"The Zen of Writing" Author Alan O’Hashi is walking proof that perfection and organization are highly overrated. His parents and grandparents were all artists and applied a zen approach to nurturing their work, which influenced him as a creative entrepreneur. Rather than rigid plans and goals, they all were very contemplative and relied more on intuition and accepted life how it happened with no judgment. The story is partly a DIY personal growth book about how the author overcame self-doubt and perfection as a “Model Minority." He’s now more confident, no longer obsessed with perfection, and has become a prolific writer. The other part is a memoir about how the importance of owning life experiences and not being afraid to write about those. His writing is now much more emotional and no longer superficial. “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” is what Ernest Hemingway says about the essence of good storytelling. This book is for anyone who is a writer of organized words, whether they are fiction, nonfiction, poetry, work memos, grant applications, academic papers, or love letters. Read this book if you’re a professional writer, a novelist just starting out, or a screenwriter with a half-done script lost deep in the bowels of a computer hard drive. Are you a writer who wonders how to get over self-doubt, kick your obsession with perfection, and for whatever reason, can’t quite finish your writing project? This book provides insight and a few tips through the author’s experiences about becoming more confident in your ability to balance perfection and accuracy that results in a higher likelihood of finishing your work. Author Alan O’Hashi relates how his lessons from life were significant influences that resulted in his first book pitch based on a typed-up piece of paper in June. He signed a contract and finished an 80,000-word manuscript five months later. Alan is a native of Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he began writing as a 12-year-old reporter for his junior high school newspaper, “The Tumbleweed.” He relates his growth as a writer surviving a 1,000-year flood, an emergency landing of an airplane with a fire on board, two job layoffs after 9/11, and getting up from his death bed.

On the Trail is a memoir recounting author Alan O'Hashi's experiences trekking thousands of miles around Wyoming in an electric vehicle (EV). If you’re curious about EVs, he explains some about the different kinds of EVs in the marketplace, but more about EV charging station subtleties like suggested locations for the three types of chargers, general details about battery efficiency, and the pitfalls drivers may encounter on short trips around town and longer drives over, say, 60 miles. One of his favorite books is On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac. It’s a story about a personal journey and literal travel associated with freedom and unknown possibilities. The narrator and protagonist, Sal Paradise—Kerouac’s alter ego—was free to roam anywhere without being tied down to one place. The world moved slower back then. On the Trail is a reflection on O'Hashi's experience with the automobile over the years and how his life evolved along with his vehicle choices. He's not the first driver to embark on a long-haul road trip in an EV, but his story recounts his pioneering spirit having to figure out how to keep moving forward. His sojourn certainly wasn’t as arduous and rustic as it would have been in a covered wagon or a handcart. It wasn’t a mountain range he had to get through or a raging river to ford. It was more like the time in 1903 when a medical doctor named H. Nelson Jackson, an auto mechanic, Sewall Crocker, and their dog, Bud, made a cross country from California to New York in a Winton touring car. Their 63-day journey was difficult, slow, and expensive, but proved that long-haul road travel was possible. When the trio had car trouble, they sometimes had to stay at a location for several days waiting for parts to be delivered by train. Like the Jackson and Crocker trek, making the leap into an EV meant a significant lifestyle change for him, mostly around slowing down the pace of life. This account of three road trips equalling 2,600 miles around sparse Wyoming meant visiting new places and meeting others, including EV drivers and EV skeptics. One of Alan's favorite TV shows was The Adventures of Superman. It was the 1950s—1960s show starring George Reeves as the Man of Steel who could leap tall buildings in a single bound and fought for truth, justice, and the American Way. Superman’s American Way is the cultural tenet that refers to making it through life as rugged individuals, winning is better than losing, and acquiring more is better than having less. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with Superman’s American Way, but what if I reimagined it with more thoughtfulness and sensibility? If anything, EVs slow the world down. Maybe there’d be less road rage if traffic moved slower and drivers put less pressure on themselves to get from place to place. The automobile exemplifies the rugged individualistic attitude. One primary symbol of American success was and still is car ownership with prestigious sounding names that speed down the road faster than the previous model and pickup trucks that conquer mountains no matter the terrain. After some basic research about EVs he ended up impulse buying a 2021 Nissan Leaf SV Plus and took three trips around the sparsest state in the country totaling approximately 2,600 miles 62kWh at a time.

Despite outward appearances three years after getting sober Lotta is struggling to deal with life in the raw. It's becoming abundantly clear what people mean when they say putting down the drink is just the beginning. Truth is Lotta's lifelong heavy-drinking habit has left her as a fledgling emotionally. She's slowly accepting that she needs to do some more work on herself. But what? Please don't say it has to involve turning into a hippy. Can't she just comfort herself with another chocolate muffin, distract herself on Instagram, and hope for the best? It would appear not. In Mrs D Is Going Within Lotta outlines the practices she developed and strategies she worked on to start establishing herself as an emotionally robust woman.

