Falling crockery

One of the hardest things for me to reconcile is the difference, often vast, between the world as I would like it to be and the world as it is.

I'm not talking about hippy-dippy, kumbaya-peace stuff or even fairness stuff: I'm talking about the physical reality of time, and how much stuff you can cram into it. Or can't, as is the case with me. It has always been this way with me, I'm afraid.

Have I told you yet about the time I took on Uncle Tom's Cabin for a book report in the second or third or fourth grade, not realizing how hard, oh, hell, how BORING it was, not to mention long? I don't even remember what page I was on when I finally gave up, 87? 187? All I remember was that I was in my parents' bedroom, and exhausted, and great waves of shame washed over me like dirty, freezing ocean water, and I cried, copiously, until I finally fell asleep.

I don't know what I thought would happen if I gave in to reality and admitted then and there that I was going to fail: I would die, perhaps, or be expelled, or have to stand in a corner with my black watch plaid uniform jumper up over my head while the teacher (rightfully! rightfully!) humiliated me in front of the class. None of which would have been staved off, were they inevitable, had I just given in and gone to bed at a reasonable hour; I'd just have been better rested for my punishment.

Neither do I know what did finally happen to me that next day, but it wasn't expulsion and my jumper stayed firmly about my little chicken legs. What was the end of the world to me was probably a blip in a burp of the day for whichever teacher had me in her class. Miss Puent? Mrs. Mackey? Sister Teshima? (Well, actually, if it was Sister Teshima, that fear of mine would not have been ungrounded, so it's safe to say this didn't go down in the third grade.)

I've been having panicky moments lately. It doesn't matter that they're born of self-created tasks and self-imposed deadlines. I'm falling further and further behind* with no sign of breathing room for catching up. I hate being that tool who doesn't follow through on promises, and I'm dangerously close to it; curse me and my stupid mouth, writing checks my poor, wracked body can't possibly cash.

So today, with the help of my beloved coach, Ilise, I made a hard decision: let go of the consulting push. Not the consulting itself, necessarily, which I really enjoy and which, unless they're all lying to me, the people who have come to me for it have really enjoyed and found useful, inspiring and fun. But the Big Marketing Push to get consulting clients is on permanent hold. No standalone website. Not even a bona fide consulting "hire me" page right now. Just that crazy Super-Secret thing I've been sending people to when they inquire for months now, and whatever people continue to float my way, regardless.

It's a little embarrassing, like having to wear a slightly old and shiny suit in public because you didn't have the time or money to go out shopping for a new one. It's probably also a little bit like admitting you're up to your eyeballs in debt or an alcoholic or that you just got the axe at work (although I guess that these days, there's not as much of a stigma there).

Ultimately, though, it feels right. I love writing. I mean, I love it like I've never loved anything else in my life. I love it even when I hate it. I love it even when I'm doing it kind of badly, like right now. (And that's not fishing, it's just fact.)

I also love going out and telling people about stuff that can help them. Social media and marketing and communicating for now, but who knows what else? Maybe the guitar playing figures in. Maybe performing has something to do with it. I trust that will take shape as I move forward.

It is hard to focus. But I can't keep talking about it and not do it myself. That's foolishness. Worse, it's a lie. Better to break a few promises and come clean than to be a liar-liar-pants-on-fire.

Better to be the best me I can be, doing the stuff I'm best at the best way I know how, than half-ass it as some wannabe Wonder Woman.

I never did look so hot in cuffs...

xxx
c

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

*Which reminds me, gotta get those prizes out!

Behind every lofty goal is a bowl of beef stew

It's nothing I'm proud to admit, but the glorious accomplishments of the past fortnight, and if the emails coming in ain't lying, they were pretty danged glorious, were launched with takeout pizza, candy and fumes.

By which I mean in order to get from the past two Sunday nights to the past two Monday nights, I literally ordered multiple large pizzas, chased them with bagsful of Jelly Belly candies, and did more on less sleep than I have since before my Crohn's onset back in 2002.

By which I mean I pushed what luck I was graced with to the limit each Sunday and Monday, and required a good hunk of Tuesday, okay, all of Tuesday and part of Wednesday, to recover. 47-year-old bodies, especially beat-up, immuno-compromised ones, don't roll with it the way 27- or even 37-year-old ones do. And my friends in their 50s are warning me of adrenal burnout and other joys that lay just ahead. Frankly, my insurance just isn't good enough to cover the kinds of problems I'm likely to start having if I don't straighten up and fly right.

I know this, of course. Troll the archives and you'll find me rebooting as often as my gal, Oprah. I can't even be too hard on myself. It's easy to get off track, times are hard, which spurs a lot of us on to work harder, but also, I have BIG things I want to do, and the sense of urgency that comes from...well, from being on the downward side of 47. My legacy is my intellectual capital, and I'm in heavy funding mode right now. But all that has to be fueled by something, and Thin-'n'-Crispy Veggie Lovers' ain't it.

Careful readers will note that I've already implemented a few practices to start turning things around. They range from daily guitar practice (good for the brain and the soul) to Hulu Hoopingâ„¢ (good for the core and, thanks to the addition of seasons 3 and 4 of Dragnet, the soul), but they all have one thing in common: they are incremental. Tiny, ten-minute (at least, to start) changes to build a new, more responsible, healthier kind of life from.

I have some ideas on rejiggering my workload that I think will help, too. It's time for me to finally embrace batching and self-imposed cones of silence and a few other hacks. I may even put myself back on the Covey calendar leash: I loathed having my days mapped out to the minute, scheduling in laundry and reading and playtime, but I have to admit, it produced results and helped keep me sane.

And Sunday morning, on my way back home (to work) from The BF's, I bought all the necessary stuff for SCD-compliant beef stew, along with various and sundry other healthful but boring snacks. The psychological hurdle of walking away from my Very Important Work for the eleventy-seven hours required to actually prepare the beef stew was perilous high, but I scaled it with more Dragnet* and the knowledge that I'd have to report back to you this morning.

Of course, the stew did not take eleventy-seven hours to prepare, and barely that to cook, which it did all by itself. Now I have a big pot of goodness to get my week off to a good start instead of a few large cardboard boxes of badness. I am still a tired, disheveled mess with a long way to go, but I have hearty and delicious beef stew to escort my weak ass through the next incremental steps of my Very Important Work, and that is something more than I had before.

This is how I get back on the horse. This is how a lofty goal becomes a reality. Not by making sweeping, glamorous plans on December 31st, but by chopping some carrots and onions in the middle of a dreary February Sunday.

A bit of a change; a bit of beef stew.

And before the blog post, the dishes. Well, okay, maybe after.

Or...maybe Tuesday...

xxx
c

Image by lc347 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

*Jack Webb: responsible for my being here today; responsible for getting me through to a brighter tomorrow. I really need to write a post on Uncle Jack sometime. I do.

The wolf at the door

You young people may not believe this, but it's not the first time as a species we've hit hard times.

I know; I'm the grandchild of people who saved balls of rubber bands and squares of aluminum foil not because they were compulsive, aspie types, but because they came of age during the Great Depression, which, from the way they described it, was mainly great in size.

There were...things, though.

Things like my paternal grandparents finally being able to conceive the child they dreamed of in the better years. That times were sucko didn't stop them, and there were lovely stories about envelopes marked "food", "rent" and "fun", with the "fun" envelope always empty, and of a kindly obstetrician at Cedars of Lebanon waiving his fee for the broke-ass young couple, and of neighbors, in Hollywood, no less, pitching in to help with baby-type stuff.

I've avoided talking about all this gloom and doom crashing down around us for a long time both because it depresses me to do so, and because I figure there are enough people talking about it already. In my (self-defined) job as a joyful conduit of Truth, Beauty and Love, I don't have much business mucking about with this doom and gloom shit.

So here's what you'll get from me: things SUCK. And they suck HARD, for a lot of people who've never had to deal with this level of doom and gloom and suckiness ever. (We will all pause the briefest moment to acknowledge that there are some for whom life has sucked since they drew breath, and in ways so horrific that what many people new to the suck cannot begin to fathom. Okay, then.)

There are many things that are good to read and to watch and to listen to and even to talk about in times like these. If you are lucky, like me, you have a nice list of them. If you have been busy with other things, well, I made my little stab at pointing you towards the stuff online, most of which can be enjoyed for free. (And there are things written specifically from and sort of about hard times which may also be worth reading, or re-reading, in a time like this. How to Cook a Wolf, a wonderful true-life story by the brilliant food writer, M.F.K. Fisher, is one of those books, and it is readily available at your public library. Or Amazon, if you're still buying things, or half.com, if you're still buying things used and on the cheap.)

Here is another suggestion I will make, however, which is simultaneously less practical and more expedient, and which I have been practicing vigorously for some time now: make something. Make anything.

Make an outline for a book. Make up a story for your kid. Make a song.

Make a beaded necklace. Make someone smile.

Make art. Make dinner. Make your bed.

Any creative act you can do right now will help. Trust me on this.

And if you are someone in the business of creating any kind of content, do it and do it up big. This is no time to play small or play tired.

Cynics may tag it fiddling while Rome burns, although that's not at all correct, as that analogy is more about assholes willfully ignoring the obvious while doing what pleases them. That is not you and that is not me. Maybe we're like those dudes in the orchestra playing on the Titanic as the mother went down. Not for us to say (and lordy, I hope not) but really, even if we are, what choice do we have?

