Letting the Creativity Flow

Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way recommends getting up first thing in the morning and writing three journal pages. Recently, I saw a video from Tim Ferriss that espoused a similar idea at about 7:20 in the video he says, "three to five hour uninterrupted blocks of time are important if . . . you want to have the space to create . . . original combinations of ideas." Basically, you want to limit your inputs so your mind can create its own outputs. You want to take advantage of the time that your brain is clean from sleep and still bringing itself back together, when your neurons are still slightly separated and can more easily make random connections.

This can be really difficult. I know, I want to rollover and respond to all possible text messages, watch YouTube videos, and catch up on my Astrology for the day, as soon as I get up in the morning. I want to clear out my email as soon as I get into work. This contaminates the mind though. It unplugs us from the collective unconscious and plugs us into the machine.

Ideology kills great ideas. It makes scientists mediocre, turns pundits into hacks, and spiritual leaders become brain dead. Ideology is easy to recognize in others, but hard to recognize in ourselves. The easiest way to deal with it is to avoid it. Get up early, see how things connect. If they do, great. If not, then there's tomorrow.

Winter Solstice and Global Warming Inspired War

Today's the darkest day of the year. Mercury is in retrograde. In Western Astrology, Mars has entered Pisces. Persephone is back with her husband, and Demeter is sobbing at the absence of her daughter. It's only been four to ten thousand years, maybe it's time that she gets over it.

And that might be the case, Sea Ice reached record lows for November, since at least the 1980s. The antarctic shrunk more than usual, and the arctic did not grow as fast. Decades of war continues to spread across the Middle East and Africa. The areas around the edges of the world's deserts have been in constant conflict. The Iraq War, Boko Haram Insurgency, Syrian Civil War, the Mexican Drug War, Darfur, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Sinai, South Sudan, the list goes on. Saying that these conflicts have nothing to do with climate change is kind of like saying the American Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. The world is heating up in a lot of ways.

Yesterday, the violence spilled over into Germany, when a man drove a truck into a Christmas market. ISIS, a group taking advantage of the Middle East violence, claimed responsibility for the attack. There have been other ISIS inspired attacks, previously: Paris, Orlando, and Brussels.

In the words of Dirk Gently: Everything is connected.

Save the environment: Move closer to work, right?

In  February of this year, I moved into an apartment in West Hartford. The move gets me closer to work, close enough that I can walk, if something happens to my car. I also have a direct connection to the Hartford Train Station by bus, which means I can get just about anywhere I would want to go. So, the the first thing I started doing, now that I've moved closer to work was to start driving back over to the other side of the river to see my friends and family. It's sort of counterproductive, but I know I make at least one trip less than I would've otherwise, which offsets my 3 mile regular commute to work, so my use of gas is at least a wash. It's really hard for me to change my life in a way that is good for the environment and my wallet.

Natural transportation and lifestyle changes seem to be the easiest way to do something positive for the environment. So, I've been working on a list of things that you can do to help the environment, which would be beneficial to do regardless of the environmental impact.

1. Grocery Bags: I get free grocery shopping bags everywhere, and they're washable, which is a big plus. Bring these along to the grocery store, some stores like Sams or Aldi or that really sketchy grocery store next to the laundromat require that you bring your own bags, anyway.
2. Drink less or brew your own: That's right we live in America, and you're getting to the bar somehow. We're not going to mention any names, but you shouldn't be doing that. Use an Uber, if you really need to go. Plus the transportation of all those glass bottles...
3. Bring your own cup: Let's be honest, paper cups suck more than the question, "What size is this?" It's a pint / medium / grande, all the other sizes imply that you have mental complex. Frankly, I think I have a mental complex because a medium in English is a large in Italian. And if I ask for a large at Starbucks by accident, I have no idea what I'm going to get. 
4. Buy in Bulk: I'm lazy. I don't want to make multiple trips. Walmart has giant bags of frozen vegetables and giant bags of rice. This is great. Plus, if you run out of money you won't starve for a while. 
5. Get on better terms with your refrigerator: Food isn't good forever. Check the frige before you open something new, go shopping, use something frozen. You'll eat fresher and save money.

New Journey into Data Science

As part of my personal improvement for 2015, I wanted to post videos to YouTube to document my entry into the world of data analysis and show other people how to do the same. So, over the past month or two, I recorded about a dozen test videos. About half of these videos, I've kept. Yesterday, Saturday, April 4, I posted the first of these videos to YouTube.

I used my tumblr account to make a more topic specific blog. The link to the blog and the video are below.

http://technologicalexposure.tumblr.com/

Pagachi Recipe

Above is the instructional video on how to make Pagachi, that pizza/calzone type slovak dish with cabbage in the middle. Below are the instructions exactly as we made it in the video. No need to adjust the portions unless you're not a fan of extra cabbage.

Cabbage Filling

Ingredients

1 - 5 pound head of cabbage

½ Medium Onion Chopped

2 Tablespoon Salt

½ Cup of Butter

Dash of Pepper

Directions

·         Chop cabbage fine in a food processor, add salt, mix and let stand for 30 minutes.

