Lingering lovingly on failure

When does a boon become a curse?

A trick question, of course: as any good Buddhist will tell you, a "boon" is just a thing, a fulcrum upon which other things can tilt one way or another. Like the Chinese Farmer story that's haunted me since I first heard of it, what is your blessing is your curse, and vice versa.

For example, this ten-year stretch of my life:

I hate my job in advertising (curse) but it's paid me well enough to transition to something I love (blessing), which turns out to be acting (curse). I've already moved to the #2 market for industry work (blessing), but an inability to book lucrative freelance ad work locally (curse) forces me to take a Stupid Day Job at one-fifth the wages I'd been earning as an ad ho (curse).

During the course of this job, I learn humility (blessing) but become so bored (curse) that I teach myself rudimentary skills in graphic design (blessing), which gives me an "in" at a highly-respected theater company (blessing).

Lacking sufficient acting proficiency, however, I grow increasingly desperate for decent roles (curse), the pursuit of which finally causes me to renege on a promise to my then-boyfriend, who subsequently dumps me (curse), exacerbating my health issues by masking the Crohn's onset I'm unwittingly undergoing as garden-variety, heartbreak-induced weight loss (curse), leading to months of pain and hospitalization (curse) but paving the way for a bloody epiphany (blessing, although technically, more of an E-ticket ride) that changes the way I look at the world forever (blessing).

You can just as easily go through the previous three grafs swapping out "curse" for "blessing," of course. Even the epiphany itself, which was absolutely the most fabulous 10 - 20 seconds of my life to date, could be looked at as a curse, no less because it made all other highs pale by comparison than because it was a wake-up bell that could not be un-rung.

My point, and I do have one, is this: looking at the why and how of things, keeping score, even a certain amount of anguish and teeth-gnashing, is not only more compelling to me, but in a lot of ways, it's more fruitful. FOR ME. My blessings, seeing the potential in things, minute and obsessive analysis of my turns in the road, are my curse.

I love figuring things out; I love inhaling scads of information, putting it through whatever filters, then puzzling out how it fits together. And then? I like moving on. I'm not completely obsessive, but yeah, as my shrink has confirmed, I'm on the spectrum. Which is one of the reasons why I pay more attention to what I haven't done than what I have, to how I fell short rather than succeeded, or however I'm phrasing it in the glass-half-empty way I do.

Are there other reasons? Yes: I'm nuts! And a perfectionist! My compass, she is effed up, probably irretrievably so. I am so messed up and it is so deeply ingrained that the best I will ever do is getting so smart about it that I can, to paraphrase my first-shrink-slash-astrologer, learn to do an end-run around my own nonsense so quickly that it will seem like I am not mightily effed up, that I may even get to (mostly) live the life of someone who is not mightily effed up. You know, that whole lounging-with-attitude ability that normal people have. This doesn't mean I should not keep trying, nor that I should allow myself to use me as a punching bag. Not at all. A lot of what I try to make public is my process around this change, around seeing what's messed up and figuring out ways of straightening it, untangling it, learning to put it aside where appropriate.

Which is what brings me to Teddelia. Teddelia has been my personal teddy bear since I was small enough that she was big (in real life, she stands roughly 8" high, whereas I am a towering 62"). Not continuously, she had many years of rest while the blankets Bunny stepped in, but she came out of retirement in my late 30s, during my relationship with The Youngster; we had a thing about using inanimate objects to act out a lot of drama we couldn't bear to handle (no pun intended) ourselves.

The relationship ended (cf. reneging incident, above), but my thing for Teddelia stayed strong. She'll get a breather for long stretches, but when the going gets tough, as it inevitably does, she hops onto my belly and we have ourselves a little discussion. If you can call it that. Usually, she stares me down or makes me laugh or does something else that the soft, fuzzy, oft-ignored, occasionally-steamrolled part of me needs to do to get the hard-ass's attention. And after the illumination and debriefing, we snuggle up with a book or a repeat viewing of Jackie Brown or some Rohmer flick and put the day to bed.

And the talking to myself is not limited to the times Teddelia is handy. One of my newer habits is to call myself out on my own shit, out loud. I'll make a mistake, say, letting the milk boil over, which happens far more than you'd think, given how many half-gallons of yogurt I've made over the past eight years.

Me (leaping from chair at the sound of the milk sizzling as it hits the range): @#$%! Idiot! I can't believe you did it AGAIN.

Other Me (gently-but-firmly, as she chases after self-flagellating Me): Hey hey hey hey hey, that's not how we talk about our friend, Colleen!

Me (irritated, but chastened, dealing with burners, sponges, etc.): Sorry. I know. Goddammit. Sorry.

Fin. Or sort of. It's a process, right? Sometimes there's more cursing; sometimes the chastening is (almost) as mean as the self-flagellating. But it's getting better. It's a process.

This is only the beginning of unpacking my last two posts on being annoyed with myself for not being able to get my work done properly, and of my problems with finding my "off" switch. I felt it was the most important part to bring to light, though, because if you jump on this blog at any given point, especially a Monday point when the heavy-duty essays tend to break, it's easy to think that all I do is walk around beating the crap out of myself for not fulfilling unreasonable promises to myself. There's far more to examine around the word "unreasonable," for starters, my decision-making process for discernment as well as load capacity. In case I don't get around to it immediately, yes, I am and have been addressing what should or shouldn't make the cut based on what I actually want, as well as what's humanly possible to do.

But if I "linger lovingly upon my failures," to paraphrase Dan Owen, know that it's as much about the pleasure and enjoyment I get from figuring shit out and bringing it to light, about figuring this shit out so I can do that shit differently, even if I fail at it as well, as it is some perverted desire to attack myself. I mean, yeah, there's probably some of that, and I'm definitely not a natural horn-tooter, but I absolutely celebrate the gains.

Maybe not as much as I "should." Almost definitely not in front of you. But to myself and to intimates, furry and other. Even out loud, sometimes.

xxx
c

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

Frrrrriday Rrrrround-up!

An end-of-weekly roundup collecting fffffive of the fffffantabulous things I find stumbling around the web during the week here, but which I post on one of the many other Internet outlets I stop by (or tweet at) during my travels. More about the genesis here.

I will never stop loving Ira Glass. [Facebook-ed]

Want to get your hands dirty and change the world? Join a crop mob. [delicious-ed, via @BeckyMcCray]

Revenge is a dish best served cold, with a Gatsby lecture. [Tumbld, via The Rumpus]

More on being lost, with panache!, from the big-hearted Penelope Trunk. [Google-Reader-ed]

xxx
c

P.S. It finally struck me that I could use one of the lovely images I've found in my travels rather than the same old cowboy photo. So there you go, and this week, just the four (other) link-links. But since I feel funny this first time out, not having five, here's a nice interview about my reading habits. Thanks, Brenda, for interviewing me, and thank you thank you thank you, dearest Jodi for hooking us all up via your wonderful Women's Business Socials. No more snotty ladies!

