fbpx
Browsing Tag

transcending

transcending

Getting through

January 6, 2013

photo(7)

When I walk with my little old Maltese dog, the southerly wind is often blowing and she trots along very strongly into the wind, enjoying her walk, ears pinned back and getting through.

The end of 2012 has felt something like that for me. It’s been very quiet here on the blog for a while; no posting, no writing. It was very busy at work and elsewhere at the end of last year and hard to get space and time to think and write. The introvert in me finds it challenging to get time and space to recharge between all the events and busyness.

And it’s a difficult time of the year. My brother died tragically 5 years ago now at the end of November. Since that time it’s generally been a time of getting through in many ways, but it’s always hard in the lead up to Christmas as we seem to quietly relive aspects of those terrible days for much of November and December. It was also my brother’s birthday in December as well so you think of what could have been.

Christmas has never been the same and there always seems to be a sharp contrast between happiness, family and appreciation, and sadness, loss, and the gaps left by those we loved and love still, but who have left us. There’s a sense of pieces missing and a constant tinge of sadness. I suppose it is like that for many. There have been moments of just losing it in between it all, the familiar waves of grief coming back again but it’s always quietly, when on my own and no one is looking as it has mostly always been.

So it’s been a matter of getting through, ears pinned back through the busyness and events. Sometimes I am aware that I deliberately keep myself busy. There are times I enjoy, especially the precious time with my family and the end of year appreciation and camaraderie with work colleagues, but I am always glad when the busy times are over and I can look forward to the start of another year. I love relaxing after Christmas and into the new year with time and space to read and reflect, watch the cricket, go to the beach, take some walks and generally wind down.

I’m also taking solace in the words from a little book, ‘Be Happy: 170 ways to transform your day‘ by Australian author Patrick Lindsay. A gift from a dear friend at Christmas, it’s a gorgeous book with simple reflections and quotes “to inspire you to find the best in yourself and the world around you”. My eyes went straight to:

Be happy…

Put the past behind you

You can’t change it,

so don’t wear it like a chain.

Understand it.

Learn from it.

Turn the experience into a positive.

Use it to look ahead.

This has become my purpose, my raison d’etre and is why this blog is called ‘Transcending’. Sometimes though this may be as simple as just getting through a day, a week, a month, a year. I try not to beat myself up too much when I need some time just to reflect and remember, to just pin my ears back and get through and when I cannot write or blog as much as I might like to.

But it is good to be reminded also to look ahead and not get caught up in the past especially what cannot be changed.

I’m looking forward now to what 2013 will bring. It’s something of a tabula rasa at this time, a wide open space on which to inscribe and I’m starting to plan and prepare for what it might bring. I look forward to travelling with you this year into what our mutual journeys might uncover and contribute. I hope your year is full of positives and light.

calmness for a new year

love, loss & longing transcending writing

First Anniversary of ‘Transcending’

May 3, 2011

Does a blog have a birthday or an anniversary? Following the communicatrix and others, I’ll go with anniversary. In this case, it’s the first anniversary of ‘Transcending’, a significant milestone. So what did I start out to do on May 2 last year? After much research, reading and thinking, I decided that ‘Transcending’ was my theme. And it still is. Sometimes I wonder, for sure, and I still need to do more work to build this theme and this platform; but I know that transcending is it, that it is relevant to so many people and that I need to keep mining it, milking it and keep that vein of possible riches flowing.

It’s been a huge battle at times. I’ve managed nearly a post a week on average and given the demands of my day job, seven weeks’ overseas travel, my daughter’s final year of school, a couple of operations and other dramas, that’s not so bad. I could do better, but it’s an achievement, all taken into account. The main thing is that I kept at it: writing, researching, tuning in and reading to others, synthesising and reflecting.

And as the communicatrix says so eloquently in her sixth anniversary post, it’s really all about writing:

What I’m trying to say, albeit rather clumsily, is that a lot of the time, the reason to write is just that—to write. You can write to promote yourself or write to make money or even write to find yourself but ultimately, you write to write. To be able to keep on writing. To be able to keep on getting better at writing. To be able, god willing, to write long enough that you write well enough to actually say something that will live on after you are no longer there to write.

But even if you don’t, even nobody reads your writing while you are alive and all your writing dies with you, if you are a writer (and maybe even if you are not), you are the better for having written.

Now, write.

That’s an important motivator for me: writing itself, the value of it, the process and the product. It’s what my working life has also been about.  I’ve been happy with what I’ve written here and how I’ve found a voice here over the past year. It’s a voice that can do much more and stretch itself out a little now. I do know that the feeling of having written here, once I get through the resistance and work it through, is like birds soaring in the clearest of skies. One of my earliest posts, ‘The value of howling into the wind‘ captures this in a way I am proud of and still has the  most hits of all my posts so clearly strikes a chord.

