the play-dough out of its container and squashed it into a lumpy pancake. Then she poked the pancake with the container in time to the music playing. She had no plan–but kept herself totally occupied for at least a half hour.  Then suddenly, she stood and said, Mom, can you make chocolate milk?

My daughter plays without a plan all the time.  Until she needs help.  And she does need help often.  Toddlers generally need help every three or four minutes. Their impulses are bigger than their capacity. Still, she needs less minute-to-minute attention than my ten-month-old. Babies and toddlers require so much adult help on so many levels.  I often marvel at the resources necessary to raise just one little person to adulthood. But why is this so?  Why do young humans need so much care?  Why can we not be more like, say, puppies, maturing much sooner? Wouldn’t we progress faster as a species if adults weren’t so preoccupied, so much of the time, with the needs of children?

Cognitive psychologist Alison Gopnik has studied babies for more than a decade. She says,

The evolutionary answer seems to be that there is a tradeoff between the ability to learn and imagine — which is our great evolutionary advantage as a species — and our ability to apply what we’ve learned and put it to use.

Children are like the R&D department of the human species. They’re the ones who are always learning about the world. But if you’re always learning, imagining, and finding out, you need a kind of freedom that you don’t have if you’re actually making things happen in the world. And when you’re making things happen, it helps if those actions are based on all of the things you have learned and imagined.

The way that evolution seems to have solved this problem is by giving us this period of childhood where we don’t have to do anything, where we are completely useless. We’re free to explore the physical world, as well as possible worlds through imaginative play. And when we’re adults, we can use that information to actually change the world.

My two-year-old can keep the electric mixer steady in the batter bowl when she helps make pancakes and she can dress herself pretty well. Still, she spends hours following her whims–trying things out.  She hops. She puts on lipstick.  She cleans the interior of my car with baby wipes.

We all used to play this way, but most of us live very directed lives as adults.  Yet, Creativity requires us to play with thoughts, ideas and mediums, pointlessly–like a two-year-old.

Improvisational violinist Stephen Nachmanovich says,

The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.

Writer Julia Cameron suggests you take time to find this inner muse by taking yourself on an Artist’s Date.  She says,

The Artist Date is a once-weekly, festive, solo expedition to explore something that interests you. The Artist Date need not be overtly “artistic”– think mischief more than mastery.

If my two-year-old’s impulses are bigger than her capacity–my capacity is bigger than my whims. Looks like I need an Artist’s Date–but I doubt I’ll spend it squashing play-dough!

Filed under: Making Time, Childhood, Art Concepts, Time Alone, The Child | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Constraints that Increase Creativity, Part 5: Pursue What You Love

Posted on October 14, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

This is the final post in a 5-day series about constraints that serve as kindling for Creation. Yesterday I wrote Ignore or Fight Bad Advice & Other’s Expectations.

Highly Creative people constrain themselves to what they love.  They pursue it with urgency because a lifetime pursuing a passion is not enough.

There isn’t time to dilute love with well-roundedness.

Our family gathers in the Music Room most evenings. Our old piano is here and our shelves are stuffed with great books.  There are Kapla blocks to build with and a wooden castle with queens and kings to play with. Last night my three older children sat here,  listening wide-eyed, as my husband read them Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

I walked in to gather my 2 yr. old  and carry her off to bed, but caught my breath and stopped short when she turned to look at me and said, I writing. We both looked down at the red crayon lines across the open spread of a beloved storybook. She smiled at me.

My little girl knows I require a pen when I read. Reading for me is like playing ping-pong with the book’s author. He serves an idea, I respond. I underline sentences I love, or  like. I circle paragraphs I’ll re-read someday. I write questions and insights as they hit me, in the margins. I don’t write only in books I’ve borrowed, antique editions or those so lame they say nothing in so many words.

Five hundred years ago, only men of high social status wrote in books.  High society women sometimes ventured to depress a tiny fingernail mark on the margins of a passage worth revisiting. Today, nobody would snatch my book for my scribbles in it.

