Take Back Your Life!

Men write 75% of op-ed columns. For some reason, women have not broken through this journalistic glass ceiling. Op-eds require a strong writing voice. That may scare or turn some women off. It also requires a tough skin. Op-ed writers can get hammered by readers in the comment sections. Negative comments tend to be more forthcoming than positive ones.

I’ve learned to let these comments fuel my passion to write even more wild and disobedient op-eds.

Honestly, it’s my favorite type of writing. I get to unleash my voice. I get to be bold. I get to be sassy. I get to use my Nancy Drew investigative skills. I get to pull disparate thoughts together into something new. To me, it’s a labor of creative love. (more…)

Hello folks,

I’ve long thought that a lack of creative thinking ability has stalled the worldwide economy.

A multitude of problems need solving, yet we continue to prop up dead and dying industries or copy existing ones. It doesn’t make much sense unless you see the root cause as an inability to move forward, an inability to create a meaningful economy, an inability to dream up something new. (more…)

Something new here at the Muse to keep the creative juices flowing. I’ll start the story. Feeling game? Please add the next couple of sentences or paragraphs, leaving your last words to be a cliff hanger of sorts. I’ll post the new entries as they come separated by the tilde. Many thanks! G.

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I’d been in the cave for 3 days. My food and water were almost gone, my portable lamps running low on batteries. Yet, I didn’t want to leave until I’d completed the Van Dussen Challenge. I thought back to the argument that led me to sign up for it … (more…)

I’ve been an oil painter for about 8 years. And while I don’t consider myself someone who can draw, I am able to use paint to create the shapes needed to make a painting come alive.

Yet, I’ve always longed to be able to sit down and sketch something from my own mind. My natural love for sketching got squelched in third grade when my science teacher sent me into the corner as punishment for laughing. I’d drawn some bold, bodacious, bawdy pictures of three movie stars in my art class and brought them with me into Science. The boys gathered around me and we were all laughing. That’s when the teacher’s need to control us hit the fan and I ended up languishing in the corner on a stool my paintings rolled up on her desk. (more…)

I got an idea a few weeks ago for the US to create companies where folks are paid to embrace their strengths. Whatever it is that makes them feel alive, that’s their job mission. It’s what I refer to as your Fearless Why.

We subsidize farmers, pharmaceutical companies, oil companies and others. Why not subsidize people’s strengths? Why not take our soul crushing economic model of forcing folks into pre-existing job categories and change it up?

Yes, I know what the skeptics will say. It won’t make a profit. (more…)

Hello all,

Billy Jack post needs to wait another week. After I perused my latest copy of Newsweek and the local paper, I felt compelled to write about the state of the United States.

46.2 million Americans now live in poverty. (15.1%, same as 1993, which I find fascinating. Was that a bad time then? Don’t think so.)

59 million do not have health insurance. (more…)

I’m in the throes of an abstract painting class intensive. Instructor’s right up my muse alley. He’s constantly uttering rebellious phrases.

And I’ve been writing a lot of them down, like “dare to be messy.” (Of course, I love this. As a messy person, I’ve faced serious discrimination beginning at overnight summer camp when the best candy bars went to the cleanest lodges. My messiness often resulted in my entire cabin sharing a pack of Wrigley Gum instead of us each savoring our own Snickers.)

(more…)

Hi loyal readers,

It took many months of researching,  percolating and writing to finish my educational piece on education, standardization, creativity and imagination. A special thanks to the fabulous commenters who suggested books and shared their own experiences with the world’s educational systems.

Here’s the link to The MetroWest Daily News if you’d like to read it. For those that prefer to stay on this site, I’ve pasted a few choice paragraphs:

“America does not need to standardize its youth. It needs to encourage creative risk-taking and self-reliance. Our economy has stalled because adults do not have enough imagination to visualize new ways way to solve old problems. Our compulsory educational system asks us to don blinders and fixate on answers.

It’s time for America to birth a new educational adventure, one that releases children from age-segregated confinement so they can contribute in a meaningful way to their communities.”

(more…)

I somehow managed to hold onto my imagination, despite the attempts of various schools and places of employment to squash it. My third grade teacher banished me into the corner one science class because a large group of young boys had gathered around my latest artwork. We were all laughing and having a good time admiring my colorful imagination on paper when she said, “Julie, stop laughing right now or you’re going into the corner.” (more…)

The way I see it, every day you write a little more of your life’s autobiography. You hold the invisible pen that writes the scenes that link together to form your life odyssey. That vision reminds me of a quote by one my of favorite writers, Jorge Luis Borges:

“A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.” (more…)