Feel the fear and refer them anyway: Make-a-Referral Week

In honor of Make-a-Referral Week, every day this week I'm posting my recommendations for various people who do either what I don't do anymore or never did in the first place. The post below explains the concept behind this one-week project, and will remain up all week; each day, a new page will go live, introducing the next round of recommendations.

Does this economy suck? Holy hell, Martha, you're darned tootin', it does!

Do we have to cower and cringe, morph into greedy hacks or resort to any other old-school, fear-based techniques? No! Just the opposite, in fact!

This is a time for new thinking, big thinking, and mostly, for fearless thinking. It's also a time for us all to be reaching out and connecting with each other, not pulling back and holing up.

In the spirit of this month's (apparent) theme (i.e., "Control What You Can"), John Jantsch (he of Duct Tape Marketing) is spearheading an outside-the-box project designed to start pulling us out of fear and into action, and getting a few people some damned work into the bargain. called Make-a-Referral week, and it's delightfully easy and simple to participate:

Pledge to refer at least one person to the small business provider of your choice.

I do this all the ding-dong day, every day, since I'm constantly getting queries for stuff I either don't do anymore or could do but not as well as someone else. Usually, it is a thing that brings me great joy. Recently, however, I've started to feel weird twinges when I do it: Should I be referring people on? Shouldn't I take the gig, when asked? Or pitch myself, when not? Am I out of my fucking mind, for chrissakes?

The answer, of course, is an emphatic "no" (except for that last bit, which most intimates will happily confirm). This isn't about not taking the work meant for me; this is about hooking people up with what they need. It's about getting the right tool for the right job. It's about paying it forward.

It's also about kicking fear right square in the pants.

It's about acting from my bigger self, not my smaller self, and I mean that both in the sweeping, traditionally-understood sense of Being the Best Me Possible and from the Buddhist sense of letting go of this ego-me and having the All-That-Is run the show for a while. (If you're new to the Buddhist stuff, Jack Kornfield is an amazing, funny, smart, awesome teacher of this stuff, and has a fantastic audiobook on the topic.)

Besides, there's no false modesty or self-sabotage about this. To the contrary, I fully intend to use this week as a practice to remind myself about staying laser-focused on the three things I've identified as being things I both do well and love doing:

• consulting with solopreneurs about how to get clear on their message, make it sparkle and put it the hell out there using all the tools at their disposal (link to my consulting)
• speaking to people about how to market themselves using social networking without being a douchebag (link to my speaking)
• writing creative nonfiction (and maybe starting with a new name for "creative nonfiction") that illuminates and inspires, or illuminates and amuses, or, hopefully, all three! (well, you're reading this already, but I also write: a monthly newsletter that's FULL of ideas and recommendations, which you should probably subscribe to; a monthly column for actors which is conceivably useful for non-actors; and a weekly update on maintaining a kickass marketing plan)

See? I just tooted my own horn three separate times. With links! So now it's time to refer you to some other people.

Because I'd like to make this as useful a tool as possible, and by that, I mean useful to me as well as to you, each day I'll post a little piece about the nature of the thing I'm referring you to, which will link out to a page I can update, much like I do the links page for this site. People's focus changes (hallelujah), so the person I refer you to this March may be doing something entirely different next June. Or I may be so far removed from that type of work by then that my referral is less than optimal. Or they might get bit by a zombie, become part of the night-crawling, brains-eating horde, and no longer be the best choice of service provider.

Whatever. I'll date each of the pages, so you'll know. You'll use your best judgment from there.

So you can follow along, here's the plan for this week:

• People who design identity (logo), collateral, or other type of graphic design (Monday, March 9)
• People who design and build websites, or who can help you learn to build yours (Tuesday, March 10)
• People who coach you through short or long-term marketing or social media projects (Wednesday, March 11)
• People who write copy (and other writing services) (Thursday, March 12)
• People who just fucking rock at what they do (Friday, March 13)

Should you come visit on those days even if you're not interested in having any of those things done? Up to you, pard', but if you're not blogging Make-a-Referral Week, maybe you could participate just by passing along some of these names to other people. Or pass along names that you have to other people.

But either way, pass it along..

xxx
c

Image by Dan Zen via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license. (It's an arrow, get it? Pointing to the left? An arrow...aw, forget it...)

You pay now or you pay later

I had an interesting check-in with my shrink yesterday. And by "interesting," I mean the kind of session where I start out like a spinning top, end up somewhat numb, and spend a lot of time crying in the middle.

The good news is that in my shrink's own words, it's been years since she's seen me like this.

The other good news is that I have a lot more tools today to work on what's broken, as well as a much better understanding of how to use them, than I did a few years ago.

The final piece of news is not really news, nor is it really good or bad. Which is not to say it doesn't make me wince, it does, but that's judge-y stuff that doesn't serve.

So here it is, in all its banal and ugly glory: I take things for granted. Time (that I'll have all I want, or enough), resources (ditto), luck (oy!) and people (ouch). Oh, not strangers, or casual acquaintances: them, I'll work my ass off to pay off; can't owe anyone anything, can't insult anyone, can't have anyone thinking I'm anything less than awesome.

Yeah, it feels about as good to look that one in the face as you'd imagine.

If I'd been attentive, I could have seen this coming. If I'd put "check in with self" on my checklist and made it a priority, chances are I wouldn't be here now. As it is, when I didn't, and the Truth politely tapped on my shoulder, I waved it off with a promise that I'd deal with it later. I meant the later, just like all the people whom I learned it from did. (That's one of the good things about the good kind of therapy: done right, you learn where stuff comes from and you learn compassion, so that you can let go of some of the hurt that comes with the stuff.)

But it kept being "later," as I dealt with each new thing that fell in my lap. Must attend to the new things: they're NEW. They need tending to!

So here I am, less than a week out from a trip I've really been looking forward to, and I'm wiped out. The bank looks to be near empty, if not overdrawn. It's time to fill the account back up, which means a renegotiation of the resources I have in play right now.

One final story before I head into the weekend to rest up and replenish. So you don't worry. So I don't worry. (Worrying never helped anything, but that doesn't mean I don't indulge!)

I was driving this morning on a street I often take to and from my most-visited haunts. It's been under construction for some time, which is to say it's been a ripped up mile of rubble that sprays shit up onto my undercarriage, creates clouds of noxious dust, generates huge amounts of noise rolling over, and generally abrades my delicate fucking sensibilities.

Every morning and evening, as I've driven over this half-assed excuse for a boulevard, I've wondered why they had to rip it up now. Sure, it had potholes and who-knows-what-other kinds of structural issues; it was awful but tolerable, unlike this, which was going to go on for god-knows-how-long.

This morning, I was twenty feet onto the freshly paved road before I realized that it was, indeed, freshly paved. Not lined yet, that'll come later. But so smooth and perfect, it was like riding on a perfectly nubbled sheet of dark gray glass. They must have done it in the wee hours, when no one was looking. And all of a sudden, after weeks of mess, it was (mostly) done.

I thought of this post I wrote over a year ago, about how sometimes, to make things really better, you have to rip everything up for a while and have it look (and even work) like hell. Change is messy. Change is unpleasant. Change looks embarrassing in front of company. And then, when you're done with it, there's more of it, somewhere else. Always.

I'm officially under construction, as of now. Things may be a little messy. You may get re-routed. The road may be closed off and on.

Trust me: we're working on it. Night and day.

With lots of resting throughout...

xxx
c

Countdown to SXSWi: It's Austin, Jake...

Okay, first? Don't sweat it; let it go.

As with any endeavor that demands time, attention and energy of you, after preparation, the most important thing is to get your head in the right place. No matter how many of the things I mentioned in Weeks 1 & 2 that you ignored, and hey, if it's any consolation, I ignored some of them, too, there are a few things you can do to see that your days in Austin are as excellent as possible. Ready?

Rest up. Seriously.

Even extroverts get tuckered out at SXSW. That's why they describe the benefits of the Disco Nap at the SXSW for n00bz panel on the first day of the conference.

Rather than running around trying to get everything done just before you go (like I did, last year), just go. Open yourself up to possibilities and random encounters. And while you're still here, take your vitamins, eat right and get plenty of sleep. Forego the coffee and nap on the plane, if that works for you.

