The Square Root of an Ash Tree

I have two books I am writing still in rough draft form. One book is done, but I need to go through another draft because it is missing something. I wonder how many more drafts it will take to find that missing thread. Hopefully it will be found before I get so sick and tired of the book that I just toss it in the trash. The other book is only about a third completed and I hate to admit it, but I have sat it on the shelf so many times due to other demands that I have gone through several drafts warming myself back up to the story. That is not (for me) the best way to get a story down on paper. I like to get a very rough sketch of the entire thing completed and then go through the drafting process. I experience the rare sparks of creativity in starts and stops. I don’t know about you, but it always surprises me. Great ideas, well, ideas that inspire me, tend to hide behind the bushes and pop out at the least expected times. And when it happens, I have to go with it, or wait for the next unplanned moment, which can be a very long wait. That doesn’t work well in my “planned and scheduled” world. I need to be independently wealthy, with a small cottage at the beach, where the incoming ocean waves, made higher by morning off-shore breezes from the cold land to the warm water offer the promise of newness and fresh ideas and where the afternoon on-shore breezes actually hold me up. Then, when creativity strikes, I can jump on it and hold it until it eventually slips out of my hands. That would work for me because the wind and the waves would still be there.

I just finished a book on media and meaning, so I suppose I should have some answers to how meaning is created and why it happens. I have some ideas, some tested hypotheses, and some interesting theories, but the actual spark is an awesome and mysterious thing and I think it will always remain so. As Miguel de Unamuno warned, when we dissect something to understand it, we kill it. We cannot know the square root of the ash tree.

So I will continue to write when I can and be surprised when I write something that is really good. It is always worth the wait.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Napolean suggested,

"Un bon croquis vaut mieux qu'un long discours,"

or "A good sketch is better than a long speech".

Some years ago I was entering into a entrepreneurial partnership with a person on the other side of the country. We knew each other fairly well, but needed to give this professional relationship a better chance of survival. He suggested we select a picture that best described our self-image as a business person. He saw himself as a fire fighter. His passion was stepping into the chaos of a company on fire (meaning a company going down in flames, or so hot it would implode of its own heat)and putting its house in order, and then leaving. Below is part of my response to him, plus some additional information and pictorial thoughts that I have added to this exercise since then. I have also used this as a reality check, running it by trusted friends, family and associates. Someone asked me this very question the other day, so I thought i would post some of this info--not so much to know me, but to highlight the value of the exercise.

I suppose if I had to use a one-word description of myself, my passion, it would be “builder.” I love building companies or any organization—maturation of processes, culture, climate, finding potential, creating catalytic mechanisms that avoid having to call firefighters... I want people to go to work excited and go home fulfilled—armed and ready to be a better person in all their stewardships. I am goal oriented, but reaching the goal is only part of the fun. It is like the Nietzsche thought: Not every end is a goal. The end of a melody is not its goal, but nonetheless, if the melody had not reached its end it would not have reached its goal... The following box I clipped from something I had the executive staff in a previous organization accomplish. We did one of those “personality tests”—this one from the book, Now Discover Your Strengths which provided the one word descriptives. We then described ourselves in a paragraph that we bounced off the group for a reality check.

Mike:
Achiever
Intellection
Learner
Input
Belief
I don’t like surprises, but I love a good risky adventure. I don’t like to rock the boat, but I do like to push for understanding—which can rock the boat sometimes. I need to improve my empathy, but I love diversity. I like to learn new skills and become a master at things, but the process is as important as the result. From that growth new vistas are created, new ideas are incubated, questions arise, introspection goes deeper. That intellectual introspection is checked by my values, ethics, and especially spiritual guidance. That guidance demands that I find work that meshes with my values. My actions must be meaningful and make a difference. I need to live out my values or find the job where I can. My actions require new research, study, writing, understanding and clarity; so I read, collect input and seek diversity. From that new input I learn and grow and the cycle continues for another turn. Sometimes I write and seek input too much from others. I think and do and then adjust. I can bend pretty far, but then I am decisive—sometimes to a fault.