Hiro Protagonist

It's fantastic when I stumble onto a good blog. It's just something fascinating about the mundane being made interesting. 73urbanjourneys.com is a real treat:

the sociological imagination

C.Wright-Mills in The Sociological Imagination (1959) suggests keeping a file, a diary or journal of everyday experiences; dreams, conversations and ‘fringe-thoughts’. He believes such things keep your ‘inner world awake’ and develop ‘self-reflective habits’. (1959:196-197).

What this means is that you must learn to use your life experience in your intellectual work: continually to examine and interpret it. In this sense craftsmanship is the centre of yourself and you are personally involved in every intellectual product upon which you may work. To say you ‘have experience’, means, for one thing, that your past plays into and affects your present, and that it defines your capacity for future experience. (1959:196)

WRIGHT MILLS. C. 1959. The Sociological Imagination, Oxford University Press, Inc. New York, USA.