Basically, arrive with a full tank. It opens up far more in the field of possibilities.

Ask. Ask. Ask.

Last year, I invited myself to dinner, to drinks (several times) and to events. "Where are you going?" and "What looks good to you?" are perfectly acceptable queries. Strike up conversations with people in line for movies or coffee; close your laptop (if you even bring a laptop) and talk to the person next to you. Trust me: the relationships are more important than the information.

Rarely did I get shot down. The worst that happens is that you end up having a nice, albeit brief, conversation, and move on to the next thing.

Plug in.

Right now: go to Twitter search and look for #sxsw; see who comes up. See who rings your bells. Follow them. If it gets too distracting, you can unfollow some other people and switch it all back when you're home again.

You want to be able to know what's going on. Unless something freaky goes down, my guess is that you'll know what's going on via the Twitter. (Or through those people you're meeting in lines, at panels, in the halls, walking to the Convention Center, etc.)

Some other random things to remember:

• your refillable water container (please remember to drink EXTRA water; hydration is important!)
• hand sanitizer (you think I'm kidding? I don't wanna get a cold for my welcome home present)
• earplugs (motel rooms are noisy; sleep, priceless)
• program your friends' mobile numbers into your phone along with their names NOW (for calling, but also for texting: critical!)
• your wedding wasn't perfect, either (seriously, it's JUST a conference, even if it is a big one)
• have fun (or what's the point)

I'm @communicatrix on Twitter (and everywhere else); in person, I'm the tiny, bepectacled, slightly-plump-about-the-midsection lady who will probably have bleary, bloodshot eyes (curse of air travel for me) and either a cup of coffee, (eco-friendly) bottle of water or cocktail in her hand. Say "hello," wouldja?

It's high time we met up...

xxx
c

P.S. If you missed them and are interested, here are Parts 1 and 2.

Image by who knows, dammit, it was late at a party via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Crunch time

I'm down to the wire on a few things.

• Meetup with the Tax Dude tomorrow, and while I love him, really, you couldn't ask for a more delightful and literate Tax Dude, either I'm prepared or both of our time is wasted. Which means that today is all about the prep.
• SXSW in one week. Speaking of prep...one week! How did it happen? I have the last installment in the how-to-prep series going up tomorrow, and still woefully behind on my own prep.
• Ticking clock on some upstate prep. My hillbilly-Jewish cousin has relocated to NorCal, and, in a sort of mini-reprise of last fall's adventure, is giving me access to the pad while she goes to China to train in some high-level permutation of a martial art I lack a pedestrian grasp of.
• Another ticking clock on a New York trip. I got asked to visit my alma mater for a shindig, an entrepreneurial weekend that's getting me back to the East Coast for the first time in almost 6 years, and back to my alma mater for the first time in (gulp) 25.

Clocks tick with more urgency than they did in my 20s, 30s and early 40s. I try to relax, knowing I'll never do everything, knowing that it's most important to do the Right Things, the things that feed me, both literally and figuratively (and really, more the latter), but it's hard. I want to wring as much as I can from the life that's left me, and I want to leave behind as much as I can that will be of use to those still here after I've left the planet.

It's a lot, I tell ya.

Earlier this week, I had a renegotiation talk with my own adviser. Our president may not have been in office long enough to have given a State of the Union address (and really, as so many have said, aren't we all acutely aware of its state, anyway?), but I have been at the helm of this particular ship for nigh on 48 years, and I'm here to say that for all my good intentions it would do, that dog won't hunt; I need to rescale, rejigger, realign where I want to go with the realities of where I'm at. The contracts I made with myself in late Q4'08 are going to be reevaluated at the end of Q1'09, and that's all there is to it. Either that, or I will likely end up a sad, small statistic.

Am I being overly brief or under-ly descriptive? Possibly.

But hey, it's crunch time, I need to work with the time I'm given. I gave the best of my love to my newsletter yesterday; if you haven't already, you can sign up here and soak in the insight that luxurious time and daylight provide. Really, it's a good one. You'll enjoy it.

And whether you do or not, any words of encouragement are welcome in this, my darkest hour of making things balance in Quicken.

I'm so not a numbers kinda gal...

xxx
c

Image by laffy4k via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Yellow Volkswagens and brown flags

I've talked before about Yellow Volkswagen Syndromeâ„¢, that phenomenon where bringing something to mind seems to all of a sudden bring it into your field of vision, and often.

When I wrote about it in this post last year, I talked about Yellow Volkswagen Syndromeâ„¢ as an invocation: if I put it out there that Help Is Everywhere, it will be. I could just as easily swap out "Help" for "Beauty," "Love," "Hilarity," or anything else I was particularly in need of. In the same way that keeping a gratitude journal helps maintain a heightened awareness of how fortunate one is, keeping any particular quality top of mind ("Grace" would be a good one, these days) helps one see how much of the good stuff is all around all of us everywhere, all the time.

The BF and I were talking about this on a walk yesterday. There's a beautiful path around the reservoir in his neighborhood, and many, many people exercise their dogs on it. Most of them pick up the piles of poop their dogs deposit along the way, but a few don't, and guess what you notice? It's kind of hard not to, really, since there it is, in the middle of the path, usually, standing out in stark contrast to the composite the path itself is made of.

When you see more than one of these on a walk, it has a curious effect, that goes like this:

"I can't believe all these people don't pick up after their dogs, it's disgusting!"

One sentence, but it's stuffed with information to be, as the anthropologists put it, unpacked.

1. That I'm in a state of disbelief Am I really? Or is it contempt? The "it's disgusting" tag at the end argues for the latter
2. That the errant poop is the result of owner negligence There are not many wild dogs running loose in this highly dog-friendly neighborhood; with so many dog lovers, any stray dog is picked up pretty quickly, and either turned over to a rescue organization or held until the owner can be found. There are wild coyotes, however, as well as a lot of other local fauna, some of it quite well-fed and large (it's a reasonably tony neighborhood with good people pickins and plenty of fatty squirrels, to boot).
3. That a lot of people are being negligent After some brief discussion, The BF and I came to the conclusion that while we were certainly seeing more poop lying around than we'd like, most people were probably picking up after their dogs. Like I said, this is a really dog-friendly neighborhood; if most people were being negligent, there'd be more shit than path.

None of these are particularly excellent thoughts to be wandering around with, but I'd argue that third point is the hardest to spot and the most potentially damaging. It spreads like a cancer and affects every part of my worldview. I eye each dog-walking neighbor suspiciously, guilty until proven innocent, waiting to see if they pick up the poop. So far, they all have, and really, I have no idea what I'd have said if they hadn't: "Shame on you" or even a direct "Hey, pick that up...please!" both feel Citizens Arrest-y and weird.

And of course, my hatred refuses to remain only with the errant dog owners. It starts to creep into all other aspects of my life, until I'm looking at the world through shit-colored glasses.

One of my recurring mantras with my actor peeps when I'm telling them about marketing and why they should bother with it is "Control what you can." It's not really my business to change the people who view the sidewalk as their dog's personal toilet; talk about wasting one's time and annoying the pig.

Instead, I'm going to let each pile sighting remind me that hey, overall, I have it pretty good here on this fine path I'm walking.

And I'm going to bring an extra bag or two. Or ten...

xxx
c

Image by gregg o'connell via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Speaking of shilling...

I spent half of my weekend helping actors understand how getting super-focused with their message would help them.

I spend the other half fiddling around with a testimonial randomizer to display Great Stuff About Me in the Sidebar.

The one is so easy, it's ridiculous. I feel like I was made to talk to people about stuff I've learned along the way that will likely help them along their way. Even when I'm exhausted (and I kinda was, this weekend, since I'd started my week out with this annoying cold), I'm exhilerated.

The other is so hard, it's even more ridiculous. Or maybe it's not. Maybe it makes all the sense in the world. Maybe it's still me, doing penance for all the crap I foisted upon the world in the name of marketing. Or rather, that I wasted my time and talents foisting upon the world in the name of marketing. Because let's be fair: it's never been the ads themselves I was against (or most of them, anyway); it was the ratio of effort to output they required. Endless fucking meetings representing tens of thousands of man-hours, and SMART man-hours, because advertising back then really did draw from the best of the creative brain trust, all to figure out which way the bears should dance around the cereal box.

