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Progress Report. Or Lack Thereof

10th February 2021
Writing
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So much for building my research database. I didn’t make as much progress as I thought with it. I did get started as planned, but it’s slow-moving.

Oh, there are reasons. Of course. There are always reasons.

We had to pick up the artworks we left for framing and pick frames for the next ones. Because of the pandemic, there’s no drop-in, you have to make an appointment, and we cannot always control the timing. It seems everyone is framing pictures on Lidingö these days; the place is bustling.

A framed picture of three drawings by Keith Harrington.
Exhibit no. 1: one of the framed pictures I had to pick up.
It consists of three large Keith Haring postcards from the Haring exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne 2019.

The new desks for the home office were finally delivered, too, and I had to vacate the office to have them assembled, then re-decorate the room.

The cat had her final X-rays for her broken paw, and we had to go to the vet one more time.

We had a lot of home deliveries too.

The deer knocked off the bird feeders.

The dog ate my homework.

Life happens. There’s always something, and if I have to wait until everything is in order to write, the right planets and stars aligned, I will get nothing done.

I have to work through all this. Despite all this.

I’m also plodding, like competing-with-a-tortoise. Once I pick up speed, and I’ve got going, it’s smooth sailing, but I have a long start sequence. Too long.

The smallest disturbance or interruption derails me, and the restart is slow. I need to work on my attention and my focus. I was spoiled by working at home alone for over ten years, comfortable in my routines, and free to work and take breaks as I pleased.

With my husband working from home too now and sharing an (albeit large) room, I find the smallest interruption disruptive. I need to shift my mindset to allow that I’m no longer working alone instead of trying to recreate those ideal conditions that no longer apply. I realize now that I was set in my ways, trying to force this new life into the mold of my old one.

The last couple of weeks has been better, in fact. I try to compartmentalize things and think, “oh, new compartment,” when there’s an interruption. Then I get back to work by switching to the “work compartment.” It does take a few minutes to shift my focus back to whatever I was doing, but it’s better than the muttered resentment and the longer focus loss. It’s still a work in progress, and I think I like the progress if you’ll forgive the pun.

Anyway. I’ve started building my research database. Yawn. Before I started, I was looking forward to working on the reading list, because, you know, books! But once I started, the boring emerged, and I started to fantasize about reading those books, not merely writing a list. Why is the promise of future work more appealing than the work you’re currently doing?

Close up of a vintage-style typewriter with the words "Just do it" typed on the page.

Mindset. It’s all about the mindset. I need to work on the list so that I can read the books. As simple as that. Just do it.

By the way, do you know where that Nike slogan comes from? It’s a pretty morbid story. Facing execution for murdering two people, Gary Gilmore’s last words were, “Let’s do it.” That was 1977. A decade later, Dan Wieden, an advertising executive, pitched the slogan “Just do it” to Nike and, eventually, succeeded. The slogan, inspired by Gilmore’s words, aired in 1988, and, at the time, struggling Nike became the sport and fashion giant we know today.

And here’s another example of me going off on a tangent instead of working on my list. I admit it was far more rewarding checking the internet for a murderer’s last words than working on my Excel file. Now I understand why people kill their internet and delete all the apps on their phones. I’m not sure I could go that far, but I’d better go back to work.

Do you know what happens if you type “go back to work” on Google? You’d see all these Covid-19 related regulations about returning to work after a lockdown.

Results of a Google search

Right, I’ll go back to work. For sure. Right away. Just give me a sec. Any time now.

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Snow

9th February 2021
Poetry
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  1. The Rising Moon
  2. Tonight’s Moon
  3. Cicadas’ Voices
  4. At Yamei’s House
  5. The Bleak Wind
  6. Beads Of Dew
  7. Moon-Viewing At My Hut
  8. Fallen Leaves
  9. An Old Tree Was Felled …
  10. The Autumn Tempest
  11. Autumn Is Advanced
  12. To Ransetsu
  13. In Imitation of Kaku’s Haiku on Knotgrass and a Firefly
  14. On the Death of Issho
  15. Ice and Water
  16. The Lark
  17. The First Snow
  18. The Moon Of Tonight
  19. The Chanting of Buddhist Prayers
  20. Lightning
  21. The Quails
  22. Moon Viewing at an Old Temple
  23. In My Dark Winter
  24. Snow
  25. The Great Morning
A lone small dead plant in an expanse of snow. Photo by Mihaela Limberea

(sent to Etsujin* at the recollection of last year’s journey)

The snow we two beheld – 

Hath it come down again this year?

