No point moving forward if you can't reach back

I've been thinking a lot about an essay written by my fine, young friend, Chris Guillebeau, over to the fine, year-old blog, The Art of Non-Conformity.

Chris had been doing some thinking of his own, as per usual: this time, about a little phrase that's often bandied about by Those People Who Get How Things Are (i.e., not too many regular readers of this blog or of Chris's blog) when they bump up against Those People Who Insist That Things Are Malleable (i.e., many, many readers of those two blogs.)

Specifically, he was raging against one of those most grating of phrases to those of us who are trying to change the way we move through the world (and often, the world, too, while we're at it), those stubborn hippie/arty/lefty/boho/slanderous-descriptor-here types who refuse to sit down, shut up, take our goddamn licks and eat dessert last because that's the way it's always been done, ergo the way it should be: "Welcome to the real world."

Chris is right: it's a dismissive, belittling, marginalizing phrase...if we take it that way.

You see, I made the point in the comments that while yes, the phrase was annoying as hell, and yes, its appearance, especially when one is grappling with the various roadblocks Meaningful Change tends to throw up in her way, the hussy, can incite something close to murderous rage in the recipient, that replying in kind is exactly what you don't want to do.

And by "what you don't want to do," I mean it's generally exactly, PRECISELY what you want to do. It's basically "I told you so" for our times, and it's no improvement on its predecessor. (For a great story about one man who graciously declined to use the phrase, please do see this episode of This American Life, referred me by The Chief Atheist. It's awesome. And sad. But mostly, awesome.) And who doesn't want to punch the ever-living lights out of whatever smug bastard has the temerity to sling an "I told you so" on top of our monster sundae of shit like it's a fucking maraschino cherry?

So you want to. We've established that.

Here's the thing, though: at some point, it has to stop. Or it has to morph into something else, some different kind of opposition. Ask the Freedom Riders or Nelson Mandela or Gandhi, if you've got a pipeline to the Great Beyond. Or hey, ask me sometime. No, really, buy me a nice single-malt Scotch or small-batch bourbon and I'll regale you with tales of how I lost the better part of both sides of my family over complete and other horse's assery. And those are two stories with fairly happy endings, as I see it, because each of them was left with an open door.

Believe me, I get anger. I get righteous indignation. I get having no room for "sorry." I was told I was crazy and wrong-headed and foolish systematically by so many different people, it's a miracle my brains aren't more scrambled than they are. I've been bad at times but I've been wronged at least as often. Who among us hasn't? (If you raised your hand, my heartiest congratulations, plus a message to stay alert.)

A little grace goes a long way towards building bridges, and bridges are what we're going to need to bring the rest of the people over. Yeah, yeah, you hacked your way through the wilderness with nothing more than a rusty Mach III and stones of steel. I'm proud of you and grateful for you, fellow traveler (hopefully just ahead of me, so as to make my own hacking slightly less painful); the world needs more like you. I know you must protect yourself and preserve the mission above all, we're all ultimately responsible for ourselves, but please, please, be as nice as you can be.

Know that I say this to myself as much as out loud, to anyone else. I had my head so far up my ass at one point that I couldn't have found my cheeks with both hands. If it hadn't been for the lovingkindness and good humor of so many people ahead of me, Jack Kornfield, Joseph Campbell, my first shrink-slash-astrologer, I wouldn't be here typing these lofty, lofty words.

I've decided that it's the key to grace in our times, by the way: humor. The gentle kind, not the mocking kind. If you look at the three people above, or at a host of other great and beloved path-forgers, most of them were pretty down with the funny. (They were also down with the grounded-and-relaxed, which I'm desperately working on.) It's a real gift on this plane, and especially during dark times.

Is it your job to get everyone out of the burning building? I dunno. I don't. Probably not. Save yourself, save those closest to you. Don't be a martyr, unless that's your wiring, in which case, hey! knock yourself out!

I don't mean to beat up on young Chris; I'm one of his biggest fans and I don't care who knows it. I also relish the enthusiasm and energy with which he backs up his convictions. Makes me nostalgic for my 20s. And 30s. (Jesus, how the hell did I get to be an elder, anyway? And when do I become good at it?)

I brought it up in the thread and again here because I think in the heat of the moment, maybe he just...forgot. Because that boy, he funny. Puh-lenty.

You are, too; I know you are. I can be, too, when I'm not getting all up in my own jumbrage.

Feet on the ground, heart in the joke. If you can get yourself into that position, there's no end to who you can reach.

Which reminds me: a Mormon, a Jew and a duck walk into a bar...

xxx
c

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

Changing room

Ask anyone: I'm a planner.

If you had access to my early college journals, you could see my sweeping plans for life, in college, and beyond. If you had access to The BF, he could bend your ear for hours about my planner genes (especially if you plied him with tasty craft beers).

If you flipped through the various notebooks I've kept for the past five or six years, you'd find myriad plans for all sorts of projects, from painting the living room to launching a business to writing a book. Sorry, books. And if you could periodically scour the recycling bins in my apartment building, you'd find the rest of the lists, scribbled and squirreled away on scraps of paper here and there before they were either transferred to electronic formats or just discarded outright. (You would also be arrested if someone caught you, and old Eileen across the courtyard has a hawk eye for that kind of creepy nonsense.)

The next step is to bring in a confidante of some sort, a friend, my shrink, or even a random stranger in a line or on a plane. I say it out loud, make it more real, and see what happens. And then finally, a few of the ideas I take into real-real life: I book a flight to interview for a job I'm not even sure I want in a city I've never been to and, while I'm there, look at houses I'd buy if I lived there. (Disclaimer: while the notion looked nutty on the outside, and definitely to The BF, I could absolutely see myself going through with it going into it, or I'd never waste the valuable time of my potential employer or the real estate agent. That's just shitty.)

Most of the things I try on are lower-stakes than an expensive (for me) exploratory trip halfway across the country. I've become a huge devotee of thrift store shopping specifically because it lets you literally try out different looks for very little money. There were definitely expenses involved with me trying out various career options: I've thrown out more business cards than most people will have in a lifetime and spent crazy amounts of otherwise-billable hours writing copy or designing websites for myself that had to be scrapped six months (or weeks) later. And I'll not speak of the insane amount of money I've poured down the drain of acting headshots except to say that it would have come in very, very handy for weathering the current financial storm.

What used to stop me from doing anything new was the enormity of everything new. I couldn't quit my glorified cubicle job (it was a corner office, but the work was as odious as any cube monkey's) because how do you go from a job that not only pays you now, pays into the future and covers your health care but also is the sole ferry for your identity? I couldn't move to another state because my significant other was tied to this one. I couldn't be a writer because what the hell had I ever written outside of a letter or a :30 ad or a 3-minute sketch that anyone wanted to look at, much less pay for?

From the other side of the valley, here's exactly how: you don't quit your job outright; you go part-time, then freelance for five years, using the old hand in to cover you while you reach the other hand out to save yourself.

You test-drive Indiana and the Pacific Northwest with pilot visits and an open mind.

You start a blog. For no money. That no one really reads, for a long, long time, which is good, because it's sort of weird and herky-jerky for a long, long time.

You try stuff on, and you walk around in it, and you see how it fits.

Make no mistake, it can be as terrifying to try stuff on as it can to make one, bold, crazy leap. After all, when you leap, there's not a lot of time to think about the many, many ways things could go south. Which, surprise!, they do.

I'd say that things being what they are, you might as well. Because life is nutty now. Because it'll be over sooner than you think.

I have two little tools that have helped me with trying stuff on over the past 10 or so years.

The first is to have a credo. Or a mission statement, or a verbalized philosophy, or whatever else you want to call it. Mine is "To be a joyful conduit of truth, beauty and love." I came up with it fairly spontaneously doing an exercise from a book whose title I have, alas, long since forgotten. There were also some five-year plans and 10-year plans and lifelong plans I created along with it; those lists are mainly novelty items now, plan detritus, if you will. But that mission statement/credo thingy keeps me on the straight and narrow.

The other thing is to be prolific. If you can make a lot of stuff, or try on a lot of stuff, it takes pressure off of having to have ONE THING that really works for you. Obviously, you need to strike a balance: if you do too much, you spread yourself thin, and that's no good for figuring out anything. Plus, it'll drive you nuts. But throwing yourself into the trying on, in whatever way you can, that is a very good thing.

I'm trying on a few things for size right now. They have to do with ways to live my life as well as ways to make a living. And yes, I realize that given the current state of the global economy, this is something of a luxury. I have been both fortunate and frugal, and have no one to support nor answer to save myself. I do not discount the enormous freedom these things have given me to explore options, and I realize that most people, especially most people living in North America who are within 10 years of my age (47.5, as of this writing), don't live in this luxurious triangle of choice.