Anyway.

I've done a lot of penance. And I've come to realize that maybe it's important to figure out a way to promote stuff that should be promoted. And maybe, just maybe, I'm some of that stuff. If what I'm doing can help anyone, I owe it to that person not only to be available to help, but to maybe turn a porch light on so they can find me in the dark.

There are 15 rotating porchlights in my far-right sidebar as of Sunday night. If you usually read this via email, or a feed, I'd greatly appreciate it if you could click on through to the blog, then hit "refresh" a few times (or visit some different pages, to trigger the mechanism), and let me know what you think.

You guys know. You're at least as smart as all those people in advertising, and probably smarter. Definitely nicer.

All my love to you this lovely Monday...

xxx
c

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

Baby steps, steep curves and other lessons from my bookkeeper

For those of you with zero experience around the Virgo nature, whose entire worldview of us was formed by the scant information you picked up on the back of a celestial cereal box, we are not, contrary to the party line, all that.

We are partly that: the Organizer, the Planner, the Gals (and Dudes) of the Brother P-Touch/Dymo Brigades. Some friends stare at my magnetized remotes and my coordinated-by-color closet agape with wonder. A smaller subset rolls their eyes, having ridden in the filth pit that is my car on any given day (what is the passenger-side footwell for if not my mobile detritus?) or lain on my carpet with its soft, cushy, overlayer of 100% human hair (hey, vacuuming is for suckers...hahaha!)

Or, to bring it on home to stuff I actually give a rat's ass about, some people (god bless you, fine people!) seem to think there's something noteworthy about the way I string words together into sentences, or make an idiot fool out of myself in a shower cap for the sake of a couple thousand laughs. I do appreciate it (truly, BLESS you fine people!) but know that for me, those things are frictionless. In the same way that other are naturally athletic, social or brilliant at making a buck, I'm good with the words and the goofy. It's my metier. It's my EZ Zoneâ„¢. It's even my default setting: I have to be careful not to retreat into it, but to use it as a foundation to build out.

Take storytelling, for example. I suck at it! No, really! No, seriously, have you listened to Ira Glass or the Moth podcasts? Those people can tell stories. I try and I try and while I'm better at it than I used to be, it's a form I'll probably always struggle with. I'm an essayist-with-a-moral person, and that's a very different thing than being a story-with-a-beginning-middle-and-end person. I can do it, but not off the cuff. It takes painstaking practice. When I want to do well, I take the pains.

Or jokes. I suck at telling jokes! No, really, I do! People think I must be great at it because I'm so down with the goofy, but a good joke, a story joke, is, again, a puzzlement to me. Like writing with my non-dominant hand or trying to learn a foreign language. (If you want to see it done well, check out these Old Jews Telling Jokes. Maybe by the time I'm an old half-Jew, I'll be half as good. But I'm not holding my breath.)

I suck at a lot of other things: things that you'd figure (sports, powerlifting, painting) and things you'd not figure, given my Virgo nature. Managing money, every aspect of managing money, has always been a struggle for me. It's only because of incredible luck and good fortune (they're different, you know) that things have worked out this well. But between my inexorably advancing age and the somewhat sudden death of my father (whom I always considered my safety net should things go really wrong), I've finally come to realize that while luck and fortune are fine things, they are not to be counted on. My moments of realizing this added up to a kind of renewed vigor to TCB, and a couple of years ago, I brought in some help in the form of a bookkeeper, to show me how the grownup people did it.

She is patient, kind and wonderful. An artist herself, she is deeply understanding of the exquisitely delicate artist nature. She is nothing but encouraging, and never complains when she has to spend 75% of her time and a lot of my money to clean up messes that wouldn't be there if I would GODDAMN GET THE INVOICING DONE and ENTER THE BASTARD INTO QUICKBOOKS. For days before she comes, and the whole, otherwise pleasant time she's here, these admonishments pound in my head.

But in her best Put the Puppy on the Mat, zen-buddhist way, Liz gently turns my gaze back towards what I have accomplished. Silly little things like billing from my accounting software instead of my writing software, or of carefully copying by hand all my deposits into pages of my notebooks, or tying all my receipts to the credit card statements, with line-item notations for each one.

Things that would seem like no-brainers to a person with a Head for Business. Then again, I might look at Mr. Business Man in amazement when his voice cracks, his hands shake, and the "um" train goes a-runnin' every time he gets up in public to speak.

So Mr. Business Man (probably a Taurus) goes to Toastmasters, and Colleen makes up games to get herself to tote up her expenses and bill on time. Bit by bit, drop by drop, we all can get there, or at least, far enough to be close enough.

Among other things, this year has been a lesson in the mighty power of the tiny increment. And of staying humble, and of staying power.

I hope I'm going places, but so you know, I'm not going anywhere, even if I do. I'm working the fields in front of me, one row at a time...

xxx
c

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

Countdown to SXSWi: 2 weeks out, heeeeere we go!

This is Part 2 of a three-part series on prepping for South by Southwest (interactive flavor). You can read Part 1 here.

Hopefully, you've already tackled some of the bigger to-dos on your list that we talked about in Part 1, like making your reservations and buying a damned cell phone and getting some kind of cards to hand out. (Your regular-usual biz cards will do in a pinch; the main thing is to have something to hand people so they can get in touch with you.)

This week, you'll want to start getting your ducks in a row. They will, of course, scatter to the four winds as soon as you touch ground, and this is part of the delight of SXSW. To make a spin on the old adage, you'll want to have strong plans held loosely to squeeze the most life from South-by. But because we aim to be helpful here at communicatrix-dot-com, a few suggestions...

That thing about signing up for My.SXSW? I wasn't kidding

Okay, if you're a big privacy freak, DON'T sign up for my.sxsw. I get that; I do. But if you're not a freak for privacy, or willing to waive a bit of it on a one-time basis, the site does offer conveniences, like connectivity with your fellow nerds and being able to add events to your calendar automagically. If you're not into that, opt out. Don't tell me which things you're attending.

Just make sure your photo is uploaded to your account so that you don't have to belabor what can already be a lengthy check-in process. Cool?

Firm up plans with people you absolutely must see

I know, I know, this is in direct opposition to what I've said above. But the time flies while you're there, and if you leave things to chance, chances are they won't happen. Other tremendously delightful things will happen, but those things you were counting on in sort of a Kismet way? No. Not those things.

You can order it any way you'd like, but my suggestion is this: give first priority to the people you know you want to see or meet and whom you know you will likely not meet in the course of the next 12 months if not in Austin. If there are groups of you, by all means, set up some group activities. You don't need to pick the venues for these breakfasts, lunches, dinners, drinks, etc, you'll find places soon enough, and those kinds of plans you can keep flexible. (Although if you're looking at going somewhere out of walking range of downtown, to get you some bona fide TX BBQ, f'rinstance, you might want to arrange that.)

So maybe don't lock it up tight, but get it in the chute. The last thing you want is to make that big, long trip and leave without so much as a "Howdy-do!"

Set your (loose) panels schedule

After two visits to SXSW, I'm tempted to say ditch the panels entirely and just meet people. But really, you'll do fine if you treat them like you do the above plans for socializing: get your "musts" in the calendar, and make note of other "maybes."

By "in the calendar" I mean make use of the great WebDav-blah-bitty-blah-amazing technology that is iCal and GCal. If you're a Mac-head, it's dead simple, you just subscribe to the SXSW calendar (click "add this to my calendar" from any particular panel or event in your my.SXSW.com.

Read up on the people you do want to meet

I don't mean to cram for SXSW like it's an exam. But if there are some panels you're interested in going to because you want to meet one of the panelists, maybe do a quick bit of research on the other panelists. At the very least, you'll have better questions to ask during the Q&A, and if you do end up talking to the person, you'll be much more comfortable. (This falls under the general rubric of "be prepared!" that I talked about in my newsletter issue devoted to SXSW and networking. It's of special interest to fellow introverts, I think, because it reduces some of the drag that socializing has on us in general.)

