I found BASF in a Box of Rain

I remember as a teenager thinking about what I wanted to do, and it wasn't creating an entirely new product--it was making things better.

 BASF We make things better.

And, now, I am doing it AGAIN.  I went to college.  I travel.  I have a family and a home.  And, I am happy but I will be happier if I can help others do things better.  Hhhhmmmm, what does this mean?

Well, the first question is "do you want to do things better?"  I have found as I get older I can answer that question more effectively.  How many times have we gotten older and said, "I wish I would have known this then!!"?  Well, maybe part of life is learning those sharp little pieces of experiential wisdom.

I was just reviewing the Birkman report that my husband suggested I get several years ago and our wonderful and talented friend Ginny translated for me.  I have read it before but maybe it has taken a while to really understand it.  I need to be treated as an individual, I need time to consider and make decisions and I definitely need deadlines but I will be in your corner, treating you with respect and hearing you when you speak.  Over and over it says I need time, I need to be grown not shoved, not constrained but given markers.

Am I happy?  A very wonderful and good friend asked me this question a few nights ago.  I couldn't freely yell, "well, yes!  of course!!"  So I have been sitting on that question and in my "needing time" way trying to find a path to it.

And, yesterday I had a long conversation with one of my scholarship kids.  She is a real go-getter who is coming from not much concretely but is going to go a long way just based on her focus and attitude, not to mention smarts.  But, in talking with her it became apparent that she wants to become a lawyer (very clearly) and she thinks there are only divorce and bankruptcy attorneys.  Whoa!  I said, "what about Environmental Law, Research, Energy, International.....?"  She did not know about these options, but now she does and she is going to go learn about them.  How many people would benefit from knowing about a few more options or realizing they had done something like this already?

So, am I happy?  Yes!!  I have so many blessings and people and options it makes me afraid.  But, there is still me and the fact that I can make a difference.  That feeling is intoxicating.  And, doing it by creating a world that isn't real but will lead you back to a world that is--that's something I could do all day and not worry about the time.

I love my husband, and my children, and the life I live.  I love walking the dogs and buying milk and watching the lake and mountains.  I AM happy (even though it makes me afraid sometimes) and I can give people a way to try things out without having to make a commitment at that moment.  They can enlarge their experience, and who knows where that may lead?

I am taking an online game design course.  It is a lot of information but I am going to complete it.  And, in the meantime I want to leave you with a question:  WHY?  Why do you want to _________?  It's not an easy question to answer.  I posed it to myself and found some earth-shattering answers and some mundane answers.  I don't know which scare me most.

One example of the power of WHY

Why do you want to go to college?
Why are you in the job you are?
Why haven't you gone to the gym?
Why haven't you made that sales call?
Why are you sitting alone at your desk working, studying, daydreaming and not going out for a walk?

Answering the why question doesn't require any action.  It is a good first step.




Box of Rain (part of the lyrics from The Grateful Dead)

Look out of any window, any morning, any evening, any day.
Maybe the sun is shining, birds are singing,
No rain is falling from a heavy sky.
What do you want me to do, to do for you to see you through?
For this is all a dream we dreamed one afternoon, long ago.

Walk out of any doorway, feel your way, feel your way like the day before.
Maybe you'll find direction,
Around some corner where it's been waiting to meet you.
What do you want me to do, to watch for you while you are sleeping?
The please don't be surprised when you find me dreaming too.

Look into any eyes you find by you, you can see clear to another day,
Maybe been seen before, through other eyes on other days while going home.
What do you want me to do, to do for you to see you through?
It's all a dream we dreamed one afternoon, long ago.

Walk into splintered sunlight,
Inch your way through dead dreams to another land.
Maybe you're tired and broken,
Your tongue is twisted with words half spoken and thoughts unclear

Open with Caution! This post is packed full...

Wow!  The past couple of months have no real effective description.  How much life can a person pack into a few weeks?  What a seminar on moderation, deliberation and soaking up life!

