I've done a couple of these around PsychCentral: open my work day with a bit of journaling to warm up. John Steinbeck did this twice—when writing Grapes of Wrath and then again when working on East of Eden. ... Earned the Nobel Prize for Literature, guess it helped. Search on brainpickings for the full 411.

Right now, I'm dealing with a mis-match on a consulting gig. Feeling my breathing ease merely by getting the words out of my head on down on this thread.

Here's the rub: get hired because I pitched a different sort of approach, but now, my different sort of approach is ... well, different!

I'm working with a group to build understanding of a complex abstraction (leadership development) from the inside out. My checkwriter keeps asking about the external evidence they "understand." He also seems to discount their words if he (or I, when he insists) don't "tell" them first.

Had an incident a few days ago. We are planning for the first in-person gathering of the group (the other meetings have been over conference calls). One of the members perfectly described the challenge and expected outcomes. Three days later the ckwriter said, "We need to get them clearer on what the expected results are." I reminded him of this contribution from one of the very members he thinks has to be told (again) what the goals are.

Now I have extra work to transcribe a few minutes of the recording to get this down in writing.

I'm feeling some grief or sadness at the dialing down of my original euphoria for what I have started to call the "romance" of this gig. Don't really like the term "romance" but "fantasy" is not as grounded as I am about this (been consulting for a long time), and "plan" is too concrete and doesn't evoke the inner-ness of my feelings. Maybe "daydream" instead of "romance?"

Comments welcome.

Revu2