We can be our best, most gracious and generous and creative and alive selves. Or we can bolt the door and turn on the TV (while there's power...and TV) and zone out.

No, I say! I am going to MAKE STUFF. And plenty of it. And share it with you.

And you are going to MAKE STUFF. And plenty of it. And, I hope, share it with me, and with your loved ones, and especially with that really grumpy person over there who looks like he needs a lollipop and a handshake, bad.

What brought this on? Well, I took the afternoon off, an afternoon I perhaps should not have taken off, that I should perhaps have spent working my network or building my empire or otherwise doing stuff that could put money in my pockets, and I hung out at my old acting class for four hours, and I watched people MAKE STUFF. And open their hearts big and wide to do it.

Then, it was my turn, so I came home and did this.

Now it's yours...right?

xxx
c

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

You. Here. Now.

When something, or something close to the something, happens a few times, it's a good idea to sit up and take note*.

While catching up on my reading, a sense of the familiar washed over me when I spied a gem of an item from Gretchen Rubin, the Happiness Project curatrix, about using the finite to explore the infinite. She didn't phrase it that way: her post is about the fourth vow of the Cistercian monk, which, not to put too fine a point on it, is to stay put.

She talks about it from the perspective of a married person, because she is one, but I've been thinking a lot about this lately from the perspective of (a), someone bound by my own circumstances, which are a combination of love and rent control and high housing costs; and (b), of a person bound by a dog I love dearly, which requires a certain amount of daily care including, according to the whisperer, at least one (and preferably two) long daily walks.

My place, you see, does not accommodate dogs. By which I mean should I get busted with a dog on the premises, I would likely be tossed out of my rent controlled apartment on my communist ass, 10-year good tenancy be damned. So in order to be with Arnie, and The BF, because neither of us feels right leaving the highly social and infernally sweet Arnie quite literally by his lonesome, I must needs be at Arnie's, which...well, which is problematic for a whole hornet's nest of problems. Let's just leave it at "it's a five-and-a-half-mile drive each way", making it less than ideally convenient or green, and leave it at that.

Were money no object, my "problem" (in quotation marks because let's face it, as problems go, it ain't much these days) would be solved immediately: purchase a small property across the reservoir, a spot both quiet and private, relative to my current circumstances, where I could both be on my own and be with The BF and Arnie when I felt like being with them but not at The BF's. But money is very much an object these days for many of us, and housing prices here in L.A., while falling fast, are falling from a rich-people-only high that will have to fall much further** than they have thus far before yours truly can buy in.

In the meantime, if you think yours truly would move out of a rent-controlled apartment which she's occupied for almost 10 years, you have been smoking something that ain't Camels.

A few other folks close to me are going through the same thing right now; there are probably a lot of us in L.A. going through this exact thing. There is more anger and fear among the general population, and the general population is getting more and more tightly packed into less and less space as people lose jobs and move in with one another. (I've been seeing it happen for a while in my neighborhood; based on our increase in population density, it was clear at least a year and a half ago that the economy was in the shitter.) We are stuck, and we are crammed into spaces next to where other people are stuck, and it all ends up being something that rhymes with "stuck", take your choice.

One thing in particular is getting me through this, and that is a foundational principle of feng shui, variously known as the art of placement, wind-water, or "that woowoo bullshit" depending on who you ask. And that is this:

If you desire a change to something new, do everything in your power to make your peace with where you are now.

As I described it to one intimate, this means quite literally (in feng shui, anyway), that if you want to move to a nicer/bigger/awesomer space, get the one you're in ship-shape first. They say it in the feng shui book. Well, this one, anyway, which is my favorite. And the crazy thing is that sometimes what happens isn't what you expect will happen, sometimes something really cool will happen in a totally different area of your life that has nothing to do with what you're working on in cleaning up your damned living space, but something will happen. I don't know how or why, it just will. Plus your house (or apartment, or yurt, or what have you** will also end up all spiffy. And so, as the kids said at some point in distant time, it's all good.

Hawk-eyed readers will note that I did not stay in my marriage, so what the hell am I doing yammering about fixing up what you've got? To which I would humbly and respectfully reply, trust me, I feng shui'd the shit out of that relationship before I opted out. And I'll never know whether I can credit the work I did while in it, but as I was moving out of it and for some time after, I had the crazy kind of buy-a-lotto-ticket-stat luck that you idly and wistfully dream of from the depths of your personal hell.

So I sit in my place, and I work on my stuff, pulling on a thread of an idea, decluttering and cleaning surface by surface, mending and patching and making better rather than making do. And for my poor, aging, neglected body, I'm hooping 10 minutes by 10 minutes, and plotting my return to the SCD that carried me out of Crohn's and into health.

And I work in hateful QuickBooks...and then I don't...and then I do. And I get to Inbox Zero...and then I don't...and then I do.

I like to think that with each circle around the mountain, I run into the same problem at a slightly higher elevation, as Julia Cameron talks about in The Artist's Way.

But through all of it, no matter how bad it gets sometimes, and it does, even in between great days, and sometimes smack in the middle of the best of all days, I stay here, now, or if I wander, I put the puppy on the mat and start again.

Where are you now? Where do you want to go? And how can you be here now to get yourself somewhere else?

Go.

xxx
c

*And by "take notice," that can mean quite literally to make an actual note, especially if time and engagements prohibit you from deeper examination in the moment. On the piece of paper you always have on you, with the writing implement you always carry, make a note at the moment something has occurred to you as being like two other things, because three times is the charm, and, without getting too ominous on your ass, the fourth might be the time you don't get a do-over. In this case, as I was conveniently parked in front of the computer, I just used that as a giant (and very expensive) notepad.

**Yes? I got it right?

***A phrase my friend, Carly, who has made a lot of BIG juju happen with the feng shui, uses, and which I fully intend to start using because it is cool. And whatnot. Which is also cool.

Image by bobmarley753 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Hello Kitty sez, "Sorry about your bumper!"

I was supposed to be spending today getting bits of yesterday pummeled out of my crickety back and neck, followed by a long, windy walk around one of my favorite parks in Los Angeles.

But last night, as I walked out to my car after what was headed for the title of World's Longest (but still Most Excellent!) Day, I spied a wholly unnatural thing: a denuded driver's side door. As in, no mirror with which to see whether objects are, period, much less whether they are closer than they appear.

I confess to a split second of mental mayhem and fury. In my defense, I was tired. Very tired. Probably too tired to be bucking for Survivor of World's Longest (but still Most Excellent) Day, but my Bonnerooski was doing a signing/reading/thingamajiggy for 600 of her closest friends which I very much wanted to attend, as I'm a supporter of (a) the excellence that is Bonnie Gillespie's output in virtually every arena she seeks to play in, and (b) free drinks, and (c) potential meetups with some friends I've not seen in too long. (Plus, you know, FREE DRINKS.)

Almost as quickly, it slipped away. Mirror was gone; not much to be done until tomorrow. And bubbled up, but...but...BUT...

And then dribbled away again. Miraculously, I could not get too worked up about it. Not like Colleen of yore might have, anyway, with the fireworks and the fury and the cartoon steam coming out of my ears. Yesterday it was more like, "Mirror gone. Boo hoo," and done. I have money in the bank to buy a new mirror (in the morning) and free time in which to do it, yay! for lucky, lucky me.

Plus, even if it wasn't safe for old-lady-eyeballs to jump on the freeway at night, they could certainly lead me to The BF's, which drive I could likely do at this point had I no eyeballs at all.

So I popped open the door, heaved my stuff onto the passenger seat, and spied it stuck on the windshield.

A sweet, petal-pink buckslip of Sanrio-flavored goodness, with an explanation ("I TOOK YOUR MIRROR OFF TRYING TO SQUEEZE BY A TRASH TRUCK"), an apology ("STUPID MISTAKE I WILL PAY YOUR DAMAGES") and a name and number. Both of which worked. Made the appointment this morning, part ordered, friendly neighbor paying my mechanics* and sending me a check for time and gas money. Hel-lo, Kitty!

Sure, shitty stuff happens all the time, all over, every ding-dong day of the week. But great stuff happens, too, and it's worth noting when it happens. To me, the great stuff was not only that earnest little slip of girly stationery some grown man used to own up to a little (but at $298.97, plus tax, not incidental) goof; it was that somehow, with the aid of external events, much patient love and help from many dear ones (amateurs and professionals alike), and the steady application of new and better patterning, a 25-year-old angry fireball of dismal fury and perpetual sorrow could get to a 47-year-old place of joy and relative peace. That, my friends, is the miraculous alchemy of choice and time in action. This stuff works; I'm living proof, and fully intend to see how much farther (further? dammit!) it can take me.

In the meantime, may you enjoy this weird and sometimes wonderful world we live in, every second of every day...

xxx
c

P.S. If one of you smartypants types has a foolproof way for me to remember "further" vs. "farther" without having to look it up on the Google each time, you win a prize. Seriously. I have a prize here that I will send you. But FOOLPROOF. Something along the order of "My Very Elegant Mother Just Sat Upon Nine Acronyms that Used to Work Until Pluto's Planet Status Was Revoked." You know.

*Reed and Mike, of RM Automotive, who have taken excellent care of me and my two past Corollas for nigh on eight years. Highly, highly recommended for you Angelenos with a Japanese-built auto. (They work exclusively on Hondas, Acuras, Toyotas and Lexii.)

