My name is Colleen Wainwright, a.k.a. “the communicatrix.”

• If you’re looking for my bio, go here.
• If you’re looking for my long-ass bio, go here.
• If you’re looking for where else I live on the web or how to contact me, go here.
  

This site is where I filter random intake through my off-kilter consciousness in an effort to be useful. And/or amusing (which, let’s face it, is sometimes more useful than being useful.)

So how is this crap potentially useful?

I wondered that myself for a long time. And since I hate not knowing things, I finally asked the people who might actually know: my readers. They are very smart, my readers—seriously, the comments on this site are often vastly superior to my own observations—and very nice, too. You are probably very nice if you are still reading this. There’s a way things work.

Anyway, from all the comments I got, I’ve distilled down a few reasons you might enjoy this site.

Some people connect with stories, not how-tos.

I wish I could remember the source—probably one of my genius commenters—but I read something somewhere about biographies being the best kind of self-help books. Damn, did that strike a chord with me. As a big reader/self-improvement nerd (I was blessed with plenty of room for it), I’m constantly seeking books that will help me become a less miserable human being. And there is a boatload of literature out there on self-improvement, but most of it is…um…less than 100% compelling.

Biographies, on the other hand, are usually written by fairly good writers about people who had a fair amount of obstacles to overcome. (Obstacles = compelling drama, a little lesson I didn’t learn until after I got out of the screenplay business, unfortunately.) So you learn at least as much reading good biographies as much as you do by reading self-help books, with the bonus-extra of not wanting to stab your eyes out with a fork from the horrible writing.

What I do here is put my life on display—not as an exercise in vanity, but as a kind of science project, albeit with more jokes and swearing than I remember from high school chemistry. The truth is—and you will see, I am kind of a stickler for the truth—I was a big, unhappy dumbass in a lot of ways for great swaths of my life. Now, miraculously, at 48, I am a pretty happy person who’s learned a bit along the way. Enough that I can examine what’s still a little wonky in a fruitful way, and share the exploration and discovery process with other interested parties. (That would be you, hopefully.)

Some places to start to see if this site rings your chimes…

• the short list of stories I’ve highlighted at the top of the page
• 21-Day Salutes™ (to see how digging deep on a single topic can be self-revelatory AND amusing)
• My year-end “100 things I learned” lists (if a more random approach is your thing)

Thanks for coming. I hope you enjoy my site. I hope you subscribe and tell your friends and they come and subscribe, and that it makes all of you happy, fulfilled, thin, incredibly good-looking and rich.

But mostly, I hope you will share your own journey—in the comments, via email, or in person someday.

Because when you come down to it, nobody ever laid on his deathbed and said, “I wish I hadn’t said that thing on Colleen’s blog…”

xxx
c

Updated 9/29/09.