Readers' Choice #1: The Law of Attraction

The commentors have spoken! Last Friday, I asked which of the dormant posts in my drafts folder should be brought to life, and which left to die. Results? A tie! This week, as requested, I'll talk about the Law of Attraction; next week, I'll talk about...well, you'll just have to come back next Friday and see...

If you...

• are my friend on Facebook, or
• tried to date me on one of the eleventy-seven* dating websites I worked my way through pre-BF, or
• like to comb the archives for weird communicatrix tags

...you probably know that I, as I like to say, "hew to the woo". This doesn't mean I eschew science or that I'm the opposite of The Non-Believers we had to wait through 44 fucking American presidents to have someone put a name to; au contraire, I rejected the notion of the Lord Jesus as either personal savior or savior of mankind a long, long time ago. No, I like to think of myself as a "Well, hell, who knows, so arm yourself with factual knowledge, be nice and use whatever story you like as a meditation to get you through the rest of it.

A meditation? What the...?

Let me back up a wee bit.

First, much as I'd like, I'm no meditatrix. I sit, I breathe, and if I'm not doing anything else, I start to itch. I'll get there someday (and YES, I try now and again) but for now, I use the dishes or the dog's walk or even HULU hooping to let my mind go elsewhere. (Although I confess, yesterday I HULU hooped to the one episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County they have loaded, just to see what the unholy fuss is about, of course, and do you know, I actually started to get dizzy, which never happens with Dragnet.)

No, when I say meditate on something, I mean some sort of stick to wrap the loose bits of your life around so you can get them off the floor and closer to your myopic gaze. Or, better yet, a lens through which to observe things. Woo-woo stuff lends itself nicely to this, because most of it has some structure and a whole lotta loosey-goosey.

Take astrology, for example. I'm a Virgo (duh...tagline!) with a Libra moon and Cancer rising. That's about all I remember from the first chart I had done, by my first shrink-slash-astrologer**, except that I also have Venus in Leo, which means I have to be very happy with my hair, which, sadly, since the Crohn's and the meds and now middle age hormonal change, I am not. However, I am extremely happy with The BF's hair, which oddly enough makes up for a lot.

Sorry, digressing.

Anyway, when you get your sun sign and moon sign and suchlike, you can get all crazy about "Oh, I'm a Scorpio, so all I like to do is have sex sex sex and all the other signs hate me!" OR you can look at the attributes, think about how they might be manifesting (or not) in your life, and think about how you might tease out the purported good qualities and grapple with the particular challenges this system presents. It's framework for looking at something, or a way to section off a piece of your life so you can start looking at something, somewhere, rather than just woe-is-me-ing it all the way home.

All that woo-woo stuff works like this (for me, which, let's face it, is the way I think it should work). Not gospel, not prophecy, not something that dooms you to some predetermined end or even tells you what you should (or shouldn't be doing that way). Whether you are reading a horoscope in the paper or getting a fancy-expensive, one-on-one reading from an astrologer, you are, you'll pardon my saying so, an idiot of colossal proportions if you try following them to the letter.  Okay, that's judge-y; how about, you're being awfully imprudent, aren't you? Putting your life and your decisions in the hands of a third-party?

No, that's not how I roll. Numerology, enneagram, magic Chinese throwing sticks, what-have-you: they are tools to play with, and to use with caution and discretion.

When the hell are getting around to this Law of Attraction, anyway?

Okay, I'm getting to the meaty part of the post now. But the preamble is important, because I think that swallowing the Law of Attraction whole, whether served up by The Secret or the Hickses or Florence Scovel Shinn (back in 1925!) is what both gums up the perfectly reasonable underpinning works and infuriates the skeptics, a.k.a. the Non-Believers (who have every right to be kinda pissed off by the name, even as they're happy for the shout-out).

Before undies start getting themselves in bundles, let's look at what the Law of Attraction means. Well, the new age-y version. Which generally gets summed up as thoughts having vibrations, or energy, that attracts things that have similar vibrations or energy. Or, to put it in a neat, 19th-century, no-nonsense nutshell, "Like attracts like." (Which either sounds sensible or even dumber, depending on your opinion of Ye Olde Fashioned Bromides.)

People for it say it empowers people to be masters of their own destinies; people ag'in it say that at its most benign, it's hooey and at its most pernicious, it promotes blame-the-victimism, e.g., if you're attracting the bad juju, it's YOUR FAULT, weak and gormless ninny, so neener neener to you and your barren womb, terminal unemployability or string of Job-like trials.

My own take is this: it might work. Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion, bodies at rest tend to stay at rest.

Or it might not. I give you medicinal leeches and a sun that revolves around the Earth. (On the other hand, I give you medicinal leeches, so who the hell knows?)

I tend to think that if the Law of Attraction does work, for most people, it doesn't work head on. You learn a little about yourself, you learn a little about the outcome of dating cads, you learn how to start liking yourself, the cads become less attractive, you become more attractive et voila! You magically, through the Law of Attraction, and 15 or 20 years of hard work, stop dating assholes and find a nice guy.

Same thing applies to health, money, happiness or whatever. The universe may or may not be doing its thing, but either way, the thing is gonna get done hella faster if you're doing some of the heavy lifting, exercise, or eating right, or therapy, or whatever, than if you're wishing really hard for God to turn you into a fairy princess who rides a unicorn every day to her magical castle on the hill.

Using The Law of Attraction as meditation!

So what's the mashup? Pretty much project thinking, as I see it:

1. Figure out what you want.
2. Figure out where you are.
3. Figure out the steps between where you are and where you want to get to.
4. Execute.

The steps will most likely change along the way, oh, boy, will they ever. And at some point in the journey, you may even decide that you're not so interested in that destination, but this rest stop, or this detour. Personally, I think it's because we're most of us are kind of impatient dumbasses (when I'm being harsh) or ignorant flowers (when I'm being generous): really, how the hell are you supposed to know what the hell it is you want when either you haven't experienced it yet or it doesn't exist, or both?! I mean, yes, there are a few people with a vocation for, uh, a vocation that already exists, and they seem to have it from the time they're three, and it's simply exasperating to the rest of us. Doctor, nun and astronaut were on the list when I was growing up; "communicatrix", alas, was not.

As you get closer to The Thing you want, it gets a little easier, just as you relax a little when that landmark you've been scouring the unfamiliar horizon for finally appears in hour 11 of a very long drive in unfamiliar territory. Then you just, you know...go.

Pointing your guns in the right direction is kind of a prerequisite (unless you're pretty cool about being open and explore-y, which I'm not, so shut up and quit making me curse my stupid lot even more.) If you need some sort of guide to exploring yourself, there are lots of fun ways to go about it, from rigidly structured to loosey-goosey, and from free (costing only time) to sky-high expensive (we'll leave off those for now, this being a depression and all). They range in woo-woo-ness from not at all to quite a bit, so, you know, find what suits you (or what resonates, as the new age kids say) and leave the rest:

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People I'll confess that this is kind of a tedious read. (Sorry, Mr. Covey!) But there are good stories that keep you going, and TONS of good exercises. You kind of can't argue with the principles behind it, and they really will help you build up great habits that will "attract" great stuff into your life.

Toastmasters International Yes, it's a speaking club. But it offers a terrific, solid, workbook structure for systematically, incrementally getting better at something. Plus the people are so nice. And bonus! You will become a better communicator of ideas, as well as a better leader of men, if you participate. Lots of stuff accelerated for me as a result of my two years in Toastmasters. If you live in L.A., I can personally recommend the Del Rey and Joseph P. Rinnert clubs. Tremendous support for a great price.

FlyLady She's currently enjoying a spike in popularity, but she's been delivering solid advice on making a better life for yourself for years now. There's lots of stuff for sale on the site, and the design is kind of loopy and gives me a bit of a headache, but there's a wealth of great info for free. The Twitter accounts especially add a lot of value, as they say in the biz world. I've dipped in and out of FlyLady for years now, when I've needed a little clarity and action. Those little mini-cleanups she advocates (which pop up randomly if you follow on Twitter) are fantastic for getting things moving.

The Artist's Way Hands down, my fave reco for anyone who self-identifies as at least slightly creative. It's a 12-week, self-directed course of study in YOU, with some great exercises I used for years afterward. You can buddy up or find a group to do it with, if you're not a lone wolf, but I did it all by myself and it worked like gangbusters: got me transitioned from advertising to acting. Za-zing!

Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life My fave feng shui book, I used this to get me out of some of the darkest post-breakup days into the light. And a shitload of money, no lie: I feng shui'd the crap out of my kitchen (prosperity corner) and within two weeks, two individual gargantuan residual checks which the agency had been sitting on finally showed up. Might they have come anyway? OF COURSE. But this way, I got a clean kitchen, felt great about it, and distracted myself from thinking about how my life was over because my heart had been tossed into the dumpster like so much trash. (Which is bad feng shui, btw: always keep your trash can emptied!) I still crack it open when I'm feeling stuck, or like I want to pull a little goodness into my life.

Tarot, horoscopes, numerology, enneagrams, etc. These are all fun toys to play with for looking at yourself, finding patterns and even coming up with daily (or weekly, or monthly) "meditations". I put them last because they're the most woo-woo, the easiest to do badly and better, in my opinion, better as a sort of an advanced-class add-on to more practical, hands-on stuff. It's really easy to get passive about the serious woo-woo stuff, and that's always dangerous territory; everyone remembers that one episode of The Twilight Zone where William Shatner and his young bride narrowly escape the clutches of a tiny, mechanical fortune teller who casts a terrible spell upon the less fortunate couple who decide to give up on skeptical thinking and entrust their future to a devil doll in a diner jukebox.

Wait, we don't all remember it? For the love of all that's holy, drop everything and go watch it now!

As you've likely surmised by now, I'm an adherent of the belief that pretty much any course of study or action can be a meditation, and that whatever you start applying your considerable (really! it is!) will to begins to "attract" more of the same. It's Yellow Volkswagen Syndrome, if you like: you become oriented towards cattle ranching or long-distance running or pie, and you start to see longhorns or times to sneak in a run or flaky crust wherever you go.

Me? I pull stories from life. And the more I do, the more I see stories, and the more I attract the kind of people who like to read them.

Not sure they'll ask for something like this again anytime soon, though. Although, you never can tell: sometimes, the stuff you pursue pulls you in some mighty interesting directions.

Questions?...

Image by gsloan via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license, and you really should go look at the full-sized, uncropped version.

*new-favorite word alert!

**won on a bet! Now there's a future post for you!

Book Review: The Power of Less

If for no other reason than his New Year's Challenge has gotten me to actually play the guitar again, I would love Leo Babauta forever.

