{"id":144,"date":"2011-02-20T02:20:27","date_gmt":"2011-02-20T09:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onlytwopeople.com\/blog\/?p=144"},"modified":"2011-02-20T02:20:27","modified_gmt":"2011-02-20T09:20:27","slug":"inspiration-or-%e2%80%9cwhat-i-love-to-do%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.onlytwopeople.com\/blog\/inspiration-or-%e2%80%9cwhat-i-love-to-do%e2%80%9d\/","title":{"rendered":"Inspiration or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What I love to do\u00e2\u20ac\u009d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before you start with, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t write very much,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to say that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m writing right now, so there. Jess and I watched \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dead Poet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Society\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for the first time tonight (yes, I am aware that we are 22 years behind), and I felt the need to write something about it. No, not about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Carpe Diem,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or even about not having sucked the marrow out of life. (If you haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seen the movie, do so, it is excellent. And you are further behind than I am.) Nope, today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s topic is, as stated above, inspiration.<\/p>\n

I enjoy writing. I enjoy it tremendously. There is little I like better than sitting at a keyboard and having stories and statements tumble out of my fingers and onto the screen. When the flow begins, and the ideas spark, there is a joy in the creative process that I derive from few other things (although, a similar feeling and pleasure is derived when coding a program or teaching a class, lest you think my chosen professions have fallen too far astray of my life\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s joys). So why don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t I do it more often? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a question I ask myself all the time, and it really comes down to inspiration.<\/p>\n

One aspect I truly enjoy about a good (and sometimes bad) movie is the scope. The scope of a movie gives a larger than life quality to the characters and the settings, and the ability of a good story to lead you down paths and force you to consider things in different ways. They may be powerful and deliberate, like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dead Poet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Society,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or expressed in another format altogether. The two best movies I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen in the past year resonated for two very different reasons, the first being \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Speech\u00e2\u20ac\u009d due to the fantastic characterization and skillful portrayals in a story that is only made the more important by its setting. Meanwhile, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Inception\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was a creative, mind-engaging tapestry, woven together and left with a single thread that the viewer could then pull on to unravel. The former left an emotional response which I enjoyed processing with Jess, and the latter left an intellectual response that I enjoyed processing with society at large.<\/p>\n

It is these kinds of experiences that I enjoy the most, and why I enjoy going to a movie and being able to lose myself in it. It is these kinds of experiences and the engagement of the mind that I want to be able to provide other people when I write. I feel every good artistic expression reveals a part of the author\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s soul, and it has long been my desire to be completely transparent. Maybe why I run<\/a>, or what inspires me to write is not interesting to everyone, but for those that care and want to know me, I want to make sure that I am open and upfront about who I am and why I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m here. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not saying all writings should be so self-revealing, but I want to make certain that anyone starting from this point knows who I am and how I work.<\/p>\n

I feel by far that the weakest aspect of my teaching is that when I get excited I talk too fast. As I am still starting out as a teacher, it can be difficult for me to modulate myself when something comes to my mind. I want to share it immediately, I want the students to understand it like I understand it. To see the light of understanding come on is immensely gratifying. Perhaps the greatest drawback of writing and posting items online is that I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get to be there when the information is read. It sits there open to interpretation, with the potential to be realized, and yet it may never occur.<\/p>\n

The weakest aspect of my writing, on the other hand, is a lack of polish. This weakness can be addressed in the exact same fashion as my weakness in teaching, by repetition. Teaching more classes, writing more often, by these avenues will I better be able to hone my passions. Teaching I only have so much control over, as I only get classes when they are available, and may practice within to my heart\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s (though perhaps not my student\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s) content. As for writing, we have now returned (after a lengthy departure for which I apologize) to the topic of inspiration. For me a touchstone is necessary, something to begin the journey to which I may (or may not) reach the end. Today, it was a movie. In the past, it has been my love for running, or softball. As I am moving out of a season of pain and distraction, it is now time to pursue my passions more readily, and not just spend my time idling on this project or that. For that I need some inspiration, so if someone reading this wants to leave me a topic they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to see me address, I would love that inspiration. I must also be ready to provide my own inspiration, and, to that end, I am going to write on this blog more often.<\/p>\n

I suppose, in a way, I have been inspired to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Seize the Day.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before you start with, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t write very much,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to say that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m writing right now, so there. Jess and I watched \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dead Poet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Society\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for the first time tonight (yes, I am aware that we are 22 years behind), and I felt the need to write something about it. No, not about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.onlytwopeople.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.onlytwopeople.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.onlytwopeople.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.onlytwopeople.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.onlytwopeople.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.onlytwopeople.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.onlytwopeople.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.onlytwopeople.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.onlytwopeople.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}