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March 15, 2016: Please Put More Peas on my Plate

Generating ideas is one thing. Acting upon them is quite another. The former involves the activation of specific neuros. The latter involves the activation of others. Note that I didn’t say the former involves the activation of one part of the brain and the latter involves the activation of another part of the brain.

I’ve been reading about neuroplasticity – the premise that the brain has localized regions of activity now seems to be passé. It’s interesting. I went to write the above first paragraph and immediately put my ideas about ideas in the context of brain localization. My now having done some reading and now



thinking differently about this most likely activated other brain neurons. New neural pathways were formed in considering another theory.

What do I know? Not much (obviously), but I sure would like to know more. Someday I’ll write a book about ideas and how the brain is activated in several, if not all, ideas when one gets an idea and subsequently begins acting upon that idea.

I have ideas about ideas. Generating ideas is fun. Acting upon ideas is tedious. This is because nine tenths of the implementation of ideas involves the implementation of administrative. This is why books don’t get finished and to the publisher. For every one book on the shelf of a bookstore, there are at least a thousand that remained a passing thought.

Here is a good self-example. The Vermont Centered Riding/Centered Writing Clinic. This was a brilliant idea on my part. Susan Harris has now climbed aboard the slowly chugging train, so there are now three people working on this. This is great – she is a perfect third member. More heads is better than fewer heads in this instance. She and Mary are both long-time Centered Riding instructors. Both (for example) know that we’ll need to submit a proposal about this venture to the Centered Riding board of trustees beforehand. If the board puts down its foot and says no, we abandon ship. If they say yes, we sail on.

Now, here comes the work part. We are going to need to talk further about this, meaning that we’ll need to do a teleconference call. I’m also going to need to write an agenda. See? This project was initially an idea – and it was great fun coming up with it. Now I must put my shoulder to the wheel and do some more mundane work.

With ideas also comes delegation. I am not computer savvy, so I must enlist Pete’s help. He’s been great about giving me an assist, but I have this sense that his patience is starting to wear thin. As I said yesterday, it didn’t used to be this way. But it is this way now. So yes, I must take more of a role in the administrative end related to acting upon my ideas.

I must plod on and for two reasons: The first is that if I just generate and fail to act upon ideas, I’ll be considered a bullshit artist. And the second, is that follow through has its own rewards. When I’m in the old hippie nursing home, I’ll have stories to tell. And if I have stories to tell, I’ll have more friends. And If I have more friends, I’ll more likely be asked to join others in the hookah lounge. If I am instead sent to the down and out nursing home, I’ll still have stories to tell. And, the same will hold true. If I have stories to tell, I’ll have more friends. The primary difference between the hippie and the down and out home is that the down and out home won’t have a hookah lounge. I will, however, when asked, have more peas put on my plate. So, yes, I’m acting on my generated ideas because I want the peas.

It was hard to write this dispatch because I had to take a step back and think about the implications of continuing to generate ideas. What I most wanted to do was continue to generate more. Oh well, there but for the grace of dog go I.

Next: 74. 3/16/16: Forward Whoa

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