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

Poetry Thursday: Eno in the trees

Your shit
didn't break
all at once
or in order,
you could argue
that it never broke
at all,
that you were just you,
fixing yourself
the best way you knew how,
splinting your own leg
up there on the mountain,
miles and miles
from a trained professional.

So go.
Roll out
a doughy stretch
of time
before you,
as much as you can gather at once,
then play with it,
in it,
around it.

Frolic in the sea
take long drives through the country
do your deep knee bends
your yoga
your tai chi
and walk the hills,
with Hank Williams
with Joe Frank
with Brian Eno
with nothing at all,
and as many trees
as possible.

Eat real food.
Drink good water.
Follow the light
around the house,
like a cat,
from one patch
to another. 
Talk to fellow
travelers;
let them fall in step
with you
and peel off
where they must.
It will be you
and only you
in the end,
anyway.

Let go
of your notions
of time,
you have all the time
in the world,
and none of it
belongs to you
anyway.

You are a perfect mess
a beloved clutch of cells
and electricity,
a brain in need of a heart,
a heart in need of room.

Here it is:
all the room you need,
right here.

Do you see?

xxx
c

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

Video Vednesday: To-read/Amazon Wishlist hack

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=14324515&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0

(on an iPhone/iPad/non-Flash-friendly device? Click here to watch on Vimeo, I think.)

In an effort to wrangle my ever-growing list of books I'd like to read, I've played with everything from hard-copy lists in pocket notebooks to Evernote, with a thousand .txt files in between.

My ideal list is:

1. easiest to use on my computer (since I'm here most of the time)
2. portable, so I can consult it when I find myself in an indie or used bookstore, grappling with overwhelm
3. digital (because my handwriting sucks, and because it is easier to copy stuff digitally)
4. updatable from multiple devices (i.e., is something I can sync between a handheld device and my computer, which is technically portable but which is such a hassle to haul around, I avoid it where I can)
5. provides a way to sort by genre, author, etc
6. contains a reminder of how I came to find this book (i.e., reco) and/or other context

The hack I describe in the video uses Amazon's Wishlist function and their browser add-on, the Universal Wishlist tool. It's easiest to describe how easy it is by showing it (hence, the video), but basically, you plug the title of the book you like and "Amazon" into your browser's search field, then click on the inevitable Amazon link that comes up. Instead of adding to your wishlist then and there, you click on the Universal Wishlist add-on, which brings up a little dialogue box that includes a space for comments. In this comments field, you add whatever context and/or reco reminders you like.

This is really a few steps away from my ideal book-saving tool. I'm hoping that someone makes my perfect iPhone app: one that would let me add context or other note, include a cover graphic, sort, sync and work offline. This way, I do have a list of books I can consult in the store, but it's dependent on network coverage, plus I have no access to my notes. I used text lists for a long time, but I realized at some point that I remember things visually, and text leaves out too much information to be helpful.

As always, comments are appreciated, I'm increasingly interested in refining my quickie-video skills, as evidence points to a not-small chunk of the population who, for some completely baffling-to-me reason, enjoy getting their information via video. (And this is not a fishing expedition for compliments, I know that there's something nice about getting to know the bloggers you "know" via video and audio as well as text; it's just that when it comes to learning stuff, I find myself impatient with even the best video screencasts, for the most part.)

Oh, and if my perfect book-collecting iPhone app exists already, PLEASE let me know. I'm tempted to partner with someone to build one, but I'd be a sad sack liar if I added a big project like that to my plate right now.

xxx
c

The crazy lady cops to the crazy

Dan Owen loves it when I write about my workaholism.

So this is going to be a banner week for Dan, something I'm happy to give him, for all he gives back via his thoughtful comments, and who knows? Maybe, just maybe, if I can chip away at some scaly mass getting in the way of me and a foothold, maybe it will be a banner week for me, too. Because for as trenchant as my workaholism is, and for as much as many 12-steppers would insist that obviously, I'm getting something out of it or I wouldn't be doing it, I insist, INSIST, I tell you!, that there is a way out of this to a happier me. To someone who, it is true, enjoys work with perhaps more fervor than many, and still to the exclusion of many things, but not to the point of obsession.

There is always, usually, a way out of here. It's more likely that there may not be one way out of here, if you're talking tactics, but the central way is most certainly some shift in thought. For example, my way of feeling, my approach to the kind of work I was interested in doing too much of, changed in pretty much an instant, during my hospital-bed epiphany (which I spoke about at last year's Ignite). But while there have been other shifts in realization that took longer, my transition from being okay with applying my stupid workaholic engine to writing ads for The Man to not being okay with it, for example, the shift to new work itself, or a new way of being, or a new set of habits, has always taken a while. Rome wasn't re-engineered in a day.

Both Dan and Piper bring up one critical component of this re-engineering: checking the yardstick by which I'm measuring accomplishment. Fair enough. I'd say I'm aware of the disconnect between my idea of reasonable and that of someone who is, well, reasonable. This year, I had my annual goals list vetted by a compassionate but critically-thinking friend; last year, I had my then-coach do the honors (who herself has a touch of the workaholism, and who declared my original plan unrealistic). This year's list required less retooling for reality than last year's, and so far, I'm also much more on track than I was last year, both of which items I'm calling progress.

I believe the real progress lies in two things: first, my willingness to openly cop to this as something that's not working and that I want to change, then trying stuff that stands a reasonable chance of working. While I've been copping openly here on the blog for years now, there are years and years (and years, decades!) before then where I not only denied it, if you brought it up to me, I'd have told you that was insane. My father was a workaholic; I knew what workaholism looked like.¹

Second, I am objectively happier. Sure, there are many contributing factors, including the epiphany, but there are some key differences that point to my being able to back off this work b.s. now and then and have fun: for starters, a group of women friends, which I never had before, and not only choosing to be with them, but initiating many of the get-togethers. My old modus operandi was just to glom onto whatever friends my S.O. of the moment had, letting him initiate the scheduling. Now I cultivate relationships, and enjoy the tending of them, maybe not to the extent an extrovert would, but I'm not an extrovert! The flip side of this is that I also grab "me" time whenever the hell I feel like it, something I never felt entitled to do before. So, progress!