So I watched my child draw more lines, about three inches each from top to bottom on printed words she loves. When she put her crayon down I scooped her into my arms and made a mental note to move untouchable books to shelves she can’t reach. I carried her to bed grateful I had not spoiled her budding like of writing.

Betsy Lerner, literary agent and author of  The Forest for the Trees, says,

When I meet a new writer, at some point I usually ask if he or she wrote as a child.  I have found that the impulse to write, to record one’s private feelings, often appears at a very early age, with few exceptions most authors started writing in childhood.

My 2 yr. old’s interest in writing may be fleeting, but I hope she will find a love before she reaches puberty. When she does, I’ll encourage her and give her freedom to pursue it.

Creativity scholar, E. Paul Torrence, wrote a Manifesto for creative children and gives this advice,

Don’t be afraid to fall in love with something and pursue it with intensity.

Biologist E.O. Wilson found ants fascinating as a child and studied them the rest of his life. Primatologist Jane Goodall has also spent her days pursuing a childhood passion.

As a little child, Goodall collected eggs from the hen-house behind her grandmother’s place. She saw hens sitting on eggs and wondered, Where on the chicken was there an opening big enough for an egg to come out of? She asked her grandmother.  But the question remained unanswered to her satisfaction.  So, she hid.

One morning while the hens were pecking at grain in the yard, Goodall crouched between two hen-nests. She sprinkled hay over herself  as camouflage and hid still for what seemed to her like forever.  She watched her subjects come back into the hen-house. Goodall says,

Presently the hen half stood and I saw a round white object protruding from the feathers between her legs. Suddenly with a plop,  the egg landed on the straw.  With clucks of pleasure the hen shook her feathers, nudged the egg with her beak, and left.

In the hen-house, Jane Goodall found her love of observing animals in their natural habitat. She pursued this love to make grand discoveries about primate behavior and forever changed scientific inquiry within biology. Some of her insights challenged what it means to be human.  Goodall even founded the Jane Goodall Institute to inspire new generations of naturalists in their own pursuits.

Childhood holds the dreams worth pursuing.

Late-blooming Creators dump well-roundedness and uncover dusty childhood dreams.  Then with wisdom granted by experience, they pursue what they lived for as children.

Filed under: Childhood, Constraints that Increase Creativity, Inspiration, Making Time | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Constraints that Increase Creativity, Part 3: Grant Quotidian Business Less Mental Space

Posted on October 11, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

For five days I’m writing about constraints that serve as kindling for Creation. Yesterday I wrote Keep Your Perfect Idea.

Highly Creative people work to the ebb and flow of mental energy, not according to a preset to-do list.

James D. Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, did not even schedule weekend work breaks. He says,

A fixed mental sabbath from experiments does not jibe with the reality of the human brain.  It rests effectively only when it does not want to work and is satisfied with what it has done.  With few exceptions, the time frame of experiments cannot be predicted, and mental hibernation should not be preassigned to a regular day on the calendar.  An unanswered experimental question is bound to remain in your subconscious.  Work done on weekends, in fact, can be more fun than that done on weekdays.  You would not be there unless your experiments were going well.

Creation requires obsession and obsession requires a focus to work unfocused on a problem.  Creative insight is mental state-specific and ties up focus to exclude even of the sensual world.  Jonah Lehrer, author of Proust was a Neuroscientist, says,

At first the brain lavishes the scarce resource of attention on a single problem.  But once the brain is sufficiently focused, the cortex needs to relax in order to seek out the more remote association in the right hemisphere, which will provide the insight.

Engaging both hemispheres for Creation requires a longer mental now rather than moments chopped into efficient morsels. The efficiency of quotidian business curbs Creativity.  A calendar bursting with pre-scheduled tasks works against the biology of Creation because business dilutes attention. You cannot obsess about two things, let alone a mess of to-do items to be crossed off every afternoon.

