I am not sure what other people do with their thoughts. I mean the one’s that make you adjust in your seat and know that there is power boiling there.
The potential seed that could grow into some potentially awesome writing, or a gadget the world has never seen before and may never experience if I don’t record it quickly and accurately. I often get hit with ideas from sources I experience every day and spend my time trying to record them in my almost magical, brightly colored, deep thought notebook.
Why I carry My Notebook
I have been carrying around a notebook for most of the past two years to catch these wonderful thoughts before they can escape me. I call it my notebook of deep thoughts and ideas. More of a hopeful title than descriptive because it captures all ideas both good and bad.
As a learner throughout life, writing things down allowed me to internalize them, ingest them and work them around inside which allows me to decide if the idea is a good one or if it needs a bit more work. My notebook allows me to place an idea off to the side, safe and sound. Then return to it in the future and find my subconscious has found the value of that writing.
Looking for a “great Idea” in my notebook. Find them all the time
Some are from reading I do, and note taking of unique points and thought provoking phrases that highlight a feeling or spark a unique thought. Some come from the great blogs I read online. I fill my notebook with quotes and descriptions that are just inspiring. Like a blog I read yesterday for the first time. There were so many great writings, I filled up many pages, with quotes like:“In your shadow, I became a child. In your light, I became a bird, and learned how to fly.” – Purnimodo
This quote and many others, I place into the book and refer back to as often as I have to, in order to let it spawn a great expression of my own. These are easy to do, because the words speak a story. In a few short words, a story is spawned in my mind. It is then just a matter of letting it flow out through my fingers onto the keyboard.
Some times during meditation, I think of those words and they allow me to encompass and cover the entire world.
Get Yourself a Thought Book
I highly suggest that you have a thought collection process for all great ideas that come your way, be they deal with spiritual things, action plans or just great information about life. I am sure that people look at my colorful notebook and have pangs of jealousy, but they are going to have to find their own.
The great thing is that the actual book, means nothing without some substantial substance located on the pages inside. Any old notebook can provide any person with a vehicle to catch their ideas and manufacture them into greatness. Mine cost a dollar but I have made it priceless.
Say Happy Birthday To the Greatest Grandmother In History
Today is March 2, 2018, which is not just another day on the calendar, it is the day that my grandmother, Helen Vinal Hilton was born. She would have been 96 this year.
I am sure that most people think great things about their grandmothers, I was fortunate to have two great ones, and to have a positive relationship with both.
Now they have both passed away, there are certain times when their memory comes to my mind more strongly than others, March 2 is one of those days for me.
To give you a little background about Helen, she was without a doubt the sweetest, kindest, most encouraging, loving, and funniest person I have ever met.
We always had a special bond since I can remember. I have vivid memories of her playing games with us when we were young, you name it we played it, cards, board games. She always made sure there were things for us to do when we visited with her.
I remember her taking us to movies, to visit Santa Clause, and to the Circus. (I never liked clowns, and probably wouldn’t have survived and enjoyed the circus if it wasn’t for her. )
One of the most incredible things, my siblings and I all remember about both our father’s parents was the unquestioning welcome they always gave you when you showed up. I would never have considered ever calling to see if they were home, or giving them any warning at all, I just showed up, as did my brothers and sister.
Not once did I ever feel like it was an intrusion. They were always, truly, happy to see me and we always had a great visit. They usually involved cookies, but we always could just talk about things. What it was like growing up for her, what World War II was like for them, what various members of the family were up to.
It seemed like we always stayed connected to relatives we didn’t see. Very often through those conversations. When my Grandfather was alive, he would chime in as well, and after he passed, Helen and I talked more and more about life. I valued those conversations then, but treasure the memory of them now. She was a great lady, great grandmother, and a great friend. I wouldn’t have traded her and her memory for anything else in the world.
So on this day, I am taking a moment to remember, and send some of the love and attention that Helen always gave to me, back to her. I hope that she knows that no matter whatever else she did in life, she was the Greatest Grandmother In History!
Even though she has been gone for over 15 years, my memories of her and all of her acts of kindness and her melodic laugh live on in my heart. Happy Birthday Grammy! How do can someone ever say thank you for all that you did and the great example you set for all of us who loved you.
