Archive for the ‘What About You?’ Category
2010 Christmas Playlist
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Love my Christmas mix this year! Here’s some of what I’ve been listening to:
Salvation Is Created, Bifrost Arts (My FAVORITE…)
Songs for Christmas, Sufjan Stevens
Advent Christmas, Future of Forestry
Advent Christmas Vol 2, Future of Forestry
Over The Hills and Everywhere, Seabird
If On A Winter’s Night, Sting
What are your recommendations?
What is Real Love?
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Been reading Ronald Rolheiser’s Forgotten Among the Lilies: Learning to Love Beyond Our Fears. In one of the chapters, Fr. Rolheiser gives a beautiful answer to the question:
“What is real love?”
“Real love is always a coming home, it is not a place we deserve or earn, it is coming to a place where you sense others will love you without necessarily being impressed with you.“
“Thus real love is always experienced as a security, a safe place, home, a safe harbor which we sail into. It is a place of rest.”
On infatuation and all the other “feelings” that sometimes feel like real love:
“…in spite of the excitement and obsession, after we have had our fix we need to, and want to, go home. That person’s heart can never, ultimately, be home for us.”
“Ultimately, if we cannot really be of one heart and mind with someone, however interesting and exciting that person may be, then that other will become just part of our world and we will grow apart and go our separate ways, that is, to our separate homes.”
“…that place where we do not have to impress or perform, or earn or win, where we feel safe and secure and where we are at home.“
Are you at home with the person you love?
Creating your BEST…by using your BEST
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“Nothing is more important to my success than controlling my schedule. I’m most creative from five to nine A.M. If I had a boss or co-workers, they would ruin my best hours one way or another.” - Scott Adams, Dilbert Creator
What are your best, most productive/creative hours of the day?
Mine? 7am – 12pm. I protect those hours like the SS protects the President. And I can do that without much problem because….well, I’m the boss.
BUT…..what about the rest of my team?
I think it’s safe to say that everyone on our team works and creates with quite a bit of autonomy. BUT…I don’t think I’ve been nearly as intentional about empowering them in this as I could be.
So here are a couple of questions I’m chewing on right now:
How can I be more intentional about helping each of my team to figure out their BEST time of the day?
How can I generously provide them the autonomy they need to (like I’m able to do…) protect and use that time well?
I’ve got some ideas and I’m ready to experiment. But what about you? Feel free to chew along with me. Better yet, share a thought, comment, idea, best practice, whatever!
The Subtle Automatics
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“Changing the pattern of outcome in your work means first identifying things about your approach that are as automatic as wedging the clay, as subtle as releasing the arrow from the bow.” David Bayles & Ted Orland, Art & Fear
This quote isn’t just for the “artist”. I think it’s relevant for everyone. Including me. Unfortunately.
Does the pattern of outcome in your work need to change? If so, start by asking yourself this question:
What are some of the “automatic” (and perhaps subtle) behaviors or approaches in my life that could be contributing towards these negative outcome patterns?
Here’s are a couple of, what I’d consider to be, my subtle automatics:
- Giving myself to useless distractions that end up sabotaging my focus and attention on the things that have the potential to change my life the most.
- Allowing my lips to move at the same pace of my brain.
- Leaning too heavily into technology.
- Being too quick to say “no” to my kids. (Instead of finding creative opportunities and ways to tell them “yes”.)
And…..I’ll stop there. Not that there are any more of course. Ahem.
How about you?
My Thoughts on STORY 2010
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Finally getting a chance this morning to decompress my time at STORY this past week…
First of all, let me say thank you to Ben Arment for the privilege of being a part of Story again this year. I’m thankful for our friendship and the opportunity to work together on such a unique event. It’s been awesome watching this dream come to pass.
Secondly, this year’s Story was exceptional. It feels to me like Story hit it’s mark in 2010. In many ways, it feels like a new community has been birthed – one that’s made up of diverse, yet like-minded creatives who really want to embrace the call to create and inspire the world around us.
