Cheryl Wilder

On Concision

September 28, 2019 by Cheryl Wilder

silhouette of young man with his arms cradling colorful balls on a digital screen — Innocence would have stayed / if I hadn’t left the door open.

The quote, “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter,” has been attributed to many people: Blaise Pascal, John Locke, Benjamin Franklin, Henry David Thoreau, Cicero, Woodrow Wilson, Mark Twain. According to Garson O’Toole at Quote Investigator, the saying originates in 1657 by French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal. That it has been attributed to so many writers is not surprising.

It takes practice and patience to say a lot with few words.

I had written another bog post before this one (and here I am with limited time). The first attempt was inspired by my new project on the interdisciplinary arts of architecture and poetry–the topic was too big-picture. I’m in the early stages of getting reacquainted with old research. The vision of the project is still fuzzy. The blog read like the beginning of a treatise instead of a concise thought or idea. I had to start over, but it got me thinking about concision.

My first thoughts don’t often convey what I’m trying to say. It’s like my initial idea is a large piece of marble and I must carve to reveal what is hidden inside. This doesn’t just happen with thoughts, but perhaps more importantly, emotions too.

Personal concision

Elevator pitches are a good example of concision. To distill your professional work into a 30-60 second speech isn’t easy but is common practice in business, including publishing. Yet, less people write personal elevator pitches. Which sounds, well, less personal. But what would happen if you distilled your core values and who you want to become into 30-60 seconds?

Writing is a tool to hone thoughts and feelings into small tangible pieces. When I write, I can see the inside of my head and heart, which allows me to fix and reshape and grow. It’s hard to ignore the words on the page; it’s easier to ignore the thoughts and feelings swirling inside my head and body.

To begin, how about writing a personal mission statement? To demonstrate how long it can take, I have been working on mine since this blog post in 2018. Please don’t let that discourage you.

Working on the personal mission statement has helped me refine what I want in my personal life and has helped me make decisions toward who I want to become. But first, I had to carve through the marble and face some hard truths about myself; what I previously didn’t want to accept.

I keep refining my statement, and in turn, I enjoy a new relationship with myself. One that helps me live a more deliberate life. As I move through the process, I feel freer; no longer held back by insecurities. Well, some insecurities. After all, I am a work-in-progress.

Get started

I started with a simple Google search and found some resources. Then I compiled inspiration from those I admired. Last, I created my own set of questions to answer, choosing from the various information.

Below are (to me) a few core questions. Unfortunately, some of my resources have either been taken off the web, or in one case, hidden behind a paywall. Luckily, Andy Andrews still offers free advice and so do the people at Live Bold and Bloom. You’ll see some of these questions on their websites.

Ask yourself

Where am I now? What got me here?
What are my core values?
How do I want to act?
What is important? What/whom do I value?
What legacy do I want to leave behind?

On Making

August 30, 2019 by Cheryl Wilder

doll house front door and window with missy piggy on motorcycle and baby chick in doorway — I am soft tissue not load-bearing wall / though we both carry weight / of the not-yet known.

A work of art… is not a living thing… that walks or runs. But the making of a life. That which gives you a reaction. To some it is the wonder of human fingers. To some it is the wonder of the mind. To some it is the wonder of technique. And to some it is how real it is. To some, how transcendent it is. Like the 5th Symphony, it presents itself with a feeling that you know it, if you have heard it once. And you look for it, and though you know it you must hear it again. Though you know it you must see it again. Truly, a work of art is one that tells us that Nature cannot make what human’s can make.
Louis Kahn

To Make

I first heard the above quote in the movie, My Architect: A Son’s Journey. It’s a documentary by Nathaniel Kahn, an illegitimate son of the deceased architect, Louis Kahn. There’s many reasons I recommend watching the movie. But there’s one compelling aspect I want to touch on here: how the movie illustrates the complexities of life as an artist.

There’s failure. The need to make something out of nothing. To find beauty in chaos. More failure and the push to keep going. And yes, achievement. But one of the more complex topics the movie covers is sacrifice. What is the cost to throwing one’s life into creating art?

From the artist’s perspective, what is the cost to not throwing one’s life into creating art? Yet, the artist has to live in the world with everyone else, and to some of those people, the artist has responsibility. So, how does an artist find balance in life, with so many day-to-day factors to consider?

