In case any of you were wondering, the main reason for my trip to Chicago was to attend this event.

Well, in case any of you were an IRS auditor from the future, anyway.

But here’s the reason I really made this trip: to see my people. My people whom I’ve known a lifetime, or half a lifetime, or a third of a lifetime. And my people whom I mostly or only know from our time together online—I came to see you, too.

It’s lonely out there, and tough, and these are strange times to be a human being on the planet. In fact, it’s so crazy out there right now, with so many people running around like characters out of a Lewis Carroll story, that it becomes all the more important to hunker down with one’s homies and get the truth via that mirror:

Yes, you’re okay.

Yes, you’re sane (or at least, crazy in the good way).

Yes, it’s kinda wild out there now.

Everyone knows how hard it is to get tone right over the internet. And the phone helps, but really, it’s a measure of last resort, and a far, far better tool once you already have some grounding in reality with the person. I’m here to do the bonding in person, because that’s what people who live in the third dimension do: they see, touch, hear and, depending on how close they are or how the spirit is moving them, taste and smell each other.

I can’t begin to describe how difficult my life has been these past several months without A PLAN. Because (a), historically, I’ve operated under one; and (b) when I’ve done, I’ve done well. Even if I hated what I was doing, I at least knew why I was doing it (money, ambition, fame) and what to do. Now, I’m down to a mission statement, and one of your spazzier ones at that: “To be a joyful conduit of truth, beauty and love.”

Some business plan, huh?

I had a new (internet) friend write me recently to ask if maybe I was work-impaired. I guess I am, but not in the way (I think) he meant. I’ve got all the work I can handle right now, being me and figuring out how I make myself useful to the universe. It’s work I chose, and that meant I had to stop some other kinds of work—i.e., the paying kind—to do it. If my father was here, he’d tell me I was crazy like my mother, and then ask if I needed money.

For the record, I’m not and, for now, I don’t. I am trusting that if I work hard at what I know I can do—write stuff down, illuminate darkish corners, make people laugh a little—the rest will work itself out.

It is a leap of faith, the stopping. But the alternative—to go and go and go, and be stopped by whatever rock drops on my head in 10 or 20 or, if I’m lucky, another 47 years—is no longer an option.

I gotta be me. Nonstop, 24/7/365.

And now, off I go to meet a few new old friends…

xxx
c

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

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, Stop! Sucking!.

If I can get myself to do it, and the book will cooperate by being good, reading will stop me cold.

So far this trip, I’ve blazed through Steve Martin’s outstanding Born Standing Up, hit half each of John Jantsch’s Duct Tape Marketing and Beth Lisick’s Helping Me Help Myself (both pretty good, in their wildly different categories), and spent a glorious afternoon browsing the quirky selection at the excellent Quimby’s. (I bought a couple of items to read on the way home, too, in case I don’t get an interesting seatmate this time around.)

If I can get myself to do it, I may give myself the gift of an afternoon with a book—and only a book—once before this trip is up.

It’s hard to do for some of us, because unless it’s assigned reading for a credit-bearing course, it feels so…optional. And if I’m not already exceptional in the ways I feel like I should be, how can I engage in the purely optional?

Of course, stopping is not optional. It’s the other half of going.

Just because something is easier to forget, doesn’t make it okay to forget it.

So…what’s on your stopping list?

xxx
c

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

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, Stop! Sucking!.

I’m no garden-variety L.A. idjit.

Born and raised in Chicago, she of the fickle weather, I learned the value of layers early on. And, when traveling between October and July, of bringing an umbrella. But a hat?

Who the hell brings a hat four days before May? Even to Chicago? Especially when one has an especially large head that looks profoundly ridiculous in hats?

It was in the high 40s today—and that was the high. So I walked and I walked and I stopped in every damned store that was a likely bet, looking for something other than a sun bonnet. Something that would keep the heat in my head.

When I finally found one—in a running store, of all places, for $32—I was a mile from my destination. $32. For a hat that matches nothing I’m wearing on this trip, and that upon my return to Los Angeles will most likely linger in my “winter” shoebox until I give up and hand it off to my friend, Lily, who looks good in all hats, damn her.

$32. To look ugly until the the weather turns.

I snapped the purple “no complaining!” wristband my friend (and frequent commentributrix) Mary Ellen gave me at lunch once against my wrist. And smiled. And thought of my wonderful chats with Mary Ellen and Heidi, and the wonderful soup that I would heat up in my wonderful midweek bachelorette crash pad, on loan courtesy of my wonderful friend, The Overly Talented Account Guy. And then I gave them my credit card, snipped the tags from my brand new $32 hat, and set off for the last leg of my day’s journey at least partly dry and vastly warmer.

Stop complaining. Buy the damned hat. You’ll catch a cold if you don’t, anyway, and then where will you be?

Stop. Before something else does the stopping for you.

xxx
c

(I wrote this last night, the 28th, and hit “save” instead of “publish.” Did I mention somewhere the importance of getting enough rest? Yeah.)

