So here’s how I like to create art: 
Exactly my way.
The last session I picked an art project (a webinar and course from my book) and started to research all about how to do it.
I got discouraged
And more discouraged
Until I was so overwhelmed I binge watched tv reruns.
I knew I was running away but I needed to not face it.
I heard Krista Tippett interview Elizabeth gilbert today. And Gilbert talked about creation being for its own sake
Side note: I am cynical about Elizabeth Gilbert because I am very envious of her success. Why her? My stuff is on par with Eat Pray Love. Why not me?
And I heard her talk about defending her art. Why create? And I remembered my tizzy about Simon Sineks “what is your Why?” And how I felt as though I’d been depantsed and my creativity was not good enough. Because I didn’t have a Why.
Gilbert gave me back my why. 
Because I can! 
I have no control over whether people will pay me for my art. That’s never stopped me before.
I know exactly how to make the course. And now that I give myself permission to do it exactly my way, it feels light again
The muse never promised me an audience. I’d like one, but I wouldn’t sacrifice future creativity for an audience for my past creations.
Creating makes me happy. That’s my why. Complicatedly, frustratingly, backbreakingly happy.
I might never find a big audience.
Which is frustrating (see previous comment)
People would be better off if they consumed what I produce.
And people often choose things that make them worse off
Nothing I can do about that
I’ll just go my art my way

Off to seek my fortune–it’s a fairy tale phrase. One of my all-time favorite movies “The Princess Bride” begins with the romantic hero Wesley goes to do that exact thing.

It still happens, I think. One way or they other, we are seeking our fortune.

I’m not sure when this quest-phrase was overtaken by “find myself.”

I know it was popular in the 1960s. Flower children ran away to San Francisco to have be-ins.

We are all looking for ourselves, it seems.

I know I lose myself often and quickly. As I immerse myself in some new environment or project I lose my borders and take on what I see the group needs as my own need.

Immerse is the right word for it. I don’t realize for quite some time how I have merged with something that is not me so completely.

I recall this experience vividly when I read Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. It was a book. It was the story of someone else. And I found myself feeling depressed and hopeless as I read her story.

Where did my borders go?

This definitely happens with friends, family, work and other social group.

Heck, it can happen with the news.

I have found myself wrestling with a mood or a state of mind for ridiculous lengths of time before shaking myself to the realization:

It wasn’t even me.

It’s not always easy to rediscover the difference between myself and my circumstance.

It makes sense that people might need to leave their circumstances completely to “find themselves.”

One of the things I love best about fairy tales is their uncomplicated lack of psychology. Fairy tale heroes do not have inner voices. They take external action. They seek their fortune, an external pursuit.

Our new quest to find ourselves has appeared only in the last hundred or so years. It seems our fortune–meaning our wealth and our fate–is what we find inside our hearts and souls. To seek our fortune, if we are so blessed, is to find ourselves.

One of the aspects of my 8-5 job is that I get to have headphones on my head. Most of the time.
Not every job lets you do that.
It kind of means that there is noise distractions in my environment. It also means that my job is mostly not that challenging. I can put some of my attention elsewhere as I plow through emails and databases.
I don’t always listen to music. A whole lot of the time I am listening to someone talk. I like to learn interesting things I didn’t know.
It’s a special balance, listening to something that is interesting but not so engrossing that I can’t have part of my brain chugging away on answering emails and data fields.
This week I have found something that fits the bill perfectly:
A recorded college class on classical mythology.
On iTunes U, there is a video recording of a class that was taught in the University of Ohio more than a decade ago. It is exactly like being in a college class. Which means that it is not at all engrossing. It is barely interesting enough that it required a threat of failure to keep the students paying attention.
That threat doesn’t work on me. I hear the professor threatening with weary humor his audience with what may or may not be on the test.
He repeats himself so often, that even though the subject matter is fascinating to me, it’s dreary.
I’ve talked before about Walter Benjamin’s Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. I fully believe that teaching is an art, and learning is an art. This Ohio class is not high art. I am sure that the professor is far better at teaching than this snapshot would showcase.
His teaching was captured, and it’s pretty sad. It could be so much better.
Khan Academy flips teaching on its head. The subject matter can be consumed in a form that the student likes best-video, written, audio, you pick. Then a teacher can come in and interact.
Watching the dumpy teacher slowly slowly working through his subject is like cave drawings.
Teaching and learning can be so much better than that. It already is.
This class is about classical Greek mythology. At least the part that I’ve listened to so far.
Those Greeks made quite an impression you know. One quasi mythological man springs to mind when I think about this topic—the art of teaching and learning.
Socrates had a famous style he used. They named it after him, the Socratic Method. Here is how Wikipedia explains it:
a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas and underlying presumptions.
That’s what I’m talking about. My Ohio lecturer really tried to get his students to ask questions. And they were not having it.
Why?
The system as is currently stands does not reward questions.
Learning for learning’s sake is nowhere in the curriculum.
It didn’t disappear though. It just went outside the system. I bet my Ohio lecturer whose name I don’t remember would be delighted to hear that I was listening to his recorded class.
I’m not the only one. Not his class, but all the ways that knowledge is being consumed.
I bet you that the other headphone-wearing cube dwellers

