Book review: The Happiness Project

Full disclosure: Gretchen Rubin is a friend. But I was a reader and fan of her blog long before we even met, and there's no way I'd have done an elaborate pre-launch pimpage post if I didn't think this book was so terrific. Also, this review was based on my reading of an uncorrected proof; there may have been minor changes in the book that ultimately went to press.

I have long had a love/hate relationship with self-help books: I love finding new ways to wake myself up, fresh strategies for altering the course of my life, novel frameworks that give me a real look at myself; I hate the dull and plodding style most of them are served up in.

Gretchen Rubin's newest book, The Happiness Project, escapes both the pedantry trap (i.e., scholarly tracts with snooze-a-licious prose) and the newage-rhymes-with-sewage, self-important, Lite Lifeâ„¢ Solutions b.s. of the quick-to-market "guru" book. Its content is both well-researched and delightfully served up, evidence of not only a fine mind and truly generous soul, but someone who reads lots of ACTUAL BOOKS for the purposes of ENJOYMENT and SELF-EDUCATION.

Like Aristotle! Montaigne! Schopenhauer!

But also A.J. Jacobs! Joan Didion! Daniel Pink!

Even Elizabeth Gilbert, that wonderful lady writer everyone now feels it's their bounden duty to crap on* because she committed the heinous sin of writing (gasp...the horror!) a P-O-P-U-L-A-R  best seller (and going on Oprah to talk about it). One of the most impressive parts of Rubin's book is the Suggestions for Further Reading, at the end, where she lists 76+ sources** that run the gamut, genre-wise, from philosophy to science to fiction.

Why is this so fantastic? Because Rubin is a synthesizer, one of that rare breed who can take things in from multiple sources, parse them wisely, and smoosh them into beautiful new ideas and practical suggestions the rest of us can benefit from. Most likely, she finds patterns without even trying, because she's trained her brain to note and sift so deftly. And then, in the case of a project like this, she finds ways to apply all this good learning to herself, further filtering it through her own experience, and finally reporting on it in such a clean, spry, engaging fashion, we don't see the work that went into it, we just get what we need out of it.***

And what do we need from a project about finding happiness?

Direction, for one. Effecting meaningful change is tough stuff, and if there's one thing that requires big-time change, it's moving from asleep to awake, from unhappy to happy, or, hardest of all, from asleep to happy. It's necessarily a self-directed, one-of-a-kind thing, since we're all special snowflakes; how do you go about teaching that?

I think we find our way by studying the great synthesizers before us, which is why I've long preferred biography and memoir to other forms of self-help nonfiction. Rubin agrees. As she says in her opening note to the reader, "I often learn more from one person's highly idiosyncratic experiences than I do from sources that detail universal principles or cite up-to-date studies."**** We read her well-told tales of struggling with exercise, with spending, with keeping her temper; we watch her apply her book knowledge in real time, see the ease that it brings, and start to look at how we might apply this learning to our own peculiar areas of fucked-up-ness. Are her solutions, a 20-minute circuit with a trainer, soliciting help from her mother to buy needful things in bulk, singing in the morning, mine? Nope. Not even close. But the process she goes through to find the solutions could be, and that she does it is inspiring.

Process and inspiration aside, the book is bursting with great, concrete ideas for changing your own life for the better. You may not recognize them as such, since Rubin is about as far from a proselytizer as you can get, but they're there, and in abundance. And there are even more at her blog, and in the communities that have sprung up around the Happiness Project Toolbox, her DIY-with-support site she's set up to complement the book. (And if you're wondering, no, the book is not repurposed content from the website, but longer stories told with more detail, with lots of never-before-seen material. It actually is an object lesson in the differences between good blog writing and good book writing.)

Before you even think about changing your own life, though, just read the book. Bask in the sunny pleasures of good writing on a useful topic.

If nothing else, this will make you happier...

xxx
c

BONUS! Erin Rooney Doland, who writes at Unclutterer and wrote a really great book herself recently, posted an excellent review of The Happiness Project on her blog. In addition to thoughtful observations about Gretchen's process, Erin makes some really good points about the connection between happiness and decluttering and of getting clear on your goals before you get going with any project. A great read for the start of the new year.

*Yeah, I didn't like the "love" part so much either, but you know what? That book still kicks more ass than you'll ever admit. And I love Oprah.

**The "+" part, because she's read the entire Samuel Johnson canon, no doubt, and a slew of things that probably weren't 100% salient to the discussion, so she left them off. Because, as I said, this woman is about reading for the right reasons (ENJOYMENT! EDUCATION!), not the icky ones, like trying to impress people with her bowing library shelves.

***In acting, which Gretchen also developed an interest in learning about, because she is that way, we talk about "catching someone acting." You rarely catch Meryl Streep doing this; you catch people on soaps and three-camera s(h)itcoms and even Important Oscar-worthy Films all the time. If that example doesn't work for you, think of how ice skaters make it look easy, or of the difference between the very elegant Fred Astaire and the very muscular Gene Kelly: they were both terrific dancers, but only Fred made it look easy.

****"Or talk out of their opportunist, I-have-a-theory asses." , Colleen Wainwright

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

,

100 Things I Learned in 2009, Part 1

,

colleenamplified_technotheory How about we start off this year's list with a riddle:

Q: What's harder than writing your annual 100 Things list?

A: Writing it after a year of blogging every day, plus once weekly somewhere else, plus writing a monthly column, plus writing another monthly newsletter, plus tweeting, plus Facebooking, plus whatever other goddamned writing-type stuff that I do in the course of my non-writing work.

You'd think all of that writing would prime me for some kickass listmaking: all that material! All spelled out, organized and time-stamped! Because hey! I'm a Virgo, right? But you'd be wrong. Hours and hours' worth of 100% wrong.

Still, this is one of those exercises I derive a great deal of value from that other people seem to enjoy as well. Your win-win, if you will. So without further ado, here you goo.

Go. I meant "go."

Oy, has this been a long year...

xxx c

  1. You're never too old to be a nimrod.
  2. Or less of one.
  3. Or, thanks to Mike Monteiro, out yourself as one.
  4. Malcolm Gladwell is even hotter in person.
  5. Kermit didn't know how right he was.
  6. Beginnings are lovely.
  7. But endings have a kind of mature élan.
  8. Boulders suck infinitely less c*ck when you mock them.
  9. Especially when you do it in 2/4 time.
  10. But I still wish I could see the top of this motherf*cking hill.
  11. The journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single purse-cleaning.
  12. Even a comments thread can be a collaborative work of genius.
  13. If you think your period is annoying, wait until you slide into a full stop.
  14. For that matter, wait until I do.
  15. My estimator is still bigger than my actualizer.
  16. Blogs are going the way of the buggy whip.
  17. So stick a sarsaparilla in my arthritic claw and call me "Granny."
  18. I love Hulu, but I will pay for Netflix.
  19. When the going gets tough, refer your ass off.
  20. SXSW doesn't get older: it gets better.
  21. Okay, it gets older and better.
  22. But mostly better.
  23. A second screen is worth its weight in third computers.
  24. Burning out on words is where poetry begins.
  25. Everyone has her price.
  26. Mine, apparently, is a whopping 4%.
  27. I will never become my best until I stop trying to be the biggest.
  28. It really is nicer to give than to receive.
  29. Making things is great.
  30. Making things because you must is sublime.
  31. Most of my favorite places are islands of awesome in a sea of shit.
  32. Nei kung puts the "whee!" in chi.
  33. "Meat salad" is not an oxymoron.
  34. Or a euphemism.
  35. (Outside the pokey, anyway.)
  36. Anything can be art.
  37. You can learn at least as much about yourself from the lists you don't write as the ones you do.
  38. There's nothing better than reading a great book.
  39. Except for reading a great book by someone you know.
  40. Commitment is still the sound of prison doors slamming shut.
  41. I'll run out of money before I run out of money for art.
  42. Tina Fey is every bit as good as they said she was.
  43. No, better.
  44. It is much harder to figure out how to get somewhere when you don't know what "there" looks like.
  45. That goddamn Yehuda Berg is a smart dude.
  46. Goddamn him.
  47. The best way to save time is to buy more of it.
  48. Dollar for entertainment dollar, you cannot beat what came out of Judy Garland's twat.
  49. Just don't bring it up over Christmas dinner.
  50. Sometimes, the good guys win.

Next installment: Wednesday, December 30th! Can't wait? Luckily for you, I've been doing this crazy sh*t for five years!

 

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

Image by Jared Goralnick (@technotheory) via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Blank-of-the-year game: Gift-giving gift of 2009

I'm late getting on board Gwen Bell's backwards-for-forwards Best of 2009 Blog Challenge, but as La Bell herself sez, you can jump on that bus anytime you want. And turn it into a train, plane, or bicycle ride, as you like: if you are blog-free, you can tweet your thoughts, slip them into someone else's comment stream, scribble them into a notebook, etc. The juicy goodness is in the excavation. Join us!

Around this time last year, I made a decision: five days a week, for all 52 weeks of 2009, I would write here, on this little blog.

Why did I do this? For two reasons.

Reason #1: Writing for glory and eyeballs

Assuming it's done well (or is at least of some interest), regular writing translates into more readership. Cheap-to-free blog stats aren't an absolutely reliable indicator, especially when comparing a month rather than total visits per annum, but at least they offer some kind of metric. Here are my December visits* since I first launched communicatrix-dot-com, back in 2004:

  • In December of 2004, this blog had 800 visits.
  • In December of 2005, this blog had 3,500 visits.
  • In December of 2006, this blog had 1,800 visits.
  • In December of 2007, this blog had 3,700 visits.
  • In December of 2008, this blog had 5,000 visits.
  • In December of 2009, this blog had 8,500 visits (as of 3pm on 12/23/09).

The first bit of data you can extract from this is that if you're reading this now, you are part of a very elite crew: we could safely call ourselves The Tribe of People Who Like Reading for the Most Part Really Long Sh*t. We are few, but, I like to think, we are mighty.

The second bit is that what I'd like to think of as the natural growth curve of this site was severely thwarted by my asshattery in the Year of Our Lord 2006. Perhaps I should do an overlay with my liquor purchases for the year: there must be something that can explain it. The start-up of my (now-defunct) graphic design business? The launch and management of The Marketing Mix blog back in September of that year? Or my tenure as business/marketing columnist for LA Casting, which also began that month? (At least I can't blame the newsletter: I didn't start that until April of 2007.)

Reason #2: Writing because it's what you DO, dammit

I took a long, hard look at what I wanted at the end of last year. (Okay, and the end of 2007, too, bear with me, here.) And I realized that more than anything, I wanted to be the very best at what I'm the very best at. Which, well, I still haven't figured out.

But I know that the way I'm the very best at delivering it is writing. I was a passable actor and a just-barely-acceptable designer. I'm a middling teacher, a so-so songwriter and a dreadful (but heartfelt!) singer. I'm a reasonably engaging speaker, enough that, given adequate time and effort and opportunity, I might have a shot at become a great one (which would thrill me no end).

I do no such apologizing for my writing, except to say that for a while, I didn't do enough of it. If ever I had a natural gift, writing was it. And when you are given a gift, it is selfish and sad not to work at it. (To trash it with bad habits or neglect may be borderline sinful, but I check off the "spiritual not religious" box, so I tend to think that really, the worst thing about stomping on your gift is wasting potential, which I personally consider sinful in the Church of Colleen.)

Plus, with the exception of several years in advertising (which counts as stomping if anything does) and a few more recovering from the sting of Groundlings rejection, I have always loved writing more than anything. If I ever got stuck, my first shrink-slash-astrologer told me while explaining my chart, I could write my way out of it. Combing through the back catalog, even the wince-inducing sophomoric years, reveals more delights than horrors. I will get rid of every other book in the house, including my original Black Sparrow Press editions of Bukowski, before I let go of those ratty college journals and loopy, pain-filled spiral notebooks full of mid-30s angsty morning pages.

Results of the Great Writing Experiment of 2009?

I missed a few days, but very few, and more than made up for the total count with the two Salutesâ„¢ that bookended the year. (Lesson? They really do work for motivation.) It was exhausting at times and exhilarating at other times, but mostly, it just became That Thing I Do.

Can I keep it up in 2010? Do I want to? Yes and yes, although perhaps not here, and definitely not here in the form it's taken thus far. Not if I want to write anything else. Not if I want to make a living. (Note to those who would try this crazy experiment on their own: be sure you have huge cash reserves before embarking on a project that can easily siphon four hours off of your day, when you have other writing due.)

A natural question as I look back at this colossal gift I've given myself, this luxury of (largely) unpaid writing, is what I do as an encore? What will my Big Gift to myself be in the coming year, or the year after that?

I don't know. And I may not know until this time next year (or, you know, the year after that).

It's a crazy thing about gifts: the best and finest of them can start out looking a lot more like obligations than anything you'd put on your Santa list...

xxx
c

*If anyone is good with Excel and wants to compile a trends graph of visitors from launch to today, I'll give you the keys to my Sitemeter. We can make it public, we'll call it a collaborative cautionary visual tale!

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

Poetry Thursday: Words

You can find them in cities
on signs
and on subways
and sidewalks
and lines,
embedded in a thousand million faces.

You can find them at malls
and in books
and in mall bookstores
if you can find one extant.

You can find them in abundance
on trains
where they float in
on the clackity-clack
of the wheels on rails
through the small cracks in your attention
as you fix it on those cows,
that prairie,
that ramshackle bit of city
just outside the station.

You can pluck them from the very air around you
and
if you are quiet-quiet,
from the very silence itself.

You can find them anywhere
and pick them like daisies
or trace them like stars
or gather them like truffles
if you are French
and have a pig handy.

You can even
(god help you)
farm them like salmon.

But words
will never come to you:

You must go to them.

Visit. Talk. Sift. Watch.

Surround yourself with stories
and songs
and all the thoughts-out-loud
and truths told softly
and million-thousand words
channeled from places we can't name
through voices made fine
by work
and love
and attention.

And if one or two
call out
while you are on your way,
be ready to catch them
and rearrange them
and send them on their way
to the next passerby.

xxx
c

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

Blank-of-the-year game: Great online discovery of 2009

I'm late getting on board Gwen Bell's backwards-for-forwards Best of 2009 Blog Challenge, but as La Bell herself sez, you can jump on that bus anytime you want. And turn it into a train, plane, or bicycle ride, as you like: if you are blog-free, you can tweet your thoughts, slip them into someone else's comment stream, scribble them into a notebook, etc. The juicy goodness is in the excavation. Join us!

I love Evernote and will doubtless do a screencast about it in 2010.

Instapaper rocks my online/offline world, too, thanks to its iPhone app cousin.

And Netflix, glorious streamer of an astoundingly deep back catalog that keeps me cable-free, fat and happy, is definitely up in the top 10. Five. Okay, three: I like watching old video more than I like reading anything on my tiny iPhone screen. (What the hell will I do when there are no more book-books?)

But if there was one application I'd fight to keep, it would be Skype. I'd first futzed with it back in 2006, collaborating on design projects with my delightful German friend, Michael (and several times, our Orange County-based clients, who might as well have been in Russia, for as conveniently located to me as is the OC). Multiple dropped calls and accompanying frustration made me dump it: when Michael and I did talk, we'd use Jajah, or he'd call me with some mystical magical cheap-to-free resource-of-the-moment he found (he's handy, is young Michael. And good. You should totally hire him, if you can.)

Today, with the addition of a Skype-in number (so clients can call me) and Call Recorder (so I can record our conversations and send them through yet another online application), I am loving Skype once again and more than ever. It's cheap, the quality is far, far better than it was when I first tried it and, using the iPhone Skype app, I can call from anywhere there's a wifi connection. (Since getting my iMac, then MacBook Pro, I can use the video function as well, but I'm lukewarm on video chat, as I find it more draining than a regular call, already draining enough as it is.)

More than anything, I love the way new tools show me new ways to look at things, and to modify my work habits:

  • I don't need Evernote, but using it has become a reminder that I experience less stress during certain points of travel or project creation if I have all my crap gathered in one place
  • I don't need Instapaper**, but now that I have it, I have begun to notice how my attention gets pulled away from stuff, and have begun taking other steps to correct it beyond offloading content.
  • I don't need Netflix, but having it available has let me ease up on hoarding: with an infinite (for my purposes) variety of great stuff to entertain me when I need it, I don't need to be the custodian of all of these DVDs. That, in turn has helped me get down with flow and impermanence, the key drivers of the abundance outlook.

Next, what I need are apps that teach me how to write short, move more and yes, walk away from the computer entirely.

Engineers? How about it?

xxx
c

**Read It Later is fine, too, and has a nice Firefox extension and iPhone app; I just found Instapaper first. Main thing? If I find myself spending too much time reading something while I'm supposed to be doing something else, I bookmark it for later consumption. In that way, my "Best Online Thingamabobby" is much like my fave Internet startup: what I love most of all is learning a new way to work more efficiently, just like what I love most about Gwen's challenge is that it makes me stop and think about the "why" behind things.

Image by A Geek Mom via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Blank-of-the-year game: Great business discovery of 2009

camashotel

I'm late getting on board Gwen Bell's backwards-for-forwards Best of 2009 Blog Challenge, but as La Bell herself sez, you can jump on that bus anytime you want. And turn it into a train, plane, or bicycle ride, as you like: if you are blog-free, you can tweet your thoughts, slip them into someone else's comment stream, scribble them into a notebook, etc. The juicy goodness is in the excavation. Join us!

Referral Friday began as a prompt from Duct Tape Marketer Jim Jantsch, a grass-roots, hyper-local/hyperspace response to the craptastic economy we were waking up to at the beginning of this year.

John called for an Internet-wide Make-a-Referral Week, where each of us made a daily effort to hook up a small business with someone who might need that business' services. Being a wily, opportunistic type, I jumped at the chance to (finally) create some static referral pages for the designers, writers and other service providers whose contact info I was repeatedly typing out as a response to requests for same.

Once the week had passed, though, I didn't see why we should stop. Neither did a lot of other people, I guess, and the idea of "Referral Monday" was born. Only I'm a stubborn cuss with a standing Monday essay feature and a love of internal alliteration*, so I stuck it on Fridays and became the referral caboose (one gets used to carrying up the rear when one's last name begins with a "W").

Like Make-a-Referral Week, Referral Friday was a boon, a win/win/win triple-"amen" score. I got to pass along the word of great businesses I'd discovered, thereby increasing the chances that they'd thrive (and I'd continue to be able to enjoy them), I got warm fuzzies for doing so, and I reduced my own writer's anxiety with the addition of a regular feature.

That's right: my greatest business discovery of 2010 was not a business, but a practice that's not even limited to business: helping other people helps me at least as much, if not more.

Of course, I did have a few favorite discoveries of actual businesses in 2009:

  • Brown Bag Books blew me away with their curatorial excellence, delightful repurposed notebooks and ingenious business model
  • Brad Nack, artist and global wanderer, similarly knocked me sideways with his sly, accomplished style and marketing moxie
  • Adam Lisagor, friend and sometime co-conspirator, most inspired me with his wildly creative business output, adding Birdhouse and Put This On! to his other list of accomplishments

And if forced to choose one sweet, sweet discovery that made my year, it would have to be the lovingly restored Camas Hotel in Camas, WA, just down the block from Vancouver and across the river from Portland. Everything about it made me smile, including the owners, Karen and Tom Hall, who are the poster children for Doing It Right. From first spotting the dilapidated mess to marketing it via social media and the web, they made all the right moves; they created another anchor in their small community and a home away from home for me.

Thank you, all, for inspiring me and giving me what I needed to keep getting up in the morning. (You especially, Gwen Bell. Can't believe it took me this long to make your acquaintance.)

And now, back to the business of excavation...

xxx
c

*Yeah, I know that's not the real term. Gotta learn me some REAL poets' lingo in 2010.

Wherein I turn in the direction of the music

I've had a semi-ironic appointment with myself on the calendar for a few months now, called "Colleen's Happy Holiday Break."

In case it's not obvious, I'm ambivalent at best when it comes to the season. I do look forward to certain treats, the annual viewing of The Third Man, the delivery of the pears. But on top of the regular-usual seasonal depression, this year and last have been a little brutal when it comes to my backwards/forwards review and goal-planning for one simple reason: I have no idea what I'm doing next.

Or maybe I do, and am avoiding it. I know, for example, that I need to continue letting go of the things I acquired during the accumulative years, all the shit I was buying and trying as I looked outside of myself for my style and my wants and my definition*. I know I need to really and truly (and literally) close the books on my moribund graphic design business, something I'd already be fighting because of my perennial money issues but that's exponentially (haha) more difficult because it means I really and truly need to commit to the next thing.

What I don't know yet is what the next thing looks like, because there's no track for it. There was a school track, an advertising track, an acting track. Even graphic design was a sort of track: I knew what the jobs looked like, I knew either how to go get them or could enlist help in figuring it out. I'm good at tracks! Maybe most of us are. Given a clear target, figuring out where to point one's guns is pretty simple; without a target, one tends to spend most of one's time bivouacked on the fields of WTF, smoking unfiltered cigarettes and trying to hold the freakouts at bay.**

I have cordoned off these two weeks for search purposes, keeping them relatively free of commitments. The few non-holiday-related ones are my lifelines, the accountability meetups (I'm up to three regularly scheduled ones, plus a one-off). The interior renovations began in earnest yesterday, as I began prep on my annual 100 Things list.*** A tradition that began as a silly exercise has turned into a silly exercise that has me dumping the contents of every memory container in the digital house all over the desktop and sifting through it. Cathartic! And horrifying!

I'm not alone in this, thank gawd. Backwards/forwards values-based planning is all the rage now, and there are wonderful, detailed posts from all sorts of smart folks who are organized enough to have this plan underway, if not already completed. I'm also weighing the possibility of chucking my old program and just rolling with a Happiness Project in 2010. Hey, who couldn't use more happiness, right?

Wherever I end up, though, I start here: me, (metaphorically) naked, my stuff spread out before me under a good, strong light.

Words of wisdom and encouragement (and even commiseration) most welcome...

xxx
c

*Don't get me wrong, that decade of 38-to-48 was wildly important, and I regret very little of it. But to keep scouring the world outside for answers would be like a 14-year-old still playing dress-up from the tatty cast-offs in mom's trunk.

**Okay. No one is dying on these battlefields anytime soon. Bad analogy, perhaps. But likening my mental state to one of the characters from Interiors is too embarrassing even for me, not to mention hopelessly obscure.

***If you've never had the pleasure and enjoy list-y stuff, they're 95% evergreen: 2008 (Part 1 & Part 2) will link you to all the rest. Or let Google do the work for you.

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

Referral Friday: Harry & David pears

Referral Friday is an ongoing series inspired by John Jantsch's Make-a-Referral Week. For more about that, and loads more referrals for everything from cobblers to coaches to gee-tar teachers, start here. Pass it on, baby! I've mostly given up on giving gifts for the holiday season.

Personally, I have everything I need, and most of what I want; the rest, I am being very careful to let into my life only after careful consideration. An intense bout of decluttering does nothing so well as point out how very much your stuff can own you if you stop paying attention.

I also am of the belief that while it's lovely to receive and give gifts, it's stressful for most people in the context of this season of high expectations. If you have kids, fine: you get a pass. The BF has gotten some lovely gifts for his kids, but even those are much more carefully chosen "big" gifts they've thought about for awhile: an iPod Touch (with an accompanying email address, which may be the biggest deal) and a "today my son, you are a man" gift to the World of Warcraft. (Ugh. But I liked enough weird stuff when I was their age that I can't really say anything.)

What I want most around the holidays, or any days, these days, come to think of it, is time: to think, to noodle, to dream and rest and frolic and plan, and to do it all as the spirit moves me, solo or in partnership.

But I also want pears.

Big, fat, juicy, golden-with-a-blush-of-pink pears, each wrapped in its own foil jacket, nestled in its own green-tissue-papered cubby, delivered to my door from magic trees in Medford, Oregon by fruit elves. Okay, the USPS, by way of Harry & David.

We have given these pears to each other in my family for, well, I forget. Long enough that it's unthinkable to give up the tradition. I may have skipped a year right after the Great Giver of Pears, my dad, passed on to that pear orchard in the sky, but it just ain't a holiday without those ungodly delicious, indescribably glorious, HEAVY pieces of What Heaven Must Taste Like.

Today (Friday, December 18) is the last day you can get free Christmas delivery on your Harry & David purchases. I suggest you jump on it while you can.

Ho ho ho.

And you're welcome.

xxx

c

Poetry Thursday: Helliday pudding

holidayspirit_respres

Start with a week
or two
(or four
if you're really hungry).

Squeeze gently
until each day feels
a little shorter to the touch,
and looks
a little darker to the eye.

Add a pinch too much sugar
or salt
or rum
as desired.

Mix thoroughly
until your arm tires
and the concoction
forms stiff peaks.

Enjoy immediately.

(Note: This will look better
than it tastes.)

xxx
c

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

The collapsing zoom of December

zoomeffect_kylemay

People lavish ink on seasonal blues, that ugly funk so many of us struggle with this time of year as we deal with the double whammy of forced merriment and short, dark days.

But you don't hear much about the other flavor of freakout that starts licking at us toward the end of a calendar year: Unfulfilled-Potential Panic Disorder.

Come on. You know: that shattering one-two punch that's not unlike the universal dream where one shows up on the last day of school to find a locker full of uncracked books for a course one dimly, if at all, remembers signing up for, and whose final is today*.

Yeah. That dream.

And why not? Everywhere around you, there are happy people riding high, trouble-free, hitting mark after mark. They're wealthy, self-actualized and putting the exact finishing touches on a life they envisioned for themselves way back at this time last year. The only thing they did that wasn't on their list was EXTRA stuff they didn't think to put on it. That's right: they've exceeded their goals a couple of weeks early, just in time to finish up that holiday shopping and kick back with a cold one and a foot massage in front of the fire.

Only they're not. None of them. Not me, not that really successful-looking person sitting there on the next Firefox tab over, not any of us. We're all falling short and we're all moving forward. We all have something going and we're all stuck. We, all of us, each and every one of us, have our basket. And I mean every one of us, without exception. Just because someone is riding high in the moment you have a moment to look at them doesn't mean they are in the moments on either side, when you've turned your gaze elsewhere. Sometimes they're being duplicitous. Sometimes they're putting up a brave face. Sometimes you just caught 'em in the right moment, when the light is perfect and the press is positive and you're the polar opposite because it's fucking late December and fucking dark at fucking five o'clock in your fucking hemisphere and ONCE AGAIN you have somehow and inevitably fallen short of your lofty expectations for yourself.

I talk about this proclivity towards comparison and accompanying despair because I'm susceptible to it. You'd think a third-generation ad gal would have learned a thing or two about spin and appearances and such, and she has, just not enough to remember always and forever, in each and every instant, that comparison truly is from the devil. Much I have learned about the importance of examining things and the joy of creating things and the rewards of letting go of things, but damned if I don't keep getting tripped up on that comparison b.s. over and over again.

Here is the thing that struck me about it recently, though: there are times when it is much, much worse than others. When I am tired, for example, or have been eating poorly and exercising insufficiently. Hungover. Weak. Stressed. Maintenance of the physical plant will net you a little extra oomph even in the best of times, but the lack of it really starts affecting you as you get up there in years. (And I say this at 48, only medium-up there in years.) I'm loathe to get into it because I have not found a non-tedious, user-positive way of discussing it, but I'll keep you posted.

The other thing that can have a deleterious effect is a pressure-cooker season like the end-of-year one. The feeling it gives me is a lot like being trapped in a real-life collapsing zoom**, that vertiginous camera effect Hitchcock was so fond of. The world falls away while an event pulls me forward, or vice versa. It's dizzying and unnerving and so lifelike, it's hard for me to remember that it's just a trick of perspective. But it is; it always is. I attach more meaning to these few weeks just as I put too much weight on getting x, y and z done-done-dunzarelli by some (let's face it) arbitrary day in an arbitrary stretch of days.

Does this mean I give myself a free pass on ever completing anything by a particular date? No. No, it most emphatically does not.

Does it mean that when I feel myself go off-plumb I should take steps to examine what's going on, to stop and breathe, to turn to one of the many sources I have put in place where I can gain perspective and some kind of objective mirror?

Yes. It is my responsibility, my trumps-all "to-do" item, if you will, to bump that sucker to the front of the line. Mission-critical stuff like keeping children fed and the family housed aside, this is the true work of life. And not doing it can really muck up the true meaning of life, which is to experience and to share love, deeply and fully.

One final thing on this heavy topic in the middle of a "light" month: while the answer is simple, essentially, to put the puppy on the mat, where "puppy" is one's attention and "the mat" is "where that attention should be," it ain't easy. Writing helps. Friends, too, especially the long-term, touchstone variety. Ditto that laundry list above, filled with disgusting, earth-bound stuff like exercise. Persistent issues, as always, should be addressed by a professional skilled in the nutjob arts.

Mostly, though, it is perspective.

This is December. December is hard. Sometimes especially so, because we're made to believe it should not be.

Go easy on yourself, y'hear?

xxx
c

*Bonus anxiety points if you're free-falling your way to the locker in the altogether.

**I have looked all over the Internet and have found no mention of "collapsing zoom," the term that whomever it was who first told me about the zoom-in, dolly-back camera move made famous by Alfred Hitchcock and overused by first-year film students ever since. Apparently, it's "dolly zoom" and I was misinformed and what the hell else is new? I don't care: my blog, my rules; "collapsing zoom" stays. Who knows? Maybe we can popularize it into wide usage together, you and I.

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

eBook Review: What Matters Now

Yesterday, in a stunning example of demonstrating with your actions what it is you're trying to say with your words, Seth Godin released his latest mini-project, a free ebook called What Matters Now. Seth has been focusing more and more on what we can do, together and individually, to make a difference; he's also been a fierce advocate for pursuing new ways of doing this, from his stance on "free" (he's pro, and there are a couple of great pieces from other contributors on the subject, too) to his methodologies for teaching (cf. last year's un-MBA program) and marketing/promoting big ideas (cf. the way he promoted last year's program, as well as how he's promoting next year's new for-money book, Linchpin (which I've already pre-ordered).

Each entry is a brief music on some word, phrase or term. There are some nifty illustrated twists (oh, Hugh, you're so dreamy!), some cool "how-to"s, (I especially liked "1%", from Jackie Huba & Ben McConnell, of Church of the Customer fame), and lots and lots of straightforward, balls-out inspirational stuff.

Mainly, I love how generous the whole thing feels. Seth plucked that term from amongst many to muse on; it's clear that generosity occupies much of his thoughtspace, as well as his time and activity.

Yes, there's some business-y stuff and some marketing stuff in here. That's just one thin slice, though; most of the pieces are just wonderful ideas to keep in your head as the new year rolls around. And even the business stuff is either communications-centric or somehow involved with making the world a better place. All good, in other words.

Best of all? Free. Like I said, he's a generous (and smart) kinda fella.

xxx c

Back to work

morningrush_kasrak

I freak out a little most Sundays.

Because while I generally work over the weekends, it's a low-stakes, puttery, solo kind of working, with few interruptions from or demands by the outside world. What I do, I'm choosing to do; what I engage with, I'm choosing to engage with.

Yes, it's always a choice. But you know what I mean: while emails can drift into your inbox on any day of the week and the phone can ring at any time (especially, these days, if it's a telemarketer), provided you've established firm boundaries, the expectations that you will leap to respond over the holy days of Saturday and Sunday are even more minimal than the trickle itself.

So while on the surface my freakout is about the quiet ending and the noise beginning, and under that, the freakout is about my being unable to manage things, under it all is my fear that this time, I will not be able to pull it off: this time, I will suck. Or more specifically, that this week, Monday's essay will suck.

This is the eternal problem of making anything good, at least for those of us into measurement: it will always either be the best thing you've done yet or it will fall short (or, I suppose, it could tie with the best thing, but that's just forestalling doom). There are no other choices. And while there is that momentary high of having done better, once you are there, there is only up, or down. Up is a cocksucking boulder; down is unthinkable. Hence, freakout.

There are ways of mitigating this: producing more, for one, and dealing with your shit openly, for another. A big reason why I committed to writing five days a week on the blog is because the more I do something, the less precious each individual instance of it is*. And the more I honestly explore what a crazy mess I am, the less I act out on my crazy mess-ness**. When I look back at the chronic creative constipation of my 20s and 30s, I can see very clearly where these two things intersected: I barely produced because I was afraid that everyone would see my hackity-hack idea for the hackity-hacksterness I knew it must be, ergo I had fewer and fewer ideas, which just drove the stakes ever higher. Ugh. The only things I want back from my youth are my screaming-fast metabolism and the money I spent on handbags and shoes worn once and joylessly.

Sundays don't just exist at the end of the week, of course. If the end/beginning of weeks is rough, the end/beginning of years and projects can be completely stultifying. And let's not forget the panic at the end of a project, job, vacation or any other substantial time sink. I was such a wreck by the time the night of my first Ignite experience rolled around, my bowels were near liquid; almost immediately afterward, when I found out over the phone with The BF that the video feed had gone down during my talk (and that, I mistakenly thought, there meant there would be no record at all of my effort), I started bawling so uncontrollably, I had to hang up and go walk it off. I write about change and fear so much because they figure so significantly in my life, I couldn't (and wouldn't) make this stuff up.

It's crazy hard to keep making stuff, but it's unthinkable to stop. While one part of my head always has the recurring smackdown-joke from Stardust Memories reverberating through it, the hero's fans wistfully recalling his "earlier, funnier movies" while at a film festival celebrating his oeuvre, the other revels not only in the sly, creative joy of making such a meta-joke but in knowing that Woody Allen went on to make a slew of other, equally-great-to-greater films that ran the gamut, genre-wise. You don't get to make a Match Point or Hannah and Her Sisters if you can't stomach the prospect of a few Shadows and Fogs.

The older I get, the more I appreciate the good sense of artists keeping bankers' hours, of having boring structure in one's exciting (haha) writer's life. The container makes the art possible, especially after the mad energy of youth passes. So, like Allen, you write out your two screenplays per year on yellow ruled pads, longhand, while lying on your bed, marking time in between with regular doses of tennis and clarinet. Or like Chaplin, you leave the French beach in the afternoon to head up to your room to write, because that's what you do. Or like Tharp, you mark up your fresh boxes with the launch of a new project, and start filling them up with stuff.

And it's not just the container aspect and the rigorous discipline that benefit creative output: it's the turning of creativity into the regular-usual, and avoiding the dread terror of this next blank page, this next fresh canvas, this next blue sky. It is one of many blank pages, canvases and skies.

One of many Mondays. The regular-usual.

Just another crazy worker, swinging another crazy hammer...

xxx
c

*Kind of like having a passel of kids against the almost-certainty of losing one or two to some epidemic or another, back in the olden days. Only not, because I hardly expect any of my blog posts to work the farm or support me in my old age.

**This has the double-edged advantage of facilitating productive output and beating people who would "out" you off at the pass.

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

Referral Friday: Flan King

Referral Friday is an ongoing series inspired by John Jantsch's Make-a-Referral Week. For more about that, and loads more referrals for everything from cobblers to coaches to gee-tar teachers, start here. Pass it on, baby!

Welcome to Flan King!

I have been anticipating this day for years now.

Not because I can't get my own mitts on delicious Flan King flan any time I want to, because I can. I know the King; the King and I are like this.

No, I'm thrilled that the Flan King finally ships nationwide because now I can share the awesomeness that is Flan King flan with every one of my friends in these 50 United States. And by "share," I mean "tell you all so you can order it for yourselves." I am not made of money any more than I am the magic combination of ingredients that makes Flan King flan the most addictive of all desserts (and one of the few I will always go off the SCD for).

Special holiday shipping schedule for Flan King flan is here.

And remember the Communicatrix's unofficial slogan for Flan King: Even people who don't like flan will love Flan King.

Happy holidays!

xxx
c

Poetry Thursday: Why I write

writing_woodleywonderworks

I have written well and wretchedly,
in crayon and ink,
with bombast and aplomb
and fear underneath.

I have written on the tops of toilet seats
from the depths of despair
and in glass-walled buildings
while my soul was asleep.

I have written for praise
and for dolls
and for cash
and for naught.

I have written for the stage
and The Man
and the screen
and the hell of it.

I wrote
because it is what I was taught
and how I was wired
and why I might be here.

But I write
because it is the only way
I know how to sing.

xxx
c

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

Book review: Unclutter Your Life in One Week

dork_ssmallfry

There are two ways of looking at clutter, and they're equally important to getting a handle on it.

The first (which for most people ends up being the second) is the under-the-hood way: what's really going on between you and all that stuff you've stockpiled? What holes are you trying to fill, what anxieties soothe, what fears hold at bay? What, in other words, on the inside needs a little thought and attention. This is the kind of root-causes stuff that shrinks use to help facilitate change, the thought being (I think) that for many of us, identifying the root of the thing helps to illuminate the path out. (Or at the very least is that bell in your head that cannot be unrung.)

It's what I'd call the "inside-out" way: like Method acting, you work on the interior landscape first, which helps you to project the truth of the character on the exterior.

For this kind of examination, I fall firmly in the camp of my friend Brooks Palmer's clutterbusting ethos, as outlined in his excellent book and blog*. And there is a beautiful sort of symmetry to a decluttering methodology that is as spare and quiet as an uncluttered room itself.

The other way of looking at clutter, it follows, is an "outside-in" way.** This is the route traditional organizers have taken, before we all started drowning in so much shit that cramming it in ever more tightly-organized compartments became unfeasible.

The new wave of outside-in people definitely nod toward the inside-out folk, in that they recognize a lot of the attachment issues we have with stuff. But they're chiefly concerned with the mechanics of getting on with it.

For my money, and like most of us, I'm paying closer attention to it these days, Erin Rooley Doland's new book, Unclutter Your Life in One Week is an outstanding example of the practicality school of decluttering. By her own admission, Rooney Doland was a wretched clutterer before a desperate plea from her spouse woke her up; since then, she's worked assiduously to change her ways, and been quite methodical in her examination of useful techniques and the order in which they need to be done.

She's also really good at documenting and explaining them. Part of that, no doubt, comes from her conversion, but I think she's just a damned fine writer and thinker, besides. Her blog, Unclutterer, is daily proof of that, as well as of her generous attitude and cheery disposition. (Never underestimate the motivating powers of generosity and cheer when facing a self-made mountain of crap.)

Unclutterer, the blog, abounds with useful advice, and is a nice way to dip your toes in the waters of decluttering before you're ready to plunge in (and to keep you honest afterwards). Unclutterer, the book offers a detailed map of how to get there from here.

As the title suggests, it covers the decluttering process by breaking it down into days. The weekend counts as one, so there are six chapters devoted to step-by-step stuff, plus one that introduces the basic concepts ("a place for everything and everything in its place" figures prominently in the catechism) and another to prepare you for the aftermath (a.k.a. the rest of your life).

Rooney Doland admits that some of the tasks will take you longer than a day; having looped around this hill a few times, I think most of them would. But there are excellent exercises and ideas, along with detailed charts and checklists, making this one of the most actionable books on any self-help topic, not just decluttering. Some of the more interesting and potentially useful items in the book include:

  • a quiz to determine the way you process information (visual, auditory or kinesthetic), which in turn reveals the best ways for you to order things for peace and sanity in the future
  • an extensive system for re-thinking and reorganizing your paper filing system
  • the most thorough and well-thought-out plan for processing stuff as it comes into your house I've ever seen (her "reception station" puts my landing strip to shame)

Having come from a blog, with its ruthless schedule of post post post, probably accounts for the wealth of juicy tips studded here and there throughout the book. There are scads of these little "lightbulb" tips, from creating triggers for certain tasks to a regular event she dubs the Sock Purge, which I am instituting immediately.

No system will work unless you're willing and ready. Once you are, though, you'll want to find a guide that really speaks to you. If you're an outside-in type, or looking for some help that elaborates on the core directives of a Clutterbusting approach, this might well be the book for you.

xxx
c

*First-runner-up prize goes to Peter Walsh, who is the slick and edgy snarkster to Brooks' sly, gentle charmer. Not a bad thing, and his style has worked remarkably well for some people. Brooks' methodology was what made the tumblers fall for me, though.

**For those of you into the acting analogy, this is more of what the British school of acting is like. Yes, they care about the underlying emotions, but they spend a great deal more time working on the externals, movement, voice, etc., with the idea that creating the right external parameters informs interior behavior. The female cast of the magnificent Mad Men (an American program!) has said that you absolutely act differently in the trussed-up, high-maintenance clothes of the mid-century middle-class Western woman.

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

Raincoats, running-on-the-beach dresses and what you really want

froggycoatDiptych_lewing

My mother had a saying she used to toss out when she wanted me to (not) do something, a line that alerted me to the existence of passive-aggressiveness some 20-odd years before we formally met:

"They're your feet."

Served up with a shrug in the most detached of tones, that line always-but-always got me to put down the Shoe of the Moment (blue Dexters with the white topstitching excepted. And yeah, I regretted those blue shoes pretty much from two months after I got 'em until I finally, mercifully outgrew them.)

Did her words sting? Do I wish that one of the 87 zillion good-to-genius books out there on communication today had existed back then, and that she would have read it with an intent to learn? Duh. Mom would have killed on Twitter, but being her daughter was often an arduous and spirit-crushing job.

Still, in her crisp, acid, Mom-koan way, she was, I believe, trying to impart this truth: live in the moment, but abandon context at your own peril. Yes, God protects fools and little children, but if you make a steady diet of Doritos, put QVC on speed-dial, or otherwise continue to stick your finger in the light sockets of life, eventually He'll hand you over to the Karma Department. And trust me: there is no reasoning with those guys.

So what is context in this, uh, context?

Cultivating a sense of your finiteness and puniness, for sure. Remembering what has come before and using that to stay aware of what might come next. Paying attention and methodically exposing yourself to new things. Deepening your understanding of others. Expanding your ability to meaningfully connect with them. All the stuff that makes life worth living, and that makes it an ongoing pain in the ass. (Like you're not going to float a sigh of relief onto that last breath? Come on.)

Part of what has been so painful about this decluttering/excavating phase I'm muddling through is that each thing added to the "donate" pile reminds me of the short-sighted assery I default to without constant vigilance. Impulse buyer, thy name is "communicatrix"! From books to clothes to iPhone apps, I must have it, and now. One can do this on a budget, believe me; they have a door in the drop-off area of Out of the Closet that leads right to the showroom. And if you shop fast enough, you can get out of there before your old stuff hits the floor.

Have I examined this proclivity? Oh, yes. Yes, I have.

Partly, it's a buffer against existential dread, of course. The more more more, like booze or drugs or what-have-you, helps to fill that empty space inside, albeit temporarily. The prescription for that kind of consumption is to still myself and fully feel the feeling, then (usually) to go make or do something. (Or sometimes, hug the dog.)

Partly, it's hope. I will learn piano/Portugese/vegan cookery. Or take more vacations. Or take a vacation. My old art director had a penchant for what she called "running-on-the-beach dresses": floaty, impractical things that whispered "take me to the beach so some handsome, romantic fool* can rip me off and make wild, passionate love to you in the surf."

What helps now when I reach for something with this intent is context, from a recall/projection standpoint. What have I committed to already? How do I feel about how full my schedule is? How will I feel if I add this to-do to my list?**

Finally, and this is the one that's new to me, it's holes in the fabric of my self-knowledge. In the absence of a clear plan and well-defined goals, it's very easy to make grabby, stupid decisions. And to have those, one has to really know oneself. I know parts of me, but not the whole of me; in middle-age, I am finally seeing facets to myself I never saw before.

My hatred of dressy raincoats, for example: a loathing so deep, my wallet is better off choosing umbrellas and dampness. I have lost count of the number of dressy raincoats I've bought and not worn in my life, yet still, I persist. Because everyone has to have a dressy raincoat, right? Even people who live in deserts need them. For Traveling.

Which is why, in the midst of decluttering and holiday partying and end-of-year-ing I committed to a bit of an excavation/illumination process with two friends and our respective copies of another friend's book. Initially, I questioned the value I'd derive from it; I'm disdainful of style in general except for what I've already found suits me, more interested in getting on with things as the years pile up and time available runs down. Now, several hours into the process, I'm a convert, and a humbled and contrite one as well. Yes, it is effortful to pull all of these things out into the light and look at them, but there have been enough surprises and revelations thus far that I'm now certain I'll come out of this being able to do more with less, and possibly with an added note of grace.

They are my feet, you see, and they carry me on my path. Attention paid to one cannot help but illuminate the other...

xxx
c

*Possibly your current honey; probably not. The further out the fantasy, the greater the chance that you're out of touch with more than just your need for a break from work.

**Or, in the case of running-on-the-beach dresses, both a schedule check and a loop back around to existential-dread land.

Images by lewing via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Referral Friday: Indie music extravaganza, FOC-style

Referral Friday is an ongoing series inspired by John Jantsch's Make-a-Referral Week. For more about that, and loads more referrals for everything from cobblers to coaches to gee-tar teachers, start here. Pass it on, baby!

musica_ana_patricia_almeida

Sure, I dabble in music now and again, but I have friends who really know how to blow it out. So in honor of them, and to coincide with the holiday buying season, this week's Referral Friday is dedicated to those who are about to rock. And we do salute you!

*****
****
***

If you watch TV, you've no doubt seen the comedy stylings of Miss Molly Bryant holding up the work of the sitcom stars or being used to promote this hotel chain or that household cleaning product. She's like a taller, prettier, more talented of me, and her Funny Friend or Character Mom wound up in a lot more commercials than mine. Molly is nice enough that it never bothered me; I cheered on her every effort and celebrated her every win. But when I finally saw her on stage, singing her crazy-touching comic songs in her beautiful alto voice, she made me want to spread her word far and wide. Buy Take It Easy, slap on some headphones, and sing along. There, now, that's better, ain't it?

Links:

*****
****
***

People only familiar with Megan Mullally from her kooky (but brilliantly played) Karen on TV's Will & Grace are always stunned to hear her real voice; people who've only heard her speak are not only stunned to discover the colossal set of pipes Ms. Mullally was blessed with (and, let's be fair, nurtured well and long), but floored to discover the range of her musical tastes. I love all three of her three albums, but as of this writing, Free Again!, her latest, is the only one available for download on iTunes (you can also buy a physical copy via Amazon).

Links:

*****
****
***

Matt North is one of those annoying quadruple-threats: great drummer, great dad, great actor (loved his turn on Curb Your Enthusiasm) and great writer (I took over his column on LA Casting a few years ago, lowering it to the status of hackey-McHackerson). He's also a fantastic music producer: if (no, WHEN) I finally have the money and time to put together an album, I want him at the helm. And your helm, for that matter. Want proof? Check out I Can't Die In L.A., the album he co-authored, performed on and entirely by his own self produced. Fantastic, original alt-country awesome you'll be singing along with after one listen like you've known them all your life.

Links:

*****
****
***

There are not a lot of people writing and producing modern opera anymore. It's a wildly expensive endeavor and a royal pain-in-the-ass to mount (no, uh, pun intended). Mostly, though, to do it successfully requires a depth of training, breadth of learning and sense of humor that rarely co-exist in one individual. O-Lan Jones is one of those rare few, and boy, does she ever write and produce opera. The Woman Who Forgot Her Sweater is a modern-day fable that draws on all kinds of myths to tell a cautionary feminist tale that's ultimately about the necessity of following your heart's true calling. Oh, and there are these five kickass lions, too. Grrrowl.

Links:

*****
****
***

I have always had a thing for a man who knows his way around a piano. Rob Kendt is such a guy, and he augments his mad skillz at the ivories with a fine sense of humor, a way with words and a melancholy vocal grace. There are all kinds of fun joys to be found on his debut CD, I'm Not Sentimental, from the Elvis Costello-esque title-track rocker to his swingin', lounge-y mashup of Britney Spears and the Beatles ("Oops I Did Bungalow Bill"). Produced (natch) by our mutual friend, Matt North.

Links:

*****
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***

Or hey, buy whatever media you want at the iTunes Music Store and drop a few holiday pennies into my pocket, too.

Happy listening!

xxx
c

Image by Ana Patrícia Almeida via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

(Full disclosure: all iTunes and Amazon links are affiliate ones that make me money. Not much, but still.)

Poetry Thursday: Circling

paulpaper_tommythepariah

If you've never hung out at Tumblr, you're missing quite a lot.

Not my Tumblr, but Tumblr, period. Tumblr is a blog engine or CMS or community site or all of these things, rolled up in one. It's a long-form Twitter or a cool Facebook stream. It's blogs minus the b.s. It's a ton of people you don't know (but most of whom you want to, after spending a little time there) throwing out all kinds of random items. Which means it's a crazy patchwork quilt of ideas, notions, nonsense and genius, served up in words, pictures and video, all embedded in a crazy, ever-flowing stream of awesome. Really. It's the tits.

Anyway.

Last week, in the sleepy, post-eating haze that was Thanksgiving weekend, Merlin, who is very back into poetry these days, unlike those of us who (sadly, shamefacedly, never were), has been dwelving into Richard Hugo of late. In the course of his travels, he turned up a nifty (and terrifying) exercise that another poet, Ted Roethke, used to give his students, to keep them on their toes. A hateful, vexing, difficult exercise which Hugo twisted to make more difficult, and which Merlin then put his own spin on, dubbing it the Roethke-Hugo Exercise (and, to be fair, threw down himself).

I do not consider myself a real poet, but I am highly competitive and love puzzles of a certain stripe. So of course, I immediately sat down and applied myself to the task. I took over an hour, and broke many other rules. But boy, howdy, does an exercise like this ever get the blood moving after the tryptophan. It's enough to make a gal apply to grad school.

xxx
c

Circling

Tough eye, cool and blue,
unwavering, insensate,
cuts to the red part of my heart,
names the rock in my throat
with swift, soft precision
that surprises me awake.

Am I ruined? No more than
the sky a cloud curves across
or the tamarack a hawk circles
and, with a kiss goodbye,
laughing in that haunting way,
fades into what is left of the days.

I hug to me your soft nonsense,
lugging it and all the mud you
sling at my indifference,
letting you bruise the truth
of what I thought I knew
against the rock of recognition.

Image by tommy the pariah via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

You're nobody till somebody hates you

hatemail_powerbooktrance

There's a way things work.

F'r'instance, as part of your ongoing excavation of Mt. What Comes Next, you'll have a series of serious and heartfelt conversations about where you're headed, and how you're sure if you're going to keep moving forward you need to jettison some of this crap you've hauling around with you even though you're damned if you know where all of this forward stuff is leading to.

And the people you have them with will bring up this or that, but especially the column you've been writing for over three years, and ask you "Well, what about that? Is it really serving you anymore?"

And your answers will range from "I don't know" to "Every time I swear I'll quit, I get another note about how much it's helping" to "Ugh."

And the "Ugh." comes from what you do know: that this project you started as an experiment, as the impetus to write seriously every month (or as seriously as someone who pens songs about the effect of flatulence on butter can write), and to do it on a deadline, on one particular topic to a particular audience, has hit The Dip, and you're not sure if it, indeed, is The Dip, or just time to go. You can stay anywhere you want, but you can't stay here.

The suggestion is gently made that perhaps you consider (excuse me while I lift this cheek) monetizing the project. I mean, sure you've scored a whopping c-note for every 1,000-word gem you've submitted, but maybe something more than shared-hosting-space money. Maybe turning it into a book that said actor-types could mark up and carry around, or even buy from you as a token of their apparent appreciation (they're quite appreciative via the email and the Facebook and even the rare in-person opportunities). Or maybe with a little imagination and effort you could even turn it into (again, excuse me, it's the beans) an information product, a "teleclass" or "webinar" or "electronic download" exchangeable for cash-money via the PayPal.

And a part of you agrees that yes, of course you could but also that no, that just doesn't feel right. Not quite. Not now.

And as you think about pulling the trigger on your resignation, a few more thank-you emails roll in, and your submission deadline looms, and you think, "One more month. I'll just table it for one more month."

And then you get a piece of hate mail.

You've heard about these, of course, from your friends who are well ahead of you on the path to that mythical land of Internet Fame; over the years, you yourself have received the odd, gripe-y comment from an Aspy reader off his meds. But this one? This one is venomous. It accuses you of all sorts of indecencies you fear and despise, and in sneering, disdainful, umbrage-laden rage: hackery, for starters, and bad intent (isn't that what all anonymous disgruntled folk claim?) but worst of all to you, it accuses you of irrelevance.

Irrelevance. That, you have a harder time shaking off.

Because you have, after all, been out of the game yourself for over four years, which is something you not only share openly and often, but which, of late, has been nagging at you as well: how great a level of utility can you provide your audience of working and even aspiring so-and-so's when you yourself kissed it all goodbye four years ago? And yes, you still regularly receive grateful, gracious, loving notes out of nowhere from strangers and former colleagues, thanking you for your work, describing in heart-warming detail how it has helped them in real and significant ways, telling you how happy they are to have information served up in a way that feels caring and makes them feel cared-for.

Irrelevant, irrelevant, irrelevant.

There are mirrors everywhere. Some of them are in darker, danker dressing rooms than you care to visit, but when you find yourself staring into one, you must still look at what is looking back at you and ask the question: What of this is the truth? And what must I do about it?

xxx
c


Book review: Way of the Peaceful Warrior (or, the book that woke me up)

nikkimclure_wakeup

First, it was stumbling across this shockingly timely quote by Christopher Isherwood, the beauty and truth of which made me cry.

Next, it was swapping out my first-of-three annual Nikki McClure calendars from 2009 to make room for the first-of-three McClures for 2010 and noting what had been buried under all those months for all these months. (See above.) No crying, but not a little, "Hahaha, LOOK WHO WAS TRYING TO SEND YOU A MESSAGE 11 MONTHS AGO!"

Finally, in the midst of a mad dash of decluttering to peel the poppies from my eyelids, I was able to actually wake up long enough to tell the Resistor to suck it, because I knew what I had to write about:

Waking up.

Not how to wake up, because if it's even possible, it's well beyond the scope of my powers and one little review of one little self-help book. Hell, it's probably what this entire blog is about, if it's about anything, and five years into this process I'm only starting to get a grasp of how to do it intentionally and usefully. Honestly, I can't imagine phrasing the purpose of the search (nor the perils of ignoring it, nor the pain of actually executing it) more beautifully and succinctly than Isherwood, which is partly why I burst into tears. (Hey, never claimed to be done with envy.)

What I can do is write a long-overdue tribute to the one book above all others that helped me wake up. I'll consider it a closed loop, and maybe you'll find yourself a literary cup of coffee (or maybe you've already read it, are 100% sure it did and will do zero for you, and can move on to the next thing. Either way, good thing.)

A now-longtime friend pointed me to Way of the Peaceful Warrior, Dan Millman's classic self-help novel about a clueless youngster and the (I shit you not) mysterious gas station attendant who changes his life forever. It's a parable of awakening that's derived from real life (the protagonist's story mirrors Millman's own journey), containing mystical elements that may or may not be true. As with the consumption of most myths and parables, that sort of stuff is beside the point: what matters is what the stories in the book do to you as you take them in. Are you intrigued? Do you feel questions bubbling up? Recognition, self- or otherwise? Do you feel tumblers falling into place or a coating of dust being blown away? Do you want to climb in and disappear, or pull the characters out and ask them questions?

There is instruction galore, real, practical, tactical stuff, and you can take as much of it as you're ready for. I wasn't ready for much of it for the many annual re-readings I did of the book, nor, to be truthful, am I quite sure I'm ready for much more right now. I like my sugar and my coffee and my booze, I struggle with exercise and discipline in general, and we all know about my ongoing battles with clutter. Even if you're not quite ready to jump on the bandwagon, the story of someone just (or way) ahead of you on the path can be encouraging or inspiring. (Buddhist meditation teacher Jack Kornfield's talks, which I found via Joe Frank's "The Other Side" on NPR, served a similar purpose for me, and deserve a whole other post unto themselves.)

And if it is the right book for you, it will ring a bell that cannot be unrung: that reminder that yes, there's something else and yes, one foot after the other, given some purpose, luck and assistance, will get you there...

xxx
c