Between finals week, holidays, and a few prompts that I’d rather think about in private than blog about, it’s been a while since I posted in response to a Reverb prompt.

Here, then, are brief responses to a few that tickled my fancy:

The prompt for day 8 of Reverb10 is. . .

Beautifully Different.

Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful.
(Author: Karen Walrond)

I know I’m not the only one who was made uneasy by this prompt.  I love Karen Walrond’s photography and I understand where she’s coming from as a portrait photographer.

I’m just not comfortable writing about what a special crystal rainbow gumdrop unicorn I am.

So let’s just say that maybe I’m more comfortable with quirkiness, and with difference—my own or others’—than the average American.  (And yes, I know in some regions of the country, that’s a pretty low bar.)

What about you?  How comfortable are you talking about how you are “beautifully different”?  How much at ease are you with others’ differences?

Photo by See-Ming Lee, and used under a Creative Commons license

Today is Day 7 of Reverb10.

Community.

Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011?
(Author: Cali Harris)

First, a digression.

(Well, sort of.  You know I’m big on metaphor, yes?)

Sea otters are among my favorite animals.  I could watch them all day; I’ve definitely added them to the list of Things I Miss In This Landlocked State.  Not only are they damn cute, but they’re resourceful.  For example:

• To keep from drifting away from one another, they sometimes link paws as they sleep.
• Before they dive for food, mother otters will wrap their pups in kelp to keep them from drifting.
• Otters are among the few mammals who use tools.
• They have really cool flaps under their front legs where they store food as they’re swimming to the surface.  Aquarists must frisk otters if they’re feeding them food that can scratch aquarium “glass,” as otters have been known to sneak shells back into their tanks.

Otters aren’t particularly social; they forage alone, though they do rest in groups called—get this—rafts.

Metaphorically speaking, I’m a small, resourceful mammal that lets the tide carry me only so far before I anchor myself to a kelp plant.  And while I do occasionally collaborate with other folks when I’m foraging working, I prefer to do the bulk of my work alone, isolated from others, until it’s time to rest—and then I seek out people.

Wait. . . What were we talking about, again?

Ah, yes: community.

I tend to seek out communities that allow me to be fully myself, that allow me to indulge my eccentricities of habit or belief.  Communities where people go out and do their work individually, and then reconvene to reflect or play.  You know—like a high-functioning college classroom, where everyone does the reading and a bit of reflecting in advance, and then joins together for invigorating, thought-provoking conversation.

So, in a community I’m looking for:

• Respect for quirkiness of habit or belief: we need to be open to people whose words or actions differ from our own, and we ought to embrace those folks even though they challenge us
• Boundaries: we all have our own space, our own lives, and we respect the division between the individual and community
• Convivial colleagues and friends: people who engage in interesting conversations
• Occasional gatherings in person: The Internet is all well and good, but face-to-face interaction is refreshing and life-affirming.

These days I’m walking the line between extrovert (by which I mean someone who is energized by interacting with people) and introvert (someone who needs time alone to reflect and recharge), and any community I join needs to respect both my desire for engagement and my occasional need to withdraw.

There are a couple of communities I belong to that already fulfill these needs and desires, but I’m also seeking a more spiritual and local (outside of work) community these days. I suspect the local Friends meeting may be one such place I find a welcoming community where I might contribute meaningfully.

And you?

What do you seek in a community?

Photo by Mike Baird, and used under a Creative Commons license.

It’s time for another Reverb10 post.  I’m now one day behind, but I’m OK with that.  Here’s Day #6.

Make.

What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?
(Author: Gretchen Rubin)

I’m trying to learn, once again, to knit.  I’ve had a couple of really talented knitters–people who are also employed as teachers–show me how to knit and purl, but I’ve had a great deal of difficulty learning how to work with yarn.  I pick up extra stitches in almost every row–I’m very good at knitting long isoceles triangles–and sometimes I drop stitches, which means there are 1/2-inch holes in the middle of some rows.

I decided I’d try again by making a scarf for my 5-year-old son.  I cast way too many stitches onto the needle because I didn’t bother doing a swatch first, so it’s an extra-wide, extra-holey, isoceles scarf.  But I suspect he won’t notice.  He’s mostly excited that I let him pick out the very bright, rainbow-colored yarn and that I’m able to make anything, no matter how scrambled, out of it.

