Inexorable Journey

Usually I put a quote of the week at the bottom of my blog, but this week, the quote is the blog.

This comes from material that the author, agent, and teacher Donald Maass said at a workshop over the weekend.

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Writing is about custom-building the hardest journey our protagonist can make. Too many writers write what happens next. This is a plot journey, which is a skeleton. Plots and skeletons are important, but if all you have is the skeleton, the story is going to be boney and incomplete.

The inner journey is an inexorable voyage from one strongly-held mindset to an even better and, usually, more flexible world view, equally strongly-held, but which requires more compassion, understanding, and humanity than the protagonist though him or herself capable of possessing.

~ Condensed from presentation by Donald Maass, 2013 May 4

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I believe this is true. Care to discuss it?

How do we switching from writing plot-based stories to journey-based stories?

Red Ink and Invisible Powder

Sharon Wildwind

In Nursing Arts, my classmates and I learned to take temperatures, make beds, fill hot water bottles, dispense medications, and perform other hands-on skills. The class was held in a ward-classroom of eight beds. At the beginning of one class our instructor had us press our hands onto a red ink pad. We went about making beds, taking each other’s temperatures and dispensing M & Ms into paper cups to simulate pouring medications.

Within twenty minutes red fingerprints covered the ward. We spent the rest of the class cleaning. The lesson was a visual reminder of how fast and far we would spread bacteria if we didn’t wash our hands well and often enough.

I was reminded of that class this past week when I went looking for an update on the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA). I had one simple question: was it safe to shred receipts, which are coated BPA powder? The answer was not simple.

BPA has at least three strikes against it.

Strike #1: BPA has been in a lot of things: food and beverage containers, water bottles, baby bottles, and baby toys like teething rings. Though some restrictions have been placed on its use, there is still a lot of it around. It is on one very important thing: thermal-paper receipts, those aggravating bits of paper that clutter our purses or fanny pack.

Strike #2: Since thermal papers coatings are a powder BPA rubs off on everything the receipt touches, and it stays there until that object rubs against something else.

Strike #3: Some research indicates that BPA is perhaps more toxic at low-levels than at higher levels.

Come run errands with me.

I start at the bank to get cash from the automatic teller. I also get a paper receipt, which is likely coated with BPA powder. The money has a high probability of being contaminated with bacteria, cocaine, and more BPA powder. Cocaine and bacteria aren’t absorbed through unbroken skin, so unless I have a cut, rash, or chapped hands those two contaminants sit on my skin until I wash my hands. BPA is absorbed through unbroken, healthy skin. As I head for my car, BPA on my hands heads for my blood stream.

Since I’ve stuffed receipts into my purse for ages, everything in there—comb, keys, wallet, cell phone, hand lotion, make-up and so on—is BPA contaminated. Open my car door, now it’s on the door. Touch the steering wheel, now it’s on the steering wheel. Rub my eye, it reaches the blood stream faster through mucous membranes.

At the grocery store, I wipe the cart handle with anti-bacterial wipes the store provides. Great for removing bacteria, but the alcohol plus the rubbing action likely drives BPA through my skin faster.

Do my shopping, go through the checkout, collect another receipt and start the process over.

Or maybe I ask the cashier to put the receipt in the bag with my groceries where it rubs against the bag itself and the cans, jars, and bottles inside, depositing powder. Hopefully my fruits, vegetables, bread, etc. are in bags, but then again, with the desire to be more eco-friendly, I don’t always bother putting fresh food in plastic bags any more. After all, are my apples really going to suffer riding around loose in a cloth shopping bag until I get home? I didn’t think so until today.

When I reach home maybe I leave my receipts in my purse. Maybe I put them in the box where we collect bits of paper needed to balance our check book. Eventually, after doing the balancing act, receipts go into the shredder—must be conscious of identity theft— giving me an opportunity to breathe aerosolized BPA powder and throughly contaminating my shredder.

Off go those clear plastic bags of shredded paper to the recycling center to begin their journey into other kinds of paper, including more cash register receipts and toilet paper, which currently has about a 50% chance of being containing BPA powder and the cycle begins again.

Sometimes it seems that when we solve one problem, we create two in its place.

If you can live with the idea, stop getting receipts. If you can’t live with that idea—I can’t—here are some cleaning tips gleaned from the Internet.

Clean the most highly-contaminated objects and areas, those places where you’ve previously housed receipts: purses, backpacks, glove compartments, cloth grocery bags, boxes where you store household records, shredder, etc. Wash them or at least rinse them with soap and water, using paper towels which are then disposed. Wash or wipe everything that’s been in those areas, like everything in your purse.

