Everyone loves a sunset and this is one I took from my home in Torbay. We live on the East Coast but we can’t afford any of the house that actually gave east. Instead we face west so we get to enjoy the spontaneous sunsets that appear with a surprise and disappear well before you can find your camera.

Although I caught this one I’m increasingly reminded to just sit and watch the beauty of nature rather than trying to rush around looking for my phone, play with the app to get the beat exposure and then store the photo in the cloud(s) to never be seen again.

Be present and ichigo-bichie

Wellington Sunday market

We launched from Torbay with a bit of lunch in a dry bag and a general plan to head north. The wind was meant to be easterly but after a couple of hours it started to swing around to the north, slowing down our journey as we had to start taking into the wind. About an hour longer than we thought, we made it to Shakespeare’s Park on Whangaparoa and sat amongst the day trippers on the beach and had a late lunch. This is our view from the lunch towel, Rangitoto in the background.

They always say, the hardest part of writing a book is starting the first page. I guess I’m glad I’m not writing a book. On the other hand, a blog is not really that different, it’s just sharing the book one page at a time rather than all neatly glued together.

Luckily the purpose of this website needs to be able to answer these sort of questions. Things like being creative or coming up with an answer when you’re not even really sure what the question is, are things that will be challenged and discussed here.

So my first post is going to be on “How do I start?” 

This topic is closely linked to many other challenges we have all experienced at various times, like creative-block, mental laziness and probably the most addictive of the lot, procrastination. I’d like to suggest that all of these have one thing in common and that is, the fear of the future or worrying about the implications of your actions in the failure. In each case, we are putting off attempting to start because we’re worried how it might turn out or worse still, what other people might think of us us or what we produce. Even if we do sit at our desk with a pencil or paintbrush in hand, poised to lay down that first mark, our minds might still be working in overdrive thinking about future possibilities.

All of these don’t directly stop us starting but they definitely get in our way. When our mind is busy speculating on all the ways we can fail in the future we don’t give ourselves the opportunity or the mental space to be creative. True creativity can only happen if our minds are calm. We may feel calm, we may be sitting in a quiet space but if our minds we not completely there.

I’m probably describing something that you already know and you’re wondering when I’m hoping to get around to answering the question. Before I do, an important point I’m making is you need to be aware of this ‘business’. Even if my answers don’t work for you, the awareness of this challenge sets you up to help solve it.

So when life is placing a blank page in front of you ask yourself, “Is my mind calm? Do I need to clear or calm my thinking?”

If you are suffering from any of the afflictions I listed above trying asking yourself, “Can I predict the future? Can anyone predict the future?” No, not really. If you’re still mentally preoccupied, ask yourself, “is failure really a bad thing anyway? Doesn’t failure help me learn? If I don’t fail, I can’t learn and if I don’t learn I can’t improve.”

Not thinking about something is really difficult, but realizing you have a choice to think about other, probably more positive thoughts, does start to give you that mental space. The more gaps you create the more opportunity and space the creative insights have to pop through.

I’ll talk about ways of calming your thoughts in another post but there is also plenty already out on the Internet. So good luck with starting and I hope to see you back here soon.