Prune/plump your Twitter

This was the single greatest piece of advice my friend, Heathervescent, gave me before my last SXSW (there was no Twitter at my first one). It's less of an issue now that there are iPhone apps to filter your feed and reduce noise, but if you have focus issues like I did, you might want to dump some of the chattier non-attendees at the same time as you add other people who you'll want to be following. After taking a few deep, calming breaths, I re-added my friends Chris Brogan and Laura Fitton (@chrisbrogan and @pistachio, respectively) because they're the kind of prolific, plugged-in types who will be all over the happs (which is why I had to reluctantly give up on following them before). You may want to add them now, too, or just subscribe/click over to their stream for the next week or so.

You can also go through the list of speakers and people from your my.sxsw (are you getting why I like it?) who are going to be there and add them, as well. Twitter was made for SXSW. (I mean, hey, it basically made its bones there two years ag0.)

At some point, people will settle on a hashtag for SXSW tweets (#sxsw or #sxsw09) and you'll want to note that. In the meantime, you may want to go to Twitter search, create a search for "SXSW" and subscribe to that RSS feed. Or, if you use a Twitter management tool like TweetDeck, set up a search within that.

The point is to get your feet wet with that now, before things get too crazy. Which they will. It's inevitable.

It's part of the fun of it all...

xxx
c

Photo of Colleen Wainwright and 2009 SXSW speaker David Eckoff by Becky McCray or Chris Brogan (I think) via Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons. No, we did not coordinate outfits beforehand. Yes, we look related. SXSW is nutty like that!

What frustration and fear are for

Try saying that headline three times fast.

No. Don't.

You're already frustrated enough, aren't you? I know I am. These days, for every moment of wonderment, and happily, there are many, and happy moments of wonderment, at that, there seem to be three of the WTF-OMFG-WFHIT* variety.

People are craaaaaazy right now. There is a craaaaaazy amount of fear in the air, and an actually not-so-crazy amount of scrambling accompanying it. Because all the rules have changed, or seem to have, in the middle of the game. (I'll make the rather existential argument that we've all been living in a fantasy hullaballoo of our own creation, but for our purposes, things got nutjob, fast.)

I was musing on (about? over?) this today because I had a Creeping Panic Moment of my own. Jesus Christ on a busted-ass Segway, what the hell is wrong with me? I wondered. I spend over a year figuring out "where I'm at" (to cop a 70s phrase from my favorite 70s movie) and in which direction I want to point my guns, and now I'm going to spend another year, or two, or five, building it? A brand new service business, in this market? What am I high on, my own fumes of delusional self-glory?

Somehow, the moment passed. Actually, I know exactly how the moment passed, and I'm going to share this AMAZING AND ALL-POWERFUL SECRET with you: I worked.

I sat down and did some bona-fide, best-of-my-ability, all-out marketing consulting work for a wonderful woman up in Palo Alto doing her own wonderful work to change the world with her own gifts. We worked, the two of us. And on the other side of that, after we'd gotten some good work done, I'm guessing we both felt better. (Well, she has a worse cold than I, by the sound of it, so she can't have felt entirely better-better. But still.)

After the call, when I set about to some puttering (I must needs putter after a call, I'm so hopped up), a crazy thought popped into my head. An analogy, which is one of my favorite kinds of thoughts, a whole string of them, actually.

It's been like this before, thought I, when I couldn't get a college paper to work, or before I first jumped up on stage in front of a bunch of strangers. It was like this when I got my sorry ass kicked out of the Groundlings Sunday Company. It was like this when I quit advertising, when I started acting and sucked at it, when I sucked again and finally had to walk away.

It was like this when I first rode the bus to school by myself, when I tried out for the basketball team in the seventh grade and again every single time I was called off the bench to play (not many for a 4'11" point guard, but I went up with my heart in my mouth each time). It was like this when my dad drove away after dropping me off at my freshman dorm; it was like this just before I finally capitulated and went into therapy for the first time. I don't remember it, but it was probably like this when I first learned to walk and talk.

These craaaaaazy times are calling for a lot of faith. Not in some celestial force, although that's fine, if it works for you (and if you don't hand over the reins to the point of missing your truck, boat and helicopter). Given the tightness of money and the uncertainty swirling around us, there will probably be more lag time between risk and reward, IF there's a reward.

I'm going to try to remember that things generally work out; I'm also going to try to remember that even when they haven't, I've not (yet) been engulfed in a tower of flame or turned into a pillar of salt.

I'm just going to try.

How about you?

xxx
c

*See here and here for those of you who weren't psycho enough to have been ardent Parker fans from the age of 16.

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

A brief message from someone I'd like you to sponsor

There's been a lot of ruckus about The Little Film That Could, a.k.a. Slumdog Millionaire, sweeping the Oscars on Monday.

I haven't seen it yet, but then, I haven't seen the movie I'm about to tell all of you about, the one that won just one Acadamy Award, for Best Documentary Short Subject (if they're still even calling it that).

The film is a 39-minute short called Smile Pinki; it was directed by one Megan Mylan. Through the story of one very plucky little girl from a very poor part of India, it documents the amazing work being done because of an amazing charitable organization founded by an amazing ACTUAL FRIEND OF MINE, Brian "Hi, I'm a Saint Who Just Happens to Look Like A Kennedy" Mullaney.

The charity is called Smile Train, and the work they've done, and the way they've done it, is nothing short of breathtaking. Brian talks about the concept in this short video accessible via his bio page, but the topline is this: when they ran the numbers and realized how many more children with cleft problems they could save from a lifetime of agony by training local doctors to do the surgery rather than sending U.S. doctors over to do it, they created a charity whose sole purpose was to do just that. This year, they will hit the 500,000 mark: half a million $250 surgeries, one at a time. There is zero cost to the children's families, and no child is turned away, except for medical reasons (there a few, very rare types of cleft problems that can't be fixed with this particular surgery.)

I've written about The Smile Train before, some four years ago, both here and on LA metblogs. It's time to write again, and a whole lot more. The global financial crisis is killing donations, and Smile Train is no exception. Yes, I know there aren't a whole lot of unworthy charities. But this one is run so well and provides such excellent results, it's more than a vote for these children to donate: it's a vote for all charities to ramp it up a bit.

Besides, they've won an Oscar!

I signed up for the monthly donation program. The bottom end of it, but still. You can sign up to donate, here.

You can watch the trailer (it's great!) and send it on to a friend, here. You can sign up to host your own Smile Pinki screening and fundraiser, here. Or just sign up to be notified when Smile Pinki will be screened near you, or the DVD is available, here.

And of course, all you savvy social media types can blog or Twitter or Facebook it (yes, they have a page; they're smart like that.)

The beauty part of this whole plan is that if Brian & co. can keep this up, they'll actually be able to put themselves out of business within five years. Just five years to get clefts down to the kind of manageable, ho-hum levels they're at here in the U.S., so they can be dealt with like they are here in the U.S.

I don't know about you, but that's my kinda business plan.

Your other ideas for spreading the word are welcome, either via the comments or privately, by email (communicatrix over by the GMAIL with a dotterooski and a COM). They're especially interested in ways they can spread the word in Africa, which has been a difficult continent for them to crack. So any of you with pull at international organizations, or some other kind of in, please do drop a line.

And now, we return you to your previously scheduled program...

xxx
c

Image via shannonpatrick via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

'ello, guvnor!

I've written about the cold as governor before, but it bears repeating (or at least, my body has decided it does).

Getting sick, while nothing most of us would wish on ourselves, no matter how insignificant the illness, is, like most things, what you make of it. (And by "you," I mean "me.")

My colds are like a nagging mother: they force me to take a little better care of myself, to get the sleep I've been cheating myself of and the nutrition I need.

My colds are like a business manager: they force me to take a look at the bottom line, and how each activity is (or isn't) working, ROI-wise.

And finally, my colds are like Twitter: they force me to write short.

Stay well, eat right and get the rest you need. Governors are fine in their way, but there are other people you'd much rather have drop by for a visit.

xxx
c

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

Relentlessly optimistic

Note: the promised Mystery Readers' Choice Post #2 is in the oven and will be out soon. In the meantime, please enjoy this fresh, delicious content that absolutely nobody asked for.