To prevent future recontamination, bring a plastic bag with you. Ask the clerk to put the receipt in that bag and close it tightly. If you’re doing self-check out, touch the receipt as little as possible as you put it in the bag.

Never crumple a receipt and throw it away. Apparently crumpling releases the most powder onto your hands.

Wash your hands as soon as you can after handling receipts. At a minimum, wash your hands when you get home. Consider using liquid soap in a dispenser. Rubbing BPA-contaminated hands on bar soap transfers the powder to the soap.

Never shred or recycle receipts. I know, I know. Identity theft and the ecology. I’m not keen on either receipts being out there with my credit card number on them or BPA leaching into landfills, but is that worse than aerosolizing BPA in my office or it ending up in my recycled papers? I honestly don’t know.

Above all, have hope. Someone clever will come up with a solution to all of this.

Quote for the week

Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change - this is the rhythm of living. Out of our overconfidence, fear; out of our fear, clear vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress.
~ Bruce Barton, (1886 – 1967), author, ad executive—he created Betty Crocker—and member of the U. S. House of Representatives

What to do when your left brain lags

Sharon Wildwind

For decades I had a job that required tons of left-brain thinking. In addition, coming from a family that specialized in crisis mode, I was the designated adult. I suspect that I designated myself, but heck, someone had to do it.

Back in 1979, when I first read Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, I estimated 85% of my thinking came from my left brain hemisphere and only 15% from the right.

A lot has changed. My current estimate is 65% right and 45% left. Some really good weeks, I manage to stay in right-brain mode most of the time. Therein lies the problem.

My left-brain to-do list grows daily. I simply can not get my head around the letters I need to write, the accounting I need to update, the filing overflowing from the desk to the floor. My left-brain refuses to cooperate, even though I don’t find these tasks onerous, or even boring.

For a while I wondered if, at birth, we’re issued left- and right-brain ration books. Perhaps I’d clipped all my left-brain coupons and had none left to spend. On closer examination I realized the problem was in the process of switching sides. My turn-on-left-brain switch seems to be stuck in a permanent off position.

I went down my health checklist. I’m doing great about preventive maintenance. I even added regular meditation and breathing exercises a few weeks ago.

I went to the Internet to see if anyone had tips on how to unstick the switch. One site suggested doing practice left-brain activities, like crossword puzzles, before doing real left-brain activities, like balancing your checkbook. This struck me as less than helpful, because if I could get into gear for doing left-brain activities, the problem would solve itself.

I’d never given much thought to the switching process. I imagined it as turning out one light when I left a room; turning on another light as I entered the next room. What I didn’t know was, was it an immediate on-off switch like light switches, or a slope with one side powering up as the other side powers down, or an off-pause-on sequence, like that interval walking down the hall after leaving the kitchen, but before entering the living room.

I did find one useful bit of research, which suggested, under controlled laboratory conditions, the test subjects, on average, switched from one side of the brain to the other 4-6 times in every 30 second test period. Musicians and dances made more frequent switches. Buddhist monks, people with bi-polar disorder, and mathematicians make fewer switches. In general, the left brain requires more precise conditions to turn on; the right brain requires (or at least tolerates) more loosey-goosey conditions. 

As I stared at that on-line article, I had a blinding connection. Anyone else see it? A few weeks ago I started meditation; Buddhist monks take much longer than average to switch from one side of the brain to the other. Buddhist monks meditate several times a day.

No way am I in the monk category. It’s a victory if I can get two focused minutes at a time. But maybe meditation really is that powerful. Maybe I’m especially susceptible to whatever good chemical things meditation does in the brain. Maybe this is absolute co-incidence and I don’t have enough information to know what the heck is going on. But it was quite a shock to think that small change was having a noticeable effect so soon after I made it.

Am I going to give up meditation? Heck, no. But I think I’m going to balance it out with some dancing as well. Maybe my brain will sort itself out if I give it some change brain sides faster encouragement in addition to the change brain sides slower encouragement.

In the mean time, can you leave me any suggestions you have for switching over to left-brain activities? I’d appreciate it.

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Quote for the week

Any active sportsman has to be very focused; you’ve got to be in the right frame of mind. If your energy is diverted in various directions, you do not achieve the results. I need to know when to switch on and switch off: and the rest of the things happen around that. Cricket is in the foreground, the rest is in the background.

~ Sachin Tendulkar, Indian cricketer