It is also the second anniversary of my father’s death today. His death and my brother’s tragic death in November 2007 are key motivators for this theme: one transcended in many ways in a sometimes difficult life and the other, also an incredible achiever, did not make it through one night. It is for these reasons, and the grief that goes with them, that transcending has become a theme in my life.

It’s why I write about transcending and resilience: working through, rising above, moving beyond, climbing across whatever is difficult or challenging. It’s not so I can look down on anyone else or feel superior in any way; that connotation sometimes worries me. It’s so that I, and you through reading and engaging, can work through, create, connect, be productive, strategise and achieve success in whatever is important: writing, grief, work, blogging, creativity, family contexts, planning and progress. Cut through and move on to the next challenge with the support of all those bloggers and other writers and creatives out there who are similarly focused on their life’s work and next project.

So what did I say I was going to do here 12 months ago? Here’s my first post:

‘Transcending’ is an exploration of the ways that we rise, overcome, climb across and pass beyond.

It celebrates the extraordinary power of the ordinary self in creativity, writing, in love, in the workplace and in our family contexts, such as our family history and what it means. It is about  resilience, grief, love, loss, longing and the resonating shapes and forms we make to deal with this and move on and through. It’s about constructive approaches at work – strategies that cut through, synthesise and provide solutions. And it’s about images, structures, texts and ways of thinking that makes this possible.

This theme resonates and connects for me in all spheres of life and I hope connects and resonates with you also.

Join me in this journey as it unfolds. Some of the areas I hope to explore are:

  • writing as a way of transcending and moving through
  • my own creative journey as a writer
  • poetry and the shapes and structures we find to manage our emotions
  • music and images as vehicles for experiencing and managing feelings
  • family history and its stories of how we connect and experience life
  • constructive leadership behaviours and strategies
  • reading and reflections on transcending
  • connections with other writers and thinkers on this theme in all its guises

Reflecting back, it’s still spot on and it’s what I have focussed on. I can do more to hone my platform and that’s a challenge I welcome. I’ve revamped my page recently and it’s whiter and brighter: a new theme, Linen, to usher in a new year. Like my theme, there’s more to learn with the technology but I’ve also loved that learning over the year: learning wordpress, flickr, managing RSS readers, linking, taking photos and everything else that goes with a blog.

It’s been a wonderful journey this past year and I thank all those who have been here with me and visited. I also thank my inspirational guides and leaders in this online space, my seven stars that continue to be guides and fellow travellers in so many ways. I look forward to the next year with a sense of brightness and light. I hope you will join me here also in the shedding of that light.

Share

blogging creativity transcending

The one clear thing Part 1

October 31, 2010

It’s been quiet here. You may have noticed. Quiet from my side and also the readers’ side. No surprises that the two are linked. There’s been a lot happening. There is a lot of complexity around me at present.

I am doing the Unravelling e-course with Susannah Conway and a wonderful group of women from across the world and there is much delving into deep layers in that space.

At work, there are challenging issues to solve, multiplicity, new systems being implemented, many projects on the boil and a constant search for streamlining and solutions.

At home, there is much change currently and on the horizon as my daughter finishes school. The effects of grief and chronic illness in the lives of my immediate family weave a web of constant challenge. And the dog is suddenly quite disabled and has to be carried from one place to the other.

So yes, it has been quiet here but I do so love this blog, what it means to me and how it tracks my progress and development, my thoughts on transcending issues like I am experiencing now: the cut through, the coping, the methods, the strategy, the passions. I am loving Unravelling at present for also taking me through this in another way; mainly through images, photos, but also writing, connecting with others and a supported environment for creativity and expression.

So to the blog. I have been wondering if I am on the right track. Have I lost my way here? Is ‘Transcending’ the right focus? Am I connecting? Am I lost? I have been thinking about starting a second blog about my work on reading as it doesn’t seem to connect. Whenever I post on reading and book voyeurs, my stats seem to dive and take a while to pick up. But this is important to me – reading as a form of transcending and riding above, crossing over, connecting. Reading has kept me focused for much of my life on the present, what could be in the future and how to get there.

Fortunately today I came across a couple of great posts from Penelope Trunk, originally via the communicatrix and her fantastic Friday round-up which led me to Penelope’s post ‘Being a snob creates too many limits’ about books, love of books, book sorting, reading and many things I am also passionate about. Then at the end, I read these words as if written for me:

You will notice there are not any work-related books. Anywhere. Which is odd because I receive at least one in the mail every day. I don’t save those books because they bore me. I wish I didn’t have to write that. But I think they bore you, too. That’s why you read this blog.

The best advice about how to conduct yourself at work is to know yourself, and get new information—from outside your own experience—about what is possible in the world. And that is what fiction, and plays, and poetry, and this blog, are about.

