Nancy Love’s Weblog

In my Ripley’s Believe it or Not Journal this morning was a tidbit of information about Tuesday’s.  Apparently Tuesday is by far the most productive day of the week.  Tuesday’s has always been special for me and my friends becauseit is the day that we get together for dinner each week.  It has become a lovely tradition to meet at our local restaurant and catch up with each others lives.  There are a core of five of us but others join from time to time.  They join for a reason or a season and then they move on.

Tuesday’s is a day that shows up in songs and book and movie titles from time to time.  Ruby Tuesday, If this is Belgium it must be Tuesday, Tuesday’s with Morrie. etc.  Tuesday’s child who is full of grace.  Tuesday is a great day and today is a lovely Tuesday here in Calgary.  It is a warm fall day with lots of sunshine and an optimism in the air about life and winter, which we all know is close.

I have been working to support my local candidate in this election.  I am discouraged, not by the campaign or the usual rhetoric, but by the apparent lack of interest by the voting public.  It is another conversation where one of the parties is not listening.  Candidates are working hard to have their voices heard and they are talking into no one listening.  Voters have either made up their mind at birth and cannot hear the arguments for changing it or they just don’t care.

Here in Alberta, even after 35 years as a resident of this great province, I continue to be amazed at the sheep like voting patterns that change very little from election to election no matter what is going on on the political scene.  There is no accountability for the elected members of parliament in this city and they know it.  They are not even campaigning here because they are assured of a win even without a campaign.

Loyalty is good.  I don’t knock people who remain loyal despite the obvious need for change.  My hope is that they will work to change things from the inside.  Misplaced loyalty or compliance out of apathy bothers me.  People should know who they are electing and for what purpose.  My should wand is clear on this.  Voting should be informed, well informed and if after weighing the choices people choose to reward a non performer with another chance then so be it.  The people have chosen.

It is heartbreaking to know that someone as dedicated and intelligent as my candidate cannot defeat a shadow of a man who doesn’t even show up to campaign, who thumbs his nose at his constituents, who cannot hold a candle to her on so many important fronts.  She is fighting shadows and ghosts, the ghosts of other politicians and their decisions of times past and the shadows of leadership from Ottawa.  She is not allowed to fight the real fight here in the constituency, where, “man to man”, she is the best choice.

I saw a lawn sign the other day.  It said “Just Vote Damn It”.  I agree.  Especially those of us who only earned the right through bloody protests in the 1920’s ought to be sure and vote.  Good luck and thank you for all who choose to run for poliical office.  You have already made a difference. On Tuesday the 15th we will know who was listening and who was not.

I am happy to be in Canmore.  The new slogan, coined by Carol, is “Write more in Canmore”.  I am anticipating a great swell in my activity as a writer. I am aware again of the responsibility that the lable ‘writer’ or ‘author’ carries with it and often times I avoid the lable for fear that peole will think that I can actually write.  It seems arrogant to me to assume that putting words on paper is writing.  There is so much more to it and any one who has done it knows how exacting and unforgiving a process it is.  This week I met two authors at different venues and we shared our stories.  I couldn’t help but feel as if I were an imposter … and yet …. maybe I am becoming a writer.

I am in the Prepare stage.  I am preparing to write.  My purpose is clear… Three smallish books and 8 or 10 articles in the next 12 months.  The subject matter will be PULSE related afer all this is the PULSE Institute where we study People Using Language Skills Effectively.  My list includes applications for PULSE, arguments for the use of PULSE and something more about how the PULSE BEACHs, although informed by the study of the Enneagram, are different from the Enneagram.  Articles that will become chapters on topics like strategic planning and PULSE as a tool for learning English as a Second Language.

My process is to Prepare for the writing by setting up my place in Canmore with everything I need to work undisturbed; to Uncover what is known about each of my topics; to Learn why they are significant to me and to you the reader and to Search possibilities for their application or audience and then to write and write and write as I cycle throught he PULSE Frame over and over as each article and chapter emerges from this internal PULSE conversation.

