The value of unknowing

My girl Daisy is an 8-year-old pit/boxer rescue. She loves people, the couch and getting slammed in overhead waves exploding onto the beach (over her head, not mine). This last part is new. It came about because the love of my life — let's call her Rosalie, because that's her name — patiently helped Daisy unlearn, unknow, her fear of water.

I want to be Daisy smart.

I want to break the patterns governing my writing. This will require me to unknow things that save me time, smoothing out the process. I'll have to lay off the cliches or spend time fracturing them. Comforting cadences will have to make room for new rhythms. Gawd, I might even have to redo a job I'm about to send because my conscience tells me there's a better way.

Thanks, Daisy. On the plus side I may become more open to having my head rubbed and back scratched by strangers. ???

This all might be a problem for Burrhus Frederic Skinner, who — I'm guessing here — seems like he could have used more head rubbing. Skinner believed free will to be an illusion. His principle of reinforcement postulates that we are driven by what we have done in the past. That is, if the consequences of actions we take are bad, there is a high chance the action will not be repeated. If the consequences are good, the probability of the action being repeated becomes stronger.

I could spend a lot of words detailing horribly bad actions with horribly bad outcomes I repeated again and again and again, so I have a problem with Skinner and his theory. So would Daisy. When she first started dipping slowly into the ocean, she would come up sputtering like an old outboard motor, which I'm pretty sure could be classified as a negative outcome. Yet she kept rinsing and repeating. Now she dives into foaming bombs breaking directly onto the sand. She loves it!

If Daisy can unknow, I'm thinking I can too. Maybe this means I need to get off my comfortable couch and start chasing down that book I tried to start while embedded at a combat outpost in Afghanistan. Or maybe it's as easy as taking extra time when I'm into a deliverable that could use something more. Maybe it's another look at the data, more reading or another phone call to flesh things out. When I was a reporter it was often that last call I placed that really made the story.

For me, writing is a business. It keeps a non-porous roof over my head, pasta on the table, kitesurfing equipment in my garage and travel on the agenda. I'm acutely aware that clients need to keep a lid on costs and usually need things done last week. Since I'm all about making sure clients walk away with a smile, just thinking about how to balance everything scares me. But Daisy was scared and she's doing ok.

Daisy, thank you again. When I rescued you I didn't know you'd be joining with Rosalie to rescue me back.