Does This Appeal to You?

"You must take action now that will move you towards your goals. Develop a sense of urgency in your life." -Les Brown

I don't know much about this Les Brown person, but I know he's a motivational speaker and best selling author, so I guess he knows something of what he's talking about.

I read this quote on this website - the quotes change daily, and I don't always pay a lot of attention to them, but this one just jumped out and nipped me. I think that is because I did something yesterday that may finally lead to meeting some of my urgent goals, that I've just been floating past for years now.

A job, a paid job, is very important in our society. If you can't give a good answer to the question "What do you do?", then you're often deemed to be nobody. Up until now I've given answers that don't usually make people think more of me. And up until now, I haven't been pulling my weight on the family finance situation.

But yesterday, I had an interview with a person from an employment agency, and together we decided I will train to be a trainer and assessor at TAFE. I finally think I know the answer to the question of what I want to do when I grow up.

Of course, I'm a forty-five year old wife and mother, so I guess I am finally grown up, but still...

Anyway, this is what I'm going to do, and this morning my son congratulated me for making the decision. He's fifteen, he already knows what he's going to do when he grows up. When I was his age I wanted to do 'something with animals'. Well, I'm a dog breeder and owner, but that's not enough to be a career and the wages aren't great!

I love helping people, I'm not afraid to speak in public, I love giving my own opinion. I'm going to be a trainer, and it feels good!

I do heaps of stuff, some of it I can't tell you about.

I take care of the animals, human and canine, and dream a bit, think a lot, write stuff. The things I think about would make you blush, or if they wouldn't make you blush you should be ashamed of yourself!

My money's on the shark

Teeth, it's all about the teeth

Sharks have killer teeth.

Creativity and Lawn Bowls

Can you see a link between the two? Creativity is letting your mind go free and come up with new things, it is seeing new links, making connections you've never thought of before.

I was playing lawn bowls this morning, and I feel I had moved into new territory. When my skipper showed me, from the other end of the rink, what she wanted me to do with my bowl, I stepped onto the mat and imagined the shot I would have to perform, where my bowl would end up, and what the result would be.

Previously, I've gone through this process, or to be more truthful, I have tried to go through this process, only to end up with a pathetic attempt at it that leads to nothing good.

But today, on the mat, it all happened. I put the bowl exactly where my skip wanted it. We'll ignore all of my other bowls of the day, some of which were good, some OK, some terrible. This one bowl was just perfect. It takes many more bowls than just one perfect one to win a game. You have to imagine you are getting somewhere, otherwise your bad shots will bring you down and perhaps lead you to leaving the game of bowls.

The skipper has to have knowledge, but also imagination, to be able to know what needs to be done from the other end of the rink. The team members all have to imagine a result that leads them to working at making their game better, bowl after bowl, hour after hour, week after week.

There's also the fun of deciding what to blame when the bowl doesn't go where you wanted it to go. The wind, the green, the moron in the rink next to you who stood in exactly the wrong spot and so ruined your concentration.

And if you decide the fault was yours, you have to have the creativity to see beyond your failure, to the glorious time in the future when every shot will be the best shot, and you and your team will be the winners!

It's a funny old game, lawn bowls.

The Evil Side of Creativity

We're all creative people here, aren't we? And we're proud of our creativity and nurture it too, but do you ever think about the Dark Side of Creativity?

Because, of course, there is always a Dark side to everything. Confused? Well, what I'm talking about are the uses of creativity that don't bring light or goodness or understanding to the world.

Advertising. Politician's spin. Media advisers. Journalists.

All are creative users of words, but they toy with the dark side, and sometimes teeter over into pure black. When a politician puts their spin to an issue, or the spin their media advisers have advised them to use, that's when creativity can be used for bad purposes, if not actual Evil.

Should this worry us? It worries me. I want to be able to believe things when I am told them with seeming sincerity. I rarely believe pollies.

Advertising, well, the Romans had that one sussed our thousands of years ago - Caveat Emptor - let the buyer beware - it seems to have been coined just for today's advertisers, doesn't it?

Does anybody read the newspapers anymore and expect to read things that are true? By the time the journo and sub-editor are finished with facts, they often take the truth right out of it. And so many times journalists take the easy way out and rely on media releases, without bothering to do any checking. Who knows what the real truth is?

When I write, I'm not always writing strict truth, but I aim to have a inner core of truth in everything I write. The facts might be slippery, but the aim and inner meaning are true. That is my aim.