Living with Creativity and Passion

I was asked to speak at the South Fraser Unitarian Congregation on Living with Creativity and Passion. I came up with the idea that what’s needed is:

story: the importance of telling your own story and hearing stories about people who inspire you.

support: a community of friends – and ideally fans

structure: a discipline that has you showing up similar to Julia Cameron’s “artist date”. Even if you’re pushing the boundaries it’s helpful to start with the rules for your genre, too.

Personality Type Differences – not content with only 4 letters?

Many people have done the Myers-Briggs Personality questionnaire (even more have done free “knock off”s in books, magazines and the web.)  If you recall that once in a classroom or board room long ago someone gave you your 4letters, you are among those who have “done” it.

For over a decade, facilitating sessions like this for team building in organizations was a major part of my organizational consulting practice. Since then, I’ve had a full-time job for 8 years that’s kept me busy. Now I’m revisiting consulting and the MBTI in particular.

What was the expanded analysis report has become Step II – but the idea is the same. For each of the 4 polarities (extraversion-introversion; sensing-intuition; thinking-feeling; judging-perceiving) you get 5 “facets”. This can be particularly interesting for people who might have scored close to the mid-point overall, but may discover some strong preferences on some of the facets. I’m interested in helping partners and teams who are very similar on their 4 letters discover how to use the more detailed results to deepen their understanding of themselves and develop more creative, collaborative relationships with others.

Here’s what wikipedia says about Step II:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBTI_Step_II

Tarot Art

I’m working on a series of mixed-media collages based on the Tarot deck.

My friend Karen, noting my rather compulsive purchasing of tarot decks, kept saying: I think there should be a Bennett deck.

It’s a couple of years ago now, when I decided to start such a project. I decided on the format 8″ x8″ wood pieces of any depth and decided *not* to focus on completing all 78 pieces or even the 22 Major Arcana pieces, but to do them in any order according to whim.

I also decided it didn’t matter if anyone else recognized the card or not – they would be my personal meditations on the Tarot.

I’m pleased to say that 30+ are now complete and were shown at the Naam Restaurant in Vancouver last year.

My friend Helen has chosen some to post with her poetry on the Tarot Major Arcana at:

http://www.northwindpress.ca/nuggets/tarot/index.html