Cycle back to:  I am a DESIGNER in search of a CONTEXT.  I am listing out what I have been reading and doing over the past few weeks.  There is a wide range of issues that I am learning about and a number of problems I want to get in on.  I read over one of my recent posts and yes, TO GET FOCUSED GET BUSY is good advice.  But, getting too busy doesn't help the focus.

YES!  To get focused get busy, but not too busy.  I am all over that right now.  Yes, I need a context, and yes, I need focus, and yes, I want to start spinning the plates I have so carefully been washing and drying.  But, let me tell you what I have been doing that has kept me so BUSY!!

Here is a list to keep us structured:

1.  Dad's memorial service
2.  Awarding scholarships
3.  END OF THE SCHOOL YEAR TIMES THREE
4.  ISRAEL
5.  Get social at the Hoe Down
6.  Beginning of college
7.  Transplant

1.  When a parent dies it is a big deal.  If this comes unexpectedly or if it has been a long process doesn't matter; it is a big deal.  It matters not if you have been close, not so close or really estranged; it is a big deal.  I am a parent and I was born into a family with two parents and one of them died.  There were aspects of our relationship I will never understand, and aspects of each of our personalities that bothered the other but I also know that my fabric comes from my father, and my mother, and from my own life.  There is no perfect world, and no perfect family, and no perfect parent.  But, I was graced with the father whom I had and I will miss him.  I have made peace with the fact that I will never show him so many things, but then that wasn't going to happen even if he lived to be 150.  So, I respectfully mourn him and all of really solid, good things about him.  And, the memorial service was lovely and respectful and gave people a place to pay their respects and visit his spot on the pond.  It was well done.
2.  If you want to learn about kids in high school give them a scholarship.  Give them an application to fill out that has thoughtful questions on it.  Ask them to tell you what they can do, where they have been, what they are reading and how they spend their time.  Don't ask them about grades or class standings.  And, then, read between the lines and deliver your decision in a video you have made yourself complete with music and inspiring quotes (and pictures of your kids or dogs or travels).  Or, just get up and tell them what wonderful human beings they are (using all of the skills you learned in speech class.)  Those kids will teach you a thing or two--and it isn't about their grades or class standing.
3.  School is not for the faint-hearted, especially not high school.  Try doing six things at once well.  Try figuring out what six or seven or eight teachers want you to do, and how to fit in just that 30 minutes or hour each night that their class requires for homework after spending all day at school and then sports after school and dinner with the family because it keeps you together, and then sleep?  When do we have to cull books and notes to complete tests in our adult lives, or find passion in subjects that may never have a bearing on our lives?  When was the last time you did a whole semester of some type of work just to get the practice? (Well, maybe this happens more than I would like to admit.)
This one has at least a couple more posts-worth...
4. ISRAEL!!!  What a trip!  My family and visited the old city in Jerusalem and so many holy sites.

  It is wild to walk streets that are old, knowing older streets lie beneath them; knowing people who I read about in ANCIENT HISTORY did mundane daily tasks and had glorious moments that changed the world RIGHT THERE.  Then, we travel through a check point (we are not in Kansas anymore) to Bethlehem...BETHLEHEM to meet George who really changes my world.  Welcome to the West Bank, Palestine and the nasty wall.