There is a saying you heard quite often around my old acting studio, and, if a recent visit is proof of anything, still is:

"It breaks your heart."

This is the cost of being a Good Actor, by which I mean not just skilled in the Theatrical Arts but awake, aware, supple and open. It is the price that exquisite sensitivity exacts, and if you want to really Bring It, must be paid over and over again.

Actors, the good ones, get paid to throw their hearts on the railroad tracks in front of speeding trains over and over again. Their hearts are lobbed around like footballs, shot up in the air like skeet, sliced lengthwise for the viewing pleasure of mere mortals.

Do not confuse the external theatricality of actors, even the good ones, for lack of tenderness; the broad gestures and booming voices and dramatic affect are just tools and by-products, and they belie the things they both project and protect.

Why the hell do I bring up actors at a time like this?

Because times like these are all about figuring out how to live like actors do, every time they act.

Times like these require you to expose your soft underbelly, your tender heart, over and over and over again no matter what dark, cold, scary thing you're walking into. They require learning, if you don't know how, to pick yourself up and make one more call, even if you might be rejected, or to reach out to one more person, even though she might turn away.

Times like these are about learning to take one more chance, even though you swear your heart can't take it.

It can. Again and again.

Here's the secret: just like Elizabeth Gilbert said to all the fancy folk at TED, it's not your love; it's everyone's love. It's L-O-V-E. It's the stuff we're all really made of, or at least, it's the stuff that sticks us all together. Plug into it and you're golden, again and again and again. You'll feel stupid and awkward and yeah, you might even cry a few thousand times at first, but it works.

Again and again.

I first labeled myself a Relentless Optimist during my online dating days, because I realized that you know, I was. And however dorky and idiotic it made me to float it out there, well, it was the truth. And not a bad truth. A relentless optimist does not have his head in the clouds; a relentless optimist knows she'll get the holy shit kicked out of her heart...again and again. But she also knows that love, the big kind, the kind that holds us all together and keeps us going and makes all the good things possible (and the bad things slightly less horrifying, if only briefly sometimes), will out. It will fill up her broken heart and mend it up like new, like better than new, because every time you put your heart out there to be broken and it does and instead of pulling it away forever and locking it up in a little box, you put it out there again, your heart gets stronger.

It has to, so it can break, for the world, over and over again.

What we learn now, in the dark, will serve each of us when the lights come back on. Maybe more so, if they don't. (And I hope they will, you know, because I know lots of people who are young and haven't had their at-bat yet, but you never know.)

Let's not dwell on that.

Let's be open one more time each day, one more micron. Let's say, a week from now, "My heart broke FIVE TIMES this week, isn't it fantastic!?"

It is. It is it is it is. Trust me. Trust yourself. Trust that your heart is more magnificently strong than you've ever had the privilege of knowing.

Now get out there and get your heart broken, and so will I.

In relentless optimism, we trust...

xxx
c

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

Countdown to SXSWi: 3 weeks out, heeeeere we go!

In a way, getting ready for the annual South by Southwest extravaganza mirrors the experience of SXSW itself: myriad possibilities, a bubbly feeling of excitement, lots to do and a creeping feeling of panic.

So the first thing one needs to do in the Planning for SXSW process is this: BREATHE.

I've been twice now, in 2008 and 2006, and I'm here to say there's no way you can do it all, nor is there any reason you'd really want to. Some of the most fun things about SXSW are the random events that fall in your lap. The best way to prepare, therefore, is to plan a schedule with plenty of room for unscheduled events.

There are some things that will make your stay infinitely more comfortable, however, and these are worth planning a bit more meticulously, or at least, considering before you toss them aside. (I'm assuming you've already gotten your plane tickets, accommodations and SXSW conference pass, but if you haven't, definitely do that before you do anything else.)

Get a personal, SXSW-only card

People do bring and use their regular business cards, especially freelancers, solopreneurs and entrepreneurial types whose name and Internet contact info is front-and-center on it. But there are compelling reasons to get a second card made up, and printing has never been cheaper and easier. If you work for Mr. Big Corporo-Megolopoly, or even Ms. Tiny Start-Up-Where-Your-Name-Ain't-on-the-Door, you may want to get a separate card printed up with your name, your contact info and your web presence (or whatever private thingy you want to promote) on it. Some resources:

• Flickr stream of "sxsw" + "cards" Not all bizcards, but some fun ideas in there. I especially like Jason Santa Maria's card from 2007 and Joshua Strebel's card from 2008 (which won 2nd place in the SXSW Card Collective Contest, which I defy anyone to say fast after even one beer).
• SXSW Business Card Collective Website that aggregates all the coolio cards people bring to and find at SXSW.
• UPrinting.com These guys are L.A.-local but I like them for quick turn and decent printing at the price.
• VistaPrint.com Free business cards for the price of shipping. Not great, but free.

Order any hardware, software or other-ware you might want to have handy

These are the things you think about getting a week before and that then drive you batshit crazy as you run around trying to find them and figure out how to use them and break them in before you hop on a plane to head out. You may not need all of them, but most of them are things I've either missed because I haven't had them.

• Working mobile device Critical. If you're going to replace your aging mobile, now is the time, not three days before, which is what I did the first year. You'll also want to make sure you have a good-sized text package for your time in Austin (I went to "unlimited" for one month), so consider that at sign-up.
• Powerstrip and/or cubetap Outlets are at a premium in the Convention Center and, surprise!, in your hotel room. I mooched off The BF's the first year and depended on the kindness of strangers the second year. Not again.
• Extra juice My iPhone is never far from a charger in my usual life, but during SXSW, all bets are off. I kind of hate to buy an extra gadget, but I'd hate no power even more, so I'm researching battery backup options for the 3G now. (If you have a strong preference, please let me know in the comments.)
• A camera that you know how to use Sounds dumb, but it's really fun and useful to have. And I borrowed my sister's last year, which was great of her, but I didn't RTFM first and...well, let's just say there were a few moments of frustration
• Good walking shoes I bring two pair, in case rain ganks up one. What can I say? I hate wet feet.

Bookmark pages, make a calendar, hook up with your peeps

Social media keeps making it easier and easier to plot out your stay.

• Make a folder for your browser toolbar Store any URLs you're going to want access to re: SXSW here. You can delete the whole shebang when the gig is over, or move it into your general bookmarks. (You can also use Evernote, delicious or whatever else you want to hold your bookmarks and info in. I'm also creating a Things project, but I like redundancy, because I'm kind of a re-dunce.
• Start a text file or paper list of stuff to do I mean, my lists are great, but you need your own, right? Method of choice, here.
• Log onto SXSW and set up your profile They've got a greatly improved "My SXSW" site this year with some social networking components. Can't tell yet whether people will use that or just old-school (ha!) Twitter-plus-hashtag system to connect, but it's at least a lot prettier and easier to upload your badge photo and info, which you should do, now.
• Bookmark the Panel Picker Available for SXSWi here. You can start looking it over to get a feel for what's there and which panels you absolutely want to attend. For example, there are a few people whom I'll grab any opportunity to see because they're so compelling, and a few friends I'd like to support. After two trips to SXSW, though, I can definitely say that the main reason to go is the people, not the panels, so don't spend too much time plotting out every little thing.
• If you're not already, get familiar with Twitter It was the social networking platform of choice last year (and basically was born the year before). If you're new, don't overwhelm yourself; just pick a username, set up an account, and try to follow along for a few days. When you're ready, you may want to consider using a tool like TweetDeck to follow Twitter from, as it lets you organize your Twitter universe (which can get messy, fast) and Set up a search for #sxsw09 in Twitter You're

Some great to-do/checklist-type SXSW posts

• Dave Seah has a terrific, orderly, pre-flight to-do list of things to make sure you do, get and/or bring to make life easier
• If you're into the social media marketing thing, you might enjoy this series of a billion ramp-up-to-SXSW interviews Aaron Stout is conducting. (Was "45 in 45 days" but like I said, SXSW has a way of getting big on you in a hurry.)

Questions? Comments? Concerns?