Image by mtl2tky via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

February's Song: Stuck in the middle with goo

Someone asked (hello, Alexis!) whether I would be starting a new habit, given that it was a new month, and whether I would be bailing on the old one, given that January is (hooray! hooray!*) behind us.

My answer, for this and probably every other month for the foreseeable future, is that I will abso-toot-ly be starting a new habit of some kind every month from here on in. I'm a convert to the Incremental School of Change; between my extraordinary and transformative (and musical!) experience with guitar and the Marketing Calendar experiment thingy (available as part of my own, ultra-fabulous, Virgo 1.0, you-heard-it-here-first site, The Virgo Guide to Marketing AND the regular Marketing Mix blog feed AND a podcast!), there is no question in my mind that for a big, honkin' hunk of the population, slow and steady, and additive, and cumulative, is the way to go.

I oughta know: I've been dealing with a slow but steady accumulation of unsightly body fat around my midsection for probably four years now, ever since The BF and I met and decided we'd be each other's perfect partner to grow fat and happy with.

Only I'm not so happy about the fat.

Up until about two years ago, I have been thin my whole life. As in, one of those annoying people who never (really) had to worry about gaining weight. Of course, after the Crohn's diagnosis, I have a better understanding of why. My intestines were basically a crazy, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride of a log flume for nutrients: zippity doo dah, with emphasis on the zippity. And, um, doo.

Also, let us not forget that up until recently, I didn't have middle age to contend with. Or I did, but it hadn't manifested itself around my midsection yet. I've always been a bit behind the curve developmentally, so it's not too surprising. Late bloomer to everything, including the decreptitude that comes with age.

Then there was quitting acting, which did nothing to help matters. I went from being a reasonably active human being who was out and about a significant portion of the day to someone who lives and (slowly, but surely) dies by her computer. There are days where I walk less than an 1/8th of a mile. Or there used to be; Arno J. gets me out a lot now, and I've stopped wearing the pedometer.

So I was casting about for cool stuff that would keep me active. It couldn't be gym-related, because I hate the gym with the blinding white hot heat of a thousand sweaty ass-cracks in spin or whatever other stupid class they're pushing at the moment. Plus I cannot get over the lunacy of DRIVING somewhere to GET EXERCISE. Um. Yeah.

After much poking and nosing about, I've come up with three things I'm going to try (in addition to the mostly-daily Arnie walks, which are no longer enough to keep the fat off my ass):

• Jumping Rope. My friend, Joan, has been doing this for 1/2 hour daily for years and looks fabulous. She also has been doing this for 1/2 hour daily for years. In other words, it will likely take me a few months to work up to even 10 minutes of jumping daily.
• Mini-trampoline. Or, as trendyhood would have it "rebounding." Yes, really. The sites for the tramps and the instructional videos make my insides get a little upheavy; that kind of lousy design sense doesn't bode well for me digging on the mini-tramp. But my sister has offered one on loan, so I'm'a give it a whirl.
• Hooping! My friend, Jodi, has been hooping for some time. Sometimes with FIRE. Yes, I said "FIRE." (I did not yell it in a crowded theater, so back off, Jack.)

For obvious reasons, I will begin with the hooping. One, I have a hoop. (See photo!) Two, I was hula hoop champeen on the Sacred Heart all-concrete, all-the-time playground back in the day, the day being somewhere around 1968 or '69. Hey, 40 years...what can it matter?

Plus, I now have fabulous Hulu action to keep me entertained whilst hooping: they just added Seasons 3 & 4 of Dragnet! I think there's kind of a fine symmetry to hooping along with the TV output of the guy responsible for introducing the two people who made me into the now-fat mass of cells I am.

Wish me luck. And please, share your February plan, if you have one.

xxx
c

*Not that January was bad, exactly; it was just a little hard on the ol' bod.

UPDATE! Neglected to mention that the photos in the triptych are by fabulous hoopster galpal, Jodi Womack. Woohoo for agreeing to document my body fat!

7 things you (still) probably don't know about me

The rules:

1. Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they've been tagged.

I was tagged by Sean Bonner.

While I find it incredibly hard to believe that, after four years of blogging in that way I do, a Proust questionnaire, annual 100-things roundups and several memes of the stuff-you-don't-know-about-me nature, there is ANYTHING that you don't know about me that's for public consumption...well, we're here to find out if it's possible. And then I'm putting a goddamned moratorium on these until 2010. At least.

1. I have never been diagnosed as such, but I'd bet money I have a touch of OCD, and I'm not a betting woman. My OCD is less about ritual (although I suspect that breaking myself of Check Email First Thing Daily and Frequently Afterwards Disease is going to be rough) and more about random stuff: I become irrationally attached to certain objects, especially those whose value in the real world is minimal. I'm currently attached to a yellow coffee mug made in Italy that came to the States via Cost Plus; if I drink my at-home morning coffee out of anything different, my whole day is kind of "off." Similarly, I have a bluish mug made in Thailand (also via Cost Plus) that I drink one mug of black Irish tea (Barry's) out of every morning, just before the coffee. Should these two mugs break before I find replacements I can slowly rotate in, I fear the entire communicatrix operation will grind to an immediate and ugly halt.

2. Speaking of OCD, you'd never know it from the obsessively, almost painfully short way I "groom" my fingernails, but I had 1"-long fingernails all through high school which I kept polished in either "Mushroom" or blood red. (The "Mushroom" was really called "Mushroom", which is just a disgusting name for a nail polish, if you aren't coked out of your brains in that '70s fashion, and you have two brain cells left to rub together.) Remember: there were no computers for normal people then, only mainframes and cards and suchlike, and I kind of gave up typing for the duration. I do remember that putting money in vending machines required an intricate position-toss-bump, which I really should replicate someday for the YouTube if I can find me some Lee Press-on Nails and a machine that still takes change.

3. The actual conversation that happened when I became engaged to be married went (something) like this:

The Chief Atheist: What's your timetable on this marriage thing?

The communicatrix: Ready when you are.

The Chief Atheist: Okay. Let's get the books.

Whereupon we each produced our '80s-licious DayTimers and came up with a date three months from then. (It was 1990, but everything was still pretty '80-licious.) (Oh, and we had to field the question of whether this was a rush job for a Blessed Reason, and no, it wasn't.)

4. On the other hand, I accidentally set up two friends of mine, a good friend from high school (and college, come to think of it) and a good friend from my last place of work. They met to talk career stuff, went home together and lived happily ever after, if recent reports hold true. So I got that goin' for me.

5. I'm a starter, not a finisher. Maybe you did know this about me; maybe I'm the only person alive who's met me who didn't know this about me. But it was not until last year, 47 years into the game, folks, that I figured out I'm just not good with details and follow-through. I mean, I can get it up when I have to, but I'm much more enjoyable and delightful and refreshing when left to my crazy devices, and when other people handle the A to B to (etc) to Z stuff. RELATED: I suffer mightily from Eyes Bigger Than Stomach Syndrome, where both "eyes" and "stomach" are metaphorical. The suffering, however, is all too real.

6. When I think about acting again, two things stop me: having to wear contacts, which, as one long-ago friend of a friend put it so perfectly, feels like "wearing potato chips on my eyeballs"; and auditioning. Actually, driving to the audition and parking. Over and over again.

On the other hand, if anyone wants me to be #4 on the call sheet of their sitcom that shoots in Los Angeles, or anywhere else, for that matter, I'm there. Or some goofy, recurring gig on any show. Or their spokesperson for some non-disgusting product or service.

Or hell, give me my own show. Just do NOT put me in charge of anything but my own, crazy devices. And make sure there is a very good Colleen-wrangler on staff.

7. For years, I was the Last-Chance Texaco for gay boys. I used to joke about this, but as I've gotten older and late returns have come in, I've realized the shocking and astonishing truth of it. I didn't even go out with all of them; I was just the legitimizing crush in many cases. But there are far too many of them for it to be a coincidence. I chalk it up to my incredible gay-friendliness from a young age (hey! I was raised by almost-show people!) and the unavoidable truth that I'm about as close as you can get to being a man while still being a woman who both self-identifies that way and has the necessary biological and social female cred.

Or who knows, maybe I am just one of those ultra-desirable people whom everyone goes for. (BWAHAHAHAHA! It's good to start off the day with a hearty laugh!)

And now, for the tagging part: Alissa Walker, Neil Kramer, Dave Greten, Rick Crowley, Danny Miller, Prince Campbell (aka chartreuse), Erik Patterson. Because I love you and you're monsters of writing and because a few of you have not been writing enough (*cough* Rick *cough* *cough* Erik *hack* *cough* *hocks loogie*) and...and...BECAUSE I CAN, DAMMIT!

xxx
c

Image by kirstenjolanda via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license. And no, cupcakes have nothing to do with anything; they are just excellent, and when I pulled up Flickr to look for an image, about 25 shots of DELICIOUS looking cakes (wedding varieties; various varieties) from this lady in the Netherlands who owns a confectionary shop came up. So there!

The week that (almost completely) kicked my ass

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPbqHhYxv5w&w=480&h=295]

Time will tell, but last week may just go down in Colleen Wainwright History as the Week that Finally Won.

Notice that I did not say "the week I won", but "the week the week one won*." As in Week, 1; Colleen, 0.

