While I’m still a relative newcomer to this conference stuff, I learned a lot during my first South by Southwest festival in ‘06, and a lot more than that since then.

Stuff like…come alone! And with an open mind—the better to let old stuff drizzle out and new stuff pour in. Make plans, but be prepared to toss them out the window. Set goals, but don’t be surprised if your ultimate takeaway is breathtakingly, stupendously, maddeningly different.

There are also some technical things to consider, like not showing up tired. Learning to listen to your body’s “no” over your head’s (or heart’s) yes. We may be energetic beings with bodies, but the bodies are no less real for that, and will punish you mightily if you choose to ignore them too long.

So took a page from my own book and carved out quiet time here & there. Like giving myself the unspeakable (for me) luxury of coming in the day before even the “soft start” of the festival on Friday. One extra night of ramping up and sleeping in, plus one delicious morning of quiet, leisurely breakfasting with an old SXSW friend from Germany. (Bonus extra: super-short line for getting my attendee badge.)

Also, compared to all but the dead, I took it relatively easy with the parties. I am not built for loud and crowded places; my vocal cords were shredded after that first night of shouting over amplified music blasting two feet from my ears. Three more nights of same didn’t help. And while we’re at it, it’s a bit on the noisy side in the old conference center.

Also-also, I slept in and opted out more. I probably averaged two panels per day, which is far, far less than I did two years ago, when I guess I equated sitting in panels and keynotes with getting my money’s worth. As my friend, Eric, pointed out, all the panels are available as podcasts after the fact, but never again will you get so many nerds happening in one place at one time. Well, not until next year, anyway.

What did I do with my time? I hung. In the halls of the conference center. In this hotbed of A-list bloggery (I know, I know) dubbed the BlogHaus. In bars, a deux or trois or maybe neuf. Over breakfast and lunch. At my first BarCamp. At a movie. On the ‘dillo. At the Whole Foods. On Twitter (yes, it can be a little scary hanging out there, too.)

Basically, I let my gut be my guide. And when it got overly nervous, I talked it down and walked through whatever imaginary fire it was edging away from. All in all, a pretty good five-day stretch for a hopeless introvert.

I did, however, eat crap. Worse, I drank beer: about as far as you can get from an SCD-legal beverage. I enjoyed BBQ (excellent pulled pork at Stubb’s, no matter what the cranks say), and I enjoyed it with two acquaintances freshly made just minutes before. (Thank you, lovely Rebecca! thank you, charming Steve! You guys were so gracious, I forgot what a fifth wheel I probably was that night.) I enjoyed fucking Rolos, for chrissakes, almost every day. Not sure what’s up with that, or the repeated trips to the lobby Starbucks one night for dark chocolate, shortbread cookies and a lemon bar. Even before I got sick, I wasn’t much of a bar-cookie type.

We’ll have to see if I get to skate on the gut infractions. There have been some nervous-making stabbing pains in the past 36 hours—never a good sign. I’m hoping it’s me being overtired, and that a weekend of sleep (and a few weeks of fanatical adherence) will get me back on track.

If not, well, I’ll deal with that, too. Life is too short for a whole lot of worry. Keep it loose. Keep it weird.

Oh—and for the record? It wasn’t Quentin Tarantino. Not unless he’s managed to replicate himself or teleport a white-haired version of himself 2000 miles.

Does that take away from the fantabulousness of me walking up to someone I’ve never met—someone I thought directed one of my 20 all-time favorite films—sticking out a hand, and telling him to quit following me around?

No. No, it does not.

Here’s me, dorky as ever. But maybe, thanks to SXSW, just a little bit braver…

xxx
c

UPDATE 03/15/08: I also posted about SXSWi more from a general networking perspective on The Marketing Mix blog. Included there are some links to other summaries of this year’s SXSWi, and a great comment from Kathy Sierra, who was a (terrific!) speaker at this year’s event.

Image of my blog card deconstructed © 2008 Hugh MacLeod.

TOPICS: Austin, communicatrix, SXSW, SXSW 2008, SXSW08, SXSWi.

I’m not a developer. (Oh, boy, am I not—more on that later.)

I’m not a gamer, animator, early adopter, Mac fanboy, social network guru, internet celebrity or famous author/change agent/superstah with a new book to shill.

But here’s the dirty little secret of the South by Southwest Interactive Festival: you don’t have to be a Real Geek to love it.

I didn’t know what to expect at my first SXSW, two years ago. And, outside of creating some schmancy new blog cards (upon which I neglected to place my phone number—on purpose!), I didn’t do much in the way of preparation. I went with an open mind, the better for the cosmos to stick a wedge in there and crack it the fuck open.