I got to see Garrison Keillor perform his Prairie Home Companion Show at the Hollywood Bowl last Friday.
Keillor has been doing his show since I was a child, on National Public Radio. There were three radio stations I was permitted to listen to as a kid: the two Christian radio stations and NPR.
The one Christian radio station was very very old fashioned and heinous. The other Christian radio station would play Amy Grant and her ilk, and was therefore close to acceptable.
NPR has mostly heinous, but sometimes it was ok. Prairie Home Companion was ok. He told stories and was silly.
In the media desert that was my teenage years, Garrison Keillor was worth listening to on Saturday and Sunday. He talked about the people in his fictional town of Lake Wobegon, I saw a real humanness that was completely missing from my church. Forgiveness, sadness, soft delight, all the feelings that ordinary people feel in ordinary life.
He was a staple. I still enjoyed listening to him as an adult, although I was not such a loyal listener as I had been.
I live here now, close to Hollywood. I’ve been to the Hollywood Bowl. As a teenager, it was inconceivably sophisticated (literally inconceivable. I had never heard of the Hollywood bowl, and would have thought it was a football stadium that could house a super bowl).
I understand how Garrison Keillor would chose to have his show at the Hollywood bowl. It’s lovely, with an amazing history of entertainment.
Just like him. Prairie Home Companion is so authentically Keillor that’s it’s inconceivable to imagine someone else taking.
Just as inconceivable to imagine it ending.
So I sat and watched (WATCHED!) this radio show. And I realized he’d made it, and he’d kept making it. Just the way he wanted to, like nobody else, for more than 40 years.
I thought, Hey! I am like him. I have made my blog just the way I wanted to, like nobody else, for years and years. I haven’t stopped doing it! We are alike. I’m 14 years in, not 40. But give me time.
I watched him up there, with his team. And I realized he does something I do not do.
He showcases other people. He invites musicians and artists to participate in his creation.
At one point, he was talking with one of his singers. She said “You are singing lead. I know you like to sing harmony, but you are the lead on this one.”
He did like to sing harmony. Even when he was SUPPOSED to be the lead, he fell into harmony.
Perhaps because of the upbringing that demanded self-denial to the extreme, I am afraid to harmonize.
In this Hollywood area I live in, “acts” abound. I am friends with directors who do great work, and I am amazed at their ability to lead a team of people to realize their vision.
I don’t trust the team. I have a vision of what I want to create.
Even this blog post, I know what I want it to be, and I don’t want anybody else tainting it.
I also know that it’s possible
Just possible
That contributors could add to the outcome. Collaboration can mean the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
It’s just
It’s just that collaboration has meant that I have to cut pieces of myself off and leave them behind to fit the mold.
It’s too high of a cost.
Watching Garrison Keillor work with his team, I was so struck at his longevity. He did it.
He showed up and did it for years until decades until it is his legacy. He said this was his last performance but I don’t believe it.
He loves to harmonize.
I would love to find some collaborators. I have to crack open my tight doors and see if I could find some trust to extend.
It’s so powerful to be generously creative. Probably the greatest power there is.