I've got so many things going on so many fronts, so many flags in so many (mole)hills, so many plates spinning, so many metaphors cut adrift and left to moulder, that I'm seriously considering whether I took full leave of my senses in committing to so much this year, much less this month. And remember, I did hella consulting with smart people before agreeing to this year's commitments. So really, it's not like this is some fantasy list, totally ungrounded in any reality.

Anyway...

On Friday, I kind of lost it, the culmination of too many days of not enough sleep, with too many external commitments and not enough firewalling of personal time. If I didn't already know I'd blown it by the way everything I did that day taking twice as long as it usually did, I knew it for sure when I had the closest thing I've had to a fight with my significant other, The BF, whose patience can only be expected to extend so far.

There were signs along the way that things were going awry. The panicky feeling when I stare down my calendar and realize if I don't scrub something, I'll fall even further behind. Dreading fixed givens of any kind, even the fun ones, because it means I'll have to stop working, and fall even further behind.

My solution for 40-something years when something wasn't working was to throw more coffee on it. More hours. More energy. More brainpower. Usually, it worked. Sure, I was tired after a push, but I knew I could catch up afterward.

Unfortunately, or not, it looks like those halcyon daze of being able to kite energy checks are over, or at least, with the equipment in its current state. Looking ahead, that means that if I want to have any chance of accomplishing what I've set out to do, I have a few choices:

1. cut back on commitments, so I can increase recharging time
2. cut back on farting around, so I can have more time for important stuff
3. dramatically change how I'm treating my physical plant, so that it's more resilient

I'd be lying if I said I was thrilled about the prospect of any of these. Plus, I have a feeling that the only reasonable course of action is a mix of all three.

On the other hand, I have a feeling that by grappling with this beastie, I'll not only feel and operate a lot better, but I'll come back with excellent info to report. Because I know I'm not the only one dealing with issues of balance in these crazy times.

In the meantime, I put it out there to the wise community. If you were in my shoes, where would you start? If you've been in my shoes, where did you start?

I'm starting by shutting down earlier when I can. I'm writing this at 9pm on Sunday, and figure it's my last act of the evening. I'd planned on taking one last spin through the presentation I'm giving tomorrow but truly, I think both the presentation and I will do much better by sleeping on it...

xxx
c

The video above (link to it on YouTube in case you can't see it) is but one of the many, many things I put together this crazy-ass past week. I have to say, I don't regret one minute of working on it, it's easily the most fun project I worked on, by a country mile.

*See? See? Ugh. Exhausted. Not good! Alissa and I are going to go to the "Say no to yes!" class together.

The dead-simple formula for achieving absolutely anything achievable

Among the 100 billion other obligations I have only myself to blame for, I've been prepping my presentation on marketing and social media for my alumni group this coming Monday.

The core of it is the same as what I did for my Seattle workshops, and for my actor marketing seminar, and for the keynote Dyana and I gave at the Design Center. If you want to get down and dirty, it's probably the core of any (responsible) speech on the topic of marketing and social media because really, the principles are the principles are the principles. There's no mystery sauce someone has that will magically make you rich, internet-famous, and decrease your belly fat the way the stars do. Because that belly fat thing is just what regular people do, expending more calories than you take in, only the stars have unlimited resources in the form of personal chefs, personal trainers and time, blessed time to enlist in fighting the good fight.

In the same way, I've come to realize that most change happens the same way. And today, combing through old emails, looking for something else, I stumbled on this gem of a formula so simple, even a BROKE, HAS-BEEN star with NO personal anything at her disposal could follow it:

1. Recognize where you are
2. Figure out where you want to be at
3. Plot out action steps to get you from 1 to 2

See? Ridiculously simple.

But "simple" is so often confused with "easy", and that's where the trouble lies (and the rows upon rows of self-help and money-management and find-love/etc books sprout up.)

Also, as I'm finding via my own incredibly circuitous route to fabulosity, things have a way of changing that can mess you up, and implementing things in real-time often takes far more will, time and resources than it does in the dry run of your mind's eye. Not to mention luck. If you don't believe me, ask those two guys who just landed the plane in the Hudson River.

Also-also, the more creative and excellent one is, the very people who have really great things they want to achieve, and whom the world really needs to have get a move on, the greater the likelihood of getting stymied by one's own multifaceted excellence. The slightly dumber, or less gifted, or at least less multiply-talented often have an easier time of finding the necessary focus to get traction: they aren't saddled with a lot of pesky alternate routes sitting there, looking alluring.

The good news is that my (repeatedly) messing up, underestimating how much time something will take and overestimating the energy and resources I have to devote to it, will be good for you, because I will keep writing about it. This, in turn, will be good for me, because I will be forced to examine things. I mean, don't get me wrong: I'm doing a metric crapload of examining right now as a result of all the stuff I've taken on this year. But really, the blog is good for forcing me to get my thoughts out and down, instead of swirling around in my head or even sloughed off in a morning walk. This way, they're there for posterity AND my own, forgetful self.

For tonight, however, the formula is both simple to sort out AND easy to implement:

1. I am here in the cold, messy dark of my apartment, overwhelmed by everything I've committed to and the enormous burden of responsibility it feels like.
2. I want to be in bed, watching good/bad BBC, snuggled up with a warm, friendly body (with another, furrier one at the foot of the bed.)
3. Put on shoes, get in car, drive to The BF's.

Well, okay, I may opt for clogs...

xxx
c

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

Get your motor runnin', Day 21: Endings are also beginnings

In case you hadn't noticed, stuff is falling apart all around you.

In case you hadn't noticed, it always has been.

Someone is always losing a job or hitting a wall or falling out of love. Someone else, somewhere else, is making something new out of what didn't seem to exist before, an idea or a song or a business or a soccer ball (see above!) or, god bless 'em (and thanks for doing it so I don't have to) a person.

I had a good, long talk with an interesting fellow I met at a networking event tonight. We met at this networking event because I arranged the event which he also came to and we wound up sitting next to each other.

But we also met because I quit my job some 16-odd years ago and drove across the country with a man who is now married to someone else, to write for a show that no longer exists, produced by an amazing crew of people who have scattered to the ends of the earth. Or at least the edges of a few continents.

We met because I got kicked out of the Groundlings, had my heart broken several times, had my insides blow up. In fact, if pressed, I would say that most of the goodness in my life today exists because my life as a Healthy Person ended just over six years ago.

Or, if you want to get mundane and granular about it, we met because each of us ended a conversation with someone else.

Stuff is always ending, all the time, all around us, whether we like it or not. And unless the stuff is us having our heads banged into a wall, we usually don't. And it has to be some egregious banging. Because just a little banging, even that can become preferably to the idea of something else, something that might be worse banging. No, we'll take this particular banging against this particular wall. It's fine. It's not even stucco.

Fear, fear, gimme a beer. How do I steer? Is help near?

We talked of fear, this fellow and I, and about how it stops people from doing what they're meant to do next. (It's key, that "next." Because you're always doing something, right? And you can waste a lot of time staying in something when you should be moving on to what's next.) He wondered if there was something particular that kept people from doing the next thing, and really, most of the time, the only thing particular about it is the flavor of fear: fear of loss of identity, fear of loss of prestige, fear of failure and thus becoming a non-person (this is a BIG one for artists), fear of destitution. You get the idea. If you were playing along, you either recognized one of these or another popped up. Feel free to share it in the comments.

Because I'm here to tell you, you are free. That thing you want is gettable. Maybe not in the exact way you're picturing it right now, but trust me, no matter how excellent a picturer you are, you cannot begin to imagine the multifarious ways the universe can imagine things. The universe will put your shit to shame.

Just go do the one thing. You know. The one thing that would move you one step closer. And then the next day, do one more thing. At some point, tell some people what you're doing, slowly, carefully, because you want to make as sure as possible you're going to get help, not hindrance.

Stuff is ending all around you. Your ability to recall things and your ability to eat whatever you want with impunity and your 40s, if you're me. Something else if you're you.

Let it end, and open your arms to embrace the magnificent next thing. You must do it for yourself. You must do it for the world.

The new year is not so new anymore. This 21-Day Saluteâ„¢ is over, too. And that's a good thing.

Because without it ending, you'd never get to see what's next...

xxx
c

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

Get your motor runnin', Day 20: Worst job in the world

Today was a very, very hard day for stuff getting done. Between watching the inauguration (before, during and after which I cried at least 15 times) and a brutal teeth cleaning (floss early, floss often, young people) I was pretty much a spent rag of a wreck by 3pm.

So while our amazing new President and his amazing wife flit around D.C., graciously giving yet more of themselves to the jubilant and adoring crowds, I will probably knock off early (where "early" is "before 7pm"), head to my friend, Dea's, to pick up my candles, and hang with my boyzzz, The BF and Arno J., for a little corny (sorry, Fionnuala!) beeb costume drama before passing out.

This means that tomorrow will be that much harder, because some of the stuff that should have gotten done today won't get got done until tomorrow.

But there are two reasons that this not only doesn't bother me, but thrills me to my core.

The first is that whatever I'm doing and however hard I work at it and no matter how much it means to me and/or the world, this man, this amazing new President of ours, is working harder at something that's exponentially, geometrically, incomprehensibly harder. And, if past performance is any indicator of future returns, I suspect there will be a minimum of fuss and a maximum of grace about it. And if he can do it with what's on his plate, by gum, I can do it with what's on mine, and then some.

