muff 'n miff

Picked up a muffin to nibble on and had to chip my way through the sugar cap on top.

Why do people do this?

I mean, I know why. But WHY?

Delicious muffin underneath. Loaded with nuts and fruit. Loaded with fat too.

And yet this is not enough virtue. The formula for sales must be:

1. Take good ingredients.
2. Labor to find the maximum taste & texture combination for the diner.
3. Lose faith in the product
4. Dump a bunch of crap on top that makes it catch the eye, but reduces the enjoyability of the experience and self-fulfills fear that product is less-than-perfect.

Nice.

I want to go to a bakery now. Just eat something right from the baker's inspiration. No marketing guy. No sales guy. No need for preservatives.

good burn

Where others satisfy, she makes most thirsty.

~ Lazarus Long

How will you know your purpose when you encounter it?

Like a really good salsa, the further you go, the greater the burn. The only relief is to keep going. To stop is pain. Scovilles of pain.

Margaritas? Do not speak to me of avoidance measures, no matter how divine. Was any poet ever able to quench his fire without putting it out?

contemplative

What is he thinking? With what elusive thought is he grappling?

This picture of my grandpa really describes how I feel in this time of big ideas and sense of purpose. Of a feeling of smallness before a monumental task. A tendency to feel alone with something I haven't been able to yet draw others into.

siic pic

Here are my awesome classmates and teachers from SIIC 2006

the wild geese are calling

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

My mind has been racing ever since my return from SIIC.

I've been turning my newly milled lens on my world and everywhere I see new possibilities. Not simply random ideas, but new understanding of the energies and motivational forces.

I must sound like I'm full of it, but really it's been more unsettling than boastful.

An unintended consequences of seeing with greater clarity is having to confront my own choices with that same vision.

I'm most of the way through a degree in adult learning, but I know I don't really want to do it. Oh, I want to earn the credential and be more employable. I want to finish and prove to the heavens that I am worthy. But I've exhausted the true motivation in it.

I want to extend my thematic work, my electives, to keep developing as an interculturalist and educator. Not to slog through 'history of 20th century high school education' or whatever.

I made some choices as an undergraduate to finish off the degree within reach. To do the "employable" thing. And I've spent the last 10 years finding my way out of that mediocre wilderness and back into passion.

It seems as clear to me as the wild geese calling as they flew over my house this morning.

If I go toward my passion, it will be a life well-lived. Passion attracts. Passion instigates. Passion leads to things. So, if I can cling to that certainty in lieu of true courage, I am about to enter a very interesting time...

Stay tuned and ask me how it goes. --goosebumplies--

the pun that slayed me

A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

new link: please experience 37days

One of my great excitements of attending these last two weeks of classes was meeting some terrific people and amazing thinkers (who are even more amazing feelers).

One of my new inspirations can be found over at 37days. Please go visit and chew on Patti Digh's blogging (pronounced "Dye"). There's some really tasty thinking going on over there.

37days

sorta saw it coming

So I am back. And I am different. Ahh, but I am not the only changed creature. It seems my boss availed himself of the opportunity (in my absence) to retire and go into business for himself. Chicken. ;?p

I sort of saw it coming. Good guy, but worn down and been really checked-out for the last couple of months.

So the times they are a'changin'.

I think this will be a good thing (he says, inviting fate to take a steaming dump on his predictions). My kindled desire to change the energy around my team and in my business was going to come into conflict with boss-man's inertia. Now that our system is in flux, there is an opening to make some of those changes come true.

Here's hoping.