Fellow previous-SXSWers, what did I miss? (For four weeks out, we'll get to the other stuff as we get closer.) Newbies, what kinds of questions do you have? I wish I'd known more about what to expect my first year, so I really don't mind entertaining even ridiculous questions. In fact, if they're truly ridiculous, they'll be truly entertaining, so let 'er rip!

xxx
c

Of possible interest:

• my March 2008 newsletter devoted to better/easier/non-suckier networking at SXSW (or anywhere)
• my Flickr stream from SXSW08
• everyone's Flickr photos tagged SXSWi08

Image of my 2008 SXSWi blog card, deconstructed © 2008 Hugh MacLeod at the SXSWi BlogHaus.

UPDATE 2/25: The author suffered severe brain cramp as she wrote this; the date was really 3 weeks out. That bodes well, doesn't it?!

¡Olé! to you, fellow artist

For those of you who do most of your creating off-stage, you may not have experienced the ¡olé! moment. That's my new-favorite term for the magical thing that happens when you get in the zone and out of the way and the work just flows through you. The term comes to me via the astonishing Elizabeth Gilbert in her very moving (and funny, and smart as hell) TED talk, below. As Derek Sivers says in his own post pointing to it, Gilbert's words speak to pretty much any writer or musician; I'll go one better and say that if there is any pursuit you've spent a lot of time getting your body tuned up for, you'll dig it:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86x-u-tz0MA?rel=0]

The ¡olé! moment happens rarely onstage, but when it does, there's a kind of thrum inside and outside of you, a strange inner/outer vibrational shift where you're very aware of what's happening and you also feel like it's something happening to you, or possibly through you. It's pretty sensational, and I'm pretty sure it only happens when a confluence of circumstances are in place:

1. You, prepared
2. You, letting go
3. Some kind of Mysterious Hoodoo Shit happening elsewhere

It's probably happened to me 30-odd times in my entire performing career, and that includes auditions and scenes in class as well as performances. I don't know if that number is on the low, high or average side, but I do know that when It Happened, it was as much something acting me as me doing the acting. No matter how many times It Happens, though, I can tell you this: It can't Happen enough; the feeling is so amazing, and the level at which you're able to transmit that creative energy is so crazy-high, if you could bottle it, you'd be a bajillionaire, even in a down market.

Especially in a down market.

There are some things that I believe up one's chances for the magic happening. As you might guess, most of the actionable stuff happens in areas #1 and #2. One of the reasons I hammer hammer hammer away at my actors in my monthly columns to Always Be Creating is that it really helps with both of those things: you become both better prepared, because constant application of effort to a certain practice makes you more skilled and confident, the 10,000 hours rule, and you are better able to let go because sheer volume of work means that any individual instance becomes proportionally less important, thereby enabling you to be way more relaxed than you might otherwise be.

It's one reason I decided to post daily to the blog. Yes, a part of me is hoping that replicating the Monday-through-Friday nature of the old-time daily column will somehow trigger the Magical Woowoo Hoodoo into manifesting a modern-day Royko gig for the communicatrix, but another far, far more realistic part of me knows that there's no way I can't get better at this if I'm doing it more often.

As Gilbert says in her talk, there is huge relief in making the shift to thinking you have access to genius rather than that you have to be a genius. My job as access point is to stay in shape and show up daily.

The rest of it? Is up to the genius.

¡Olé! to that...

xxx c

###

In case you have ever wondered what I sound like when speaking in public, I finally have a speaking page up which contains an embed of a decidedly non-TED talk. At least I know now what I'm tuning this old carcass up for.

The green-eyed monster as giver of direction

Between a nostalgic visit to my old acting class and last week's abysmal (and final) audition, I've been thinking a lot about the lessons I learned from my time in the business.

Or rather, of things that were told to me back then that I didn't necessarily get or believe, but which, many years of processing later, I've finally understood to be true.

Take my faults, please.

Like most people, I'd like to pretend they didn't exist. That I didn't grapple with envy or self-centeredness or apathy. Or at the very least, I'd rather draw your attention to the very lovely and spectacular qualities I'm choosing to showcase, my grace with words, for example, or my sense of humor, or my engagingly earnest nature, that you might overlook the petty, small-minded, grousing, greedy bitch of a slob I share this carcass with.

Take my jealousy, please.

Of all the things I hate in myself, more than anything I hate the streak of schadenfreude that I wear like a skunk stripe along my back. Because it's not enough that I loathe myself, or my inability to achieve the things I want, or to covet the success of others. Oh, no. I have to actively derive a certain soupçon of joy from the misfortune of those who have some measure of the success I'm coveting. Which, you know, makes me a spectacularly gorgeous specimen of humanity.

The thing is, though, it kinda does. No, schadenfreude is not excellent or sexy or anything to aspire to. But it's one possible human feeling to have and therefore, an indicator that I am, in fact, human, and not a robot. To get back to the acting lesson I brought up earlier, one of the chief mistakes most new (or old, but self-conscious) actors make is failing to show their failings. As an audience, we embrace truth, not perfection. A drama with no drama is someone putting the kettle on. A drama with drama is wondering what's going on while that kettle is being put on, and who it's being put on for, and what just happened, and what ever will happen next.

Conflict is drama, and drama is the stuff of life. I may like all the nice traits in Column A, but the stuff in Column B is what's going to get me through the long haul. The stuff in Column B is my combination indicator light and to-do list, if you will. It both tells me when there's engine trouble and gives me something important to work on.

That's important, of course, the working through of things. You don't want to just hunker down with your Column B and say, "Well, that's it! I'm an intolerant sonofabitch who fears change and is tight with a buck, amen," because if you do, your life will probably play out a lot like Ebenezer Scrooge's, minus the happy ending. And trust me, brother, you do not want to be 80 and realize you pissed your life away being slothful or small or rageful, because I've seen a few people in that position and it is a thing so scary I wouldn't even wish it on the people I wish it on. Much.

I'm currently grappling with a few things I never thought I'd have to grapple with. Like my friend, Chris Guillebeau, I was extraordinarily fortunate when it comes to making a living with ease, until I suddenly wasn't; like women everywhere, I'm finally dealing with weight gain that's not easily lost. It's a bitch, baby, and when I don't get enough rest or exercise or self-love, so am I.

The thing I cling to as I grapple with the green-eyed monster and other personal beasties is this: that which I can identify, I can deal with. One of the reasons I'd never go back to being 25 or even 35 is the lack of perspective that was a hallmark of those ages...for me. Not enough spins around the globe to see patterns, not enough hardship to have a sense of proportion. And then, of course, there was the sheer terror of falling completely to pieces if I took any one part of me out to examine closely in the light. GOOD GOD, PUT THE CARD BACK BEFORE THE WHOLE TOWER COLLAPSES!

Now I have books about my problems, and lengthy discussions about them, and, ta da!, this blog about them. I won't lie, it's always a little scary putting some of my ugliness out of the table for us all to look at; on the other hand, there's also always this accompanying sigh of relief that I'm not keeping this HORRIBLE secret to myself.

The other nice thing, of course, is that I get to hear about all the ways in which people who share this particular area of overlap deal with it. And we get to shed a little light on what must seem like baffling behavior to our human friends who don't have this particular indicator light installed.

So how's about it, fellow travelers? What pearls have you to offer about jealousy or (damn your eyes!) the lack thereof?

xxx
c

TIP-EROOSKI: For what it's worth, when I get stuck in some kind of nutty emotion, I like turning to a tiny snack book called The Little Book of Moods, by Jane Eldershaw. Lots of quick insights and how-tos that are surprisingly effective at pulling me out of a crazy spiral.

UPDATE 2/17: A reader sent in this link to an article on this exact topic from the Science section of today's NYT. Great publishing minds, etc.

UPDATE 12/20: I finally wrote a detailed review of The Little Book of Moods on the blog.

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

Rejuvenating rendezvous-es

It was an amazing weekend of colossal proportions.

Why?

THING THE FIRST: I got a metric buttload of work done. My fellow squinty-eyed middle-agers reading the actual page will notice a ton of it straightaway; the rest of you can feel free to see here and, HUZZAH!, here for external examples. Oh, and feel free to tell me what you think via this handy device.)

