Tag: reflection

Reflecting on a Year of “Daily” Haiku

arthurhovinc1 Comment

It’s been a year since I’ve taken on the challenge to write a haiku everyday. Before 2014-11-19, I was only writing a haiku tweet about once a month. I had only starting writing haiku tweets in 2014 after my grandpa passed away. On 2014-10-01, I wrote my first haiku tweet in over 10 months.

Huge air shuts my book/
They say that, “The wind rises! /
We must try to live!”

The haiku was a reference to the poem The Graveyard by the Sea and the movie The Wind Rises, which I had recently seen. The passage I sampled from had to do with living even in the face of death, which was salient with losing my grandpa.

The wind is rising! . . . We must try to live!
The huge air opens and shuts my book: the wave
Dares to explode out of the rocks in reeking
Spray. Fly away, my sun-bewildered pages!
Break, waves! Break up with your rejoicing surges
This quiet roof where sails like doves were pecking.

See http://unix.cc.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/fr/daylewis.html

I followed the 2014-10-01 post up with one on the first of November, 2014-11-01, all about visioning.

Go The Artist’s Way/
“Where will you be in five years?”/
Answer truthfully

Then on 2014-11-19, I decided to write haiku daily, or at least try to meet that goal. For a month up until that date, I had much lower energy than I was used to. I was, in parallel, facing the aftermath of losing my mentor and patriarch, feeling the pressure of a new job, and reeling from a relationship that didn’t work out. I needed something to do that would keep my brain busy. I needed a creative outlet that could help me find my voice again. I already had the haiku Twitter, and I’d written a number of haiku as a fundraiser, so it was familiar enough to keep going, but challenging enough to increase the frequency.

Writing 5-7-5 everyday is hard, at least to write haiku that mean anything. I could have cheated and just assembled random seventeen syllables each time, but I wanted each poem to represent something I’d seen or felt. I think some of the haiku turned out beautifully, and some are a stretch. I found that several haiku talked about the same subjects and ideas. Sometimes I had to resort to clip shows.

As of today, I have written 301 haiku on the daily cadence. There are a few more I squeezed in the next day after I missed a day, but I’m not counting those. I’d like to share some of my favorites from the exercise below. They aren’t ranked, and they may not even be the best of the batch. But I think they’re worth sharing.

1. This haiku (2014-12-20) is a translation of John Steinbeck’s letter to his son and some thoughtful advice on relationships. This advice has helped me get through some seemingly rougher times.

Main thing: not to hurry/
If it is right it happens/
Good won’t get away

The original words:

And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens—The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.
—John Steinbeck, to his son Thom

2. This haiku (2015-01-05) was my reflection on the book Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut. I volunteer as a store clerk in a fake robot store that is actually a nonprofit tutoring and writing center. This haiku made the newsletter there.

Robots don’t need sleep/
They can do your job, better/
Player Piano

3. In this haiku (2015-01-08), I was upset about the relatively low temperature outside.

Check if Fahrenheit/
Indeed, still zero degrees/
My scarf needs a scarf

4. This haiku (2015-02-15) turned out to be advice, as I found several others in this series to be. They feel kind of like fortune cookies. This is advice about learning.

Slow cook mastery/
Broil not, lest lesson be singed/
All good things take time

5. This haiku (2014-02-17) is about a quiet, starry night.

No wind, stars are loud/
Gripped by wonder, vast blackness/
Ghosts of long dead suns

6. Two pieces of advice within a week. Maybe I needed some inspiration and comfort when I wrote this haiku (2015-02-21). I get some comfort in reading it again.

Move at your own pace/
Be good at being alone/
Then it’s not lonely

7. I wrote this haiku (2015-03-05) on the day I celebrate as “my favorite day of the year”. (There’s no particular reason it’s my favorite date of the year. I do think it’s important to have such a date. For some people it’s Halloween or Christmas or the first day of summer.) It’s about timeless moments. Note that I accidentally put the line break after the last line. Is there more to this poem?

Short breathlessness, peace/
Rare bird spotted once in life/
Elusive feeling/

8. I wrote this haiku (2015-03-08) about winter’s retreat, which seems nice given that I’m currently looking out at the first snowfall of the year as I write this.

Chrome sky, soft mauve, blue/
Air thick, sweet with snow’s retreat/
Dripping percussion

9. This haiku (2015-03-09) sampled from A Tribe Called Quest’s track Push It Along, which itself sampled from Grover Washington, Jr. It’s about keeping at it, like Sisyphus. I read Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus that winter, and I had learned to appreciate tenacity even in the face of futility. The absurd hero pushes the boulder along.