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

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, Stop! Sucking!.

I feel like I’ve come back to life in the past 48 hours, and not just because I’m finally well-rested for the first time in four days.

There is something about removing myself from the confines of my usual life—and the particularly tiny, triangulated footprint of computer/refrigerator/bathroom—that gets my juices flowing. I need structure, yes, and probably even more self-discipline, but I also need to get better at overcoming inertia (aka the tractor pull of my computer workstation), even when the inertia is productive.

I came pretty far to jog myself from a cranky daydream, but I’ve felt similar resuscitation taking a spin up to Ojai (especially when I can include a visit with my friend, Jodi) or even a walk around the block. I’m not sure what kind of reminder I can set in place to use when I sink back into productive torpor in L.A.—maybe the 1-2 combination of a hypnosis tape and the discipline to use it.

For now, I’m content at the restorative qualities my little trip is having on me.

Besides, I’m sure some of you friendlies will have some great hacks for jogging oneself out of torpor…right, friendlies?

xxx
c
Image by emmiegrn via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, Stop! Sucking!.

As sort of an other-shoe-dropping, sister-post kind of thing, I’m using my space and time today to point out some people doing some significant things.

Because (hangs head, kicks dirt with shoe) I’m ashamed to say that I’ve been thinking a wee bit too much about ME and how I can take ME to the next level and why aren’t more people paying attention to/digging on ME and a whole lot of other annoying, self-involved tripe. And, I mean, all this while people are eating dirt and women on other continents (and possibly areas of this one) are having parts of their lady-areas hacked off and a million other human indignities that one could call “real problems.”

Even if we shy away from the area of “real problems,” isn’t it still better to focus on what other cool stuff there is going on than to bemoan some imaginary, non-existent thing you think should be happening to you? Not that I don’t want good stuff to happen to me, and not even that I don’t think I deserve it or whatever The Secret-y thing you want to believe. Thing is, if I stop for one second to think about it, I realize instantly that I have an overabundance of blessings, that my (non-specific, agnostic-type) prayers have been answered over and over again, and that I’ve had so much help from so many hands, both seen and unseen, it borders on the embarrassing.

So you know, I pimp everywhere. I am kind of obsessed with pointing out good stuff. But I mostly do it in places like StumbleUpon or Clipmarks or del.icio.us. Or I forward it to my pal, Michael Blowhard, who has a much bigger audience and gets the word out far more effectively than I ever could.

But I’ve been wined and dined and guest-bedroomed by my wonderful peeps here in Chicago for a day now, and I’m filled with the spirit of giving and sharing. So…

Meet the FOCs (Friends of Colleen) and someday FOCs!!!

• Grant McCracken writes one of the best blogs I know. A terrific mix of marketing, cultural anthropology and inventive thinking, there’s always something great to be found there, and every great thing is truly different from every other one. Check out his greatest hits if you don’t believe me.
• Speaking of faves, my go-to blog for years now has been 2Blowhards. In fact, while I have changed feed readers many times, I have never, ever moved 2BH out of my “always read” folder. Even though they’re (gasp!) conservatives!!!
  
• People ask me all the time why the hell I’m on Twitter. I may talk a big game about the importance of social media and staying on top of the game, but the reality is that I love watching the wit of these three guys unfold in real time. Finally, they’ve gotten together and put on a show: You Look Nice Today!, A Journal of Emotional Hygiene. It takes a while to orient yourself to it—these guys are like an order of magnitude smarter than most smart, funny people working today. But just like watching Shakespeare, after a few minutes, you’ll acclimate to the rhythm. And laugh your ass off.
• One real-life friend has finally gone online with a public record of one of the more fascinating projects it’s been my pleasure to track. Nick Offerman, a wildly funny and gifted performer, is also a master woodworker craftsman-type. And so, finding himself in NYC for a time (sweet boy is there providing moral support as his wife works on a little play), he decided to use it wisely and…build a canoe from scratch! I care as much about woodworking and canoes as I do football and trigonometry (not much), but I’m always thrilled to see a new installment in my inbox. Finally, the rest of the world can share that thrill.
• Finally, because I’m getting a little tired of people who say that feminists aren’t funny (haha) or that the patriarchy is dead (I wish), I give you Twisty Faster. Her writing has been somewhat more sporadic the past several months, but the archives are rich with radical feminist goodness.

For those of you who might never sign up for one otherwise, I also include Cool Finds of the Month in my free newsletter, communicatrix | focuses. And yeah, newsletters are kinda dorky and sucky, for the most part. Maybe mine is, too, just by virtue of being one. I mean, hey, it is a marketing tool. But for me, it is also an opportunity to write on one topic (best practices of great communicators) in a very specific way, i.e., without swears. If I’m lying, may my motherf*cking tongue fall out of my c*cksucking mouth.

See? Along with gratitude, insights and there will always be foul language here on communicatrix-dot-com.

Some things will never stop…

xxx
c

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, FOCs, Stop! Sucking!.