They had a pet adoption near the grocery store. We don’t need another pet, yet we are hard hearted enough to enough to play with the cute doggies while they are available for petting.

While we were there, a family came by with a poodle. The volunteer referred to it as a “surrender.” They could keep the dog sand these volunteers would take the dog and find a remand the home for it.

Doggie was dumped in the pen with the other orphan dogs. My daughter was holding as many on her lap as would come in the pen.

Poodle stared into the corner. His family was gone. He didn’t know what was going on. The other dogs left him alone.

He began to growl softly. He didn’t know what was going on but he did know he didn’t like it.

“You don’t like this do you?” I said to him. “It’s ok. You will find new people.”

He was not comforted and continued to growl. I thought about how alone he must feel. What was his place in the world?

Dogs are pack animals. I thought I was help him remember he had a place.

“Sit!”

He was not listening to me, put I insisted. I pointed at the ground, and repeated the command until his fuzzy bottom was planted on the ground.

He felt secure, because I reminded him of his place in the world. His place was in a pack.

A workshop I am taking was recommending coming up with categories for blogposts.

Oh I did not like that idea at all. I don’t Want anybodY telling me what I have to write.

Don’t fence me in! I have a topic, it’s “wonder.”

I would like to believe I am a person of infinite variety, however that is an illusion. I do more things habitually than not.

I heard an interview that Leonard Nimoy gave, in which he advised a young actor about typecasting.

After he played Spock, he said, he never lacked work. People knew what to do with him. Typecasting worked out for him.

So that little poodle, growling at the world, had an idea of what his place was. Except his family was gone and like it or not he had a new place. Clinging to false hope made him unhappy.

And so. I am going to put some categories around my posts. It will help everybody if I do.

I’ve heard it said that writing is far less about inspiration than about time spent with your butt in the seat doing the work.

Categories are another form of doing the work. It helps people know what to do with me.

We saw Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory at the theater yesterday. Not sure I’d seen the whole thing before.

On the ride home, I said to Veronica, “There is a saying “Love to hate”…Which of those bad kids did you hate the worst?”

She was quiet for a while then started muttering. “what kind of crazy saying is that? That doesn’t make any sense..”

it doesn’t. I have a sensible child.

The summer solstice was the hottest day of the year so far, into the hundreds.

First day of summer, as they say. It is the longest day, the most sunlight of any day of the year.

There is a huge fire down the road. The sun is cloaked in smoke and looks eerie.

I don’t like it. Then again there hasn’t been much I have liked this week.

I’ve been pushing myself too hard. There is a very mean person inside my head that is not satisfied with anything I do.

It’s not enough. 

It’s never enough.

Of course, I believed this voice. And got more and more uncomfortable.

This weekend the only Thing I wanted to do was escape. I mean , I wanted to accomplish all those things that voice in my head was screaming at me to DO. But rather quickly and to my own self recrimination, I devolved into binge watching Amazon prime videos.

Monday roared back with even more pressure, and I was squirming.

This was not working. How could I get out of this rut?

I’d finally recognized it as a rut. and seen my tv watching doe what it was:

Escape

And not from my life, which wasn’t that bad. From MYSELF.

If watching reruns on TV was what it took to quiet that never-satisfied voice in my head, that was exactly what I would do.

Faced with that harpy and no distraction on Monday morning, I was forced to contemplate other possibilities.

To try to come up with positive things to say and feel about myself.

Some ruts need to be abandoned posthaste.

It’s been a long day but I’m lighting a single candleholder light the end of the tunnel.

Tomorrow is another day. I’m going to bring in some mercy reinforce tsp and find a better rut.

I worked late today.

Some unexpected stuff came up, and I couldn’t put it off or it would have haunted me over the weekend.