In my way, a boulder/
Strength in character, not arms/
Just push it along

10. This haiku (2015-03-18) is about naked trees and their gnarly branches. I see in trees a lot of personality, mostly in their shape and not actions.

Inverted talons/
Witchy claws scrape baby blue/
Begging for new leaves

11. This haiku (2015-03-20) creates a metaphor out of dealing with difficult situations. Louis C.K. is very good at observing true things (and thus very funny), and he advocates that knowing how to sit with pain and sadness is how to be a person.

Acceptance as moss/
Sit with it and it’s pleasant/
Know your own way north

12. This haiku (2015-04-04) is about the rise of spring and the surprises buried beneath the snow. When I first learned about haiku, the samples I read were usually about seasons and nature. I think these are important ones to highlight in this series.

Branches a-dancing/
Rich spring soil beneath leaves/
Wind blows fall away

13. I wrote this haiku (2015-04-19) while feeling sad during my road trip through the southern United States. I had stayed in some hotel rooms by myself, with very populous cities outside. I thought about the millions of people surrounding me and how I didn’t want to meet any of them. I looked out my hotel window at a skyline I didn’t recognize, and I hated the skyscrapers I saw. Conceptually and architecturally they were impressive, but by that time I’d seen building after building in different cities, and they were all starting to look the same: just metal, concrete, and glass. My best friend P says, “Home is the skyline you smile at.” This wasn’t home.

City far away/
Buildings are generic blocks/
Hotel room quiet

14. I wrote this haiku (2015-05-25) about a stunning mutt named Zeke.

Soft, cool plot of grass/
Gallop gives to gravity/
Dog day afternoon

15. I wrote this haiku (2015-06-22) in thinking about the joy of exploration. When I was little, the forest outside my grandparents’ cottage seemed to unfold larger and larger as I walked through it. That forest is now someone’s property with dusty driveways and not the fresh, untrodden paths I once knew and still yearn for.

Loamy, twiggy floor/
Soft, wild, and new to the step/
Undiscovered glade

16. This haiku (2015-06-26) is about Lake Michigan at night, to my left as I was driving to my grandparents’ old cottage. The moon had risen white, and the small waves on the lake were picking up its quiet, clear light.

Licorice lakeshore/
Ripples like vigil candles/
Soft and sure in dark

17. One common trait among haiku in this series is the subject: clouds. I hadn’t before recorded how often I look out windows at clouds, for significant lengths of time, and it became very clear that’s my most practiced hobby after writing so many haiku about it. This one (2015-07-17) is one of my favorite “cloud haiku”, in that it doesn’t have the word “cloud” in it, and it doesn’t need a picture of a cloud to support it, but a nice picture is attached anyway. (Most of these cloud haiku have an associated cloud picture attached, but I think the haiku should stand on its own.)

Turquoise shines from soot/
Late day sky ponders next move/
Lumbering liftoff

18. This haiku (2015-07-29) is another “cloud haiku” that doesn’t mention “cloud”, but finds ways to express what I’m seeing in metaphor.

Suspend in gray clay/
Sun is somewhere, butter spread/
Ambiguous light

19. This haiku (2015-09-04) is another “advice haiku” about using the right words.

Diction is a knife/
Too sharp, certain injury/
Honed just right, a tool

20. I have a fascination with rivers. When I stopped going to church, my temple became the riverbanks. I wrote this haiku (2015-09-09) to express my reverence.

Rivers never end/
To sea, to rise, and to fall/
Infinity stream

21. This haiku (2015-09-10) is about “the little things”. It’s also about my grandpa going on a walk with me through the woods on a cool summer morning when I was maybe 8. He told me to look closely at the sparkling morning dew on a spider web below a fern along the trail. I’ve been looking at those kinds of details ever since.

“Is all common, base?”/
“Have you seen the morning dew?/
There’s no rarer gem”

22. This haiku (2015-10-13) is about a dream I had the previous night, where I was lost at sea and questioning some of my values.

Silent sea beckons/
Great water doesn’t douse your/
Roaring inner flame

23. I wrote this haiku (2015-10-27) about the impermanence of the beauty of fall. Some people living near deciduous trees make rituals out of seeing them in their traffic light state. I’m one such observer. About 10 years ago I remember falling to the ground as one of my crutches landed incorrectly, and I didn’t get up because I was lost in the golden leaves of a tree. I was feeling a similar awe when I wrote this.

Rush and lust for gold/
Great treasure needs reverence/
So impermanent

24. Precisely one year after I started this practice, I wrote this haiku (2015-11-19) about the practice itself. I think to live up to the phrase, “We must try to live!” we have to do more than merely passively survive, but create artifacts, ideas, and practices that can help and inspire others. (The owner of a local bookstore here replies to “That author has a gift!” with “No, he has a practice.”)