It turned out to be a very good plan, the not-planning. In fact, it worked out so well, I’m doing it again, with a few minor adjustments:

1. This time, I’m going solo.

No BF, no SXSW Gold Pass. It’s interactive only, and one big, fat, glorious, piggy king-sized bed.

Don’t get me wrong—I love traveling with The BF, and by “traveling,” I mean exploring the turf, sharing experiences and having sex in motel rooms.

But I will be forced to get out there more and mingle. Having the Gold Pass (i.e., access to all the offerings of the SXSW Film Fest) and having a movie-freak companion meant I missed out on a lot of the schmoozing and boozing I hear tell happens outside the panels themselves.

Plus, communicatrix was pretty new to the internets a couple of years ago, and social media hadn’t really taken off yet. I knew one or two people going in, and met one or two more. This time, I’m excited to meet up with a whole slew (for me) of people, including Chris, Michael, Becky, Adam, Merlin, Alissa, Eric, Sean, Scott (who took this most excellent shot of the terrifying Podcast Pickle) and (your name here*).

2. I’m also planning…a little.

My natural tendency is to schedule myself down to the pee break, so I like to use vacation—which I characterize as me not doing my normal routine at home, not me sitting on a beach with a fruity drink—to mix things up.

I’ve made some oh-so tentative plans with a few people, and put their mobile numbers in my phone. I am also planning to be a total weinerdoodle and hole up in my hotel room alone with the cable TV on Thursday night. Because I know how tiring SXSW can be, and I want to experience as much as I can.

But other than that, the planning, as such, includes only one other thing:

3. An exciting and long-delayed image overhaul.

Watch this space, is all I’m saying…

xxx
c

*I’m serious, people—if you read this, and you’re going, for chrissakes, contact me! Who knows when we’ll get this chance again?

Image of the Famed Podcast Pickle by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: communicatrix, SXSW, SXSW2008.

It’s been an interesting week so far—and it’s only Monday.

First of all, something seems to have been dislodged in my brain—that thing that keeps me from processing stuff I don’t feel like, like paperwork and phone calls (wah wah wah, First World white girl) and from finishing things I’ve started, like work. Not that I’ve gotten everything tidied up and on its way: today saw the dispensing of my DMV registration, some queries about my post-COBRA world (universal health care cannot come soon enough) and a number of other annoying/scary if smallish items, but several others are getting rolled over (again) to tomorrow, my favorite day. (Just like my favorite week, month and year are “Next.”)

I made a dent in it though, especially by my standards. And I felt so gosh-darn good about it, I decided I would spread a little of that sunshine and head over to My Country House (a.k.a. The BF’s) to visit the dog (a.k.a. Arno J. McScruff) as his master (a.k.a. The BF) is living in the Land of the Stupid Day Job for the next several weeks and poor Arnie—well, he has dogly needs.

Now, this sort of thing does not occur to me usually, and when it does, to actually do it feels burdensome. Yes, I’ll go see you in the hospital or water your plants or take in your mail, but only if I’m allowed to feel grumpy and put-upon, at least to start with. Do not let the cheery photo fool you, my Internet friends! I am a crab and a bee-yotch of the highest order, and I’ve got plenty of real-life backup on that.

But today, I’m driving the five miles from my place to Arnie’s and practically whistling. At 3:30, no less—pretty much guaranteed that I’ll hit traffic going at least one way. In fact, I think I probably was in traffic; it just didn’t bother me, so it didn’t feel like traffic. And as I’m cruising through this traffic-that-is-not, I pass a place I’ve passed 1,000 times before. No, really: this is the route I take between my place and The BF’s; I could probably drive it blindfolded. Once, anyway.

It’s a shitty little storefront restaurant—nominally Chinese, but selling all manner of crap from gyros to boba tea like every other shitty little storefront restaurant I’ve seen like it. Might not—probably isn’t even run by Chinese people. Could be Koreans, could be Salvadorans, could be Armenians: it’s that kind of neighborhood.

But whoever owned it had hung one of those bright paper lanterns with the fringe on it that you see in Chinatown stores. It was kitschy and alive and pretty, and one thought flitted through my head:

I want.

Now let me assure you that while my taste in furnishings is somewhat eclectic, it’s not so boho-funky that a Chinese paper lantern would fit right in. In fact, it would look dreadful. I know this because I’m a designer, and I make my living knowing what will look right and what will look like ass. This would be the latter, trust me. There’s not one place in my place it would look right, including outside my front door, bapping about in the breeze just like it was in front of the not-Chinese restaurant.

Instead of feeling disappointed, though, I had this amazing flash of insight into why, for most of my life, I’ve been a hopeless accumulator of crap: I want that feeling.

That feeling that a particular shirt or dish or gadget gives me. The promise that’s inside that book—I want to retain that rush of inspiration I felt when I pulled it from the shelf. Or to be the person who has absorbed and processed its contents. Or to have a piece of that author (or artist, or musician) in my hands.