Matsuo Basho 

* Etsujin, Basho’s favorite pupil.

Matsuo Basho (1644 – 1694) was the most famous Edo period poet and a haiku master.

To read more poems, click here.

How to Do Research for a Non-Fiction Book

8th February 2021
Writing
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Stack of old books.
Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

When we moved from Switzerland to Sweden in late 2019 I decided to do a Kondo review of our possessions. I didn’t want to bring old stuff into our new home and new life in Sweden. It was a signal of new beginnings, with a clean slate.

Old stuff in the huge garage or the bomb shelter … OK, that sounds crazy. Let me explain. Yes, we had a bomb shelter room, with a heavy, thick steel door like a bank vault, complete with six field beds, a chemical toilet, and an air filtering system. It’s a requirement when building a house in Switzerland. If it made me feel safer? I don’t know, but it was perfect for additional storage with 25 square meters.

This brings me back to the move. The extra storage area meant that even more stuff found its’ way there. Some things were easier to throw out than others. Books and my archive papers were hard. 

I had the idea of my non-fiction book for a few years and had started collecting material, even though I wasn’t sure how I could write it when I was working more than full-time and was utterly exhausted during the weekends. But I kept at it because I knew the day would come.

So here I was with boxes of papers, ready to start my new life as a writer, at last. I couldn’t leave all that behind now, could I? What I did, in the end, was a quick scanning, removing duplicates or outdated papers. There were still too many boxes, but I did what I could.

Now to the “how” part. 

How to Do Research for a Non-Fiction Book

1) Preparation

“To lose a passport was the least of one’s worries: to lose a notebook was a catastrophe,” travel writer Bruce Chatwin said. All research starts with a notebook. A kernel of an idea, an overheard conversation, something the neighbor said, a book I’ve read. I write it all down in my little Moleskine notebook that I always carry with me. Nowadays I use the iPhone’s Notes app as well.

As my intentions became clearer, I wrote a few points that would later go into the book outline. Nothing detailed yet, just high level, to provide directions.

Once I had a pretty good idea about what kind of book I wanted to write, I bought a few folders in clear pretty pastel colors and organized the papers I already had. This helped me better understand where I was going with the book.

2) Online Research

Then on to do some online research, starting with Google Scholar, and expanding from there. I did a quick check on what others have written on the subject, and their sources, as they’ve already done their research.

I follow a few writers in my areas of interest; many of the experts in their field would have a homepage or a blog, and often, they would list recommended books. A pre-validated list, that’s gold.

3) The Library 

Libraries are magical. Imagine all that knowledge, free for anyone to grab! Non-fiction books are organized by topics, so this step is relatively easy. I just went to the relevant shelves and browsed. I’m pretty good at scanning books quickly, and my list grew pretty fast.

The advantage of “real” books is that you can browse through whole books fairly quickly; with e-books, it’s much harder.

4) Analyze Sources

I like to think I’m pretty good at evaluating sources, but a formal test is always good. I use CRAAP (an acronym for Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose). I also prioritize primary sources (first-person accounts) before secondary sources whenever possible.

5) Organize the Material

Now, the tricky part is keeping track of everything you’ve found. Enter the research database. I’ll write a separate post on this.

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Fight or Flight?

6th February 2021
GardenLife
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Close up of a a red squirrel. Photo by Mihaela Limberea
A red squirrel eating a peanut in the snow. Photo by Mihaela Limberea
Old hands in the garden

The usual squirrels haven’t visited for a couple of weeks now. I guess they’re all hiding in their dreys, munching on their nut provisions. It’s been very cold, and they must be as reluctant to go out in that frozen world as humans. 

A red squirrel in the snow. Photo by Mihaela Limberea
The new squirrel, so tiny in the deep snow.
A red squirrel eating a peanut in the snow. Photo by Mihaela Limberea
She appreciated the nuts. Very much.

A new one came twice, much smaller and thinner than the others. She must have been desperate for food. The first time it was wary of me, darting away at my smallest move. The second time, still suspicious, she let me come much closer. I took a few pictures, but then I let her eat up the nuts and the sunflower seeds. 

Her eyes were continuously scanning everything around her. She took only a fraction of a second break to pick up a new nut; the rest of the time was spent munching on the nut at turbo speed and checking the perimeter. 

