New and Different

When I was working on my series of children's books in earnest, one of the imperatives was to create something new and different, a kind of story, or a kind of teaching through the story, that had never, ever been done before. It was a daunting task, filled with hours of creation and revision, research trips to the bookstore and searches of online booksellers. All to make sure that this thing in my head, this attempt to create something new and different for children and parents, was actually as new as I thought it to be. As it turned out, even keeping it feeling new to myself was a challenge, so, at the moment, it sits not on a shelf in a bookstore, but on a shelf in my mind (and in a file on my computer).

Creating something new, and keeping it new, is not easy, whether it's a soap or a blog or just life in general. It requires fresh eyes in the face of daily drudgery, fresh ears in the face of agonizing quiet and deafening noise. But when a person who creates can find those fresh eyes and fresh ears, something new can be born. And that is my challenge every day--to keep from losing myself in the routine of life so that somehow, in some form, this blog can be new and different, and my experience (and yours) of the world can be new and different too.

It used to be said that soap operas moved so slowly and were so formulaic that you could miss days and see virtually the same thing in another episode. Having worked in soaps for quite some time, I would actually say that even the same scene performed multiple times is not the same--it is affected by all sorts of random things--the temperature of the studio, the previous night's sleep of the cast and crew, the placement of a prop. So, if we (people, not characters), in lives lived in a much wider world than a TV studio, can't find the new and different each day, there's more looking and more listening to be done.

For me, the commitment to a daily blog is my reminder to keep my eyes and ears open to discovering new things every day. But each one of us can stand to be reminded to look for the new and different in a life that feels the same from day to day. You, too, can find the new and different. The question is, what will your reminder be?