Ongoing visualization of a five-pound bag and the amount of shit that will fit remains a challenge, though. Piper's method for handling this is intriguing, but feels effortful to me. I've timed things, how long it takes to write a post, a newsletter, to clean the kitchen, to run to the post office, to no avail. The times are too variable. Slightly better has been to play with time allotments for things, as several commenters suggested. This has been marginally more helpful, but man, I have a capacity for denial even with this: I'll completely overlook the physical drain something that's emotionally exhausting will take, and end up with stupid-long lists.

What it boils down to is something that I really hate to look at, but is exactly what Dan seems to suggest is inevitable: what do I really want to do? Because that, I'll manage to get done. I take care of what I have to, eating and sleeping, keeping body and soul together, and what I "have to", this blog, mostly, and connecting with people I'm interested in about the topics I'm interested in. Like most smokers, I quit smoking when I wanted to, and not a moment sooner. I went on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet when the choice was between that or hard-core meds with deleterious long-term effects, not months before, when I was just uncomfortable.

These books I say I want to write? When I really want to, by this logic, I will write them. I'll quit writing so much here, and start writing more there. Maybe my refusal to let go of this idea of me writing a collection of essays on one theme is just another form of clutter. I've been cautiously, cautiously watching Hoarders lately, as they put up new episodes, and it's a little scary, seeing the outward manifestation of interior chaos and clinging. I recognize myself on that OCD spectrum, and fully cop to both my blessing/curse of seeing potential in goddamn everything and my reluctance to call chapters closed. Part of why I've been stripping away, stripping away, stripping away mercilessly (albeit slowly) at my physical and digital clutter issue is that I recognize this inability to make decisions about stuff-stuff is adversely affecting my ability to make decisions about life-stuff: there's a side of me that's still seven, and that wants to live in four different cities (at once!), with five different men, or none, as a ballerina/shrink/college professor/Mike Royko/hobo. Okay, that's an exaggeration: I never wanted to be a ballerina.

It's crazy-making, the ability to see potential in things. It leads to lives full of crap and devoid of a central thing, okay, maybe two, that really matter(s).² I know more about this than I wish I did right now, I've been on both ends of this problem. Maybe I'm delusional, thinking that my continued pursuit of a solution to the problem is anything more than a workaholic cat chasing its own tail. Maybe I should cut my losses, find the lowest-common-denominator workaround to the problem, workaholics anonymous, which does exist, and sign myself up.³

One final thought (for now) on this mishegoss: while I'm happy to have read 52 books in less than 52 weeks, and while I almost certainly would have been a bit disappointed had I made it to the end of 52 weeks without having read 52 books, I really am happiest that I've managed to build reading back into my life. Really and truly. I am happy to be reading books again, because I enjoy it. I am happy to be reading them still, though I've more than fulfilled my "obligation" to myself, and I expect to continue enjoying reading far, far beyond these 52 books and however many weeks.

I'm proudest, however, that I've been able to stop reading books I didn't want to finish, after 10 pages, 50 pages, even 100 pages. That I didn't for a moment think "OMG I HAVE 100pp INVESTED I CANNOT STOP NOW AIIIYYYIIII!!!1!!" I am reading what I like, because I like it, that is healthy, I think, but it was my crazy-ass, OCD-oriented mindset that got me back to this nice place of being.

That, I think, is not crazy at all. Or maybe it's just crazy in the "good" way.

xxx
c

¹I didn't, of course, any more than I knew what Crohn's looked like. My workaholism presented much differently than my father's did, just as my Crohn's presented differently. He was all Joe C-Suite and shallow conversations and diarrhea! I was all starving-artiste and meaningful dialogues and constipation! COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. (Not.)

²Here's how crazy-making it is: when I watch Hoarders, I want to train as a professional organizer who specializes in compulsive hoarding disorders!

³By the way, if anyone has experience with this organization, I'd be very interested to hear about it. And yeah, I get the ano

Image by moffoys via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license. From this "Crazy Frog" Filckr set, which will almost certainly make you laugh, which is good for you whether you're a workaholic or total layabout.

Sticking a fork in it, Mister Rogers-style

While I've spent most of what I'm coming to call my "Sabbatical from Sabbatical" holed up alone, I have made occasional runs back into L.A. for various types of interpersonal reinforcements.

A Biznik meetup. Some Nei Kung lessons, to get a particularly complex bonus-extra move down pat, successfully, fingers crossed.

And, of course, for shrinkage. I've taken many hiatuses from shrinkage over the years, but I've found that the monthly tune-up version of ongoing shrinkage really works for me. Maybe if I can get my farkakte compass working 100%, I'll be able to forgo those; maybe finances will force my hand at some point, regardless. But for now, I compile a little GTD-style "@shrink" agenda, slot it full of stuff, then haul my ass in to get the crazy straightened, kind of like a Brazilian blowout for my psyche.

We're running up against a really trenchant issue now, or maybe it's a tangled web of stuff that presents as a trenchant issue: my workaholism. Nothing I haven't discussed here before, but I'm starting to look at it a little differently, a little more tactically. One huge step forward for me was declaring this very sabbatical (although not the Sabbatical from Sabbatical). Granted, I've been declaring it incrementally, two weeks in December became a quarter in early January, and I keep pushing the edges of it outward as much as I can.

Within those borders, though, I've been operating with mixed results. I'm happy with the amount of reading I'm doing now, both for fun and edification. I've gotten much better about spending time with friends (I think, maybe I should check with them.) I'm spending more time with food prep and on exercise, which keeps me from hurling myself at drive-thru windows most of the time (I confess, to you and the Specter of Wayne, to my enduring love of those goddamn Jack-in-the-Box, 2-for-99¢ tacos). I'm getting to bed earlier, so I'm getting more rest.

On the other hand, I seem to be having trouble finding the "off" switch for my days. Part of it is that I have not been good about earmarking an entire one per seven for rest, so I steal time during my weekdays, which pushes work into the weekends, which creates a vicious circle. The other part is that, and I cannot believe that I'm saying this at almost-50, I've never found the "off" switch for each individual day. From the time I called my time my own, I've just worked when work needed to get done. Justified or not (and believe me, most of it is NOT), when you work in advertising, you work, period.¹ Once I escaped, I felt like I couldn't stop working, because I didn't have a foothold in anything else yet. This drove my ex-husband, The Chief Atheist, batshit-crazy, probably rightly. During most of our recreational time I was less a companion than I was an angry, grudging millstone. But it got me out of writing ads for money into acting in them for money, and helped me pick up all these mad, 21st-century skillz along the way.