But in addition to being a gentle ass-kicker of the highest order and to writing the generous and excellent ZenHabits blog, Leo is also a shining example of that favorite thing of mine, someone who uses himself as guinea pig, testing his concepts on his own esteemed personage and reporting back, generously, kindly, and with far, far less swearing than yours truly, with the results. (For more of these fellow travelers, see the blogroll cleverly named "Fellow Travelers" on my Virgo Guide blog.)

In other words, Leo is a walking, talking ad for the everyday miracle that can happen when one lives by the simple (but not always instinctive and definitely not always easy to follow) credo that less is more, establishing simple but solid changes one at a time that, over time, result in a spectacularly different kind of life.

And now, because not everyone digs the bloggity-blog thing, and because sometimes it's, well, simpler to carry around a handful of dead tree, Leo Babauta has written a lovely book laying out his system for personal change so that the world (or the interested pockets of it) can follow along.

What, in a nutshell, is the Power of Less?

As I do more and more consulting work, I'm finding that one of the chief issues smart, creative people grapple with, the kind of people who read communicatrix, for example, is finding focus. Leo's point (and mine, when I can state it simply enough) is that if you pull away all the gunk first, you're left with a much more reasonably-sized bear to wrassle. Which is to say, there will always be bear wrassling, and somedays, even a smaller-sized bear will pin your ass to the ground, but really, don't you want to do what you can to improve your odds?

While he covers everything from dealing with email overload to starting an exercise program, his core principles are basic, and support every lesson and idea in the book:

Principle 1: By setting limitations, we must choose the essential. So in everything you do, learn to set limitations.

Principle 2: By choosing the essential, we create great impact with minimal resources. Always choose the essential to maximize your time and energy.

The principles take different shape depending on the desired change, and Babauta offers up plenty of real tips from his own experience for the most critical kinds of changes we need to implement, reducing project load, managing email, starting (and sticking with) an exercise regimen. But all of his examples start with the kind of sound prep that I've come to realize is essential for creating real change:

As Leo himself says in a helpful FAQ, The Power of Less distills the core principles of his blog in an easy-to-digest (and much easier to carry around and mark up, if you're into that kind of thing) book form. Yes, you could drill through his entire ZenHabits oeuvre and get the info, but if the point is to simplify, you have to admit that a neatly bound, portable volume is way simpler to use.

How can you tell if the book is for you?

I'll be honest: while I employ many principles from David Allen's GTD system, I could never get it fully up and running for long enough to say I'm "doing" GTD. Leo's "system", in quotation marks because it's really a philosophy, but he offers concrete and helpful tools to start operating under it, owes a lot to GTD, as well, but he's managed to pull the best stuff from it and leave the rest without making you feel you're missing anything.

So I'd say this: if you've tried and abandoned systems for organizing your life, or reducing procrastination, and you suspect that the reason you have is because (a) you become overwhelmed easily and (b) you have multiple areas of focus pulling you in (too) many directions, Leo's Way may be for you. Because Leo's Way is really going to be  your way, you will find and create your own systems naturally as you let other stuff drop.

And that may be just the ticket for fellow Virgos (and Virgos-at-heart)...

xxx
c

• BUY The Power of Less via amazon (and I get...oh, I dunno, a quarter or something. Which is awesome!)
• BUY The Power of Less via your independent brick & mortar indie store (and they stay in business so they're around when I finally write my own #@%* book and do a tour and come visit you in your town)
• BUY The Power of Less via half.com and support some guy sitting in his bathrobe and slippers in the second bedroom of his house in a suburban cul de sac

Image by hooverine via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Control what you can

I'm like a broken record about a couple of things with my actors, and yes, I think of them as MY actors, because I put my heart and soul into schooling them on every hard-won lesson I've got. And also because I am possessive about them the way I am about MY readers and MY boyfriend and MY dog, even though my dog is technically The BF's.

The first thing I nag them about is opening their big Dummy Actor minds to the idea that they can learn about acting from learning, period. From studying another art or craft, from learning another (completely unrelated to acting) skill, from reading something, anything, about something other than acting. It's why I hammer them to sign up for my newsletter, which is jam-packed with stuff any human being with words can use every day of their lives, in or out of the audition room, and it's why I despair every time I see an "unsubscribe" from one of them. Actors, some of them, anyway, are into learning EXACTLY what it will take to get from A to B, where "A" is where they are and "B" is up on the stage of the Kodak Theatre, clutching a tiny gold man by his crotchal area. (You think I'm kidding, you haven't met enough actors. Or enough honest ones.)

The second thing I nag my dear, darling, maddening actors about is to put their time into what they can control and let the rest GO. I don't think I've ever stated it explicitly the way I do in February's column (coming soon to an inbox near you!), but really, if you're any good at extrapolating, that's what these endless exhortations to get one's shit in order are about.

I bring these things up because today I stumbled across the website of a fascinating lady in New York* who happens to teach actors about how to do good monologues (which are, like, the hardest thing in the world to do, and actors HATE them), and happens to have been taught, at one point, by one of the world's finest living persons of the theater, Mr. David Mamet. Whose teachings she compares to, of all people, FlyLady, whom I've also exhorted people to pay attention to if they really, really want to get their shit straight. And who has written an article about auditioning for actors that civilians (that's "non-actors" to you non-actors) who have more than two brain cells to rub together and who want to get somewhere in their lives should go read right now. (Now. Here it is again.)

I've learned about marketing design by reading a terrific blog about marketing by a guy who does it for lawyers, who, trust me on this, could not be further from designers in terms of perceived value and service business models. A guy who writes a (terrific) blog about job seeking for super-tech types became a fan of this blog because...well, I have no idea why. But he is great and we are now real-life friends and learn from each other.

The list goes on. I can't, because I've got to go run and meet a bunch of designers, a group I no longer count myself among, but you can dig around in my links and find all the other people who are nothing like me and yet getting at the same truth via different means. Or go back to this woman's site and read everything she's written for actors (check the right sidebar, partway down). Or go to FlyLady, and start practicing being an excellent, nice-to-yourself human being who gets things done without punching yourself in the face repeatedly.

All roads lead to Rome, baby. If there's a traffic jam or washout or a bunch of potholes on one, go find another.

See you at the Spanish Steps...

xxx

c

*Also weird: her name is Karen Kohlhaas, which freaked me out because I already have a long-distance doppelganger thing going with my now-real-life/Biznik pal, Seattle consultant Karrie Kohlhaas, and if things keep going at this rate, the world is going to collapse in on itself way, way in advance of any Mayan calendar prediction. I mean, come on: REALLY.

Image by Just a Temporary Measure via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Get your motor runnin', Day 17: The Trigger Trick

The good news is I practiced today.

The bad news is, I almost didn't practice today.

Not because practicing the guitar for 10 minutes is so awful, or because a horrible misfortune befell me, or because I willfully threw up my hands (instead of wrapping them around the guitar) and said, "I quit!"

I almost broke my 16-day streak (and out-loud promise) of practicing guitar every day for 10 minutes because I blew off my trigger.

For those of you not joining in on Leo Babauta's 30-day New Year's Challenge, the trigger, according to Leo, is the thing you name as the thing you'll do right before you do the thing you're promising to do. Depending upon your particular challenge, the thing could be anything from waking up to parking your ass in your chair at work to shutting down your computer for the day.

Since I chose "practice guitar for 10 minutes daily" and since I work from home 99% of the time, I figured "after breakfast" would be a good trigger. There have been one or two days when I've breakfasted elsewhere, but I've practiced as soon as I walked in the door, before doing anything else, so I figure that counts.

Today, however, I had to work on a presentation that was due fast. Didn't exactly have a hard out, as we say in the trade, but I was up against it enough that figured I'd just push the guitar off until after I emailed the preso off. You know, pick a new trigger...for the day.

So I did my work. Emailed it off. And three hours later, I was merrily barrelling through a raft of non-essential bullshit when I realized, yup, you got it, I'd totally blown off the guitar. And I actually kind of like playing the guitar. Not as much as farting around with non-essential bullshit, obviously; I'm a lot better at farting around than I am guitar at this point, so farting around is more seductive. I just forgot, because I blew off my trigger.

And then I spent an extra five minutes on scales just to remind myself not to do it again.

Triggers, people. Triggers...

xxx
c

Image by ctd_2005 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Get your motor runnin', Day 6: Make 10 minutes make a difference

If you're old enough, you've heard the joke already, and if you're not (or you just haven't), it's high time:

Man in NYC #1: Excuse me--how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Man in NYC #2: Practice. You %$#@*!

Note to young people: in the joke as it was told to me, the second guy--clearly a native New Yorker--did not curse. As a former New Yorker, I can assure you the cursing version is more accurate; New York moves fast, brother, and has no time for fake politeness*.

At any rate of speed, New Yorkers are a great lot for getting things done, because they have to be ingenious about it, the non-wealthy ones, anyway. Time and space are at a premium, so you both learn to make the most of what you've got and to appreciate the hell out of it. Many of the good habits I've learned, writing fast, cleaning up as I cook, how to eat while walking, when necessary, I picked up during my three years living in New York as a rich-in-opportunity, poor-in-money intern at Ye Olde Madison Avenue Sweatshop.

If email response is any indication, I recently wrote my most popular column ever for The Networker, the monthly newsletter that goes out to LA (and SF and NY) Casting members. The subject? 10 things you can do in 30 minutes each to improve your career. (Well, to market yourself, but that falls under the rubric of improvement, I'd say. I guess it's human nature to feel overwhelmed by the big, perhaps because when we compare ourselves to the infinite, we see how small we are.

So while I generally eschew all these "100 ways you can skin a cat" posts, I'm relenting this once, because it is, after all something new for me to try, which should help get my own motor running. And because we're all looking for ways to do more with less time, they're short, 10 minutes or less each. (And NOT ONE OF THEM is about taking a walk, doing jumping jacks or meditating. So there!)

Basically, these are ideas to break down huge, colossal projects like:

• find new job
• get a life
• find a romantic partner
• start a blog/learn what this #@%* social media thing is all about
• etcetera

into manageable chunks. Most of them (surprise, surprise) will work to make you a better communicator, which is a skill that cuts across all kinds of desired goals. It's one of those fundamental, don't-skip steps that some of us step-skippers (cough-cough) try to skip anyway.

Here, then, are my...