While I know it can be hard to come by, changing room is essential to most of us on the path. Just a little bit of private, move-around space for trying stuff on. Maybe it's not luxurious; maybe there's an item limit. Maybe it's makeshift. Maybe it's even shared, like the godawful spaces at Loehmann's where we all have to sort of let it all hang out by ceding each other some pretend private space.

But hey, just changing alongside old Jewish ladies and middle-aged Persian ladies and young ladies who just fell off the Turnip Express from Topeka will sometimes score you nod of approval (or a quick head shake of the other), sometimes there's even a little comradely advice or encouragement to be had in the company of fellow travelers.

I don't know how you find your room. All I know is that the alternative, to live a life where you deny your heart even a sliver of  space to dream and your mind the tiniest room to roam, is mighty bleak.

Maybe start small: five square feet. Five minutes per day. An extra thirty seconds on the john after you've done your business.

In my own wackadoo experience, a little bit of room begets more.

And makes everything a little bit better...

xxx
c

Image by newtype2011 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Junking jumbrage

Back in my youth, I remember an older, wiser friend taking a rather bemused stance over my ranting and raving on some Topic of Incredible Importance.

Righteous indignation, he said, is the province of the young.

Of course, that only had me railing all the more. Good GOD, I thought, and said, because I was something like 24, and decades from developing my internal editor, if everyone felt like you, what then? If no one got their panties in a bundle about the myriad injustices of the world, how would wrongs ever get righted? How would the stuck become unstuck? How, I demanded to know, would anything happen!?

My mother, while given to prolonged assaults on my character, attitude, or whatever else peeved her in the moment when in her cups, never did suffer much from righteous indignation. Like my older, wiser friend, she preferred the bemused stance, seasoned with heavy doses of acerbic wit. I'm not sure if it's something she developed over time or was baked into her character, but while she was certainly capable of a freakout if she caught me setting something on fire or other insalubrious activities, she tended to meet my childish need for justice justice justice (and engagement) with a shrug and a lazy, detached "They're your feet" or "Because I'm the mother" or her favorite, "Who ever told you life would be fair?"

I'm pretty sure it's Dad who had the issues with fairness doctrines. Early on, he instilled in me a love of Clint Eastwood films, with their simplistic  credo of right over wrong, and to hell with the rest of it; toward the end of his life, he, my sister and I discovered we were all members of the Law & Order/Judge Judy fan club: nothing more satisfying than someone Getting Theirs in a predictable episodic or half-hour format.

I've always been simultaneously confounded and fascinated by you oddballs who can maintain a level of detachment. I was easy to rile (and easy to surprise, since I was always in reactive mode), and viewed the sanguine like they were another species. My first serious education in the art (and rewards) of detachment was during my marriage to The Chief Atheist, whose nickname could just have easily been The Chief Ball-buster. He was a black-belt in flipping people's fury back onto themselves, and he looked at the whole thing like a science project. He had a look and way about him that was very blue-collar, although he was born into a nice, middle-class family from suburban Chicago. Instead of seeing his look as an obstacle, he used it to his advantage, playing dumb because (stupid) people expected him to, watching them blow stacks and hit roofs while he most decidedly had the last laugh.

Of course, there were things that got under his skin, too, including, from time to time, the idiotic assumptions people made about him because of the way he looked. But mostly, he accepted the cards he'd been dealt and learned to play a much, much higher-level game. He certainly never had much use for jumbrage, something I indulged in regularly.

"Jumbrage" is my recently (and accidentally) coined portmanteau word for "judging" and "umbrage," things I do and take too often, respectively. And I've cut back a bit, a lot of bits, really, from my youth. It's still easy for me to go there, but I've realized how lousy it feels to live there, so now I just visit, take note of when I'm doing so, and hightail it back to friendlier, calmer climes.

The more I do, the easier it is to see how many people enjoy indulging. I mean, they must, right? To do it so often, and with such fervor?

And now that I don't join in every time someone starts a round, it's kind of startling to note how far off they are on the judging thing. The other night, for example, I was waiting in line to purchase a copy of a friend of a friend's new (and pretty interesting-looking) book: a line of two, to be precise, with me comprising the rear part of the line. The party of the first part was engaged in some very complex transaction involving the return of something and the crediting of something else, which complexity she compounded with, among many other things, her insistence to the junior cashier-type person that she need only give up her first initial, not her entire name. Me, I was hanging out, trying to keep Monkey Brain's mitts off the gigantic, fluffy, homemade marshmallows (a half-pound for $7.99!), which was very difficult as Monkey Brain likes pure sugar even more than she does sugar in other things. Also, the marshmallows were so dense and heavy in their cello-wrapping (four marshmallows! an eighth of a pound each! two bucks a throw!) as to be almost pornographic in their appeal.

I happened to look up from the marshmallows; oh, hell, I was able to tear my lustful gaze from them for a quarter-second, the precise quarter-second the first half of the line looked up and back, nervously, angrily?, and found me in the way.

"She'll be WITH YOU in a MOMENT!!!!" she said loudly, whipping back to face the cashier.

I blinked. Huh?

She whirled to face me again. "I SAID, 'She'll be WITH YOU in JUST ONE MOMENT!!!'"

A mere six months ago, I'd have jumped on the Jumbrage Express without hesitation: "Fine!!" I would have answered, my tone and physicality (probably a "WTF?" look) inferring that not only were things not fine, they were the furthest thing from it, and in case she didn't get it, it was all HER FAULT.

Or, "Oooookay!" with that kind of a "cuckoo! cuckoo!" look that very clearly established where each of us were on the sanity and cluesomeness hierarchy.

That night, though, I did nothing. As in, nothing. Except look surprised, which I was, and probably a little foolish, which, let's face it, ain't far off the mark. Not only did I have no idea I was in her space, riling her up, down and sideways with my angry, impatient behavior as #2 in the line; I was consumed with homemade marshmallows.

In that second of realizing the miscommunication, the rampant projection going down, a whole playlet that had gone down without me realizing I was onstage, I got the futility of being reactive. That thing about the meditation, and all the self-grounding I have to do? No kidding. Like the man said, "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son."

There are a lot of changes happening really fast right now. For me, the first step to getting a handle on most of them is slowing down to take a good, hard look at them.

Jumbrage included...

xxx
c

Photo of coconut TOTALLY looking like it's taking umbrage by certified su via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license. I mean, seriously: that coconut is taking umbrage!

Three things per day and a special outfit

Many years ago, in an uncharacteristic bit of self-indulgence prompted by a stranger's warning that if I didn't, I'd be in serious hot water down the line, I started going in for regular shiatsu bodywork therapy.

Many amazing things happened over the course of the several years we worked together. Crazy stuff like sudden photographic images of the past floating up in front of my eyes, a ton of aches and pains vanquished forever, and crying, lots and lots of crying.

Out of all the amazingness, though, two things have stuck with me.

The first is the almost shocking way that my practitioner, who was pretty much a spinning top like me in her civilian hours, became a loving, radiant center of calm as soon as she slipped into her shiatsu duds. It was incomprehensible to me that such a shift could take place so quickly and so dramatically, but every week, without fail, and for a while, I was going every week, there it was.

The second is her calendar. In her off-hours, my shiatsu lady was, like myself, a working actor. Which is to say she had a lot of places to be on any given day, most days, since that's the way things were back then, both in the business and in our category. In 1998 or '99, it wasn't unusual for me to go out on five calls per day, most days of the week; Molly's schedule was a little lighter, since I worked more commercially and she more theatrically, but still: it was a lot of activity.

My calendar back then (pre-iPhone, pre-Palm) was a fatty, six-ring DayTimer-type thing. I kept it to Filofax size for a while, but eventually gave in an bought a big, three-ring, half-sheet binder size. Horrifically ugly, but I needed the space.

Hers was a tiny, TINY, pocket-sized, week-at-a-glance style. By "pocket-sized", I mean a daintily-proportioned pocket, at that: I believe most years, her calendars were giveaways from banks or insurance companies; I know one year, I passed along one I'd gotten.

One day, I asked Molly how she could get all the stuff she needed to do into that little space.

Molly: "I only do three things per day."

Me: "?"

Molly: "I found I could fit about three things in any given day, so I have a calendar that only fits three things in a given day."

Me: "?"

Molly (smiling): "See you next week."

To be fair and balanced (ha!), I know for a fact that at times, my Yoda-in-a-Gi by day was often a white tornado at night, going on marathon unscheduled housecleaning or data entry or file organization tears. She also did a whole lot of non-scheduled stuff of a puttery nature during daylight hours, in her civilian gear. And since her non-Yoda work was acting, occasionally she'd fill up that teeny-tiny space with 3+ auditions, and then some other items. But the scheduled stuff included things like "dance class," which she loved and wanted to keep a priority, and other things of this nature.

In other words, she had kind of a handle on it. And given that, as Voltaire said (and Gretchen and I like to paraphrase), "Perfect is the enemy of the good," a handle is a beautiful thing.

