Imagine arriving in an unfamiliar town and heading straight to the local Highly Sensitive Haven, tucked away on a quiet side street a gentle walk from the busier commercial streets. You’ve arrived a day early for a holiday vacation with your extended family, and want to settle in on your own before you venture out to meet with anyone.

I stumbled into Kening Zhu’s world a while ago, in the midst of an internal reckoning about my work and business. I’d been scouring the internet, as we do, hunting for tools and advice to help me sort out the conflict between doing what I wanted to do in my business the way I wanted to do it—the way I felt intuitively drawn to do it, versus doing the things I was “supposed to” do…

To bumble is to take uncertain action. Bumbling, fumbling, floundering engagement with the material world educates differently, opens portals to new dimensions not available when we only think about taking action. If you want something and don’t know how to get it, try blundering forward. The bumble road is open to any endeavor…

On an internet call with a highly sensitive friend in another country, we commiserated over the wish to have more local friends, and then touched on the challenge of finding them. We don’t want more of just any type of local friends. We want friends who can listen with full hearts in addition to talking about themselves.

It makes sense to me that those of us who are odd ducks would yearn to belong somewhere, somehow, and would often have trouble finding such a place. With hindsight, I see how much my misfit discomfort prompted me to search far and wide for somewhere to relax. Where could I feel like myself? Often, that "place" was in my mind or inside studious quests for information as I followed my curiosity.

I first learned about elevenie poems when I lived in Germany and attended intensive German language classes. For many days I showed up with my classmates, studied the material, participated in exercises, and did my homework. I loved those classes because they clued me in to linguistic secrets and I inevitably also learned more about English as well.

A wrestling match with perfectionism can be debilitating to the point that nothing gets finished. On the other hand, if you know your writing could be better, when do you stop trying to improve a piece so you can let it go and move on? As a frequent rider on the perfectionism train, I know firsthand the effects of this particular struggle.

By the time the doorbell rings, I’ve assembled the apple crisp in the pan, the kitchen table is cleared and cleaned, and the radiator sends up cozy waves of warmth. My friend Annabel and I are trying something new today. We’re using each other’s company to forward our creative dreams.

The quest for a unique style can tie a writer in knots until nothing’s being written. Why write if the output is boring or is a copy of someone else’s style or is something anyone could have written? If there’s not enough pizzazz to the words, how likely are we to reel someone in?

When the thing you want to create resists the birthing process, consider cheating. I don’t mean copying someone else’s work and calling it your own, or forcing yourself into territory that’s unnatural for you. Instead, get proactive by enlisting the concept of the muse—your personal source of creative inspiration.