I saw a small squirrel once, chased by a large cat in our garden. The cat was very bold, indeed. I had to push her, physically, to get her away from the tree where the squirrel had climbed in panic. She came back as soon as I turned my back. You cannot be too careful.

Eurasian jay in the snow. Photo by Mihaela Limberea
A jay who managed to steal some nuts from the squirrel. Squirrels and smaller birds have a healthy respect for jays.
A blackbird in the snow. Photo by Mihaela Limberea
A blackbird, with own nuts. The only way to keep the peace in the backyard.

It’s the same with the birds. They have to if they want to survive. They fly into the trees at the hint of a movement. Flee first, check later.

This is the same fight or flight mechanism humans have as well. Our ancestors faced mostly physical dangers in their environment, like a lion. The hormones released by the response to the threat would ensure that the body was primed to deal with the threat, either fight the lion or run away as quickly as possible. A survival mechanism, simply put. The threat of lions is gone for modern humans, or most of them, in any case. The threats are now mental, but the body response is the same. 

An important presentation at work, speaking in public, being late for a critical meeting, and so on. All the perks of modern life. The brain perceives them as threats and instructs the body to prepare for fight as it did millennia ago on the savannah: you start breathing faster, the heartbeat quickens, and your entire body becomes tense and ready for action. I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Reeds. Photo by Mihaela Limberea

It’s not so surprising. We’re not so much different from our ancestors, after all. We just have more technology; monkeys with smartphones.

What’s more, the brain only needs the thought of a threat. I.e., it will respond to imaginary threats as well. Hence, the phobias.

Luckily, this works the other way around, too. This is why visualization and affirmations work.

The fight or flight response is a fine-tuned survival mechanism, but we have to learn to handle it when the mental stressors trigger it. If you’re in a car accident, it’s a great way for the body to increase your survival chances. If you’re in a meeting you dread, not so much.

For my part, I learned the hard way (including a trip to the ER with a panic attack that felt like an infarct) that breathing and calming my mind helped. But that’s another story to be told, maybe, in a future post.

For now, I’m happy watching the little squirrel and hoping she’ll make it through the winter.

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Time Cannot Exist in the Zone

5th February 2021
Life
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A little more than one year ago, my life was a frenzy of conference calls, online meetings, e-mails, projects, and what have you. It felt like being on a bullet train, the landscape whooshing by at such speed that all you could see was a blur. Time was speeding up more and more every day. It was Monday morning; then I blinked, and it was Friday again. I was barely aware I was living. Weeks and months flew by, growing into years faster than I wanted to admit. 

And I was wondering whether this was how my life would continue, years and years flying by faster and faster, and me barely able to tell them apart.

I managed to jump off the hamster wheel of my corporate job eventually. I had realized I couldn’t continue living at lightspeed. 

And you know what? Life slowed down. I slowed down. Time slowed down.

It did take a while, and a lot of soul searching. But once I’ve done that soul work, looking at my values, thinking about what was important for me, and deciding on a course of action, everything changed.

Living intentionally, with a purpose, based on values that were important to me, slowed down time. 

I’m in my bubble every morning, writing my morning pages as soon as I’ve completed my morning ritual (I’ll write a separate post on my ritual). The outside world ceases to exist. It’s only me and the sound of the pen moving across the paper. I lose all track of time. Time ceases to exist. Time cannot exist in the zone. 

I lift my eyes to the oak tree I see from my window. A woodpecker stares back at me. The little red squirrel that comes by every few days flies graciously from branch to branch. This irritates the woodpecker, and it flies away. 

I go out and put out walnuts, peanuts, and sunflower seeds for the squirrel who was waiting for me. She’s stopped raiding the bird feeders. She waits for me. The camera is irritating, I know, so I try to give her time to eat before I start clicking. I toss her a few nuts, and she walks, ever so cautiously, closer. No more than 1.5 meters for now, but my 300mm lens gets the job done at that distance. I didn’t invest in a wildlife telelens; I’m not a wildlife photographer. But there’s magic happening in my backyard, and I’m trying to catch these ephemeral moments.

Another bubble wraps around me. I forget the time when I’m taking photos. I have to set the timer on my Apple watch to remind me to get back for lunch.

Writing (morning pages, blog posts, poems, my book), taking or editing photos, gardening, reading, watching the birds and small animals in my backyard – this is my new life.

Marveling at this amazing world makes time disappear. Time doesn’t speed up; we do.