I've been toying with ideas on building or co-opting a better handle. There seems to be huge power in an actual, written-down list of stuff on a piece of paper for me, so much so that I resent its effectiveness when I actually do it, but I do it nonetheless. Me stopping was me willfully throwing aside the Franklin-Covey weekly calendar I purchased, and the reasoning went something like "I didn't quit my job and its so-called security to turn myself into the boss I hated."

What if I could be a good boss, though? What if the part of me that understands we're trying to get Big Stuff Accomplished could listen patiently to the the small, wadded-up furball of fury, fear and sorrow and then gently but firmly lay down the law? As Emma commented in a recent thread, "we need gentleness from ourselves as often as we need the drill sergeant." Which reminded me of a discussion Elizabeth Gilbert had with her small, wadded-up furball of fury, fear and sorrow when she was trying to meditate, which made me think that maybe I was onto something. (It also made me grudgingly admit that I needed to put "take another crack at this meditation thing" back on the to-do list. Oh, well.)

I did a test conversation the other night, while in the car, running an errand. Sugar cravings hit me hard, and as any good SCD-er knows, sugar is enemy #1. It's also hell on fitting into one's pants properly, so I have double the reason to avoid it, and yet there was that 7-11, one e-z right turn away, and my Monkey Brain screaming for M&Ms. (Monkey Brain is pure class, I tell you.) So Monkey Brain and I had a little confab, we both got to state our cases, and finally agreed that as an experiment, we'd hold off for now, but if Monkey Brain still wanted sugar at the end of the week, he could have an entire package of Peeps. (See? Pure class.)

I think this is a step in the right direction. I think if I can combine List of a Reasonable Length, three things sounds like a good start, with some discussion and bargaining to keep Monkey Brain satisfied and The Resistor at bay, I might have a shot at nailing some of these opportunities that have been floated out to me in recent weeks.

Of course, as a former actor who totally gets the magical power of costumes (scroll through the photos on this page if you don't believe me), I'm also thinking "special outfit." Gi? 1980s power suit and tie? Or just FlyLady's recommended "dress to shoes"?

Now taking suggestions for the costume of the peacefully productive...

xxx
c

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

The nature of crazytimes change

There's a really, really good piece by Clay Shirky, the guy who wrote Here Comes Everybody, among other fairly colossal things, that's been making the rounds lately.

I first heard about it from Merlin Mann at SXSW a week or so ago, then from a bunch of other people; a post by John Gruber, who invariably points to the really good stuff (and whom I also finally met at SXSW after his fine talk with Merlin on Not Being a Dick on the Internet, which title is at least as good as theirs), finally got me to read it. And yes, as I said in the kickoff to this here piece, it really is All That and possibly a bag of chips.

Nominally and in substance, it's about journalism and newspapers and how the demise of the latter (which even the stubbornest, sandy-headed-est ostrich can no longer deny) does not necessarily mean the end of the former. It's smart on the topic and smart, period, just a really, really well-written, engaging, well-informed and solid piece of writing. If he'd only written a definitive piece on whassup with the death of newspapers, he'd have done (another) amazing thing.

I think it's about much more than the death of newspapers, though; I think it's a thrilling summation of where people's heads are in general about change, and in particular about the massive and rapid change that we're undergoing right now as a planet of people.

Consider this quotation from the piece, the one I lifted to accompany my big, fat thumbs-up on StumbleUpon:

When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won't break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren't in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to. There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.

As I said in my comment, this ain't just about newspapers; it's about Elvis leaving the building, genie escaped from the bottle, ship sailing, etc. It's about the revolution.

I know my conservative friends (and yes, I have some, and yes, I think everyone should) are especially not always so much with the change; there are times (albeit, not many) when I'm in agreement. But there are other times, when the S.S. Poseidon is knocked on its ass by a surprise tidal wave, or when you're on fire, or when you're on fire at the bottom (or the top) of the S.S. Poseidon, that it's good to acknowledge and take action.

Believe me, I know. Because I was basically on fire at the bottom of the S.S. Poseidon (which was really the top, how confusing!) at the nadir of my Crohn's onset, when my sister had to use trickery to get me to a hospital. And this is living in Los Angeles, a city with some of the best medical care in the world, not to mention no shortage of mirrors, bathroom scales and thermometers. I weighed less than 90 lbs, was having fevers in excess of 104ºF, with an ass functioning like a can of bright red Krylon, and I was still in absolute denial that my physical condition necessitated the care of more than ice baths, acetaminophen and hope. Yeah, right.

Or pick your catastrophe; we all have them. Train-wreck relationship, child clearly on large amounts of drugs and/or alcohol, gambling away the farm. I get why people don't want to leave their houses in a fire/flood/tornado/hurricane, because I didn't want to leave mine when my insides were melting. But at some point, you have to sit up and say, "The walls are on fire; maybe we should think about leaving" or "There's blood shooting out of my backside; how about we call a doctor?"

Or you don't, and you die.

We are living in more than a time of change; we're living in crazytimes change, possibly total upheaval. Even the good stuff, like the unprecedented access regular people have to food and information, or the "printing presses" that Shirky talks about in his essay, is being dumped on us faster than we can cope. My grandfather, who was born at the turn of the last century and lived to the tippy-top of it, used to talk about all the stuff that had happened in his lifetime; I think these might have been the times that tipped it for him, where the change was too much too absorb. (Although I think he had an inkling. He was pretty smart about some stuff, was Gramps, when he wasn't being a blowhard.) Nothing has changed this fast or this furiously since maybe the Industrial Revolution (Shirky talks about that, too, and about how people coped with it, or didn't, in this piece. It's kind of Shirky's Thing right now, this upside-down, S.S. Poseidon, crazytimes change.)

So what do we do? Who knows. As a planet, I mean. As individuals, I guess we all need to do what we can to get grounded and still stay receptive. For the first time in six or so years, I'm thinking I'll take another stab at sitting meditation. Maybe. My friend Gretchen and I commiserated about how lousy we were at it over coffee and eggs in Austin last week. I know it's gonna be a bitch (which, yes, I know will only make it more so, THANK YOU), but I feel like I need to do something. Change what I can.

While the world changes as it will.

Stay tuned. Stay steady. But flexible, too.

I think flexibility is going to be more and more important.

xxx
c

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

The other side of balance

I had my ladies over this past weekend; I'd like to have my ladies over every weekend, they're so fun and smart and grounding, not to mention they fawn over the dog and bring delicious treats. For me. Well, and the dog.

One of the very grounding things these ladies do is provide context: we've been meeting semi-regularly for five or so years now, and have known each other longer than that, so we all know quite a bit about each others' strengths and challenges and accomplishments and, while we speak of them kindly and with reverance, our inevitable abject failures. We're omelet-makers, are we, and that entails the breaking of many eggs, and the eating of many mistakes along the way.

The other grounding thing my group provides is this spectacular set of lenses and mirrors. The mirrors are kind of obvious, I guess, we all have people around us who reflect back to us our lunacy and brilliance, our predilections and finer affinities. These gals do that unstintingly, but kindly; they're like really clean, really fine-quality glass mirrors set in beautiful frames. They're not skinny mirrors but they're not fun-house mirrors, either. They simply reflect the truth, with gentle grace and beauty. Which is awesome, let me tell you: I lived a long time in the fun house, and that shit will mess you up.

The lenses are another thing altogether. We have significant areas of overlap, we're all women, we're all actors and artists, we're all very forthright, and enough differences to make life interesting and ourselves particularly useful to each other. The oldest of us is in her 50s, the youngest in her 30s, and the rest of us are born within 14 months of one another. We all make art, but of different types; we've all collaborated together on different things, design projects, theater projects, writing projects, video projects. We've got a mom, a seamstress, a graphic designer, a professional journalist, two speakers of French, an opera composer, a couple of singers, a drummer, two piano players, a guitarist (and a half), and FIVE, count 'em, FIVE kickass cooks between us.

We also have writers. We're all writers, of differing sorts of things: blogs, plays, columns, stories, poetry, songs, operas, essays, screenplays, articles and yes, journals. (Although interestingly, I don't think any of us are journaling at present.) And we've each been writing for differing amounts of time, but for a long time.

So when I threw out that the schedule and goals I'd set for myself in late December had me writing 3, 4, and sometimes 5 or 6 hours per day, on top of all the other crap I'm doing, I got a very interesting response.

"That's a lot. A real lot."

I'm paraphrasing, but you get the picture. I got the picture. Finally. Finally, it started to sink in that while all that writing is great, and while it's definitely something I love and want to be doing ALL the time, it's a lot, a real lot, on top of the consulting and speaking (and marketing of such) that I'm doing. And that's not even getting into the other things I'd been working on, like turning myself from a half-assed guitarist to a full-assed one, or getting in shape, or, you know, being a reasonably non-shitty girlfriend to one of the planet's finer human beings.

It hit me hard today, as a lot of things have been hitting me hard, since I don't have a lot of buffer lately. You can't be balanced without room to do it, ergo removing stuff from the total load is probably the first step towards balance. (Not to mention focus, but I don't even know what to do with that right now.)

