Fresh ideas come from fresh minds – Joe Duffy

Writers, designers, artists and creative people of all types are the merchants of ideas. But in today’s world of technology and information overload, burnout and brain drain can be hazards of the workplace.

How do we stay fresh, inspired and in a space where creativity flourishes?

A little time off – an hour, a week, a year – can work wonders to renew and recharge our creative engines.

Where do you find your best ideas?

My brief moments of genius often come to me in the shower, in the park or on long road trips. I call this free time for the brain – a mini mental vacation.

Getting out the office can achieve far more than staying chained to a desk and wired for distraction.

In choosing where and how we work, we can integrate “free time” into highly productive “creative time.” We can make a life, and a living.

As the directors and designers of our own lives, and careers, we can choose whether we want to tune in, log on or power down – and for how long.

In his article A Plea to All Creatives: Stop Going to Work, designer Joe Duffy advocates getting out of the office, on a regular basis, in order to be more purposeful and productive. “Design how you’re going to work. Dial it into the rest of your life and vice versa,” he says. Find out what makes you happy, inspired and energized, then nurture those things, people or places. “Being someplace, like in the office, for appearances sake is futile.”

Duffy’s formula for enhanced creativity is simple: Balance=happy=creative=productive.

Rockstar designer Stefan Sagmeister maximizes the power of time off even further. Every seven years he closes down his New York studio, sees no clients, and pursues a one-year sabbatical of enforced inspiration.

By escaping to a new environment (like Bali) he returns to New York energized, inspired and at his most innovative. “The work that comes out of these years flows back into the company and society at large,” says Sagmeister, renowned for album covers, posters and bizarre art installations around the world.

I, too, find my greatest inspiration through travel and time spent living or studying in other countries. In the last two and a half decades, my one-year power sabbaticals have included Australia, California and the South of France. Each time I return to manifest extraordinary career opportunities, beautiful living spaces and new relationships. And in February 2010 I’m heading Down Under again for five weeks of creative inspiration, brought to me by the Pacific Ocean and the Australian summer.

“Time off” gets a bad rap in our workaholic society, yet “not working” can work wonders.

If you can find a few hours, days or months to “unplug,” your work, your creative outlook –perhaps your outlook on life—will be refreshed and revived.  How valuable is that?

As writers we strive to be original and the use of clichés may be seen at best as a lazy brain and at worst as an intellectual disgrace. Yet a well-positioned cliché sticks and stays; it is a concise, efficient and road-tested use of prose.

Clichés earn their status when a few well-chosen words can express an entire thought, story or image in a heartbeat. Clichés are chock full of meaning and the rest often goes without saying. Who needs to think outside the box when 24/7 we can find an expression that says it all.

Honest to goodness I could keep going until the cows come home but I think I’ll stop at this particular point in time before you throw me out with the bath water.

For writers, the fitting use of clichés may be all in a day’s work, but when we become too clever for our own good we risk adding insult to injury. So for those of you who love a good cliché across the board, I direct you to a recent article in The Boston Globe in praise of clichés, and to one of my treasured resources, The Dictionary of Clichés by James Rogers.

Hope you enjoyed this quick read though it may be nothing to write home about. In the future, I’ll do my level best to avoid well-worn words, come hell or high water.

We moved from “word of mouth” to “world of mouth.”

If you think social media is a passing fad, watch this video and then decide.

Hey cool Winnipeggers – tired of answering that relentless question: Why do you live in Winnipeg??

Well, now you can tell all your friends, family and followers that even Hollywood (film and TV) producers realize that Winnipeg is one cool city, and worthy of name dropping.

Watch this fabulous YouTube spot called “Does Winnipeg really exist?”

The video was created by www.incrediblycool.ca a, website of Destination Winnipeg.

I discovered it at a workshop today (in Winnipeg, of course) called “Social Media Marketing: Get your Business on the Internet Grapevine,” presented by Murray Conron, a Toronto-based freelance writer.

According to Conron, online social networks are becoming the preferred source of news and market information (why get all that ink on your hands from a newspaper or magazine or face the inconvenience of waiting for the six o’clock news?), and communications via social media, texting and instant messaging are replacing the use of email. (Now your grandma will need to get on Facebook).

And if you are doubting the power and reach of social media, here are a few numbers to consider:Facebook has 320 Million registered users.