The second is that this man, this amazing new President of ours, is our president. At one point, around the same point that I was, he was just another American kid whose mom wanted him to make something of himself. Only instead of having some piffling gender odds stacked against him, he was an American kid from a single-parent household who was half-black, which, in this country, meant he was black, period, and which, as he pointed out in his glorious inaugural address, means a whole lot to all of us:

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

Yeah, it's kind of corny. But it's 100% fantastic. If you work at something, bit by bit and day by day, you can make it happen. Not always. But it's possible. And he's going to try it again.

If this man is willing to do that with what I think must be the most horrible job in the world, I can damned sure do it with mine.

Who's with me?

xxx
c

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

Get your motor runnin', Day 19: The point of service

I've tricked The BF into watching yet another corny BBC costume drama with me. (Heh heh heh.)

This time, it's the 2005 version of Charles Dickens' Bleak House, featuring the endearingly odd Gillian Anderson (who most famously played Scully of American television's The X Files, and who has one of acting's craziest head-to-body size ratios I've ever seen), a lot of really talented British actors like Charles Dance and Pauline Collins ("No, honestly, C.D....") and strange "ch-chunk"-y sound effects and jarring transitional cuts that remind me a little too much of Law & Order, in a bad way. Oh, well; nothing's perfect.

While I'm not entirely certain what it is about the BBC treatments that rings my bell, I suspect it boils down to two things. First, they actually tell the damned story. Second, they pick really, really good stories to tell. There's a reason Dickens and Shakespeare and a few other windy writers are still read, and it's not just because their works are in public domain. They were outstanding chroniclers of the human condition, which hasn't changed much in several hundred years. Circumstances, yes. People, no. And it is both illuminating and a huge, huge relief to have a name put to certain types, and to see them exposed for what they truly are.

Take one of the minor characters of Bleak House, for example. Mrs. Pardiggle. She's a preposterously silly woman who is devoted to her many charitable causes...at the expense of her family and to the detriment of those she purports to serve. Her children (rightly) despise her and we're not too all-fired nuts about her, either. Which is, I'm pretty sure, exactly the reaction that Dickens, who was so good at pointing out injustice, even (or especially) where popular opinion was ignorant of or blind to it, was going for. No dummy, that Dickens.

Unfortunately, I think many of us grow up with a dreadful, burdensome, yucky notion of service. It's supposed to hurt, serving is, or we're not doing it right. I think that's...well, wrong. Service may feel uncomfortable (especially in the beginning), and there's going to be some effort about it if you're doing something useful and meaningful, but the idea that it has to be unpleasant or you're not doing it right is a big pile of crappity-crap.

Service is about paying it forward, yes, and sharing our gifts of time or expertise or what have you, but ultimately, it's about helping two parties: the one on the receiving end and yourself. If it's not even, it may be patronage, it may be charity, and it may or may not be helpful, but it's not service, which is made up (in my opinion) of equal parts humility and free exchange. As in, you humble yourself to someone else so that they may prove your teacher, and your service to them is the medium of exchange.

My first inkling of what real service was like came when I volunteered to record books for the blind via an organization now known as Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic. I had visions of myself wowing the vision-impaired crowds with my über-compelling narration skillz; the reality was more me learning how little I actually knew about pronunciation and the English language, and fumbling through computer textbooks when I was even allowed to do the recording part. In other words, it was something I thought I'd be good at it, I ended up not being not very good at, and yet I stuck with it because I figured hey, it's supposed to make me unhappy: it's service!

I continued on in this fashion, volunteering for things I was neither particularly adept at nor interested in, because I felt I should. And service continued to make me very, very unhappy, and God was in her heaven, and all was right with the world.

And then, lo, a breakthrough! I had joined a professional organization for both networking and educational purposes, and was being subtly pressured to volunteer. Which I did, on a project that I could see from the get-go was being very poorly managed, whose poor management would most likely cause me a great deal of head- and heartache. At one point, I was groaning about it to a new friend who was a longtime member of this group, and she passed on the greatest bit of advice I've ever heard regarding service:

"I've done it both ways; now, I only volunteer for the stuff I really want to do."

GENIUS.

Of course, my first thought was, "Well, who's gonna do all that stuff I don't want to do?" The answer, of course, is all those people who don't want to do the thing you want to do.

Note that I'm not saying one should only do what one is already good at, although that's a fine place to start (and it's always nice to put those talents to good use). Service is also lovely because it allows us to grow our skills and outlook, to become finer leaders or programmers or chefs. Or painters.

And sometimes, to be fair, you need to do a little excavating around that "stuff you really want" part. If you're a voiceover actor and your neighborhood coalition needs people to pitch in to clean and repair the dog park, there may not be a role that utilizes your VO skillz, but the part of you that's a dog owner may say, "Well, I really want a safe, clean place for my beloved Sparky, who has enriched my life in so many ways, to run free," and suck it up and swing a paintbrush. Like that.

But most of the time, there's no need to make yourself (or the people near and dear to you) miserable by volunteering for crap you hate. Love comes from love, and stuff done from a sense of obligation and not gratitude has the stench of duty all over it.

Pun fully intended...

xxx
c

Some notes on Bleak House and service:

You may want to just pick up a cheap copy of Bleak House, as it's quite long although it should be readily available at your public library. You can also read the full text for free, online, via the excellent Project Gutenberg, or listen to downloadable or online MP3s of for free via LibriVox and Internet Archive.

And if you are an actor or voiceover person or just someone who likes reading stories aloud, you may want to look into volunteering for LibriVox, a group that gets individual volunteers to record works in the public domain from the comfort of their own home computers, and upload them to the Internet for all to use. Amazing and miraculous, that!

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

Get your motor runnin', Day 18: Hating the thing you love

This week was a banner week for crossed signals and nutty communication. A topsy-turvy week, if you will.

This morning, for example, The BF and I arose just before the crack of dawn, thanks to a call from his son, who lives several states away and is not really old enough to appreciate the time-zone thing. The good news is that even though it was godawful early for a Sunday, (a) I've been rising earlier and earlier anyway, owing to the twin curses of advancing age and young dog; and (b), it was just a general howdy-do call, no big thang. The bad news is that a roughly-wakened, middle-aged heart does not know the difference between an emergency and a mistake, and, especially when it's housed in a worrywart carcass, is inclined to assume the former, and put hard miles on itself, regardless.

I also managed to upset some poor horseperson in Nebraska whose photo I used to illustrate yesterday's post. I thought my Trigger/trigger play on words was hilarious and the photo, perfection; s/he thought I was the devil incarnate and a villainous thief. The whole matter took less than a half-hour to sort out, but still, half-hours don't come cheap these days, and justice is one of my weak spots.

This is on top of a scrap heap of double-booking, overbooking and forgetting I'd booked entirely. I mean, the week itself wasn't bad, but my management of it really was befouled from stem to stern.

And, in the midst of this, I am endeavoring to maintain my commitment to my art, my craft, my love of turning the vague into the concrete. Which is to say: some writing, some more writing, and a wee bit (10 minutes per day, to be exact) of gee-tar playin'. Not too much to ask, right?

It shouldn't be, for these are the things I love, the writing, the gee-tar playing. (Well, the music-making. The gee-tar playing, or the learning of the gee-tar, to be precise, is something I must endure, for now, until such time as I actually do not 100% suck at it. So you see.) And yet, this week, these past few days, I have been feeling love far less than I have obligation. Or outright annoyance. How can I love these things and hate them at the same time?

Well, it's not the same time. Or, more precisely, sometimes it's the same time.

I came across a fine item today about art and pushing through the rough times with it by a fine writer/artist/person named Jen Lee. I'm pretty sure I found her via Dave Pollard, and fairly certain I left a comment on her fine item, but as this is the end of the week of farkakte communication, who knows if it's true and if the comment actually made it through. Jen Lee wrote about her takeaway from Stephen King's wonderful book on writing (aptly titled, On Writing) and Anne Lamott's equally, if not more wonderful book on writing, Bird by Bird, and the big cheese-daddy takeaway, which I left in my comment, which may or may not still exist, is this:

We're all of us nuts, and scared, and a mess; we all of us hate the hell out of the thing we love some days.

It's true, you know. Even the thing you love more than anything will flip you the bird some days, or wrassle with you on other days, or, on particularly bad days, take a powder entirely.

It's okay.

Because the thing you love will always come back to you, and you will love each other just as you always did, if not more.

You write well...or don't. You act well...or don't. The muse visits...or doesn't.

Show up every day, and the occasional day off doesn't matter so much. This, from someone 40-some-odd years into one love, and a mere 18 (of conscious, applied effort) into loving another...

xxx c

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

Get your motor runnin', Day 16: Do do that doo-doo you don't do so well

I realize that while I chronicle my overall personal struggles, confusion and very occasional triumphs here, that not everyone here reads or even gives a toss about my business-y, marketing-y or other non-core communicatrix-y stuff. (Although I could argue that as I am the communicatrix, pretty much anything I work on is de facto communicatrix-y, I will not, it is Friday, and I am far too tired and have far too much yet to do to waste energy on silly arguing.)

So, hey: if you HATE marketing or HATE business or HATE marketing-your-business stuff, go read some other stuff. Like all the crazy crap I've been posting to my Tumblr blog, or to my StumbleUpon blog, or...well, anything else on this page.

If you're still here, here's the deal. I hate marketing, too. And business. And marketing my business.