I’ve vowed to finish the scarf, both because my son knows it should be finished soon and because I’m trying to commit to seeing my personal projects through to completion.  Work projects?  No problem–I finish those, almost always on time.  But artsy-craftsy stuff, or intellectual pet projects?  Those tend to get pushed aside in favor of easier things.

What about you?

What have you made recently?  What remains unfinished?

Yarn photo by Stephen Depolo, and used under a Creative Commons license.

It’s Day 5 of Reverb10. Here’s today’s prompt:

Let Go.

What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?
(Author: Alice Bradley)

Oh, so very, very much.

But let’s start with an excerpt from Elizabeth Bishop’s villanelle “One Art.”

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! My last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

I lost a town.

I lost my proximity to some very dear friends.

I gave up a dog.

I’ve shed 15 pounds (so far), as well as a job that I had ceased to love.

I’ve also gained many lovely things.

The metrics of change

This stuff is hard to measure.  It’s not as easy as making two columns labeled + and -, and then deciding what to do next depending on which column contains more items.  There’s no point system for loss, disappointment, grief, transition, or renewal.

We’re told when we’re establishing a new thing that we should conduct research, gather hard evidence, evaluate the market (or interest) in what we want to do.  And then once we launch (or begin to share) whatever it is we’ve made, we’re told we must pay attention to all kinds of metrics: How many people are visiting our website every day?  Who are they?  When?  How often?  Looking for what keywords?  How long do they linger?  What links do they click?

Yes, these are all important things to know when we’re in transition from one undertaking to the next.  And I will begin measuring soon—looking at the course evaluations my students will complete later this week.  Looking at the peer reviews from the journal articles I’ve sent out this semester.  Considering whether it’s time for us to buy a house instead of rent.  Looking at the statistics from local elementary schools as we decide where to send our son for kindergarten next year.

At the same time, there’s something to be said for observation that goes deeper than metrics–one that recognizes qualitative markers like feelings, personal and professional development, and comfort.  I’m in a stage where I’m recognizing what I’ve lost, and deciding whether or not I need to grieve that loss, seek a replacement for it, or let it go entirely.

What have you let go this past year?

Is it something you miss?  Is it something from which you’re glad to be free?  Is your loss, or the grief or joy you gained from it, measurable in any way?  Feel free to share in the comments.

Here’s the prompt for Day 4 of Reverb10:

Wonder.

How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?
(Author: Jeffrey Davis)

When I consider wonder, I think primarily of two things:

• being in awe of, or delighted with, something in the world.
• being intensely curious.

These are two of my favorite states of being.

I think these two poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins artfully capture my own sense of wonder.  Go ahead–read them aloud to get their full effect.

God’s Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

The Windhover

To Christ our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird — the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Do you know what makes those poems different, other than their lovely imagery?  Their sound, their diction.  Hopkins tried not to use words derived from Latin, and the result are poems rich with Anglo-Saxon sounds and rhythms, sounds from a time and place that’s foreign to me.

And so: wonder.

Words

Words are how I cultivate a sense of wonder in my life.  I notice things, and I try to put them into words: November, the last orange leaves still snagged on twigs, coated by a heavy dusting of snow.  Mountains rising suddenly beyond the city, glowing that western-dry-grass gold in the last sun.  Iowa, and its threat of sky.  Tracks of unfamiliar mammals in the backyard snow.

Sometimes I fail.  And that really underscores the wonder of a thing–when I can’t adequately capture a moment in words.

Wonder for me comes when reality exceeds my expectations, at the seam of the urban and rural or natural worlds.  Boise has been full of these moments: a badger in the yard.  The first snowflakes I’ve seen in a decade.  A river behind my office; a giraffe beyond that, peeking over the zoo’s fence.

Negative capability

That’s what John Keats called that state “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”  For me, wonder engenders negative capability—it happens when I’ve transcended that left-brain moment of “how does that work?” and shifted into the right brain’s “rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!“  It’s the moment beyond questioning, a moment of beholding.  A moment of contentment.

