Doug 7.0 has been available for a few years now but bugs in the delivery system disrupted the full launch and implementation on the network.
I have worked diligently behind the scenes adjusting attitudes, parsing sentences, exploring images in countless pages and journals. Many gallons of black ink were sacrificed.
I refer you to Creator Rule #4: Stop digging your own hole.
I also suggest Creator Rule #3 is in play: “Leap and the net will appear.”
I’ve never taken a “How to retire” course or even read anything about retiring. I’ve just never seriously thought about it. Retire to what? Do something different other than tell stories? Seriously? I want to tell more stories….. (Oh, there’s a retirement project – tell more stories. Didn’t take long did it? What’s so hard about that?)
If I stopped doing that, what would I do? Frankly, I can’t stop telling stories – as my friends will tell you. (Give that man a beer or glass of scotch and stand back – his whole conversation is one giant story. Good friends say there’s a healthy dose of B.S. in those stories but that’s what good friends are for.)
My “process” for this next phase of my creative career started with my fountain pens and several blank (really, really inexpensive) 250 page notebooks. And yes, it was harder than it looks and I killed a lot of trees in the process.
My creative muse – that voice in the back of my head which we may talk more about in future posts – asks, “Aren’t you going to tell them about the gallons of coffee and those forty-ouncers of scotch whisky?”
OK- lots of morning coffee and ending my day with an ounce of really good whiskey. Happy now?
Silence.
I arrived at these five steps.
Every step along the way – every tiny step towards each of the five big steps – gets written down in morning notes.
#1 Reimagine myself – dream wildly with zero limitations.
#2 Reinvent myself to those dreams. Who is it I must become? How must I behave?
#3 Re-educate myself – it isn’t going to happen without work of some kind.
#4 Rebuild based on #1, #2 and #3
#5 Relaunch and do those things or be that person (one small step at a time)
A sixth step – but you’ve figured this out already- is to constantly check and recheck and evaluate. This is a two steps forward, one step backwards kind of change.
Stay tuned, it’s already in progress.
You can follow along by subscribing here. (And yeah, there’s a link at the bottom of every note.)
OK. I really let the imagination run free and wild over the past few weeks. Filled even more notebooks and tried to get my thoughts together before snow hits the ground.
At this point, you might snort. It seems “get my thoughts together” activities have been sorely lacking in this office for the past few covid-laced months.
Between you and me, (and now the entire damn Internet) it was a classic case of creative burnout. Not the first time I’ve been there, done that, but hopefully the last.
For the record, I’m bouncing back nicely. 😉 Creatively.
So what now?
I’ve always loved dragons. And they get such a terrible reputation from evil knights who see killing an honest dragon as a way to a faire maiden’s heart.
Dragons are just like people, there are good ones and not-so-good ones. Smart ones and not-so-smart ones. There are….. (well, you get the idea)
The new dragon website project is at the dreaming stage. Not much to see there and I’ll let you know here when I get the email/story setup built.
In a previous note, I posted about my new Atalantea project here.