Hola! Fantastic and that is truly why I write this blog also. I know I am in another place altogether with far, far fewer readers than Penelope with her thousands of subscribers that she has built up, but I recognise the essence and motivation. I also try to connect what I know from work, from reading, from experience and distil it here. ‘The one clear thing’ was the title I planned to write about today and I have my draft of notes around that. It will need to be part 2. The one clear thing at the moment here, part 1, is to keep focus here in moving forward.

So I read some more of Penelope’s blog. I read:

Penelope’s Guide to Blogging which is excellent – great summary advice and links to previous articles Penelope has written that delve into each topic in more depth.

The one of course that attracted me: Don’t Start a New Blog: Stick with the one you have  How come this woman is inside my mind and talking straight to me today? I think she has been talking for a while and I just haven’t been in hearing range. The words that jump out at me are:

But each of us has multiple aspects to our personality. This doesn’t mean you need to start a new blog. It means you need to understand how your changing self integrates with your old self. Your blog is a way to watch yourself change. Your topic is a way to ground yourself. Write at the edge of your topic. That is where things are most interesting, anyway.

So thanks to Penelope Trunk and Colleen Wainwright, the communicatrix for the leads (do so love the communicatrix’s Frrrrriday rrrrround up. It often seems to get me back on track somehow) and to Susannah Conway for the Unravelling experience which is one of deep change right now. I will:

  • write at the edge of my topic
  • explore my topic as a way of grounding myself
  • understand how my changing self integrates with my old self
  • know myself and get new information about what is possible: at work, at home, in creativity, in writing and through blogs, twitter and other connections

That is the one clear thing for today: the writing of this blog as the way forward and the steps it might take from here.

Do you have any other thoughts on blogging and keeping clear on your focus there and elsewhere?

Image, Glass of Water by gfrphoto from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license with thanks

Share

creativity transcending work life

Thinking about transcending

August 29, 2010

  

Back to base. Thinking about ‘transcending’, the word, what it means, what it means to me.

Checking out the Merriam Webster online  on ‘Transcending’ yields up:

‘transcend

transitive verb:

1 a: to rise above or go beyond the limits of  b: to triumph over the negative or restrictive aspects of: OVERCOME
2: to outstrip or outdo in some attribute, quality or power
intransitive verb: to rise above or extend notably beyond ordinary limits

Examples of transcend:

1 music that transcends cultural boundaries
2 She was able to transcend her own suffering and help others
3 Her concerns transcended local issues

Origin of transcend:

Middle English: from Latin, transcendere – to climb across; transcend, from trans, and scandere, to climb
First known use: 14th Century
 
Related to transcend:
Synonyms: beat, better, eclipse, exceed, excel, outclass, outdistance, outgun, outmatch, outshine, outstrip, overtop, top, tower (over), surpass’

The words that resonate with me: to rise above, go beyond the limits of, triumph over the negative or restrictive aspects of, extend beyond ordinary limits, to climb across, eclipse, exceed, surpass and outgun. They suggest a strength of spirit, resilience, creativity and ability to find a source of power to go that extra dimension.

This for me relates to managing grief, pain and difficulty; finding solutions in the workplace; taking a creative approach instead of an old one; finding a fresh perspective;  being able to find ways of managing and climbing across obstruction or restriction; ways such as:

  • writing: poetry especially, but any writing that helps you understand and cut through – letters, emails, journals, blog posts, essays, long cathartic dumps of free-writing, submissions that clarify and come up with a strategy and creative solution to a problem
  • reading the right book: whatever it is – fiction to escape, non-fiction to understand, learn how to or make sense of; either form to learn about life, yourself, writing and another’s world
  •  listening to the perfect music for the moment, again whatever it is and thank goodness for ipods and other portable music sources that enable us to find the right song for the moment and play it now.
  • images and photography: creating an image that captures where you are, seeing an image that another has captured that echoes the world for you just now, wishing you had a camera for that image you have to capture in your mind’s eye to carry with you as the cameo of your current state of being
  • family and family history: past, present and future, those you have loved and lost and cherish, those you can see and hold and hang onto and connect with, those you have never met that mean so much to you somehow through your lineage because they are part of you
  • friends: people you chime with that become part of you through some serendipity or synchronicity of meeting – in the workplace, online, through your family, through your various interests in the world.
  • blogging to find a way through and beyond, to communicate and share this vision, to appreciate the unique visions of others and how this might inform and shape your own.

Hence my themes, categories and tags here in this special space.

The words that don’t resonate with me are the ones mostly about out-doing somebody else. ‘Transcending’  for me is not a comparison or a competition; it’s a personal journey of finding the extraordinary, the extra-special, the extra-creative way of managing and living positively and the difference this can make.

It’s become an intuitive personal mantra, my theme and centre, honed from experience but always developing into the future. I welcome you to join in the journey of exploring more about transcending, how the ‘ climbing across’ might be negotiated and the difference it could make. I welcome your thoughts here. 