Or I want to be the person who can cook a perfect omelet with that pan. Who has pictures filling frames hanging on walls that burst with life, a host of beautiful craft projects made from these bolts of fabric, a lady who has the carefree life requiring, as my old art director, Sherry Scharschmidt used to call them, “Running-on-the-Beach Dresses.”

Maybe that’s why Peter Walsh and his ilk are making so much money these days: because we all have needs we’re shortchanging ourselves on; we’re all spending money instead of time, which becomes starting instead of finishing, which becomes a heap of never-worn, never-used crap we eventually haul off to Goodwill. And, since I’ve trained myself to understand that I never will have the time—that I will rush and rush, on and on, never stopping to take a breath and do the thing or even feel the feeling—I buy the souvenir instead.

It’s scarcity thinking in the middle of unprecedented abundance. And it’s a bitch of a habit to break.

I stopped myself today, though, in the middle of a thought of buying such a lantern. Because for ONCE, I realized I wanted the feeling of serendipitously stumbling upon a beautiful thing like that, blapping around in the clean, post-rain breeze. And I can’t own that any more than I can bottle happiness and save it for later. The wet jewels you find along the shore on holiday are just dull bits of rock when you get them home; a fleeting whatever is beautiful, in part, because it’s fleeting.

I’m not quite ready to do a spend-out yet, although I’m starting to see how it might help people like me who are used to going too fast and treating themselves too roughly. For now, though, I think I’ll try something else: going slower and treating myself more kindly.

Better. Cheaper.

And takes up a lot less room in a tiny apartment…

xxx
c

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

TOPICS: clutter, communicatrix, consumerism, happiness, self-development.

This is Day 10 of a 21-day effort to see the good in what might, at first, look like an irredeemable drag. Its name comes from a classic bit of dialogue uttered by actor Kevin Bacon in a classic film of my generation, Animal House.

My late father was in the habit of mocking my late mother’s side of the family for what he saw as their massively fucked up views on money and blithe disregard for facing up to the truth of just about everything, their mortality included.

It was not without some irony, therefore, that my sister and I viewed the colossal disarray in which he’d left his own affairs. And as for his relationship with the truth…well, let’s just say it was rockier than we’d been led to believe.

Of course, we should have been prepared for this: there are few people who get excited at the prospect of their inevitable demise, and we’d been blindsided once by the bizarre structure our maternal grandmother had left in place. But this was our dad: the sensible parent—the one who didn’t drink. If he had put a bit of a gloss on some…shall we say…interesting life choices, well, hell—we were a family of storytellers and ad people, for crying out loud! We spun for a living.

When there is a dispute about shekels left behind, the warring parties always declaim, “It’s not about the money.” But of course it is: the money is what’s there representing the promises made (and broken). And since money means different things to different people, bequests represent love, security, freedom, fear and probably a host of other things. As with fetishes, there’s one for everything you can name, and entire online communities for many things you can’t.

For me, the difference between the airtight provisions that had supposedly been made and the jerry-rigged structure my sister and I ultimately discovered was devastating. Yes, because of the money—we’re talking a lot of money, here—but also because of the years and years of haranguing about our supposedly subpar handling of our lives. My sister and I chose some pretty non-traditional paths, and while we weren’t what I’d call irresponsible, we also were not living the suburban-American dream, socking away millions from our jobs at Shearson Lehman.

Dad was the responsible one. The one who supported his aging parents for the last 20 or so years of their lives while never, ever rubbing his father’s pride in it. The one who paid for our mother’s funeral, even though they had openly despised one another for most of their lives. The one who always always always asked if we needed money, and, though we always replied in the negative, quite often sent some anyway. The one who told us we’d be taken care of, and the precise sum that translated into, despite our protests that the whole discussion was silly and morbid.

So the blow was hard to take. And it was followed by another, far worse one which there’s no reason to go into—the story is so old and clichéd and obvious, it’s laughable. A story that happens to rich people and crazy fourth wives of famous singers, not middle-class girls from Chicago. The details hardly matter. Suffice it to say that it involved lawyers and family members taking sides and the besmirching of our good names. No one wins in a game like that, except the lawyers.

And yet, almost four years after the fact, I am grateful for this happening. My blood sister and I are closer than ever, having walked through the fire together. The family and friends who stood by us, I have an even greater appreciation for. More than anything, though, I am thankful for being introduced to who I am at my core, and for discovering the striking similarity it bears to the me that walks around from day to day in more mundane settings.

It is a good thing to sleep well at night…

xxx
c

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

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, communicatrix, family, life, Money, sir! May I have another?!™, thank you sir may i have another.