YouTube gets 1 Billion views per day (12,000 per second).

Twitter serves 5 Billion tweets.

Now that’s something to blog about.

Visiting artists in their own studios and creative environments is one of my favourite things to do … and now you can too!

For your chance to see Winnipeg artists up close and personal take part in the In Plain View Artist Studio Tours and visit about 30 local artists and galleries.

This is the fourth year select Winnipeg artists will be opening their studios to the public during two upcoming weekends: November 7 & 8, from noon-5 p.m., and December 5 & 6. (There will also be an event June 5 & 6, 2010) What’s In Plain View for you?

The tours are FREE, inspiring and a great way to support the people who contribute to Winnipeg’s status as The Arts and Culture Capital of Canada.

Internationally renowned artist Katharine Bruce is one of the organizers and participants of In Plain View. Her work hangs in Winnipeg’s City Hall, private collections around the world… and in my house.

Here are a few images of Katharine’s work:

So, if you’re looking for art – whether buying or just browsing – this tour is a wonderful way to find something original.

For more information about the artists and where to find them In Plain View, go to www.inplainviewwinnipeg.com or contact Katharine Bruce at 786-3052, kbruce@kbruce.com or Gloria De Neve at 489-9795, e-mail gdeneve@mts.net

1) Explore Manitoba Centre at The Forks (adjacent to the Johnston Terminal),

2) Destination Winnipeg, 279 Portage Avenue (204) 943-1970

3) Artists studios’ and galleries listed in the brochure and on the website.

Perspectives: the ability to discern the relative importance of things; the state of one’s ideas, the facts known to one; the faculty of seeing all the relevant data in a meaningful relationship. (excerpt from art exhibition Perpectives: Robert Houle & Tim Schouten)

In an exhibit currently at Winnipeg’s Buhler Gallery (St. Boniface Hospital), two artists offer us some new insight (and perspective) on First Nations Treaty sites in Manitoba, native spirituality and the prairie landscape.

The work of Robert Houle and Tim Schouten look at places, words and spiritual connections as well as issues of trust and accoutability in Canada’s history, where Aboriginal and European cultures intersect.

What does this (or any other art) matter? Because as Pat Bovey, the project’s curator, so aptly says: “culture is a word of many meanings, suggesting both division and diversity… As well it refers to the sum total of knowledge and values shared by society, in this exhibition the people of Manitoba.”

All of these meanings of culture, particularly as it relates to the First Nations experience, are beautifully and simultaneously expressed in Houle’s drawings and Schouten’s encaustic paintings.

Why go see this exhibit?

Because this, like other art, gives us the opportunity to reflect on our own history, beauty and spirituality.

Because art helps us look at who we are, who we have been and who we imagine ourselves capable of being.

Again, as Bovey sums it up, “Houle and Schouten simultaneously provide us with a challenge, the opportunity to understand the multi-layered meaning of culture with the hope of ensuring a richer, postive future.”

What more is there to say?

Get yee to an art gallery… and get some new perspective.

(Perspectives: Robert Houle & Tim Schouten runs Oct. 1, 2009 – Jan. 17, 2010 at the charming and intimate Buhler Gallery on the main floor of St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg.)

Be kind to women for they make up half the population and are the mothers of the other half. – author unknown

Today I joined 1,000 other people in Winnipeg at the19^th annual LEAF (Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund) Persons Day Breakfast, a fundraising and awareness-raising event to celebrate the landmark “Persons Case,” won on October 18, 1929.

What is “The Persons Case”? Well, “way back” in Canadian history – the early 1920s – the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that women could not be appointed to the Senate because legally they were not deemed to be “persons.” Five gutsy prairie women took issue with this, appealed the decision to the Privy Council and won.

That was 1929, a mere 80 years ago, a split second in the span of history, but a ground-breaking achievement in enabling women to participate in Canadian public life. However, the status was not declared for all and the struggle for equality continued… and continues.

Imagine living in a country (or world) where for women to be seen, treated and respected as “persons” it has to be legislated rather than a given, inherent right and, I might add, an obvious fact of life.

Ask yourself this (I’m talking to you, boys) who among us was not born of a woman? And if women were not “persons” what exactly would the wee creatures (male and female) that they gave birth to be?

