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As my last moments at Dell faded out of view down the Texas Tollway this morning, I did what I usually do in times of massive renewal. I stopped at Half Price Books. I was looking for "Waiting for your Cat to Bark" but came away with "oh so much more." [Isn't that always the case?]

So one of the books in my stack was "The Artist's Way at Work." The cashier, a very chirpy and chatty woman, said, "Oh The Artist's Way, do you do the Artist's Way?"

"Well, kind of, I've just never seen it for business."

"Yeah," she lamented, pausing for a moment. "I've really been meaning to get back to reading the Artist's Way. I didn't really finish it last time."

"Yeah, it is a great book. And if you get the idea of the "morning pages," if that's all you get from it. And if you DO the morning pages, that process is transformational. That's the heart of the whole thing for me."

"You're absolutely right. They are great! …pause… Hey do you want an Adventure Watch," she said pointing to a kids watch hanging near the register.

"No thanks, I've got plenty of watches…" I looked at the box. "$3.99 well, what does the little thing do? Do you know if it still works?" The box looked pretty mangled. "Do you have any more of them."

"I don't think so."

I pull the box off the rack and here's what it looks like.

[ image of box to come - scanning now ]

Watch
Compass
Red Laser
Timer

All for $3.99 but it was clearly dead. Nothing flashed or dazzled when pushed. I pulled the little blue "guide" out of the box and a bag of tiny batteries fell out. Three different sizes of mini-batteries. Odd!

[ image of bag-o-batteries to come - scanning now ]

"Yeah, my son will love this. Hope it works."

"You can always bring it back if it doesn't."

"Well, there is that…"

She offered to bag my 6 books and I was out the door. A bright inner smile building up.

And I realized what the morning pages were for me. Waking up every morning and writing for a set time gets a person in the habit of conversing with their own thoughts and perhaps dreams that were experienced overnight. But what I think it does is it develops the inner dialogue between you and your narrator. And by cultivating that inner voice and writing it down, your thoughts and dreams are captured in a structured and concrete way.

Now the AW book recommends you not spend much time reviewing older morning pages or even really re-reading them at all. The idea being that the stream of ideas is merely part of the process. And the beauty of letting the stream flow by, picking out pieces of it and writing them down, and then moving on… The beauty of the morning pages process is the big ideas, the thematic desires of your life begin to emerge over and over. As you become more familiar with dialoguing or journaling with your inner process, your inner process develops more influence on your life.

And this blog is now part of my inner stream. I am thinking things out and reasoning with myself as I write. [Everyone does this when they write, this is not unique to me, it's the process.] And I have chosen to reveal just a few bits of my inner stream with others. Some days rambling and conversant [Note the brackets of the other voice.] and other days a video link to something that ignited a feeling in me. And then for some reason I share…

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/artists-way

And then… As Scott Berkun says in The Myth of Innovation, it is not the Eureka! moment that is the game changer. It is what happens after that moment that defines the innovators who are remembered. Because the process of bringing those Eureka! ideas to fruition is just plain hard work not magic.

Tags: about dell, artist's way, dell, future's so bright, half price books, immersion, immersive learning, inner smile, inner voice, journaling, learning by immersion, leaving dell, morning pages, my life at dell, odd image, self-renewal, texas tollway, the artist's way, the artist's way at work, times of massive renewal, tiny batteries, waiting for your cat to bark