The heartbreak of creativity: a public service announcement
A version of this piece originally aired on CBC Radio’s “Breakaway.” You can hear the original audio version here
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Hello, I’m Ross Murray, beloved columnist, salad dressing connoisseur and author of the best-selling self-help book Don’t Kid Yourself, Mister. Today, I’d like to talk about a condition that afflicts 2 out of 6 Canadians and in some areas as many as 1 in 3. I’m talking about… creativity.
Creativity can strike anyone, anytime, though probably not before 10 a.m. Creative people are just like you and me, except with weirder clothes and occasionally dubious hygiene. Creativity is a highly distracting affliction, but, with regular treatment and flattery, most creative people lead full, productive lives… Let me try that again: most creative people lead full lives.
There are two types of creativity. Some people are born creative, although early creativity remains difficult to diagnose. Many parents become convinced that their…
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What Will the Future Hold for Refreshingly Mature It Girl Lupita Nyong’o?
Don’t Undermine Your Comment with a Plug
We talk a lot about commenting — why it’s important, what makes a good comment, how to moderate a vibrant comments section.
There’s one surefire way to get your comment ignored or worse, deleted: leaving a shameless plug. If you’re going to take the time to visit others’ blogs and press the “comment” button, avoid this basic mistake.
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Teaching as Self-Sacrifice
Like everyone else, I’m heir to the prejudices of my culture. So even though I know firsthand that teaching is a profession, on some level I see it as an act of self-sacrifice, as a hard path undertaken for the greater good.
![](https://rhi123456.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/14.jpg ""Yes, I know, it's hard to tell the difference. The main one is that we have a lot more PD."")
This might not sound like a prejudice. Not a damaging one, anyway. It paints a generous portrait of teaching as noble and virtuous—a useful antidote to the too-common caricature of educators as lazy, union-fed bureaucrats. This ethic of “the greater good,” in fact, helped draw many of us into the profession. What we lack in salary and prestige, we make up for in civic-mindedness, in moral conviction, in feeling we’ve taken a high road through our professional life.
But all this high-mindedness has a dark underbelly. In painting the choice to teach as an act of self-sacrifice, I believe that we may harm our schools more than we…
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When a place becomes home
A friend of ours noted
that this path
through America-yama Park
and up the hill
by the Foreigners Cemetery,
is the bit of Yokohama
I’ve photographed
most frequently.
She said she wished
she’d done the same
in Bangkok
where they’ve lived
for years.
This path,
my favourite part of Yokohama,
is my walk to school
and home.
I know the afternoon light
on this path
at 4:37
and 5:03
and 6:12.
I’m acquainted with
all its disparate goldens,
have memorized the lengths
of shadows cast
by trees
and tombstones.
I wear this path
on the inside.
In Autumn
we decided to stay
in Japan
another year
and then for more…
for as many as we can.
A declaration
of place-love
as fierce
as we’ve felt.
Unexpectedly
my relationship
with this path
began to shift.
For thirty months
this path
has been inhabited
by changing seasons
of fairy-people
and magic.
On…
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Happy
If your happy you will feel like this.;-) 😀 🙂 =-O :O. If your sad you feel like this. 😦 😥 :-[
Cake Wisdom
I am one of 25 people in a circle of grown men and women, sitting in a dimly lit room. This circle surrounds a table overrun with treats. There is candy, there are chips, there is soda. In the centre, there is a cheaply-made, cheaply-decorated grocery-store cake.
I am celebrating with strangers. It’s Odessa’s ‘Cake Day’. I don’t know yet what these people will mean to me. All I know is that there is a gorgeous woman being honoured, and that this woman, despite being addicted to marijuana, has not smoked it for an entire year.
I am a member of what is called an ‘after care’ group. Everyone in the room has a substance abuse problem, has completed a number of intensive sessions, and has committed to either abstinence or moderation.
My first impression is general: They all look pretty normal. My second, more specific: I cannot believe this…
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