elizabeth grigg - the other fourth meal

With taking on the name of Grigg, one trait that has grafted onto me is the practice of not communicating when there is bad news. No news is bad news, in other words.

Often we get asked "how do you do it." My dh takes it as a compliment. I take it as an important message from an objective outside observer that anyone observing what we are trying to do after 5 minutes chit chat at a funeral wake can see we are pushing the envelope to the potential detriment of our health and happiness.

Rather than going into all THAT, right now, I want to paraphrase a bit perhaps the only conversation my dh and I have had in months.

There is the question of craft, and where it should best be placed. My mom has the phrase "polishing a turd" and that is the attitude lots of practical people have who are short on time towards projects that are really not worth it. Say you have a project that is decidedly not going to change the world or alter your career. This is project A. What amount of creativity do you bring to bear on this project? Some people have the common sense that you should make the largest investment in project B, which is a project that might be your idea, or more promising, or makes more business sense.

However, in matters of craft, there is no such thing as polishing a turd. Rather, since creativity is generative (the more you use it, the more you have), it is to your advantage to find your voice even with something trivial. Reading Brian Eno's diary reveals this approach. On any given day he might be working on a low-budget low-impact art installation, then working on the U2 album. He brings the same materials, the same intensity to both. He values both the same. If you get to a juncture where you don't see where your voice can fit in, it means your focus is too broad. What you need to do then is magnify, "zoom in" as it were, in order to find the problem that is reactive to what you have to deliver.

Because when you have tiers of projects, and some are turds, you will go down the path of viewing your creativity as a fixed resource. That's self-fulfilling scarcity thinking.

My devil's argument to this is, what about the business side. What if, on Sunday, you are faced with the choice of doing either project A or B, but you cannot do both. Doesn't it make sense to choose the project that has the most business potential?

And I am not sure at this juncture I am describing, that this is not another form of scarcity thinking. Just stacked up, vertically. Happiness is keeping this creative thread going. Putting on the business hat, of picking and choosing, can put on some real blinders. Sometimes it does not add awareness but take away. For example, it is possible that the activity that will give you the greatest insight on whether to take project A or project B is to be in the zone, to work hard on one of them and see how it goes. Because the zone is more important than the business need.

This is still something I am working through. It is definitely true that when I start weighing the business needs of the various choices I have, that I lose perspective. When I work hard on following through with one specific project, when I zoom in and magnify the problem so my creativity is in play, I get clearer vision into everything. It doesn't make sense but there it is.

Last, I want to mention that we still have a babysitter for next Thursday, March 16, where we will be on the Chris and Ponzi show talking not about games and technology and digital lifestyles but about the house remodel, the dotcom crash, the whole freakin thing. My dh has promised to do the voices. I will get a super nice bottle of wine to get him going. It's our best material. Be there.