Well, happily, in 1929 in Canada a few “non-persons” helped the persons come to their senses. Sadly, this is still not the case for women in all countries.

There is much to do in “The Never Ending Equality Journey,” as noted by the guest speakers at this morning’s LEAF event. Law professor and human rights activist Kathleen E. Mahoney spoke of past successes in the advancement of women’s legal rights, as well as the progress made for the rights of First Nations people, specifically on the Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.

Phil Fontaine, Former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, then spoke of his own experience in Residential Schools and their tragic consequences of abuse, poverty and despair, and the challenges ahead of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission established to provide healing to First Nations communities and all Canadians.

On days like this, when thousands of “persons” across Canada celebrate those working for a more equitable world, we are acutely reminded that when we support women’s rights, we support human rights.

Happy Persons Day.

LEAF Manitoba is part of the national LEAF organization founded in 1985 to advance equality for women and girls in Canada through litigation, law reform and public education. For more information call (204) 453-1379 or email.

If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss and they open doors to you. – Joseph Campbell

In other words, to create an environment that nourishes you and your work, attract the people who will be attracted to you.

Seek to connect with the friends, associates or customers who speak your language or follow your beat because these are the ones most likely to want to work, play or conduct business with you … or at least buy you a drink to find out.

When cultivating your field of bliss, i.e., the people with the keys to new doors, here are a few things to consider:

Who is working, and succeeding, in your field of dreams, at the level to which you aspire? Or who likes to do what you like to do and is damn good at it?

Who holds you in positive regard and recognizes your talent or value?

Who gives you energy and encouragement simply through a kind word or action?

Who would go the extra mile to help you become a better writer, pastry chef or tennis player?

Who has the time, interest and sense of humour to become a mentor to you?

Surround yourself with people who are doing what you are or would like to be doing (at a high level) and watch those doors swing open.

And for more about Joseph Campbell, a wise man who lived a life of bliss, visit www.jcf.org or pick up a copy of Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion.

Once while Mahatma Gandhi’s train was pulling slowly out of the station, a reporter ran up to his compartment window. “Do you have a message I can take back to my people?” he asked.

It was Gandhi’s day of silence, respite from his demanding speaking schedule, so he didn’t reply. Instead, he scrawled a few words on a scrap of paper and passed it to the reporter: “My life is my message.”

Gandhi worked throughout India attempting to be the change in the world that he hoped to see in it. A man of compassion and service to others, Gandhi lived his truth.

When you live what you believe – when you walk the talk – your life becomes your message, and one that can inspire others.

Gandhi, Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela and many other spiritual and inspirational leaders of our time have led lives that were ultimately about truth and compassion.

Yet you don’t have to be a spiritual master or enlightened being to bring your message to the world.

Two people you may have heard about come to mind.

Former mountaineer and author of Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson has dedicated his life to building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan – especially for girls. After a failed attempt to climb K2 in 1993, to repay the kindness he experienced in a remote village of the Karakoram mountains he promised to build a school there. That promise, and his message of peace through education, continues to expand and attest to the power of the humanitarian spirit. As of 2009, (according to the website) Mortenson has established or significantly supports 131 schools in rural and often volatile regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Equally powerful is religious thinker and author Karen Armstrong’s efforts to create a global Charter of Compassion. Armstrong, who has written more than 20 books on faith and the major religions, studying what Islam, Judaism and Christianity have in common, says that at the essence of all religion is compassion. She says the central tenet of all religions is The Golden Rule i.e., treat all others as you wish to be treated, and she is working with religious and spiritual leaders around the world to implement this message in The Charter of Compassion. The Charter will be launched on November 12, 2009.

Whether our lives and actions reach others on a global scale,  compassion – like charity – begins at home.

What’s my message? “Inner peace, world peace.” Because you can only begin to bring peace to the world by being at peace, with yourself and those around you.

What’s your message?

“To say thank you is an act of spiritual power. The very act of saying a sincere thank you hones our personality, making us humbler, gentler and more loving people. When something good happens and we give thanks for it, recognizing it as a blessing, then its positive effect expands within in us. “ - Marianne Williamson

This is Thanksgiving weekend in Canada and in this peaceful country of stunning beauty, and all kinds of abundance, we have so many reasons to say “thank you.”

Here’s a little gratitude opener for you.