‘The brighter the light, the darker the shadow.
Some things can’t be changed; they’re part of the show.’
Stephen Cummings – ‘The Brighter the Light’
Good Bones (Liberation Blues Acoustic Series)
Share

 

love, loss & longing music & images transcending

Sudoku days

June 19, 2010

 

I have been in a twilight zone this week. The twilight zone of watching someone you love being the subject of an operation, the preparation, the process, the aftermath, the lying there, the not knowing the outcome, the twilight of hospitals and waiting.

We have been there far too much these past years and know the drill unfortunately. All you can do sometimes is move things around, find ice, meet some small need, talk quietly. So much you can’t do, such a sense of helplessness.

For these times and other times of waiting, holding, healing, times when you are frozen a little and caught in that moment to moment dealing with something – my secret weapon is sudoku.

Gwen Bell talks of mindfulness in her wonderful Mindfulist blog. In contrast, sudoku at this time is a kind of mindlessness, almost meditative,  a sheer focus of attention on nine numbers that helps you manage much and gives you a sense of peace. It is akin to the escapism of watching sport, the engagement with something that enables you to rest the difficult thoughts for a moment. You still your mind, counting numbers one to nine. It is highly recommended. It’s well known to be highly addictive. I’ve been there and it can eat a lot of your time, but in its rightful place, sudoku is for me a strangely powerful source of stillness and strength.

Learn more about sudoku, get your basic skills up and look at a whole bunch of great sudoku pics here at the Sudoku Pool on flickr.

Image above: Sudokuby Jason Cartwright, via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

Image below: Sudoku on the Waterloo and City Line, by Annie Mole , via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

Share

creativity transcending writing

Balancing acts

June 6, 2010

This week has been so very busy at work; much to sort, solve and manage and all very intense. I struggled to get here at all to write after what I felt was a strong start. The balancing act of managing the ‘day’ job and creative aspirations remains a challenge for me as it does for many people.

I’m interested in how others attempt this balancing act and their commentary about this. Also how balance is perceived – work/life balance, priorities and how we can better strive to meet our personal goals.

I asked Joanna Penn from The Creative Penn about this. I have been reading her blog and listening to the podcasts about how she built her online presence, how she maintains this and how she continues to learn about social media. Also, how she is writing a novel. And then she mentioned on one of her podcasts that she has a full-time job as well – as an IT consultant to a mining company. Hallelujah, I thought, a role model – someone managing to balance creativity, the investment of time required to support this and a full-time job.

Joanna’s answer referred me to two of her posts: ‘On efficiency or how to get everything done as a multi-tasking writer,’ and ‘What will you give up to write your book?’ I found the answers fascinating and they rang true with my own thoughts. ‘Getting rid of the TV’ is right up there and confirms my own thoughts on how much time this activity can take up. Less sleep, maximising travel time, being organised, setting goals and investing in education are included in Joanna’s tips and have also featured in my attempts to achieve across a range of life goals of career and creativity.

The concept of balance is an interesting one. Joanna also says ‘love the process’, confirming some inspiring words I read recently in Ted Kooser’s wonderful ‘The Poetry Home Repair Manual’:

‘Remember that the greatest pleasure of writing are to be found in the process itself. Enjoy paying attention to the world, relish the quiet hours at your desk, delight in the headiness of writing well and the pleasure of having done something as well as you can.’

If we are always looking for balance, we may well feel we never get it right. Who’s to say any particular balancing act is right or wrong? I was buoyed by Danielle LaPorte’s joyous debunking of the concept of work life balance: in ‘the suck factor of life balance +passion as a cure to stress.’ Truly, I felt freed after reading this and decided on my own cry of intention in moving forward: ‘No more ‘either/or’….’ No more waiting for one thing to stop so I can do another; no more waiting for time or other resources which may never arrive in that perfect state. Just move ahead, focussing on what I have now. You can have a life of adventure, passion, joy of process and in a way, refuse to be balanced.

To quote from Danielle’s inspiring post:

‘When you refuse the banality of balance and go for full on life (which includes full on productivity and full on stillness,) you’ll see the inevitable mess of it all as something more beautiful and purposeful – full of peaks and valleys – an adventure. The climb can be rigorous, grueling sometimes, but the air is cleaner, and the view will blow your mind. The fruit you’ll find on your own tilted path is so much sweeter – and there’s so much more of it to share.’

So the search for balance may be just an act, an automatic response, that really doesn’t help with moving ahead much at all or worse, holds us back as we wait for a state of illusory perfection that may never come. In that sense, perhaps it’s just another form of resistance? What are your thoughts on balancing acts?

Image: Rocks balancing, by me’nthedogs’ via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

Share

PRIVACY POLICY

Privacy Policy

COOKIE POLICY

Cookie Policy