There were two big messages the universe sent me via SXSW:

1. If you put it out there, it will come back to you in ways you never dreamed of
2. Without stamina, there ain't much you can do about #1

This is not me with a plan: this is me finally starting to get a clue that the plan has to be one that works in the third dimension. I don't know how yet, but I look forward to the universe throwing a few lesson plans my way very soon.

And by "universe" I mean "everything, including you." So fire at will, and make it the good stuff...

xxx
c

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

Real-life white space

I understand that thing about different strokes; I do. (Although that thing about Diff'rent Strokes eludes me entirely.)

But I don't get clutter.

I mean, I get how it gets like that, and have read enough to understand that it gets like that for psychological reasons (depression and anxiety, mostly) as well as physical ones (insufficient trips to the Storage Solutions area of IKEA). I get it because from time to time, I move from "messy" (i.e., too busy to deal, too tired/sick to care) to "clutter-y", usually, some combo platter of depression and anxiety. (As this article points out, clutter can also be an external manifestation of ADD or OCD, which freaks me out because you'd think if you had one of those conditions, you'd lean much more to Felix Unger than Oscar Madison.)

And for the past few years, examining my own resistance to dealing with certain types of clutter, electronic file organization, for example, and money stuff, has been wildy instructive to me. I'm being reasonably nice about it all, taking FlyLady-advocated baby steps in QuickBooks and enlisting the help of really nice, supportive people, but it's an arduous and embarrassing and deeply humbling journey anyway.

This week's little lesson comes to me courtesy of my beloveds, The BF and Arno, the former of whom is out of town and the latter of which requires human companionship, as well as someone with thumbs to refill the water dish and open the kibble bin. I'm happy to stay here in My Country House, as it is large, sun-filled and blissfully noise- and smoke-free; this economy has been hell on occupant density, and several of the new additions smoke like Korean hipster chimneys, so my poor, sweet, little rent-controlled haven sounds and smells a lot like an old "L" train circa 1984. Not good.

Things are better along those lines over here. There is the occasional car or bus rumbling by, more so at certain times of day, and Arno does like to exercise his barking cords whenever a service person dressed in uniform drops by, but overall, it is awfully peaceful, especially with my No Audio rule enforced for the duration. I even have my own little spot carved out here in the corner of the sunny dining-room-cum-office, with 10 luxuriously square feet of me-space for me-things like computers, peripherals, and the beverages I seem to be so good at spilling all over them.

There's just one thing: not enough white space.

When designers try to explain white space to civilians, the response is generally some nodding, vigorous or otherwise, followed by a query: "But if there's room on the page, there, why can't you add another picture/500 words of copy/pony?" Like nature herself, clients abhor a vacuum, and see white space as an opportunity to add more stuff.

Designers, on the other hand, see white space as the thing that allows the rest of the stuff to be there, and to be useful. Without adequate white space, you cannot as comfortably and easily take in the information. (Also, it looks better, but let's put that aside for now.)

The BF and I have a joke about how he views horizontal space as a place to put something. And somehow, the house seems to help him out. It's as though every flat surface was a great, smooth sheet of magnet, and all the stuff so much iron shavings. To be fair, I do my share of "temporary" dumping, too, both here and Chez Communicatrix. My threshold of tolerance is much, much lower, though, and periodically, I'll have a mini-freakout and swirl through the joint clearing surfaces and returning things to their rightful place. Surely, that's the secret to some of this: more rightful places. At some point, you either need to let go of your attachment to bare vertical spaces and give in to the BILLY bookcase, or let go of the crap you would otherwise have stowed in them. Maybe some combination of both. My week here has reminded me that I have plenty of work to do in both the Letting Go Of  and Getting Organized department myself; I've easily hauled over a carload of gear, and am feverishly plotting my next run tonight, on the way back from an event.

I know there are other issues on my part; hell, my issues are legion, and well-catalogued on this website. I procrastinate, I avoid. I feel better in familiar spaces. I feel better in small, well-lit spaces. I've been hungrily eyeing a room in the back of My Country House, wondering if I could set up shop back there, where there is even more light of a particular quality, and a tiny, warm bathroom attached, and it is even more ghostly quiet than it is up front. Maybe that is it. Or maybe it would help.

In my (apparently) Big Book way, though, I'm electing to change what I can for now, and letting go of the rest. Or trying to, or at least observing carefully what it is I'm so bloody invested in, I must clutch at it like a fencepost in a snowstorm.

I see myself afraid of letting go of something, clinging to something else. Avoiding. Shrinking, not expanding.

So I'll have to pull out some feelings and thoughts and activities and inspect them. Then, most likely, they'll go out in the rubbish or at least sit for a bit in the recycle bin.

That's the way back to balance. Which is, in turn, the way to growth.

One bit of clutter at a time...

xxx
c

Image by littledan77 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Lessons from SXSW, Part 2: You be you be you

I'm reading a wonderful book right now: Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling memoir, Eat, Pray, Love.

Well, I was reading it anyway. I got through "Eat" on the outbound flight to Austin, and most of "Pray" on the return flight to LAX, but I was sobbing so hard during the "Pray" part, I felt like I was so alarming my seatmate, a man drawn more to the Airport Potboiler type of tome (not that there's anything wrong with that), that the only kind thing to do was stop. Besides, you try blowing your nose on a stack of those starchy airline cocktail napkins.

There are many things I expect I will be discussing from my experience reading Ms. Gilbert's wonderful book, along with many more things about SXSW, the mind-and-heart-splitting festival I see fit to subject my poor, battered body to every year, but right now, I need to discuss themes. She discusses themes in her wonderful book: specifically, she talks about the word that sums up each city or person, according to her Roman language-sparring buddy, Giulio. For example, according to Giulio (who apparently has given all of this a great deal of thought), Rome's word is "SEX" while the Vatican's is "POWER." After giving it some thought Gilbert (she of the brilliant "Olé!") settles on "ACHIEVE" for NYC, and her Swedish friend Sofie decides that Stockholm is "CONFORM," which depresses both of them and probably everyone else who picks up the book, Swedes inclusive.

I think that events might have words, too. I'd probably go for RIPE or ELECTRIC or JUICY for SXSW. But I also think that people bring their ideas along with their ironic tees and handheld computing devices and PowerPoint slides, and the main idea I caught in the air this year was this:

"Be the best you, not the second-best someone else."

At least, that's what I'd been rolling around in my brain since I left town on Monday, and what I responded with when someone asked me on one of the social networks I spend way too much time frequenting.

To be fair, it may not have been the Theme of the Hour. But lately, it seems to be the Theme of Colleen, which not only rhymes in a most auspicious manner, but means that's how my antennae are cocked (or half-cocked), so that's what I'm pulling down. I heard it in a panel with Merlin and Gruber, and I heard it about three other places I can't recall anymore because I forgot to take notes and a whole buncha stuff went down in a way-tiny space of time. And besides, it's not only a Central Truth for the Ages, but something of note in crazy times like these, when fear starts curling around people's ankles and pulling them back toward the Dark Place.

I have to turn in a resume? I'd better do it right, like the candidate they want to hire, rather than show them me and my crazy edges.

I have to choose a path? I'd better pick something that's tried-and-true (for, uh, someone else) instead of veering off in that crazy-ass direction that hint of a whiff of a central urge is pointing me towards.

As someone who, from the ripe old age of consciousness, spent a considerable amount of time sussing out what other people wanted me to be, and exerted a similar amount of effort to suppress whatever wacko tendencies wanted to float to the surface, I get it; I do. And hey, I just have me and my single, non-debt-carrying, rent-controlled-apartment-dwelling, devil-may-care old carcass to maintain. If I go off the rails, no big whoop. If any of the hundreds of moms or dads in my life, The BF included, do that, we're talking some serious consequences. That kind of fear is 1984-rat-in-the-face-cage compelling.

My thought on that would be this: if you need to knuckle under and dig some ditches, so be it. But if you can, carve out a little time and space, fifteen minutes in the bathroom before anyone wakes up, even, to let you be you be you. Or it is too easy for you, and the days, and your life to slip away.

Or for the word for your life to be SMALL, or FRAUGHT, or worst of all, UNLIVED...

xxx
c

Image of me being the only goddamn me I'm capable of at this point (and a surprisingly tan-looking Lydia Mann), by permission of and ©2009 Jeffrey Zeldman, my new and excellent friend, via Flickr, whose community is managed in part at the hand of the amazing Heather Champ, whom I also finally met at SXSW. Good gods, people, need ye any more reasons to hie thee to the greatest festival in all the land?

Lessons from SXSW: Why I go, and why I keep coming back

Some people come for the panels and others come for the unprecedented opportunity to party with fellow nerds, but I come to SXSW to have my head and heart split open.