This world of blogging is a strange world indeed. You read blogs, leave comments and begin to feel like you actually know the people you are talking with. Yesterday I had the great
Kim (left) of Tranquil Dreams visited the Life of Jonathan the other day. It was awesome.
fortune of actually meeting one of my blog friends in person and to make them an actual friend.
If you have never read Tranquil Dreams then you don’t know Kim. She writes eloquently about food, books and especially movie reviews. I enjoy reading her work and what I like best is that she always has a friendly and encouraging comment to share with you when you visit her blog.
Kim told me she was coming to Maine awhile ago, and I was hoping that we could meet in person when she was here. We were able to work out the details and I was able to spend some time with Kim and her awesome boyfriend Eric. They were kind enough to humor me and listen to my stories about camp and life.
For me it was a thrill, and if Montreal is full of people like Eric and Kim, I definitely have to visit there.
I hope anybody who is coming to the area, gets in touch with me to arrange a meeting, it was amazing to meet your blog friends in person. Also in the picture, Kim makes me look really tall.
This is what I looked like at Jefferson Village School, circa 1980.
It was a few short weeks ago that MY COHORT and I embarked on the Jefferson Writing Project. We didn’t know where the winds would blow our thoughts but we knew that each day they would be published on our blogs.
My friend’s name is Hope and we talked at the beginning of February and she wanted to do more writing but had some writing blocks and motivational issues. I suggested a mutual writing project. She agreed and we made up some simple rules. I am not a big rules guy because who needs limits on our creativity.
I would make up writing prompts and we each would do a post that day involving the prompt. It was supposed to last for thirty days, but went a bit longer.
I went back and looked over our Facebook messages and it started on the 9th of February and ended today. Hope doesn’t like to write on Sunday! (I can blame her, but I like Sunday off too. 🙂
The only known photo of me playing ball at JVS. Thank God. We were styling!
Coming up with the prompts was not as easy as I thought in the beginning. I know Hope so I wanted to get some good easy to write about things. Then as I got going I would just make them up in three seconds.
Or if I was cheating, I would start a post on something and use that for the prompt, or make the prompt something I wanted to write about anyway. In fact what I found, no matter what the prompt was I just wrote whatever I wanted to anyway.
I found that I learned a lot just from reading Hope’s posts, when she was fired up she would get them done way before me. I found I could read and enjoy her thoughts and not let them affect what I was writing.
After about twenty writing assignments or so, we switched it up and Hope was responsible for the prompt. That was more fun because then I could bug her to tell me what it is, rather than the other way around. I still just wrote whatever I wanted to and included the prompt in some way. Other times the prompt was the story.
7th Grade Lookin” Good!
It was fun to have someone else “checking up” on your work and at first the only other person who knew why you were writing about the things you were.
It is just enough motivation to get you to give a little extra effort to make sure you got your post out that day. But most importantly it was fun. Hope is a bit different, (in a good way), I know her personally and used to coach her in basketball. That was awhile ago but I enjoy seeing the young lady she has grown to become.
So I encourage anyone who is hitting a snag in their creativity or motivation to partner up or even group up and start a writing project. It was a fun way to keep things interesting and to work on being creative.
It is called the Jefferson Writing Project because, Hope and I both lived in the town of Jefferson, Maine when we were growing up, and we both graduated from Jefferson Village School, and know that Jefferson is small, has a beach, and a cattle pound. I do not know what the cattle pound is for, but it exists. She likes to take pictures there. Thanks Hope for all the fun. I will always be reading and commenting on your blog because that is how I roll.
Click Image to say HI to Raimy-D. She has an entourage and wears jewelry like a rapper. But she is great!
One of my favorite people in the blogisphere is my friend Raimy-D(creative-guru.com). She spends her time dreaming up stuff for me and others to try to experience. I am two activities behind but I am making an effort to do this one in real-time and let the chips fall where they will. I will take a lot of positive thinking to get this done.
Automatic Writing Assignment
This activity is called automatic writing and I was intrigued because I had such a good time when I tried her automatic drawing exercise, highlighted by Raimy-D and her expert analysis of my very talented drawings.
