My Bloscar Nomination Interview

Hey Everyone,
I know I said I would be taking the weekend off but I couldn't resist taking the time to get on the blog and catch up on some commenting :) 
I wanted to include a link if any of you were interested.  It is the interview I did for my nomination of the Bloscar.  Check it out if you are interested at EISY MORNING - Aaron Outward Interview

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Reducing My Visits from 2 to 3 - Week in Review

Time to Grow Contest Update

The race for first place opened up a little this past week.  We had someone take a big jump into the lead with 18 referrals.  Second place is a much tighter race with one person at 6 referrals and another at 5 referrals.  Don’t get discouraged though and give up if you are interested in the contest.  You can easily catch the leaders.  Remember the contest runs until April 1^st, so you all have plenty of time to catch up, just keep in mind The Tortoise and the Hare fairy tale.  I am so happy with the results so far but would love for the blog and its message to reach so many more people.  So keep flexing those networks and letting people that you think would enjoy or gain something from the blog know about itJ

Supporting this Site

You may notice slight changes to the side bar of the site recently.  I have been really unhappy with the advertising company I had been using and the quality of ads they were providing so I have removed them from the site.   The contests that I run were being funded by this advertising.  I want to continue to run contests throughout the year so I am going to try something new out.

You will notice there are a couple links to amazon.ca on the site now.  If you ever are planning to purchase anything through them please go through these links.  By doing so a small percentage will paid to the site and I will be able to continue running my contests J  I am not asking you to go out and buy from them, just if you already were going to use them you might as well use the links J  Amazon is an excellent site that offers an incredible range of products, I would check them out when you have a spare minute.

Health Update

I had a very good checkup with the doctor on Tuesday this week.  The cocktail of suppressants seem to controlling my skin GVHD very well now.  The staff doctor was so happy with the progress that he is planning to start tapering my steroids next week.  He wants me to remain at the same dose of steroid for one more week to give my body a little more time to stabilize the GVHD before the tapering begins.  The best part is since everything else is stable he gave me Friday off of having to go to the hospital for a checkup. 

When we do begin the taper, we are going to move slower this time around.  In the past we did large drops in the steroid dose at a time which caused flare ups in my GVHD and subsequent large increases in my steroid dose to get it back under control.  These large swings in steroid dose can be really nasty for my body so I am pretty excited to take things slowly this time around and hopefully reduce the chance of another flare up.

 The funny thing is this week my trips to the hospital for checkups were supposed to be reduced to once a week.  Of course that couldn’t happen, so instead of going just once this week I had to go three times. Go figure eh, you can never win J

Last week when they did the CT scan of my lungs, the doctors saw some water around my heart.  To be safe they wanted to do an echocardiogram to get a better image to make sure it was nothing to worry about.  This is very common for people coming through such a heavy chemotherapy protocol combined with the high doses of drugs I am on.  I technically don’t find out the results until next Tuesday but the Sonographer was a friend of mine from high school and he let me know there was nothing to worry about.

Thursday I was back to the hospital to see the dentist for my 60 day post transplant checkup.  This is a scheduled checkup examine the condition of the mouth.  The combination of my present drug cocktail, with the Total Body Irradiation, and GVHD can cause a reduced amount of saliva in the mouth.  Again, this is a very common condition post transplant. 

I do have GVHD in my mouth but not really bad, but my saliva level is lower than he would like it to be.  Saliva is one of our major defense mechanisms against bacteria in the mouth which causes cavities.  To help protect my teeth until my saliva levels return I will begin using fluoride every day.  So they took dental impressions to create custom fluoride trays for my teeth. 

I go back next week to get my new “toy” and learn how to use it.  Hopefully this fluoride will taste better than what I remember it tasting like as a kid J  All in all it was a pretty good week on the health front!

Personal Update

With all the trips to the hospital this week combined with posting on the blog I pretty busy. So I didn’t get up to too much else this week.  In my spare time I did a lot of reading on my camera.  I decided to tackle the user manual for my camera but instead of the Nikon edition I am using one written by a professional photographer, Thom Hogan.  I really enjoy reading his photography website and this version adds a lot more context and explanations to the concepts and components of the camera.  I enjoy learning the intricate details of the camera; the only downside is it is 790 pages so it is quite an undertaking!  I am a quarter of the way through but thoroughly enjoying it.  I sprinkled in some other reading this week so I didn’t get too bored J

I also went for my longest walk to date on Wednesday of about 45 minutes.  It was so beautiful out so I decided to go for a walk to do a couple errands.  In actuality it was more of a stroll than a walk but I fit right in with the retiree’s of Port Credit perfectly ;~) The walk made me feel great but near the end I was getting wiped.  Afterward it left me pretty gassed for the remainder of the day.  I intend to keep slowly pushing myself so that I get stronger, but it is a little like walking a tightrope to properly manage my energy levels.

Posting update

I have decided to only post one day on the weekends now.  I want to continue doing the dialogue post where I post something thought provoking and we all discuss it.  I have really enjoyed hearing your viewpoints and thoughts over these past few weeks and don’t want to stop that discussion day.