Well, not all of it. But a lot of it. I have weird issues around money and commerce, since grubbing over the former destroyed two whole sets of family for me and the latter pretty much robbed me of a father, an active, present one, anyway, for my entire life. (Although commerce was responsible for many fine hamburgers poolside at the Four Seasons, along with the occasional treat from the minibar during a Judge Judy/Law & Order marathon, and a whole lotta frequent-flier-mile-purchased airline tickets, so I won't totally crap on commerce. I'll just say that it has its place, and I've never felt that comfortable sidling up next to it.)

As many of you who have things like bills and mortgages and suchlike know already, it takes a certain amount of money (and, by extension usually, commerce) to fuel these mundanities. I won't lie to you: I've been outrageously fortunate in the money department. Outside of a rocky start ($15K didn't get you through an entire year in NYC even when the year was 1983), I've never really wanted for the stuff. Yeah, I learned to live modestly; there's a great story around that involving a yacht and a well-timed trip to the Executive Creative Director's office at my last real job. But I've also been lucky. Like, really, really lucky. As in, able-to-make-a-living-acting lucky, for almost 10 years, which involves these fantastic things called residuals that magically appear in the mail, and great health insurance, and a hobby that earns you pin money on the side. Lucky.

I could never really lean into my luck, though, and count on it. Thar be fools, and I ain't no fool: I'm a Virgo. Virgos squirrel things away and worry and figure out ways to, as my friend, Dyana, puts it, squeeze a dollar out of a nickel. Virgos clip coupons from their perches atop big heaping piles of cash because, well, you just never know when a pirate will skateboard in, distract you with shadow puppetry and steal your perch out from under you. (Don't laugh, it could happen.)

So I always worked on other stuff, even when I didn't know what the hell I was working on. I kept up my subcontracting and my design gigs and even (sssshhhh!) my copywriting, for a few select folkies. (They're grandfathered in, so don't ask. No new copywriting clients, period.)

And as far as bringing in business, well, I worked the things that worked for me: Email. Friend network. Referrals. Later, an actual website and posting to Flickr and of course some blogging and other newfangled types of (ack!) marketing that might spread my reach a bit. With ENORMOUS provocation from the mighty Ilise Benun, I even dipped my toe into the cold and unfriendly waters of real-life networking, which turned out to be...well, if not exactly delightful and restorative, certainly manageable and occasionally, fun.

I tried to remember the fun when I committed to this week's project. I tried sooooooo hard. And I still put off making (ack! eek! ook! uk!) cold calls until the last possible minute (almost) of the work week. That's right: the Virgo said she was gonna call FIVE people FIVE about these here acting workshops all the Angeleno actors raved about, and the Virgo was not going to back down. Mostly because she'd committed to it out loud in at least two places (and via audio). I mean, let's be honest.

How did it go? Well, I'll save the full story in all its horror and glory for the biggity-big blog post on Monday. But the gritty details don't really matter, not here, anyway.

What matters is that I'm here. I made five cold calls and I'm here. I picked up the phone and did something the very idea of which is so horrifying to me, I'd never actually done it. And then I did it FOUR. MORE. TIMES.

People, people...

If this man can land a kaput plane in the river, saving the lives of every passenger on board...

If this man can volunteer for the toughest job in the country at one of the lowest points in its history...

If I can make FIVE COLD CALLS...

...you can do it. Whatever "it" is. Whether it's sucking up your pride to do something you don't think you should have to do, or taking a risk you were never supposed to have to take, or shouldering a burden you never thought you'd have to take on, you can do it. You do one little piece of it, then do a big honkin' piece of it. Or just eat the whole damned problem in one bite. Whatever. Your call.

Times have never been crazier, but times have always been this crazy for someone.

If you need a little more inspiration, go read this post of Tim Ferris's. Even if you have no idea who he is. Even if you do and think he's a jerk. Maybe he is, who knows? I'm a jerk. Everyone's a jerk. This post? You should read. And watch. Trust me.

You do it, that horrid thing you don't want to do, that you know you should do. And I'll do that horrid thing I don't want to do, etc.

And afterward, we'll all have a cold beverage and laugh a little and have some fun, hopefully, before we go out and do it again.

This is what we do, my friends.

We go to work...

xxx
c

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

Get your motor runnin', Day 15: Good enough

There's a little lunch-y shop in The BF's neighborhood that we patronize from time to time, for a sandwich or a salad, or sometimes just an espresso drink.

The chef-proprietor is quite gifted in the kitchen: he's Cordon Bleu-trained and no slacker with post-graduate education, as evidenced by the interesting new dishes and combinations he's always dreaming up. And the shop is nice, with a pretty patio and a good location.

Here's the thing, though: he's in Los Angeles, where those kinds of things are cost-of-entry. Unlike opening a place in the middle of nowhere, or even in a small somewhere, like a college town or a non-ritzy resort town, those are the things required to have even a shot at survival. Which they were doing, Matt and his lovely wife, Jacquie. Surviving.

But things were tight. And times are tight. So they put their heads together and came up with an idea to open for dinner. Not exactly earth-shattering in the novelty department, right? Only here's the thing: they're only open for dinners on Fridays and Saturdays. And the menu is prix fixe. And the prix it's fixed at is twenty bucks a head.

It gets better.

Matt & Jacquie only accept a certain number of reservations for each evening. Probably because of space limitations in the kitchen, which also limits the types of ingredients Matt can use, as he only has certain cooking equipment available to him, but what it does (which is they way they sell it) is let them what comes linger as long as they like. No bum's rush; hang on the pretty patio as long as you like. With your wine, which you've bought yourself from a nearby wine shop, which has selected a number of possible pairings at various price points because Matt and Jacquie, smart, SMART, I tell you, approached this wine shop with the idea. Because a liquor license is not an easy thing to obtain, but why should that be a liability? Make it a plus, and don't even charge corkage.

There's a point to all of this, I swear. And it's this. (I think.)

I've always wished I was a little more so. A little prettier. A little taller. Definitely a little smarter. (Okay, a lot smarter. And prettier, and taller.) I figured that if I was, it would have made the difference, to my love life, my popularity, my career success. Sometimes I'd even find myself using my lack of whatever as an excuse to not try so hard. Because really, what was the point? What, really, could I do? So much of this was out of my average-looking, below-average-height-percentile, IQ-deficient hands.

Then, last night, I got the shock of my life. It's taken me a while to write this, because I was searching (unsuccessfully) for stats to back it up, but here it is: the last bit doesn't matter. That's what Malcolm Gladwell says, anyway, and I suppose he did a fair amount of research for his most recent book about success and how it's achieved, and by whom. Last night, he brought up some crazy-ass research that basically said that once you made it into the 95th-percentile club, it was all pretty much the same. That any IQ points over 120 were irrelevant to success, or at least, no guarantor of it. 120 is the benchmark, the ticket to the game, but everything after that, while, as he said, "it's fun to have", doesn't really figure ins. After that, it's the hours of intentional practice/rehearsal/learning, plus timing and environment and luck: in other words, one factor within your control and a whole lot that's not.

He even went so far as to say that neither IQ nor test scores (again, above a certain benchmark) should figure into college admissions procedure: have your pool of applicants with a baseline of intelligence, the old SAT benchmark would be around 1250, and leave the rest to fate. Which, of course, will never happen, because what would happen to the Harvard brand if there was no appreciable difference between it and, say, Tufts?

I can't buy it completely. Not without seeing actual research, not without reading a lot more about it. But even thinking about it that way is pretty freeing...and pretty terrifying. If those 20 or 30 or 40 IQ points aren't making the difference, maybe I can. Or maybe I can't, which is the terrifying part.

Here's what is true: I have the option of doing everything that's within my control to advance my position, or not. Maybe Gladwell is wrong and those 10 or 20 or 30 IQ points would make the difference; maybe my efforts are sweet, but for naught. Maybe, in other words, I'm fucked. Maybe you are, too. Maybe you're not pretty enough or tall enough or smart enough. Maybe the economy isn't good enough. Maybe maybe maybe.

The way I look at it after hearing about Good Enough last night is this: Matt and Jacquie have a place that's good enough. The location and the menu and the pricing and the food. They're as good as a lot of really good places like them. So they use their juice to think up ways they can be different, where different equals better. (And I'm pretty sure they're also just constantly looking to be better, period.) They're going at it from a Seth-Godin, purple-cow perspective. Which, in the absence of hard evidence as to what makes for success, makes as much sense as anything and more than most things.

I'm good enough. Maybe someone else who's good enough also got some lucky combo platter of timing and location and even connections or context on her side, and she's whooping it up with the career I long for right now. Maybe I'll never get my version of that career. But damned if I can't keep figuring out ways to be better, or different-better, or more focused and deliberate about putting in my 10,000 hours (the 10,000-hour rule being something Gladwell also talks about in the new book). I mean, I'm here anyway: might as well work at something.

If nothing else, it's something to write about.

xxx
c

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

Get your motor runnin', Day 14: Blink of an eye, Blanche

For those of you who've never had the pleasure of living in seasonless paradise (or hell, depending on your outlook), time passes crazy fast with no external markers of the obvious variety.

And, for those of you who are still stuck in your 20s, time accelerates (or seems to) with each passing decade, something you can't begin to understand until you've got more years of driving under your belt, or voting, or (legally) drinking, than not.