Create or consume?/
The former a firmer stance/
Against entropy

25. I wrote this haiku (2015-11-21) at the first snowfall of the season, rounding out the weather observances for the year.

Light and sound diffused/
All will be immobile soon/
As silver dust falls

That’s it for the highlights, but there are plenty more haiku available at my Twitter page, @ArthurHovinc.

I intend to continue the “daily” haiku practice for the rest of the year. I’ll decide then if I want to keep the frequency into the new year, or resume a monthly contribution.

—Art

Reflection on 2014

arthurhovinc

I recently created a Facebook Year In Review for 2014. I called it Millimeters By Intravenous, or MMXIV as an acronym, which is also 2014 written as roman numerals. Facebook could only create a review based on what I posted to Facebook. There were definitely gaps in the narrative from when I was deliberately offline. My offline times were my most transformative, and it felt strange to get on Facebook and write about what happened while offline. I don’t think the Facebook Year In Review was the right place to share what happened. In fact, quite a bit of hullabaloo came about when terrible life events were framed as celebratory in the Facebook Year In Review for others. I’ll avoid adding to that discussion. Instead, I’ll focus below on details of my own life, especially ones where I think my blog is a better medium.

Note that this entry touches on parts of my life I may not have revealed on this blog thus far. As I continue writing in 2015, I want my blog to be my primary outlet to the world, so expect additional personal entries like this one. It would be difficult for me to write about learning without sharing what went into my own learning, struggles and all.

The format of this entry is going to be a retrospective, or retro, format. As I’ve learned from my new and current employer, Detroit Labs, a retro typically covers three categories:

  1. What went well?
  2. What didn’t go so well?
  3. What needs to change?

I’m going to keep the details fairly short on each item, only elaborating where it affects the scope of the year as a whole. I’m sure I’ll write more entries about specific items, and I’ll hyperlink to those entries with future edits of this entry.

What Went Well?
I read a book called Self-Parenting, where I learned about psychographic profiles that most of us have called the Inner Parent and the Inner Child. I learned that most of my inner conflicts can be acted out as dialogue between the Inner Child and Inner Parent. When I found ways to keep the dialogue civil and constructive, I was better able to work out my inner disputes.

I started regularly running again, and this time all on my own. I hadn’t run seriously since 2012. Back in 2012 I lived around Dallas, TX, and I had trained with my friends for the 2012 Chicago Marathon. I ran only some of the recommended training runs (and yes, I did finish the marathon with this inadequate training, but that’s another story), and only with my friends and never on my own. Turns out I love to able to run on my own for my own health and peace of mind and not for a race or any other goal.

I took journaling to the next level. I had been carrying a journal with me to most places since 2012, and I had used the journal to record little thoughts and observations at random intervals. This year I instead used my journal to write three pages of whatever comes to mind in the morning. This is Julia Cameron’s idea of the “morning pages“. Writing this amount has helped me see further into what’s really on my mind. A journal is a cheap therapist.

I went on a major road trip through North America’s northwest. I haven’t typed up my collected experience of this road trip yet, so I’m not sure if it will take multiple entries to explain. Essentially, the trip started in Seattle, WA where I hung out with friends for a few days. I then drove my rental Jeep Compass through the deserts of Washington, past the sapphire Ceour d’Alene over the Continental Divide of the Americas, in a Y shape around Montana that I loved and will visit again, across the green prairie of Alberta to Calgary’s metropolis, through the mountains and lakes of Banff and then British Columbia back down to Seattle. I followed a course similar to the one in the map below.
Screen Shot 2014-12-31 at 16.53.44

I wrote out a vision of where I want to be in five years, and I have defined my life’s mission statement. I worked on these while on my road trip. When I type out the final versions of these, I’ll make them pages on this blog.

I saw some of my favorite acts live in concert. Throwing Muses is one of my favorite bands, and I caught their act in Seattle during my road trip. They haven’t played together in a very long time. I saw Tacocat at a block party concert by Calgary’s Luke’s Drug Mart (also a stop on the road trip), and they were kind enough to chat and take a photo with me after their set. I saw Sharon Van Etten at The Loving Touch in Ferndale, MI, and also chatted with her after the show. There were a few other great acts, but that’s for another post.

I officiated the wedding of one of my best friends and her husband. That’s right, I’m ordained.

I left my job in medical devices for an apprenticeship in mobile application development at Detroit Labs. For three months I learned about Java and Android in downtown Detroit with a handful of other apprentices of all different backgrounds (no computer science majors). It was the most supportive and simultaneously most challenging education experience I’ve been through. There’s plenty more to write about this experience, another time.