This year didn't disappoint. To the contrary, it was easily the best South-by conference yet. Not just because I got to reconnect with now-longtime friends, or to meet-live-and-in-person so many wonderful people I've known only online thus far, or because those people proved to be exactly as I expected them to be in real life, but because I spent the entire time being myself, and feel like at this point, it would be almost impossible not to be.

Don't get me wrong: "hard" opportunities abound in Austin for that five-day stretch (as I assume they must for film and music types during their respective stretches). I'm sure there were deals being sealed right, left, top, bottom, in- and (Buffalo-gals-go-around-the-)out side. Having danced this waltz thrice so far, though, I can tell you that the real beauty in all that stuff coalescing in one small slice of space and time is the unprecedented opportunity it offers towards leaps in growth. At least, for hard-working introverts of a nerdly nature.

Consider that most of us introverted nerds work at our own stations, in front of our own computers, on our own stuff, alone. It takes real effort to mesh with other nerds, when that's even possible locally. Yes, there are co-working spaces, great ones like BLANKSPACES here in L.A. and Office Nomads up in Seattle. (I saw Co-chief Nomad Jacob Sayles again in Austin, which was fun and random.) Yes, there are great groups like Biznik (come to the L.A.-flavored events I'm hosting, if you're around!) and KERNSPIRACY (ditto on Spencer Cross's events, if you're a designer and around) who encourage real-live mixing and mingling, and yes, great stuff comes out of it. There's something about that once-yearly thing though...maybe it's nothing more than scarcity, but really, so much good stuff flows in those four or five short days, it's pretty amazing.*

I've been catapulted forward by stuff where there was no human participation at all, too, and plenty more of it where the human contribution happened without any intention or awareness on their part. These are epiphanies and they're a whole nuther story. Several stories, in fact, which one human at SXSW this year told me in no uncertain terms that I need to start telling. (More on that later.)

What I got from being around Gretchen and Pam and the endless, delicious onslaught of excellent person after excellent person in the flesh was juice. The energy to keep me going, the alchemy that happens when ideas connect with encouragement.

I have so many things to tell you, I could burst. But I will tell them slowly, and with a lot of napping in between.

SXSW giveth, and SXSW most definitely taketh away...

xxx
c

Image is a SHITTY photo of the way-excellent 2009 deconstruction of my biz card by one Marty Whitmore. He is cute as a button and weird as Austin. Also, talented.

*Liz Strauss's SOBCon ("School for Bloggers!") ran a close second for overall meetup-happiness last year; I had quality time with a host of Internet-made-real and just randomly awesome people. If you're a blogger wanting some camaraderie and encouragement around your blogging, you should check out this year's event. Plus Chicago in May = totally awesome!

You pay now or you pay later

I had an interesting check-in with my shrink yesterday. And by "interesting," I mean the kind of session where I start out like a spinning top, end up somewhat numb, and spend a lot of time crying in the middle.

The good news is that in my shrink's own words, it's been years since she's seen me like this.

The other good news is that I have a lot more tools today to work on what's broken, as well as a much better understanding of how to use them, than I did a few years ago.

The final piece of news is not really news, nor is it really good or bad. Which is not to say it doesn't make me wince, it does, but that's judge-y stuff that doesn't serve.

So here it is, in all its banal and ugly glory: I take things for granted. Time (that I'll have all I want, or enough), resources (ditto), luck (oy!) and people (ouch). Oh, not strangers, or casual acquaintances: them, I'll work my ass off to pay off; can't owe anyone anything, can't insult anyone, can't have anyone thinking I'm anything less than awesome.

Yeah, it feels about as good to look that one in the face as you'd imagine.

If I'd been attentive, I could have seen this coming. If I'd put "check in with self" on my checklist and made it a priority, chances are I wouldn't be here now. As it is, when I didn't, and the Truth politely tapped on my shoulder, I waved it off with a promise that I'd deal with it later. I meant the later, just like all the people whom I learned it from did. (That's one of the good things about the good kind of therapy: done right, you learn where stuff comes from and you learn compassion, so that you can let go of some of the hurt that comes with the stuff.)

But it kept being "later," as I dealt with each new thing that fell in my lap. Must attend to the new things: they're NEW. They need tending to!

So here I am, less than a week out from a trip I've really been looking forward to, and I'm wiped out. The bank looks to be near empty, if not overdrawn. It's time to fill the account back up, which means a renegotiation of the resources I have in play right now.

One final story before I head into the weekend to rest up and replenish. So you don't worry. So I don't worry. (Worrying never helped anything, but that doesn't mean I don't indulge!)

I was driving this morning on a street I often take to and from my most-visited haunts. It's been under construction for some time, which is to say it's been a ripped up mile of rubble that sprays shit up onto my undercarriage, creates clouds of noxious dust, generates huge amounts of noise rolling over, and generally abrades my delicate fucking sensibilities.

Every morning and evening, as I've driven over this half-assed excuse for a boulevard, I've wondered why they had to rip it up now. Sure, it had potholes and who-knows-what-other kinds of structural issues; it was awful but tolerable, unlike this, which was going to go on for god-knows-how-long.

This morning, I was twenty feet onto the freshly paved road before I realized that it was, indeed, freshly paved. Not lined yet, that'll come later. But so smooth and perfect, it was like riding on a perfectly nubbled sheet of dark gray glass. They must have done it in the wee hours, when no one was looking. And all of a sudden, after weeks of mess, it was (mostly) done.

I thought of this post I wrote over a year ago, about how sometimes, to make things really better, you have to rip everything up for a while and have it look (and even work) like hell. Change is messy. Change is unpleasant. Change looks embarrassing in front of company. And then, when you're done with it, there's more of it, somewhere else. Always.

I'm officially under construction, as of now. Things may be a little messy. You may get re-routed. The road may be closed off and on.

Trust me: we're working on it. Night and day.

With lots of resting throughout...

xxx
c

Crunch time

I'm down to the wire on a few things.

• Meetup with the Tax Dude tomorrow, and while I love him, really, you couldn't ask for a more delightful and literate Tax Dude, either I'm prepared or both of our time is wasted. Which means that today is all about the prep.
• SXSW in one week. Speaking of prep...one week! How did it happen? I have the last installment in the how-to-prep series going up tomorrow, and still woefully behind on my own prep.
• Ticking clock on some upstate prep. My hillbilly-Jewish cousin has relocated to NorCal, and, in a sort of mini-reprise of last fall's adventure, is giving me access to the pad while she goes to China to train in some high-level permutation of a martial art I lack a pedestrian grasp of.
• Another ticking clock on a New York trip. I got asked to visit my alma mater for a shindig, an entrepreneurial weekend that's getting me back to the East Coast for the first time in almost 6 years, and back to my alma mater for the first time in (gulp) 25.

Clocks tick with more urgency than they did in my 20s, 30s and early 40s. I try to relax, knowing I'll never do everything, knowing that it's most important to do the Right Things, the things that feed me, both literally and figuratively (and really, more the latter), but it's hard. I want to wring as much as I can from the life that's left me, and I want to leave behind as much as I can that will be of use to those still here after I've left the planet.

It's a lot, I tell ya.

Earlier this week, I had a renegotiation talk with my own adviser. Our president may not have been in office long enough to have given a State of the Union address (and really, as so many have said, aren't we all acutely aware of its state, anyway?), but I have been at the helm of this particular ship for nigh on 48 years, and I'm here to say that for all my good intentions it would do, that dog won't hunt; I need to rescale, rejigger, realign where I want to go with the realities of where I'm at. The contracts I made with myself in late Q4'08 are going to be reevaluated at the end of Q1'09, and that's all there is to it. Either that, or I will likely end up a sad, small statistic.

Am I being overly brief or under-ly descriptive? Possibly.

But hey, it's crunch time, I need to work with the time I'm given. I gave the best of my love to my newsletter yesterday; if you haven't already, you can sign up here and soak in the insight that luxurious time and daylight provide. Really, it's a good one. You'll enjoy it.

And whether you do or not, any words of encouragement are welcome in this, my darkest hour of making things balance in Quicken.

I'm so not a numbers kinda gal...

xxx
c

Image by laffy4k via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Yellow Volkswagens and brown flags

I've talked before about Yellow Volkswagen Syndromeâ„¢, that phenomenon where bringing something to mind seems to all of a sudden bring it into your field of vision, and often.

When I wrote about it in this post last year, I talked about Yellow Volkswagen Syndromeâ„¢ as an invocation: if I put it out there that Help Is Everywhere, it will be. I could just as easily swap out "Help" for "Beauty," "Love," "Hilarity," or anything else I was particularly in need of. In the same way that keeping a gratitude journal helps maintain a heightened awareness of how fortunate one is, keeping any particular quality top of mind ("Grace" would be a good one, these days) helps one see how much of the good stuff is all around all of us everywhere, all the time.