30 Ways to Start Initiating Big Change in 10 Minutes (or Less)

1. Park your ass in the chair, pull out your resume, rewrite the Objective or Summary so it's interesting. (Think movie synopsis, story for a SMART 8-year-old, catching up an old friend on what you've been doing, etc.)
2. Re-record your voice mail message so that it is shorter, friendlier and more charming. (Smile while doing it; it really does help.)
3. The Improve My Relationships Hack. Call a friend you haven't spoken to in a few weeks, but not someone you haven't spoken to in a few months. Tell them at the outset of the call that you can only talk for 10 minutes, but you want to spend it telling them how much you like them, and why. Or tell them you'd thought of calling them when you saw x the other day, but you forgot, and now you are. But do the 10 minutes thing up front. (You can schedule another time to talk later if you want.)
4. The Be Here Now Hack. Set a timer, then go play with the dog for 10 minutes. You're setting the timer because chances are you will not want to stop after 10 minutes (I never do, unless I'm winded), and your dog certainly won't. Only your dog will be fine with this; they're great at living in the moment, are dogs.
5. Go to your hard drive. Find your pictures folder. Create a subfolder called "Happy". Pull out as many photos from your main folder that make you smile as you can in 10 minutes. Put them in the folder named "Happy" and save that folder as your screensaver. You can do this in 10-minute chunks if you're slow or an overthinker, like me. (Cursed Virgo tendencies, they give, and they take away.) Again, set a timer. Big rabbit hole potential with this one.
6. Pull out your favorite book, open at random and read one page.
7. Pull out ANY piece of hard-copy reading material and read it one paragraph out loud. Now read it out loud as if you were telling someone a secret. Now read it out loud as if you were furious at someone.
8. Put on a favorite song, one you know most of the words to. Sing out loud with it. Twice, once, just full out, to yourself, and once as though you're singing it to someone you love. (They don't have to be there. Or use the dog.)
9. Take a piece of paper and draw yourself. Even if it sucks. Try repeating this every day.
10. Write an email to someone you admire telling them why. You don't have to send it, although you certainly can. Later. Not these 10 minutes.
11. Take three deep breaths. (Okay, this is CLOSE to meditating, I'll admit. But it takes way less time and is also very effective and awesome.)
12. Ladies! Clean out your purses! (Mens! Clean out your man purse or wallet!)
13. Go through a magazine you've been meaning to read, rip out the articles you actually think you might read, and throw the rest in the recycle bin. (Alternatively, go around your workspace or home collecting stray magazines and corral them in one place. Do the 10-minute scan later.)
14. Clean out old files, paper or electronic, for 10 minutes. (Timer thing.)
15. If you're a GTD-er, spend 10 minutes with your Someday-Maybe list. Pick one thing you want to still do and figure out how you could move toward that thing in 10 minutes. (Hint: think practice if it's something you want to get better at, or research if it's something you know nothing about.)
16. Go leave a comment on someone else's blog. A good one, that adds something, not a "Great post!", dig-me kinda comment.
17. If you haven't the night before, write out the list of things you need to do today with the time estimated for each. Check your real time against your estimated time and revise accordingly, moving forward. (I am so still working on this one.)
18. Clean your computer monitor or your eyeglasses.
19. Go pee. (Okay, this one won't make sense to some of you, but for others, you're going to be all "WOW. I feel SO much better!")
20. Write out, by hand, your favorite quotation. (If you don't have one, and you should have many, I think, Google "quotations + happiness" for starters.) Do this every day for a month. I still have a journal of these I started way, way back in college. It's hilarious in some ways, but kind of inspiring in others; we really are what we spend our time thinking about and doing.
21. Think of an object. Write a haiku about it.
22. Think of a country. Write a limerick about it.
23. Select a book you've been meaning to read but have been blowing off. Preferably of a helpful, edifying nature but not TOO smartypants. Preferably one you don't mind getting a little messed up. Put a bookmark in the front of it. Bring it to your bathroom. Leave it there, and remove any magazines on your way out (or ones that belong to you, if you're sharing.) From now until it's done or you've decided that it actually sucks and you're not going to read it and you're ready to pass it on to the used bookstore (or Goodwill, depending on how beat to sh*t it is), that's what you're reading in the bathroom.
24. Repeat #22, only make sure this book is inspiring. Put it next to your bed. That's what you're reading before bed until it's done or you're done with it.
25. Make a folder in your bookmarks toolbar called "daily." In it, put all your time-wasters: email, Facebook, Twitter; you know your poison. Pick a time once or twice per day. That's when you go to that folder, period.
26. Make a list of your favorite books as a kid. (I hope to god you have something on this list. If not, feel free to use mine, Bread and Jam for Frances, or any of the Frances books.) The next time you are at the bookstore, buy one of these books. (Or if you're broke, the next time you're at the used bookstore or the library.) When you start beating yourself up, pull out the book and read for 10 minutes.
27. If you don't already, get and install the StumbleUpon toolbar for your Firefox browser. NOT SO THAT YOU CAN SURF. You will use this to "thumbs up" great things you read. NOT CAT VIDEOS OR MEAN GOSSIP. (Well, okay, some cat videos.) And guess what: each thing you "thumbs up" or Stumble, I want you to write a brief review of why people should read this. If the little box doesn't pop up automatically, go into your toolbar and click on the speech bubble thingy. Do not be a lazy-ass surfer: add to the greater good; make yourself smarter in the process.
28. If you have never heard of StumbleUpon, take 10 minutes and read this, or Google it.
29. If you're still using Internet Explorer, take 10 minutes and read about what Firefox is. Then take another 10 sometime and install it. Seriously. You're going to be left behind if you don't.
30. Leave a comment on this post. You don't have to take 10 minutes; in fact, I'd rather you just write. It can be some great tip; it can be something you've tried implementing before that sucks. It can be some fear about starting that you're releasing. Be imperfect. Share yourself. Use your words.

Ready? Go...

xxx c

*On the other hand, New Yorkers are some of the most genuinely kind people I've met, not to mention generous, tolerant and open-minded. City people get a bad rap, but I've found most of them to be pretty creamy in the middle, once you scratch the hard-candy shell.

Image by tanakawho via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Get your motor runnin', Day 3: Enemy of the good

Anyone who has been (a) paying attention and (b) reading this outside of a feed reader knows that the tagline of this conglomeration of oddities is, and has been from Day One, "A Virgo's Guide to the Universe."

And, in a master stroke of irony, anyone who has not is not a Virgo.

I am asked sometimes what the extent of my belief in the woo-woo is. Not as frequently nor with such pointed annoyance as happened during my years with The Chief Atheist, but still, enough to warrant a policy disclosure. And said disclosure goes something like, "I believe in horoscopes, fortunes and other non-scientifically-based predictors of the future when they portend great things, and woo-woo stuff in general when it provides an interesting framework with which to puzzle out a problem.

The Virgo thing is just such a framework.

As I say in the "about" page of the new marketing project blog thingy, Virgos are "all about the order-from-chaos, the meticulous noting of things: we're, like, the Information Butlers of the world." We're the ones who ask for (and get) bright yellow filing cabinets for our 13th birthdays, which sometimes fall on Friday, the 13th, which doesn't freak us out in the least but which we think is really rather cool and orderly.

We're the ones who don't just create doll villages, but come up with full names, back stories and family trees for the 80-odd (very odd) residents. And type up a town newspaper. With columns. On a typewriter. A manual typewriter.

We're the ones who not only compile to-do lists but add any items we've already done to the lists, so that a complete record is in place.

We're the ones constantly coming up with better systems, when we're not stubbornly clinging to old, outmoded ones, because promise of perfection is constantly just there, one elusive, perfect system/hack/hashtag away.

There is a saying that "the perfect is the enemy of the good." Actually, it is a quote from Voltaire, and thus originally in French ("Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien"), and, it could be argued (and is, quite persuasively, here) that the actual translation is "The best is the enemy of the good." This thin-slicing of hairs is not my point; my point is this:

If you go after perfect, you lose. Because it will never be perfect. And I'm a Virgo, and I know from this shit, because I wrassle that particular bear almost every day. I've gotten into fights over the placement of a preposition in a headline. I've lost tens of thousands of dollars of income fretting over a tenth of an em-space in kerning. That's an imprecise example, but hey, I write this blog the way I do, all at once, very little editing, unlike other bits of writing like my columns and my newsletter, because this blog is about letting go of the perfect to get at more of the good.

Like everything else I talk about here, I bring this up now because I'm working on no less than three projects which will kill me, KILL ME DEAD, if I do not submit to the truth that the perfect is the enemy of the good. That blog project thingy I mentioned earlier. An upcoming (god help me) webinar on pricing that I'm co-presenting with my marketing coach, Ilise. And a new song that has to come out this week, or not at all, because it's got a whole new year's theme thing to it. (Well, okay, it could come out NEXT year, I guess, but that would suck all the more.)

Let us swear an oath, you and I: let us make 2009 the year we stopped letting the perfect be the enemy of the good more of the time than not. Or even, if you like, more of the time than we have before.

Or, hell, why not go for the whole ball of wax, the year we at least introduced the thought into our working vocabularies.

This post? Not perfect.

And I'm not going back to fix anything, save to add a picture.

Your comments? THROW THEM THE HELL OUT THERE. Don't edit! Go crazy! This one time, I will not judge you! Or myself!

And in return, when I put up the half-baked, not-as-perfect-as-I'd-like song, I hope you will be supportive. Because I'm only human, and it's going to be rough, taking the slings and arrows from the Great General YouTube Coliseum Community.

Even if you don't, though, even if you snicker a little at this or at that, when it comes out, I'm hanging tough.

Because friends, this is one advanced-syllabus lesson I'm learning. And at the end of 2009, I want it learned.

Well, as much as I can do, anyway...

xxx
c

P.S. I'm not even CHECKING this in PREVIEW mode. Look at me go!

Image by Jo Jakeman via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Get your motor runnin', Day 2: Most Beneficent Outcome

Someday, I will have to write an entire essay about my first-shrink-(slash)-astrologer.

I've written about her in passing, usually when I need to back something up with particularly good wisdom in a particularly pithy way. My first-shrink-(slash)-astrologer, let's call her "Zifka," which is the name I gave her in the Young Adult novel I was supposed to write and, for various reasons, blew off, was full of both wisdom and pith. Which meant, from a practical application standpoint, that she was both able to point out why and how my head was stuck up my ass, and make excellent suggestions for the extraction of it, when (or if) I was sufficiently fed up with my condition to actually do something about it.

Which is to say, she called me on my shit in the best of all possible ways.

Anyway, Zifka and I hooked up again on my big trip to the PacNW this past fall. We'd spoken on the phone, here and there, over the years: sometimes as a "tune-up", for which I happily paid her; sometimes just to shoot the breeze. A lot of breeze accumulates when you really vibe with someone but only get the chance to do it directly every five years or so, and we did us a lot of breeze-shootin' (and fois-gras profiteroles eatin', as she's such a foodie, I'll even eat lamb hearts and other "dare food" when I'm with her). And it's cool, I don't want to be a pig, sniffing around for truffly bits of worldly wisdom when she's not on the clock. Although, you know, I hoped for them, all the same.

So she talked about being a mom, about living in the PacNW, about being an aging dyke mom to a black kid in the PacNW. We talked about heirloom beans, or somesuch, fifty bucks a pound!! (I told you: foodie.) We talked about wine and Chicago (where we're both from) and California (where she used to live, and I still do) and how it sucks that thinning hair dictates cut as you get old. We talked a lot about the then-upcoming elections.