I graduated the apprenticeship at Detroit Labs. I’m now working as full-time developer, making Android apps for clients. I never thought I would write that.

I started taking habit tracking seriously. I use an app on my iPhone called Habit List, where I can record how many days a week I kept to a habit I want to build. Among the habits tracked: getting more sleep, meditating, running, journaling, and eating well. My final project of my Detroit Labs apprenticeship was an Android app I made called HabiTrack that helps the user keep up chains of good habits following Jerry Seinfeld’s productivity secret.

What Didn’t Go So Well?
My visit to Canada this summer as a whole. I enjoyed seeing Tacocat live in Calgary, and it was gorgeous to drive through Banff, but I did not do the right amount of planning for the rest of my stay. I’ll spare the details for now, but I’ll just advise against not having a data plan in Canada and driving through British Columbia in one sitting.

Sleeping in a Jeep Compass without good blankets or coats. There’s nothing wrong with a Jeep Compass—I actually really liked driving it. I just don’t recommend sleeping in one. On cold nights, without my coat or blankets, I wrapped myself in trash bags, to wake up to dew coating my legs. Sleeping in the back of the Compass is worse than sleeping in the seat. I would wake up with a sharp pain from my neck to my feat, almost wishing I hadn’t slept at all.

Finances. I won’t divulge numbers here, but I have not been staying within my budget this year. I leave this year in the black, but there’s a lot to do to improve saving.

I lost my grandfather. He was very important to me throughout my entire life. He’s the reason I ever started liking math, wordplay, and comics. He believed in my creativity and nourished it. I miss him. When he died, I vowed I would live a life as great as his.

What Needs To Change?
I can call Discover and Verizon before I do any international travel to enjoy my stay more.

I can save up more for travel and stay in more hotels or motels on future road trips. A bed is worth it.

I can get serious about systems for saving money. One trick I learned this year is to save $5 bills instead of spending them. It stacks up faster than I thought it would. To take this further, I plan on working out an envelope system of saving, where every dollar is allocated to something, even flex room. I can also create a habit to spend time on finances on a consistent basis.

There’s plenty more to work on in 2015, but I’m glad I made it through 2014. Discomfort and loss were major emotional tones this year, but I think I was in a better place to work through them. I have a job I really like and I’ve got the momentum of the habit changes and hard work I’ve done this year.

2015, let’s do this.

To the future,
Arthur Hovinc

Reflecting on Reflecting

arthurhovinc

I’ve been reflecting a lot more often recently. Autumn has that effect on me, and this autumn has had a lot to reflect on (more on that in other posts). I’m trying out a new reflection technique at the end of every meeting I have and at the end of every workday. It’s pretty straightforward, but I don’t see a lot of people doing it.

Reflection Technique:
I simply take out my pen and a piece of paper and I write down the thoughts in my head after each meeting or after the workday. When I say “meeting”, I mean any discussion with another person or other persons, formal or informal. At the end of day reflection, I answer the questions “What went well?” and “What could go better?” The whole technique takes between two and fifteen minutes each time. It’s time well spent.

I’m finding written reflection very useful to my learning process. My brain generates a lot of ideas, but if I don’t write them down or dictate them to my phone within two minutes of their creation, they are gone forever. I’m finding that I can consolidate my fleeting thoughts into long term memory just by writing down what I’m thinking after an experience like a meeting or a full workday. I may never read the notes again, but it doesn’t matter. The act of writing itself commits the thoughts to memory. Writing it down puts clear words to what I was thinking and feeling, and these clear words are retrievable in my brain, unlike fleeting emotions or vague thoughts.

I had left meetings and workdays in the past with many thoughts storming around my head, and not doing anything about them but letting them sublimate. Collecting those thoughts is analogous to finishing up a piece of art and properly stowing all materials and tools used to make it. It’s tidying up, leaving a meeting or workday cleanly. It helps me see what to-dos come out of meetings and what I want to focus on the next workday.

For instance, I reflected after an all-team meeting last week at work. The team was discussing being open and honest in communicating. Easier said than done. One of my thoughts after the meeting was that I could host some Lunch and Learn sessions about the techniques I’ve learned to communicate clearly and actively listen. I wrote it down on my notepad with my pen. Now I can recall it even without referencing my notepad, as I type this. It matters to me, and I intend to study more on the subject of communication and listening, and then implement and teach what I learn.

The act of reflecting is one level of the Four Levels of Learning. I’ll be writing more about these levels in the future, but I’ll list them below. Credit goes to ZingTrain for introducing me to the Four Levels of Learning.

Level 1: Listening or Reading (where good and active listening is an art and good and active reading is a system)
Level 2: Reflecting
Level 3: Assimilating and Implementing
Level 4: Teaching

Reflecting,
Art