·         Squeeze all of the juice out of the chopped cabbage. Repeat.

·         Using medium heat - Melt Butter in a large sturdy pan.

·         Add Chopped Onion and stir until translucent

·         Add Chopped Cabbage (all at once), and dash of pepper

·         Cook for at least 35 minutes, stirring almost constantly until cabbage is a light brown.

·         Set aside to cool.

Raised Dough

The recipe will make enough dough for 3-4 Pagachi

Ingredients

1 Dry Yeast Packet

1/2 Tablespoon Sugar

1.5 Cups Milk

2 Egg yolks

1 Tablespoons Melted Butter

3 Cups Flour for mixture (have another 1-2 cups on hand for kneading and rolling)

Directions

·         Mix the yeast and sugar in lukewarm milk

o   Let Stand

·         Mix Egg Yolks and Melted Butter

·         Add Egg Yolks and Butter Mixture to Milk Mixture

·         Place the combined liquid into a large bowl

·         Slowly add flour to liquid mixture

·         Blend/Mix using a wooden spoon

·         Let Stand (covered with light weight towel) in a warm place to rise for 1 hour

·         Adding a little flour at a time, knead the dough in the bowl until it is “workable”, no longer real sticky

Pagachi Assembly/Cooking

Directions

·         Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees

·         Place 2 racks in oven

o   One rack placed on the bottom-most level (or second bottom most)

o   One rack placed on the top-most level (or second top most)

·         Split the dough into thirds or fourths

o   Work with, and Bake one Pagachi at a time.

·         Put one portion on a well-floured wooden pastry board, work and roll the dough into a circle

o   You will need to continue to add flour to roll the dough

o   Don’t be concerned about the amount of added flour

·         Spread Cabbage Filling on half of the circle

·         Fold the dough over the Cabbage Filling

o   It will look like a Calzone

·         Close the edges by pinching/pressing closed

·         Prick top of Pagachi with fork to allow steam to escape

·         Place Pagachi on ungreased cookie sheet on LOWEST Rack for 8 minutes

·         Then move cookie sheet to TOP Rack for 6 additional minutes or until a dark golden brown

·         Remove and cool on a cooling rack

·         Repeat for the remaining pagachi

·         Once cooled, the pagachi can be put into 2 Gallon Plastic Bags and Frozen until served

Serving the Pagachi

Ingredients

Butter

Salt

Pagachi (If frozen, take out of freezer and allow to thaw in refrigerator)

Directions

·         Melt Butter in a pan until a golden brown (slightly burnt)

·         Heat Pagachi in 350 degree oven

·         Take out the Pagachi, liberally brush butter on top and salt to taste.

·         Cut into smaller pieces, using a pizza cutter

ENJOY!

I love this part of writing....

On the whole, I try to avoid writing about writing, because it's redundant, self conscious and on the whole too revealing, like starting to strip on a crowded subway, just something to be avoided. But, perhaps that is what also makes it awesome and exhilarating, like a good skinny dip.

So here's the part of writing I'm good at, the mental preparation for for war. Oh, about a month in I'll be fried, but now, I'm about to start a new project, and I'm excited. I've got the storyboards up on the wall, and I'm ready to go. But not yet, the story needs to cook a bit more in my brain. Can't go starting things at 10 at night, I need to work in the morning, after all.

However, I found a new brilliant method of preparation, and I would imagine this works for everything. Watch out, it has to do with the power of positive thinking. Yeah, I know, hold onto your hat, the awesomeness is about to come right through your computer. Every time, I think about something negative, I switch my thinking to ... not just anything ... something positive that I can get excited about--writing my novel. It's like penance and excitement and motivation all curled up into a handy nutlike snack.

Up to this point, I've really have floundered on the positive thinking thing. It has been forced. Between very intense meditation, vision boards, even journaling, positive thinking just has not been easy for me. However, this is different. Yes, I'm 10 years into the novel writing process, but I've got a good 50 more to go, perhaps 70 or 80 with better medical technology. At that rate, I've got at least 15 more drafts in me. A complete novel is inevitable. Therefore, it is my new positive thinking tool. And, I have never felt better about myself than I have the last couple days.

Digging through the basement

Last weekend, I started digging through the pile of stuff downstairs in the dungeon. There hidden among a bunch of old posters were two storyboards from a novel that I was working on long ago. Despite the fact that these ugly decorations were of no use to me the first or second time they graced my walls, perhaps putting them up a third time would give me more motivation than I have previously heretofore acquired. 

This particular novel is funny. I started it right before my first successful Nanowrimo run. And, despite it being the shortest of the three novels that I'm working on, it has certainly garnered the most attention and time of all my writing. On the whole, it is probably the best novel I've written; although, the first half is admittedly a grammatical disaster, so much so that I occasionally wonder if I can just change the second half into a short story.

In short, perhaps I've just put these up on my wall because, like most people, I just need a reminder of what motivates me. I need something that recognizes that I have sacrificed and accomplished a task. And most of all, I need a reminder that I am perfectly capable of doing all of it again in the near future.