Besides, a lot of the time, I'd goof off here and there during the day, then work away all night. I'd get my 12-hour day in, just at weird times. I can't do that anymore; these days, I feel the air coming out of the balloon at around 6:30 or 7, and there's no second wind forthcoming.

So I'm looking for hacks. Soliciting hacks! Or ideas, solutions, tricks, whatever you want to call them, as long as they've worked for you. They can be front-end hacks, i.e., things that I could do in the earlier part of the day, to ensure that I get my plate cleared off and feel okay stopping at a reasonable hour.

But I'm especially interested in "Mister Rogers" hacks: putting on play clothes at the end of the day to signal it's time to stop working. That kind of thing. They can be treats, I love treats!, but they should not be fatty, as I'm trying to reduce a bit, and they should not be alcohol. I already know how to use that as a shut-off valve.

What does one do to mark the end of the day? WWMRD, What would Mister Rogers do?

Or is that all made-up, PBS, fairy-tale stuff?

xxx c

¹This has only gotten worse with time and the splintering media landscape, by the way. At least I could take time off when I was away on location, during production. These poor people now? Ugh.

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

Frrrrriday Rrrrroundup! #19

An end-of-weekly roundup collecting fffffive of the fffffantabulous things I find stumbling around the web during the week here, but which I post on one of the many other Internet outlets I stop by (or tweet at) during my travels. More about the genesis here.

What can you make with an iPad? Only the world's coolest cover of "Eye of the Tiger." [Facebook-ed, via daring fireball]

If you're one of those seven people who reads here because you actually dig and want to learn more about communicating, you might enjoy this excellent round-up of marketing and copywriting books. [delicious-ed]

Speaking of tigers, a particular Chinese one has its eye on my pal Chris Guillebeau's upcoming book. [Flickr-faved]

"Believe me, no one likes to read blog posts about people who are smug about how they have solved all the problems of the world. I mean, look, you either are winning a Nobel Prize or you do not have any answers." This, and so much more on Putting It Out There, is why I love Penelope Trunk.  [Tumbld]

Danny Miller's fantabulous (with a twist!) tribute to the late Patricia Neal. [Google-Reader-ed]

xxx
c

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

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Video Vednesday: 52 books! 52 books! (and a hack)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnZuuVnO7o0&w=480&h=385]

I did it!

Earlier this week, I finished reading my 52^nd book for the year. As I confess in the video above, as well as on the goal-tracking page itself, I started several of these books before 2010, some well before, which is one of the reasons I decided to take on this reading thing as a goal. Tired of unfinished business, I was. It's inevitable when Overly-Busy Syndrome collides with Eyes-Bigger-Than-Stomach Disease; there are too many things you want to read, and always new ones, and never enough time. (Now, when I put down a book unfinished, I do it consciously, this book is not for me, and I'm not going to read any more of it. Next!)

The video is especially blathery considering I am sharing the world's simplest how-to. I seem to be constitutionally incapable of creating an improvised video shorter than 2 minutes. On the other hand, I'm so damned excited about finishing 52 books in less than a year, something I'm sure I haven't done since my 20s, or maybe even college, that I'm giving myself a pass. This ONCE. Then, back to it.

Here's the trick, written-out-style, for my fellow non-video types:

At some point before I start my daily reading (40pp!), I decide on a natural stopping point around 40pp out, sometimes a little shorter, sometimes a little longer, depending on the book and my mood. Then I place a sticky note on that page, sticking up about 1/4", so that I know when it's time to stop.

I find this helps me let go of page count (as much as a nutcase obsessive type can) and focus on the book itself. Before, when I used other methods, I got all caught up in my underwear: if I used my right index finger, it got uncomfortable; if I used a second bookmark, it tended to lift the last few pages before my stopping point, which took me out of reading; and if I used my brain, well, we won't go there. Very ugly.

Hopefully, this little hack will be of use to you. If not, well, you can just congratulate me on (finally) doing the right thing again. Woo-hoo, indeed!

xxx
c

P.S. The book I'm holding up is Influence, Robert Cialdini's classic work on persuasion, which I'll be reviewing soon. As I mention in the video, I'd picked it up at a book sale right before I heard Jonathan Fields talk about it on his segment of the World-Changing Writing Workshop. It's every bit as much of a must-read as Jonathan said, and it's fascinating and FUN to read, as well. So there you go. Stay tuned!

Book review: My Misspent Youth

I came to Meghan Daum's writing backwards, or sideways, or at least, highly out of order, my fault, entirely.

While she was living in Manhattan, getting published in The New Yorker, I was going off the deep end in Los Angeles, and had let my subscription lapse. By the time she'd moved to Los Angeles and landed her gig as a columnist for the L.A. Times, I was obsessed with moving to hicksville, and (again), had let my subscription lapse. (Well, the weekday one, anyway.)

Finally, this spring, I spied an interview with Daum and another writer in a publication I still subscribe to, the excellent and ever-lively New York magazine. Said piece was clearly part of a P.R. push to accompany the birthing of her latest book; in a stroke of something-or-other, someone had gotten the idea to have Daum and another lady author interviewed together by a third lady author. Oh, the lady authors!

I am leery of stunts in general, as they bring up the phantom stench of all the sleazy things I've done in the name of advertising, and this particular stunt was, well, stunty. But the oddest thing happened. Quietly, gracefully, in the midst of this flack-driven circus act, Daum somehow managed to rise above it all and assert her brilliance, using nothing more than her extraordinary gift with words and her non-crazy perspective.

This piqued my interest, onto the to-read list she went.

Her second book, a novel, turned up first. It is smart and funny, with some sharp characterizations and surprising plot twists. Then her most recent book popped into view, literally, on the same shelf my now-friend Brooks' did. It's a quite-nice memoir on the longing for roots and the inevitable discovery that there's no goddamn "there" there, something I not only relate to, but could write a book on myself.

Finally, on a recent Bart's run, My Misspent Youth appeared before me. It is Daum's first book, a collection of essays from her salad days as a young writer and editor living in New York, and it blew my doors off. All of a sudden, or rather, bit by bit, with strings of long-dormant nerve cells lighting up like Christmas lights, the references to Joan Didion made sense. The superficial similarity, yes, the stories are New York-centric, involving dreams of living the life of a Manhattanite as much as her subsequent (and slightly more grim) reality.