And finally, we talked about my trip to the PacNW and what I was trying to accomplish with it. Which I had problems articulating to the rank and file, but which I knew had little to do with my bullshit cover (writing second draft of submission chapters for aforementioned Young Adult novel) and everything to do with (god help me, I'm a walking Somerset Maugham cliché, 64 years later) finding myself. Ugh.

I knew it was borderline shrink territory, but hey, she's Zifka, Zifka will tell you to GFY in a South Side minute, and make you laugh as you move on to the next subject. But she didn't: she brought up the concept of Most Beneficent Outcome, or MBO, for short. And it's so important a concept, I'm giving it its own header*, so future legions of Internet searchers can benefit from Zifka's wisdom, too, even if Oprah insists on inviting that well-meaning yawner of a self-help dude, Eckhart TOO-lah**.

The "Most Beneficent Outcome" Concept, by Zifka

Instead of focusing on getting a particular thing, put out to the universe that you would like the most beneficent outcome. Point being, the universe is infinitely wiser and more complex than you, and you're probably asking for something in PARTICULAR because you can't imagine a fraction of the infinite possible outcomes.

Taking my Seattle trip as an example, I told a lot of people I was going there to write the book, because it was easier than saying I was going to see what would happen.

But the truth was I knew I was a stuck and needed some help processing info and figuring out how to get to the next level. I hadn't a clue about what I was actually "processing" or what the next level looked like; I didn't come up there thinking "I need to meet a lot of interesting people, dammit!" Or, "Seattle! That'll be just the thing for kickstarting a series of workshops teaching people about how to market themselves and finally putting to good use all those wasted years writing ads and fucking around on Twitter!"

Instead, I did Most Beneficent Outcome (not calling it that) and lo, I got these chances to speak, met a slew of interesting new people, and came away with an Actual Clue as to what the hell I was supposed to be doing with the next few years of my life.

It's really easy to get attached to outcome. Trust me, it's how I operated the first 41 years of my life. I functioned at a pretty high level, considering, but who knows what I might have achieved had worked my ass of AND held an intention, rather than thinking I was making a downpayment on a very particular outcome.

As you move forward with your goals, you may want to think about the brilliant Zifka and the brilliant Most Beneficent Outcome.

Is it scary? Hells, yeah! At first. And always. But really, what worthwhile new thing isn't?

Speaking of new things, if there's a concept floating around out there that's the same thing as MBO, only called something different, could you please bring it to my attention, preferably in the comments? I like knowing the long and noble history of ideas.

Even if they originate with Eckhart TOO-lah...

xxx
c

Image by _neona_ via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

*Adam Kayce! Monk at Work! This is one of those things we need to fix on my blog, right? I should have an h-2  header for internal entry callouts, right? Or am I nuts?

**Okay, he's a really smart, nice guy. Great ideas. But come on, I can't be the only one who drifts off like Ralph Kramden watching the Late Late Late Show when the guy starts talking.

Staying Awake in Seattle, Day 15: PDX, PDQ, Part the first

I'm an extreme creature of habit, part of the reason for my current Shake Things Up in '08 Tour. so when I decided to take a side trip to Portland, I pretty much resigned myself to staying where The BF and I stayed last year, the ultra-groovy Jupiter Hotel, with its Hipster Seal of Approvalâ„¢.

I say "resigned" because as a certified Cranky Old Lady, I had a few problems with the Jupiter the first time we stayed there. Like the room that was so small, I could touch the door and the window/wall from the bed by pointing my toes and stretching. Like the party vibe, college dorm fraternizing vibe and noise levels. To be fair, they warn that it's a "high energy" hotel, but until you have to be peeled off the ceiling at 3am by your boyfriend because a drunk, albeit friendly hipster with a 12-pack of PBRs who doesn't realize that the party is not, in fact, in your room or that his very loud knock mere millimeters from your head sounded like a home invasion, you have no idea. Really.

Still, in true Adult Child of an Alcoholic fashion, the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. Plus, I was going to be having dinner with my former shrink/astrologer at the awesome Le Pigeon (foie gras profiteroles! lamb heart flatbread!), right across the street. Plus, I knew how to get there from the freeway. Er, sort of.

So I logged onto their website and booked me an expensive, fancy motel room. And then, stung a bit by sticker shock (it was definitely cheaper when we booked last year, by a lot), I made the fatal mistake of searching for better rates on a few travel sites, and discovered one for NINE DOLLARS LESS!

I do not take these things lying down anymore, so I immediately dashed off a sweet plea to Whom It May Concern at Jupiter:

I just booked through your site and then saw on Kayak.com that I could have saved a whopping NINE BUCKS on the room. Which ain't the end of the world and you're nice and all, but really, these are hard times and nine bucks is nine bucks.

So do you think you could just throw in parking for that one night, and we'll call it even? (Happy to give you the extra buck.) Seems much easier than cancelling the reso and rebooking.

Thanks!

xxx c

P.S. Stayed here last year, if that gets me anything. Probably not, but what the hell.

Imagine my surprise when, just a few minutes later, I received this lovely, accommodating email from on Al Munguia, the Actual General Manager of the Joint!

you got it.. free parking.. and i'll throw in a bottle of voss water as well.

Figuring I might as well go for the Full Monty and leverage my incredible popularity as a Blogger of Creative Nonfiction, I fired off one more email:

Upgrade this old bag to a room that the drunk hipsters will steer clear of and there's a sweet blog post in it for you. (We had an, um, interesting 3am visitor last time. It was like getting the EMT paddles, boy howdy.)

Unfortunately, I did not hear back from my pal, Al, so I started girding my loins for the inevitable 3am visit from one of my Higher Energy fellow hotel guests, figuring that was that.

How delighted was I, then, upon my arrival to find that not only had my parking been comped, but that I'd been upgraded to a bigger room! This one had a desk, a closet area and a sleeping area all in different quadrants, and there was an actual walk from the bed to the door. SCORE!

I'd never had an issue with the taste level of the place or the niceness level of the employees. They are all super-great, and the place is about ninety times cooler than any home of mine will ever be. They have groovy amenities like free apples and coffee, if you are old and cranky, and the ultra-fab Doug Fir Lounge, host to many hipster musical acts, if you are not. The beds are extra-comfy with good mattresses and nice bedding: I slept like a log in my Bed that Was A Walk From the Door, although I took the preventive measure of (free) earplugs this time, too; you can see them, here, in the desk drawer, alongside the in-room copy of The Four Agreements, which I call the world's most genius hipster replacement for the Gideon bible.

For all I like to knock the noise, the Jupiter puts the same level of care and attention to detail into your experience as the Four Seasons does, albeit with funkier style and at a (much) lower price point. Eco-cool toiletries, great copy on everything from the website to the guest feedback card, Muppet-skin slipcover on the bolster.

So it's kind of baffling when they hand you your impeccably designed Windshield Parking Pass that they don't explain the tiny garage will most likely be full, and that you can park in an overflow lot across the street from it. (The nice girl explained that part to me when I checked out.) Or that, since there were no spots, you tell them, and you parked on the street, they offered to take the parking charge off your bill which had been comped when you checked in. (Huh?)

Or, for that matter, the lack of a TV remote. Looked up and down for that sucker; maybe hipsters like their TV old skool.

But I quibble. If you're 30 or under and aren't from the Bible Belt (on purpose, anyway), you'll probably love it. A young 30 to 40? Ditto.

40+? Well, The BF loved it. He is a young almost-46. I was an old 26, so I'm probably not the best judge.

I am, despite all signs that I might not be, a fan. Al, I'll be back.

Although next time, I really, really want one of those parking spaces...

xxx c

How doing one thing differently saved my bacon

Anyone who's read my newsletter, spent more than 10 minutes in semi-meaningful conversation with me or seen the shame that is my bookshelves knows I have a predilection for the self-help aisle.

I fought it for years, in no small part because I saw my mother devour book after best-selling book even as her alcohol intake crept slowly but steadily upward. Reading is no substitute for action. Buying and piling in artfully arranged stacks around the house, even less so. And while I'm a pretty productive motherfucker when all is said and done, I've got undeniable hard-wiring for procrastination on both sides of my genetic divide.

Dad was a frighteningly efficient accomplishment machine, but anyone who knows about "-aholic" tendencies knows that's just the flip side of the same coin. He "did" out of fear; mom "didn't". And they both avoided the root issue until the days they died.

I, on the other hand, have made it my singular mission in life to act, and to act well. There's nothing else for me to leave behind to make the world a better place, no genetic material I've given a better start to, no big pile of money to fund a groovy foundation. It's just whatever ripples I can send out there now, and whatever additional ripples people whom I've (hopefully) helped or a book that I've (hopefully) written can send out later.

So when I get stuck, when there's not only no forward motion, but no indication of what that forward motion should be, I get a little panicky. I don't think, "Oh, good...a nice rest!" or "Great! Things are just marinating upstairs!"; I start sliding into the dark place on a greased chute with no handrails.

In times like these, I grab onto those books like a lifeline and use them to start hauling myself back up. The best ones (and you do know to only read the best ones, right?) offer some kind of clearly defined, actionable steps, and when you're in a place where you can't see clearly, a well-lit staircase with an "EXIT" sign at the top is your friend. It doesn't matter which set you get on: it will get you out.

Sometimes, though, there is no time. Sometimes you find yourself in hella mess and the clock is ticking and there's just no damned time for a whole book, much less careful digestion and implementation of its contents. That's when you need this prescription-strength remedy:

Do One Thing Differently.

Yes, it's a self-help book, too. I've never read it, though. I've only heard of it, and then fondled it briefly in my shrink's office while waiting for her to come in and start our session:

"It looks like you could get everything you need from this book just by reading the title."

"You can," she said.

I'd thought about this exchange many, many times since we first had it, maybe six months ago. (Maybe a year, my memory ain't what it used to be.) I've thought about it a lot because I've been dealing with my own existential crisis for the past eight or nine months. I actually capped off the year by doing one thing very differently: admitting out loud that things were broken, and that I was taking some time off to evaluate them, four months off, to be precise.

The gods love it when we make plans, don't they? It's like Season 4 of LOST to them, or, more likely, some really good, trainwreck-y reality TV. I'm guessing they've had me on TiVo and are praying I get renewed for another 13 episodes. My Finnish dark night of the soul has been appointment viewing up on Mt. Olympus.

