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today: IT'S A GAMBLE! - GAMBLING - GREAT? GRUESOME?
GAMBLING - ESSENTIAL, ADDICTIVE, DESTRUCTIVE

Elsa's Creativity Space - Update
   Hello again,    

I'm used to thinking of gambling as horrible. Every day I hear stories of people destroying their lives, and the well-being of their families, because they can't stop gam.bling. Everything goes. A woman speaks from her prison cell: she turned to robbing banks to pay for her addiction. She doesn't excuse herself. But she couldn't help herself. She wanted to be arrested. Despair.

I've been thinking about gambling differently this past while. Not "pure gambling" (lottery tickets, casinos, online gambling). But gambling as an essential feature of healthy hopeful living that takes us beyond the routine.

My partner and I are building a business. Now, that's a gamble - with our time, our lives. I'm also building this site - Elsa's Creativity Emporium. Another huge gamble with time, energy, creativity. Columbus sailed for America. His gamble: that he would end up in the Far East. He didn't get was he was aiming for - but the gamble paid off for the Europeans.

Farmers plant seeds. The gamble: that the season will be good. Designers design. The gamble: that the design will find a market.

People fall in love, and decide to try to make a live with that person - one of the biggest gambles in life.

****

On the other hand, many people want a predictable salary. No gambling, please. So and so much an hour. Anything else feels wrong, out of control, dangerous. How can anyone live like that, they shudder and recoil.

An observation. Many people don't want to gamble with work time. They want steady dependable pay. At the same time, they have a hugely developed urge, even an overwhelming urge, to gamble.

"It's just for fun." "It's my right." "I have every right to do what I want with my money. I earned it, after all. It's mine." "Everyone's entitled to have a good time every now and then. All those hours I work. I deserve something."

So though many people are entirely unable to consider working "on a gamble," they gamble over and over in ways that are set up to make the huge majority of people lose.

I'm going to call the kind of gambling I'm used to recoiling from "pure gambling" - in other words, one isn't gambling that the weather will cooperate with one's efforts, one isn't trying to teach someone who has a hard time learning, one isn't trying to build a site or a business, one isn't courting and hoping another will respond to us. "Pure gambling" - bingo, casinos, lotteries, slot machines, computer games like minesweeper and so on. The goal is winning in a game stacked against us, and the win builds nothing except the win. No book is written, no grain is harvested, no hypothesis is tested, nothing is built.

In everyday gambling - which I'll call "part-of-life gambling", the pleasure of winning is part of so many other things.

****

I've felt the pull of pure gambling as well as of part-of-life gambling.

****

Here's the rest of the article:

It's a Gamble - Great? Gruesome?
Gambling - Essential, Addictive, Destructive

Lots more on gambling - the good, the dangerous good, the bad, and the gruesome.

****

Special point: Good gambling combines with creativity. It helps us move out of ruts, into the unknown. Something in us knows this is a good direction. There is a pull from deep inside ourselves.

As with so much about us, it's easy to mess things up.

I'll end with words from a song I wrote a few years ago, on one of the biggest gambles we're encouraged to take in life - the gamble of falling in love, trying to make a good life with another person:

Love is my kind of gamble
Love is my kind of tangle
Love mild, love wild,
Love returned to me
Love gamble
Love tangle

More
Longer Version

My writing is a gamble, by the way. I'm gambling that it's worth it - to me and to you.

Your comments are very welcome.

As always all the best,

Elsa
July 8, 2007

copyright © Elsa Schieder 2007
publishing house - FlufferDuff Impressions 2007

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Elsa's Creativity Emporium - Updates
July 8, 2007
vol 1, no 7

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Welcome to Elsa's Creativity Space

Gambling is addictive. But is there good gambling,
helpful and maybe even essential to healthy living?
Elsas Creativity Space Update explores gambling.
Creative projects are a gamble, for instance.

Elsas Creativity Space,
an all-round creativity site
exploring moments, memory, thoughts
through spoken word, song, story,
idea pieces, rap, journal, reflection, dreams, more.
Elsas Creativity Space.

Elsas creativity space is
Elsas creativity emporium is
Elsas creativity place

Gertrude Stein said, almost a century ago, a rose is a rose is a rose.

Just as a rose is a rose is a rose,
Elsas creativity space is
Elsas creativity space.

One could even go on to say that
a rose is a rose by any other name.

Likewise, one could hold that
Elsas creativity space is
Elsas creativity space
by any other name.

And many humans might not even notice if,
instead of
Elsas creativity space
I wrote
Elsas creativity place
or
Elsas creativity site.

Most humans would just register that it's
Elsas creativity something or other.

And it is.
But there's more.

The name is a signal.

This is
Elsas creativity place.

i am not calling mayday. This is not a distress signal.

It's a hello signal, come see me, notice me.

Hello,
it's Elsas creativity place
calling all search engines
to find me on my island
deserted but fertile
enchanted but isolated
creative and creating but too too alone.

Who will help me through my dark?
Who will help me make my mark?
Who will help me build my ark?
I cannot do it alone.

I'm calling to people
but strangely it's not people
I am turning to for help.

It's the web
the world wide web.

I'm calling hoping the web will hear that
Elsas creativity space
Elsas creativity space
is calling, calling, calling with longing and hope.

signed,

Elsa

Zee

Not-me

Sexe-Tete

All of me

including my early childhood self, Dely,
who took the name Elsa

July 9 , 2006
somewhat revised, February 6, 2007

copyright © Elsa Schieder, 2007 - all rights reserved

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