The real Didion-like comparison goes much, much deeper, though. Because, like Didion's for a certain kind of (crazy) person, Daum's is the kind of writing you find by accident that makes you believe in Divine intervention. There you are, living your stupid life, a little despondent and starting to lose it because really, really there is no one out there but you thinking these crazy thoughts, who is disturbed by things other people seem to find completely normal, when suddenly, there is this gift from an angel, these batches of words that whisper, "No, no, you're fine, and see? Here's the curtain, and there's the funny little man madly pulling levers behind it." This is writing that's startling and clear and still deeply, deeply human. There is horror nestled in there, but it's always flanked by humor, as it's supposed to be. There is no coyness, no winking, no pandering; there is no muddiness, no equivocating, no pedantry. There is just sharp, clear insight and humanity channeled onto every page. AND HUMOR. Did I mention humor?

It's extraordinary. And for those of us who feel a little crazy most of the time, it might be very comforting, as well.

If you are not a little crazy, you might not get the big deal. You might be shocked, even offended, by a few of the pieces. Trust me, if you want to be a writer, those are the ones you should read twice. (Ira Glass very rightly kept a copy of Daum's essay "Variations on Grief" handy for years, to hand out to people inquiring as to who the strong, new voices were these days.) The truth is not comfortable, but it is the truth, and if you can open your heart to it, amazing things start to happen.

So, yes, enjoy the memoir. Read the novel on the beach during what's left of this summer. But me, I'd start with My Misspent Youth, and carve out the time to read it properly, slowly. It is a wonder of a book.

xxx
c

• Buy My Misspent Youth by Meghan Daum on Amazon
• Visit Meghan Daum's website
• Ass-kicker ★★★★★ interview with Daum and Joan Didion

Photo of Meghan Daum by Laura Kleinhenz.

Disclosure! Links to the book(s) in the above post are Amazon affiliate links. This means if you click on them and buy something, I receive an affiliate commission. Which I hope you do: while small, 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.

What's wrong with me?

The proof that I sat my ass in a tub of awesome this August continues to mount: this morning, at coffee, one of my new friends, photographer by trade, semi-retired layabout by choice, and all-around fascinating fellow Virgo a few miles down the road (both literally and metaphorically), offered to tell me what was wrong with me, woo-woo-style. (What? Some of the witchiest people I know walk among us as straights.)

A modest titter of horror rippled around the table when he made the suggestion, and I'm pretty sure there was a second wave when I jumped at it. (Although that could have been Judge Colleen kicking in. It's been known to happen.) Why don't you tell her what's right with her?

His reply, My superpower only works one way, was delicious. But mine was the reason I was really interested: What's wrong? makes a great to-do list.

I'm kidding, but I'm not. Because while I'm all for knowing your strengths, I read the book, and I've had various other witchy people give me various other witchy kinds of readings for the same reason, my bottom line with all this self-improvement stuff is illumination of dark corners and assistive devices for finding blind spots. I get what I'm good at, for the most part, enough to know where to spend my time getting better at it. And I'm getting better at seeing what trips me up. So I see the illumination of problems or flaws or "faults" just as advanced instruction on the finer points of the machinery.

I can fly; now I want my instrument license.

xxx
c

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

Frrrrriday Rrrrroundup! #18

An end-of-weekly roundup collecting fffffive of the fffffantabulous things I find stumbling around the web during the week here, but which I post on one of the many other Internet outlets I stop by (or tweet at) during my travels. More about the genesis here.

By now, you've heard of workingman's hero, airline attendent Steven Slater, who told an a-hole customer where he could go, grabbed two beers from the galley and skedaddled via the inflatable emergency ramp. But have you heard the anthem? (Warning: contains swears! But you're used to that kind of thing around here!) [Facebook-ed, via daring fireball]

Mike Tyson has walked through the fire and has something to tell you about it. Not that he'd put it that way, he's actually been through the fire, you see. [delicious-ed, via Ben Casnocha]

How to be alone. [YouTube-d, via everybody everywhere]

Any veteran of the music biz who's still around and kicking and FUNNY knows a thing or two about a thing or two. Bob Lefsetz writes about all the smart things he knows, like the fame/artistry schism in music, and when it shifted, in his daily newsletter.  [Tumbld]

If I were still designing, I think I might just replace my landing page copy with this brilliant piece by Mike Monteiro on when, why and how you should purchase design services. [Tweeted]

xxx
c

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

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Poetry Thursday: More I Cannot Wish You

I am imagining
you a song:

it is the song of your dreams
if your dream
is to hear
Frank Loesser's
"More I Cannot Wish You"
sung by 
the perfect Irish baritone,
breaking here and there in places
because he's seen and heard it all,
or a virginal chorus
of earnest high school voices,
painfully on pitch
because they have seen none of it yet
but are impatient to.

Either way
I wish you the boon
of that gentle song,
all but forgotten
for want of dazzle
in the midst of a show
that crackled with it,
but the tune that carries
sweet truth the furthest:
that love is what matters most
even when
it is the hardest thing
to believe in.

So yea, though we swoon to drunken Sarah Brown
and her dream of bells,
and nod along with Adelaide's lament of fidelity
and cross our fingers for Sky Masterson and his sevens, 
and tap our feet as Nicely-Nicely
finds his personal Jesus,
we'd do well enough
to wish each other love
in all its shapes and guises,
and mostly,
to it showing up
today.

xxx
c

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

What's up & what's gone down :: August 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)

• August L.A. Biznik Happy Hour at Jerry's Famous (Wednesday, August 11; 5:30 - 8) TODAY! Co-hosted by my friend and colleague Heather Parlato, this is a really low-key, easy way to get out and meet some likeminded solopreneur and small biz types. Free, but join Biznik here first (which, hooray!, is also free). And this is my last one until October, as next month I'll be in Portland, speaking at...
• Ignite Portland 9 (Thursday, September 23, Bagdad Theatre, 5:30/door, 7pm start) Holy moly! I got accepted again! I guess they either liked last year's talk okay or forgot about it. Either way, I'll be serving up a new and delicious thingamabobby in five minutes and 20 unstoppable (literally!) slides in just over six weeks. If yer in town, come say "hi!"
• Your Actor MBA (available for pre-purchase now; episodes starting Labor Day) Holy crap on a cracker, did I ever have a good time talking Actor Mind Taffy with my friend, Bonnie Gillespie, and the talented bunch of people she and her people pulled together. This is my sight-unseen plug, for which I receive NOTHING. And have received NOTHING. Except a great afternoon of talking shop with smart talent, a couple of new acquaintances, and an orchid (which, sorry, Bon, I had to give away. I'm just no good with the delicate fucking flowers.)