It was liberating and fun. So automatic writing, no problem, this should spark some positive thinking.
This is how it is supposed to work
So it should work like this: 1. Think of a question you want to have answered in your life.
start writing without a conscious thought. (easier for some than others)
write until you get tired I guess or until you feel like you are done.
The idea is that the subconscious mind will answer the question that you ask. I have told Raimy-D that I am a little fearful of doing this because what if the answer isn’t something I want to hear? But bravery is the better part of valor here and I am going to do this right now, right here and you can read my ramblings.
The question: What is my next step supposed to be in life? (Play the song at the bottom when you read, it is neat.)
There were twelve swans that went to a local pond to take a swim. The water was warm but the swans didn’t know about the secret underneath the water. There were worlds that they had never seen. one at a time the swans would dive for food and while under the water they saw what was there and went to investigate each finding their own world to explore for awhile. Until there was only one swan left and he looked around and realized that he was all alone. He called for help, but no one came. He wanted to fly away but also couldn’t leave his companions without knowing their fate. He had never seen anything but food on his dives so he was unaware of the mysteries below the water. Finally he dove deep and saw out of the corner of his eye a light that he couldn’t resist. He swam as hard a he could toward the light and with all of his effort he made it and emerged into a totally new world. It was colorful, and full of beautiful trees, sparkling lakes it had a lot of green grass to walk on and beautiful puffy white clouds that the swan couldn’t wait to fly into. There was no reason he could think of that this place existed but here it was he could touch it with his feet and taste it with his tongue. It seemed real to him and in the end I guess that is all that mattered.
Answer my questions please.
So there you go I am not going to read this until after Raimy-D looks at it and tells me what she thinks. The answer will be in the comments. Feel free to contribute your own interpretation of the story I am open to any and all guidance in this endeavor. I just want to learn about my next step.
I encourage you to give this a try for yourself and see what happens. I definitely encourage you to read the Creative Guru so that you can try all of this neat stuff as well.
A fantastically fabulous blogger from a magical kingdom has come up with a great idea to challenge the masses, a tug of war.
Always up for a challenge I accept wholeheartedly. The inaugural question was what came first, the chicken or the egg?
This was a softball to me, because of my rudimentary understanding of biology and evolution. The world has my excellent experience in the public education system of the 1970’s and 80’s to thank for this detailed answer.
The Chicken Wins
The Chicken of Course!!!
There are several arguments I could make. If I believed the religious teachings I heard every Sunday as a youth, God made chickens and chickens make eggs and that is the end of the story. That would make it simple, even if it makes no sense an leaves a “few” gaps.
That answer never satisfied me so I looked to education for my answer. As I understand life it worked something like this.
There was a Big Bang! (just had to get that reference in here)
Just looking at my drawing. The big bang looks like a fried egg, or a pile of pooh. We’ll stick with fried egg. :_)
The Earth and the atmosphere formed.
Life started to evolve.
Life begins
Where it came from, now that is debatable but here we are, not debatable. (at least we think we are here)
Life was made up of single cell organisms who due to environmental influences started to evolve over time to become more proficient at survival.
Things started to Evolve
Many forms of life evolved, why they didn’t just all turn into people or monkeys or dinosaurs, or chickens is a bit unclear to me, but what do you expect from a free education.
Now these single celled organisms multiplied through cell division. Over time cells bonded together to form multicell organisms. Some of these primitive life forms eventually evolved into chickens.
The Chicken may die, yet the eggs live on.
The early chickens found an evolutionary benefit to developing their young in eggs outside of their bodies, so it is clear that the Chicken definitely came first!
It had been years since I had ventured into that attic As I climbed the rickety pull down ladder my face was greeted with a musty, dusty smell and the cold air that stabbed my cheeks reminding me of the winter weather outside. As my body became fully engulfed by the cold I tried to make it a quick visit. I was looking for my copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, when something caught my eye.
It was a box. There was nothing about the box that separated it or made it seem that much different from the rest of the boxes in the attic, but the feeling I had was definitely not normal or routine. I picked it up almost subconsciously and maneuvered my way back down to the warmth of the house below with the box still closed in my hands.