Taking a day off will enable me time to recharge my batteries and keep the blog content to the quality you have come to expect.    Plus I am sure you need a break and don’t want to hear from me every day of the week anyways :P 

Today’s Picture

It really has nothing to do with this post.  I was just going through some photos from last year and came across this one.  It is one of my favorites but I forgot about it, so I thought I would share it.

Oh I almost forgot if you haven’t gone and voted for my Bloscar please do so.  The voting closes Sunday.

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The Two Biggest Myths of Creative Thinking

 

The key question isn’t “What fosters creativity?” But it is why in God’s name isn’t everyone creative? Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? I think therefore a good question might be not why do people create? But why do people not create or innovate? We have got to abandon that sense of amazement in the face of creativity, as if it were a miracle if anybody created anything.” — Abraham Maslow

In my post What To Do When Everything Is Going Wrong, I spoke about dealing with the frustrations of the infamous “creative block”.  This occurs anytime we can’t get our creative juices flowing, but what really is creativity? 

If you listen to Osho being creative “means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.”

This is a very poetic definition, but it only feeds the first myth of creativity:

·         Only some people are capable of creative thinking

When most people think of creativity they often only associate it only with those in the arts, like artists, writers, and musicians.  Creative thought is much more widespread than only living within the arts. 

We all require creativity in our lives for independent thought and problem solving.  As George Lois said “creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.” So if creativity can solve any problem, it must be available to more people than just the artists.  In fact, we are all capable of creative thought we just have to learn how to foster it.  If you think about it, how else could our greatest leaders get to where they are without creative thought?

This brings me to the second myth of creativity:

·         It just comes naturally to creative thinkers. 

We are not creative machines; the inspirations that feed our creativity must be worked at.  In our quest for creativity we can be notorious for focusing solely on that one endeavour for an extended period of time.  By doing this, we often achieve the opposite of our desired effect and stifle our ability to be creative; thus, experiencing the dreaded creative block.  So how do we feed our creativity without stifling it?

To help us understand this let’s take a look some of the most creative thinkers of all time. Leonardo Da Vinci is most known for his paintings, The Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, two of the most identifiable pieces of art ever created.  But he was so much more than just a painter; he was also a sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer. Michelangelo is most known as a painter (The Sistine Chapel) and sculptor (The Statue of David) but he was also an architect and engineer.

If I was to stop at these two examples, although they are great, they also continue to feed the first myth of creativity, but we find great creative thinkers anywhere we look, even in the science community, which usually thought of as being rigid and stifling creativity.  Albert Einstein is most renowned scientists of all time with his work on the Theory of Relativity and physics but he was also a renowned philosopher.  Thomas Edison holds 1093 US patents in his name and is easily regarded as the most prolific inventor in history but he was also a successful businessman as well.  How could either of these men achieve their amazing accomplishments and accolades without the presence of creative thought?  They couldn’t that’s how ;)

What does each of these creative thinkers have in common?  On first glance they all contributed significant masterpieces to their respective disciplines but more importantly each one had multiple outlets and focuses outside their main discipline.

For me personally I enjoy having multiple outlets for my creativity.  In fact, most of the inspiration for my new posts come when I using channelling my thoughts and energy into one of my other outlets that have nothing to with this blog.

We are all capable of creative thought.  In fact, this requirement for creative thinking is going to become more prominent in our society as time progresses.  As Edward de Bono said, “As competition intensifies the need for creative thinking increases. It is no longer enough to do the same thing better . . . no longer enough to be efficient and solve problems” 

As this need for more creative thought emerges we must discard the myths often associated with creativity. 

·         We are all capable of thinking creatively.

·         We must feed our creativity with multiple outlets.  Creative thought does not just come naturally, it is work.

Hey if I can come up with new posts each day and a decent picture here and there, anyone can be creative right ;) 

I would love to hear your thoughts on the myths of creativity.  Do you agree with them?  Did I miss one?  Oh I chose today’s picture not because it was my sharpest and best picture but because it was me attempting some creativity one day with my camera. 


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It Can't Be a Leukemia Blog Without A Leukemia Diagnosis Story

This solely leukemia blog anymore as it has grown over the past year just like me.  Although this blog does not completely focus on just Acute Leukemia anymore, the Leukemia was the catalyst that caused the creation and inspiration of this blog.  I have tried over the past year to touch on issues related to chemotherapy, treatment, and bone marrow transplant, but my Acute Leukemia has provided this blog with so much more important things to share when dealing with cancer; lessons, insights and reflections on self improvement and personal growth. 

To know where you are going you have to know where you came from.  With this in mind I wanted to create this post to bring together the story of the beginning of my journey with Acute Leukemia.  If you haven't read these posts before I highly reccommend them.  If you have I would say read them again, they are a good read ;)

A Day That Will Live In Infamy - The Story Of My Acute Leukemia Diagnosis Part 1
A Second Day of Infamy - The Story Of My Acute Leukemia Diagnosis Part 2
A Third and Final Day of Infamy - The Story Of My Acute Leukemia Diagnosis Part 3


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BLOSCARS - Your Votes are Needed!!

