When a Good Thing Happens

I felt like maybe I’d reached the end. Maybe the applause had stopped.

Had I finally found that one tremendous failure and didn’t recognize it? Maybe my optimistic spirit was keeping me from seeing, from knowing what everyone already knew, but couldn’t tell me.

It was possible. I might have turned down a lonely road so wrong, so lost in space I had no hope of coming back. How would I know?

Each day I’d remember my mother saying, “You keep putting one foot in front of the other. You reach inside, pick yourself up, and keep on going.” I hadn’t found another option. My heart was telling me it was a matter of time. The universe was not a bad or angry place. Was I delusional?

Every day the glorious sunrise came. It wasn’t for me. The sun set on my resilience. People became my air, my food – they saw a me that I so wanted. The fog of not knowing and wondering whether my believing would be my mistake was the greatest test of all. Iwondered if you could somehow walk off a cliff and not know that you had fallen until you landed.

Then a good thing happened.

That good thing wasn’t my first idea. No, no I’d had so many. It was the first that had the magic. It had the stuff of stars that makes ideas remarkable and real, sparkling with sophisticated simplicity. A spectacular light made a first star so bright it cleared the cosmic dust, so bold it shone in infinite deep feeling color. The soundless vacuum broke into music, sliding like silk all over it.

The universe exhaled relief to find the tension over.

My posture and my disposition lightened. My shoulders softened and my voice got brighter. My thoughts cleared up. My heart slowed down. My fear seemed distant and worthy of study. My calm was here to clear my desk, to organize my head, and to recognize my value as someone.

Despite all logic, I trust that times have changed now. No proof, no medicine is as healing, no sign can turn a lonely road to an adventure as quickly as when a good thing happens.

−me strauss Letting me be

Setting My Feet to Run

When a powerful, wonderful, engaging idea grabs a hold of my mind, my thinking alters. I start seeing colors and possibilities that are "this close" tangible. The conceptual chemisty is magical. Cell upon cell ignites, passing charges across my synapses. I don't see myself. I don't feel time passing. I am inside the idea. I am train of thought speeding to a destination.

Energy dispels any self-consciousness, as my eyes turn inward to visuals of what the idea is, how it works, watching it tick and move. It’s not that different from a mother imagining a baby a few weeks into pregnancy. Yet it's different completely because my imagining becomes true.

When the idea is forming, I share the concept with caution so that folk listening catch a glimpse and understand what they’re seeing. One by one I approach people whose opinion I value, and I use words and metaphors to bring them into my dream. Each of the people I talk to offers a tiny revision, a little tweak. Each tweak makes the idea simpler, more elegant. The concept gets clearer and more intelligent.

My feet feel the feedback of the floor as I move from mind to mind, person to person letting all of them try on the concept. Do they need alternations to make it fit their world view? A few conversational nips and tucks and then, it suits them. It suits me. The process has smoothed out the rough edges. I turn my mind and my hands to crafting the idea in 3-D.

The idea begins to become a product, a service, a something that others can read and make use of. Before I can finish people are askng if they might try it.

Setting my feet to run, praying for the wings at my sides, this idea has it’s own vibrant life.

I’ve always known how get up to fight again when I fail.

What do you do when a dream idea becomes a living reality? What do you do when you succeed fabulously? I think I might have to know these answers soon.

−me strauss Letting me be

The Power of a Great Idea

Ideas. How many does one person have in one day? Surely we have more than there are stars, more than there are grains of sand. Each thought, each response brings a new possibility − an idea − to our heads, some of them actually get to our hands. We think of ideas as creativity and the actions they bring innovations.

Not all ideas are so special. Some are downright bland and boring. Some are self-indulgent plans for glory. Some are wishes without substance. Some are dreams we won’t invest in.

Ideas can be impractical, improper, or impossibly beyond imagination’s dreamy land. Ideas can be great, grand, and goofy − well worth pursuing, playing with to find where they take us and who with.

Every long time an idea happens, when a piece of this collides with a bit of that. Suddenly, what you have is a great idea. It’s not great because you had it. It’s great because you recognize it. You realize that it’s something you, your friends, and people you don’t know have needed it for a so very long.

That’s when you have to take the idea out of your head and put it in your hands to build on it. Then it’s time to set your feet to run.

− me strauss Letting me be