Pilgrimmy Progress

[gurdonark]

One thing that interests me is the creative potential which continual self-expression can spawn. Whenever I hear phrases such as "creative potential", I look for the place on the form that says this "human growth seminar" will cost only $ 499.99. Still and all, I've noticed since I began keeping this journal that I am much more oriented to getting things done. I write more, I try to volunteer more time, and I have interactions with strangers that do not take the form of demand letters.

I always like that Amelia Earheart (or is it Helen Keller? All quotes are misattributed in the Cliffs' Notes of my mind) tag about life being a grand adventure or it is nothing. I also like that Michael McClure "Meat Science" poem I read in Paris Review when I was the sort of young many who regularly bought Paris Review (and nonetheless sat in the stands at football games yelling "wooo, pig soooie") about how all sorts of lives half-lived "are suicide".

As pleased as I've been with the positive effects of keeping a personal journal--score one for the Puritans, who were big journal fans--this week I am focused on transmuting (or transmogrifying, which I always think is a cooler word) this personal progress into progress on even mundane fronts. Today was an enormously productive day, so I hope that the effort is succeeding.

As I sit here, an affidavit just completed,
resisting mightily the temptation to write about the two big trials in November that marked the onset of a mild period of exhaustion (hey, maybe my personal community could be alled "lawwarstories", a place for recovering litigators to tell about trials), I'm ready to slay dragons and learn sensitivity and trade all my paperbacks in for other paperbacks and even find the missing CDs.

I'd settle for just getting my tasks all done.
My wife left for her weekend Nebraska farm trip today. Maybe I can use the time alone to focus on getting things done.

Comments

[muse.livejournal.com]

Getting things done lends completion and accomplishment to the personal spirit. I have a list of things to do for my house and self and try to accomplish a bit of each weekly or monthly. It feels very good to mark off one of the additions to the list, from the physical act of marking to the feeling afterwards.

The quotations you discussed are absolutely right. A life half-lived is not worth living. Living half-cautious is like drinking curdled milk on purpose.

yes

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Yes, you said it exactly right. It's that checking things off the list, that's the ticket. Then it's just a matter of supervising the list!

[geekturtle.livejournal.com]

Helen Keller, one of my favorite quotes :)

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I really love it, too.

But there is a great Amelia Earhardt quote as well, and it escapes me now....