 I found out about settlers, and maybe think about our own settlers in America a little differently.  I met people with so much dignity and pluck.  And, a whole world of history that just walked right into my conscience.  One minute I was in 2013 Palestine and the next in ancient Rome.  The land under the feet of Israel has been around for so long that the stories could be plumbed like the ice cores from Greenland.  Walking in Capernum, in Nazareth, in Cesaria or Haifa was so much more than taking a picture and sending a postcard.  The United States is so young because we have not asked about what came before us.  Israel left me with such breathable history and experiences.  George left me with a completely new view of contemporary life in a place that is home but is being eked away.  And, I have a new appreciation for the definitions of sacred, dignity and compromise.
5.  Nothing can replace old-fashioned, in your face friends and family activities.  And, nothing can replace my father-in-law's Hoe Down.  As a proud member of the Hoe Down Concierge I have been there for each one.  Dunk tank, elephant, mariachi band, fife and drum corp, egg toss, what's your strength?, Wild Bill, and much, much more ending with karaoke and fire works.  This year add bag pipes, a killer acrobat act and Latvian New Year -- oh, and the best behaved and cutest baby I've ever seen.  We returned from Israel on Wednesday, Hoe Down on Saturday--need I say more?
6.  One day a child is graduating from high school, the next there is an international trip with the family, the next is a huge social event, the next I am waving good bye as that child passes into a new realm.  Make no mistake, I will still have a place, but he is riding his own bicycle and I am here now if he wants me.  It is a chillingly humbling moment yet so exciting.  I have to remember to pray and breath, breath and pray...
7.  I am transplanted for a few weeks.  I enjoy living in my own skin and wherever I am led.  I still want my creature comforts (and for this time maybe a dehumidifier.)  There is global warming, and it makes the weather wetter and more violent in my part of the world.  But, there are also amazing moments...

So, I have unloaded the past several weeks and now I can move on to more game design and getting my context back!

It is summer in the city

I haven't written anything in weeks and so much has been happening!!  Just wait a little longer for a full post.  But in the meantime you can anticipate hearing about a wonderful trip to Israel (and George!), and my completing a course in game design and lots of thoughts about our education system, and how I hope to assist parents of international students!

Now, there is a look of anticipation if I ever saw one.....

Create Not Expections

Time has gotten away from me and my game is lying in it's file being neglected but hopefully for not much longer.  Life demands my attention, my life in particular but also a number of other lives.  The great news is that my son will be going to his (and our) first choice for a college, and my daughter will be going to her first choice for a high school.  And, my older daughter had a great trip to California.  And, I have read much even if I have not been posting.  And, I have been working on parts of my game even if I have put that on these pages.  And, that is just the big stuff.

My older daughter wanted me to read some of the Dao Jing, which we found as we decluttered her room a week ago.  I found this:

    it is hard to handle
    a cup filled to the brim

    and better to know
    when to stop pouring

    no matter how much you sharpen the blade
    it will still go dull

    impossible to protect
    a house packed full of precious stuff

    money and success
    bring their own faliure

    knowing when the thing is done
    is knowing the dao

Reading this simultaneously took my breath away and gave me a sense of great peace.  It is about balance and just like the yin and yang it is not about a winner.  How counter to the way I live my life and how I am surrounded.  Words so simple but so hard.

So, I come back to this journey I am on.

I am designing a game because that is what I want and am meant to do.

I want to learn from this process so I can do it again, and I can walk into problems or situations and apply what I learned.  I am not a corporate success or a guru or someone who knows everything about the world.  But, I do have a gift or a set of talents and am going to share them, use them to make situations more workable or to help people transform.

I return to ReWork (Jason Fried and Davide Heinemeier Hansson) and find:
"A lot of people get off on solving problems with complicated solutions.  Flexing your intellectual muscles can be intoxicating.  Then you start looking for another big challenge that gives you that same rush, regardless of whether it's a good idea or not.
   A better idea:  Find a judo solution, one that delivers maximum efficiency with minimal effort.  Judo solutions are all about getting the most out of doing the least." p.112

Very counter-intuitive and probably downright unAmerican but I like it.

"When you overthink at the wrong moment, you cut yourself off from the wisdom of your emotions, which are much better at assessing actual preferences.  You lose the ability to know what you really want.  And then you choose the worst strawberry jam." (p. 143, How We Decide  Jonah Lehrer)

I think my breathing has slowed way down and I am almost smiling a gentle smile.

