Poetry

Most of what I write publicly is work-related, yet my passion as a writer is creative, crafting stories and imagines from words. Since junior high, I have been writing song lyrics, poems, and short stories.  Hundreds of lyrics created, some kept the rest tossed.

After How Dyslexics Will Rule the Future is published, I will take a break from writing business books to focus on completing my first novel and publishing a children book series I’ve created.

Here are two poems I wrote.  Salt was written at a restaurant while Brandon met with his tutor.  The second poem was written listening to the remix of Blondie’s Heart of Glass by Philip Glass.

Listening to music, driving, and running are my favorite sources of inspiration, I can listen to a song and ideas for novels, lyrics and screenplays easily flow through my thoughts.

Salt
Calories never counted
Focus is food
To escape while thinking nothing, watching the nightly news
Row after row of generic tables filled with people
Sitting in silence while consuming less than nothing paying more than they should
Emptiness fills the space, accepting how life will be
Hope provides energy, doubt drains leaving a void
He cleans without ever knowing the native language
Earns just enough to send home, a place he hasn’t seen years
Memories fade, people grow old
Workers stare at the clock thinking of where they want to be
Dreaming of a better life
Knowing in the end they’ll be sitting in the rows eating food with too many empty calories.

© Copyright 2011-2018 Dillon 5 LLC and Tiffany Sunday. All Rights Reserved.

Unexpected Event 
Stillness
No motion
She sits quietly at the train station
Waiting
Trains speed past to their destination
Hot wind from the motion blows her hair
Waiting
Until he returns
She sits alone on the bench
Staring at the track
Ignoring passengers
Never seeing the janitor
She waits
Thinking he’ll return
With each tick of the clock,
Life goes by in a blur of mix memories
She attempts to bury,
To erase,
The pain she carries inside

© Copyright 2011-2018 Dillon 5 LLC and Tiffany Sunday. All Rights Reserved.

Twice in 2016, I thought to myself, “Am I going backward? Was I regressing to a place I no longer wanted to be?”

Both times, I was an event participant.  Everything felt dated.  After several attendees voiced concern, the coordinator stated, “That’s the way it’s always been done, no need to change.”  Staring back at the individual, I felt like an alien.

I don’t want to go backward, especially after I’ve spent so much mental energy moving forward.  The last thing I wanted to do was to get stuck in another rut.

In all of my experiences, there has never been a time where going backward proved beneficial.

Not once.

As an impatient movie viewer, films are consumed while working on the computer with the audio playing in the background or during dinner. Last night’s working selection was Whiskey Tango Foxtrot starring Tina Fey as Kim Barker.  The movie is based on Barker’s book.

I’ve been thinking about Tina Fey’s character and the reason she became a war correspondent.  Each day she faithfully ran on a treadmill. One day, she noticed the constant motion was moving the machine backward across the carpet.  In her mind, she was regressing in life instead of gaining.

Again, I am consumed with the question “Am I moving forward or not gaining at all?”

Change surrounds us, yet for many, there is no movement, there is no internal growth, there is only redundancy.  The creation of goals reworked year after year.  There is comfort in knowing what to expect each and every minute of every day.  Being too comfortable can evolve into compliancy distorting reality masquerading as happiness.

2016 was a mixed bag as I was surprised and pleased with the growth of my business while conversely dealing with several sobering realizations.  From the new awareness, I gained wisdom enabling me to move forward once again.  I am not the same person I was six months.  My approach to problems and how I formulate decisions is different.   My worldview is constantly evolving.

When you think you are moving backward, stop and ask yourself why you feel this way and what could be the triggers? Often we ignore our inner voice.  Look beyond the usual answers and responses, what else is under the surface.  Is there a decision or something you are avoiding that needs to be addressed?

If nothing comes to mind, then think of the most outside of the box answer.  Anything? If not, let your mind noodle on why for while.  When you least expect an answer it will appear.