Without getting all Cat's-in-the-Cradle on you, it's kind of important to have not only a plan and a whole lot of carpe diem fueling it, but it's especially so when you're staring down the back half of your life from the sun-baked flats of Los Angeles. Despite my type-A tendencies, I managed to fritter away big, honking swaths of my life on crap activities for the first 10 or so years after graduating from college. That wouldn't be so bad, we've all of us got to fritter  a little bit, but I've got introvert genes and fear-of-God-and-the-Non-Standard-Job programming, so I was perhaps a little overly slow in embracing change.

One of the things that becomes unavoidable as you age is the introduction of common tragedy to one's life: illness, sadness, death. Both my parents and all of my grandparents died in rapid succession over the course of 10 years, from my early 30s to my early 40s. Friends have begun succumbing to illnesses, cancer, hypertension and the like; my own bitch-slap of a Crohn's onset shook me up but good seven-odd years ago.

Still, it's easy to forget. It's another sunny day here in seasonless paradise, and the hours fly by, filled as they are with obligations, chores, and the occasional fire that needs putting out. First the hours, then the days, then 40 years later all of a sudden you're wrapped in a Snuggie watching the weather channel with the volume turned up way too loud, marking time by meals and medication. I forget, and I spent five months climbing the walls with frustration during my Crohn's recovery: I was so happy the first day I could drive myself to the post office and back I actually cried (right before falling asleep for three hours from exhaustion).

I suppose there are as many ways to stay aware of time passing as there are people to dream them up, but a new one I've started is keeping the obituaries nearby. Not all of them, and not as they come in. Just the "Farewell" page from the end-of-year issue of THE WEEK, with everyone on it but poor Eartha Kitt, who missed the cutoff date for publication. It's good for me to look up from my computer and see Paul Newman and Studs Terkel and Alexandr Solzhenitsyn looking back at me, asking me what the hell I've done with my day. It's even good to see some of the sadder entries, David Foster Wallace and Tim Russert, who died too soon (and, in Wallace's case, too, too horribly). Because you never know, and because you can never be too grateful for the good minutes you're given.

I realize that even teeing up the discussion this way puts me in old-man-hitchin'-up-my-pants territory. But so be it.

I am my own old man, and that old man's job is to make sure I'm doing mine...

xxx
c

Image by bobboo_77 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Get your motor runnin', Day 13: The parts you hate about the things you love

There's a vision you have on the outside of the thing you want.

That vision features you, well-lit and peaceful, in the perfect clothing, with perfect teeth and perfect health, enjoying your perfect Perfection as you achieve that thing before a perfectly adoring audience.

The clothing varies, depending on the pursuit of the visionary, and whether or not the Peak Vision involves a red carpet and a televised awards ceremony; the audience may or may not be directly visible, depending on the thing (but always, if we are honest, an adoring public is involved, preferably one chastened by their own shortsightedness in recognizing such genius so late in the game).

In other words, details may change from person to person, dream to dream, but one thing remains constant: on the outside, you see the finished product, not the hours and days and weeks and years of tedium, of toil, of pushing the c@#ksucking boulder up the motherf%@king hill, and especially not the particularly craptacular scenes of you loosing your footing and having the c@#ksucking boulder roll back down the motherf%@king hill, over your goddam toes.

For me, there is a lot of tedium around anything that requires me to leave my comfortable home, including fun things. It was not always thus; when I lived the luxurious life of a working actor (don't laugh, it WAS luxurious!), I looked forward to leaving the house. Reveled in it! And when I was in the last stages of recuperation from my Crohn's onset, well, I was like the proverbial B-movie publicity whore: I would get dolled up to go to the opening of a door.

Now that I am working on a new thing, however, one that demands ferocious quantities of brain juice, with a lot of tedious but necessary grunt work thrown in for good measure, going out is the last thing on my mind. Sorry, second-to-last thing: sex is probably last. Good thing The BF is up to his very own eyeballs in boulder-pushing these days.

I go, I go. And usually, after the excruciating effort of overcoming inertia has passed, it ends up being tolerable, or even pleasurable. Today, for instance, I hauled my middle-aged carcass out of bed and drove it to one of Jeff Pulver's legendary breakfasts, at one of my favorite delis (Nate'n'Al's) in one of my least favorite neighborhoods (Beverly Hills) to meet a bunch of other Internet nerds, one of whom rather oddly and stubbornly refused to self-identify as such. No matter. The rest of the gang turned out to be fun and interesting; a few, I suspect, may go on the short list of Fine & Excellent Acquaintances Worth a Trip to Visit in Person. (And breakfast itself, it goes without saying, was superb. I mean, come on, Nate'n' fucking Al's, for chrissakes!)

The rest of the day was pleasant enough, if not clips-reel-worthy: a trip to the post office, a visit from a new acquaintance, some work, some emails. Mundane. Unexceptional.

Except...

Except if you unpack those simple, humble events, some rather more noteworthy things bubble up to the surface. Gently, most of them, because really, what kind of big thing is it to mail a small gift to a book editor in New York City? Not much, until you think that a year and a half ago, you didn't know any book editors in New York City, much less one who'd become friend and champion enough that you felt a small gift upon the occasion of a new and better job would be an appropriate gesture.

Nothing unusual, either, about a visit from a new acquaintance, except that this person happens to be a fellow traveler whom you met randomly at a friend's holiday party, someone who gave up a monied career for the life of an itinerant guitar player (and not at 20, and not at 30), and that he's coming over to try on the tuxedo which belonged to your beloved paternal grandfather, which tuxedo you've been carting from place to place since his death over 10 years ago, never quite able to put it in the pile for the consignment shop or Goodwill, and of course, it fits perfectly, which is a strange and wonderful sort of omen, in a way.

The work is just monkey work you've done a million times now, but you do it so easily and it makes the person on the other end so grateful, you almost forget that you are completely self-taught in it, that you didn't know how to open Photoshop or Illustrator 10 years ago, much less do anything with them, and now they are part of the odd but sturdy net that holds you up to do the rest of it.

And email? You get email everyday. But one of them this day is an invitation to sit on a panel of experts, the rest of whom actually look like experts, and talk about this crazy thing you love, that again, you were just Wasting Time on 10 years ago, the Internet.

There is a saying one of my old acting teachers used to use that confounded me for years: "the root of the thing is never the thing itself." Which, in acting terms, means that two people arguing about a misplaced sock aren't really arguing about a misplaced sock.

I like to look at this saying another way, though, and in a more forwardly direction. And that is that the thing you think you are going after is not the thing you're really after. After all, after that thing, there is always another Thing. Ask Meryl Streep. Ask Warren Buffett. Hell, ask any of your Internet-famous types, for that matter. What you are going after is the going and the doing, and guess what, cowboy? That includes all that crap you hate. The overcoming inertia. The hours of tedium. That's what they mean by it being about the journey; it's about living every second of that journey, tedious and hateful parts included, full out and 100% there. Huzzah!

I realize that sometimes, it sounds like I hate what I'm doing, or am tired of what I'm doing, or am frustrated by the Doing not getting me to the Thing fast enough, whatever the Thing of the moment is. And in those moments, that is the absolute truth. Which sucks, but there it is.

And then (glory be) in the next moment, all is right again. Tedious, perhaps. Fun sometimes. Occasionally? It even matches the vision.

But I will tell you this. I had a vision more in my heart than my head some 20 years ago, long before I thought moving to L.A. was in my future, and an eternity away from any clue about what a life here might look like. That's the best I can describe it: a vision in my heart, walking around Westwood on my own during a production trip, and smelling L.A. air in January. It's a unique smell, the mix of Santa Ana wind and dry heat and whatever nearby brush is blooming. It smells like possibility to me and always has.

And today, walking around, time collapsed in on itself as I smelled that smell again. In that moment, I remembered that whatever else happens in the next moment, I am living the part of my life that I dreamed of, and I love it every bit as much as I felt in my heart I would.

I was not wearing anything special. My eyes and teeth and health are all a bit dodgier than they were when I had the vision. Believe me, there was no audience, adoring or otherwise, anywhere in sight.

Best. Moment. Ever.

Until the next one...

xxx
c

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

Get your motor runnin', Day 9: First gear also works

I won't lie: I'm not used to this kind of pace.

It's been a while since I've been this prolific. If ever. And I've never been this old while trying to be this prolific, that's for sure. Hard-won skills are worth something, but sometimes nothing beats the sheer boundless energy of youth.

I have to remind myself that moving slowly is okay, too. Some days, today, for instance, might be more for catching up with emails and reading and other digital housekeeping. Even though as a freelance type I set my own hours, the rest of the world has demands during the week and some inevitably seep through.

I also have to remind myself that this is the end of the very first work week of the new year. Not that I think any part of this year will be about coasting, but I do hope to build up some work callouses, as it were. And better habits. I've already seen that I must needs reserve certain hours of the day for certain heavy-lifting tasks, and push the rest off until later.

But all the scheduling, good habits and discipline in the world aren't going to change the fundamental truth of the next few weeks: I've got a lot on my plate, possibly more than I can reasonably do in the time allotted. Or do well, anyway.

It's too late for now, but for 2010 (now there's a scary round number for you) I would like to propose we not attempt to front-load all of our networking in the first four weeks of the year. There are 48 more of the buggers, after all, just waiting for us to get together, mix it up and DO stuff.