"To put something in the world that was not there before, you have to be able to see that which others before you have overlooked.  Both creativity and play involve appreciating paradox and the unexpected." (George Vaillant)

So back to the game, and where I am being led.  I have tried to make sense of my circuitous path
and make it look like a ladder or something that resembles success.  In doing this I have learned to judge others, not appreciate different perspectives and feel disappointed when things don't turn out the way I'm expecting.  Time for a paradigm change I think.  My circuitous path is mine, and I just have to find my people who I know will appreciate it.  But, I have been meeting lots of interesting people along the way, too.  Yin and Yang.

Maybe I should close with good, old Harlan (The Naked Roommate)  "Tip #1...Don't create too many expectations.  You might think that you know what will happen in college, but really you don't."  (p. 31) Doesn't that apply to lots of things?  But, hey, even if you shouldn't have a lot of expectations don't you want to get a high score on the "travel the campus" game?  Who knew the bus was going to be late when you needed to make a copy to take to class and your alarm didn't go off....

Busy and Focused

I am building it, to continue from my last post.  I guess the saying is "if you have something to do give it to a busy person."  This week I have been supporting my daughter as she completes her History Day competition entry, helping my other daughter study for French (I don't speak French so you can imagine how I am slaughtering pronunciation), trying to stay on top of the administration for our home-school coop, trying to be patient waiting for college application decisions for my son, trying to read a couple of books, going through helpful articles in Inc. Magazine and trying to surrender to the inspiration and joy I feel listening to Mumford and Sons' I Will Wait For You.   And don't forget walking the dogs, making dinner, washing dishes, etc.  Suffice it to say, TO GET FOCUSED GET BUSY.  At least for the moment, until I switch over to needing a meditation break.

I am thrilled to see the number of people checking out my blog growing, and also growing internationally!  I wonder what is interesting in these pages?  I hope this design process brings questions or connections.  I wonder if those of you in Russia or Germany or Hong Kong or India or any of the other very cool places find something of interest here?  I wonder where in the United States people are from?  Do you have a student ready to apply to college?  Or, a love of the Grateful Dead or Mumford and Sons?  Or an interest in improving the education system?

This is a photo of what I am working on right now.  It has come from a list of characteristics that students or people in general might use to define themselves within a context.  Right now I am just using Familiar/Unfamiliar as my context but I am moving to something more specific.  And, I have laid out a board to track how quickly a player can move on a simulated campus.  But that is for another day...

AHA: If You Build It They Will Come

I have been going through many AFGOs this week (Another Fabulous Growth Opportunity).  In one AHA moment I realized once again (another layer of the onion) that what I crave is acknowledgment and affirmation.  I know there are people in the world who are in business or personal relationships who work well together, giving each other undivided attention and support while also pushing ahead.  They are teams.  Teams have no "I" but the members know each other well and the team is a central unit in the business, even above the customers.  This is because if there is no team, there is no success and no customers.

And, in the middle of this AFGO and AHA moment I answer the door to find my neighbor asking for a tea date so she can talk about her product.  I have been running from that because she makes me feel uncomfortable, and I am not clear about her understanding of and commitment to boundaries.  But, I feel like a heel because she is probably looking for the same thing I am.

Okay, so I know I am a complicated human being who is still developing.  But, maybe I'm getting warmer.

Which brought me back to the GAME.  Designing the game is an exercise in completing a process, and I'm hoping this specific round will yield a product or process I can use as I move from being a home-schooling person to an entrepreneur.  But, I have to ask myself DO TEENAGERS WANT TO ASK THESE QUESTIONS AND TRY OUT ASPECTS OF COLLEGE BEFORE THEY GET THERE?  Did I?  Hhhmmmm.....  It was very invigorating or perhaps just plain scary to meet new people, learn to live with a roommate, set my own limits and walk into academic experiences that I had never had before.  What a complicated, wonderful and terrifying journey it was, and probably still is if a teenager really gets into the process.

My 13 year-old daughter saved an article entitled How to Choose a College (Frank Bruno, NY Times, 1/6/2013) for me when I was in Florida trying to help my mother after my father's death.  First, the experience was difficult but also a catalyst for just doing what I really feel is important.  Second, it was really affirming that she got what I am doing with this process.  My husband and I are blessed with three amazing children. 

