May 30, 2023

I'm reading Verlyn Klinkenborg's excellent book Several Short Sentences about Writing.

One of the important insights in the book has to do with the practice of noticing.

He writes:

Most people have been taught that what they notice doesn't matter,
So they never learn how to notice,
Not even what interests them.
Or they assume that the world has been completely pre-noticed,
Already sifted and sorted and categorized
By everyone else, by people with real authority,
And so they write about pre-authorized subjects in pre-authorized language.

and

Noticing is about letting yourself out into the world,
Rather than siphoning the world into you.

What you notice is filtered through your own experience. Your noticings will be different than mine.

The idea is to be aware of what you notice, to sit with your noticings, and to let ideas emerge from there.

To me, this ties into the balance of creation versus consumption.

"Siphoning" is an excellent description for the time we spend consuming other people's thoughts, creations, and content.

Noticing is the first step, perhaps the precursor, to creating thoughts and work of our own.

The challenge is to practice bringing our noticings to the surface, giving them the time and space and attention.

I hope you notice something interesting today.

Take care,

Camille



About Camille Freeman, DCN (she/her)

Hi there! I'm a clinical herbalist and nutritionist specializing in fertility and menstrual health. I run the Monday Mentoring community of practice and also offer continuing education programs for practicing herbalists and nutritionists (Check out this year's Deep Dive!). I'm also a former professor with the Maryland University of Integrative Health, where I taught physiology, pathophysiology, and mindful eating for 17 years. 

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