The BF and I were talking about this on a walk yesterday. There's a beautiful path around the reservoir in his neighborhood, and many, many people exercise their dogs on it. Most of them pick up the piles of poop their dogs deposit along the way, but a few don't, and guess what you notice? It's kind of hard not to, really, since there it is, in the middle of the path, usually, standing out in stark contrast to the composite the path itself is made of.

When you see more than one of these on a walk, it has a curious effect, that goes like this:

"I can't believe all these people don't pick up after their dogs, it's disgusting!"

One sentence, but it's stuffed with information to be, as the anthropologists put it, unpacked.

1. That I'm in a state of disbelief Am I really? Or is it contempt? The "it's disgusting" tag at the end argues for the latter
2. That the errant poop is the result of owner negligence There are not many wild dogs running loose in this highly dog-friendly neighborhood; with so many dog lovers, any stray dog is picked up pretty quickly, and either turned over to a rescue organization or held until the owner can be found. There are wild coyotes, however, as well as a lot of other local fauna, some of it quite well-fed and large (it's a reasonably tony neighborhood with good people pickins and plenty of fatty squirrels, to boot).
3. That a lot of people are being negligent After some brief discussion, The BF and I came to the conclusion that while we were certainly seeing more poop lying around than we'd like, most people were probably picking up after their dogs. Like I said, this is a really dog-friendly neighborhood; if most people were being negligent, there'd be more shit than path.

None of these are particularly excellent thoughts to be wandering around with, but I'd argue that third point is the hardest to spot and the most potentially damaging. It spreads like a cancer and affects every part of my worldview. I eye each dog-walking neighbor suspiciously, guilty until proven innocent, waiting to see if they pick up the poop. So far, they all have, and really, I have no idea what I'd have said if they hadn't: "Shame on you" or even a direct "Hey, pick that up...please!" both feel Citizens Arrest-y and weird.

And of course, my hatred refuses to remain only with the errant dog owners. It starts to creep into all other aspects of my life, until I'm looking at the world through shit-colored glasses.

One of my recurring mantras with my actor peeps when I'm telling them about marketing and why they should bother with it is "Control what you can." It's not really my business to change the people who view the sidewalk as their dog's personal toilet; talk about wasting one's time and annoying the pig.

Instead, I'm going to let each pile sighting remind me that hey, overall, I have it pretty good here on this fine path I'm walking.

And I'm going to bring an extra bag or two. Or ten...

xxx
c

Image by gregg o'connell via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Baby steps, steep curves and other lessons from my bookkeeper

For those of you with zero experience around the Virgo nature, whose entire worldview of us was formed by the scant information you picked up on the back of a celestial cereal box, we are not, contrary to the party line, all that.

We are partly that: the Organizer, the Planner, the Gals (and Dudes) of the Brother P-Touch/Dymo Brigades. Some friends stare at my magnetized remotes and my coordinated-by-color closet agape with wonder. A smaller subset rolls their eyes, having ridden in the filth pit that is my car on any given day (what is the passenger-side footwell for if not my mobile detritus?) or lain on my carpet with its soft, cushy, overlayer of 100% human hair (hey, vacuuming is for suckers...hahaha!)

Or, to bring it on home to stuff I actually give a rat's ass about, some people (god bless you, fine people!) seem to think there's something noteworthy about the way I string words together into sentences, or make an idiot fool out of myself in a shower cap for the sake of a couple thousand laughs. I do appreciate it (truly, BLESS you fine people!) but know that for me, those things are frictionless. In the same way that other are naturally athletic, social or brilliant at making a buck, I'm good with the words and the goofy. It's my metier. It's my EZ Zoneâ„¢. It's even my default setting: I have to be careful not to retreat into it, but to use it as a foundation to build out.

Take storytelling, for example. I suck at it! No, really! No, seriously, have you listened to Ira Glass or the Moth podcasts? Those people can tell stories. I try and I try and while I'm better at it than I used to be, it's a form I'll probably always struggle with. I'm an essayist-with-a-moral person, and that's a very different thing than being a story-with-a-beginning-middle-and-end person. I can do it, but not off the cuff. It takes painstaking practice. When I want to do well, I take the pains.

Or jokes. I suck at telling jokes! No, really, I do! People think I must be great at it because I'm so down with the goofy, but a good joke, a story joke, is, again, a puzzlement to me. Like writing with my non-dominant hand or trying to learn a foreign language. (If you want to see it done well, check out these Old Jews Telling Jokes. Maybe by the time I'm an old half-Jew, I'll be half as good. But I'm not holding my breath.)

I suck at a lot of other things: things that you'd figure (sports, powerlifting, painting) and things you'd not figure, given my Virgo nature. Managing money, every aspect of managing money, has always been a struggle for me. It's only because of incredible luck and good fortune (they're different, you know) that things have worked out this well. But between my inexorably advancing age and the somewhat sudden death of my father (whom I always considered my safety net should things go really wrong), I've finally come to realize that while luck and fortune are fine things, they are not to be counted on. My moments of realizing this added up to a kind of renewed vigor to TCB, and a couple of years ago, I brought in some help in the form of a bookkeeper, to show me how the grownup people did it.

She is patient, kind and wonderful. An artist herself, she is deeply understanding of the exquisitely delicate artist nature. She is nothing but encouraging, and never complains when she has to spend 75% of her time and a lot of my money to clean up messes that wouldn't be there if I would GODDAMN GET THE INVOICING DONE and ENTER THE BASTARD INTO QUICKBOOKS. For days before she comes, and the whole, otherwise pleasant time she's here, these admonishments pound in my head.

But in her best Put the Puppy on the Mat, zen-buddhist way, Liz gently turns my gaze back towards what I have accomplished. Silly little things like billing from my accounting software instead of my writing software, or of carefully copying by hand all my deposits into pages of my notebooks, or tying all my receipts to the credit card statements, with line-item notations for each one.

Things that would seem like no-brainers to a person with a Head for Business. Then again, I might look at Mr. Business Man in amazement when his voice cracks, his hands shake, and the "um" train goes a-runnin' every time he gets up in public to speak.

So Mr. Business Man (probably a Taurus) goes to Toastmasters, and Colleen makes up games to get herself to tote up her expenses and bill on time. Bit by bit, drop by drop, we all can get there, or at least, far enough to be close enough.

Among other things, this year has been a lesson in the mighty power of the tiny increment. And of staying humble, and of staying power.

I hope I'm going places, but so you know, I'm not going anywhere, even if I do. I'm working the fields in front of me, one row at a time...

xxx
c

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

What frustration and fear are for

Try saying that headline three times fast.

No. Don't.

You're already frustrated enough, aren't you? I know I am. These days, for every moment of wonderment, and happily, there are many, and happy moments of wonderment, at that, there seem to be three of the WTF-OMFG-WFHIT* variety.

People are craaaaaazy right now. There is a craaaaaazy amount of fear in the air, and an actually not-so-crazy amount of scrambling accompanying it. Because all the rules have changed, or seem to have, in the middle of the game. (I'll make the rather existential argument that we've all been living in a fantasy hullaballoo of our own creation, but for our purposes, things got nutjob, fast.)

I was musing on (about? over?) this today because I had a Creeping Panic Moment of my own. Jesus Christ on a busted-ass Segway, what the hell is wrong with me? I wondered. I spend over a year figuring out "where I'm at" (to cop a 70s phrase from my favorite 70s movie) and in which direction I want to point my guns, and now I'm going to spend another year, or two, or five, building it? A brand new service business, in this market? What am I high on, my own fumes of delusional self-glory?

Somehow, the moment passed. Actually, I know exactly how the moment passed, and I'm going to share this AMAZING AND ALL-POWERFUL SECRET with you: I worked.

I sat down and did some bona-fide, best-of-my-ability, all-out marketing consulting work for a wonderful woman up in Palo Alto doing her own wonderful work to change the world with her own gifts. We worked, the two of us. And on the other side of that, after we'd gotten some good work done, I'm guessing we both felt better. (Well, she has a worse cold than I, by the sound of it, so she can't have felt entirely better-better. But still.)

After the call, when I set about to some puttering (I must needs putter after a call, I'm so hopped up), a crazy thought popped into my head. An analogy, which is one of my favorite kinds of thoughts, a whole string of them, actually.

It's been like this before, thought I, when I couldn't get a college paper to work, or before I first jumped up on stage in front of a bunch of strangers. It was like this when I got my sorry ass kicked out of the Groundlings Sunday Company. It was like this when I quit advertising, when I started acting and sucked at it, when I sucked again and finally had to walk away.

It was like this when I first rode the bus to school by myself, when I tried out for the basketball team in the seventh grade and again every single time I was called off the bench to play (not many for a 4'11" point guard, but I went up with my heart in my mouth each time). It was like this when my dad drove away after dropping me off at my freshman dorm; it was like this just before I finally capitulated and went into therapy for the first time. I don't remember it, but it was probably like this when I first learned to walk and talk.

