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Episode 9 – Wine: moderation vs. medication (The famous HALT method)

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Spark My Muse
Episode 9 – Wine: moderation vs. medication (The famous HALT method)

This is a surprise “mid-week” episode. This show normally goes live each Wednesday. Episode 10 and 11 are longer special interview episodes.

Episode 10 (airing May 27th) Emily Miller writer and journalist for the Chicago Sun-Times and Relevant Magazine

Episode 11 (airing June 3rd) Daniel J. Lewis prolific creator of an entire network of podcast programs, including nationally-awarded shows on how to podcast, comedy, and the #1 rating discussion show for ABC’s series “Once Upon a Time”.

Check back for those!

This episode was brought to you by “The Daily Sharpening Ritual”–The perfect way to supercharge and renew personal awareness in your life.
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Wine segment

How much wine is considered “drinking in moderation”?

• Rule of thumb: 2, 5oz glasses per day is moderate drinking, and no more than one drink per hour, or four drinks per occasion (like an all-day event like a picnic or wedding)

But if it’s hard to go a day without drinking wine (or wanting to), rethinking your relationship with wine is needed.

The show details some physical repercussions of over-consuming wine, and a practical way to build mindfulness.

• If you unsure that your consumption is healthy, jot down the feelings behind the desire to consume wine so it doesn’t master you.

• Wine can too-quickly be used to medicate ourselves, and this hurts our Souls. Be mindful. :)
(“Soul” meaning what it does in Hebrew: our whole-self, mental, spiritual, creative, relational, etc)

Sparking your muse

Featuring the book by Brennan Manning called, “The Wisdom of Tenderness”.

Explaining “the HALT method” for decision-making:

Brennan Manning died last year, and he is probably best known for writing the Ragamuffin Gospel. He accumulated a lot of wisdom through life, but it didn’t come cheap. Poor choices, wrong turns, and hard lessons molded him, eventually, into a person of great compassion and grace–a sage for the poor in spirit and those smart enough to listen. Many sought him out for his wisdom.

When Manning came into recovery as an alcoholic he learned a buzzword from AA (Alcoholics Anonymous). AA folks use it as a method and smart tool to create greater awareness in those vulnerable to slipping back into alcohol abuse.

• They stay on the lookout for four qualities that make them susceptible to relapse and are encouraged to seek help when they identify them occurring in their life. Before they take a sip they look for the signs and call for backup.

If H.A.L.T., then halt.

Regular internal check for these:

H – Hungry (not just for food, but a longing in general)

A – Angry (or stressed, or frustrated)

L – Lonely (or rejected, or left out, feeling alone in the world)

T – Tired (often tired from helping others or being otherwise overcommitted)

We all need to cultivate an awareness of our vulnerabilities to avoid a slide into poor choices, creative slumps, or dangerous behavior.

Sometimes we don’t even realize our feelings while we are having them or how we are trying to soothe our selves.

Let’s develop the awareness to halt and take an internal inventory or seek help when we get run down, over-extended, or when we find ourselves feeling in some way hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.

It is awareness which is at the heart of any ingenious creative pursuit, meaningful transformation or spiritual growth.

NEW next week (May 27)…A great interview with my friend, Emily Miller (writer and journalist for the Chicago Sun-Times and regular contributor to Relevant Magazine).

JUNE 3rd, comes an interview with expert creative, Daniel J. Lewis!

Please take part in this anonymous 30-second listener-survey so I can continue to produce the show.

Episode 3 (Five best tools for opening wine and guest Natalie Hart)

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Spark My Muse – Episode 3 (5 best tools for opening wine and guest Natalie Hart)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:07 — 23.9MB) | Embed

Spark my muse is The podcast for curious creatives types, wine newbies, and those willing to put up with my occasional silliness. Thank you so much for sharing your time with me.

This episode is brought to you by:
Life As Prayer: Life As Prayer: Revived Spirituality Inspired by Ancient Piety

Today’s wine segment!

I open dozens of bottles of wine per week as a manager of a wine tasting room at Spring Gate Vineyard. We use a simple tool, I hadn’t seen before to make it quick and simple with very high levels of success.

BASICALLY only the cork should get screwed. No broken corks, no puncture wounds–for you!

Cork screw is also called a wine key, or a waiter’s pry.

There are a few tools that are poor choices for opening bottles….

There are the best tools which may include some you may want to avoid.

These (affiliate) links will get them for you at a good price.