Here are a few thoughts:
- The volunteers. Amazing. Seriously. Every volunteer I came across over those two days complimented and contributed to the environment so well. Their role was essential and they made it happen. Thank you for everything you guys did.
- The opener. Blaine Hogan . Dude. You nailed it.
- The speakers. Loved the eclectic mix of speakers. Loved how unpredictable their presentations were. And I loved the fact that many of the speakers were unfamiliar names to me. That’s how it should be more often IMHO. (Perhaps TED is on to something? Ha.) I also thought the mix of practical vs. inspirational was really good.
- The music. I loved it all. And trust me, that’s saying a lot. Kari Jobe was the perfect opener for the event. Josh Garrels was exceptional (listening to “Lost Animals” album now btw). And Sons & Daughters made me hungry for more of their music. Can’t wait to hear their new project. (BTW…I thought the audio quality/mix in the auditorium was stellar.)
- The venue. Well of course I’m partial to last year’s venue – The Paramount in Aurora – but Park Community Church in Chicago was a great #2!
Loved the intimate feel of their auditorium. And of course, the view through their auditorium windows is just sick. Wow.
A few other thoughts…
- Dan Allender – perfect choice as the first presenter. Loved his demeanor. Made me want to attend Mars Hill Graduate School.
- Charlie Todd – loved hearing how he does what he does. He stretched me. And made me laugh.
- Richard Walter – Chairman of graduate program in screenwriting at the UCLA film school for more than 30 years. Are you kidding me? What a privilege to hear from him. Loved his stories.
- Jason Fried – loved his contrarian ideas on organization and productivity. And kudos to Tim Schraeder on a great interview!
- Gary Dorsey - inspired by where he’s taking his art. And if it wasn’t for his cool tattoos I’d be a little upset about how much sleep I lost that night after watching his Thief in The Night clips. Oh the memories…
- David Wenzel – looking forward to going back and listening to David’s talk again. What a story… Loved his honesty and authenticity. It’s good to listen to people who are living with a different perspective towards life than the average person.
- Wesley Hill – so glad Wesley came to Story. I think he was an integral part of what made this year’s experience what it was.
- John Sowers – loved interviewing John. It was very clear to me that John is doing what he was created to do. You could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice.
- Leonard Sweet - great way to close out Story. Couldn’t write fast enough to keep up with all the ideas that were hitting me during his talk. Loved this quote, “Too many churches are stuck in a Gutenberg mindset in a Google culture.”
Congratulations Ben and everyone involved on a tremendous STORY experience! Can’t wait to see where this goes in the months and years ahead.
How about you? Were you at Story? I’d love to hear your thoughts, ideas, ways to make it better, etc… Who are the creative voices you’d love to hear from?
**Photo courtesy of Joshua White. See more Story photos here.
Mood Boards
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Earlier today I Twittered that I had created a “mood board” for a new series we’re starting in a few weeks at The Orchard. Several of you replied and asked what a “mood board” is, so I thought I’d try to define it and share a screen-shot of part of one I worked on today.
Basically, a mood board is a space (digital or physical) used to pull together a bunch of ideas/thoughts/concepts that help direct creative teams as they work on design ideas for a particular project.
In our context at The Orchard, mood boards are helpful to our teams as they think through everything from new series logos to music ideas to video pieces, etc… I also do a “vision cast” video for each new series where I talk about the overall theme, what I sense God wants to do through it, where the idea came from, what creative ideas I’m picturing, etc… I then send this out along with a .pdf of the mood boards. This is really helpful in that it helps me to communicate what isn’t always easy to communicate through words.
Hope that makes sense.
Now….I’ll share one of my mood boards….if you’ll consider sharing one of YOURS! Post a link in the comments to yours. I’d love to see it!
PS – I use Evernote to store ideas that I run across. It’s amazing. You need to use it if you haven’t already. I’ll share more about that later…
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