Neuroscientist Mark Jung-Beeman says, The relaxation phase is crucial. That’s why so many insights happen during warm showers.

Making Creative work a priority over pre-scheduled business frees you up to work with your mental energy, rather than against it.

Filed under: Constraints, Constraints that Increase Creativity, Making Time | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Constraints that Increase Creativity, Part 1: The Truth about Time

Posted on October 8, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

For five days I’m writing about constraints that serve as kindling for Creation. Yesterday I introduced the topic of Constraints.

I once sat to the left of a Literature professor at a colloquia round table. She dressed in olive-green and gray, adjusted her smart glasses every few minutes and wore her dark hair short. To my right a round, doughy woman with a slight tan shook her head slowly, opened both her hands and said, I just haven’t had time to review today’s topic. She sighed. I’m just a bit overwhelmed, I have so much to do .

The Literature professor nodded her head. She spoke with a thick Eastern European accent,

Yes, I know sometimes it is very hard to garner energy to read something that seems irrelevant to every day life.

When the communists controlled Bulgaria, I was assigned to work in a factory.  My job was to screw one type of screw onto one section of thousands of refrigerator backs, all day.  I had to do this over and over and fast to keep the production line moving quickly. I started work at 7 a.m. and arrived at home at 9 p.m.  I did not read a single page of Literature those years.

I wasn’t really alive.

The doughy woman sat quietly like a scolded five-year old but nodded her head in  faux-commiseration.   The Literature professor’s truth exposed the doughy woman’s lie of being overwhelmed. She also pointed out a larger truth that eludes many creative types: when someone else controls the minute details of your time,  you aren’t really alive and you won’t Create.

Journalist Laura Vanderkam says,

Being busy has become the explanation of choice for all sorts of things…

But here’s the crazy thing. [Highly Creative persons]–and the people who claim they’re ‘too busy’ to vote, or have only 12 minutes to talk to their spouses,  all have the same exact amount of time.  All of us.  We have 24 hours in our days, and 7 days in our weeks. If you do the math that comes out to 168 hours each week to create the life we want.

You may be reading this post from a jail cell in Nigeria or on a laptop precariously placed on top of unfolded laundry in New Jersey.  Your little children may be climbing all over you all day long  because you home-school or you may be sitting in an office cubicle looking busy and avoiding your gnarly boss. If you can think, Time is yours.

Vanderkam says,

What if we approached time differently?  What if we started with a blank slate? What if we viewed every minute…as a choice?

Writer Maria Housden barely made it up the stairs awake at bedtime when her four children were small.  Her  husband did not understand her need to Create and questioned any time she spent writing. So she stopped writing.

One day, Housden left her children with her sister for a summer break.  Then she rented a tiny cabin in the woods and slept.  Eventually, she gathered her thoughts, took back time as her birthright and wrote.  Two weeks later, when she came back to family life, she couldn’t stop writing.  But, she also realized she wasn’t the mother she had always hoped she’d be or the wife her husband wanted.  So Housden left.  She left her children with her husband and an energetic nanny and lived on her own.  She faced the truth about her time and built her life for Creation.

Vanderkam says,

I will not pretend this is easy.  In order to get more out of their 168 hours, some people have had to change jobs, move, or otherwise create turmoil in the middle of already full lives.

If you believe you are too busy to Create,  you are lying to yourself.  And if you tell others you are so busy and overwhelmed,  you are lying to them.  The truth is that you have not organized your life for Creation.  Constraining yourself to the truth about time will free up energy formally used for excuses and you can move on to actually pursue the Creative Life.

Filed under: Choices, Constraints, Making Time | Tagged: , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Constraints Kindle Creativity

Posted on October 7, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

My 8 yr. old sets his own daily schedule without parental prodding.  He makes time to walk under the oak trees in our front yard and tidy his room. He gives himself plenty of time to design on Lego’s Design by Me site.

