Potentially Life Changing

My audio book "So You Need To Decide"
Was written up in Variety this week.
Chris Willman put it on his
What I’m thankful for in entertainment 2022 list.
And called it 'potentially life-changing':)
#grateful

Let’s edit 'potentially' out of the blurb
My people said.
Life-changing is better.

I didn’t want to.
It felt inaccurate.
Maybe I need to change into someone who would do that.

But me
As I am now
I prefer the idea of
Potentially life-changing
It’s less bossy.
More complex.
Mysterious.
And it even sounds better.

And I just love potential. 
The idea of it.
The feel of it.
The potency of potential.
It’s not just me.
#HumanPotentialMovement #hp #higherpower
More thoughts about that another time.

And sure my love of potential
Means I have fallen for the long game fixer uppers
Humans and houses both.
But I try now not to get sucked in.
Stay focused on my own
And the potential of those who ask for my help.
To stay focused
On my projects’ potential
The new word doc.
The empty bowl.
The fresh sheets.
Sometimes I even see a cup of coffee
As potential.

And I had all this on my mind
When I stumbled into the story
Of the blank paper protests in China. 
Blank paper protests?
What?
#A4revolution

Demonstrators
Angry about deaths resulting from
Zero Covid lockdown policies.
Zero Covid - an impossibility.
Denial of the spectrum.
And connectivity.
Two of the big ideas we need to integrate to survive.
Frustrated and creative citizens
Having to find ways to protest
In a climate of censorship.

So they have been holding up blank paper.
Saying what needs to be said
Without saying anything.
The genius of combining
Pure potential
And having been erased - scrubbed
Into one symbol.

All possibility as a protest 
For the lack of possibility.

I somehow kept thinking of white flags.
And how the blank sheets
Of white paper waving in the air
Is an subversive echo
Of surrender. 
In a situation which is anything but.

Writers talk about
Being scared of the blank page.
But scared
Is just sacred 
A little mixed up.
When you make a sacrifice
You make something sacred
That tends to diminish the fear.
And I’m so grateful to these protestors
For their sacrifices.

I just love
That blank paper
Which can so often represent
The fear of the unknown
Is being used in such a courageous way. 
My fresh ream of printer paper
Has a certain glow about it today.

I’m thinking about how the phrase
Getting written up
Which can be so lovely in the context of getting press
Can be so devastating in the context
Of trespassing
Troublemaking
Dissenting.
Arrest.

About how writing our lives up
Our stories
Is potential realized.

I’m feeling like
The #A4revolution
Is history being made
History getting written up
Without anything
Being written down.

xx