I believe the only way we can move forward and create a meaningful life is to avoid events and people who cause us to move backward.   Our world is full of too many amazing things to be satisfied with how it’s always been done or remaining stuck in a rut refusing to evolve.

What Matters Most Must Never Be At the Mercy of What Matters Least.
Goethe

As an avid runner, I’m run six days a week in my neighborhood. Today’s run was a treat, a beautiful fall morning, cool and crisp with a slight dampness from the dew. My pace was faster as my body adapted to the chilly temperature. Fall is my favorite time of the year to run.

My mind is most creative during my runs and I am always thinking about something.  My mind settles into a quiet meditation on the longer runs as I have sorted through my thoughts by the third mile.

This morning, I was thinking about Work Simply by Carson Tate, a book I picked up at the library two weeks ago.  At first, I read through a couple of pages and put the book down.

I thought, “just another how to be productive” book.  I always give books a second chance, and while waiting for my son at band practice, I opened the book again and started reading. I realized Tate’s book was different.

In the book, she talks about how we’ve been trained to use planners and the amount of time we can waste managing our to-do lists. Her words started working their way through my mind as I thought about what she was saying.

During the run, I kept thinking about how much time we waste inputting data in our planners, especially scheduling every tiny detail of our life down to five minutes to meditate, five minutes to walk around our cube, five minutes to plan a strategy for clients.

Back when we were transitioning from the farm to the factory, managers were taught that workers could not be allowed to think for themselves.  We, the workers, must be told what to do every minute of the work day. This mentality has lead to our modern day busyness, must stay busy, must stay busy…

We are obsessed with busywork in American.

It is our badge of honor, the Holy Grail of cubeville or Starbuck’s.  We write in our emails and text messages – “I’m slammed!, My bandwidth is tapped!, and I’m swamped!” We work diligently to complete our planner checklist.  We compare notes on how many emails are in our inbox as if it is a ranking in our importance. More emails = higher pay?

Our ego and self-worth are wrapped up in our busyness. Being busy is not the same as being productive. There is a difference.  I think about the productive individuals who lived hundreds of years ago.  They did not have any cool tech tools to help them and they produced an enormous amount of work.

Dozens of thoughts filled my mind as I connected the dots and I thought “what if, we didn’t assign time to projects? Before you freak out, I know what you’re thinking, “How could we bill clients? and “How would we know if we’re profitable or not?”

What I am suggesting is that we work on the projects instead of spending so much time writing down every detail into our planners. What if we spent time focusing on the project and what needs to be done? No fancy rules just focus our time on what is important.

Since reading Tate’s book, I’ve stopped scheduling ridge time slots for client work; I am referring to work completed outside the client’s office. I am more relaxed and can focus on what I need complete instead of feeling guilty for ignoring my planner.

We’ve been brainwashed to believe the only way we can be productive is to create highly detailed strict; factory styled schedule to dictate our day.

We think there is no other way to work.  I question every part of how I plan my day.  I have two whiteboards in the office. One board, I write my weekly schedule. The second whiteboard is where I list critical action items such as add Google Analytics to the new website, schedule my car for service, and so forth.  You get the idea.

I have greater confidence in my ability to get work done.  This past week, I have started writing in the mornings immediately following my runs.  I know without a doubt this is the most creative time of the day. I have written more in three days in less time.

 Our brains are not binary, we need time to think.  We cannot turn our thinking on and off like a light bulb.

I believe our planners are obsolete as we are not factory workers anymore.  Our world and how we work is undergoing a significant transformation.  We’re knowledge workers and innovation and growth are not derived from breaking our day into tiny slots of time. Innovation comes from our creativity and having time think and solve difficult problems.

To-do lists have a place when organizing specific tasks and projects, these lists are not meant to be carried with us each day, depleting our mental energy along the way.

Nor will our productivity increase by using more planners, more scheduling apps, or creating more busy work, these are all leftovers from the Industrial Revolution Era.

I’ll leave you with a thought – a person can be organized without writing and scheduling every detail into a planner.