THING THE SECOND: The BF finished a HUGE job and celebrated by cleaning his entire house. Which, I can say now, was a huge job in and of itself. And no, I didn't help; I volunteered for two stem-to-stern tours of duty in that theater and finally realized that if I did it again, we would not last as a couple through the experience. Because neither one of us could take the stress. (Highly compatible people do not necessarily have highly compatible styles of Getting Things Done.)

THING(S) THE THIRD: Heaping helpings of neighborly love! To wit...

• a joyous, post-cleaning dinner at one of my favorite neighborhood restaurants (oh, lordy, that SALMON!!!) with The BF and a new-and-great friend, Hippie Jan (so named to help differentiate her from L.A. Jan and Chicago Jan)
• a joyous, post-wedding gathering for an old, dear actor friend and his new, dear bride
• a joyous, laugh-laden reunion with my old art director, Kevin, who is out here on a production

If you've been following along for awhile, Kevin is known here as the fellow who put together an extraordinary project to mark his 50th birthday: a compendium of anecdotes on life, love, happiness and other interesting things from 50 people whom he felt shaped his life, the idea being that if a man is known by the company he keeps, what better way to find out what makes us so than to go to the source.

We talked a lot about the project, which has been very well received, adored, even, not only by the contributors, but by the people whom they were moved to share the book with. There's been a resounding call on many fronts for Kevin to pitch this as a book-book for wide publication: yes, the stories are specific to him, but they're so specific and so tender and so beautiful, there is something profoundly universal and touching about the whole affair. You cannot read this book and not be moved, seriously.

In honor of these highly moving stories, I'm sharing another of my own submissions, two of seven or so I sent back to him made the final cut. The first was about art and truth and the fire that burns within, but this one...well, this may be my greater contribution, when all is said and done...

xxx c

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

Story after the jump.

The Request, as it came from Kevin:

Recall some small detail about our halcyon days at Y&R back in the '80s.  It could be a small moment, a particular view, a scent, a color. With any luck it will bring a laugh or at least a smile. Describe it and explain what makes it so memorable and meaningful.

The Answer, as it came from me:

Many, many years ago, when my chief features of youth and vigor were abundant enough to have let me rack up successes without much else going for me, I was graced with a big task: to assist in the launch of what looked to be a rather revolutionary frozen food product.

I couldn't be trusted to do this on my own, of course, so I was partnered with one of my beloved art directors, an equally youthful and vigorous Kevin Houlihan, with whom I had many deep, soulful discussions about the merits of feta cheese omelettes vs. “real” lunch food, and which of us had better hair.

But now, our discussions centered around names. Because this was such a revolutionary frozen food product, as I recall, its Unique Delivery System ensured a fresh taste and crisp texture to the finished product heretofore unavailable in an entrée of its kind, we needed a name that was not only catchy and compelling, but descriptive as well. After all, actual focus groups of civilians had confirmed what we'd all tasted for ourselves in the test kitchen: freshness! Gourmet-quality taste! Beautiful presentation! Complex depth of flavor! These were no mere TV dinners; they were masterpieces of gastronomical proportion!

(You'll pardon the pun, there are far worse to come.)

So we sat in my office, the two of us; he, drinking endless Diet Cokes and alternately pacing or musing from my guest chair, feet on my desk; I, chain-smoking Marlboro Reds, hammering out lists of names on my trusty Selectric™.

Fresh Plates! Fresh Masterpiece! Creative Masterpiece! Fresh-n-Easy Creations! Gourmet Plates! Masterful Creations! Masterful Plates!

And in one moment, we locked eyes, the same genius idea popping into both our youthful, vigorous brains at the same time. I hammered it onto the page, pulled the sheet from the typewriter and we fairly skipped down the hall to our boss' corner office.

"Michael! Michael! Got a minute?"

"Ye-e-e-es?" he drawled, in his inimitable style. (Michael was what you'd call one of your unflappable types.) "We've got it! We've got the name for the frozen food thingy!"

"Mmmm?" he said, leaning back, his face still an imperturbable, pleasant mask. (Michael had been in the business for what I now realize was an eternity by that point.)

Kevin and I looked at each other...and at Michael...and at each other. And finally, in unison, we let it ring out into the room:

"MASTER-PLATES!!!!!"

Beat.

Michael looked at us. We looked at him.

Beat.

He looked at us. We looked at him.

Beat.

He looked at us and raised a single eyebrow. And, I can't be sure of this, but I'm fairly certain one corner of his mouth turned up ever so slightly, probably at the thought of retelling this over cocktails to various other less youthful, less vigorous parties.

We looked at each other.

Oh.

There are moments in life that are perfectly Proustian in nature, that send time collapsing in on itself and us back to a moment that, in hindsight, perfectly sums up "happiness" or "love" or "peace".

And then, there are Masterplates.

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!

Clutter, other people's stories and the ache of letting go

Longtime readers (and compulsive types who click deep into the "about" section) know that I've had two previous lives of roughly 10 years each, career-wise, before coming into my own as the communicatrix you know and love.

First, I wrote ads. Big, and small, but mostly big, TV ads for cars and cereal and gelatin products, among many, many others. It was a fun job in many ways, but the ROI on it sucked eggs, for me.

Oh, it paid well enough. Until you broke down that big salary + bonus into hourly increments, that is, and then it didn't. And when you factored in the amount of brain juice that went into it, and what ultimately came out, it really wasn't, for me. Some of my compatriots would likely have written ads for free, for the sheer joy of it; for me, it finally came down to something I did for money, and the money wasn't enough to keep me there.

Next, after a few misdirected efforts (*cough* screenwriting *cough*), I settled into a new career: acting in ads. Well, I acted in a bunch of stuff, including a ton of sketches, a half-ton of plays and a (small) handful of film and TV projects. But all "blink-and-you'd-miss-me"-type stuff.

That also paid well enough, although again, not nearly as well as you'd think when you broke down all the eleventy-seven-billion hours you put into training and auditioning. Probably 98% of the working actor's life is spent either interviewing for jobs, getting ready to interview for jobs, or driving around looking for parking to interview for jobs. Eventually, the Crohn's, the experience I had because of it as much as the physical legacy it left me with, forced me into retirement. The ROI, while it was definitely better than advertising, just wasn't good enough to warrant the wear and tear on my body and psyche.

So I retired. Or stopped auditioning, which at my level is a de facto retirement. My agent, Mr. Cris Dennis of Film Artists Associates, one of your finer human beings, insisted on calling it a semi-retirement, and keeping things open in case something good came up. Cheered by the depth of his kindness and faith in me, I agreed, and things chugged along quietly enough, until last week, when I went in to read for a series of perfectly fine spots for what I'm sure is a perfectly fine product...and I hated it.

I hated getting dressed up. I hated driving there, and parking. I hated putting on a suit that no longer fit after two and a half years parked on my ass in front of the computer.

But mostly, I hated that I wasn't good at it anymore. Oh, I got a callback, so I didn't suck eggs. But I've been on the other side of this equation and I know that if you're even in the ballpark in some way, lots of times they'll call you back. And physically, I was a dead ringer for what they were after.

It's probably obvious, but just in case it isn't, this is a much, much harder thing to let go of than some goal of getting out there and hustling for consulting clients. I gave up a lot to go after my dream of acting, and letting even this last, mercenary bit of it go, because let's face it, no one is in commercials for the glorious acting opportunities it affords, is far, far more melancholy-making than letting go of my ad tool portfolio or a dream of some potentially gargantuan but wholly unrealized revenue stream. I became an actor to Tell the Truth, and a small part of me feels like a loser and a copout for moving away from it and into writing-plus-whatever-the-hell-else-I do-now.

On the other hand, it has never been clearer or more obvious that my job now is to tell my own stories, not other people's. So tell I will, and devil take the hindmost.

I made a hard phone call on Wednesday afternoon, just before close of business. I told Mr. Cris Dennis that this time, I really am hanging up my spurs. I can't half-ass anything anymore, and I can't give acting that good stuff I was in the prime of my dream. I leave this job to my dear girlie, Annie, who is rocking the world where I like to think I would have left off, if I'd been half as talented as she is*.

Oh, and I also told him that I'd meet him for lunch next week. Just because the journey has taken a little turn doesn't mean I have to leave behind the people I met on the way.