My protocol will be to remain gentle with myself and others through out the process, to be honest and self critical when I need to be, to be open to the suggestions and thoughts that occur or are shared with my by others, to be specific and use examples for clarity and to keep on talking (writing) until an agreeable, sustainable product has emerged.

I will set up a calendar so that I can have periods of confidential time, where there will only be me and my thoughts. I base my ‘author’ity on this last year of working with PULSE Conversations for Change and seeing how there is so much more to say then I was able to cram into that little volume and on the fact of the postive reviews of that first attempt. My role is to stay focused on the product and the process, learning from last time how and what to do.  Over the next fifteen months my first PULSE priority will be the generation of new products, the promotion of new products and the care and feeding of clients from previous years, practitioners and professionals.

Your role will be to enage with other PULSE professionals to learn the basics and keep you skills honed, to contribute to this endeavor with your thoughts and comments and to stay tuned for the exciting new books and articles that will emerge.  Thanks for your support.

nancy

Marjorie and I are sitting in the office chatting as she edits the PULSE Advanced program which she will present in Kansas next week. Post-it-notes … I forgot to pack them for her.  She will pick some up.  We use post-its for the parking lot items in class.  Participants post their unanswered questions so that we can deal with them after breaks.  It is interesting that few participants take advantage of the opportunity.  That may be because we encourage dialogue in the learning conversation…..

We were also talking about bandaids because Marjorie has mine in her kit for next week.  We print the skills for changing cycles on bandaids, defining a bandaid as something that covers a wound so it can heal from the inside out.  The Bandaid or skill represents the solution that is needed to allow for the healing.  We do an exercise where people decide what skill to apply, and how.  Scenarios are described and bandaids applied.  First Aid for conversations, you might say.  It is a great exercise that provokes a lot of discussion.

“Sometimes it doesn’t fully load” is what Marjorie just said about the footers that for some reason begin on page 39?? in version 2 of the Advanced course.  We spend a lot of time figuring out the program language so that we can have the computer do what we expect.  Computers and people need clear instructions and expectations.  Computers are less forgiving and will not do something you haven’t asked them to do in a way that they understand.  People will pretend to know or think they can figure it out and then get it wrong, not out of bad intention but out of a desire to please and to appear knowledgeable. 

There is this wonderful creative energy that is only resident in people.  People will try to use Bandaids as Post-it-notes and vice versa.  Computers would never think of doing that.  Would you?

While I was at the IEA Conference in Atlanta I purchased a DVD called “Is Enneybody Home”.  It is a great DVD that shows one actress acting out all of the types.  It is especially powerful because it is one actress acting out all of the types…  It is easier to experience the enneagram stances as BEACHes or Perspectives on the world rather than as a stereotypical typing tool.  It is great and we have incorporated it into the new level 2 or advanced practitioner training.

BEACHes – sets of Beliefs, Expectations, Assumptions, Concerns and Hopes – are what we stand on that determines our perspective and BEACHes shift.  Evidence of that was clear a couple of weeks ago when Carol and I were in the Virgin Islands, working with people from the University and the Government of the BVI.  The tail end of Hanna swung through one day bringing wind and rain and a storm surge that raised the water level about a meter and a half.  Where the Beach once was there was ocean and lots of if.  A Day later the water subsided and the Beach returned.  It was not the same BEACH.  It had been reformed by the wind and water and we knew it would be some time before it was the same BEACH we had enjoed days before.

BEACHes change.  What does your BEACH look like today?  What have the elements and the environment done to reshape your BEACH.  So many questions fit the metaphor.  and so the title of this entry.  For me, the discipline to write the blog comes in waves.  Like the calm BEACH that we played on, I can come back to this place and write and play … except when the storms of my live surge to a level where I am unable to find the BEACH.  The wind and the waves of training and travel take away the calm space to write and to think.  It is interesting that while I was on holiday in Italy I still had the space to complete the blog.  Travelling and working fill my head, like the storm surge so that I am unable to find the discipline.

Like the BEACH – I am back – for a while – until the next storm.