• Basic lever corkscrew – very inexpensive, small and portable, comes on an army knife. (There’s a better option below…keep reading.)

• Electronic one – large, slow, overly complex for my taste. It can be glitchy, run out of power…

• Winged or butterfly…It has arms that go up as you twist it down into the cork…Easily can cause broken corks when not done right. (Tip: hold the arm down tightly until you get it firmly pinned down to the cork and begin twisting straight down.) It’s slow, and has higher failures.

• The rabbit style. Large, more complicated than necessary. Table mounted options. If you have the room, like a full bar in your house…go for it.

• Air pressure bottle opener. It uses a needle CO 2 80 bottles…meh.

What’s the best tool?

The 2 lever waiter’s corkscrew!
It’s portable,fast, and low tech. The secret is the double hinge. It only takes about three rotations. (TIP: Go straight down and use the lever to pull the cork straight up. Don’t crank the cork to the side. First you use the top lever and then you switch to the bottom one.)

Here’s a video of the same tool I use at work and how to use it. Skip to minute 1:00.

Spark My Muse guest:
Writer – Natalie Hart

• Natalie’s Webiste
• Her book: The Giant Slayer

We discussed:

• Biblical fiction genre

• Her favorite way to get unstack creatively

• Identity (David’s, and the rest of us.)

Thanks for listening / reading. Please subscribe, or leave comments. I’d love to hear if you like the show.

For just $1 you can help the show purchase better sound equipment for better quality in future podcasts!

Special perks and rewards are available too. Join with the Spark My Muse community at the Spark My Muse page at Patreon! Click the image for more info.

Encountering your own loneliness

Managing a wine tasting room is a great job for a writer because, when it’s not too busy, you can become a kind of social scientist: observing people and trying to see why humans do what we do.

You can even allow your curiosity to navigate some of the deeper questions about the human experience.

One recent observation:
The “poison apple” of the smart phone has changed how we do things alone–eating, drinking, or traveling, in particular.

FACT: People rarely come to taste wine by themselves (at our place).

That may seem obvious. Wine tends to bring people together, right? Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised that people only rarely come alone.

But it IS strange.

Think about it like this:
Shopping for food or clothes alone isn’t considered weird and people tasting wine are really just shopping for wine.

The only difference perhaps are presumptions, previous experiences, or maybe subterranean social exceptions.

• Feeling low…solo

When people visit the tasting room alone, I can usually sense their social discomfort. They might suddenly offer me a reason why they are alone this time or they might neurotically use their phone to look busy or connected.

The alternative, of course, would be to interact with and absorb the environment they are truly in or look for ways to subvert social fear through some modicum of meaningful interaction: friendliness, conversation, inquisitiveness, for starters. So terrifying is the prospect of looking lonely at a winery, that many solo customers barely experience it at all.

• Confronting fear

This observation got me to thinking of ways I try to numb or avoid these fears or points of discomfort in myself and in my life. What am I missing that I shouldn’t be. The default is to use technology to connect, but at what cost?

When I interviewed Rolf Potts, famed travel-writer and best-selling author, he talked about his own wrestling with the seduction of “not being where he was” by engaging with technology. One of the most memorable things he said was this:

“When you travel alone you are forced to confront your own loneliness and boredom, and interact with your surroundings in ways you can’t [when you’re] with a companion.”

We miss our chances for new experiences with the advent of constant so-called “connectedness”, don’t we?

The habit forms quickly. Only thoughtfulness will heal this malady.

(Here’s the video. He covers that bit around min 2:40.)

Do you question how you use technology and confront what it might be stealing from you?

Encountering our loneliness more deeply could create epiphanic moments of self-discovery and new insights into what we fear and what makes us each unique.

Maybe it’s time to do something alone to test your social fears, deepen your healthy sense of self, and develop a new sense of social, and even spiritual, courage and strength.

Maybe leave your phone is the car for the 30 min you shop, eat out, or exercise. Good things could happen.

If you like what you’ve read, consider getting my in-depth but consice weekly correspondence, starting soon.
Learn about it here.

Do you think in Words or Pictures? (and why it matters)

Do you think in Words or Pictures?

Chances are if you are reading this, and if you tend to read a good deal, you are firstly a person of words. Nothing wrong with that. But, your blind spot might be hurting you unawares….more on that soon.

Me? well….

I’m a weird mix.
I’m am– rather evenly–a person of words AND and person of pictures.

