Keep the Ideas Coming Two: Try Something Completely Different

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Keep the Ideas Coming Two: Try Something Completely Different

You may feel in a rut for new writing ideas, but a great way to give your creativity a boost is to do something else creative – but totally different.

There’s actually a merit badge for this.

Photography. Painting. Dancing. Piano. Even if you aren’t creating through writing, anything that flexes your mental muscles will keep your brain working and active. These new pathways in your brain will often unlock ideas that were hidden when you actively hunted for them. Knit or build a model or put together a puzzle. Build with Legos or blocks with your children to keep your mind working. Going on a hike or bike riding gives you exercise while clearing out clutter and stress.

Writing something completely different helps just as much. Are you a fiction writer? Try writing poetry about a scene in your current or a past work. Write newspaper copy about a current event, or an event in your story. You don’t have to concentrate on quality for these pieces. This effort is to take your mind out of the familiar and tackle creativity in a different way.

Your focus may be writing, but writing isn’t the only way to be creative or to find ideas. Make sure your mind gets variety, and you’ll be surprised how well your trove of ideas starts to fill.

I Thought The Supreme Court Was Conservative

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Last week was a great week to be a liberal. It was a great week to be black, uninsured, sick, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning. The Confederate flag is coming down (a step in the right direction).The Supreme Court ruled Obamacare is still legal and that LGBT partners can marry. These are not only liberal victories, these are the RIGHT THINGS TO DO.

This sums up the weekOMG HOW DID THEY GET THE DOORS OPEN?!

All of these topics the Republican party stands against. (The Confederate flag may be an exception to this, but topics like no gun control and no such thing as white privilege are certainly Republican tenets.)

Obamacare has been upheld at least twice by the Supreme Court. Gay marriage is now the law of the land, and I cried when I read Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion. And this is from a Court with a majority of conservative justices.

A conservative Supreme Court has been a champion of liberal values in the past week. It has gone against some of the bedrocks of the Republican party’s platform. What does that say about the Republican platform?

This should be a signal to the GOP. They are out of step with the Constitution. They are out of step with public opinion. They are on the wrong side of history. They need to figure out what being a conservative means in the current world, and what their constituencies really want.

I am far too cynical about politics to believe this will happen. But the signs are there. Please don’t ignore them.

But for now, I’m all like Everything Is Awesome.

Don’t Let The Confederate Flag Be a Distraction

Check out my previous Musings From a Geek Dad blogs here! Updated every Monday.

Don’t Let The Confederate Flag Be a Distraction

Don’t get me wrong. The Confederate flag is a powerful symbol of racism that should be done away with. Kudos to Walmart et al for stopping its sale.

I started this post titled “The Confederate Flag belongs only on the roof of the General Lee,” but even that is not true.

However, I don’t want its removal (hopefully from South Carolina as well) to distract from the two equally valid and important problems the shootings expose: Racism and guns. I don’t want us to fool ourselves into thinking we’ve “fixed” the issues of the SC church shootings simply by taking care of the flag problem.

The Confederate flag is a symptom of racism. Flying the flag of a nation born of slavery above a state capitol is the equivalent of flying the swastika. But barring its use does not mean the underlying issues have been resolved. And SC gave us yet another mass shooting, which seem to crop up now every few months.

Racism still exists. Largely unregulated gun access still exists. These are the important issues we still struggle with. I am proud we’re slowly getting rid of the Confederate flag, but this is a bullet point under the bold heading of racism. Minority incarceration, racial bias and income inequality in an environment already plagued with income inequality are much bigger issues that are harder, but much more important, to fix.

And guns? I’m sick of hearing about another mass shooting every few months, gun suicides, travesties of justice and the NRA’s morally bankrupt excuses. We need serious gun regulation, as the much-misconstrued second amendment itself states.

Walmart, Amazon and others get kudos for dropping the Confederate flag from their stores. But when they stop selling guns, then I’ll stand up and cheer.

My Star Wars trailer takeaway: Han Solo is a grumpy old codger

Everybody has seen the latest trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. In case you are that one person who didn’t see it (or not, in which case it’s likely you want to see it again), here it is:

I admit it, I loved it. It’s already better than the prequels. (And yes, despite popular opinion about Revenge of the Sith, I think they’re all terrible movies.) But I found myself ruminating afterward not on all the awesome in the trailer, but on the end, specifically the moment when the one and only Han Solo says, “Chewie… we’re home.”

Before you jump to share my excitement, I focused on it not in the way that most of the fan boys and girls do. Han Solo is… old. It’s been close to forty years, man. And it’s not the years, it’s the mileage. He’s wearing an outfit almost identical to the one he wore four decades before. Hell, it might be the same ol’ trusty duds that saw him through that unfortunate carbonite incident back on Bespin. He’s still driving the same jalopy that was a piece of junk forty years before, when he still had the edge to keep it in top form with his special modifications. To put it in terms of a time right now, in a galaxy we’re in right here, he’s driving and wearing this, today.