A Work of Art

I don’t have the answer for how to find balance as a working artist. Just like everyone else, artists need to traverse those decisions themselves, based on their personal lives and artistic goals. (If you want strategies, there’s plenty of resources and I am happy to share my own in future posts. Let me know if this appeals to you. For a couple examples on my process and struggle for balance, go here and here.)

What I do know, is that artists need to make things. Whether those things are as small as poems or as large as buildings.

When taking what Kahn says, “A work of art…[is] the making of a life,” it is easy to see how sacrifices are necessary and important. To make a life is no easy feat. What is sacrificed is the hard part. But this is what artists do in the process of making, decide what to keep and what to let go, all for the sake of the work. So how can that skill translate in life?

Again, there is no easy answer to that question. Perhaps the one thing to remember is that the work of art needs space made for it, just like bringing home a newborn baby or puppy. It’s a household affair. Routines will be adjusted, expectations changed. And since artists are the primary caregivers of their work, the capacity to extend themselves will be challenged, until maybe some of them won’t see what’s fallen out of reach.

Disclaimer

Louis Kahn died in 1974, and therefore, used the accepted terminology of “man” to represent humankind. I’ve taken the liberty to change “man” to “human” in his quote to reflect updated terminology, without changing his sentiment.

On Joy

July 31, 2019 by Cheryl Wilder

looking up between a high canopy of trees and a rock face to a sunny clearing

My summer reading list includes The Book of Joy and The Wisdom of Menopause. The Book of Joy is based on a week-long conversation between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, moderated and written by Douglas Abrams. The premise of their conversation was to answer the question: “How do we find joy in the face of life’s inevitable suffering?” The Wisdom of Menopause focuses on women tapping into their changing bodies rather than just getting through menopause.

I won’t get too involved in talking about perimeopause, which started for me about four years ago. But I will say that this summer the internal workings of my body made a drastic shift, prompting me to pick up both books.

Becoming Joy

It’s not that I was joyless when I felt a need to read The Book of Joy. What I felt was a deeper layer of my mind open up, some untapped region that wanted to be fueled or fed or filled. The only thing that made sense to me was to fill it with joy. Fill it with a perspective I already believed in, based on the work I did in my twenties. But more of it. I wanted joy to exist at a deep cellular level and I believed this was my shot, with something inside me newly opened to receive.

I am more joyful than I was just two months ago.

Spreading Joy

My sister patiently waits for my writing to be less sad for her to read. To be fair, I write a lot about situations she has lived and doesn’t necessarily care to relive. I totally get it.

I believe my writing process stems from my healing process after the traumatic car crash. First, I built a foundation to work from. Then, I scrutinized every devastating angle of what happened to find compassion for myself. This is how I tackle writing projects. Hence, lots of emotionally sad and tough material. But, I also want work that brings a smile to the reader’s face, and I want my sister to read my writing. So, I’m working toward bringing the joy I live into my writing more. Offer a little bit of balance anyway.

Which brings me to the teaching that the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu believe is at the core of finding joy: “We are most joyful when we focus on others, not on ourselves. In short, bringing joy to others is the fastest way to experience joy oneself.”

I can’t always control what I write. It’s how I process the world. But I can control some of it. And from now on, I’ll be strengthening my joyful muscles.

On Intent

June 3, 2019 by Cheryl Wilder

Last summer, I gave a sermon at The Community Church of Chapel Hill Unitarian Universalist. An early draft included the four stages of competence. The section didn’t make the final cut, but I learned a new way to think about the learning process.

Four stages of competence:

Unconscious incompetence – You don’t know that you don’t know
Conscious incompetence – Now you know but you don’t know what to do
Conscious competence – You know what to do and you’re learning
Unconscious competence – What you didn’t know is now second nature

The four stages of competence are attributed to management trainer Martin Broadwell. He taught managers that training an employee is a process. Learning a skill takes time and effort. My sermon was about choosing to follow my dream. My first step was to define what “following my dream” meant to me. I needed to know myself better in order to make my dream intentional.

If you Google “living with intention” you’ll find all kinds of articles with tips on mindfulness, purpose, and establishing habits (Disclaimer: I have only skimmed a few of them). All good things. And while I believe in living with intent, I also believe that letting go is part of the process, akin to Broadwell’s stage four of competence.

In the Zone

Unconscious competence is defined by the learned skill becoming second nature. Meaning, I don’t think about what I know, I act upon what I know. The switch from doing to being creates a new relationship with the skill I was learning but now don’t have to think about to execute. Yet, learning to ride a bike or build a stone pathway in the backyard is different than learning who I am and what I want. In order to follow my dream, I had to accept a different relationship with myself.

