10/2/14 Creative Walking: 1880.9 to 1890.1 Miles

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Virtual Hike Animated Street View The animated street view along route 12 is generally correct. Google doesn't agree with the starting and ending way points. The shoulder is wide and road visibility is good which would make for fast walking.  The route passes through Pomeroy, Washington. It is the county seat of Garfield County. Fires destroyed half the business district in 1890 and 1898.

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Flat tire
Wilson had a flat tire this morning. I'll have to get a self-sealing tube. I think he felt bad being left behind in the garage.

Creativity Process
This is a simplified explanation of the creative process. If you want the super-deep explanation, it's in "The Kedushat Levi, Sefer Beresheis," which I translated from the Hebrew and Aramaic.

Creative Process Levels

The process has three levels. The black is the creative mind where new ideas come from. We are completely unaware of what happens there. If we have a thought, it's not IN the creative mind. It is coming FROM the creative mind. This is what is meant by light coming from darkness.

The yellow is enlightenment. "Enlightenment" which is when an idea emerges from the creative mind into that part of the mind that talks to itself.

Eventually, we decide on an action, which I represented with the green donut. 

At the beginning of each walk I establish a creative mindset. It's always the same. I ask my subconscious to give me two pages of notes I can use to develop a blog post. 

Usually, my creative mind is silent until about 2.7 miles into the walk. Then it gives me something to work with.

This is like the central fountain in a pool of fountains. The central fountain is the idea that enlightens the mind. 

Then the mind starts an internal discussion and other ideas start erupting. This is when I start taking notes because thoughts are fleeting and can be lost.

The water falls back into the pool when I write and there is a completed product that is said to be "done." Once something is "done" it can't be changed any more than a word, once spoken, can't be changed.

My Fitbit Pedometer records my step count for each five-minute period. You can see the creativity happening during today's walk. For the first 30 minutes, my stride rate ranged from 125 to 132 steps per minute. Then it suddenly dropped. That's when i started stopping to take notes. 

In the last 10 minutes, I was back into the creativity mode. I stopped for coffee at the Loaf 'N Jug for about 10 minutes, and then there was the quick half mile walk home. 

Immediately after, while the ideas were still fresh, I made this blog post.

Yesterday's walk was incredibly easy. The walk this morning was also a snap. The cycle is working. Getting the 3.5 miles of random steps during the day is still an annoyance. In the next cycle, I may drop that requirement. For now, I'll complete the cycle as planned.

In the beginning of today's walk, my internal coach kept prodding me to walk faster. I questioned the advisability of walking fast today since there are three more hard days before the break. He said to let him govern the pace, which I did. Today's long walk was also easy.