I pre-ordered Austin Kleon’s latest book, Keep Going, and it arrived this week. True to the other two books, it’s an easy and deceptively thought-provoking read. It’s a nice reminder to find ways to reconnect with yourself, and even to try new things.

When I started writing online, I had a 12-inch iBook G4 and TextEdit, the built-in text editor for Mac. It was on that little laptop that I started to develop a voice with my writing, and where I first came to realize I like to write at all.

I’ve written here before how graduate school, life, and work sapped me of energy to write here, and to let my thoughts just flow where they wanted to. I didn’t realize it at the time, but social media certainly impacted that, too.

Lately, I’ve been craving a return to a simpler way of life. Less moving parts, less small bites of many things, and more time to explore my own thoughts, interests, and enjoyments.

In keeping with thoughts of work, I recently read Atul Gawande’s excellent piece on why doctors hate their computers. While thinking about it today, I also was thinking about Austin Kleon’s frequent use of blackout poetry to visualize and reframe what he’s writing about.

Having never done one before, I decided to give it a try, and the above piece is the result, using the text from Atul Gawande’s piece.