Sell old blue? They don’t make ’em like her these days! Let’s see you play my 8-tracks over your Blueteeth thingamawhatsit or whatever the hell you kids are using.

In short, Han Solo is my grandpa. The old codger on his porch with his blaster pistol screaming “Get off my lawn!” at the rascally Ewoks that have moved in to his neighborhood.

I may be wrong. Along with Captain Kirk and James Bond, Han Solo defined manhood and cool for me growing up. The first two examples have aged quite well. I can only hope Han will do the same.

But until I see Han once again shooting first in the cantinas of The Force Awakens, the image of the grumpy old smuggler that time has passed by won’t leave me. Let’s just hope Lando Calrissian doesn’t show up in the next trailer, kicking back a Colt 45 and playing holographic cribbage with his buddies Han and Chewie in the Falcon’s assisted living compartment.

A Remodel Ain’t A Remodel Without Pestilence

You may remember from a previous blog that our house is trying to kill us. We found this out before our remodel. Now, the offending vinyl (shown below… two flavors!) has been removed and we’re down to the sub-floor. The cabinets have been demolished and our kitchen now looks like the photo at the top of the article.

Who needs new floors with classy 60s asbestos death vinyl like this?

So we are now kitchenless. And furniture-less. We pulled up all the carpet and molding to get to the hardwoods underneath and will be painting while the furniture is in the garage. There are nails, staples, tack strips and dust on every surface except in the bedrooms and bathrooms. Hence the dining on PB&J using boxes in the garage as a table. Today the electricians and plumbers are doing further destruction in the name of making the house less of a forbidden zone. Oh, did I mention the guest bathroom toilet has been plugged for the past few weeks? Good times.

It’s like camping! In our own garage! Eating on a box!

However, Life decided living in a gutted house wasn’t quite enough of a challenge. During the asbestos removal, the abatement company cut a hot water pipe and we had no hot water for a couple days. Keep in mind everything was dusty during demolition, with now no ability to shower. Then on Thursday, my two year old Sebby came down with pink eye. This quickly moved to a chest cold, which he proceeded to spread to his sister and mother. Then, to top it all off, I had an MS flare up kick in Thursday night. This means that, for a brief period of time, my MS symptoms are cranked up to 11. I could barely get out of bed Friday morning.

So in addition to a house with no furniture, no kitchen, no hot water and no laundry room, four of the five family members were put out of commission due to illness. Remodeling FTW.

The silver lining is that treatment for an MS flare up is a three-day course of steroid infusions. Which means that 1) I feel much better than normal afterward, and 2) I don’t sleep for three days. Saturday night I used our shop vac to clean up the insulation, paint chips and nails in the kitchen and laundry/utility rooms. Last night I swept the living room, dining room and hallway starting at ten, and still had energy to pick up molding and watch the Game of Thrones premiere. So I guess having a day of MS suck was probably worth it in the end, after all.

It’s Baseball time!

Seattle is a sports city.

I know Seattle gets some national backlash for the recent popularity and success of the Seahawks. But I don’t know of any team that has such a diversity of personality and talent. “Go Hawks” is synonymous with goodbye or have a nice day in the Pacific Northwest. And not to take anything away from the Patriots, but Seattle should have a second Lombardi trophy. Keep telling yourself Russell Wilson isn’t good, people. We don’t care. He’ll just keep beating you.

Even MLS is enormous in Seattle. I compare Sounders fans to drama kids in High School. They aren’t as ubiquitous as Hawks fans, but those that are in the club are WAY in the club.

(There are people still furious we lost the Sonics, too. I haven’t been into the NBA since the days of Michael Jordan. But it feels like a legitimate sports town needs basketball as well as the other major sports.)

But in my heart, I’ve always been a Mariners fan.

When I moved to Seattle, I went to my first Mariners game in 2000. And that game? A nineteen-inning monstrosity against the Boston Red Sox. They had a second seventh-inning stretch in the 14th. They wheeled out the coffee urns at the top of the concourse steps and gave out free coffee to those of us still there. I didn’t get home until 2 AM.

And I loved it.

I lived through 114-win and 100-loss seasons. I watched Ichiro explode and Felix still exploding. Who won the Cy Young last year again?

Safeco Field is one of the finest MLB stadiums in the country, and I’ve been to over a dozen. I cannot confirm or deny that the baseball home game schedule might have affected my scheduling plans for events I organized.

We have Felix and Iwakuma. We have Robinson Cano, Kyle Seger and now Nelson Cruz. Last year, we were a game out of the playoffs. This year, I believe.

I think in October Seattle will meet New England in another championship. And trust me, Felix’s curveball is nastier than a slant pass.

William Reid

Speculative Fiction Author

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