It was getting old down here, though. So I've been One-Thing-Differently like mad, from my kitchen to my alarm-clock setting to my hairstyle. Desperate times call for desperate measures! A few of the myriad thangs I changed up include:

• enlisting the help of an accountability partner, a badass, take-no-prisoners type whose list of accomplishments makes me look like a piker
• replying over and over to generalist queries into my state of health and well-being with a frank admittance of my perilous suckitude (counts as once because the first 15 times were an out-of-body experience I gained nothing practical from)
• admitting I had fucked up
• walking three miles each morning, whether I wanted to or not
• billing for work done (feel free to laugh at me, the gods aren't the only ones who know how ridiculous I am)

On Thursday night, I finally had a breakthrough of the major sort. Something popped, and it feels like I'm finally on track again. Thank god. Gods. Whatever. That's an eight-month experience I don't want to repeat anytime soon.

But from the other side, I feel it my duty to say that the One Thing thing works. It really does. Those One Things got me through a lot of rough patches and gave me the hope and the oomph to hit it for one more day.

And cumulatively? Holy crap, do they add up! Try it. Try folding in a few one things, and see if there's not some kind of major, quantifiable effect at the end of six months. A kitchen you're not afraid of entering. A scale you're not afraid of stepping on. It works, folks: it really, really works.

The biggest irony in all this is that now I feel like I've got to read the book. Just to see if I did it "right" and if next time, I couldn't do it better.

You, however, have no need of it. Just do it, like the ad said. One thing. Differently.

And if you've got some sweet, sweet self-helpage you know about and don't leave it in the comments? You're no friend of mine, Klein.

xxx c

Image by greenapplegrenade via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Why following your bliss might not feel blissful

Some things are simple. Some things are easy. (And, it should go without saying to anyone living in the early part of the 21st Century, some things are neither.)

There are even rare times, those Kojak-parking, traffic-lights-synchronized, buy-a-lotto-ticket days when you're really, really cooking with gas, that things are both simple and easy.

But the quickest route to heartache is confusing simple with easy. Because in the context of goals, they couldn't be more different.

A (good) goal can be expressed in terms that are fairly simple: get married; lose 10 pounds; balance checkbook. Rarely, however, is that simple goal an easy one to accomplish. How do you go about finding someone you'd even want to marry, much less create a relationship that leads to marriage? If 10 pounds is so easy to lose, why are people constantly having to lose the same 10?

And don't get me starting on the #%@^ checkbook.

I've found myself running up against this simple-is-not-easy maxim repeatedly lately, and to an extent that is pretty deeply humiliating. In fact, the sheer act of writing this piece is pretty deeply humiliating: what ordinarily flows easily is resisting with a stubbornness and tenacity the likes of which I've not experienced since I had to create bullshit "science" copy for a P.O.S. hand lotion. "Micro-particles absorbed quickly and easily, leaving no smooth, hydrated skin with no greasy film" my ass.

What's triply frustrating (because it's hot as a troll's nasal cavity today, and that's two) is that this is the first time in my life where not-easy is proving really...well, hard.

Working my way up the adhole chain in my 20s? Not particularly easy, there were long hours and mountains of shit to shovel, but nothing like this.

Becoming a working actor? Or dumping that to hang out my own shingle?

Leaving my marriage? Getting over the Crohn's?

Hard, hard, hard & hard, to be sure.

At least, that's what I thought, until I ran up against this.

And what, pray tell, is this "this" of which I speak?

Exactly.

It gets exponentially more difficult when you know what the goal is philosophically ("To be a joyful conduit of truth, beauty and love") and even particularly (to help people find their Truth by sharing my own journey through writing and speaking) but there are no paths laid out. Or the paths take the shape of sweeping, Yoda-esque maxims ("the change, be"). This is a fucking poet's life, for chrissakes; who signed me up for this?!

I did, of course, with each choice I made along the way. Start choosing truth and there's no going back to the other. Take the red pill, and taking the blue pill is no longer an option. Some days I'm fine with it; most of the days, however, are really, really not-easy lately.

Friends help. Tribe members, especially a good mix of old and new. Those who've known you a while help show you that the excruciatingly incremental growth you've been experiencing is actually mildly impressive; those who are new to you accept the You you've grown into, and make Future You seem achievable.

Routines help. I've instituted a daily walk in the morning for a week now. For a non-morning person, this not only constitutes a huge achievement, but creates some (healthy) shape to my day.

Speaking of achievements, I can't overstate the importance of folding relatively easy, short-term projects into the mix. Getting a sinkful of dishes or the kitchen floor washed . Burning through a to-do list or a time-delimited assignment. Saving up for something. Planning even a small party.

Writing a blog post.

I'm profoundly grateful for the small, hardy group of fellow travelers that have assembled here at communicatrix. The feedback I get in the comments and via email helps keep me going, both because it feeds me and keeps me on my toes. There is always something new to think about or puzzle out or grapple with.

I am glad we're walking the goddamned path together. Even, or especially, when things get a little hard...

xxx c

Image by emdot via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

The Wayback Machine: Advice to the lovelorn

Between coming off a lollapalooza of a trip and the crapload of work staring me in the face upon my return, I've been kind of overwhelmed and under-motivated. Happens.

But in a twin stroke of magic from the Serendipity Fairy, I got an infusion of inspiration on a trip to Ojai visiting a lady-homey, and another jolt while trying to clean out the Fibber McGee's closet that is the innards of communicatrix-dot-comâ„¢, official bloggity-blog of Colleen Wainwright and the communicatrix empire.

Specifically, at the tail end of my journey, I ended up talking about...tail: where one gets some and how to procure the quality version. (If you're a lady-homey, you already know how to procure quantity: walk into a bar and flash any portion of your ladyparts.) And tonight, I came across this unpublished bit which had been languishing at the bottom of a pile.

So for those nice ladies I got caffeinated with at Ojai Coffee Roasting Co. the other day, and for any of the rest of you who might be on the prowl, romantically-speaking, I offer the following. Mostly still sound, mostly not too poorly written. Some updates in brackets [like so]. It's more general than tactical, but I think it's no less useful for it. Maybe you'll confirm this; maybe you'll tell me otherwise.

Me, I'm going to enjoy some of the fruits of my own online labor of many years ago and head over to The BF's for some...um...weekend. Yeah. That's it.

Have a lovely "weekend," all y'all...

I'm not prone to giving advice, wait...yes, I am. Well, not unsolicited advice, shit, I do that, too.

Sigh...

Okay: I love giving advice. I've been addicted to advice columns since I found Dear Abby on the funnies page (her hipper twin, Ann Landers, was in the Sun-Times and we were a Trib household all the way).

I especially enjoy advice on matters of the heart since I find love fascinating, although as regular readers know, I spout off on pretty much anything within arm's reach. I loved Em & Lo, the erstwhile Nerve gals who write so well about sex, and subscribed to Salon.com not so I could keep up with their excellent news coverage but because I got tired of reading the Daily Pass ad to get to my Cary Tennis. [Today, I'm an ardent (haha) fan of the magnificent Dan Savage, whose excellent sex/relationship advice column is widely syndicated in alternative papers and whose out-loud version of the column (a.k.a. The Savage Lovecast) is so true and funny it makes me snort things out my nose even as I pound the dashboard in assent with his uncanny insight.]

Ironically, though, ever since I actually have had some clue about How These Things Work, I have questioned my right to be an authority on (insert topic here). I'm definitely one of those women who suffers from Imposter Syndrome, as Jory Des Jardins describes it:

(Imposter Syndrome) is a fairly common condition that affects many women, particularly those who are achievement-oriented. It's a belief that one's accomplishments are not deserved, that one has somehow fooled the system and will inevitably be found out for the fake that she is.

As a well-under-30 pup selling ads to clients twice my age, I remember having frequent "When Will They Find Out We Are Frauds" discussions with my then-boss back in the go-go '80s.

But, as usual, I digress.

I think that my youthful zeal for offering advice had more to do with my needing to be seen and valued than with any selfless desire to share the wealth. These days, I find it easier to resist offering unsolicited advice one-on-one. I figure if someone wants my goddam opinion, they can goddam well ask for it; if, on the other hand, they're just jaw-flapping, as The Chief Atheist used to say, and I have an excuse to walk away and not waste my valuable time and energy.

As an avid reader of Craig's List, however, I used to find my advice-giving buttons pushed pretty frequently, and the lure was strong. Fortunately, they make you jump through so many hoops to reply to a post that often, my ardor cooled in advance at the prospect. In fact, I'm always shocked at how many people will jump on a lame thread in the Rants & Raves section; they must have really, really boring jobs.

But every once in a while, a post would cry out to me. The poster seemed to genuinely want an answer to a problem that spoke to my experience, and I'd have an extra ten or so minutes to devote to the issue. I always considered it another way of giving back; lord knows enough people have helped me through the dark and murky times.

I won't repost this guy's entire plea for help since I don't have his permission, but suffice it to say he was experiencing some bewilderment on the dating front and, having given up entirely on meeting people in real-life venues like bars, he had now come to the conclusion that even the people looking online weren't really looking for a relationship. Worse, I could sense he was on the precipice overhanging The Dark Place; one stiff wind and we might lose him to the other side.

Here's what I had to say:

You know what? You're absolutely right...and you're absolutely wrong.

I'm a fairly cool chick (or so I've been told by some fairly cool people who didn't stand to gain anything by saying it) and I've met some pretty great guys online. And in bars. And through friends. And even, one unusual time, standing in front of a burning bus.

I've also met some equally heinous guys in each of those places. (Well, I only met the one guy in front of the burning bus.)

Point being, there are asshat chicks *and* cool chicks *everywhere*. If you're really looking for a cool one, why close off any reasonable avenue? Two caveats, though. First, in my experience, you do better if you're open but not Looking. Cool chicks can get a little turned off by guys too much on the prowl. (And nobody likes a needy person.)

And second, if you are burning out on any part of the process or developing any kind of an attitude about a particular avenue, stay away from it until you can jump back in with a better attitude. Don't date angry!

Now, I know Em & Lo [or Dan Savage] would have been way funnier, and that Cary [or Dan Savage, can you tell I'm queer for the dude?] would have done a much more thoughtful job of dissecting the guy's modus operandi and even analyzing his intent. But sometimes, the best "advice" you can give is a little reassurance that this, too, shall pass, and that maybe it's a good idea to cool one's heels until one can approach the "problem" with an open mind and a fresh perspective. Especially when you don't really know the person asking the question. And as someone with extensive experience in online dating who had experienced burnout and the falling rate of return that accompanies it, I felt uniquely qualified, nay, compelled, to speak up. So I'm pretty sure I wasn't talking out of my ass.

Hopefully, I wasn't just flapping my jaw, either.

xxx c

Image by anniejean via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Stop! Sucking! Day 6: Tools for stopping...and restarting

I had a nice kind of cheering, Stop-This-Stupid-Crap win today.

I was gearing up for a "duty connection": extending myself to someone whom I really didn't want to meet, much less extend myself to. Not necessarily a bad person, but almost certainly, from the context in which she presented herself, Not My Tribe.