I have been nominated for a BLOSCAR in the category of Most Helpful Blog by the Sunny and her blog Sunny Sings the Blues. I feel so honoured and humbled to be recognized by my fellow bloggers and nominated in this category, I actually feel speechless.

Voting begins today (Wednesday) and it lasts until Sunday when the actual Oscars are. 

My blog is nominee #12 and is at the very bottom of the page.  Scroll Down to the bottom and click the vote button!

I have put up the button that will link you to the nomination page at the bottom of this post and on the right hand side of the homepage so it will be easy to find.
If you have a few extra minutes today since this post is so short please go check out Sunny’s blog.  Her writing is phenomenal and her blog is one of favourites.  I always make sure her latest posts are one of my first reads of the day.  I don’t want to give to much of a spoiler on her blog with my biases though because I believe one of the beautiful things about her blog is each person will take away a little something different from it similar to here at AaronOutward. 

Thank you so much to all of my readers, and again a special thanks to Sunny for nominating me.   
So if you like my blog and feel that it is worthy to win a BLOSCAR then please vote for me.

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What Do You Do When Everything Is Going Wrong?

Have you ever had those days that no matter how hard you try to focus on completing something you can’t?  Instead of being able to accomplish what you set out to, you end up sitting in frustration watching the seconds turn to minutes, and god forbid the minutes turn to hours, with each passing moment adding to your frustration.

Over the past year this blog has “allowed” me to experience this type of frustration on many occasions and at many different levels ;~) 

Why not just not write when you are feeling like this, you may ask? For the most part I try not to but sometimes those hours can turn into a day or two and then I feel the pressure to get back to it.  You have made commitment to taking time out of your busy day to read what I write, so as a writer I feel a commitment to providing quality content for you to read.J 

Don’t worry though I have adapted some writing techniques over the past year of blogging to help avoid these frustrations as much as possible.  When I first starting blogging I would just sit down and expect “genius” to flow onto the screen.  Writing like becomes work and not enjoyable very quickly because creating the post becomes ten times as hard as it should be and instead of “genius” the quality of the content is just decent. 

To help avoid these frustrations I have adapted two techniques.  First, I try to keep at least one post ahead so on the days I can’t write I don’t have to but I can keep up my posting schedule.  The other technique is I have changed my writing process.  Instead of just sitting down to write a whole post at once, I now write a post in three iterations, taking a break away from the post between each of the iterations. 

First, I sit down and get all my thoughts and ideas down on the page.  The final result of this stage I call my “idea skeleton” because it forms the basic structure of the future post.  To most this skeleton would be gibberish, but the goal isn’t readability, it is just getting my thoughts out.  I try to have a bank of these “skeletons” so I create them anytime I come up with an idea for a post.  The second stage I sit down and start crafting the rough draft of the post by linking the thoughts together and trying to add some flow.  After another “break” from the post I come back with a fresh mind, do the final proof read, and publish it. 

These two techniques have helped a lot with reducing those frustrating times of sitting and staring but there are still sometimes I sit down to create the draft and the words just won’t flow, thus the frustrations start to come back.

I experienced this frustration recently two weeks ago. I had already used up my buffer posts so I knew I had to write.  When I sat down to do the draft no matter what I did though I just couldn’t find the words I wanted.  So instead of writing, I ended up sitting and staring at the screen instead.  With each passing second of staring, my frustration grew.  Just as I was about to boil over, I received an email from a fellow leukemia survivor I have been chatting with.  He was sending me some quotes that helped him through his tough times, this was one of the quotes he sent:

“There will come a day when you'll feel like shit and you'll want to give up on this life and everything else.  When that day arrives, save yourself some trouble and don't do thing.  Just take a nap.” - Unknown


Talk about the perfect example of the interconnectedness of our world we spoke about in last week’s post, Why We Are Given Challenges.  Just as I was facing what seemed like an unbeatable challenge, I was provided with the answer.  It was like a light bulb went off, “You can’t write because you forcing it and are tired.”  I immediately got up and went for a nap.  It was just what I needed.  After my nap I felt so recharged that I gave the draft another try, and to my surprise the words flowed as easily as they ever have. That day taught me you can’t force writing, you can only do it when you feel inspiration. 

This can go way beyond writing and be applied to our everyday lives.  You can’t force anything; our best work will always come when it is inspired and not workmanlike.  When things aren’t going the way we may like and we are getting frustrated, instead of giving up we just need to take that proverbial “nap”.  It can even be a metaphorical nap, we just need to get time away from what is causing us all the frustration so our brains can recharge.  95%  of the time this will solve all our problems and we will come back with a fresh mind and complete our task.  And the best part is......you have the perfect excuse to take real naps whenever you need ;)

I would love to hear if you have any tips or techniques that you use to help overcome difficulties and frustrating times :)
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