Even though I’m reflective by nature, it can be hard for me to just sit silently with things.  But sometimes what I’m building—be it a lesson plan, an article, a business, a happy childhood for my son, a personal theology—needs that moment of reflection, needs that space where I can observe in wonder at the thing-in-itself, the untouched thing before I’ve tried to fix or alter it.  It’s a space where I don’t need to worry about reaching after fact and reason, where I’m fine with uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts.

And you?

Where do you find wonder?

Photo by William Warby, and used under a Creative Commons license.

It’s Day 3 of Reverb10.

Here’s today’s prompt:

Moment.

Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).
(Author: Ali Edwards)

For me, this year was filled with a few highs and a lot of mediocrity.  The university teaching center where I worked was demoted from a windowless suite of basement offices in a classroom building to a mostly-empty cubicle farm in a couple of converted veterinary lab classrooms–inside a 50-year-old “temporary” building/tin shed.  That was terribly demoralizing, but everything was made easier by the job offer I received before we made the move to the cubes.

I don’t know if there’s one moment when I felt most alive.

Mostly I remember feeling tired, frustrated, and sad.

• Tired of my old job, because we were being drained of resources and I didn’t feel my work was respected by the folks above me in the bureaucracy.
• Frustrated because we had to return a beloved dog to the SPCA.
• Physically tired all the time.
• Sad that we were leaving our friends, and our son’s, in a lovely California town.
• Worried about the effects on Pete of the move to Boise.

Honestly, I remember happy moments, but not in the sensory detail I remember the painful moments, and the long dull periods of cube-farm mediocrity, from the past year.

I suppose we’ll have to settle, then, for moments of contentment.

Strategizing with a good friend about building our consulting business, often over really great Thai food.

Sitting with Pete and our son on the edge of the deck surrounding the giant oak tree at the Davis Farmer’s Market, on a chilly but sunny morning, sharing cherry danishes and chocolate croissants, as well as cups of lemonade.

Meeting our new puppy, Jake.  (It’s hard to believe he was once so small; at 10 months old, he’s now more than 100 pounds.)

Suiting up our 5-year-old for his first experience with snow.  There were only a couple inches on the ground, but it was very, very cold out there.

Moments of teaching my public history course, when students’ ideas were sparking all over the place and conversation was lively.

Painting bright boxes and birdhouses with my son at our kitchen table in Boise.

Pete’s and my decision to relaunch TerraFirma Creative, and the day I introduced him to the revamped website.  There was a good deal of promise in that moment.

Attending my first Quaker meeting in a long time, and realizing that maybe there was space for me among the Friends.

Looking forward

I’ve already said I’m looking to ground myself, to put down roots.  I suppose another goal needs to be better recognizing those moments of contentment, and really savoring them rather than looking forward to the next thing.

That’s one thing I’m working into The Friendly Vivarium Handbook (that’s the super-secret pre-launch page; see more details here): instructions for how to find space for reflection on what you want to do in the future—but also how to recognize moments of contentment in the present and build on them.

Your turn

When did you feel most alive this year?  Or when did you feel content?  Are you taking time to recognize those moments when you’re in them?

Today’s prompt from Reverb10:

Writing.

What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?
(Author: Leo Babauta)

Not much keeps me from writing.  After all, last month I wrote 52,731 words outside of my full-time job as a professor–many of them appear in the two ebooks I’m working on right now.

That was, of course, an exceptional month.  But I do find myself writing every day.  I might author a blog post, comment on others’ blogs, work on those ebooks, discuss issues in a forum, write assignments for students, respond to student work, begin a poem, send e-mail, draft journal articles, and more.

I would love to be a more prolific writer as an academic, but my process requires a lot of reading and reflection, a lot of time in the archives.  Still, I believe blogging helps keep my writing chops flexible and strong.

How and why

Those of you wanting to write more, but who are feeling blocked may wonder what inspires me to write.  I’d say I’m less inspired than driven.  My identity has long been tied up with writing, from well before I majored in English and then earned a Master’s in creative writing.  Writing helps me to think clearly, and so without writing, I don’t get much thinking done.