Stage four was difficult for one main reason: I didn’t want to let go of what I learned because I was afraid I would forget the lesson. Keeping the knowledge front and center in my mind helped me feel in control of my life’s direction. But, there is a difference between trying to live with intent and living with intent, and I believed in the benefits of letting go. So, I did. And guess what? I didn’t forget. Actually the opposite happened.

I liken living with intent to being in the zone, an immersive and energized mental state often exemplified by watching someone like Steph Curry shoot three-pointers. If you’ve seen him, there’s no doubt Curry trusts himself to let go. And what does he do when the game is over? Practice.

On Experience

May 4, 2019 by Cheryl Wilder

When I created my Facebook account in 2008, I felt daunted by the About Me section. Full disclosure: I’m not a natural at this sort of thing. I overthink. I doubt. Rinse and repeat. Not knowing what the world of Facebook would eventually entail (I joined to keep up with friends from graduate school), I summed myself up in one sentence and moved on: I’m an experiential junkie.

That statement is still true. I’m predominantly a kinesthetic and visual learner. I prefer to jump into the messiness of learning by process. To squeeze essence from a moment and make something new with it.

It’s also true, that I grow increasingly interested in the expression of experience through writing, and the study of experience through architecture and web design. When I have time of my own, I do more of the studying and expressing than the physical doing.

In the Name of Customer Service

My service industry career began at the age of 14 with my first job as a busgirl in a family-owned steakhouse, and ended at the age of 32 as a bartender in a neighborhood pool hall. Customer service has a direct in-the-moment focus on caring for someone else’s experience. What I do now (with the exception of client relations) is quite different than customer service, yet I always have the experience of others in mind.

While writing a poem, I’m motivated by someone reading it 100 years in the future. This helps me revise until the poem is clear and concise. Until I’ve fully expressed an idea or feeling or experience.

What I learn from studying architecture is no different. One aspect of design is to consider–and in many cases heighten or add meaning to–the experience of occupants based on the function of the building.

In web design, the practice of incorporating experience is plainly called, User Experience (UX). It sounds simpler than it is to implement, though I could say this about writing and architecture too.

On What Comes Natural

I recently attended a poetry reading where someone (who doesn’t write) asked if I was always thinking about writing, possibly taking notes in my head as we spoke. I understood where he was coming from, the image of the writer with the proverbial notebook. But I answered, no. That’s not how I process.

When I’m out “in the world,” I prefer to immerse inside the experience of it. If I’m lucky, I’m not thinking about anything. I’m simply being.

When I get in the car, that’s a different story. I take notes right away or wait until after a silent car ride where the experience can work its way through my head.

Full immersion is natural for me though of course it also takes effort to sustain. Distraction is so flashy. Responsibility, weighty at times.

I love what I do because I easily and happily become immersed in the work. Which is why I struggle with Facebook, and other in-the-moment social media outlets. I enjoy keeping up with friends, family, and local events. But for me to have fun and be in my natural and preferred state, I would have to immerse myself, which comes at a high cost to my creativity–I don’t have an abundance of time and extra brain space. And I simply can’t afford it.

On Space

April 5, 2019 by Cheryl Wilder

It’s been a few years since my last visit to the East Building of the National Gallery of Art, designed by architect I.M. Pei. Honestly, it’s been too long since I sat in the presence of any well-designed building. I believe buildings that evoke the present moment are magical. The experience inspires me to be something more than myself.

And that’s one of art’s gifts, right? To hone a moment so acutely that a person believes there is no other activity she should be doing but listening / watching / reading / experiencing that charged moment. Architects, like other artists, are intent to create and enhance human experience.

Architect and writer Witold Rybczynski talks about the design process in his book, The Most Beautiful House in the World. At one point he says, “The designer slices through reality.” There’s not much to add to that statement. It is pure poetry.

And yet, Rybczynski describes what I attempt in my own work as a writer, to slice through what I believe to be true, and to make something new out of what I find. I’d even say I aspire to make something habitable. I connect the most with writing when I can make myself at home within it.

One cool factor of architecture is that people are inherently active participants. At the gallery, I get to walk up staircases, stand at the edge of a particularly sharp corner, feel smaller or larger (depending on the mood I bring with me) to the central atrium where, as a visitor, I feel central to the design.

In its simplest form, architecture harmonizes math, poetry, and nature. When it’s executed well, I feel the vibration of its musicality. I sense it waiting for me to sing.

On Concision