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

• fear.less magazine (July 2010) Ishita Gupta's inspiring digital mag, downloadable as a free PDF file, is full of reasons BESIDES me to read it. But yeah, there'a a pretty great interview with me in it, which I mainly credit Ishita for. She is a dreamy, dreamy visionary, in all senses of the word(s).
• StoryWorthy podcast My new L.A.-storytelling-circuit pal, Christine Blackburn, had me on her new L.A. storytelling podcast to tell the story of the colorectal surgeon who fell so head-over-heels with me, he wanted to build me a new rectum. Sexy! And true!
• Coudal Partners Fresh Signals The fine folk at America's greatest mutual purveyor of links and groovy note-taking supplies put up with me and my freaky links to writing-related and totally random stuff for the entire month of July, then gave me a fab tour of HQ when I was in town. Thanks, Jim & Co.! And thanks, Alissa Walker, for recommending me! Hope I didn't shame anyone too much.
• The World-Changing Writing Workshop Pace & Kyeli invited me to teach one of the segments of their new-model online/tele-writing classes. And it kicked ass! Well, people said so, anyway, and I had a blast. I'm working my way through all the other segments now. Once I'm sure everything is copacetic, and if they offer a recorded version for sale, I will let you know! And you will buy it from me, and I will be rich! Rich! RICH! (Well, no, but as I very rarely recommend things for purchase, if I do, it would be super-nice if you did buy it through me.)
• Amazon (video) book review I'm playing around with these for now, but it's my intention to start creating some kind of review for every book I read, mainly, so that the book sticks in my head, and so that I keep myself honest reading it. This review is of a super-light read, Debbie Ford's The Best Year of Your Life, self-help, and fluffy self-help, to boot. Still, I got a few worthy things from it, and if you're the kinda-sorta person who enjoys video more than writing, you might like it. (Although honestly, if you are, I cannot imagine what you're doing on this wordy-ass blog.)

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 yours truly. 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

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

Urge to yammer

I've been housesitting for friends who live in a very quiet, very bucolic part of the state. It's been restful in many ways, most of which are probably obvious: no traffic, no city noises, cleaner air, singing birds, some of whom sound weirdly like my iPhone's alert noise, which tells you all you need to know about how often I get out of the city and into quiet.

What's been a bit surprising, and not a little alarming, has been discovering how much noise I'll generate to mitigate against all that glorious silence. After dark, for example, I tend to like having Netflix or Hulu on to keep me company, not a habit I'm particularly okay with, but my current policy on this kind of stuff is to slow down and observe rather than act out of the alarm and try skipping over to good habits. Because when I skip steps, nothing sticks.

But the other other (and far more disturbing) thing I've noticed is how often I catch myself talking out loud to nobody. I'll observe something silently, that it's getting dark, for example, and that I should shutter up the house for the evening, and then I'll say, "It's getting dark, I should shutter up the house for the evening." I mean, I will voice EXACTLY what I've just thought.¹

I'll ask my shrink and report back to you on that. In the meantime, here's what the wide gulf between all that quiet and all that chatter has also pointed out to me: how much quieter I've gotten around other people. Not in a being-shy or expressing-my-inner-introvert's way: in a listening way. In a being-okay-with-quiet way and a give-other-people-room way. I was raised to be really, really "on", in my family, the wittiest monkeys tended to get the prime resources. "Off" didn't happen unless I was off by myself (and believe me, I worked hard to get that "off" time.) The worst feeling I could have was to be around people and not feel comfortable enough either to talk (usually because I was either intimidated by their superior knowledge or their quicker monkey wit) or to let there be quiet (more complex, but obviously some deeper thing about safety).

These days, while there is still often the urge to natter on, to rush in and fill that abhorrent vacuum with yammering, just as often I'm cool with hanging. With letting other people natter on or, if they're interesting, of drawing them out with questions. And yeah, yeah, I know the whole thing about the most sparkling conversationalist being the one who shuts up and lets other people talk about themselves. In my early days of learning the networking thing, I tried to consciously apply that technique. Now, it's different; now, it's more of a genuine curiosity. Who are these people? What stuff do they know that I don't?

Or, if it's about me (and yeah, it still is, because I'm still a selfish, self-involved, terrified little hairball much of the time), then it feels good to be quiet and to note the feelings and impulses that float up: Wow, I'm getting really anxious and my breath is getting shallow; or Dang, I really want to tell this guy what an effing incorrect blowhard he is. More often than not, I've been happy to shut up and listen. Or, when I don't, to learn something from my not being able to.

If I have a point, and this is a baby idea, so I'm not sure that I do, it's that clutter takes many, many forms. And word-clutter (surprise!) is one of them. In the past, just as I've rushed in to buy more crap to fill empty spaces, I've filled empty air with words. Finally, I get the power of "empty" space, of quiet. Years after having it illustrated during countless power scenes in acting class (for a crash course, watch The Godfather, part I or II.) Decades after I first  tried (and failed, and failed, and failed) in silent meditation. Because the space is not empty: it's filled with silence.

Beautiful, powerful, completely whole, utterly terrifying silence.

xxx
c

¹If I'm in a playful mood, I'll add, "I know it is; I'm you." So yeah, I'm probably a little nuts. On the other hand, if you know you're a little nuts, perhaps you're less nuts than if you don't know. Or maybe there's just a little more hope for you. Or maybe you should just ease off the caffeine a bit.

Image by Bùi Linh Ngân via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Frrrrriday Rrrrroundup! (Political Edition) #17

An end-of-weekly roundup collecting fffffive of the fffffantabulous things I find stumbling around the web during the week here, but which I post on one of the many other Internet outlets I stop by (or tweet at) during my travels. More about the genesis here.

In case you don't live in California or spend any time on Twitter or Facebook or any other kind of news outlet, the scurrilous civil rights violation that is Proposition 8 was overturned by U.S. District Judge Vaughan Walker, my new personal hero. [Facebook-ed; bonus fave link: most hilarious/sad reactions]

Speaking of hilarious and sad, here are a bunch of actual reactions, measured! with science!, of dudes to styles of feminine comportment. [delicious-ed, via Jezebel]

As long as we're talking about stupid reactions to good things like personal freedom and agency, enjoy this hi-larious graph I found. [Tumbld]

And if you don't think you should concern yourself with personal freedoms and agency because you're not gay or you don't have ovaries, the late George Carlin has a rant for you. [ [YouTube-d, via everyone and his brother on Facebook]

Okay. I know I've already shared one video. But just so we don't end on a completely cranky political note, here's the happiest version of "Mrs. Robinson" evar. [YouTube-d, via Kristian Hoffman]

(Next week, I'll get back to posting goofy stuff. Probably. Maybe. Oh, who knows, right?)

xxx
c

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

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Poetry Thursday: On looking out over the valley

Have you seen the light
to the side of the house?
And have you seen
how it pulls each edge
of each leaf
of the agaves
into brilliant focus,
and casts shadows
in the folds of the
organ-pipe cactus
while it draws your eye
to the two shy flowers
blooming to one side?

