This is a long one, just to get you caught up with what's going on with the Willie. It's funny how I shift day-to-day in and out of esoteric versus factual, from imagic (my own word) to newsy.

Today, I finished yet another technical manual and recorded my notes in a very large annotation document. Since January, even with the insane amount of consulting work finished during the day, I have read just shy of 1200 pages on CSS, with another 250 to go. After that, 1700 pages to go on .NET 2.0 and the new toolset. After that, I'm thinking of taking a break and reading a book on updated DHTML. Later this year, I'll probably be reading books on PHP and Community Tools.

This in addition to all of the new software to be learned with the potential MacBook coming into my life.

One of my greatest strengths as a Dork is my ability, when interested, to ingest tech materials and learn. I have a high aptitude rating. Though I normally have a low motivation. I'm a smart, lazy guy.

I've been dealing with my technological "I'm behind and it's impossible to catch up" panic by simply doing and reading things I'm interested in. If I get to a point in my life where I'm no longer interested, that's when I'll know I'm done with all this. But for now, I enjoy reading technical manuals. My brain likes being stimulated in that way.

In other areas of my life, not so much stimulation (don't even start, writeanya). I'm having a hard time processing out this latest round of self-therapy and self-workshopping, and that usually results in a great deal of avoidance of things that are pretty stupid to avoid - like reading books that, oh I dunno, don't have code chunks on every other page. I'm avoiding a thousand other pursuits as well, as the blank page and the wide expanse of space and possibility looms. I am, however, seeming to accomplish much in the video game realm.

Practice is hard, says beckyb and I've taken that little tidbit of offhand wisdom to heart. No I don't wanna. But I haveta. Lots of things, haveta, little child.

In the world of The Process, then, something new. I've been having ongoing conversations with streamsandpools about, well many things, but the thing that keeps pinging my brain with importance is the notion of creating space. Maybe that's because I'm really fond of and consider it a big portion of anything I do and any way I interact with the world, to open space and provide experience. That can be in terms of active listening, or allowance for safe space for vulnerability sharing, or play, or in terms of the more improv creative aspects of "Show up and see what happens" or "Get in the car and start driving".

This philosophy and practice is rapidly becoming a whole solution for me. I've, as usual, taken my own track with it. The idea for me is that there are no expectations and no goals, no outcome. Instead, there is the work to define the space and make it as fertile and pure as possible, establish the rules and the boundaries (that aren't flexible), and simply show up. If something isn't working, it's not the activity, it's the space. And you work on making it more supportive of the activity.

To that end, my new Process for creation is going to be the formation of time and space, blocking out three to four hours during which only certain kinds of activity can take place. I plan to have some really playful, nonsensical ritual to mark the beginning and finishing of that realm of being. And though of course creation happens often in the margins, I'm going to try to block out smaller times and stick to the ritual of it if I feel the need arising.

If I'm not in that space, I'm not going to be creating. I'll be reading or actually taking walks or going to movies, or mailing things to people that are waiting. Or perhaps I'll begin creating space that is unique to other activities and using this practice for them as well. But to walk into the creative space, I have to first create it.

For the writing realm then, the biggest rule is that it isn't a writing realm. Its a mad-science workshop, without the science, of anything goes. It's Kindergarten playtime grownup, where you have a slew of possible activities, a set time to play with them, and only move from one to the other out of pure interest and enjoyment.

What that allows for me is the scheduling, and the monitoring of scheduling, of creative blocks of time, the establishment of those blocks of time as something unique and special, and the relaxation out of those blocks where I'm not constantly feeling the tug of the should or the whine of avoidance of anything.

So wish me luck. It's the progress of process indeed.