For you busy types, here’s the topline: the communicatrix is well rested, the happy couple is well (and legally) married and (surprise, surprise) I did not get half as much done as I thought I would on my merry jaunt up the coast.

For the rest of you, settle in. Because that last bit was the source of a lot of deep thinking over the past several days.

I thought about it as I gazed out the window at the view of all views, not doing the Important Writing I was sure the solitude would facilitate. I thought about it as I walked the six happy, hilly miles to get my cup of espresso from the village every day. And I thought about it quite a bit on the long and tedious drive home this afternoon.

One of the excellent civic truisms I learned from my ex-husband, Chief Atheist of the West Coast and World-Class Urban Driver from way back was “If you’re passed on the right, you’re wrong.” Clearly, 95% of the people on the 101 S never had the Chief for their traffic school instructor. Between the uptick in asshats and the population boom overall, what used to be a beautiful drive is now little more than a colossal pain in the ass, at least for sadly long stretches.

Get mad at the people for being in the way. Get mad at me for not being perfect. Expect things to be different without really changing. How ridiculous I can be! How amazing it is that anyone at all listens to a thing I say! How fortunate it is that I have my monthly shrink appointment in two days to sort out some of this mess!

Of course, the heavy lifting of shrinkage is done outside of the 50-minute hour. You get assignments and perspective for those 50 minutes, but you do the work on your own. Or you’d better, unless you like wasting time and annoying the pig. And I have done a bunch of mine this week, even if it wasn’t the Important Writing kind.

• I spent a day positively convinced I had back-of-the-leg cancer, when really I just had a case of too much exercise for too-atrophied muscles. Because I worry about everything.
• I spent two nights watching Law & Order marathons. Because I am an addict.
  
• I spent five nights freezing my ass off before I finally broke down and turned on the gas furnace. Because a part of me will always be 12, forced to live in my grandparents’ drafty barn of a house and afraid afraid afraid to ask for anything.
  
• I ate cookies and burritos, beans and bread, chips and corn and god-knows-what in the delicious sauce of the meal my friends Terry and Gus bought me, and paid for it all in many square yards of methane output. Because I am the spawn of the King and Queen of Denial.

That’s a lot of thinking for one week, huh? I wish I could give credit to my wonderful brain and ferocious will to change. The truth is, though, it was the house: I was staying in a magical house.

Its location is magical, certainly, poised as it is a mere 10 yards up from and 20 yards away from the mighty Pacific. Few things are as restorative as viewing a fine sunset over sea water and a cold beer.

But I think the house itself must be magic. Compared to the outsized homes of the neighboring “Yankee fuckers”–swathed in decks, crapped up with all manner of aggressively country decor, my house is a pint-sized throwback to another time–a kinder, funkier time, when four swingin’ cats might just bake a doob in the glassed-in turret (accessed via the bathtub!) or while away a rainy day playing strip Yahtzee. My house all crazy angles and dark, moldy wood–including the countertops! It’s practically decomposing before your eyes, with its long-busted pocket doors, its non-functioning locks, its stop-gap newspaper insulation held in place with brittle masking tape. So what? There was a broken recliner and high-speed internet and a view: I was ready to move in, brother.

And I’m not the only one. My fellow outcasts–the ones without yellow magnet ribbons on our SUVs, the ones who like things a little sexy-grubby-rundown, had all left pieces of themselves there. Books with loving inscriptions to future guests. A closet full of puzzles, games, and 8-track tapes. A pantry full of foods, fancy and plain, with a little extra stock in the fridge.

People leaving stuff instead of stealing the toiletries. I was ashamed of my fleeting thought to abscond with a jar of barely used peanut butter–which I’d bought myself.

Never fear–it was fleeting, and just the lack talking. The weeks and months of people not letting you merge, not saying “please” or “thank you”, avoiding “hello” or even eye contact. And I can’t blame them: I am them, on my not-so-great days. I left my own contributions to the pot: Mrs. Meyer’s Dish Soap, the aforementioned jar of Laura Scudders, a lone Sierra Nevada beer.

I suppose the real topline for this week’s adventures is Wherever You Go, There You Are. I had my Dorothy Gale experience and it was all marvelous and trippy and very, very Technicolor in nature, but now I am back in my own backyard, ready (I hope) to deal with the accumulation of rusted out cars and old refrigerators that have been piling up there.

Because I would like to have fewer not-so-great days and more dancing-around-the-house days. More laughing days. More reading, walking, thinking, skipping, lounging days. I got an infusion of good mojo from the residual juju of a thousand happy Stone Soup House inhabitants before me; now it’s up to me to get some of that good witches’ brew going down here.

xxx
c

Photo of paradise courtesy of The BF.

TOPICS: communicatrix, life, sabbatical, self-development, vacation.