Roasted Red Peppers

Excited.

Creativity vs. Stress

There’s an idea floating around the internet put forward by Chase Jarvis, Create, Share, Sustain (also explained in a video of a presentation, here), creativity can sustain you.

From his blog:

Create. Make something. A photograph, a video, a poem, a piece of software.

Share. Send your thing out into the world. Post it to your Facebook, your blog. Tweet it. (And still share it with your mom).

Sustain. Start out by waiting tables. Or keep your day job. Or sell your spouse’s socks on ebay. Or do something out of the genre of what you want to do until you can afford not to do it. Or do all of these so that you can keep creating and sharing without requiring “permission” from anyone.

And repeat. Create. Share. Sustain. Repeat.

I don’t have any intentions to stop being a design engineer, however I probably fall under the following:

“The practice of art isn’t to make a living. It’s to make your soul grow.” ~Kurt Vonnegut  via the PixelatedImage Blog

The left brain-ed, analytical, time-line driven work of an engineer doesn’t really feed the soul, or at least not mine. The above ‘poster’ was just for fun, and was something I’ve been wanting to experiment with in Photoshop for a while.  Normally, I’m not a fan of Photoshop at all.  I like doing minor edits in Lightroom, but I have a personal distaste for photos that are obviously [over] processed.   No one else has to like the above work, but I had a lot fun skiing with Polly and seeing an idea through to finished work.  The same goes for the previous post about Good Design.  I like the idea of making a letterpress poster of that or something in that vein and having it around my desk for inspiration.

The process of photography, and simply taking time to do small, potentially meaningless personal projects provides a way to engage the right-brain and find a creatively positive outlet from engineering design that then refuels me to go back and work on the things that pay the bills.

So for me the Create, Share, Sustain isn’t about changing financial sustainability or changing where the finances come from as much as it is mental or emotional and having a different well to draw from.

I think its very important to have a hobby or an outlet beyond vocation that you can engage in and be passionate about doing.  I like finally having a better articulation of this how and why a creative outlet is important.

It was a nice long, three day weekend: Yurt trip out to the Unintas and a Ski Free After 3 day with Polly for her first ski day back post-op.  The yurt was very, very nicely stocked, firewood, kindling, pots, pans, dishes, propane lantern+stove.  No touring beyond the yurt to be had though, the snow pack was too shallow.

Meting snow takes a while…

Polly skis again!

Glad to see her skiing again!

Winter Hikes

These are almost a week late, but last Sunday, got to go on a winter hike with Polly. It was good to get out above the inversion and breath some clean air as well as move the legs around after the tour.

Polly enjoying the fresh air.

Not something you see every day.

Got to get out on a longer tour this Saturday and though for most of the day we were mostly up in the clouds, the sun did break through for about 10 minutes and it was an immediate moral boost!  The snowpack is thin and the avy conditions very strange, but it was good to get out and above the bad air down in the city.

The full set of photos can be found on Flickr: Skiing 2010.

Nothing compares to dynamic light in the mountains.

Serenity part 1.

Serenity part 2.

The burst of light brought out smiles all around.

Skiing is fun.

Riding looks fun too.

Still Inspiring.

The Boston Globe’s The Big Picture photoblog has some images from NASA’s recent Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). Since high school I’ve felt that its unfortunate that my generation doesn’t have any well defined, well funded national goals like the moon program in its hey-day.  30 years later its still inspiring to me, despite that the collective will to accomplish something great seems to be lost to petty partisanship.