Tag Archives: professional growth

LOL: The Not-Failed Experiment

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Last week, I published Wednesday Wisdom as an experiment.  I tried to include a quote from Alice Walker and a photo.  I seem to be the only person who received the imbedded photo. I hope the quotation and photo actually appear at the top of this post.  Just in case, the relevant quotation is:  “Much of the satisfying work of life begins as an experiment; having learned this, no experiment is ever quite a failure.”

In light of Walker’s wisdom, my experimental Wednesday Wisdom post did not quite fail.  True, it did not do what I hoped for. Some readers received garbled computer text, others received a box with a question mark or an X.  But it was not a total failure because it showed me that what I tried didn’t work, and it provided the impetus for me to keep learning and experimenting.  Yippee!  As Marshall McLuhan says, “The medium is the message.”

This post is another experiment.  I hope the image I created appears this time.  If it does, this will have been a BIG step for Barbara.

Please, please, send me a comment or email letting me know if your version of this blog post includes an image of the Walker quotation and a young girl at a piano.  As far as I can tell, it will, but then, I thought it would last time, too.  Thank you.

Look for another Wednesday Wisdom this week.  I will publish longer posts about every two weeks.

 

 

 

Wednesday Wisdom

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Welcome to a new weekly feature on Changing Direction.  Each Wednesday will bring brief words of wisdom for living life well.  The emphasis is on brief.  Some posts will be serious, others funny.  Pass Wednesday Wisdom along to others and let me know which posts you like.  (P.S.  Wednesday Wisdom is an experiment–see below.)hands_on_keyboard_with-text-best-place[1]

 

 

L.A. Snow Day

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imagesUKL5P5N9Yeah, yeah, I know:  we don’t have snow days in Los Angeles.  Except for me.  I had a snow day this week right here in Pasadena, California.  Of course, with roses blooming in my garden and a lime tree covered in fruit it required a bit of imagination.

I missed snow days when I moved from the land of freezing winters to the land of sunshine and palm trees. Snow days often bring power outages and travel delays, but they also give a guilt-free reason to cancel everything and slow down the pace of life. Who can argue when the governor or school superintendent tells everyone to stay home?

When smog made me cancel my calendar for two days this week and stay inside my house, I had a brainstorm.  I said, “Self, these are snow days. You love snow days. Pretend you’re in Upstate New York again and this is a snow day.”

Every time I felt frustrated at where I couldn’t go and what I couldn’t do, I filled myself with remembered feelings of coziness, leisurely reading on the sofa, comforting smells from the kitchen, and relaxed puttering around the house.

It worked.  For two days I kept frustration at bay with the wackiness of my imagination.  Then the weather changed and cleared the air, which is good because even actual snow days give me cabin fever after 48 hours and I don’t think I could have sustained my willing suspension of disbelief much longer.

My snow day/smog day framework improved my attitude by changing how I reacted to the smog.  I consciously chose how to perceive my limitations, chose how to act, and chose my attitude.

Life is all about choices, after all, some writ large and others known only to us. I chose to have a snow day in L.A. and it made all the difference.