And have you seen the light
on the bougainvillea
at the edge of the road
and on the lavender
to one side
and the soft, green sage
to the other
and on the million silvery spikes
of rosemary
just beyond?

Have you seen the light
on your hand
on your feet
on the gravel
on the asphalt
on the twisted wires
that seem to thread
from tree to tree
and through the haze,
on the softly sloping mountains
at the other edge
of the valley?

Yes, there are dishes
to be washed
and beds
to be made
and errands to be run
and to-do lists
to be done.
But they will be here
and this
will not.

Sit, if you can,
for a moment
and take in
what you can,
for now,
because you cannot
ever see enough of it
and because all of it
will change
in the blink of an eye.

Worrying the thread of longing

It's too bad that you can't be in two places at one time. Or three. Or twelve.

Each of them feels so right when I'm not there: Chicago looked good when I lived in New York; Los Angeles looked good when I lived in Chicago. Now that I'm here in Southern California, the segmenting just gets smaller, the beach looks dreamy when I live inland, but the further-inland entices, too.

But wait, even my tiny living space does not rule out restless longing. When I am at my desk, I wonder if it might not be better to write at the coffee shop, at the co-working space, at the dining-room table, just 1o feet away. And who says longing needs to be anchored in the real world, have you never watched a movie and wanted to crawl inside? I give you Tuscany and its very special sun, the holy Gilbert Triangle, and (irony alert) the Kansas of Dorothy Gale. (To be clear, while these places leave me cold, I am not immune, rather perversely, I know, Phoenix looks good to me when I'm watching the Mid-Century version of it in Hitchcock's Psycho.)

I've moved enough times to get that the problems you think you leave behind will jump into your luggage and follow you to your next destination like so many Manhattan bedbugs. What is the question, really, that's behind "Where do I want to live?" Is it really how do I want to live? Is that the Big Question that's at the root of all the questions, especially as I roll up on 5-0, or is it a subtle variation, how do I want to spend my time?

As I continue my casting-off of stuff, I'm finding the smallest bit of room and courage to look at some radically different ways of living out the back 40. So far, it's been equal measures asking for help and being open to serendipity, so hey, feel free to drop fantastic tools/books/what-have-you that have been helpful. Some context would be nice.

xxx c

P.S. For the record, I've had great success with The Artist's Way, Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life and Simple Abundance; I'm having ongoing good results, especially this year, with Your Best Year Yet. This time around, something finally clicked between me and Wishcraft, whose contents my friend Havi has long loved. I'll report back here once I've finished it and assimilated the results. (Which brings up an obvious to-do for the blog: create write-ups of each of these as I have for Move Your Stuff, and maybe a comparison grid of some kind.)

Screen cap of opening panorama from Psycho nabbed from the internets.

Book review: Walking on Water

Because, like you, I'm trapped in my own body with its own quirky patterns and assimilated buffet of experiences, I forget, perhaps like you, perhaps not, that not everyone is like me. That, for instance, there are people who dislike school and reading and even learning.

What is useful, then, is to have someone with better understanding, perspective and experience to unpack the whole "I Hate Learning" thing. What is unbelievably useful is when said person can, in the parlance of George Clinton, tear the roof off the motherfucker in the process, which is just what Derrick Jensen does in his compulsively readable, unapologetically critical book on learning as a radical act, Walking On Water: Reading, Writing and Revolution.

Jensen is a longtime writer and avid, almost zealous learner, both in the traditional sense (he's got two "legit" degrees) and the Emersonian one (he's done stretches as a beekeeper and a writing instructor of men pulling stretches). His belief is that no one hates learning, but almost everyone hates school, and that one follows the other because schools are set up not to help us learn, but to do the opposite: to turn off our brains, the better to turn us into docile implements of the industrial machine. He argues his case well, which is to say, both thoroughly and entertainingly, but the book is about much, much more. It's designed to wake you up from your slumber and reacquaint you with your birthright, that love of learning the teachers tried to bore out of you, as well as to give you the tools to write, write, write what has been locked up in your heart.

If the book soars in one particular place, it is here. Like many books on writing, it presents plenty of what I've come to learn are called "writing prompts," exercises that purport to unstick you long enough to get out of your head and onto the page. (They're not bulleted, so you have to look for them, but they're there.) Mostly what it has, though, are examples of people reclaiming their love of learning by getting in touch with their stories, and of changing their lives in the process. It is writing, and reading, and learning, which are inextricably intertwined with real writing, as revolution, and it is awesome and inspiring to behold.

I should mention that Walking On Water was recommended to me by Michelle Jones, the bundle of energy, heart and inspiration behind TEDxTacoma, who is easily one of my favorite ten people I've met over the past five years (and brother, I've met a LOT of people in these five years). Michelle's signature course at her former place of employment, University of Puget Sound, was called "Passion-Based Leadership;" among other things, she stressed the importance of modeling right behavior and using one's gifts to unbuckle the world from the leech-machine we've attached to it. Which is to say, this is a radical book; it is an Eat the Red Pill kind of book, and there is no going back once you've read it.

I think that's a good thing, and I can't imagine the kind of person who wouldn't love this book to pieces. Or rather, I can, but that's not a person I want to spend any time thinking about. Not right now. Not while there's a revolution to prepare for.

This, then, is my pitch: reading Walking On Water will not make you a better writer. No book will, and that's a big part of Jensen's point. To do it, you've got to do it, as all the great how-to books say, but to do it UP you've got to upend things. You need radical change.

So what this book will do is bring your attention to where you are currently surrendering your attention, and then ask you: Hey! Is this really where you want to be? It will inspire and yes, instruct you with some truly fundamental rules of the road. (Come on: the first five rules of writing are "Don't bore the reader"? That's radical shit, baby.) It will challenge you to examine yourself, and to begin the process of excavating that self, if you haven't already. Hell, it will challenge you to look at just about everything, and while that may initially upset you about a lot of things, it will ultimately help you find the joy in many more.

UPDATE: Just viewed this fantastic 3-minute clip of George Carlin doing a bad-ass, stand-up version of this same message. If you can't deal with a whole book just yet, start here. It's on Facebook, for now (which means you'll need to be logged in to view it.) As the original poster noted, it's a big rip on the Powers That Be, so who knows how long before someone finds some (bullsh*t) reason for taking it down. (Here it is on YouTube, too, again, for now.)

xxx
c

• Buy Walking on Water by Derrick Jensen on Amazon
• Visit Derrick Jensen's website

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.

