What's in Your Back Pocket?

I have an article that I have bookmarked to consult on days like these.

"Blog Ideas Are Everywhere"

(Oh, yeah? Then why can't I think of any?)

But I re-read the article, calm myself down, stop fighting my own fears at having nothing to say. It's almost like a meditation, or a prayer. When you strive to write every day, you need that. Ask anyone who is attempting to keep the daily discipline of writing.

You want to do it. You enjoy doing it. You love the flow of it when it flows.

You hate doing it. It hangs over your head. You want to rebel against it.

So I keep that article in my back pocket. Re-reading it is rather like renewing one's marriage vows, or recalling why one got married in the first place. Sometimes it jolts my brain into making a connection that produces new ideas. Sometimes it relaxes me enough to to be able to "step away from the computer." After all, the author states, "Your best ideas usually come when you aren’t trying to think about them."

This is where my journey brought me today, a short video by General Electric about--ideas.

@generalelectric: Some ideas start out ugly, even scary. But with the right environment, they can transform into something beautiful.

Yes, it's a feel-good, sappy bit of commercial self-congratulation. But it still gets me. It reminds me that, in my quest for a daily blog post, my hope is always to reach into my back pocket and pull out a beautiful idea every time. Maybe I need to start an Ugly Ideas Journal--a place to nurture ragged scraps and threads and funny-looking concepts--and give them a supportive environment to transform into something beautiful.

The first thing I'm putting in that journal is this guy.

 (Taken from GE Video)

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