What about this one?
Daring Greatly Leadership Manifesto
What about this one?
Daring Greatly Leadership Manifesto
life
All posts tagged life
Holstee Manifesto
“A manifesto is a written public declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party or government.” (Wikipedia)
What intention do you declare for you life?
Just like real life.
Goodreads | A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut – Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists.
A Man Without a Country is where Kurt Vonnegut wrote
Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country
Sherman Alexie at University of Redlands, February 5, 2013
This topic is not the original intent I had for this blog post. I’ve been sitting on this draft for about a week now. I had wanted to talk about the movie Super 8, which I rewatched with my family after I returned from ALAMW13. I was inspired by the catchy line delivered by the 2011 movie’s protagonist Joe Lamb. I thought it held a significant idea encapsulated in a compact info-package worthy of a blog post. But I had trouble putting my thoughts together in a coherent enough manner.
Then, last night, I heard Sherman Alexie speak at University of Redlands. My first time to hear him in person. Things fell into place in my head. He delivered the same message as Joe Lamb: “Bad things happen. But you can still live.” Not the same words. But similar idea and spirit. The injustice and suffering we experience need not be for nothing. The anger we harbor can fuel our artistic, creative, and aesthetic endeavors. And by living I mean feeding and growing one’s soul through art and creative work: writing, painting, drawing, dancing, or performing.
Alexie spoke of the grinding poverty he knew as a child growing up on an Indian reservation in the Spokane, Washington area. When you are dirt poor, he said, your basic hungers for food, shelter, safety, and physical comforts become one with your spiritual and emotional hungers. Basically, that’s nice, dear. But it doesn’t fill my belly. What do you do when that’s your reality?
For Sherman, the answer was he had to get out of the rez. The consequences of his decision to leave were not (are not) easy to bear. There was the challenging question: “You think you’re better than us?” Wait, don’t answer that. Whether you think so or not, it doesn’t really matter. It’s a trick question. You’re damned either way. Then there’s the biting, corrosive self-loathing. So, in sum, you get beat up or ostracized by others because they think you’re full of yourself, then you beat yourself up because you think you’re a colossal idiot for wanting more out of life. And yeah, you are full of yourself because you’re full of shizz. Oh, joy. What writer, what artist or creative person, does not know this old familiar tune?
So we crack jokes and tell stories. We laugh. We do this so we can go on and keep on living. So, live.
Haters Gonna Hate. What’s a Woman to Do About It? – The Cut.
Please read this. It’s not just for and about female empowerment. It’s for those of us who take social justice work dearly and seriously.
Crossing paths with snarky, ignorance-laden, bigoted commentary, online and off, this late in the 2000s, still bothers me a great deal. Don’t get me wrong. I like a good, irreverent laugh as much as anyone. And I struggle daily with my own internal biases, blind spots, and prejudices. I think we all should take stock and do personal inventory at least once a week. But I still hear things that makes me want to say, “do you understand the words that are coming out of your mouth?” When that happens, the world becomes a smidge bleaker and colder.
I sometimes feel overcome by the hate. It saps me of my strength and will. Like, what’s the point? And the point is, I do what I do because it brings me to life. I keep doing what I do because I want to get better at what I do. Haters will hate no matter what. So let them. Take heart. You are not alone.
“That doesn’t mean I consider all of my critics to be haters. If I get negative feedback from people who are close to me, strangers who actually care about my work, or experts in the field, I listen. Those people push me to work harder, too. But nothing motivates me like haters. The hierarchy just helps me to compartmentalize them. It’s not that I stop caring altogether, it’s that I care much less about the least consequential among them.”
Friedman’s Hierarchy of Haters
“When you are broken, fill in the cracks with gold.”
The greatest joys of having a digital life are the serendipitous, happenstance encounters I often have with people, words, and ideas that lead me to other ideas, words, and people. Once in a while, I become so moved, I am compelled to do something. This is one such occasion.
There have been too many times recently when I felt overrun by brokenness and damage–from my own shortcomings, those belonging to others, and from events in both the national and global stages. This morning, I was reminded of the beauty of redemption. It is central to the art of kintsukuroi. Simple, beautiful, elegant. Thank you, Melissa Martin Powell, for leading me onto this path. The quotation on the image above is from Melissa. Thank you, Nazgul2, for the Creative Commons share-alike image on this post.
Now I must read, research, and learn more.
The biggest d20 ever by saintovbastards via Flickr
D20s aren’t just for skills checks. They’re also for reality checks.
One life lesson I’ve been trying to impart to my children is the respect and appreciation for nuance and complexity. I found this a difficult lesson to communicate. Until I started playing D&D with my family, that is. Because we had taken up tabletop RPGs as a family, I realized I had a concrete illustration tool right in my hand. And I played it. To the hilt.
An issue, I had started saying, is like a d20. There are usually more than 2 sides, more than 2 perspectives.
Like most parents, I don’t get much feedback to let me know I’m getting through. And, like most parents, this bothers me. However, tonight, I got the verbal confirmation from my teenage daughter that I’ve been craving. The highlighted quotation above was something she said to me, without my prompting. And, again, without my prompting, she told me how profound she thought the d20 concept is.
My. Doesn’t that make a mother proud?
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