And lo, as I was hitting "command-n" to create the email, I felt the vomitous pit of dread blurbling in my stomach, thought about actually meeting this person and how that would feel, realized that I was in no way obligated to reach out. . . and didn't. Which, if you've been following along, is a major win.

It wasn't always this easy, though, realizing I had choices, understanding what they were. I operated on my factory default settings for a looooooong time. Saying "yes" when I meant "maybe" or even "no." Doing what I had always done because hey, it had gotten me as far as this in one piece. Not realizing that trying something else and perhaps failing at it was 10x better than not trying something else at all.

This is something I get now. Really. I may not get it 100% of the time, or as fast as I'd like (will I ever get anything as fast as I'd like, I wonder?) but I do get it. I've left careers that weren't fulfilling, relationships that weren't working, habits that were insalubrious. And sometimes, because I'm not where I'd like to be, or where I know I can be eventually, if I keep working on it, I forget that I may have useful advice for people who are currently encountering a particular bear I've already wrassled.

It happened in the comments section today. (I love the comments section. It's my favorite part of my blog, because it's not only a source of rich inspiration, community and connection, but it's the one place where I don't have to write everything.) Earl Kabong (not his real name, unless he's really managed to fly under the Googledar) posted a really touching and interesting comment about the nature of his current stuckage.

Earl, you see, is a writer, and a good one, it seems: not only does he get paid to write, many people's dreams, his pay comes exclusively from writing, something I'm pretty sure is my dream right now, or damned close to it. Moreover, he's been a paid writer his whole working life. Which means, of course, that he's smart enough to know that it can sound like 15 kinds of ungrateful to say he really doesn't dig it, but that he doesn't know what else he would do.

I get it. I do.

Back when I was an advertising copywriter, I regularly met with people who would have eaten a limb to do what I did. I was pretty good at it and worked pretty hard at it, but the truth is, I had my job because I had the native skills and the connections. In equal measure. My blessing, my curse.

It made extricating myself rather difficult. Because sure, I could quit, that's the easy part. The hard part was dealing with all the rest of it. How do I pay my nut? What do I do that's more fulfilling? How do I tell my father? What do I tell my father, and anyone else who asks?

And the biggest thing of all: how will I introduce myself at cocktail parties until I'm happily established in some TBD life pursuit? For me, it boiled down to two issues: money and identity. And the latter was much, much harder to deal with than the former. Poor, I could handle. Shiftless loser with no direction? Not so much.

So here are some things I've learned about the Full Stop/Reboot, along with some resources I found useful in making my transition:

1. Realize you're in it for the long haul

This is a process, not a to-do item. I was unbelievably arrogant at the start of my switch, thinking I could just tackle this like any other project. It is a project, and that's a good way to look at it. But it's a long-term project, which means approaching it differently than the time-delimited ones I'd been used to up until then. Establish a desire. Muse. Reflect. Seek counsel. Research. Lather/rinse/repeat as often as necessary before moving on to action. Even if you're loaded. Especially you're loaded. But if not...

2. Get your financial ducks in a row

One thing that shocked me years later was going through tax receipts for the last full year I worked before I decided to make the change. I was appalled, physically sick, at the amount of money I'd spent on nothing. Dinners out. Trips. Stuff. And that's what it is when you're not fulfilled: things you're stuffing down a hole to try to fill it.

Figure out what you're spending and where. Figure out how much you can cut your expenses and still "pass" as a normal person in your socioeconomic station. Do it and sock the rest away. Figure out where your holes are and plug them. For me, it was learning how to cook. (That was a rough two years, and I will be forever grateful to the Chief Atheist for eating my mistakes.) Start learning that money is freedom, money is choices, and save accordingly.

And remember, unless you are part of an incredibly slender (and ever-decreasing) slice of the population, you were once happy with far less. Even if you were born to that top 5%, there was a time where you were as happy or happier playing with the box as you were the toy it encased. So we're clear.

3. Consume and explore

Some possible good books to read: Po Bronson's What Should I Do with My Life? and Julia Cameron's Artist's Way. Yes, even if you don't want to do something artsy. It's just a good internal excavation process.

I also heard of a good-sounding new book via Pam Slim (Escape From Cubicle Nation) called How'd You Score that Gig?. The author did a pretty hefty amount of intake interviews and research on personality types, and came up with not only stories of interesting jobs, but the types of people who'd do well in them and the actionable steps to take to acquire those jobs.

Observe. Start carrying a notebook, like you're a reporter. When you feel a tug, at anything, however small, write it down. Hate something? Write it down. Feel a stirring of joy? Write it down. You're looking for clues, and they come up everywhere.

4. Engage professional help

I would not be where I am were it not for my first shrink/astrologer and my current therapist (who has no nickname, but who should probably be called "The Saint").

If you can find the right person, your "predicament" (in quotes b/c really, it's just a stage you're in) might be well addressed by the application of adroit personal coaching. It's great for the goal-oriented, and brother, you've got a goal.

Friends are good, but in my case, the friends I had then weren't equipped to help me make the transition. (Of course, the friends I have now are brilliant with it. What can I say, my life is an O. Henry story.) You may have a rogue uncle or old, old grammar school friend who's living authentically and knows you and can both call you on your shit and do it in a nice way.

If not, pay someone. This does not mean you're weak; it means you're brave.

5. Give yourself time and patience and love

Please note: I was very bad at #5. Still struggling with it, although I'm getting better.

These big shifts? They don't happen on your timetable. They require thought, digestion, exploration, more thought. They need room to breathe, your epiphanies. (Or room so you can notice them.)

Wander in bookstores with hours to spare. Walk on the beach. Take up yoga or meditation. Volunteer for a meaningful yet mindless and repetitive task. Knit. Whatever.

Create space for the new thing to make itself known. Yeah, it's all woowoo and shit. You're a reader of this blog, aren't you? You were expecting maybe science?

The bottom line? Just because you can't imagine it right now doesn't mean there isn't something out there for you that you're equally as good, if not better, at, and that you will actually love.

I swear, this is true.

I was a pretty good copywriter. I was an okay actor. I made a decent living at both. I'm not where I need to be financially yet with The Communicatrix and may never be, but I've found the thing(s) I'm good at, that the world needs, and that I love to do. If, for some reason, the money does not follow in the numbers I need it to, I'm confident I can deal with it, either by reducing my standard of living or going back to a Stupid Day Job or both. But I will never again know that profound unhappiness that comes with feeling utterly adrift, mainly unfulfilled, and thinking that choice lies outside of me.

It doesn't. Not in this part of the world, anyway, not yet. Maybe never. Maybe nowhere.

The one thing I do know about stopping the suck? Not knowing how to restart is not an excuse. The world needs you to find your passion and realize it as much as you do. Maybe more.

What one thing can you do today to start?

xxx c

Image by Kruggg6 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

It feels so incremental

I have made this drawing for a lot of people recently:

Friends. Clients. People in kind of a blue funk right now, frustrated with what seems like zero forward motion for too, too long.

What's funny is that I didn't realize I'd been drawing it for myself, really, until tonight, while on a call with The Youngster. He's known me for almost 10 years, and not only has he witnessed my seemingly unquenchable thirst for growth NOW, but has pretty much matched it, pang for pang. (There's a reason The Youngster and I hit it off as well and long as we did, and age-appropriateness was not it.)

Change. It happens a millimeter at a time, until it happens all at once.

Of course, it doesn't ever happen all at once; it's always happening incrementally, which is the big, fat, hairy, hoary secret of change. It's happening now. It was happening a second ago. It will be happening five seconds from now. It just seems like you look in the mirror one morning and aged 20 years overnight. (Or, in my case, pulled on your fat pants and gained 15 pounds overnight.)

You work and work and work and work and work and ONE DAY, you look up et voila! Your kitchen is remodeled!

Or you work and work and work and work and work and then ONE DAY, you can do the splits!

Or you work and work and work and work and work and then ONE DAY, you are making bank. Or have 10,000 readers. Or can answer a query for directions in a town you don't call home, and in fluent Portugese!

For me, my work has consisted of a few very specific things these past several years. I've devoted crazy amounts of time to Nerdmasters, for example. To writing. To, believe it or not, farting around on the internet.

I've spent countless hours talking, with friends, with paid therapeutic professionals, with aforementioned Nerdmasters. I've worked extra hard on the communicating (only fitting, given my handle) and on the figuring-out of things. It's made catching up with people I haven't seen in 5 or 10 years both very easy ("So what have you been doing?"/"Nothing.") and very hard ("So what have you been doing?"/"Nothing.") I don't have millions of dollars or thousands of square feet of real estate or even 1.2 kids to shove in front of anyone, some quantifiable proof of growth.

All the same, I know it's there. Because the writing comes so easily now, and it didn't always. (If you don't believe me, read the archives.) Because answers, or ways to find answers, come so easily now, and they didn't always. (If you don't believe me, talk to my shrink, or my friends, or my colleagues or clients.)

Someday, I will write some of the stories of people I've known who looked up and realized their lives had slipped away while they had their metaphoric head in a figurative book. For now, I'll just say, "hang on."

If you're on the path and it seems to be winding especially slowly, hang on.

If you're moving forward, you swear to Christ you're moving forward, and it seems like you're on the George Jetson dogwalking treadmill, hang on.

If you're climbing and it seems you've gained no ground...if you're stretching and it feels like you'll never reach...if you're pulling on what feels like an endless rope...hang on, hang on, hang on.

Change happens incrementally until it happens all at once.

And once the "all at once" happens, you realize that's just an increment, too. A more obvious increment, but an increment, all the same.

One foot in front of the other. One step at a time.

Love. Taxes. Life.

One incremental step at a time...

xxx c

Image a POS graph drawn quickly by yours truly in Photoshop. This post is dedicated to The Youngster, a slightly belated birthday gift. Thank you to him, and to all my wonderful peeps who have helped me with my incremental growth.

SCD recipe: Smoked salmon and goat cheese bites

Note: if you're a "Crohnie" or UC patient or parent of an autistic kid who came for the recipe, feel free to skip ahead to the recipe. (Although I'm guessing most kids won't be too into lox.)

Likewise, if you're a self-involved tool equally disinterested in understanding the suffering of others and broadening your body of knowledge, feel free to skip ahead. Although be warned: just because you don't have IBD now doesn't mean you or someone you love won't someday, especially if you keep on eating your crapass, Corporo-Fascist-approved Standard American Die-Yet? Incidence of IBD on the rise in Westernized countries.

No, really, go ahead: blow off the back story. We'll be here via the Google when your insides have turned into raw hamburger. Hopefully, it won't be too late! Toodles!

Okay.

For the rest of you...

THE BACK STORY

Readers come here from all kinds of search strings, but one that comes up a lot is "Specific Carbohydrate Diet" + ("you name it").

