Two fabulous writing exercises

[flexagon]

I heard of two amazing-sounding writing exercises yesterday.

• Gretchen Rubin suggests writing your own list of eight auspicious symbols, as in Buddhism, and many readers took her up on it in the comment section. While I am kind of a grouchypants about the encouragement of superstition, there is something appealing both about the do-it-yourself Buddhism and thinking of 8 things that make me smile or feel lucky.



• This month's Psychology Today suggests writing a "failure resume" where you list all your failures -- academic, personal, professional. I like this as a reminder that normal, successful lives include a lot of trial and error, and I also like it because it could be formatted just like a real resume and would probably be hilarious.
  

As for those symbols, hmm. Cats, turtles, thunder and lightning, cherries. Spirals and/or circles? I would once have said "subway tokens".

Comments

[a-kosmos.livejournal.com]

*grin* We have some "symbols" in common. These are Zuni fetishes that I keep on my desk at work.

[kaigex.livejournal.com]

Spirals. Dragons. Icosahedrons. 0. 47. Broken clocks. Swords. Clefs.

right! Platonic solids!

[flexagon]

...though I'm way more into dodecahedrons. Adding them to my list.

Re: right! Platonic solids!

[kaigex.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I first thought of saying dodecahedron, as my love of them goes back to The Phantom Tollbooth and is therefore much older than my love of d20s, but icosahedron won out due to Magic, D&D, being in a mood for pentagons, and it being the largest Platonic solid. But I am a total fan of the number twelve...

[flexagon]

Update: I tried writing the failure resume today. It was fun for about 15 minutes, and then it started to turn kind of depressing. I stopped right before I would've stopped smiling.