The point of pointlessness

Thanks to that goddamn Yehuda Berg, I think I've figured out Reason #5 why I enjoy washing dishes.¹

The first reason, of course, or maybe not "of course," but "of course" to me at this point, having long ruminated on the topic, is the immediate satisfaction of accomplishment. Like a lot of people playing a long and fuzzy game, milestones are more like 100-milestones, and closure, period, is even rarer. Whereas with dishes, unless you're toiling at Satan's Eternal Sink at the Seventh Circle Café, eventually you're done, and the outside of "eventually" is usually less than an hour. (Thanksgiving/etc. take longer, but then, there are usually helpers, unless your friends and family are total shits.)

The second reason is brain-off time. (Walking is brain-off time, too, but you have to put on shoes and leave the house, which is not always convenient.) My brain often hurts from being pushed beyond capacity and reason. (I know, I know.) Dishes are guilt-free brain vacation, because I am still

The third reason is really a corollary of the second reason: you can do it while watching TV! Because, as Ole Golly cautioned her young charge, Harriet, TV should be "enjoyed" only in conjunction with another, equally dull thing, because together they make up one sort of entertaining thing. (Exceptions, notable for their true scarcity, as well as extreme non-boringness, include The Wire, Mad Men, and a handful of other offerings where looking away means really missing something.) Seriously. If you take nothing else away from this long-ass post, TV is far more enjoyable and watching it will leave you feeling far less woozy and hungover when consumed with a healthy portion of manual labor.

The fourth reason is clean dishes. Duh!

Which brings us to the fifth reason, a decidedly woowoo one, so beware, prompted by reading today's pithy missive from that goddamn Yehuda Berg: washing dishes makes other, more "important" stuff happen elsewhere.

Now. TGYB's own point about pointlessness is that concerted effort in one area or on one project does not always bear immediate and direct fruit: you pour yourself into a relationship that just will not work, only to find yourself in a subsequent one that does; you bust hump on a project that flops, only to have another magically fall in your lap.

There are almost endless, nuanced variations on this.

Sometimes trying a thing teaches you you're not very good at that thing, but allows you to inadvertently discover that you kick ass at something else. I'm thinking Jan Brady in that episode where she ends up discovering a knack for art, or my dad, who by his own admission was one of the world's worst copywriters, but who, in the course of trying to sell his crappy ads, discovered he was an amazing salesman.

Other times, the wheel moves around to someone else before cashing-in time: you work and work and work to make the world's greatest adhesive to no avail, but someone else discovers it kicks ass at sorta-kinda helping tiny yellow squares of paper temporarily stick to everything. Or you're Nicola Tesla, and you're just ahead of your time and kind of a sucky business person. Or you're a woman or other disenfranchised and oppressed soul, and your shit is just outright stolen, because it can be. (And speaking of advertising, hoo boy, notorious for that kind of thievery.)

Finally, or at least, finally for our purposes, there is the seriously woowoo notion that applying effort in one area has a hoodoo-voodoo effect in another. This is where skeptics start howling at stuff like feng shui and the Law of Attraction and their ilk. Which I get, believe me, especially because the mainstream is not the exclusive province of charlatans, hucksters, and idiots. Personally, I have huge problems with the Law of Attraction because the way it seems to get put out there is as a kind of cosmic shopping device: I want these things, ergo I will wish them into being. Which is messed up for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is entitlement. Bah. Don't get me started.

But when you look at it another way, the hoodoo-voodoo thing does make some sense in certain applications because it's establishing new and consistent behaviors, as well as facilitating change and creating new surroundings. For example, my kitchen falls in the Prosperity bagua, according to feng shui. Me cleaning the hell out of it, something I've been doing slowly and assiduously over the past six months, is not going to make me rich.²

However, me attending to something I've largely neglected for the past five years brings with it a whole host of salubrious effects that might conceivably affect my ability to make money, from feeling good about caring for myself to understanding that I can push a c*cksucking boulder up a motherf*cking hill, if I do it incrementally. Will two checks for $10,000 each show up in my mailbox ten days from now, the way they did the last time I finished de-gunking the tracks in my jalousie windows with cotton swabs? Doubtful. Will I come out of this exercise feeling freer and better able to make a move? Yes, because I've unloaded a bunch of crap, and have a concrete understanding of how much of the remaining crap I really need to get by. That facilitates a physical move, which is something I've been considering, whether to a place where I might lower expenses (and save money) or find new opportunities (to make money).

Besides, greasy kitchen is a bummer. Just is. And I am all about bummer-removal right now.

That goddamn Yehuda Berg made his point in just a handful of well-selected words, which is why he's that goddamn Yehuda Berg and I'm just the communicatrix. We are on the same page, though, the Yehuda and I. Energy is never lost, for good or for ill. (You'd better believe that when you put energy in the wrong place, it will come back and bite you in the ass down the road.)

So I try to stay alert, and to choose wisely. Mostly, though, I try not to worry as much about the point. The point will sort itself out later. Or is likely only visible from some further-out point.

Commit fully. Move forward. Take breaks. Trust.

xxx c

¹It's a term of endearment for the wily wizard who sneaks up on me EVERY TIME and zaps me with truths. Cf: #45 & 46; and this. ²Unless it is, in which case, whee! Drinks are on me! ³Although hey, if that happens, woohoo, and see #2, above.

Image by dno1967 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

If you like story-type stuff, you should check out my friend Christine's great new podcast, Storyworthy. I'm on this week's episode, "Hospitals," telling the story of the doctor who lovingly offered to build me a new rectum.

Frrrrriday Rrrrroundup! #16

An end-of-weekly roundup collecting fffffive of the fffffantabulous things I find stumbling around the web during the week here, but which I post on one of the many other Internet outlets I stop by (or tweet at) during my travels. More about the genesis here.

Flags of the nations, in food! (This one's for you, Jodi.) [Facebook-ed].

If you've wondered what this here Kickstarter thing is all about, look no further than Mr. Craig Mod's excellent writeup.   [delicious-ed]

Terry Richardson shoots Los Angeles. [Tumbld]

One of my fave small fries I met via the interwebs, doing an excellent impersonation of an adorable elf. [Flickr-faved]

And my favorite link from the past week as Coudal Guest Editor, my last: clueless idiot gives "gift" to his ex on her wedding day; Lizzie Skurnick tells him where he can put it.

xxx
c

P.S. Bonus extra link I found VIA Coudal: the world's greatest story involving a screenwriter, a prostitute and the law. So not what you think, it will blow your mind. (And even if it doesn't, the writing will.)

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

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