There was a Christmas excitement that I was feeling as I started to pull the top of the box open to see what treasure was held inside. I am not sure if the contents glowed but there was a light that emanated from the container as I peeked inside. It could have been real light for all I know or remember because inside were memories that hadn’t been disturbed in years and they were being resurrected today.
The Book
Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel. Beat modernization but became a furnace in the end!
The first thing I pulled out of the box was a book. It was a children’s book and a pretty ordinary one at that, but it brought to life, experiences that occurred long ago.
It was called Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. The contents of the book didn’t matter as much as the words. As I flipped through each page, the voices of those who read those pages to me in my youth came back. Most of them from the grave.
I was awash in nostalgia and even the love a kid feels when someone takes the time to read a story to you. Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and even some teachers voices rose from the page.
When I was child the best time of day was just before I went to sleep when my mother or father would read a story to us. It was a ritual that lit my imagination on fire.
I dreamed of castles, monsters and being a hero. Those images crept back into my mind as I remembered my imaginary adventures from long ago. I wondered how many kids today get to experience this now.
The Scrapbook
Phones looked like this. You dialed the numbers. It was slower yet better. Unless you dialed wrong.
Anxiously I moved on, the next item was a scrapbook I had made in junior high of all of the pictures I could find with me in them. As most young people are, I suppose I was a bit self-centered at the time.
It hit me as I remembered teams I had played on or my seventh grade class picture, just how much life had changed. Not one of the kids including me in those pictures had ever heard of a cell phone or a personal computer for that part.
Yet we managed to live our lives, make friends, go places, and have fun anyway. I remembered how awkward it was to call someone’s house (from the phone attached to the wall) and have to talk to their mom to see if they were home.
Each of these pictures made me wonder how kids can manage to
This is Paddleball. Not much too it thank God.
pay attention at all today. They always have an electronic distraction within arm’s length.
I had a hard enough time concentrating when there was only a paddle ball to distract me. If you are not sure what that is, see the image, but the point is I was easily distracted.
I looked at the kid I was and was happy for him that he had never dreamed of Facebook. It was much more fun to talk to girls in person I think.
My Former Friend
The most painful feeling of looking for your friend and seeing only an enemy
The next item was not filled with pleasant memories. It was filled with pain and sadness. It was a homemade award that one of my best friends had given me.
It represented some joke between us. We used to work together and I thought we were very good friends. It struck me that I had not seen nor heard from this person in over five years.
Something in my heart sunk as I thought about the temporary nature of all things in life and particularly the fleeting ideas of friendship. Why weren’t we friends anymore? What had happened?
It all seems so silly now. There was this award, a joke shared long ago that now only echos in hollow silence. They say that everything happens for a reason and some day perhaps I will understand the reason friendship ends, but it won’t be today.
The Game Changer
I was out of time and had to run, but I reached in the box one more time and this time I came out with a total shock. My collectors edition of thoughts by William George Jordan! The book I think is only significant to me as my reading of it changed my life from one of a taker to one of a giver.
Reading opened doors in my mind I never knew were there.
That book was the gateway for me into a world of wonder and wisdom. It planted the seed of an idea, that every thought you form affected your experience in life was a concept that I had never conceived of, much less ever heard of before.
I recalled how as one book turned into another that philosophies started to make sense in my mind. I remember not only feeling more positive about life but more hopeful about the fate of the world.
There were greater powers available to mankind than simply watching tiny plays acted out on a television screen. Learning is a lifelong thing and how much you want to learn is controlled only by your own personal desire and ability to put away your phone, turn off your television or computer and allow words to seep into your mind. The reward is knowledge of anything you want. Aladdin had a lamp, you have a book, each can make any wish you have come true.
The End
I closed the box and placed it in a very safe place and hurried off to my pressing appointment with work. Even though I left the room physically, my mind was still stretching back to what was inside that box.
A Notebook for All Reasons
You Can Have my Notebook When You Pry it From My Cold, Dead Fingers
ToDoCal by Day One: An Assignment Notebook For Grown-Ups