This week has been torqed because of swimming lessons. Swimming lessons every weeknight at 610

I dont get home until 530, and it take 15 minutes to drive to the pool,

So it’s NON STOP. Work the home and no time to eat, then off to the public space of my swim-terrified kid and home and the bedtime routine and the exhaustion and repeat

so this friday, I had to stay late. Which made me too late to take Veronica swimming.

I had been keyed up all day PUSHING to get the stuff at work done.

I tried calling everyone I knew for the drive home. I kinda wanted some human company.

NO ONE answered.

Someone finally called me back as I got home, and we talked for 15 minutes. It was great.

THen I got to be alone. ALONE.

I made food. I ate it.

i watched TV

I was so grateful to be alone for once this week.

As desperate as I was to talk to someone on the road home, NOW I am desperate to be alone.

It’s like I needed shades to transition into the next phase.

Now? I am eager to be alone for a long time.

I’ve been meeting some artists lately. REAL artists. Like the kind who involve themselves in galleries and stuff.

I talk about the ideas of art on this blog all the time. After all, if it’s about wonder, it must involve art.

So why do I think of these others as REAL artists?

It is pretty clear that I’ve compartmentalized art in my mind. There is HIGH art, abstract art. There is commercial art.

And there is also whatever it is that I do. I got this response from a reader some time ago:

“I do think of your newsletter/blog as art!”

At least one person thinks of this whatever-this-is as art.

I’ve certainly protected its right to exist in exactly the form it has taken. In my blog, and my books, I’ve utterly rejected other people’s control. This blog is what I make it. My books are my voice, and none other’s.

That’s why I have never offered my books to publishers. I refuse to give up control of my voice and my vision. Every bit of this is my product.

For those who have read The Russian American School of Tomorrow, you know that I was raised to reject my impressions and conclusions. I laid down my own voice at the feet of a constructed God.

After I escaped that world, the repressed bomb of me detonated.

The words of Scarlett O’Hara come to mind “As God is my witness…they’re not going to lick me. I’m going to live through this and when it’s all over, I’ll never be hungry again.”

Hungry is the right word. Starved to a skeleton for the food of myself, I had to start with my words.

Out of the formless void that my life had become, I demanded:

Let there be light!

Where else could light be found but from my voice? My voice was all I had. My words.

I couldn’t let anybody else take them. They were too fragile. I’d worked too hard to trust anyone else with them.

Never again.

I strung words together, and more words together. I scratched some out. I made more.

Words and whatever else I could find.

If I had demanded light, my writing is a great part of what brought it to me.

Almost immediately I wanted more. I wanted to share this light.

If I’d looked in wonder at something, and took the time to see something new, I benefited. The wonder of the world increased.

So let’s take the bushel off this light. There is a reason not to hide it.

Those real artist friends have challenged me to define why I do what I do.

My first feral response of “Because I must!” was insufficient.

What is all this for? It is not enough to write for myself alone.

I need to share this. I need you, readers.

And I will presumptuously claim, you need me.

This whatever-it-is is art. I transport myself when I make it. And when I share it, I bring you along.

Your world is not the same after I’ve gotten involved.

Do you feel my finger tapping on your chest? I mean you.

Your world is impacted by my art.

My art is impacted by your involvement.

I’m grateful for your participation. It makes this effort worthwhile.

With my vision and my words, I make something new. I will share it with you and we are both better for it.

That’s a very good reason to keep making new art.

When I started this blog 14 years ago. Chris had told me about this new thing called web log, shortened to “blog.”

there were platforms for it, you didn’t have to code your own page (which intimidated me.)

I was intrigued. I decided I would do it if the right name were available on Blogger

Wonderblog

It was! So I started.

And it’s been going.

I kinda meant it to be like a superhero…Wonder Woman

And yet it was perfect in many ways. It has perfectly evolved to be about wonder, the verb.

I like to wonder. And every post on this blog is the acto f me wondering about something through the medium of writing.

It’s more fun to wonder. I think most people prefer to examine their life and wonder at it.

Then again, maybe some don’t.

I guess the people who don’t enjoy wondering about life are not going to enjoy this blog.

This is not a blog of listicles.

I don’t work that way.

For my wonder tribe, thats just fine.