This volume investigates performances as situated "machineries of knowing" (Karin Knorr Cetina), exploring them as relational processes for, in and with which performers as well as spectators actively (re)generate diverse practices of knowing, knowledges and epistemologies. Performance cultures are distinct but interconnected environments of knowledge practice. Their characteristic features depend not least on historical as well as contemporary practices and processes of interweaving performance cultures. The book presents case studies from diverse locations around the globe, including Argentina, Canada, China, Greece, India, Poland, Singapore, and the United States. Authored by leading scholars in theater, performance and dance studies, its chapters probe not only what kinds of knowledges are (re)generated in performances, for example cultural, social, aesthetic and/or spiritual knowledges; the contributions investigate also how performers and spectators practice knowing (and not-knowing) in performances, paying particular attention to practices and processes of interweaving performance cultures and the ways in which they contribute to shaping performances as dynamic "machineries of knowing" today. Ideal for researchers, students and practitioners of theater, performance and dance, (Re)Generating Knowledges in Performance explores vital knowledge-serving functions of performance, investigating and emphasizing in particular the impact and potential of practices and processes of interweaving of performance cultures that enable performers and spectators to (re)generate crucial knowledges in increasingly diverse ways.

• Shows how Zen offers a creative problem-solving mechanism and moral guide ideal for the stresses and problems of daily life • Shares the author’s secular, vernacular interpretations of the Four Noble Truths, the Three Treasures, the Eightfold Path, and other fundamental Buddhist ideas During the nearly 3,000 years since the Buddha lived, his teachings have spread widely around the globe. In each culture where Buddhism was introduced, the Buddha’s teachings have been pruned and modified to harmonize with local customs, laws, and cultures. We can refer to these modifications as “gift wrapping,” translating the gifts of Buddha’s teachings in ways sensible to particular cultures in particular times. This gift-wrapping explains why Indian, Tibetan, Vietnamese, Japanese, Chinese, and Indonesian Buddhism have significant differences. In this engaging guide to Zen Buddhism, award-winning actor, narrator, and Zen Buddhist priest Peter Coyote helps us peer beneath the Japanese gift-wrapping of Zen teachings to reveal the fundamental teachings of the Buddha and show how they can be applied to contemporary daily life. The author explains that the majority of Western Buddhists are secular and many don’t meditate, wear robes, shave their heads, or believe in reincarnation. He reminds us that the mental/physical states achieved by Buddhist practice are universal human states, ones we may already be familiar with but perhaps never considered as possessing spiritual dimensions. Exploring Buddha’s core teachings, the author shares his own secular and accessible interpretations of the Four Noble Truths, the Three Treasures, and the Eightfold Path within the context of his lineage and the teachings of his teacher and the teachers before him. He looks at Buddha’s teachings on our singular reality that appears as a multiplicity of things and on the “self” that perceives reality, translating powerful spiritual experience into the vernacular of modern life. Revealing the practical usefulness of Buddhist philosophy and practice, Zen in the Vernacular shows how Zen offers a creative problem-solving mechanism and moral guide ideal for the stresses and problems of everyday life.

Tap into your inner wisdom and reap the rewards of self-trust with this inspirational guide by the popular author and executive coach. We live in an age where constant media messages tell us to be richer, thinner, smarter, and faster. But what if, instead of listening to all of those voices, we listened to our own? In her unique and approachable way, M.J. Ryan asks us to imagine what life would be like if we practiced an attitude of self-trust. In Trusting Yourself, Ryan teaches ushow to quiet the critics?inside and out?and trust ourselves instead. When we remember that everyone learns through trial and error and that we each have unique strengths, our self-trust begins to grow. With this renewed self-confidence, our worries begin to shrink, and happiness and success start to come more easily.

As anthropologists have often been considered a kind of culture detectives, so Keating's fictional detective Inspector Ghote of the Bombay Police is here considered a kind of anthropologist, illuminating some of the core moral and ethical issues of modern India. Tamaya also explores how Indian-born British writer Keating eludes the orientalism that haunts so many of his ilk. Paper edition (unseen), $12.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A guide to cultivating and channeling the power of our imaginations at home, at work, in love, friendships, health, and more The Secret for a new generation, Imagination Transforms Everything helps readers to harness the transformative power of our imaginations. Using a voice-driven personal narrative, scientific research, and practical exercises, debut author Andrea Kasprzak introduces the concept of "intentionally imagining," which entails taking time to disconnect and daydream, using journaling to track those daydreams, and turning them into intentions to fulfill our goals. The author draws on her own experiences, the law of attraction theory, and intention research to give practical steps for stopping limiting self-talk, unfulfilling narratives, and the endless digital cycle sucking up our attention. Ultimately, "intentional imagining" promises to result in greater clarity about who we are and what we want, so that we can act in ways that align with that clarity.