Most likely this is because the Specific Carbohydrate Diet is notoriously difficult to follow. The list of legals and illegals only makes sense up to a point: Why navy beans and not kidney beans? Why provolone and not mozzarella? Why honey and not maple syrup?

I noticed. And while we're at it, what the hell's up with you hippies and your homemade yogurt?

Bottom line is this: the SCD is predicated on the thesis that undigested matter lingering too long in the gut provides a 24-hour feeding station for irritating intestinal bacteria. The more bacteria, the more mucous (yum!), the less the gut is capable of doing its (you'll pardon the pun) duty; also, the more irritation, the more abrasion, again, leading to a reduction in functional capacity. Not to mention the garden of attendant earthly delights like diarrhea (regular, explosive and bloody varieties), extreme fever and underweight, energy loss, body aches, pain and...wait for it...puppy-killing farts.

Or, in the words of the wise and eloquent Seth Barrows,

The SCD combats bacterial and yeast overgrowth by restricting the energy they require to live while keeping the host well fed.

But no one really knows why it works, just that, in many cases, it does work.

Unfortunately, in many cases it doesn't, but no one knows why on that count, either, it could be user error, as the SCD is notoriously difficult to follow. Even when you start to get what you can and can't eat; even when you're well enough to eat the full range of allowable foods (in the beginning, when you're really sick, many "legals" are verboten), there's hella prep involved in eating legal.

So there's no getting around it: following the SCD is a pain in the ass.

For those of us who've found relief, however, not following it is an even bigger pain in the ass. I fell off the wagon shortly after meeting The BF (not his fault! not his fault!), and have been on and off in the three years since. (I was in Fanatical Adherence mode for the two years prior.) I started to get another scare just before Thanksgiving, and had an epiphany much like I did when I felt the bronchitis coming on for a third time and quit smoking on the spot, in mid-pack: 20 years, and I'm still smoke-free.

Of course, it is MUCH harder to stay on a diet than to quit a substance entirely, because hey, you gotta eat. And not only is it difficult to steer clear of the temptation all dieters are faced with, there are literally hidden evils in everything. Every. Thing.

So we eat mainly non-processed food. Nothing canned, bottled, boxed or to-go. No convenience foods. Which makes life...inconvenient.

There's another downside to this: food gets scary-boring. I mean DEADLY boring. Because it's so much work finding and making food, one's intake on the SCD gets numbingly repetitive. Honestly, if I could have any luxury, when I can have any luxury, the first one I want it a private chef to come in three times per week and cook me stuff. (And for my chef friends out there, now you know that the thing I love most is being asked over for a tasty, SCD-legal dinner!)

One trick I've learned to apply from the other part of my nerdy life is batch-processing. Make a tub of yogurt and then figure out the 17 different ways you can use it. Find a recipe that freezes well in portions and make a shitload of it. Four dozen cookies, six loaves of "bread" (which you then turn half of into toasts).

So the following recipe is what you do with some of the homemade goat's milk yogurt it takes you 26 hours to make. It's fecking hawesome, as Shane Nickerson speaking in a bad British accent might say, and it made my night.

Also, for you normies, you can have it on real bread toasts, if you like. But the cuke makes it lighter and less caloric, in case you care about stuff like that.

THE RECIPE

Serves 1 hungry-ass SCD-er as a meal, or several dainty types as hors d'oeuvres

• 1 cucumber, sliced into 1/4" rounds
• 1 cup DRIPPED SCD-legal goat's milk yogurt*
• 1/2 cup chopped scallion
• a few tablespoons capers
• 4 oz SCD-legal smoked salmon**

1. Spread rounds with dripped goat "cheese".
2. Press sprinkling of scallions on each round.
3. Press a few capers (to taste) on each round.
4. Layer with generous swath of salmon.
5. Eat your damn face off!

*Can substitute SCD-legal cow's milk yogurt, although not as tasty
**Check package, even if brand you used last time was legal; I think suppliers change for brands, and many add sugar

This is very tasty with a Virgin or Bloody Mary. Vodka, fortunately, is 100% legal on the SCD.

Um...in moderation, of course.

xxx
c

Image by chocolate monster mel via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license. And no, that recipe is totally illegal. Looks good, though!

Other SCD-legal recipes on communicatrix-dot-com:

• SCD-legal artichoke dip
• SCD-legal Salade Nicoise (aka tuna!)
• SCD-legal Strawberry-Chicken-Walnet Salad
• SCD-legal Chopped Liver

Honeydripper: Changing film history, one viewer at a time

Here's the ugly truth about the current state of independent film: filmmaking may have been democratized by the portable video camera and iMovie, but distribution, the means of getting films by the people, to the people, is still totally FUBAR.

No studio dollars, no big marketing push.

No marketing bucks, no big release.

No big opening, no run.

How do I know this? Because I spent two hours that were, in equal measure, exhilarating and spirit-crushing, with filmmaking duo John Sayles and Maggie Renzi (and, because I'm not above dropping a few names when they're this impressive, Haskell Wexler, Lawrence Turman and Anne Beatts.) It was part of a small, roundtable/salon-y type thing I somehow fell into (to pervert a line from Animal House, "Thank you, blog!"), which Sayles and Renzi doubtless (in part, anyway) decided to attend to pimp their latest film, Honeydripper, which was wholly self-financed AND is being wholly self-distributed.

Okay.

For those of you who are completely outside of the Hollywood scene, who might know box office tallies and other useless insider info (something that came up, as well), that is like me saying I'm going to build my own direct competition to McDonald's out of Legos and gum, and have it profitable inside of four weeks. Seriously. Because...

• the pipeline is really tightly controlled by mega-chains and distributors
• the pipeline dictates that (most) movies must open big or die instantly
• the pipeline is configures so that all but the most outrageously popular films must move along, son, after a week or two

And mainly, because the pipeline is THE pipeline. There are next-to-no "little theaters" for cinema, like there are for stage performances; there's no off-off-Broadway for movies. And coordinating what is there takes Herculean effort.

Which means it's difficult for even great, proven filmmakers like John Sayles and Maggie Renzi to get their stuff out there to the audiences who want to see it. Let me state that again: to audiences who want to see it. Sure, there's Netflix (and it's great!) and yes, someday, that Internet pipe will be big enough and ubiquitous (provided we don't blow up the damned planet first) but movies-in-theaters are rapidly becoming, as they put it, the blow-'em-up stuff that will play globally or the few token, anointed indies that make it. Bad news for those of us who like to see our movies big and communally, in the theater.

The good news is, these are some smart, determined people who don't understand the meaning of the word "impossible." They've been doing the impossible already for years: creating smart, interesting cinematic treats that live decidedly outside of the mainstream. And making a living at it. So they've put together their own distribution for their latest film, Honeydripper, which opens in theaters this Friday, December 28. Maggie & John broke down the plan for us over lunch, and I have to say, if anyone can succeed at this very brand new game, it's them.

We all know how important it is for new films to do big box office on opening weekend, so I don't need to tell you to get out there and support this Friday/Saturday/Sunday (especially Friday, that's when I'm going!) But they've also put together kind of a grassroots worksheet on other things you can do to get the word (and people) out, and support the film. I've uploaded it to my server, and you can download it here. It includes a glowing review from Variety; I haven't seen the film yet, but the story, about a black roadhouse owner in the 1950s American South who stands to lose everything unless he can pull off a Saturday night miracle, sounds good and fun and full of excellent music.

I'm all for the edgy youngsters making edgy movies about their edgy selves. Hey, I was edgy once! Okay, I wasn't, but I pro-edge.

I'm also pro- grownup movies made by grownups for grownups (although Honeydrippers sounds like something you could take the kids to, and it is PG-13.) And as through-the-looking-glass as it is, films like the ones John Sayles makes, especially films made now, by the no-longer-young John Sayles, are the fringe films in need of support to get a foothold in this crazy marketplace. These well-crafted, beautifully told, thought and emotion provoking stories are what is really edgy and out there.

If you're in New York or L.A., get out there, too, this weekend. If you're elsewhere, check to see when it's rolling out near you in January & February. Read the PDF. Blog it. Do that voodoo that you do so well.

See you at the movies, fellow hipsters...

xxx c

UPDATE (12/29/07): Feel-good charmer/fable of the season. It's gentle and sweet, with lovely music and a life-affirming message. Plus, that kickass Sayles storytelling ability.

UPDATE (01/14/08): Another cool DIY film project here, albeit on a much smaller scale: Fat Head, debunking current dietary wisdom, or what passes for it. Start with Michael Blowhard's great interview of the writer/director, Tom Naughton.

Image of Danny Glover & John Sayles on the set via Flickr and ©2007 John Sayles.

Tarnation

There are gothic tales of horror all around us, hidden in plain view. I had tastes of several growing up, something about my own, weird upbringing made me very freak-friendly, but I never grokked the way darkness goes hand in hand with light until I moved New York City in the mid-1980s.

You would meet people, in bars, mostly, but occasionally at parties, in bookstores, through friends of friends of friends, whose fabulousness you just knew was incredibly hard-won. I didn't have a storybook childhood by any means, but there was (enough) money, stability and love to establish at least a foundation of normalcy to provide a reference point to the madness that followed. For example, my own overly-beautiful mother (as far as I know) was never subjected to repeated rounds of electroshock therapy, abandoned by my father when I was an infant or raped by a stranger in front of my eyes hours after we rolled into town on a Trailways bus.

All of these things happened to Jonathan Caouette, the writer-director-actor whose autobiographical documentary, Tarnation, took the film world by storm (four years ago, but more on that later.) Comprised of stills, film and video clips over at least 20 years, and originally edited entirely in iMovie, it's a haunting, mesmerizing look at what one wrong turn (in this case, falling off of a house rooftop) can do to a delicate soul and everything that touches her.

It's also a monumentally inspirational take on the power of the human spirit to prevail in the most horrific of circumstances. The film and video that Caouette pieces together to tell his story is clearly the film- and video-taking that kept him sane growing up in, to put it mildly, horrific circumstances. There are smidgins of film taken before even the very precocious filmmaker was ready to pick up a camera, but once those mini-digits were big enough to place "record", it would seem young Caouette was at the ready and up to the task. Part of what's so fascinating about the film is getting to see the artist in formation, on both sides of the camera (there's one particularly compelling bit where he plays a woman in distress to the camera.)

Of course, even his impressive facility with the very simple tool that is iMovie was vastly enhanced by the soundtrack. Like El Mariachi some 15 years earlier, the film was made for peanuts ($218.32 of them!) and repackaged for substantially more. (Note to budding DIY filmmakers: if we can't hear it right, we won't be able to see it right.)

But who am I to quibble with the addition of some great songs and high-priced, Sunday-go-to-meetin' sound editing? At its core, Tarnation is good, old-fashioned storytelling.