These craaaaaazy times are calling for a lot of faith. Not in some celestial force, although that's fine, if it works for you (and if you don't hand over the reins to the point of missing your truck, boat and helicopter). Given the tightness of money and the uncertainty swirling around us, there will probably be more lag time between risk and reward, IF there's a reward.

I'm going to try to remember that things generally work out; I'm also going to try to remember that even when they haven't, I've not (yet) been engulfed in a tower of flame or turned into a pillar of salt.

I'm just going to try.

How about you?

xxx
c

*See here and here for those of you who weren't psycho enough to have been ardent Parker fans from the age of 16.

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

'ello, guvnor!

I've written about the cold as governor before, but it bears repeating (or at least, my body has decided it does).

Getting sick, while nothing most of us would wish on ourselves, no matter how insignificant the illness, is, like most things, what you make of it. (And by "you," I mean "me.")

My colds are like a nagging mother: they force me to take a little better care of myself, to get the sleep I've been cheating myself of and the nutrition I need.

My colds are like a business manager: they force me to take a look at the bottom line, and how each activity is (or isn't) working, ROI-wise.

And finally, my colds are like Twitter: they force me to write short.

Stay well, eat right and get the rest you need. Governors are fine in their way, but there are other people you'd much rather have drop by for a visit.

xxx
c

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

Relentlessly optimistic

Note: the promised Mystery Readers' Choice Post #2 is in the oven and will be out soon. In the meantime, please enjoy this fresh, delicious content that absolutely nobody asked for.

There is a saying you heard quite often around my old acting studio, and, if a recent visit is proof of anything, still is:

"It breaks your heart."

This is the cost of being a Good Actor, by which I mean not just skilled in the Theatrical Arts but awake, aware, supple and open. It is the price that exquisite sensitivity exacts, and if you want to really Bring It, must be paid over and over again.

Actors, the good ones, get paid to throw their hearts on the railroad tracks in front of speeding trains over and over again. Their hearts are lobbed around like footballs, shot up in the air like skeet, sliced lengthwise for the viewing pleasure of mere mortals.

Do not confuse the external theatricality of actors, even the good ones, for lack of tenderness; the broad gestures and booming voices and dramatic affect are just tools and by-products, and they belie the things they both project and protect.

Why the hell do I bring up actors at a time like this?

Because times like these are all about figuring out how to live like actors do, every time they act.

Times like these require you to expose your soft underbelly, your tender heart, over and over and over again no matter what dark, cold, scary thing you're walking into. They require learning, if you don't know how, to pick yourself up and make one more call, even if you might be rejected, or to reach out to one more person, even though she might turn away.

Times like these are about learning to take one more chance, even though you swear your heart can't take it.

It can. Again and again.

Here's the secret: just like Elizabeth Gilbert said to all the fancy folk at TED, it's not your love; it's everyone's love. It's L-O-V-E. It's the stuff we're all really made of, or at least, it's the stuff that sticks us all together. Plug into it and you're golden, again and again and again. You'll feel stupid and awkward and yeah, you might even cry a few thousand times at first, but it works.

Again and again.

I first labeled myself a Relentless Optimist during my online dating days, because I realized that you know, I was. And however dorky and idiotic it made me to float it out there, well, it was the truth. And not a bad truth. A relentless optimist does not have his head in the clouds; a relentless optimist knows she'll get the holy shit kicked out of her heart...again and again. But she also knows that love, the big kind, the kind that holds us all together and keeps us going and makes all the good things possible (and the bad things slightly less horrifying, if only briefly sometimes), will out. It will fill up her broken heart and mend it up like new, like better than new, because every time you put your heart out there to be broken and it does and instead of pulling it away forever and locking it up in a little box, you put it out there again, your heart gets stronger.

It has to, so it can break, for the world, over and over again.

What we learn now, in the dark, will serve each of us when the lights come back on. Maybe more so, if they don't. (And I hope they will, you know, because I know lots of people who are young and haven't had their at-bat yet, but you never know.)

Let's not dwell on that.

Let's be open one more time each day, one more micron. Let's say, a week from now, "My heart broke FIVE TIMES this week, isn't it fantastic!?"

It is. It is it is it is. Trust me. Trust yourself. Trust that your heart is more magnificently strong than you've ever had the privilege of knowing.

Now get out there and get your heart broken, and so will I.

In relentless optimism, we trust...

xxx
c

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

The green-eyed monster as giver of direction

Between a nostalgic visit to my old acting class and last week's abysmal (and final) audition, I've been thinking a lot about the lessons I learned from my time in the business.

Or rather, of things that were told to me back then that I didn't necessarily get or believe, but which, many years of processing later, I've finally understood to be true.

Take my faults, please.

Like most people, I'd like to pretend they didn't exist. That I didn't grapple with envy or self-centeredness or apathy. Or at the very least, I'd rather draw your attention to the very lovely and spectacular qualities I'm choosing to showcase, my grace with words, for example, or my sense of humor, or my engagingly earnest nature, that you might overlook the petty, small-minded, grousing, greedy bitch of a slob I share this carcass with.

Take my jealousy, please.

Of all the things I hate in myself, more than anything I hate the streak of schadenfreude that I wear like a skunk stripe along my back. Because it's not enough that I loathe myself, or my inability to achieve the things I want, or to covet the success of others. Oh, no. I have to actively derive a certain soupçon of joy from the misfortune of those who have some measure of the success I'm coveting. Which, you know, makes me a spectacularly gorgeous specimen of humanity.

The thing is, though, it kinda does. No, schadenfreude is not excellent or sexy or anything to aspire to. But it's one possible human feeling to have and therefore, an indicator that I am, in fact, human, and not a robot. To get back to the acting lesson I brought up earlier, one of the chief mistakes most new (or old, but self-conscious) actors make is failing to show their failings. As an audience, we embrace truth, not perfection. A drama with no drama is someone putting the kettle on. A drama with drama is wondering what's going on while that kettle is being put on, and who it's being put on for, and what just happened, and what ever will happen next.

Conflict is drama, and drama is the stuff of life. I may like all the nice traits in Column A, but the stuff in Column B is what's going to get me through the long haul. The stuff in Column B is my combination indicator light and to-do list, if you will. It both tells me when there's engine trouble and gives me something important to work on.

That's important, of course, the working through of things. You don't want to just hunker down with your Column B and say, "Well, that's it! I'm an intolerant sonofabitch who fears change and is tight with a buck, amen," because if you do, your life will probably play out a lot like Ebenezer Scrooge's, minus the happy ending. And trust me, brother, you do not want to be 80 and realize you pissed your life away being slothful or small or rageful, because I've seen a few people in that position and it is a thing so scary I wouldn't even wish it on the people I wish it on. Much.

I'm currently grappling with a few things I never thought I'd have to grapple with. Like my friend, Chris Guillebeau, I was extraordinarily fortunate when it comes to making a living with ease, until I suddenly wasn't; like women everywhere, I'm finally dealing with weight gain that's not easily lost. It's a bitch, baby, and when I don't get enough rest or exercise or self-love, so am I.

The thing I cling to as I grapple with the green-eyed monster and other personal beasties is this: that which I can identify, I can deal with. One of the reasons I'd never go back to being 25 or even 35 is the lack of perspective that was a hallmark of those ages...for me. Not enough spins around the globe to see patterns, not enough hardship to have a sense of proportion. And then, of course, there was the sheer terror of falling completely to pieces if I took any one part of me out to examine closely in the light. GOOD GOD, PUT THE CARD BACK BEFORE THE WHOLE TOWER COLLAPSES!

Now I have books about my problems, and lengthy discussions about them, and, ta da!, this blog about them. I won't lie, it's always a little scary putting some of my ugliness out of the table for us all to look at; on the other hand, there's also always this accompanying sigh of relief that I'm not keeping this HORRIBLE secret to myself.

The other nice thing, of course, is that I get to hear about all the ways in which people who share this particular area of overlap deal with it. And we get to shed a little light on what must seem like baffling behavior to our human friends who don't have this particular indicator light installed.

So how's about it, fellow travelers? What pearls have you to offer about jealousy or (damn your eyes!) the lack thereof?

xxx
c

TIP-EROOSKI: For what it's worth, when I get stuck in some kind of nutty emotion, I like turning to a tiny snack book called The Little Book of Moods, by Jane Eldershaw. Lots of quick insights and how-tos that are surprisingly effective at pulling me out of a crazy spiral.

UPDATE 2/17: A reader sent in this link to an article on this exact topic from the Science section of today's NYT. Great publishing minds, etc.

UPDATE 12/20: I finally wrote a detailed review of The Little Book of Moods on the blog.

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

Readers' Choice #1: The Law of Attraction

The commentors have spoken! Last Friday, I asked which of the dormant posts in my drafts folder should be brought to life, and which left to die. Results? A tie! This week, as requested, I'll talk about the Law of Attraction; next week, I'll talk about...well, you'll just have to come back next Friday and see...

If you...

