I’ve been wanting to show you these for awhile now.
Ooh, I just thought of this analogy, its just askew enough of being plagiarized to make me just a little bit happy to have arrived at it. Have you ever had an idea you thought was original only too find out later it was already thunk of? Don’t be sad. Great minds think alike. (By the way, not original) For some reason you and whoever else had the same great idea independently of one another. Be proud of that!
The analogy? Gee, the more I think about it, the less original it sounds. Screw it! Doubt and fear can both be ventilated. Knowledge is like the water cycle. It exists in the atmosphere in a sparse layer of vapor. Like a cloud? Shut up. Your thought, your wonder adds pressure to the info-sphere in small doses. The vapor condenses. Concentration leads to precipitation. Ideas fall like rain.
Your mind is the ground upon which the ideas fall. Choma-nous (soil of the mind- Greek). But what is the texture of your mind? How porous is your perception? If your mind is clay, the ideas will wash over you like a flash flood and be gone forever. If, however, you’re mind is sand, you will absorb the ideas and they will nourish your creative self. Still, you can’t possibly absorb them all. Most will sit atop the crown of your intellect and evaporate back into the info-sphere for another cycle.
What does this have to do with my breadth(s)? This. Unless your mind is bedrock, where ideas simply erode at the surface, you can change its composition. I often find myself under a storm of ideas. I have to choose my own mind’s permeability, and its saturation tolerance.
I’ve talked about rabbit holes of useless information. They exist everywhere; discovery channels that can easily fill and draw your energy away from what’s important. I have to plug these with clay. I need breadth. I need just enough information about more than enough concepts to lend my writing authenticity. Loam is the perfect balance. Absorb a little bit about a lot of things, and I can write with reasonable confidence about anything.
As my most loyal supporter, RJT/Xeno, mentioned to me not long ago, I’m a smart feller. Thank you! You are too! If I was ever tasked to do so, I could gain a depth of knowledge about a great many things. The problem is, I would have to devote all my energy to that one thing at the expense of all else. I need to know just enough about lots o’ stuff to make myself sound informed to the reader (and probably like a complete idiot to whoever might be an expert in any of those subjects).
So, till your mind to suit your intellectual needs, and let it rain, baby. Let it rain.
Now go dry off. You’re all wet, and I’m percolating a book.
The Halteres Chronicles 