In the meantime, I will make the humble suggestion that we each put aside one or two days to move a little more slowly than the others. For me, this means no phone calls, no meetings and at least a short evening constitutional. For you, this may mean no serious writing, no errands, no cooking. I'm guessing each of us feels pressure slightly differently. And yes, many of us have always-on obligations; after spending some quality time with The BF's progeny, I'm always reminded of the miracle that is getting ANYTHING done while simultaneously raising children. So you know, I will never, ever judge the cleanliness of a house with young children in it again. (At least, until a rat runs over my foot or something. There are limits.)

Moving at a snail's pace is also moving. It will get me there. And as Merlin says in a lovely interview with Leo Babauta, pushing through the exhaustion is not always the wisest move. Sometimes the wisest move is a short walk. Or a short post.

A short post for a long week.

Up and at 'em again tomorrow...

xxx
c

Image by suika*2008 (out) via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Get your motor runnin', Day 7: Letting your freak flag fly

If you were online in a wanting-to-date capacity roughly four years ago, and you were man enough to be aged 38 to 48 and actually seeking same instead of a 12-year-old, and you lived somewhere within a 10-mile radius around the Undisclosed Location that serves as communicatrix HQ, you might have stumbled upon this:

Loyal, fierce, sunny, slight, myopic & astigmatic, mildly obsessive, eternally optimistic. Adherent of no man's dogma; unapologetic devotee of the Truth. A self-actualized diva-dork with enough of a past to keep things interesting; a student who is eternally ready for the next teacher to appear.

The usual folk: smart, kind, interesting, self-evolved. Anyone who makes my heart beat faster when I have them in my sights, who lingers in my head afterward AND who can make me laugh...hard. People who will introduce me to beautiful new sights and sounds. Fellow travelers who make my heart sing. You know: the good stuff, baby...

The first paragraph was my "About Me"; the second, my "Who I'm Looking For." Yes, this was my online dating bio on the Onion personals, part of the now-defunct Spring Street Networks, which also incorporated the LA Weekly, Nerve and Salon personals, the latter being the entry point of choice (so to speak) of The BF.

You might have emailed me; more often than not (after the beginning, anyway, when all new ladies are chum in the online dating waters), I would have emailed you. For a while, when you put in your search parameters, the photo at the top of this post would have been what you saw, not, even I knew, a typical online dating key photo, which is exactly why I picked it.

Sometimes, you have to put out a hoop to see who will jump through it. Even if doing so flies in the face of all the great advice from all the people who have gotten somewhere before you. Sometimes, without even knowing why, your inner freak tells you it's time to hoist the flag and see who salutes.

What's interesting to me about this bio, this "what I want", this crazy-ass picture, is the thread that they are a part of. They're not about what I want in a date or a mate; they're about what I want, period. They're about who I am, what moves me and what deep, deep down gets me going. Re-read the paragraphs: they are not about walks on the beach or hot sex (not that there's anything wrong with that) or getting partnered up. Take them out of context and they're nothing more and nothing less than ABOUT ME. They're about the thread. They are the thread.

It's a thread that's been running through me as long as there's been a "me" to me, and that thread weaves that freak flag which is mine alone to fly. Not that I flew it all the time; I didn't fly it much at all for months or years at a time. I folded it neatly and stuck it away somewhere, like the memorial flag presented to the military widow. Freaky me was in indefinite suspended animation, so what the hell did I need (or want) to be flying that flag for?

You fly it anyway, though. You do. And by "you," I mean "me." I mean everyone.

We're all us of us big, fat, hairy, circus freaks, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. We're all crazy, five-year-old genius-artists somewhere way down deep, who don't know yet that you have to shut the hell up because GROWNUPS are TALKING, or because WE DON'T DO THAT IN CHURCH, or just BECAUSE I SAID SO, THAT'S WHY.

Kids aren't stuck, and they don't need to get motivated to do their work. Which they excel at, by the way. All kids can draw. All kids can sing and write plays and build castles. All kids can write stuff that makes you laugh and cry at the same time.

All kids run around, until they're stopped, buck-ass nekkid, letting their freak flag fly.

And sometimes, in tiny little steam-valve surprise releases, we do it as grownups, too. They're the moments you respond to in movies, and the things that make you laugh in real life. Comics make a living holding up special mirrors so you can see your freak flag. Writers, the good ones, do the same thing.

So like I said, I had mine safely packed away for many, many years, but every once in a while, I'd pull the drawer open and you'd get a peek. Sometimes, someone would be there to witness, like the proverbial chance pair of ears in the forest when the proverbial tree gets heard: the head shot photographer who took the above photo, or the better half who catches you talking to the rye toast. More often than that, I'm guessing, the drawer-cracked-open moments passed without notice.

Of course, to the rest of the world, I'm sure that most of the time, I still looked like a stone goofball. I worked it, you see, because it was my angle. But the authentic stuff came out so rarely pre-Crohn's-induced epiphany that I totally get why I was "difficult", as one close friend told me later, to be around before.

If you get stuck (and really, who among us doesn't), consider letting your freak out of the closet. Just for a spell. For a few moments, maybe, in 250 words or 3 minutes of stream-of-consciousness writing. In private, you know, at least, at first. Because if the perfect is the enemy of the good, the freak is often, oh, shit...is ALWAYS the engine of it. The freak makes things happen.

Make it a (brief) freak holiday. Let the flag fly, just for a bit. Salute the freak in whatever fashion feels good to you.

Then go ahead and (neatly, kindly, gently) fold the flag back up and (slowly, carefully, gently) ease it back into the drawer.

For now. Like the lady said, tomorrow is another day...

xxx
c

This post was inspired by an exhilarating phone call with my new almost-real-life friend, the fine and brave writer and thinker Dave Pollard. Pick up the phone, people. Even if you hate it. Especially if you hate it.

Get your motor runnin', Day 3: Enemy of the good

Anyone who has been (a) paying attention and (b) reading this outside of a feed reader knows that the tagline of this conglomeration of oddities is, and has been from Day One, "A Virgo's Guide to the Universe."

And, in a master stroke of irony, anyone who has not is not a Virgo.

I am asked sometimes what the extent of my belief in the woo-woo is. Not as frequently nor with such pointed annoyance as happened during my years with The Chief Atheist, but still, enough to warrant a policy disclosure. And said disclosure goes something like, "I believe in horoscopes, fortunes and other non-scientifically-based predictors of the future when they portend great things, and woo-woo stuff in general when it provides an interesting framework with which to puzzle out a problem.

The Virgo thing is just such a framework.

As I say in the "about" page of the new marketing project blog thingy, Virgos are "all about the order-from-chaos, the meticulous noting of things: we're, like, the Information Butlers of the world." We're the ones who ask for (and get) bright yellow filing cabinets for our 13th birthdays, which sometimes fall on Friday, the 13th, which doesn't freak us out in the least but which we think is really rather cool and orderly.

We're the ones who don't just create doll villages, but come up with full names, back stories and family trees for the 80-odd (very odd) residents. And type up a town newspaper. With columns. On a typewriter. A manual typewriter.

We're the ones who not only compile to-do lists but add any items we've already done to the lists, so that a complete record is in place.

We're the ones constantly coming up with better systems, when we're not stubbornly clinging to old, outmoded ones, because promise of perfection is constantly just there, one elusive, perfect system/hack/hashtag away.

There is a saying that "the perfect is the enemy of the good." Actually, it is a quote from Voltaire, and thus originally in French ("Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien"), and, it could be argued (and is, quite persuasively, here) that the actual translation is "The best is the enemy of the good." This thin-slicing of hairs is not my point; my point is this:

If you go after perfect, you lose. Because it will never be perfect. And I'm a Virgo, and I know from this shit, because I wrassle that particular bear almost every day. I've gotten into fights over the placement of a preposition in a headline. I've lost tens of thousands of dollars of income fretting over a tenth of an em-space in kerning. That's an imprecise example, but hey, I write this blog the way I do, all at once, very little editing, unlike other bits of writing like my columns and my newsletter, because this blog is about letting go of the perfect to get at more of the good.

Like everything else I talk about here, I bring this up now because I'm working on no less than three projects which will kill me, KILL ME DEAD, if I do not submit to the truth that the perfect is the enemy of the good. That blog project thingy I mentioned earlier. An upcoming (god help me) webinar on pricing that I'm co-presenting with my marketing coach, Ilise. And a new song that has to come out this week, or not at all, because it's got a whole new year's theme thing to it. (Well, okay, it could come out NEXT year, I guess, but that would suck all the more.)

Let us swear an oath, you and I: let us make 2009 the year we stopped letting the perfect be the enemy of the good more of the time than not. Or even, if you like, more of the time than we have before.

Or, hell, why not go for the whole ball of wax, the year we at least introduced the thought into our working vocabularies.

This post? Not perfect.

And I'm not going back to fix anything, save to add a picture.

Your comments? THROW THEM THE HELL OUT THERE. Don't edit! Go crazy! This one time, I will not judge you! Or myself!

And in return, when I put up the half-baked, not-as-perfect-as-I'd-like song, I hope you will be supportive. Because I'm only human, and it's going to be rough, taking the slings and arrows from the Great General YouTube Coliseum Community.

Even if you don't, though, even if you snicker a little at this or at that, when it comes out, I'm hanging tough.

Because friends, this is one advanced-syllabus lesson I'm learning. And at the end of 2009, I want it learned.

Well, as much as I can do, anyway...

xxx
c

P.S. I'm not even CHECKING this in PREVIEW mode. Look at me go!

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