And I have never been one to turn down a good yarn...

xxx c

• A great WIRED article on the making of Tarnation (for $218.32!!!)
• Tarnation: wikipedia entry
• Jonathan Caouette's blog

Image of Jonathan Caouette and his beautiful mother from the film, via WIRED online.

The Diving Bell & the Butterfly

Sometimes, The BF has to drag me to movies.

Okay, most of the time. He's remained a more ardent fan of both film and music, almost always willing to put up with the minor discomfort that trekking out to consume new things involves. I don't know when I shifted from being the girl who'd see four (challenging) movies on a weekend in New York City to the old lady who'd rather stay in and watch a DVD, but there's no denying I've shifted demographics.

Well, come on, like you'd want to leave your comfortable home and drive through 10 miles of Los Angeles semi-rush hour traffic to see a movie about a man who's struck down by a massive stroke in the prime of life and wakes up from his coma to find the only thing he can move is his left eyelid?

As my friend, Danimus, likes to say, "The goody-good times." I'm glad I don't have to market this film.

And yet, I'm about to. Because that's the only way a great but challenging film like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is going to get the audience it deserves: one rave at a time.

I can do nothing but rave, save perhaps marvel. How did the editor of French Elle know what I was going through when I had my own hospital epiphany? How did he bat out an entire memoir with his eyelid? How did director Julian Schnabel make this story come alive, brilliantly, burstingly, hilariously alive, with a main character who was, for all intents and purposes, immobilized?

Most of all, how come none of that matters and the film ends up being about love and human foibles and communication and all the other utterly mundane (but profound) things we struggle with day in and day out, no matter what our level of autonomy or mobility or self-understanding?

There's not a false performance in the film, and everything, the music, the lighting, the design, is beautiful. Unobtrusively so, there to serve the story and not for dig-me purposes. Full and mad props go to Schnabel, director of the also-excellent Before Night Falls, who won the Best Director Lion at Cannes for Diving Bell.

It's also the perfect tonic for a trippy season, this overly-amped time of year when we wonder why there's no there there and whether maybe we haven't all got things a bit bollixed up and backwards. We have, but Jean-Dominique Bauby's message is that it's not so difficult to sort it out, should we really want to. Connect with your humanity, with the magnificence that is the ability to feel a thing and communicate it to another living soul, and you will reconnect to the all-that-is.

It is maybe a little more difficult to do when you have so many moving parts in the way, but it is possible. Live, live, live while you have the chance.

See this movie if you need a little reminder of all the good reasons why.

xxx c

Image of the delicious Emmanuelle Seigner lifted from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly site.

Priming the idea pump (A character checklist shamelessly lifted from acting)

There are lots of tools the great actor has in her toolbox, but most of them really only gain utility with time. Script analysis, the ability to quickly access one's emotions, physical flexibility, vocal projection, even memorizing lots and lots of text is a skill that can take years to learn.

But there is one tool that is pretty easy to use right out of the box: the character checklist. Exactly what it sounds like, the character checklist is a list of questions that, when answered thoughtfully, provide a wealth of information for the actor to draw from.

Writers stand to gain much from the character checklist as well. For the fiction writer, it's a terrific way to sketch out a full picture of the character in your mind before writing, or even (oh yes) when you find yourself stuck. Let's face it: most characters in fiction draw heavily on slices of the writer's self; it's nice to have a few other things to flesh them out into full-fledged bona fides themselves.

But another great use for the character checklist is to jump-start your own non-fiction writing. Bloggers have embraced the meme in a big way; it's everyone's favorite crutch when the well runs dry.

And pre-Web 2.0, the form was equally popular. From the emails that circulate with lists of likes, dislikes and quirky questions to fill in and forward on to the venerable Proust Questionnaire, people are endlessly fascinated with...themselves, yes, but other people, too. My favorite features in glossy magazines are usually the ones where the same five, 10 or 20 questions are asked of different people.

There are probably as many of these character checklists circulating among acting classes as there are memes proliferating across the blogosphere. I dug this one out of my old actor files, and it's as good a place as any to start:

The Character Checklist from Colleen's Old Acting Files (provenance unknown)

1. Name
2. Age
3. Occupation
4. Hobbies
5. Marital Status
6. Favorite Color
7. Favorite Restaurant
8. Favorite Song
9. Favorite Movie
10. Favorite TV Show
11. Pet
12. Bad Habit
13. What I Like About Myself
14. Who I Look Up To
15. What Makes Me Laugh
16. What Makes Me Sad
17. How Do I Relax
18. What Word/Phrase Do I Use Most Often
19. Favorite Room In Home
20. Goals
21. Embarrassing Moment
22. Favorite Article Of Clothing
23. Pet Peeve
24. People Close To Me
25. One Word To Describe Me
26. Favorite Holiday
27. What Is Important To Me
28. What I Can't Do Without

The trick to making lists like these useful to your writing (and there's always a trick) is using them thoughtfully and strategically, not just indulging in them as diversions (although that can be fun sometimes, too). Figure out the task you're wanting to accomplish and then pick up your tool. Not all of the items will be useful for every piece of writing you're sitting down to work on, but a surprising number will be, if you let mind wander to new and interesting places.

For example, let's say you've got a blog edumacating people about widgets and you are plumb out of widget stuff to write about. You could...

• Talk about how people shorten the life of their widgets with bad widget habits. (#12)
• Describe your favorite widget use, and why. (#28)
• Relate a horror story about a customer being widget-less in a widget-necessary situation. (#21)
• Interview a few people in the widget chain of supply. (#24)
• Link to your favorite widget scene in a movie on YouTube. (#9)

There's no set way to put yourself in a frame of mind to see questions differently so that you can answer them differently, but one great trick is to imagine yourself sitting down with someone who knows nothing about widgets, or who thinks they know everything about widgets, and then look at those questions as though you're being interviewed for a show or podcast or magazine that goes out to that target.

In other words, playact...like an actor!

xxx c

P.S. If you give this a whirl, I'd love to hear how it works for you: communicatrix [at] gmail [dot] com.

Image by welcome_to_nunavik via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

This post gets a lot of traffic from StumbleUpon. Go figure. Anyway, if you clicked looking to find posts about acting, there are a ton of them here, two years' worth of columns written for a major casting service's newsletter here in L.A. And if you're looking for more tips on writing and how to make it more awesome and less awful, check out the back issues of my non-sucky (I swear!) newsletter. Back to you, Chet!

Helpful Thing of the Day: Putting the "useful" into URLs

TinyURL is great for making big-ass emails shorter, no question. I've used it regularly for a couple of years now, and it's reliable and great.

But while it takes care of overly long URLs, it doesn't do it very gracefully. Those of us who don't understand the numerous hideous things that can happen upon clicking a blind link don't do much to assuage the fears of those who do.

Then again, there are geniuses like my new best friend, the adorable, kind and wildly talented Doug Stern, who totally get it. Since Doug is a master self-promoter (i.e., he does it well and for the right reasons) I don't think he'll mind if I share his email sig (it's a screenshot, kids, so don't make yourself batty trying to click on things):

When I saw that list of clean, orderly URLs at the bottom of his sig, I almost shat myself. While I love my newsletter service provider, I hate being their free ad everywhere I go; even more, I loathe the stupid URL I got. (I think they offer some way of creating permalinks for your newsletter archives on your own site, but if there's a way to put it on a subpage of one's own site, I've yet to find it.)

Anyway, I immediately did some quick Googling and interwebbery, and found the magic site that will cure all of your wonky permalink woes, Metamark. Not only does it take a big-ass URL and shorten it into a nice, clean redirect--it will add the short, vanity extension of your choice. Behold, my original big-ass, gibberish newsletter signup link from Emma:

https://app.e2ma.net/app/view:Join/signupId:19736

Meh. And bleh.

Now feast your eyes on its brief and elegant cousin:

http://xrl.us/eNewsSignup

Note to the extremely nervous: nothing is infallible. Metamark was upfront about their failing, which 86'd a number of URL redirects in early June.

But since my main use for these will be visible URLs--i.e., the kind that grace my email sig rather than the kind that hide, invisible, embedded in HTML on a website (hover over both of the above to see what I mean)--I don't much care. Email's shelf life is such that I don't think a lot of people will be digging through theirs to find that one link I included to my newsletter signup.

And in the short term, it sure is pretty...

xxx c

There's only one secret to increased productivity

It's not often I get tagged for memes of a business nature. But spiritual business coach par excellence, Mark Silver, saw through my fluffy exterior and knew I'd have something to add to the best productivity tips in all the land, the rapidly escalating group effort to corral the best of entrepreneurial wisdom by my former Great Big Small Business Show collaborator, Ben Yoskovitz. So here goes nothin'...

You don't have to explain the beauty of a project like this to a listmaker. We revel in lists: the how-to, to-do, tip-mad fests that other people put together. We live for memes, boy howdy.

What intrigued me most about this exercise was the one limitation placed on those of us who saw fit to pick up the gauntlet: Challenge yourself to pick one. Because, of course, the delicious truth is, while there are many excellent "hacks" to improve productivity, my number one tip is to choose the one that works for you.

Yup, that's it...suckers.

No, seriously, it's deceptively simple, for it means spending some time identifying what's tripping me up at any given moment. And yes, it also means I need to reassess from time to time, because my barriers to productivity shift, as well. What trips me up Monday, lack of sleep, say, or needing an injection of Karin's fun after a weekend of too much work and not enough play, may not be the issue on Tuesday, when I'll about needing to do some of the "sprints" that Dawud Miracle mentions, or Hump Day, when I'd give my right arm for some of Monk-at-Work Adam Kayce's clarity.

Of course, I won't cop out there; I'll play nice and share One Great Thing I've found that's been working for me lately. (Which I know, I know, makes this post technically about two tips, but my #1 tip is so meta, it makes my head swim.)

Are you ready for this life-changing, earth-shattering Tip of Tips?

Keep things tidy.

Yes, literally by keeping my desk clear, or at least, of all jobs but the one I have going right that second, and my surroundings neat and the dishes done and every other stupid, mundane thing my Swedish grandmother told me mattered back in 1964, when I got fobbed off on her during my parents' second honeymoon, actually makes a difference.

Hi-Baby, the CEO. Who knew?

xxx c

P.S. They may have been tagged already, this meme's been bubbling for a few days, but I'm tagging:

• Ilise Benun (because coaches always have the best tips)
• Scott Ginsburg (because that whippersnapper has output that puts people twice his age to shame)
• Rebecca Morgan (because to keep so many plates spinning, she must be a productivity guru)
• Bonnie Gillespie (because girlfriend could write four books on productivity in the time it took me to write this), and...
• Danny Miller (mainly because I don't think anyone ever asks him any business-y questions either, but even if he knows nothing about productivity, which I'm sure ain't so, he is one of my all-time favorite writers)

Image by mer incognito via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.