Most adults have few days that feel free and self-planned, but Creativity favors those who set their own schedules. Highly Creative people control their own schedules and live by them to stay productive.

Novelist Isabel Allende begins a new book each 8th day of January.  Once she begins a book, she writes six hours a day until the book is finished.

Nineteenth-century French novelist Gustave Flaubert, sat at his desk to write from 1 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. When his daughter turned eight, he adjusted his schedule to teach her for one hour before starting his writing.  Then, his work day began at 2 p.m.

Lillian Moller-Gilbreth, mother of twelve children and “Woman Engineer of the Year” in 1952, adjusted the family’s schedule on a weekly basis to meet her work schedule.

A proper schedule makes Creative work a priority in your life.  It serves as a constraint to ward off mental entropy.

Scott Belsky, founder of Behance says,

Constraints serve as kindling for execution.  When you’re not given constraints, you must seek them.

For the next few days I will be writing about self set constraints and Creativity.

Filed under: Creativity by Habits, Making Time | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Strict Schedule as Newbie-Novelist

Posted on September 18, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

Highly Creative people keep favored routines.  For ten days I’m posting about the routines of individual Creators, historical and current. My previous post: Alkaline Water and No Coffee.

John Grisham

Novelist

When he first started writing, Grisham says, he had “these little rituals that were silly and brutal but very important.”

“The alarm clock would go off at 5, and I’d jump in the shower. My office was 5 minutes away. And I had to be at my desk, at my office, with the first cup of coffee, a legal pad and write the first word at 5:30, five days a week.”

His goal: to write a page every day. Sometimes that would take 10 minutes, sometimes an hour; ofttimes he would write for two hours before he had to turn to his job as a lawyer, which he never especially enjoyed. In the Mississippi Legislature, there were “enormous amounts of wasted time” that would give him the opportunity to write.

“So I was very disciplined about it,” he says, then quickly concedes he doesn’t have such discipline now: “I don’t have to.”

(From San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 5, 2008, Thanks to Mason Currey)

Filed under: Creativity by Habits, Making Time | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Scheduled Time for Her Dream

Posted on September 17, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

Highly Creative people keep favored routines.  For ten days I’m posting about the routines of individual Creators, historical and current. My previous post: Worked and Dined with Satre, Her Imaginary Husband.

Sarah Susanka

Architect, Writer

I am excruciatingly aware that all my life I’ve struggled with time–how to be in it effectively.

For many years as a young adult, I was aware of my response when someone asked me how I was.  “Too busy!” I’d say.  Gradually it dawned on me that although I always thought the condition of too-busyness was temporary, it was in fact the most constant aspect of my world.

Since I’d wanted to be a writer before I knew much about anything else, I decided to build into my week some time to write.  I decided to put it on the calendar, schedule it in, just as I would a meeting with one of my clients, even though it seemed an outrageous act, given how busy I always was. I told myself I would just have to live with the consequences; the one thing I wouldn’t compromise was my writing time.

So began my Tuesday and Thursday morning meetings with myself and my computer.

At first the purpose of these morning was pretty fuzzy.  I knew I wanted to write a book about architecture, my primary passion and career direction at the time.

For several weeks I simply wrote for myself, in more or less a journal format, pondering the book’s direction.

My father’s early advice to me often echoed in my mind.  He had wisely advised me, when I was a teenager and determined to become a fiction writer, that I should wait until I had something to say before becoming an author.  During the past decade I’d frequently felt that I now had the appropriate level of expertise under my belt and I was ready to say something, but paradoxically I believed that I no longer had the time to say it.

It was only when I decided to question my belief in my own “too-busyness” that I discovered the time was there, ready and waiting.

(Taken from Susanka’s book The Not So Big Life)

Filed under: Creativity by Habits, Design Thinking, Making Time | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Next Page »
%d bloggers like this: