Referral Friday: 11:11

Referral Friday is part of 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!

Well, it happened again, South By Southwest is just around the corner, and once again, I'm going to be scrambling to get my new cards done in time.

Honestly, though, I only care about the cards because I'm so screamingly, trippingly excited to whip out my brand, spankin' new, super-foxy card holders from 11:11.

Who to the what now?

Don't worry if you haven't heard of them yet. You will. Jamila Tazewell & Patrick Ladro, the wife-and-husband co-owners of 11:11, makers of the world's cutest ready- and custom-made vinyl hold-y products, will be well-known soon enough. Oprah-known, if I (and you, only you don't know it yet) have any say in it.

The weird backstory

Patrick and Jamila found me in the most normal of modern ways: via Chris Guillebeau, when he announced his L.A. visit (which I helped pull together, as I am a crazy-mad fangirl of young Mr. Guillebeau). Only...he remembered me from somewhere else, like acting. Because he used to act in commercials, like I did, so he used to read my L.A. Casting column, and, well, you get the picture.

Speaking of pictures

This is where Jamila comes in. She's been designing these adorable business-card holders and checkbook holders and other groovy holder-type things for awhile. A-dorable. And since we all have all this stuff in common, and they like my stuff, as a kind of thank-you Jamila makes me a custom business-card holder and Patrick sends it to me. And I go NUTS for this thing because it's everything I want in something like that: cute, small, light and plastered all over with my picture.

So I say, "Hey! We need to make this a Referral Friday feature and get the word of this out there: can you give my readers a deal?"

And Patrick is like, "Hey! Righteous!" And even offers to send me a bunch more, so I can show them off at SXSW and totally make all the other cool kids jealous. HA. Take THAT, cool kids!

Anyway. Here's the deal.

Fabulous deal for readers of communicatrix-dot-com only! Go to the 11:11 shop on Amazon and...

• Buy any one 11:11 enterprises item on Amazon.com and get 10% off
• Buy 2 or more 11:11 items on Amazon.com and get 25% off

BONUS-EXTRA! I have it on good authority that if you buy two or more items with this code, 11:11 will throw in a random cardholder as a free gift. Rock the hell on, mighty soldiers!

Make sure to enter this promotion code at checkout: COMX9999

(Look, Ma! My own special checkout code!)

Offer good on orders placed from today, Friday, February 26th - Tuesday, March 2nd, and only on orders from the Amazon store. If you want custom items, well, you'll have to take it up with Jamila and Patrick yourself. And no discounts. That I know of, anyway.

This is my first special communicatrix offer and I am so excited to offer it. Don't be a jerk, order a bunch. Make me look good. For yourself! For your friends! Because how cute are these as gifts, right? You're gonna get one free if you buy two!

Full disclosure: the kids have thrown me a few of these for free, because that's how they roll. But I'm'a order me a jet-plane passport holder and a Siamese kitty checkbook cover anyway, full boat (minus discount!). Because that's how I roll, mothatruckas!

xxx
c

Full set of photos available to view at Flickr.

*And so you know, the SECOND ANNUAL Make-a-Referral Week kicks off on Monday. Hop to it for the info, and get on board the get-this-goddamn-economy-moving-for-the-little-guy train!

Poetry Thursday: You first

Eight hours
of sleep

Thirty minutes
of exercise

Sixty-four ounces
of water

One goal:

Put
your
own
oxygen
mask
on
first
or prepare for a long, hard, rocky, uphill road
of diminishing returns.

Taking care of yourself
can be a bitch
but it does not make you one.

That is reserved
for those who take from others
what is not given.

You first, ma'am:
no matter what shape
the fixing
takes.

xxx
c

Funhouse mirror

I have a friend whom I guess the kids would characterize as a kind of frenemy: thrown together by circumstance, stuck together of necessity, we are close in some ways but wary in others, always doing this delicate dance of extending ourselves while keeping an eye on the exits, or using our powers of incision while endeavoring not to cut each other  too deeply.

Like most cases where I have a strong and somewhat negative reaction to someone, I suspect it is because we are more alike than either of us cares to admit: there are plenty of flat-out buzzkills I couldn't care less about because I feel no common ground; their shit isn't my shit, ergo I have no personal investment, because hey, when you get right down to it, it's all about us.

I had been having the hardest time putting my finger on it, though. We are unaligned in so many ways it's ridiculous, from our personal style (girly-chic vs. whatever mine is) to our modes of expression (sailor-colorful vs. whatever hers is).

On the other hand, on paper, we have quite a bit in common: love of the arts, wide range of creative expression, a fairly sharp mind. I'll even grant her a sense of humor, although of a much, much different variety.

As for our shared "challenges," after some painful reflection I've noted that we're both neurotic, controlling and highly insecure. I mean, I get all that, it's outrageously, neon-sign-obvious to me, although I question whether the similarity is even a blip on the edges of her consciousness. So you could say it's blazingly obvious, too, why she would push my buttons: seeing my most loathed behaviors come to whiny, annoying life in her would of course set me off, right? Who'd want to be like her, I mean, me, right?

Only that wasn't quite it. Trust me, I've noted my own, shameful behaviors in far more dark and/or lost souls than this woman, who really is more annoying than anything else, and really only annoying to me, not anyone else. This is my thing; I'm sticking my Dymo label on it.

Finally, while I was playing around in the Google Wave with Daveâ„¢, he held up the mirror that allowed me to see it clearly for the first time: she is me, inside out. She is fine with our flaws, while I'm still afraid or ashamed to truly hold them in my hands and own them in my heart. Or she seems that way, maybe she has no idea, and maybe that is her own path, coming in her way to that realization.

My path is to carry this with me, this uncomfortable burden of truth, until I can toss it about so lightly, I can toss it, period. And, no guarantee, of course, but maybe once I do, I will have a hand free to extend in true friendship...

xxx
c

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

Book review: The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb

I am not one known for my godliness. Church makes me itch, I've been a doubter from way back before I knew there were such things, and, while I've been exposed to big, honking chunks of it thanks to eight years of Catholic school, I've never read the Bible all the way through. Those "begats," they always put me to sleep.

I've always found the idea of comic-book renditions kinda suspect, as well. Sure, there are some stories in there that lend themselves to literally graphic retelling: look what DeMille did with Exodus and 4 million extras; I do, at least once a year. But the various panels I'd seen made these efforts seemed more like sucker bets, ways of roping in kids and the egregiously impatient, more like Jesus porn than anything really illuminating. Illustration, like design, should earn its keep, not be reduced to cheap gimmickry or decoration.

Revelations from the genius of documentation

R. Crumb's cartoons have been illuminating things for me since I stumbled on them at the tender age of seven or eight, in a stack of other grownup-type reading material at my grandparents' apartment.¹ It took a while for my baby brain to catch up, but I now realize that Crumb's work was my first exposure to drawings carrying equal weight with words in grownup storytelling. Plus, you know, there were all of those great, dirty pictures. Way more interesting than the back issues of Playboy I also unearthed in Grampa's study (which to an eight-year-old were already pretty interesting).

Dirty subject matter will only get you off so far, though. Once you'd burned through the material a first time, for the naughty bits, you could go back and pore over the minutiae. I'm a fan of minutiae, by which I mean I can get a little OCD at times; re-reading early Crumb is very soothing, and it only gets better as he gets older and his talent deepens and his scope widens, not a lot, just enough to incorporate his other interests, like old-time blues and jazz, or the creeping industrialization of the countryside, or, now, really old stories about where we come from.

The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb is book-ended by an illuminating forward, where he documents (in hand-drawn lettering) his impetus for creating the book and acknowledges the great amount of help given him in bringing it to life, and an equally illuminating commentary (in mercifully legible typeset characters) at the end, where he discusses various pertinent items concerning the content and background of the chapters.

Do yourself a favor and read the book all the way through first, without skipping ahead to peek at what are basically extended footnotes. While the commentary helps make some sense of a few really impenetrable parts, for the most part, I found myself fully sucked into these ancient stories, begats inclusive, in a way I never have before. I wondered about all the people I sprang from (at least half of them directly descended from Noah's son, Shem, according to this particular history); even more, I started to wonder about all the people and stories who weren't in the book, the ladies doing the begatting, for instance, and how some of their stories really, really didn't add up. Crumbs drawings pull you in and slow you down even as they make you want to race through and gobble the story up whole. Reading this version of some of the greatest stories ever told is maddening and intoxicating and, yes, interesting.

"Goddammit, this is a good book!"

As God is my witness, those are the exact words I spoke, out loud and without thinking, when I finished the whole shebang, and, I think, why Crumb's work is a triumph: it engages people who might not otherwise engage with these ancient stories, and provides a way for us to plug into the ancient throughline of humanity. Despite predictable accusations from certain quarters, the book is as far from titillating as you can get when you're talking about a work where every five seconds, it seems, someone is either smiting someone or begatting with them. As more reasonable members of the religious community seem to have pointed out, it ain't like the stuff isn't written in there, people.

It's unlikely that I'll have a conversion experience even having had my first connection with a holy text. But like my brothers and sisters on the other side of this great religious divide, I now have an interest in a story we share. That's a shared place, and shared places can be the beginning of mutual understanding, right?

Or not. But either way, it's a helluva good read...

xxx

c

• Buy The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb on Amazon (affiliate link)
• Watch video interviews of R. Crumb with Francoise Mouly (co-editor of the amazing RAW magazine)

¹By piecing together various stories, dated documentation and memories, I finally deduced that the underground comix in question had been a gag gift for my grandfather's massive 60th birthday bash, although given his interest in keeping up with the times as they were a-changin', he may have bought them himself: Gramps was hip to Dylan when Dylan was coming up on the scene, and had the ancient LPs to prove it.

Images by Rachel Kramer Bussell and ideowl via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Yo! Disclosure! Links to the books in the post above are Amazon affiliate links. This means if you click on them and buy something, I receive an affiliate commission. Which I hope you do: it helps keep me in books to review. More on this disclosure stuff at publisher Michael Hyatt's excellent blog, from whence I lifted (and smooshed around a little) this boilerplate text.

A complaint-free Colleen

One of the more fascinating things about deciding to grant myself MORE ROOM this year, taking these few months off to catch up with the mountain of obligations I'd overcommitted to, taking time in the day to read and to practice Nei Kung and to write in the Google Wave with Daveâ„¢, taking the time while traveling to wander instead of cramming each trip with wall-to-wall everything, has been seeing what arises in the spaces that I've managed to create and not immediately fill up with some other "doing."

Note, please, that I said "fascinating," not "wonderful" or "cool" or "awesome," (although I could possibly use that last in the more traditional, non-surfer-co-opted sense). Because quite often what floats into that space is not "pretty!" or "love!" or even "what?", but some kind of slam. And far too often, the object of my scrutiny, adjudication and swift-and-merciless punishment is my own self-battered self. Which is not to say it would be better to find the rest of the world wanting instead; I've just been around long enough to know that shitty outward behavior tends to originate with shitty inward stuff.

So. What to do?

I'm already observing, which is great, because I'm of firm belief that nothing can change until you have some idea that there's something you need to change in the first place, and that requires a certain amount of looking around.

I'm also already in talk therapy (which is probably how all this conscious observing started, come to think of it). I've got a few flavors of ongoing accountability support set up, as well, Success Team and the aforementioned Wave project and my semi-not-regular ladies' meetup, where repeat sabotage cannot help but be brought to light.

I'm really, really not ready for meditation: seeding three big new habits of reading, Nei Kung-ing and SCD-ing are all I can handle.

Ditto for toting around some kind of "judgment journal" to note my slams on the fly, like one would pennies spent or calories consumed.

The answer came on a fishing expedition for a fresh moka pot gasket, a supply of which I keep on hand in the silverware drawer. After stabbing my fingers on various implements I've thrown in over time (note to self: declutter silverware drawer), I came across the complaint bracelet my friend Mary Ellen had given me a couple of years back.

Self, I asked, what is judging yourself if not a kind of complaining?

Whereupon I stuck that sucker on my wrist with a solemn vow to transfer it from one to the other with each noting of the negative. I did it, too, for a full week(ish). After which I took off that damned purple nuisance and hurled it back in the drawer with some excellent excuse or other, too loose on the wrist, too ugly with my outfit, and tried to forget about it.

But this morning, after a few rounds with my inner Judge Judy before breakfast left me feeling sad and weary, I pulled out the bracelet again and quietly slipped it on my wrist. Wasn't gonna tell anyone, much less the blog world at large; was gonna make up some crazy thing about orphans in West Africa or widows in Afghanistan if anyone in real life asked.

Then I realized that not only is there no shame in working to relieve myself of a burden I am weary of carrying with me, there may be help available in the getting-rid-of if I'm really and truly game.

I will catch myself where I can. And if you see me out and about, sneaking a little one-two punch to my own jaw while I'm not looking, perhaps you will catch me where I cannot catch myself.

Gently, of course, and without judgment...

xxx
c

Referral Friday: Shatterboxx Media

If you're reading this via email or RSS, you probably won't notice, but maybe, just maybe, you'll want to click on through to the other side today.

Because finally, as of today (or a little bit of yesterday that barely counts), I've managed to wrest this poor little blog from the ganky clutches of Frankenstein code I've cobbled together from various WordPress themes over the years, and into nice, clean Thesis.

Or rather, Jamie Varon and her team at Shatterboxx Media have.

Are you here yet, on the site? (Go on, do it! I'll wait!) Okay, even if you won't right now, at some point, you're going to need to visit the site for something, back issues of the newsletter archives** or to find that recipe for Strawberry-Chicken-Walnut Salad* you've been dreaming about for years but finally are going to make this spring, for reals. And when you do, that site's pages will load and reload and load again like a, well, I was going to make a luge joke, but it's really too soon, even if it is a dreadful sport I never saw the point of.***

That's because Thesis has been optimized within an inch of its life, or at least, a helluva lot better than Colleen's Third Grade Stabs at Fixing CSS Code (which is an insult to nine-year-olds everywhere, I know). I laughed, laughed, I tell you!, at the idea that cleaning things up could positively affect page load; I figured the biggest benefit would be that I could now go in and fiddle under the hood and actually change things, instead of that code just staring back at me in that mysterious, impenetrable way. But no, ZIPPITY-DOO-DAH, the pages, they are loading! Which means all sorts of other nerdy bits of goodness, like Google's bots having an easier time of indexing my pages and (we can only hope)  much lower "bounce rates" born of frustration.

What is most important to you, the reader (and I hope, potential blogger/website owner) is knowing about Jamie. She is fast, she is good, she provides excellent value and, glory hallelujah!, she is patient. We talked back in June of last year, after which conversation I immediately plunked down a 50% deposit (when you know, you know), after which...nothing. Because of me and my busy, busy schedule, and my massive disorganization and plate-spinning and such. Jamie just calmly emailed me now and again to touch base, to see what was what, to see if I needed any help/nudging.

When I finally gave the go-ahead, we had an easy-breezy 1/2-hour conversation about what I wanted vs. what had to happen; 24 hours later (if that), I had a schedule and a plan. Bada-bing, bada-boom! All of life should work this easily.

One more note: I'm not an affiliate for many items, even multiple items for the same person. I became an affiliate for Thesis because after installing it on The Virgo Guide to Marketing, I fell in love with its ease of use. There's massive support for Thesis, and a big user community. If you're really terrified of doing anything yourself, there's a community of nice Thesis devs like Jamie and her partner and team who can help you with what you need for a reasonable fee. But really, it's a great way to get your feet wet with webby stuff, because it's so danged simple.

Brava, Shatterboxx! Bravo, Thesis!

Now, let's get back to work...

xxx
c

UPDATE 7/16/10: While for now, this site is still using the Thesis theme, I can no longer recommend Thesis due to concerns I have about the ethics surrounding its release.

I may write a longer post about this, but for now, I'll simply say that I'm very concerned about the hard line Chris Pearson is taking on the WordPress license issue, and very upset with myself for not doing due diligence when researching replacement themes for Grid Focus. I'd been meaning to take down my affiliate links anyway (more on that, soon, too, in the form of a policy) so I've gone ahead and done that, but I'm really hoping that Chris will do the right thing and release Thesis under the GPL, the license that WordPress itself is released under, and which all iterations are supposed to carry.

I still recommend Jamie Varon if you have your heart set on a Thesis customization.

• Visit Shatterboxx Media's website

*Yeah, sorry, I know I didn't link to the actual post, but ain't it great how FAST the site loads!?

**Uh...what I said above.

***Unless Dreamhost is down, AGAIN, and nothing is loading, in which case all you'll get is a stupid "502 Error" page. Ugh.

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

Poetry Thursday: Ham sandwich

On slightly dry white,
it conjures up
foreign lunchrooms
and sour lunchboxes
and the clamped-shut feeling
of a stomach that can't do its job
for worry of a new place.

Crusts cut off and insides
lightly lined with butter
it brings back Gramma
and days of being well-cared for

Rough-hewn
from the Honeybaked bone,
wrapped in romaine,
dipped in mustard,
inhaled over the sink,
of being a grownup
for the first time ever:
not well, perhaps,
or elegantly,
but old enough finally
to deny yourself
something good now
against the hope
of something better
down the road.

What for you is my lunch
for me is a portal,
a trip back
to a simpler life
that may or may not
have existed.

What for me is a stab at meaning,
and a clumsy one at that,
put down quickly like packaged ham
on commercial rye,
for you, I hope,
is a thread to worry
(or not)
as you please
toward the root of your own
sweet and sour
and slightly salty past.

At least,
that is how
I present it.

xxx
c

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

10 in 2010: Chunking out goals

As one of my 10 goals in 2010+ is "Get back on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet 100%," I probably should have spent Fat Tuesday whooping it up with all of the sugar, rice, wheat, chocolate, potatoes and etcetera (lots and lots of "etcetera" on the SCD) I won't be able to eat anymore.

Instead, I holed up in a favorite coffee shop with a green tea and, while I waited for my friend from Portland to show up for our visit, I set about breaking out this monstrous, slippery to-do into smaller, hopefully more manageable tasks.

Some goals lend themselves to chunks. As I've mentioned before, my breakthrough moment with "Read a book a week" came when Julien Smith shared his own chunking solution: read 40pp per day. It's obvious in hindsight, but when you're panicking at the thought of how to do something you've never done before (or haven't done since your early 20s), looking at books as roughly 280pp units and then doing some quick division ain't the first solution you try applying.

My new Nei Kung practice shakes out the same way: "Practice Nei Kung every morning" has a built-in chunking mechanism; it's expressed as a chunk. (The morning part I'm facilitating by tying it to a morning routine, which is another pro-tip Julien puts forth in his excellent post. I swear, I'll keep linking to it, so you might as well go read it now.)

Compared to reading and Nei Kung, "Get on SCD 100%" is a slippery mollusk. While being on "100%" is both a clear metric and in keeping with SCD tenets*, it doesn't help me "be" on SCD day to day. I like to-dos; to-dos make for a regular and orderly life.

So I sat down and brainstormed a number of activities I can do to help support my transition back to and then my staying on the SCD. They include:

• expunge cupboards of all SCD "illegals"
• cull non-SCD-legal and/or non-"keeper" recipes from recipe binder
• create running grocery list
• check running grocery list
• make SCD-legal baked goods in bulk (e.g. almond-flour cookies, breads, etc.)
• make SCD-legal freezer-portion foods in bulk (e.g. stews, chilis, pizza sauce, etc.)
• search new recipes for SCD-legalization possibilities
• shop farmers' market

Some of the items are daily things I can check off, and very small. Just because you've committed to a big annual goal doesn't mean every ding-dong day has to involve pushing a c*cksucking boulder up a motherf*cking hill. Some days, you just want to look at your running list and check the fridge, freezer or pantry for supplies. Other days you might only have the gumption to spend five minutes surfing epicurious for Paleo recipes you can convert, or even email a chef-y friend for suggestions on how to fabricate legal substitutes for some craved food.**

And there's no law that says you can't find to-dos that kill two goals with one stone. I'm also looking to make more plans with friends this year; who says one of them can't be "Go with so-and-so to farmers' market on Sunday"? Not me. I wouldn't say that.

One final note: to get myself started with the list, I asked myself a couple of "how and why" questions: how does the diet work for me, and why do I want to be on it?

When I initially got on, the answers were clear and obvious: to not die; to get out and stay out of the hospital. As I've moved further away from peril (praise the sweet baby jesus), it's become more difficult to come up with pressing reasons. To get off of meds? Yeah, a worthy goal; these immunosuppressants are hell on your liver, long-term. For me, the reasons are now tied to other things, like having the energy to really apply myself to my other big goals. I do NOT want another repeat of last December, when I viewed my previous year's list of goals and saw six or seven out of ten unaccomplished.

Therefore, since I know that in the moment those BIG goals aren't necessarily enough to keep me on the straight and narrow, I needed to look at some tactical stuff, too: what daily to-dos can I put in place to remove friction? To make it easy to say "no" to Mr. Delicious French fry, or at least, easier?

For me, it's about not letting myself get hungry and not letting myself feel deprived. So some of my to-dos can become:

• prep travel bags of snacks for on-the-go
• think up more games to keep myself motivated
• look at pictures of bloody transverse colon pre-SCD

Kidding on that last one, sort of. Truthfully, "Watch Ignite video" would make a really great to-do for a given day, since it is both a graphic reminder of what I went through to get here (and what I never want to go back to, ever), and a motivator to stay on track with one of my other goals, which is to do more speeches that I feel really make a difference.***

But that is another goal story for another day...

xxx
c

*At least initially, being on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet calls what our beloved Elaine called "fanatical adherence": the smallest cheat nulls the effect, since what you're striving for is a removal of all opportunistic, "bad" bacteria in the gut, and the slightest trace of something juicy will keep the bastards alive. Once you're on and symptom-free for two years, you can consider an indulgence here and there. Although as I seem to be an abstainer rather than a moderator when it comes to things like French fries or Italian bread with a gnarly crust and chewy tooth, I'm just off of it, period.

**I've been dreaming of those greasy sesame sticks you buy by the pound at Trader Joe's, and my friend Wayne said, "Oh, I love figuring out stuff like that." So there you go. Make someone else's day into the bargain.

***And who said you can't kill two goals with one story? Not me. Never me!

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

What can you do during the not-doing?

There's nothing like exiting your comfort zone for discovering more aspects of your character you're either ashamed of or annoyed by.

Last week's startling revelation and accompanying, out-loud mea culpa regarding my self-loathing seems to have unlocked some secret chamber of my darkest heart, from which has tumbled (or, in some cases, oozed) all kinds of earthly delights: My bottomless well of impatience! My race to judgment! My predilection for check-out assistants #1, 2 & 3 (Internet, TV-on-Internet and booze, respectively)!

There are a hundred, thousand ways I choose to brutalize myself. What's fascinating is when I choose to stop brutalizing myself with them, either one at a time or in one giant cudgel of Acme©-sized weight and volume, and just look at them: Well, now, those are certainly a lot of things. Yes, they are!

This is a new practice for me, what I've taken to calling the not-doing. I'm a fix-it kinda gal, so when leaks spring, I like to grab my toolbox and go go go, or, better yet, head to the Home Depot and find me some newer, shinier tools.*

Even talking about the not-doing is difficult. I guess by nature, the not-doing would prefer that you, you know, not do. Sit. Maybe observe. But mostly, sit. It is, after all, not-doing, and it would like its season, too, turn turn turn.

But since there is no point to writing (for me) unless I'm going to be at least one of the three big things I'm always squawking about (useful, supportive and/or entertaining, if you don't feel like clicking any of those links), and since writing is one of the things I not only allow myself during the not-doing but that the not-doing actually demands, I'm moved to share what I've observed and understood well enough thus far to be able to somewhat illuminate; if it doesn't work for you, so be it, it will serve as a record for myself once I've moved on to a different part of this endless motherf*cking journey I'm on.

Not-doing will not come naturally if you are a do-er.

Sorry for that brief message from Captain Obvious, but the whole discussion needs to be grounded in this, if only to prevent any wonderful souls who are good with the not-doing or who have extensive experience in the not-doing to urge well-intentioned-but-not-useful-right-now help upon us. If do-ers could meditate, we would be not-doers, or at least, we would have a passport to not-doing, where we could visit other not-doers and have not-tea and not-cakes as we shared not-stories about all the not-doing we were doing. Er, not-doing. You get it, right?

There are myriad wonderful modalities for do-ers, and even for advanced not-doers. Meditation, for example, I hear is excellent. It makes me itch. I've personally had good luck with shiatsu, some yoga (until the Yoga People namastéd me right out of the studio), the relaxation exercise used in Method acting, hot baths, walking, naps, hypnotherapy and, lately, Nei Kung. Reading helps, too.

Here's the thing about not-doing: you're always doing something. Always! Surprise: not-doing is a zen koan, and the zen joke is on you! Even meditation is doing something until you're doing it to the point where you're just being.

So what is not-doing for do-ers?

It is not racing to a thing, frantic. (No spiritual Home Depot for you, Little Miss Do-er!)

It is sitting there, in your damned mess, and saying, "Hey! Look! Mess! How unbelievably awful/uncomfortable/unusual/(your-reaction-here) it is to sit in it and DO NOTHING."

Then and only then do you do something. Which generally looks like going about your day, truth be told.

But the first doing of the not-doing for doers is, apparently, observation. A doing, to be sure, but not one we're used to.

My not-doing involves a lot of writing and cleaning.

This may seem confusing at first: how can not-doing involve writing? Isn't writing a big, fat Doing?

It is; this is. This kind of writing: writing to illuminate outwardly, is a big-time Fatty McFat Fat Doing. It is the one Doing I'm allowing myself during this planned three-month (so far) hiatus, other than a very, very minute amount of teaching.**

Rest assured that for every long-ass essay or article you read here***, there are thousands upon thousands of words being spewed, vomited, hurled or otherwise shed, either privately, in various .txt files and notebooks, or semi-privately, via communications with trusted friends and paid associates. Some weeks, I think Dave Seah and I may crash Google's servers all by ourselves with our "little" Wave experiment.

The cleaning I do because, like walking, it is a rote activity that occupies my body without overtaxing it, gets me off my ass and away from the keyboard and, like a lot of mindless, repetitive physical activity, helps free up thoughts.

Also, unlike walking, you can do it in bad weather and at night, plus it offers the amazing side benefit of de-crud-ifying the house.

My not-doing works better with themes.

Your mileage may seriously vary here, but I am one of those people who likes naming things. Or rather, it's one of those childhood Habits of Awesomeness I found myself picking up again when I hit my 40s. I find that naming things makes me care for them more, which I guess makes me kind of a label whore. Oh, well. All I know is that when I remind myself to call my car "Betty," I drive more carefully, which is exactly why I named a 2,000 lb. hunk of metal and fiberglass after my beloved paternal grandmother.

My friend Pam Slim has a wonderful tool she uses called her High Council of Jedi Knights, a panel of people you select as a kind of inspirational/motivational backboard to bounce things off of. (I finally created one this year as part of my Best Year Yet goal-setting process, although I've dubbed it my High Council of Goal-Crushing Awesomeness because it's my panel and because, you'll remember, I like naming things.)

Somehow, my lab partner and friend Dave Seah and I got into the naming thing with our Google Wave Experiment, too. We've set themes for each week based on what we'd like to focus on; you can see the list so far at this excellent post Dave wrote about what the Experiment has taught him about continuity, something he was interested in focusing on with the project.

Not-doing ain't as bad as it's cracked up to be, not-doers!

Like getting over those first three days of not-smoking or that first horrible decade post-breakup, it not only gets easier the more you give into not-doing, it actually becomes rather enjoyable. The best thing I can liken itself to is conducting a comprehensive, in-depth study on yourself, where you're student, teacher and lab rat.

The second-best thing I can liken it to is taking a vacation, which is a loaded thing for me: I've never really been big on vacations as most people seem to define them, either full of recreation or full of nothing. I have come to enjoy and appreciate the idea of vacation as change, removing oneself from one's routine, and that's more of the approach I'm looking at this not-doing as. I am usually a do-er; for now, I am mostly a not-doer. It feels strange and awkward. It feels tense, sometimes, and relaxing or invigorating at others. In the way that some people use travel, changing their context to see themselves more clearly, I am using not-travel. I am seeing and experiencing and learning new things by changing my context.

Is it always enjoyable? Of course not! Neither is travel. But I am starting to sense a shift of some kind.

I'm not willing to name it just yet, but that, too, will come with time. And maybe a little more regular not-doing...

xxx
c

*Nowhere is the desire to manage from the outside in stronger or more laughable than my endless attempts to Improve Productivity: with the money and time-as-money I've blown on shareware, books and blog-scouring, we could provide water to at least one small desert nation, freeing up massive amounts of well-meaning but let's face it, pretty annoying bandwidth on the social media circuit.

**Hey, you cheat by stealing an occasional Oreoâ„¢ or drag off a cigarette, I'll cheat by stealing an occasional chance to talk about stuff I love with people who want to learn about it.)

***Or via my newsletter, which, according to open and click-through rates, not to mention actual feedback, has been kinda kicking some ass lately. My mess is your gain! You should, therefore, consider subscribing, if you have not yet.

Image by Reverend Barry K. via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Poetry Thursday: For occasional blues

When you are low

, and you will be,
just as sure as you
may not be now,

it is good to have
a few necessities in stock
to keep the beasts
at bay.

Like your day at Point Dume,
and that wall of wind pushing back
as you sung the first three lines
of fifty pop songs
against it
while your heart screamed,
my ocean!

Or sinking into the air-cooled comfort
of first show at the Grove
and tucking your chilled toes
up under your tush
as you prepared
to disappear
for two delicious hours

Or the heat of the tarpaper tiles
on the low-slanted roof
as you baked between classes
beside your traveling companion,
passing salted Ruffles
and a half-quart tub of sour cream
back and forth
against the prospect
of imminent minor discomfort.

The trick
if there is one
is to recall specifics
with the precision
of an ichthyologist
aligning individual scales:
the feel of leaning in
the nap of new velour
the slope of the incline

And if you can't,
make it up

But precisely

God is in the details
even if you are the god
who put them there

and it is through these million
man-made pinholes
that you will reconnect
with the All-That-Is
and find the love
that eludes you now.

xxx
c

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

10 in 2010: Ch'i, inside and out

So far, and 48+ years is pretty far, I've not been able to sit still long enough to meditate.

I've read about, listened to and met actual benefactors of its benefits, but if you sit me down for more than five minutes at a time without something to do (besides the not-doing of meditation), I start itching all over.

I get that I'm not alone in this; I also get that one of the points to having a practice is practicing, which eventually leads to getting better at it. But I can't, or won't let myself, get over that hump.

Similarly, while I'm equally aware of the benefits of regular, old physical exercise, I've had real problems creating a routine around it. My genius plan of renting a mailbox a little over a mile from my apartment worked for a while, until it didn't. (Did you know you can also drive your car both ways in about half the time? I know!) Besides, while walking clears the mind and even provides a bit of cardio work, provided you do it briskly enough, it doesn't do a whole lot in the way of enhancing flexibility or building strength.

Enter Nei Kung, an internal form of qigong, which itself is a type of slow and precise moving meditation that gets the chi, or energy, flowing. According to my instructor, Jim Borrelli, Nei Kung is way more obscure, at least, compared to other kinds of qigong, and was developed to give martial artists extra reservoirs of strength to use in fighting. I'm disinclined to fight, but who wouldn't want extra strength, especially when it came bundled with better energy, focus, flexibility, and peace of mind come. The obscure part, on the other hand, was obvious: you see qigong or tai chi being practiced on grassy mountaintops in every other montage commercial promoting wellness or yogurt, but who the hell has heard of Nei Kung?

I have now, obviously, and have been doing it regularly, almost every day, which is unheard of for me, for nine weeks now. I know this because every week, I cut a big, fat check for the privilege of one-on-one training, which, unless you're in New York City and can score some kind of class situation with Master C.K. Chu (who taught my teacher, who is one of the smallest handful of people Chu has so deputized), or maybe if you're plugged into some arcane Chinese martial arts circuit, it ain't gonna happen. Believe me, I'm frugal enough to self-identify as outright cheap, and there's no way I'd pay for this if it wasn't necessary. Or worth it.

So far, it is, and that's been true since Day One. My Internet friend, Alan, had a similar experience with Nei Kung: maybe we both have Nei Kung-friendly bodies*; maybe we were both martial artists in a former, Chinese life. Whatever the cause, each of us seems to have taken to it like a duck to water, and for my part, I can tell you it's a relief: after beating myself up over not liking running, cycling, weight training or yoga, to do something I'm good at that makes me feel good is an extraordinary gift, especially 48+ years into the game. (Which reminds me, hate all games, too.)

My commitment is to practice Nei Kung for 25 minutes every morning, session dates excepted (I get a mammoth dose of it then). For the winter, I've shifted my practice to sit between reading and breakfast, since the half-hour or so of reading gives the heater a chance to kick in. Exceptions will most likely be made to accommodate travel and the insane bloody heat that seizes the E-Z-Bake Ovenâ„¢ around August.

As far as the outside chi goes, Item #4 is to feng shui the place bagua by bagua, starting with the Skills & Knowledge sector. As author Karen Rauch Carter (wisely) says in her book and my feng shui bible, no matter what you're looking for, money, health, success, you'll have a hell of an easier time of it if you buff out the gray matter.

But more on that later...

xxx
c

*Mine is compact and slight, with short legs and a long torso; I can't speak for Alan's.

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

10 in 2010: Reading 52 books!

As I close out my goal-setting for the coming 12 or so months*, I thought I'd post a few of the more universally-relevant (i.e., non-private) ones to the blog for the hell of it.

The first one is the easiest (and thus far, most enjoyable): READ 52 BOOKS.

As I noted in an earlier post about goal-setting in general, I lifted the idea (with permission! and encouragement, even!) from Julien Smith, co-author (with Chris Brogan) of the wonderfully-written Trust Agents, the book I most often recommend to people looking to wrap their brains around the whole social media thing. Julien has written several times about his attempts to read more in general, and to read a book a week, specifically. In 2009, he figured out a key secret, read 40pp per day, and broke through to complete his goal for the first time.

Five weeks and change into 2010, I'm pleased to report that it's working out quite well. I'm 12 books into the goal, with another well underway. I wanted to front-load as much as I could, as I had the time now, you know, bank a few books, but really, the "52" is just a metric: my goal is to READ MORE BOOKS and READ BOOKS MORE OFTEN. So really, I'm hoping to read many, many more books than those 52; I'm just honoring my theme for 2010 ("MORE ROOM") by doing a little front-loading. It's not like I'm gonna stop once I hit that 52nd book.

I went back and forth on whether or not I should share my list of books read. Not that there are any especially compromising choices: mostly, it was about maintaining a level of privacy for myself and a measure of respect for authors in general. As you'll see from the running list I decided to make public, there are several books I've chosen not to review, and I don't want anyone getting the wrong idea about this. My decision to review is based on a whole slew of factors that have nothing to do with merit, among them available time, alignment with my personal goals for this site and my "brand" (such as it is), and perceived value to the people who read here regularly.

For the same reason, I've decided not to keep a running list of books I'm currently reading or that are under consideration. I'd love to read everything that catches my eye, and to finish everything I pick up, but one is impossible and the other, I've finally decided, is folly. Every book is not for me just like every person or food or sport is for me. (Actually, almost no sports are for me, but that's another story for another day.) And even though we're all grownups, I know I'd probably be hurt if, pardon me, when I write my first book and learn of that first friend or acquaintance or utter stranger didn't finish it. Ouch. But there it is. So this is my sad little fix for it.

Finally, some books require more integration and/or implementation before I can speak to their utility in a way that's illuminating.** For example, I could review Nonviolent Communication favorably right now in terms of the value and insight I got from a first reading of it, but that first reading made it abundantly clear that the real value of a book like that is the reward from implementing the system outlined within, and I can hardly do that until I've done that. It's also why I'm very comfortable reviewing really old (but useful!) books like Simple Abundance, Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life or The Little Book of Moods. (Look for other utterly non-newsworthy reviews on The Artist's Way and Your Best Year Yet in this space!)

That said, I do welcome any suggestions based on favorites I've already enjoyed. If you look at the list of books I've reviewed, period, you should get a pretty good idea: there's not a one under 3-stars, and 95% are 4-star and up. So feel free to be my human algorithm!

Just don't berate me if I don't choose, or choose to finish, your suggestion...

xxx c

*I'd intended a January 1 start date, like most of the rest of the goal-setting world. This got pushed to February 1, then Groundhog Day (the 2nd), and now we're looking at February 15th as a final-final start date. But a few goals are underway, and the "Read 52 Books" launched on January 1st, because I was hot-to-trot for it.

**This is not to say that timely reviews of all kinds of "how-to" books can't be immensely valuable, just that I'm not the person to write them. I'm very grateful for those early adopters with mad skills in a particular area and writing skills to match who get in there and do the important work of early reviewing.

Image by Photos8 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Too much, too little, and loving what is (A story about goals)

After numerous setbacks, some regular-usuals that I now know to plan for (hello, holidays!), some spontaneous combustibles that required urgent but unscheduled attention, I wrapped up my goal planning for 2010.

Yes, five weeks or roughly 10% of the way into the year I'm supposed to be living, I'm done planning for it.*

It is an easy, easy slide into self-loathing, just taking in that last sentence. It feels like a sentence, when I start to take it in fully: this is your life, loser, and no one to blame but yourself for it. Little Miss Overachiever. Little Miss Fancypants, with your ridiculous notions of time and how many things you can fill it with, or, if you want to dip into that bucket o' truth you claim such fondness for, how much shit you can cram into it.

So, you see how I talk to myself when you're not around?** Not nice. Not even helpful. But this is the voice that runs through my head most of the time, or one of them, and it is this voice, or rather, what this voice is doing to me, that I'm choosing to address this year.

Because two very interesting and highly unusual things happened this year during the penultimate phase of goal-planning. They're embarrassing enough that I'd ordinarily leave them out, but illuminating enough, at least, I hope they are, that they're staying in.

For those of you unfamiliar with the values-centered goal-planning system outlined in Jinny Ditzler's Your Best Year Yet, it starts with an inventory and ends with a map, with a whole lot of excavation, grading and other survey-ish/cartographic folderol in between. The inventory is a look back at the previous year's happenings, divided into accomplishments and disappointments, the better to get a handle on what's working (so you can feel good about yourself!) and what's not, so you can beat yourself with a cudgel crafted from your own sodden, misshapen failures. Kidding! Only, well, there's a reason Ditzler has you list your accomplishments first. It can be mighty dispiriting to look at that list of disappointments. She is fairly adamant that accomplishments be viewed with pride and the disappointments taken as learning, but right there, that's suspect to self-loathers: wherefore such inequities of discernment? That's just bad science, lady!

Interestingly enough, in the five years I've been doing Best Year Yet, I've never once had a problem coming up with staggeringly long lists of accomplishments that even the meanest stranger would affirm as such, while my list of disappointments has been proportionately far smaller. Of course, they're big honkers, those disappointments, stuff like "only completed 4 out of 10 goals from last year"; worse, they tend to recur. This may not be a big deal when you're 20 or even 30, but when you're staring 50 in the droopy, gray-haired sac, you start to worry. Time is, as they say, at a premium. How much more of it can you count on? How much more can you waste on an outright-destructive or even "benign" insalubrious habit? Is there even such a thing after 45? (I'm really asking: is there?)

My own goal-planning process ground to a depressing halt in December not only because the year had worn me down and the holidays weren't going to let up, but because when I finished up my list of disappointments, I noted that 11 of them, that's 11 out of 18, were recurring. And big ones, too, like "didn't write book...again," where "again" meant "for the third year in a row." After completing those two lists, I went on to answer the next couple of questions, but really, I knew I was fucked. The only way around this problem was through it, and that was going to require a lot more time than the week I had set aside. And resources, too, in the form of outside help.

Which brings us to the penultimate session I mentioned about 40 minutes ago in this piece.

Up until this year, I've mostly done my BYY plan alone. I ran last year's by my business coach, but only the final plan, and only the business-related aspects of it***. While it makes me cringe with shame now, I realize that I was doing a lot of obfuscating and tap dancing, more plainly called "hiding" when one is not given to obfuscating and tap dancing. If I was going to change my pattern, someone else was going to have to be given root access to the plan, to help keep me honest about what was going on. One of my friends from Success Team (my weekly mastermind-like group) agreed that it might be helpful from an unsticking perspective to collaborate, so we scheduled a work session for this past weekend.

I was prepared for almost anything. A lot of stuff bubbles up during the BYY excavation and mapping process, and for me, that inevitably brings a lot of crying and pain, especially around the Dreaded Chapter Four, where you look at your limiting paradigms. (Trust me, unless you're Jesus, you've got at least one.)

What I was not prepared for was bursting into tears when I looked at my list of accomplishments, which is just what I did when it was my time to go over them. I'd thought, "Oh, I'll just read the topline from this embarrassingly long list to save us time." Instead, something told me to read it in its entirety, all 47 items, and when I the last one, I collapsed in a heap of sobs: all of this stuff I'd accomplished, and still I felt like shit? What would it take? What would ever be enough? If accomplishing all of these 47 remarkable things, and my friend assured me that individually, many were remarkable, but taken together, they were REMARKABLE, if doing all that did not fill the black hole inside me and make me feel loved or safe or worthwhile, what would?

The answer, that nothing would, that no external thing would ever be enough, stared back at me, plain as you like. Hence, sobbing. A lot of it. Fortunately, I have loving and patient friends. Who somehow, when I am feeling like it's anything but possible, can assure me in a way that I actually can hear and almost believe, that I am enough: that I might be lovable just because of who I am, and not because of any list of things I do.

It seems so simple, but trust me, it can take a long time to "get", even if you know it. Even if you've paid your shrink thousands of dollars and wept your way through boxes of her Kleenex to learn the same thing. Learning is not necessarily "getting"; if you're lucky, I think, you "get" it with enough time before you die to know some kind of peace. I felt one huge shift like this in the past 10 years, when I had my hospital bed epiphany. I had a second one this past weekend, looking at that long list and bursting into tears. I have a little more peace, but I'd also like to get a little more of this music out of me before I die, you know?

The other Very Interesting and Unusual Thing that happened revolved around money and happiness. It also involved a goodly amount of sobbing, and is involved (and possibly significant) enough to cover in depth another day.

For now, know this: next year when I sit down to do my Best Year Yet plan, I expect the list of accomplishments will be far shorter, while the list of disappointments will likely be about the same length as it's been in previous years, only with a much, much higher percentage of new things I'm disappointed about.

And that, my friends, is an accomplishment in and of itself...

xxx
c

*Hopefully. Because I finished the wrapping-up yesterday, late in the day, and am feeling rickety about it. Plus, you know, shit happens, Q.E.D.

**Obviously, you're very much around, as you're reading this. What I mean, which you probably already gathered, is this is the dim chatter that forms one layer of my soundtrack. This is the stuff that goes on that I generally don't write, or if I do, that I erase before publishing.

***Your Best Year Yet is a whole-life planning system, based on the idea that achieving balance is largely responsible for achieving happiness, and possibly for achieving goals themselves, at least in the "life well-lived" sense. Also, it's worth noting here that even my coach said my plan was probably overly ambitious. I made changes to it based on her feedback and those changes did work: the four out of ten goals were largely accomplished because of those tweaks.

Yo! Disclosure! Links to the books in the post above are Amazon affiliate links. This means if you click on them and buy something, I receive an affiliate commission. Which I hope you do: it helps keep me in books to review. More on this disclosure stuff at publisher Michael Hyatt's excellent blog, from whence I lifted (and smooshed around a little) this boilerplate text.

Image by jurvetson via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license. For maximum enjoyment, view in original, huge size.

Referral Friday: Hotel Vertigo

Once upon a time, I was a medium-big traveler.

I never did it as much as my friends Shane or Chris, and certainly not as much as my father (o, he of the fabled American AAirpass!), but for a goodly stretch of my life, say, 22 - 32, I got around, and when I got there, I parked it in hotels.

I am a big fan of hotel-staying over couch-surfing, even when the couch is a lovely guest room with private bath or a beautiful detached guest house all to oneself on Mt. Tamalpais. (Yes, really. Another lifetime, and of course, friends of my father's.) Unless my generous hosts are nowhere near the premises, I have problems with staying in someone else's space.* Real, serious, physical problems.** Travel is hard enough on non-hardy introverts; throw a lot of activities into the mix, even activities you really, really enjoy, like hanging out with beloved friends, and you have a recipe for fried circuits and an exhausted nervous system, especially when you're talking Virgos with Cancer rising.

What I am not a big fan of is overpaying for comfort. I'm down with comfort, but when it edges into what I call luxury, I get uncomfortable. I like parking my own car, hauling my own luggage, brewing my own espresso. If I had my way, I'd either rent houses or have my own everywhere I went (which is a lot of houses, probably even Oprah wouldn't want to do that.) And yeah, I know that makes me just as much of a Wussy McWusserton, first-world person of privilege as any fatcat who stays at the Four Seasons on expense account. I guess my style is more "do whatever you can to fly under the radar while still protecting your soft, chewy center." If there's a tag like that.

So what I do now when I travel, especially right now, when I'm feeling a little bit tender and I need to travel, is find a great place with the right kind of "luxury" that doesn't break the bank. This means such critical stuff as clean, safe, sleepy-bye bedding and (premium) cable, basically, somewhere that is at least as nice as my humble little rent-stabilized one-bedroom in an undisclosed area of Los Angeles. (Which, now that I think of it, is exactly what I've always wanted from a home-away-from-home, which is why some of those places seemed Saudi-prince-level-luxurious back when I lived with drafts and vermin in my Brooklyn shithole.)

Enter the Hotel Vertigo in just-a-little-too-beautiful-for-me San Francisco.

Named after the legendary Hitchcock classic, the Vertigo is one of a fambly of charming San Francisco hotels, each of which seem to be hipster-rehabbed properties which might have fallen on hard times. It's beautifully decorated, loads of hipster color combo orange-'n'-brown, furry scatter pillows, and Vertigo art, with wonderful attention to Colleen-crucial details: kickass bed/bedding, non-chintzy bathroom and bath accessories, adequate setup for on-the-road computing. The wise folk who run it are exceptionally blogger-savvy: like the Roger Smith in New York (a place you can bet your ass I'll check out next chance I get, and similarly tout if it's great), they go out of their way to accommodate nerds, and as a nerd, I say, It's about fucking time this got me something!***

But they're nice to everyone, or at least, they were as far as I could see. Can I tell you what a relief it is to find service that is great without being obsequious or otherwise creepy? Because it is. Like my recent world-changing experience with Virgin America, I now believe that there is some way to staff up with normal, nice, smart human beings, and then empower and treat said staff well enough that they continue to act like nice, normal, smart human beings whose job happens to be helping you deal with life on the road.

Because then, not only do your customers get their reservations sorted out by an actual friendly human when they stupidly screw up their flight plans; not only do they  get their airport transfers handled with something bordering on elegance; you get wild, crazy evangelists to go forth and do all your promoting for you for FREE. ZOMFG, the world may end, it's such a radical business plan!

In my perfect world, there would be a wonderful little hotel like the Vertigo in San Francisco, or the Camas Hotel in picturesque Camas, WA, or the Jupiter in Portland, OR (only maybe a little quieter, for us fogeys), in every town I ever stepped foot in as a traveler: affordable, enjoyable, accommodating, non-icky.

Maybe there is. But I won't know about them unless we all start telling each other. How about it, nerds? Give 'em up in the comments?

xxx c

*In case you're curious, I actually have a few outrageously generous and well-to-do friends who offer up their cush cribs to me while they're on the road, for which privilege I happily run out and buy them all manner of shit for their houses, from coffee machines to designer toilet brushes to wireless routers.

**There were times when The Chief Atheist or The Youngster and I stayed with his parents where I would not poop for a week. A WEEK. Thankfully, The BF was 100% fine with not staying on the family property; that he shared my convictions of "camping" meaning "staying at a motel without premium cable" was one of many reasons we lasted as long as we did.

***Seriously, they could not have been more delightful and accommodating at every turn

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

Poetry Thursday: Words after words

Ain't no trick
to writing
nor magic
in doing it well.

Writing is you
and your chair
and your brain
and your heart
gathering together
for as many moments as you can string together
of work.

Writing is nouns
and verbs
and adjectives
and adverbs,
in that order,
ordered
and then reordered
over and over
and over
again.

Writing is taking
the stories you see
and the truths you hear
all around you
all the time
and letting them sift
through the filter
you have created for them.

Keep that filter clean
and in good working order:

Change it as necessary.
Air it out in between uses.
Protect it at all costs.

Now go
and catch stories
and write them down
or talk them through
or act them out.

Do not be fooled
into thinking
there is only one way to tell a story:

There is only
the best way
and only you,
trying again and again,
can tease it apart
and put it back
together
in a way
that makes sense
and sets hearts
to beating.

Okay: I lied.

Here is
the one trick
to writing
that will take you magically
from where you are now
to the heights
of where you can go:

Do it over and over
and over and over
every day
for as many
as you have left.

Go!

xxx
c

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

What's up and what's gone down :: February 2010

A mostly monthly but forever occasional round-up of what I've been up to and what I plan to be. For full credits and details, see this entry.

Colleen of the future (places I'll be)

• The February L.A. Biznik Mixer at Jerry's Famous Deli in Marina del Rey (February 10, 5:30pm, no drop-ins!) My co-host, Heather Parlato, and I will be doing a little "how to start hosting your own Biznik event" thing in the 6 o'clock hour. EVENT FULL. Sign up for Biznik NOW to get advance notice of future events, including other LA-area ones.
• $100 Business Forum call My friends Chris Guillebeau and Pam Slim joined forces to create this smart smart smart class on how to launch a micro-business. (If you can practice with something small, you may be able to graduate to something big with the lessons learned, right?) SOLD OUT. I'm participating in a call about branding; if you're a part of the class, line up your toughest questions NOW and squeeze every penny's worth out of me!

Colleen of the Past (stuff I did you might not know about)

• Cornell Alumni Leadership Conference I labored mightily to change my now rather standard social media presentations on branding and marketing into one that would be useful to those interested in building community for a good cause. I'm delighted to say that all my fretting (not to mention my foregoing DC sightseeing in favor of co-working at my friend Jared Goralnick's HQ) paid off, the programs (I did it twice) went really well, by all accounts: i.e., people had fun, got un-scared of using social media and learned something (even if, in some cases, it was simply a half-grudging, "Okay...I'll give it one more go."). One of the best things about this and my recent trip was flying there on Virgin America, speaking of which...
• Referral Friday, Video Edition Yes, I shot an onboard testimonial for my new-favorite airline, Virgin America, 35,000 feet over North America. It's a departure (no pun intended) from my usual plugs, but well-deserved. And well-received, if the emails and texts I've received so far are indicative.
• December in January A few different sources, including my friend, Dave Seah, with whom I've been collaborating on a fascinating (to us, anyway) Google Wave experiment, gave me the idea to postpone New Year's Goal-Setting to February. It was a grand success, if by "success" you mean "relief"; I posted my progress throughout the month, outlining in detail the steps I took towards a plan I could really get excited about. You can read them all here, in reverse chronological order for now.
• Seth Godin's "media tour" for Linchpin I love pretty much everything about Seth Godin (not least of which how everything he touches so elegantly floats to the surface of Internet consciousness), so participating in his alternative media tour to launch his terrific and important new book, Linchpin, was a no-brainer. So is reading it, if you're at all the kind of person who enjoys reading here. It'll shake you up, but (mostly) in the good way.
• Re:WORK, the monthly BLANKSPACES newsletter Last year, my colleague Peleg approached me about collaborating on a relaunch of the newsletter for our friend (and my fellow Cornell alum!), Jerome Chang's outstanding coworking space in the Mid-Wilshire area of LA, BLANKSPACES. I'm pleased to say that open rates increased immediately and have been rising since, as have click-throughs, thanks to our mutual efforts. If you're local, you should sign up to get word of all the great upcoming events they host; if you're not, you should get it anyway, for the articles. (Yes, really. I wrote January's.)

Colleen of the Present (ongoing projects)

• communicatrix | focuses My monthly newsletter devoted to the all-important subject of increasing your unique fabulosity. One article per month (with actionable tips! and minimal bullsh*t!) about becoming a better communicator, plus the best few of the many cool things I stumble across in my travels. Plus a tiny drawing by moi. Free! (archives & sign-up)
• Act Smart! is my monthly column about marketing for actors for LA Casting, but I swear, you'll find stuff in it that's useful, too. Browse the archives, here.
• Internet flotsam And of course, I snark it up on Twitter, chit-chat on Facebook, post the odd video or quote to Tumblr, and bookmark the good stuff I find on my travels at StumbleUpon and delicious. If you like this sort of stuff, follow me in those places, I only post a fraction of what I find to Twitter and Facebook.

xxx
c

Photo of Arno J. McScruff housed on Flickr, where I also occasionally stick pixels.

Book review: Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin

I think I understand why people say they don't like a particular slice of culture, vampire fiction, for example, from the bookish point of view, or reggae, from a musical one, but it's always made me a bit sad.

By all means, bypass the crap, life is too short to read shitty science fiction, and the drive from your garage to the street is too long to listen to most Contemporary Country, but closing yourself off from all of it? That means you lose out on losing yourself in the far-out worlds of A Wrinkle in Time, one of the most enjoyable books from my childhood (and one I reread in adulthood) or singing along to Carrie Underwood's Sonny & Cher Show-era story song, Before He Cheats. So why would you do that?

I'm a shameless consumer of fine-quality "crap," by which I mean only "that which is not generally regarded as highbrow by anyone." I love Valley of the Dolls, The Brady Bunch, Showgirls and a slew of confectionary mid-century movies, not to mention my beloved Play Misty for Me. And really, I think my view makes more sense: is Take the Money and Run the "lesser" Woody Allen movie for being funnier, or am I really supposed to like Shadows and Fog more for its impenetrable artsiness?

I say roll with the finest in every genre and you can't go wrong! Balls-out comedy? Try Caddyshack or Blazing Saddles: well-written, well-acted and rollicking fun from beginning to end. Hot Western action? Take your pick, but I'd start with Shane or Deadwood (unless you're looking for campy, noirish Western, in which case it's Johnny Guitar all the way. There are great musicals (Singin' in the Rain), great chick flicks (Thelma & Louise), great horror films (Psycho), great melodramas (Gone with the Wind). There's even great porn, and if you don't believe me, you  haven't seen Deep Throat (but you should, unless you're really delicate).

I feel the same way about books, including celebrity tell-alls. Yeah, most of them are junky, but that just makes the good ones, I'm with the Band, Pamela Des Barres' super-dee-duper autobio chronicling her days on the Sunset Strip in groovy, rock-a-licious, '60s L.A., that much better.

This is my long-winded way of teeing up comedienne/actress Kathy Griffin's new memoir, ingeniously titled Official Book Club Selection, as the true slice of hilarious awesomeness it is. Okay, how awesome? It's I-read-the-whole-thing-on-my-Kindle-app-for-iPhone awesome! It's "I laughed out loud 25 times!" awesome. It's even well-written awesome. (Not that I think Griffin would be a bad writer, just that with everything she has going on, I figured there's no way she'd have time to write it. Maybe that's why she brought on Robert Abele to write it with her, uncredited up front, but credited front and center and in no uncertain terms in the acknowledgements. That, my friends, is the mark of a class act.)

I will confess that however prickly I may have found Kathy Griffin to be when I knew her at the Groundlings (her star was well on the rise during my tenure), she was always nothing but classy. She offered up her house for a mutual friend's memorial service, I'm not 100% certain she knew him well. And when I got my ass kicked to the curb and ran into her at a play elsewhere, she was the perfect combination of "That sucks" and matter-of-fact, allowing for bitterness but with a laugh, and always with compassion.

So yes, there's dish in this book. How could it have the Griffin imprimatur and not? But there is also tremendous heart and genuine humor, as well as a stunning example of the kind of tenacity and work ethic necessary to get from any old place to somewhere special.

I loved the hell out of this book; if you can tolerate the outré with your humor, I can't imagine that you wouldn't, too...

xxx
c

• Buy Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin on Amazon
• Visit Kathy Griffin's website

Image ©Random House or Kathy Griffin or someone else, but not me.

Yo! Disclosure! Links to the books in the post above are Amazon affiliate links. This means if you click on them and buy something, I receive an affiliate commission. Which I hope you do: it helps keep me in books to review. More on this disclosure stuff at publisher Michael Hyatt's excellent blog, from whence I lifted (and smooshed around a little) this boilerplate text.

Diving headlong into dread

Now that it's safely behind me, I can confess that I was not looking forward to my trip to Washington, D.C., last week.

I made my plans a few months ago, when I was still excited about the prospect of working at speaking, working at consulting, working at this thing I've been working at for the past couple of years, helping people wrap their heads around social media, for want of a better descriptor. I jumped at any chance to speak, and even more quickly if the trip included travel. And to D.C.? A place I hadn't seen since my eighth grade class trip...from Chicago...on a bus?

Yes, I would very much like to do this job.

Only there were some problems. I was aware of them from the get-go, just like I'm aware of all kinds of other warning signs I choose to fuzz out or otherwise overlook: the diminishing sense of return I got from consulting; the dimming enthusiasm I felt for various self-promotional endeavors; the increasing intake of alcohol on school nights.

Worse, there were the spikes of enthusiasm for things which pointed in the opposite direction, like increasingly non-marketing-oriented blog posts and newsletters. Or the odd, one-off personal-coach-y coaching session I was talked into (and secretly loved, and told no one about). Or my bright and shining moment of pure truth and beauty on the stage of the Bagdad in Portland. talking about poop and love.

So week after week, I found myself not re-working the presentation, but working some damned fine excuses. Exhaustion was a good one, as was my being ridiculously overcommitted, as was every procrastinator's favorite trump card, the holiday season. And then finally, in the new year, which I'd cleared out in anticipation of needing to close some loops, my personal life went into a tailspin and, well, you gotta deal with that.

I boarded that excellent airliner to D.C. with no small amount of dread, sweating out that first half-day in town. And then I made a decision: I might go down, but I'd give it my all before I did. Because if nothing else, there were people who had stuck their necks out to bring me in for this talk, even though it wasn't strictly inside my proven area of expertise. I went to bed Wednesday night thinking, "You will come up with the framework that ties this together, and you will tie it together the best that you can."

An interesting thing happens to me when I really and truly give myself over to an idea: it starts taking shape. To be fair, I'd had the talk in the back of my head for weeks; I knew where things didn't line up. And I'd had a couple of in-depth conversations with the organizers, so I knew what kind of help the attendees were going to be there looking for. Still, I went to bed with nothing and woke up, at 2am, with an idea. And because I had no pen and paper by the bed, I made myself feel my way to my friend Jared's office where my laptop lay sleeping, pulled up a text file and spewed out everything that had bubbled up. And then all day Thursday and most of the day Friday and very early in the morning Saturday, I did not sightsee or lounge about or cocktail it up with my peeps: I worked.

And lo, it worked. Ten or 12 or 15 hours of me and PowerPoint, me and Photoshop, me and Firefox later, it came together and helped connect the dots for people the way I'd hoped it would (and, from the sound of it, the way the organizers had, which was only slightly less important to me).

I learned a great deal this past week about work: both how I like to handle it and how I end up handling it when I don't handle it as I'd like. I'm both thrilled that I'm at a place where I know my stuff well enough to pull things together swiftly, and aggravated at my entrenched habits of procrastination. It's something I really want to look at this coming year (starting tomorrow! on Groundhog Day!).

I also learned that sometimes, as I did when I signed on to help Cliff Atkinson with the first L.A. Presentation Camp, sometimes you have to let that crazy, impulsive side of you jump out and say "YES!" even when the prudent side of you might not. That is stretching of the good type: you, taking what you do to the next level. After which you're free to enjoy the clean air and fine views on this new plateau, or take your snapshot for posterity and head back down the hill (or to another hill entirely).

The world will never want for cocksucking boulders to push or motherfucking hills to push them up. That is what the world is made of: cocksucking boulders and motherfucking hills.

May you put your shoulder to the right ones this year; may you enjoy the view at the top, and everything in between...

xxx
c

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

Referral Friday: Virgin America

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!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFfcqQb1Vf4&w=475&h=381]

I got a little carried away by my newfound love for Sir Richard Branson's winged brainchild.

On my second trip in as many weeks, I plugged in the laptop, plunked down $12.50 for some in-flight WiFi and did a little screencast plug for the greatest thing to happen to commercial aviation since the 747 Lounge. Roughly five minutes; if you can't see it on your screen, you can view it on the YouTube.

xxx
c

Poetry Thursday: The core of tenderness

An old acting teacher
used to say,
"The root of the thing
is never the thing itself."

Easy enough to understand
on its surface
with its hints
about what lies beneath,
undulating
or roiling
or pulsing
or cringing,
depending on gender
and other matters
of context.

Harder to remember
in the moment
when the roiling
is on the surface
covering up
the weeping
or vice
versa.

Sometimes I think
pain is just
a sticky note for feelings,
"Remember this
along with the milk
and the life plans
and all that other pokey
you fell into believing
is the Thing Itself.
And don't forget it next time,
asshole."

We could remember love
just as readily
just not
as easily.

I promise you this:
from the moment
I woke up
on that hospital bed
I have moved toward the love
and only the love
because in the end,
there is nothing else
worth moving for.

A heart may break
in places you cannot see
behind screens devised
for a thousand types
of modesty

But what pours out
is always love
no matter how hard
the heart may seem.

xxx
c

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