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The Zone: No. 16 – Feb 4, 2020

4th February 2021
The Zone
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  1. Welcome To The Zone!
  2. The Zone: No. 2 – Oct 22, 2020
  3. The Zone: No. 3 – Oct 29, 2020
  4. The Zone: No.4 – Nov 5, 2020
  5. The Zone: No. 5 – Nov 12, 2021
  6. The Zone: No. 6 – Nov 19, 2020
  7. The Zone: No. 7 – Nov 26, 2020
  8. The Zone: No. 8 – Dec 3, 2020
  9. The Zone: No. 9 – Dec 10, 2020
  10. The Zone: No. 10 – Dec 17, 2020
  11. The Zone: No. 11, Dec 31, 2020 – Special Edition
  12. The Zone: No. 12 – Jan 7, 2020
  13. The Zone: No. 13 – Jan 14, 2020
  14. The Zone: No. 14 – Jan 21, 2020
  15. The Zone: No. 15 – Jan 28, 2020
  16. The Zone: No. 16 – Feb 4, 2020
  17. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!

Neil Postman’s life advice, Sauron’s eye (really??), Seth Godin talking books with Neil Pasricha, and much more in The Zone No. 16.

  • Neil Postman’s Advice on How to Live the Rest of Your Life. I have always admired Postman and was delighted to find his life advice list online, compiled by his former student and colleague, Janet Sternberg. A few favorites:
    • Do not watch TV news shows or read any tabloid newspapers. Life is terrifying enough. Only a fool would expose himself to an exaggeration of the danger.
    • Establish as many regular routines as possible. The point is to reduce the number of decisions you have to make about trivial matters.
    • Carefully limit the information input you will allow. As a general rule, do not take in any more information after seven or eight o’clock at night. You need protection from the relentless flow of information.
Close up of a sun spot
  • Ear Candy: Víkingur Ólafsson is a pianist from Island and an exclusive recording artist for Deutsche Grammophon. I find myself listening to two of his albums, Philip Glass Piano Works and Johann Sebastian Bach, almost daily. And I mean really listening to the music, and not using it as background when I’m working. I’m not sure whether it would work that way; the music forces you to abandon whatever you were doing and start paying attention.

Complaints about too many books predate printing, including the biblical lament “of making many books there is no end” (Ecclesiastes 12:12) or the thirteenth-century prologue in which Vincent of Beauvais complained of “the multitude of books, the shortness of time, and the slipperiness of memory” that motivated him to write a compendium of all knowledge. 

My Zone

A Quote I’m Pondering

There is, I hope, a thesis in my work: we may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. That sounds goody-two-shoes, I know, but I believe that a diamond is the result of extreme pressure and time. Less time is crystal. Less than that is coal. Less than that is fossilized leaves. Less than that it’s just plain dirt. In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats—maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats—but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. 

Maya Angelou

From My Photo Archives

Snowy landscape Photo by Mihaela Limberea
Snow

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To read more The Zone posts, click here.

The Perpetual Tide and Ebb of the Creative Process

3rd February 2021
CreativityWriting
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I had a good workday yesterday, keeping to my to-do-list and ticking off all the items. That’s the power of a list, that sentiment of accomplishments that fills you up when you’ve crossed all points. (Here’s a good read on the subject of checklists).

But it was more than that. I was pleased with the work; I was pleased with myself. I looked at my day and congratulated myself. 

It doesn’t happen often. Life usually happens. An unexpectedly early delivery, computer breakdown, a distressing phone call. There’s always something, and I’ve learned to juggle priorities. As long as I focus on my priorities, I can handle disruptions. If I’ve done my top three priority items on my list, I’m happy about my day.

Crossing off all the items and feeling good about the work, that one chapter, or those two photos, now that’s a rare combination.

Because creative work cannot easily be judged as, say, a piece of …

A red squirrel eating a peanut in the snow. Photo by Mihaela Limberea

Speaking of interruptions, the little red squirrel came by, and I ran out to take photos. Now I have to re-focus and return to my text. 

It’s easy to decide if a product such as a toaster meets the quality standards. But how do you decide whether an artwork is good? Herein lies the difficulty. The doubt creeps in. Small mistakes or minor flaws are enlarged until you only see them. Is this really the best I could do? Maybe if I had more time, I could have … I should have … 

Euphoria and doubt, back and forth, the perpetual tide and ebb of any creative process.

