I received confirmation today that I’ll be leading at least one session at the 2008 Annual Conference of the IAHL, May 15-18 at The Retreat Center in Plymouth, Michigan.
no amateur
Just to prove I’m no amateur, check out the photo of 5 kids under 6 eating a candle-lit dinner. Yes, they’re eating. Yes, I cooked the food (I’m king of the crock-pot). Yes, I’d had all of them (3 mine, 2 not mine) for 5 hours or so by that point. Yes, by myself. (Well, Rune, our oldest, had spent a couple hours of that time at kindergarten.)
Granted, it didn’t last long before the entropy set in and Merrick made his escape.
Granted, the 2 4-year-olds play well together.
Granted, the 2 2-year-olds play well together (unless sharing is required…).
Granted, there was an hour at the play-center at the mall.
Granted, one of the moms was due back within an hour of this photo.
Granted, a double-scotch on the rocks was in my future – but not until after all three of mine were tucked safely in bed for the night.
KUDOS to all the full-time moms out there – especially the single ones doing this 24/7! You all deserve a day off. We love you. And, even when we don’t say it, we truly appreciate all you do. I love the kids. I had a great time with them for the afternoon, but starting companies and negotiating contracts is WAY easier than negotiating toy sharing between 2-year-olds (although those “grown-up” tasks can, unfortunately, sometimes have a lot in common with the kids…).
our new house in the mountains
Moving the residence up here:
(Click on the first picture below for a larger view. The house is in the upper right.)
(from the bottom of the lane looking up)
(Midway down the lane looking back to the “main” road)
I KNEW there was a reason I drove a pickup! 🙂
days of snow and quiet
on these days, it’s nice to remember that Power Manifests in Silence.
the business of creativity
I’ve had several conversations with friends and clients over the last few days specifically addressing how to frame the discussion of law, business/art, creativity and spirit in some understandable form. The phrase that keeps coming up and helping people understand what this is about seems to be “The Business of Creativity” where the law element is included in the business/art discussion and the spirit element is rolled into the creativity discussion. I don’t know yet if this really works for me yet because I don’t know if I want to down-play the spirit discussion at all. Maybe I won’t have to short-change the spirit, but I’m not seeing how “the business of creativity” captures everything I want to say. It definitely captures a sub-set VERY well. I pay the bill by helping people with the business of creativity, but there’s more to it.
I’ve been thinking about negative space – the space between objects and classifications. If you think about the numbers 1, 2, 3, etc a little bit, it’s easy to see that these numbers that we think of as “whole” are really an infintesimally small point along the number line. There is an individual infinity between 1 and 2, another between 2 and 3. So, when we think about the “whole” numbers, we’re missing a very great deal of good stuff in the spaces between. I don’t want to make that mistake when discussing spirit, creativity, business/art, and law.
I don’t want to get so focused on the labels or “poles” that the relationships between the poles are not given full attention. It’s the overlap that’s interesting. Perhaps it’s the overlap that gets closest to “real.”
In effect, these poles are only “real” when they are relating to each other, and relating to a whole host of other concepts that are outside of my focus. You could say they are in relation to each other, but maybe the “relation” should be spelled “realation” in this discussion. How about “inrealation” as a unifying label for the discussion? I like that. Inrealation.
What do you think? Post a comment…