toilet first on the left
Something seems to be happening to me. Maybe it’s age-related and so, along with the hormone that spurs nasal and aural tufts, there’s a chemical cascade that propels me into the back yard to get all horticultural.
Some context: our back yard is a jungle. A small tribe held together by the absolute belief in the sanctity of the abandoned shopping trolley and we’d be none the wiser.
There’s something immensely satisfying about reeling in yards of thorny blackberry stems, unearthing a patio or discovering a WC that’s so old it was actually manufactured locally. Whilst my body is pottering, sawing and carrying, my mind is free to wander and toy with ideas. Some of my best ideas happen here. This could be down to the endorphin high or perhaps the rate of oxygen to the brain (cycling or walking produce a similar state).
By contrast, when I’m at work and stationed in front of the ‘puter, the vast proportion of my time is on problem solving. My attention is trained on the task in hand, traversing a tree of problems which branch into sub-problems and so on. Even if I take a break, I’m still selecting from a set of links and buttons, See…click..see….click… like a lab rat searching for a neurological payoff.
It’s only if when I ditch the choose-your-own-adventure structure that the bigger ideas have room to step forward and quietly introduce themselves.
sixball 