However, I am rarely, if ever, both at the same time. I have to switch gears. My dream life even changes when that happens and I go through phases that seemed to be tied to the weather… Sort of strange, I know.

Here, at the website, as you might figure, I’m mainly a person of words….if I wasn’t I would have abandon blogging ages ago. I’ve posted about 2,000 times here and in previous blog efforts.

This “being a person of words” came not so much natively as much as a way to create things.

(I’m an ENTP and I love conceptualizing, innovating, and making things come to life. That’s my sweet spot.)

Sidetone:
There are all sort of free Myers’-Briggs personality/temperament sorts of tests online, but they always seem to be short and less than definitive. (They’re “meh”)

I recommend this book for its apt testing process. A 70 question test is inside (and it’s much less expensive than the official Myers-Briggs test with about 100 questions). Plus, there are loads of helpful descriptions to flesh your results out and understand it all better. Learning you spouse’s, friends’, co-workers’ or family’s temperament style is invaluable too.

 

Before I was a person of words (online, in print, for graduate school, in business, at work)….first, I was a visual artist–a person who thinks and understands more powerfully when images are readily available and utilized. I still am.

Words have only really been powerful when they conjure mental images for me. Maybe it’s the same for you.

How to increase your imagination–because IMAGINATION is power:

(Imagination = literally, bringing up images)

If you are a “word person”, I encourage you check for a blind spot on the visual side. That is, if thinking in visual terms isn’t native to you (and you will already know if it is), then consult with someone who thinks from a visual paradigm. Then, with them– look for ways to richly add that aspect to your message.

If you are a Picture person? Reading more will help.

Some ideas for enhancing the picture side are…

(click examples to see the visual)

• using / creating Infographics: (a graphic way to convey written content).

Example 1

Example 2

• Adding art, photography, or Illustration (it should encapsulate or elucidate your message, not just decorative)

Example 3

Example 4

• Adding video (this should flesh out-in the true sense-what you are trying to convey)

Example 5

BONUS?
• Add other visually demonstrative or include sensual elements
(things involving the senses…not sensual like… you know…”kissy stuff”)

– demonstrations

– dance

– drama

– sensual: aroma and other tactile experiences (taste and touch), sound elements…etc

If you need visuals to magnify your message, I’m here for you. Just send me a message.

Guest writer at Everyday Liturgy

I’m very glad to have the honor of being the guest writer today at Thomas Turner’s blog:

Everyday Liturgy

Thomas wrote me saying,

I would love for you to contribute a 500 word (or so) post about how participating in a particular church or denomination has helped make you the Christian you are today. The purpose of this series is largely ecumenical, and looks at the positive you gleaned out of the experience. If you had a bad experience that turned into something good later on, I would think you could make a great post out of that…

Some of you may not know just how fundamentalist my roots are.

Here’s but one example:

Several people approached my mom to discourage her from marrying my dad. Why?

Because their offspring would be bi-racial.

Plenty of (fundamentalist) Christian groups at the time prohibited “inter-racial” dating and (obviously) marriage and pro-creation.

Southern Baptists were the slave-owning southerns who coined their monicker at the time of the American Civil War (to them known as “The War of the Northern Aggression”). Northern Baptists, as they were once called, later changed their name to American Baptist and became (typically) more progressive and liberal in their views over time.

Southern Baptists proliferated to many places outside of the the South (to the American North and through missionary work, to all parts of the world), but kept their name and, as you might guess, some of their same notions.

(To be fair, things have changed for the better, mostly. Today, folks in churches coming from that tradition run the gamut of very strict and conservative… “old school patriarchal imperialist southern” -if you will- to more gracious and relaxed in their dogma on issues of race, gender, and other matters.)

(By the way, my dad was Puerto Rican. Are you curious to see what he looked like? Here. Like most conversations about “race” –as if that was an actual thing– it’s really just vestige of a medieval mindset and a preoccupation about skin tones and/or physical features. Sadly, it still is and by people you would imagine would know better. But, I’ll tackle that in some other post.)

I wonder how many of them were relieved that I ended up having my mom’s light skin.

(This is were Obama and I are alike. Like me, he actually looks more like his mom than his dad. Trust me, it’s true. I notice these things! :) )

So, what was my journey and where do I stand now?

Give it a read and find out!

Shownotes: Spark My Muse Episode 9 – Wine: moderation vs. medication (The famous HALT method)