Pages

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Coming back to myself


It had nothing to do with writing, though yet, in a way, it did. And nothing to do with the stories I tell, except for the stories I might still tell myself in the long and the quiet of the night.

For I was a teacher once, a trainer, an instructor. I spent my days shaping minds to see order and sequence - and to realize (in the sense of making ‘real’) such seeing in code so a computer could go about the business of…well…computing.

Later, not formally teaching, training, instructing, I led others, in two different startups, to imagine order and structure laid upon the realities of business. We described the world, people, skills, and commerce, in abstract terms, in diagrams, in information encoded in database structures.

And I taught people to write code that brought these together and made something useful of it all. I even taught some to imagine how such might be wrought again.

Today, this afternoon, I got to exercise that part of me again. To imagine. To seek an innovative approach. To even seek a radical approach. To allow my mind shape theory out of imaginings and to have the result hang together and make sense to another.

The writing will be done by this other. A short paper, with her own ideas and experience brought to bear.

But I mapped out a road, placed the signposts, sketched the destination.

It felt good to stretch.

6 comments:

  1. Welcome back to creativity, sir! We've kept it warm for you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. But I mapped out a road, placed the signposts, sketched the destination.

    And yet you do this with every outline - the bones of the story. Your imagination has always flowed well - you just sent it down a different conduit today and helped another to see their own potential. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for the welcome, John. Nice and warm it is! :D

    True, Laura. I do indeed - but this, this...this was a real letting of the techie that I am *romp*. I've spent more than a couple of decades being good at such things - it was nice to push it harder than I have to these days.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh so good to see you back! The road to creativity is an endless one, you can stop off and stretch anytime you feel like it! Loved reading this piece. ^_^

    Helen - from helen-scribbles

    ReplyDelete
  5. Your words are very poetic. Drifting, finding oneself, helping others find themselves. Creativity flows through so many veins and facets of ourselves.

    ReplyDelete
  6. @Helen - Glad you enjoyed the piece. I agree, the roads to creativity are many and varied - as many and varied as creativity itself.

    @Lara - Thank you for the comment about my words. And thank you for stopping by - I like your thought about creativity.

    ReplyDelete