More than anything, or at least, more than a lot of things, I would like to believe that I will make silver jewelry again, when I have time, so I should continue to hang onto the 16-year-old (some of it untouched) equipment I bought and hauled out from Chicago. Or that my apartment building will magically return to being the quiet, clean, sweet-smelling haven it was when I moved in 10 years ago and I can stay put, and 37, with difficult change behind me and freedom ahead. Or, recently, that the goddamn suit will fit again.

I start to wonder how much of the pain of letting go of clutter, emotional, career, physical, what have you, is fear, and how much is nostalgia. And, maybe, how much of nostalgia is fear.

In a way, it doesn't matter. We can sit around debating these things, or we can clean out the closet and the bookshelves and the mustier, darker parts of our souls and brains and hearts we would perhaps prefer not to look at.

It ain't easy. But so far, every time I've put aside the next decade's version of childish things, I've been astonished not only at the childish wonder that's been reinvigorated in me, but at how damned nice it looks in here, how damned good it feels.

Easy is for other people; we are after bigger things. Or maybe just other things. At the very least, some wiggle room.

Now, go close some doors so you-know-who can open some windows...

xxx
c

*Note: this is not an excuse to stop writing, missy-ma'am; you're young and able-bodied enough to do both for now.

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

Wiggle room

Sometimes constraints are good.

They swaddle babies, as I understand it, because it makes them feel safe. If you think about it, it makes sense: the little buggers are coming from a pretty restricted area, and the idea of flailing around in a whole lotta space must be as terrifying as, well, the idea of flailing around in space, period, for us. Adrift, in the vast beyond, total darkness except for whatever light is being bounced off of a random planet, or some giant chunk of astro-hell that flies in out of nowhere and bonks you on the head? Not my idea of a relaxing way to go through life.

On the other hand, too much constraint is no good, either.

You put a plant in a smallish container to seed it, then move it to a larger one when it its rootbed fills up the area, so it can continue growing. Not too much larger, that can kill it too, apparently. (I kill plants as a matter of course, so all of this is non-practical, book knowledge to me. Although if this thing about air-scrubbing plants is true, I may have to take one more crack at plant husbandry.)

There are a few constraints I know I need. Through trial and (grievous, abysmal) error, I have learned to embrace the deadline as my friend.

Similarly, I have learned to forge new friendships when I'm entering unknown (or known and dangerous) territory: they're called accountability partners, I have several, some paid, some not, and I highly recommend it as a practice. I have a self-created deadline set up with my friend, productivity whiz, Matthew Cornell. Despondent over the highly unmanaged state of my contacts and other information, I reached out for a lifeline, and there he was. We set us up a phone call, a series of follow up tasks and check-ins, and holy cow if I'm not making some progress! (Matthew, if you're reading this, I had another sync issue with @#%(! Google Contacts that set me back a bit, but I am making progress nonetheless.)

I also know that limiting my time with a particular project can work for me (done and OUT, rather than redone and redone), as can limiting my time, period. I've never been more productive than when I scheduled my whole ding-dong day, down to the five-minute break; I've also almost never been more miserable, so that's not an option.

The magical sweet spot for me is always enough, but not too much, to do. I go a little batty without something to aim my guns at, but I wither and die without a little space to stretch and grow. Wiggle room, that's really all I need to flourish. After the terror of letting One Big Goal go bye-bye subsided, I felt positively buoyant. There was suddenly room to breathe, and to think, and to create. I felt hopeful again, rather than doomed. And all I did was to take one thing off my plate. (Well, I also took an out a friend handed me, so a thing and a quarter, perhaps.)

As a result of this dreadful shock and subsequent revelation, I'm taking a cold, hard look at my calendar. What's doable? What's not? What can be put off for now? What can be put off indefinitely? Currently, I'm booking dates for March and out, even though there are some blank spaces still in February. Because while I could fill them, I know I won't be at my best here, there or anywhere if I do.

This focusing stuff is a bitch, I won't lie to you. A workaholic's tendency is to keep working, long after she's reached the point of diminishing returns, just like a couch potato's tendency is to keep watching TV and a junkie's tendency is to keep shooting H or popping bennies. (Sorry. Watching a lot of Dragnet lately during my HULU-hooping.) Because the thought of doing it differently is just too overwhelming: what would that be? How would it work? What does that even look like?

I'll tell you what I think it looks like for obsessives like us: doing one thing differently. There's a book about it I see each month on my shrink's coffee table; I flipped through it today and found some stuff in there interesting enough to warrant checking out the rest of the book, I think. (Have you read it? Let me know in the comments, would love to hear how readers of this blog think I might or might not like it.)

And now, I will get back to work.

Work, with a little cushion of wiggle room on all four sides...

xxx
c

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

Falling crockery

One of the hardest things for me to reconcile is the difference, often vast, between the world as I would like it to be and the world as it is.

I'm not talking about hippy-dippy, kumbaya-peace stuff or even fairness stuff: I'm talking about the physical reality of time, and how much stuff you can cram into it. Or can't, as is the case with me. It has always been this way with me, I'm afraid.

Have I told you yet about the time I took on Uncle Tom's Cabin for a book report in the second or third or fourth grade, not realizing how hard, oh, hell, how BORING it was, not to mention long? I don't even remember what page I was on when I finally gave up, 87? 187? All I remember was that I was in my parents' bedroom, and exhausted, and great waves of shame washed over me like dirty, freezing ocean water, and I cried, copiously, until I finally fell asleep.

I don't know what I thought would happen if I gave in to reality and admitted then and there that I was going to fail: I would die, perhaps, or be expelled, or have to stand in a corner with my black watch plaid uniform jumper up over my head while the teacher (rightfully! rightfully!) humiliated me in front of the class. None of which would have been staved off, were they inevitable, had I just given in and gone to bed at a reasonable hour; I'd just have been better rested for my punishment.

Neither do I know what did finally happen to me that next day, but it wasn't expulsion and my jumper stayed firmly about my little chicken legs. What was the end of the world to me was probably a blip in a burp of the day for whichever teacher had me in her class. Miss Puent? Mrs. Mackey? Sister Teshima? (Well, actually, if it was Sister Teshima, that fear of mine would not have been ungrounded, so it's safe to say this didn't go down in the third grade.)

I've been having panicky moments lately. It doesn't matter that they're born of self-created tasks and self-imposed deadlines. I'm falling further and further behind* with no sign of breathing room for catching up. I hate being that tool who doesn't follow through on promises, and I'm dangerously close to it; curse me and my stupid mouth, writing checks my poor, wracked body can't possibly cash.

So today, with the help of my beloved coach, Ilise, I made a hard decision: let go of the consulting push. Not the consulting itself, necessarily, which I really enjoy and which, unless they're all lying to me, the people who have come to me for it have really enjoyed and found useful, inspiring and fun. But the Big Marketing Push to get consulting clients is on permanent hold. No standalone website. Not even a bona fide consulting "hire me" page right now. Just that crazy Super-Secret thing I've been sending people to when they inquire for months now, and whatever people continue to float my way, regardless.

It's a little embarrassing, like having to wear a slightly old and shiny suit in public because you didn't have the time or money to go out shopping for a new one. It's probably also a little bit like admitting you're up to your eyeballs in debt or an alcoholic or that you just got the axe at work (although I guess that these days, there's not as much of a stigma there).

Ultimately, though, it feels right. I love writing. I mean, I love it like I've never loved anything else in my life. I love it even when I hate it. I love it even when I'm doing it kind of badly, like right now. (And that's not fishing, it's just fact.)

I also love going out and telling people about stuff that can help them. Social media and marketing and communicating for now, but who knows what else? Maybe the guitar playing figures in. Maybe performing has something to do with it. I trust that will take shape as I move forward.

It is hard to focus. But I can't keep talking about it and not do it myself. That's foolishness. Worse, it's a lie. Better to break a few promises and come clean than to be a liar-liar-pants-on-fire.

Better to be the best me I can be, doing the stuff I'm best at the best way I know how, than half-ass it as some wannabe Wonder Woman.

I never did look so hot in cuffs...

xxx
c

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

*Which reminds me, gotta get those prizes out!