In my cursory overview of my personal “big data” project, I mention a desire to gain a better understanding of what, exactly, made relocating more difficult than I anticipated. Words are my stock in trade, so I started collecting life data points, as it were, in an effort to gain a better understanding of myself and reactions to things. To do that, I’ve made extensive use of Evernote. I’m hard pressed to remember what life was like before Evernote, and I’m about convinced this personal project would have been considerably more challenging without it.
I kept a few different Evernote Notebooks:
*Data Points — Books
*Data Points — Lyrics
*Data Points — Middle
*Data Points — Music
*Data Points — New
*Data Points — Old
Sometime over the summer, I consolidated them all into a single Notebook, “Data Points,” and used the tagging feature to keep track of which Notes came from what Notebook. Once consolidated, I found myself looking at over 400 Notes, or Data Points. It was equal parts mind-boggling and fascinating, like reading over old journal entries and thinking “I did what?” or “I remember that” or “Oh yeah! That was so awesome!”
Two things immediately jumped out at me while reviewing all of the Notes: I read, A LOT, and Lyrics are a type of code in my brain.
I know I rotate reading subjects, usually in three to five book increments. I went on a psychology tear, though, in both book (physical and digital) and audiobook format. It started with Surviving Survival: The Art and Science of Resiliance, which I read in physical book format, and Kindle format with a few months or so in between. I made notes and highlights in each version, curious to see if there would be a difference. Yep. And in a way, it became the blueprint, or foundation, of understanding. It helped ground what had otherwise been ethereal.
The concept of resilience, of survival, fascinated me. I read Deep Survival as well. The lessons from both were more applicable than I understood at the time. What also caught my attention was this idea of story, and healing through story. I read Healing the Mind Through the Power of Story which, it turns out, is an actual method of psychotherapy known as Narrative Therapy. And yes, there is a book called Narrative Therapy. Incredibly fascinating stuff, especially from an American medical perspective often dictated by insurance companies. That lead to The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness, by Elyn R. Saks, who is a professor at University of Southern California Gould School of Law, A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, which is decidedly more philosophical yet incredibly useful, Emotional Intelligence, How to Work for an Idiot, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking which is a really interesting read.
Then came The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, The Artist’s Way, The Writing Life and a few other books on writing that I haven’t read since college.
Somewhere along the way I branched out into Buddhism, devouring The Art of Happiness, Getting Unstuck and a three-volume series called Modern Buddhism.
All of the reading material offered a different perspective that took some time to absorb. I confess it seemed trivial in the beginning, especially the stuff on narrative therapy and story telling. I’m a writer. Telling stories is what I do. It’s fun, entertaining and often enlightening. I always learn something during a #GoneClio interview, chatting with teammates during softball or dodgeball or just out at something with other people. Everyone has a story, and everyone wants to tell that story at some point.
Taking stock of Data Points in the context of story and all that I had absorbed, and turning my keen analytical sense on myself, for once, generated a new perspective for me. Much of it resides in Lyrics and Books.
Next task: deciphering Lyrics and Books.