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In My Dark Winter

2nd February 2021
Poetry
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  1. The Rising Moon
  2. Tonight’s Moon
  3. Cicadas’ Voices
  4. At Yamei’s House
  5. The Bleak Wind
  6. Beads Of Dew
  7. Moon-Viewing At My Hut
  8. Fallen Leaves
  9. An Old Tree Was Felled …
  10. The Autumn Tempest
  11. Autumn Is Advanced
  12. To Ransetsu
  13. In Imitation of Kaku’s Haiku on Knotgrass and a Firefly
  14. On the Death of Issho
  15. Ice and Water
  16. The Lark
  17. The First Snow
  18. The Moon Of Tonight
  19. The Chanting of Buddhist Prayers
  20. Lightning
  21. The Quails
  22. Moon Viewing at an Old Temple
  23. In My Dark Winter
  24. Snow
  25. The Great Morning
A pine tree, black and white photo by Mihaela Limberea.

In my dark winter lying ill

At last I ask

”How fares my neighbor”?

Matsuo Basho 

Matsuo Basho (1644 – 1694) was the most famous Edo period poet and a haiku master.

To read more poems, click here.

First Anniversary and Some Reflections on 2020

30th January 2021
Life
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Happy Birthday, an anniversary watercolor

Happy Birthday! Today is my birthday, and the blog celebrates its first anniversary. A few reflections on this first year of creative freedom may be in order.

2020 was not what I expected, and it’s not what you think. Yes, Covid-19 wreaked havoc with our lives and certainly with mine too. But it’s more than that.

I had resigned from my corporate job at Microsoft to do one thing: create. Finally, I would focus on my art and do all the things I was dreaming of when stuck in endless conference calls (I lived quarantine life before Covid-19 imposed it on the rest of the world).

It sounded simple, and I can see now that how deceptive this simplicity was. Hindsight makes things easy to see for what they are. This simple one word, create, encapsulated so many things that I was lost. By trying to do too much, I did nothing in the end. It’s not an excuse, just a late epiphany. Here’s a passage from one of my blog posts in late 2020.

My To-Do list had over 200 items on it (properly categorized, of course). The length was not, in fact, the issue, but the prioritization. What would be the best use of my time? Write every morning, then work on photo projects in the afternoon and read in the evening? What about the blog? I loved blogging and wanted to make room for it. And social media? And I don’t mean watching cat videos on YouTube (even though this may happen more often than I’d admit), but my Facebook photo page and Instagram (posting well-curated photos, of course). 

Where would I then fit drawing/painting/making music/going to art galleries/reading New York Review of Books/going to yoga/making tasty-yet-healthy smoothies/creating a new garden/gardening/listening to thought-provoking and inspirational podcasts/watching interesting and motivational TED talks/learning more about astrophysics, or 19th-century explorations, or psychology, or fractals – to say nothing about the mundane things like cooking (healthy, mostly vegetarian and locally sourced), or nurturing relationships, or just having plain, old fun?

Well, Covid-19 did take care of the art galleries or yoga (although the devil’s advocate could argue that you could manage both online), but the rest? The paradox of choice. So many things to do, so little time … no wonder I was anguished.

Fear played a role, too. Of course. I was afraid to finish anything because that would expose the big fraud that I was to the world, and I realize now that I was just hiding behind that huge to-do-list.

Follow your dreams watercolor

The way I choose to look at it is that 2020 was my learning curve—a year of discovery. I had to be honest with myself and face my fears. Revisit my values, review my goals, and decide what mattered and where my focus should be. Less social media and news, more arts and culture.

Post less, create more.

My 2021 mantra is, “I don’t have time for that.” No time for fear, no time for distractions. Ars longa, vita brevis.

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Authors Should Be Good Gods

29th January 2021
Writing
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Frozen lake and snowy trees. Photo by Mihaela Limberea

If authors are gods, sole and powerful creators of fictional worlds, they should be good gods. Even if characters are put through hell (and they should, if the book is to have any verisimilitude), there should be a meaning to their suffering. Poetic justice, if you will. It doesn’t necessarily mean a happy end. But something that makes sense. He who has a Why can endure any How, as Nietzsche put it.

This is what makes the Greek tragedies so powerful. The hero’s journey is tragic, yes, and we wouldn’t want to be in their shoes, to have to face those choices. But they find a meaning to their suffering, eventually, when all is revealed at the end.

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