"If you're among the lucky who can factor more than cost and proximity into where you decide to go, college is a ticket to an adventure beyond the parameters of what you've experienced so far.  It's a passport to the far side of what you already know.  It's a chance to be challenged, not coddled.  To be provoked, not pacified......College can shrink your universe, or college can expand it.  I vote for the latter."

So, I go back to the current parts of this game I am ruminating on.  I love mountains but I am not a mountain climber right now.  I would not go to a mountain and try to climb it unless I was prepared.  But, with preparation maybe that would be an option.  Kids should choose a college and program that is going to help them expand and really think, really put to the test what they think they want to do.  But, that doesn't mean they shouldn't think about the type of teacher they learn best from or acknowledge their own limitations regarding being a roommate or a student.  If someone needs five alarms to finally wake up in the morning she probably shouldn't have a class that begins at 8am on the other side of campus -- at least not starting out.  If a student is used to always being at the top of the class then trying a subject that he has no experience in will be a trip outside of the comfort zone.

I firmly believe that expansion happens really well when it grows from a base of acknowledgment and affirmation, and when the person goes into their personal AFGO with a suitcase of experience tools that can be altered to use in the expansion.

So, here is "Build a Professor".  It's kind of like "Build a Bear".

The professor on the left is a teacher you have NOW and learn well from.

                                                       The professor on the right you WOULD LIKE to take a class from.

First, who is your favorite teacher now, why?    Second, who is your most effectve teacher now, why?

Now, dress them up (long/short hair, loud/soft voice, neat/not-so-neat dresser, glasses?)

And then, add on the sides the style of speaking, what they know, attitude, professional experience, personal experience.

Tell me what happened!  Hit the comments' section, even if you already went to college and have no students heading that way.

In the Comfort Zone?

This past month has been something else.  My father's death, school applications, home-school classes and I am trying to find a balance in the midst of so much.  I do not live near where my parents and brother live so this horrible change in our lives means a section of my life, along with much of theirs, has to be renegotiated.  And, this leads to somewhat of a ripple effect that touches everything else.  So again, this past month has been "something else".

Writing a new post has been on my mind constantly, but how to stay focused on what I was making progress with, with the changes?  How to be true to what I know works while making room for what has to be new?  That model works with so much in life, doesn't it?

I moved from my parent's home years ago, and have often lived in situations that are outside of my original comfort zone.  I will always remember the day my mother dropped me off at college.  I wanted to go, I had worked toward that specific place even though it wasn't clear I had all the skills and experience to be a success, and there was a moment when I was ON MY OWN.  Yes, I had to stretch, often to the point of breaking.  Yes, I made so many mistakes.  Yes, I often came close to failing.  But, I succeeded.    And, I wouldn't be the person I am now if I had not taken the chance of living outside of my comfort zone.

And yet, finding those things that are familiar also gave me a huge sense of connection.  Kindness, sincere interest, and those typing and waitress skills all became very important.  I have traveled to places like Krakow, Berlin, Kaunas and Sydney and found kindness and sincere interest.  I have met a President, a couple of Cardinals, movie stars and homeless people and those same things ring true.

So, as I continue to work on this game to assist students in answering questions like "is college the right choice?" and "will I have experiences and skills that can apply?" I have to go back to the things I know have worked.  Yes, being true to who you are is where you start.  That may not always be pretty but it is key self-knowledge.  And, it can be a jumping off place for new things or a solid place to never move from.  The choice is the step that sets the course because there is room for both directions.

Sometimes I fantasize that my ancestors arrived from some far away place, stepped off the boat and started walking until they found a comfortable spot which they never wanted to leave.  I live in a place that is a destination for many people's dreams and aspirations.  Both places can lead to never wanting to move, physically or emotionally.  So, is it okay to find a place of comfort and keep it that way, or do we keep pressing on?