Twice a day?

It's Boxing Day. I've been sitting quietly with tea and reading, occasionally stirring to clear away some of the gifts and paper still strewn festively over the living room. It's December 26 and this is my 490th blog post. To make the magic 500th post by 2010, I'm going to have to blog twice a day. Hmmm.

It's possible. Everything seems possible in this brief period between Christmas and January 4, when the world starts at full tilt again. I have lost track of how many days I worked in a row in October and November and December. Now, for a few days, I have a little time in between. As I relaxed yesterday, I felt the stirrings of creative thinking.

Creativity requires a rhythm, a pulsing between the beat and the rest. When the space in between is too short, there's no room to interrupt patterns and create possibilities. Much can be accomplished, but nothing can be born. Ideas are born in the relationship between movement and stillness, in the tension between the word and what it represents. They require that we think - and that we listen to what we are thinking.

These are the days in between. One year effectively ends with the burst of celebration that is Christmas (for those of us who celebrate Christmas and even for those who don't. Because the rhythm of Christmas and Boxing Day - that sense of building to a finish - is part of our collective experience). The next year really gets started on the first working day after January 1. What comes in between is opportunity.

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