I’m fortunate to have a job that values writing, research, and deep thinking.  And I’m lucky, too, to be married to someone who understands—nay, who lives and breathes—the need to work on writing projects outside my job.

What about you?  What keeps you from writing?

Photo by John O’Nolan, and used under a Creative Commons license

Today’s blog post is inspired by the Reverb10 project, which asks people to reflect on the past year and consider the coming one.  Each day during December the folks at Reverb10 post a new prompt.  Like Sarah J. Bray and Jessica Albon, I’ll be responding to each prompt, but it’s unlikely I’ll be publishing all my responses in this space–since I haven’t seen all the prompts, I’m not sure how much they’ll be relevant to my readers here.

Today’s prompt:

One Word.

Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?
(Author: Gwen Bell)

The word that best describes 2010 for me?

Shifting.

My family and I experienced many shifts this year.  Here are three:

1. In February, after a five-year dry spell on the job market, I finally landed a tenure-track job teaching U.S., gender, and public history.  So in July, we pulled up stakes and moved from Davis, California to Boise, Idaho.  This, of course, had repercussions not just for me, but for Pete’s employment and our son’s schooling.

2. In late 2009 and early 2010, before I even accepted the job in Boise, I realized I was burning out in my job on the staff side of the academic house.  I was working with wonderful people, but the bureaucracy of the university, plus ongoing budget cuts, meantmy job wasn’t necessarily secure, and to make it more so, my job responsibilities would be shifting in ways with which I wasn’t entirely comfortable.

Accordingly, with a view toward the longer term, I founded a consulting practice with a good friend and colleague.  We had started to really define what we could offer clients, as well as begun marketing efforts, when I accepted my new job.  We decided it would be difficult for me to remain partner in a business 1,000 miles away at the same time as I was pursuing tenure, so we parted amicably.

3. I’m by nature relatively reflective, but this year I’ve kind of taken it into overdrive, really trying to think about what I value, what projects I want to work on (there are so many possibilities!), and how I spend my time.  If anything, I feel more confused than ever, but I feel I’m moving toward a more grounded, centered way of knowing and being.

When I look back at 2011, what do I hope to see?

Grounding.

I still feel a bit like an exile from California, so grounding for me will take the form of:

• Continuing to deepen my practice of reflection, and to let that practice be transparent as we relaunch TerraFirma Creative
• Getting to know my new city better, and to become more involved with public history projects and organizations here
• Embracing more fully my creative energies, and finding a way to blend them with my work as an historian

Play along in the comments.

What about you?  What single word best sums up 2010, and what are your hopes and plans for 2011?

Habitat collapse: despite all our attempts to protect the landscapes on which plant and animal species depend, sometimes it happens.

It happens in business, too.  Your habitat might be the niche your business serves (newspapers that set type in lead), the group of folks with whom you regularly collaborate (your favorite graphic designer, web developer, and accountant all retire or go out of business at once), or—god forbid—your entire industry (film cameras).  Regardless of the scale, you realize the space you’re inhabiting—your habitat—can no longer sustain you.

Let me give you an example.

I have a very good friend whose habitat is collapsing.  For the sake of our discussion—I don’t want to reveal too much about his actual identity—let’s say that he’s makes and repairs wooden wagon wheels. And let’s call him Abe.

Abe first entered the wheelwright trade serendipitously.  He applied for a job with a stagecoach company, hoping to ply his novice blacksmithing skills as a farrier.  But the manager of the stagecoach company—let’s call it Bells Cargo—wanted at least a journeyman blacksmith, so he wasn’t interested in Abe.  But he did say he had an opening for a wheelwright, and he asked Abe if he had any experience with woodworking tools.  Abe admitted that he didn’t—even though every high school graduate by this time had some spoke-setting skills.  The Bells Cargo manager said in that case he couldn’t use Abe.

But Abe was persistent.  He said he’d work for free for a week, and if he hadn’t produced a working set of wheels by the end of that week, they could fire him.  But if he did produce good wheels, Bells Cargo ought to consider keeping him around.

