IDEA

"Have you any idea how many kids it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen?  Three.  It takes one to say, "What light?" and two more to say, "I didn't turn it on." - Erma Bombeck  A few different people now have asked me where I get my ideas for what I'm going to write about or what picture I might use.  The answer is not that I sit quietly at a desk all the live-long day thinking them up. I usually just go about my normal day to day routine, and all of a sudden my brain is forming the sentences and paragraphs, even spell checking. Great ideas don't have to be meticulously planned out, thought about for days and hours, approved by committees or voted into being.  (And I didn't say all my ideas are good....please refer to the melted door to our microwave for example...too long of a story to share here.) They just need one person who can visualize what they are thinking and share it with the world, or the three people that might see it on Facebook that day. Great ideas are really a lot like bad ideas....they just sort of happen.  Who among us can say we wake up in the morning and tell ourselves we plan to inadvertently ruin a perfectly good microwave?  I definitely didn't.  I just got an idea about cleaning it (Wasn't this story too long to share?  What am I doing?) and forgot that I also had a pot of boiling water on the stove...one push of the door too far open and now it's brown and warped and looks like something toxic happened.  Which, in this house, is not out of the realm of possibility. Similarly, not many people wake up one day planning on creating genius works of art or writing award winning books or losing fifty pounds and actually make it happen.  (Of course, people do plan to do these things, but an "idea" and an action are two separate entities.  Most plans do not go "according to plan"...or else there would be many many many many more novelists, rock starts, artists, and skinny people in the world.) A great idea isn't just about THINKING something.  It is about having a thought, and doing it.  You can think all day long about going potty, but unless you are Harry flippin' Potter I doubt it's magically going to happen in the way that would be most hygienic. I know you have great ideas.  Don't just think them.  Do them.   Don't wait for someone else to agree that it's a fantastic idea.  Don't stop if someone tells you it's a horrible idea.  You don't need permission to like your own thoughts or actions.  You don't need permission to like yourself.   You are a great idea.