Thrivability - A Collaborative Sketch by Jean Russell

Jean Russell has just launched a very cool "Thrivability book." I'm going to do a bit of an intro on it, but feel free to skip my intro it and head to the bottom of this post to see it... Or you can linger and read my intro. Just letting you know I'm going to say a few words before showtime.

An introduction to my life of full-on thrivability
I was up late last night, doing what I often do: indulging my creative capacities. Last night that meant working with images, posting them to various sites to share – and then reply to comments as "friends" and "fans" and "followers" quickly responded. When I finally turned off the light and got up from my little "kitchen of the mind," I realized that this is a very propitious time for some like me: I have the tools, the skills and talents, and the social nature to spend most of my waking hours creating and sharing my creations. Sometimes it feels like full-on 24/7 magic in my life!

One of the reasons for this is my ability to use the tools at hand: digital media like still fotos, video, text-forms like blogging and micro-blogging (Facebook, Twitter, etc). Another reason is the inspiration and guidance (and opportunity) I get from so many people I meet, sometimes face-to-face, sometimes its via virtual connections, similar to what "penpals" used to be, I imagine. (btw: The richest f2f encounters happened at last years Media that Matters event – I strongly recommend anyone who wants/needs to plug into a powerful current of creativity to check out this year's MtM in May).

Tools, talents, people
I'd like to say that I can't tell which is more important right now: my capacities to use the tools available to me, or the people who inspire and guide me. But, like so much else in my life, what is at the heart of my creative outpouring is my connection with people. Jean Russell is one of these.

I've never met Jean f2f. We've never spoken. I can't even remember how we "met." I do know that we are mutual Twitter "followers," that we are Facebook "friends," and that I was drawn to her notion of "thrivability."

I won't get into what "thrivability" means to me. I will however say that thanks to Jean I've found a handle that describes what's important to me: that I don't simply sustain or maintain myself, my family, my community, my work, but that I do what I can so that these are places of active, creative engagement. Places that I can describe as thriving.

All of this is a long introduction to a project Jean asked me to be a part of, an online "book" that you can look through via this embedded slideshow. She "crowd-sourced" the project, putting out the call to folks like me to submit a word that we think relates to "thrivability," and to accompany that with a page of writing, images, etc. It's was a beautiful idea. Now its a beautiful "collaborative sketch."

My word...
Dance. As you may know, I love to dance, and I love to talk and write about dance. I love to take pictures of dance too (though it's hard sometimes, because mostly when I see others dancing I only have one thing on my mind: to be dancing too). Thanks Jean. Thanks for inviting me into this project. Thanks for giving me another opportunity to explore my experience of dance.

ps. It's on page 28, surrounded by many amazing pages of images, writing, thinking. An inspiring neighbourhood to find myself in!

And above all – Congratulations Jean, on this lovely "book!"

Thrivability: A Collaborative Sketch

View more presentations from Jean Russell.

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