Ends up Abe was exceptionally good at making wagon wheels.  He became a wheelwright at a time when, although cars were filtering into the market, they weren’t yet being churned out on production lines—they were more of a boutique item.  And so there was still quite a bit of money to be made as a wheelwright, and during holidays and special events, when folks were out travelling quite a bit, Abe picked up a lot of wheel repairs for not only stagecoaches, but carriages as well.

Then along came Henry Ford and assembly lines and efficiency theorists, and in a period of two decades, the long and glorious history of wheelwrights ended.

Abe now finds himself a relic, a creature without a habitat to sustain him.  Sure, he can ply his trade among hobbyists, but there aren’t enough of them to keep him in business.  In his town there’s only the one guy who drives a carriage downtown for tourists.

It’s really sad. Abe’s depressed.  After all, even though he never intended to become a wheelwright, there’s a long and glorious tradition of wheelwrights, and he felt welcomed in that brotherhood.  He enjoyed working with all the other folks who took pride in building stagecoaches and wagons and carriages.

But all is not lost.

Because unlike in the world of actual flora and fauna—which take generations to evolve new adaptations, and thus can face extinction rather precipitously—people can adapt and evolve quickly.

Abe has a number of transferable skills, and he’s picked up some experience in adjacent industries.  He might apprentice himself to an artisan furniture maker, for example—because Abe is a sucker for anachronistic industries—or, because he’s picked up quite a bit of knowledge about horses as he’s worked in carriage shops and barns, he might parlay his observations about horses into horse whispering or, with some schooling, equine homeopathy.

But when you’ve been a wheelwright for two and a half decades, it can be hard to reimagine oneself as an practitioner of alternative medicine for large animals.  And it can be even harder to explain this change to friends, family, and clients.  Who knows?  Maybe it ends up Abe should have stuck with handicrafts and made high-end Adirondack chairs out of sustainable hardwoods.  Maybe he wants to leave that door open, just in case.

Abe’s therefore in the process of establishing a couple of vivaria, tiny incubators where he creates and manipulates the environment instead of letting external forces wreak havoc with his habitat.  So he’s started a blog about equine homeopathy, and he’s created a binder of clippings from craftsman magazines and websites about artisan furniture, and he’s sketching some possible creations.  He’s noticed the local ag university offers courses in large animal husbandry, while the community college’s art department offers a course in working with wood.

Flexibility and reflection

It’s at once thrilling and frightening to set off on a new adventure, especially one that promises to be so life-changing.

But Abe and others will make it if they adopt a few key practices:

Reflection. Maybe this takes the form of writing in a journal or on a blog.  Maybe it’s rest.  Maybe it’s doodling or playing the guitar.  It looks a bit different for each person.

Flexibility. By which I mean two things: openness to serendipity and a willingness to try new (and sometimes initially uncomfortable) things.

Learning. Listening. Reading. Observing. Asking questions. Apprenticeship.

I’ll write more on these in the future blog posts.  But for now, ask yourself: In what ways am I letting myself be open to new opportunities and new learning experiences?  How am I processing what I’m learning and observing?

(Also note that Abe was flexible and open to learning when he stumbled into his first beloved career as a wheelwright.)

You don’t need to be making plans now.  This stage is all about reflecting, collecting, marinating.

Don’t fear the desert

When you’re looking for a new entrepreneurial habitat, it’s tempting to migrate toward the lush, green jungles and forests that appear able to sustain a good deal of competition, or toward the lovely islands.

But sometimes the most attractive places are the first to have their resources exhausted.  Forests get cut down for lumber, or they succumb to fire.  Island species may grow smaller over generations, and they might even become maladapted to other niches (birds that no longer fly, for example–the dodo, anyone?) and thus stuck on their islands.

Your new habitat may at first resemble a desert, but the desert is actually thriving with life—you just can’t always see it immediately because it’s small or hides during the heat of the day.  And in the spring, many desert habitats bloom in ways that might surprise you.

If you’re open to adaptation, you may find you’ll thrive in your new habitat.

What’s your habitat looking like these days?  Any plans to seek a different one?

Polar bear photo by Ajay, and used under a Creative Commons license
Wagon wheel chandelier photo by Ralph Hogaboom, and used under a Creative Commons license
Wildflower photo by Rennett Stowe, and used under a Creative Commons license