• are my friend on Facebook, or
• tried to date me on one of the eleventy-seven* dating websites I worked my way through pre-BF, or
• like to comb the archives for weird communicatrix tags

...you probably know that I, as I like to say, "hew to the woo". This doesn't mean I eschew science or that I'm the opposite of The Non-Believers we had to wait through 44 fucking American presidents to have someone put a name to; au contraire, I rejected the notion of the Lord Jesus as either personal savior or savior of mankind a long, long time ago. No, I like to think of myself as a "Well, hell, who knows, so arm yourself with factual knowledge, be nice and use whatever story you like as a meditation to get you through the rest of it.

A meditation? What the...?

Let me back up a wee bit.

First, much as I'd like, I'm no meditatrix. I sit, I breathe, and if I'm not doing anything else, I start to itch. I'll get there someday (and YES, I try now and again) but for now, I use the dishes or the dog's walk or even HULU hooping to let my mind go elsewhere. (Although I confess, yesterday I HULU hooped to the one episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County they have loaded, just to see what the unholy fuss is about, of course, and do you know, I actually started to get dizzy, which never happens with Dragnet.)

No, when I say meditate on something, I mean some sort of stick to wrap the loose bits of your life around so you can get them off the floor and closer to your myopic gaze. Or, better yet, a lens through which to observe things. Woo-woo stuff lends itself nicely to this, because most of it has some structure and a whole lotta loosey-goosey.

Take astrology, for example. I'm a Virgo (duh...tagline!) with a Libra moon and Cancer rising. That's about all I remember from the first chart I had done, by my first shrink-slash-astrologer**, except that I also have Venus in Leo, which means I have to be very happy with my hair, which, sadly, since the Crohn's and the meds and now middle age hormonal change, I am not. However, I am extremely happy with The BF's hair, which oddly enough makes up for a lot.

Sorry, digressing.

Anyway, when you get your sun sign and moon sign and suchlike, you can get all crazy about "Oh, I'm a Scorpio, so all I like to do is have sex sex sex and all the other signs hate me!" OR you can look at the attributes, think about how they might be manifesting (or not) in your life, and think about how you might tease out the purported good qualities and grapple with the particular challenges this system presents. It's framework for looking at something, or a way to section off a piece of your life so you can start looking at something, somewhere, rather than just woe-is-me-ing it all the way home.

All that woo-woo stuff works like this (for me, which, let's face it, is the way I think it should work). Not gospel, not prophecy, not something that dooms you to some predetermined end or even tells you what you should (or shouldn't be doing that way). Whether you are reading a horoscope in the paper or getting a fancy-expensive, one-on-one reading from an astrologer, you are, you'll pardon my saying so, an idiot of colossal proportions if you try following them to the letter.  Okay, that's judge-y; how about, you're being awfully imprudent, aren't you? Putting your life and your decisions in the hands of a third-party?

No, that's not how I roll. Numerology, enneagram, magic Chinese throwing sticks, what-have-you: they are tools to play with, and to use with caution and discretion.

When the hell are getting around to this Law of Attraction, anyway?

Okay, I'm getting to the meaty part of the post now. But the preamble is important, because I think that swallowing the Law of Attraction whole, whether served up by The Secret or the Hickses or Florence Scovel Shinn (back in 1925!) is what both gums up the perfectly reasonable underpinning works and infuriates the skeptics, a.k.a. the Non-Believers (who have every right to be kinda pissed off by the name, even as they're happy for the shout-out).

Before undies start getting themselves in bundles, let's look at what the Law of Attraction means. Well, the new age-y version. Which generally gets summed up as thoughts having vibrations, or energy, that attracts things that have similar vibrations or energy. Or, to put it in a neat, 19th-century, no-nonsense nutshell, "Like attracts like." (Which either sounds sensible or even dumber, depending on your opinion of Ye Olde Fashioned Bromides.)

People for it say it empowers people to be masters of their own destinies; people ag'in it say that at its most benign, it's hooey and at its most pernicious, it promotes blame-the-victimism, e.g., if you're attracting the bad juju, it's YOUR FAULT, weak and gormless ninny, so neener neener to you and your barren womb, terminal unemployability or string of Job-like trials.

My own take is this: it might work. Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion, bodies at rest tend to stay at rest.

Or it might not. I give you medicinal leeches and a sun that revolves around the Earth. (On the other hand, I give you medicinal leeches, so who the hell knows?)

I tend to think that if the Law of Attraction does work, for most people, it doesn't work head on. You learn a little about yourself, you learn a little about the outcome of dating cads, you learn how to start liking yourself, the cads become less attractive, you become more attractive et voila! You magically, through the Law of Attraction, and 15 or 20 years of hard work, stop dating assholes and find a nice guy.

Same thing applies to health, money, happiness or whatever. The universe may or may not be doing its thing, but either way, the thing is gonna get done hella faster if you're doing some of the heavy lifting, exercise, or eating right, or therapy, or whatever, than if you're wishing really hard for God to turn you into a fairy princess who rides a unicorn every day to her magical castle on the hill.

Using The Law of Attraction as meditation!

So what's the mashup? Pretty much project thinking, as I see it:

1. Figure out what you want.
2. Figure out where you are.
3. Figure out the steps between where you are and where you want to get to.
4. Execute.

The steps will most likely change along the way, oh, boy, will they ever. And at some point in the journey, you may even decide that you're not so interested in that destination, but this rest stop, or this detour. Personally, I think it's because we're most of us are kind of impatient dumbasses (when I'm being harsh) or ignorant flowers (when I'm being generous): really, how the hell are you supposed to know what the hell it is you want when either you haven't experienced it yet or it doesn't exist, or both?! I mean, yes, there are a few people with a vocation for, uh, a vocation that already exists, and they seem to have it from the time they're three, and it's simply exasperating to the rest of us. Doctor, nun and astronaut were on the list when I was growing up; "communicatrix", alas, was not.

As you get closer to The Thing you want, it gets a little easier, just as you relax a little when that landmark you've been scouring the unfamiliar horizon for finally appears in hour 11 of a very long drive in unfamiliar territory. Then you just, you know...go.

Pointing your guns in the right direction is kind of a prerequisite (unless you're pretty cool about being open and explore-y, which I'm not, so shut up and quit making me curse my stupid lot even more.) If you need some sort of guide to exploring yourself, there are lots of fun ways to go about it, from rigidly structured to loosey-goosey, and from free (costing only time) to sky-high expensive (we'll leave off those for now, this being a depression and all). They range in woo-woo-ness from not at all to quite a bit, so, you know, find what suits you (or what resonates, as the new age kids say) and leave the rest:

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People I'll confess that this is kind of a tedious read. (Sorry, Mr. Covey!) But there are good stories that keep you going, and TONS of good exercises. You kind of can't argue with the principles behind it, and they really will help you build up great habits that will "attract" great stuff into your life.

Toastmasters International Yes, it's a speaking club. But it offers a terrific, solid, workbook structure for systematically, incrementally getting better at something. Plus the people are so nice. And bonus! You will become a better communicator of ideas, as well as a better leader of men, if you participate. Lots of stuff accelerated for me as a result of my two years in Toastmasters. If you live in L.A., I can personally recommend the Del Rey and Joseph P. Rinnert clubs. Tremendous support for a great price.

FlyLady She's currently enjoying a spike in popularity, but she's been delivering solid advice on making a better life for yourself for years now. There's lots of stuff for sale on the site, and the design is kind of loopy and gives me a bit of a headache, but there's a wealth of great info for free. The Twitter accounts especially add a lot of value, as they say in the biz world. I've dipped in and out of FlyLady for years now, when I've needed a little clarity and action. Those little mini-cleanups she advocates (which pop up randomly if you follow on Twitter) are fantastic for getting things moving.

The Artist's Way Hands down, my fave reco for anyone who self-identifies as at least slightly creative. It's a 12-week, self-directed course of study in YOU, with some great exercises I used for years afterward. You can buddy up or find a group to do it with, if you're not a lone wolf, but I did it all by myself and it worked like gangbusters: got me transitioned from advertising to acting. Za-zing!

Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life My fave feng shui book, I used this to get me out of some of the darkest post-breakup days into the light. And a shitload of money, no lie: I feng shui'd the crap out of my kitchen (prosperity corner) and within two weeks, two individual gargantuan residual checks which the agency had been sitting on finally showed up. Might they have come anyway? OF COURSE. But this way, I got a clean kitchen, felt great about it, and distracted myself from thinking about how my life was over because my heart had been tossed into the dumpster like so much trash. (Which is bad feng shui, btw: always keep your trash can emptied!) I still crack it open when I'm feeling stuck, or like I want to pull a little goodness into my life.

Tarot, horoscopes, numerology, enneagrams, etc. These are all fun toys to play with for looking at yourself, finding patterns and even coming up with daily (or weekly, or monthly) "meditations". I put them last because they're the most woo-woo, the easiest to do badly and better, in my opinion, better as a sort of an advanced-class add-on to more practical, hands-on stuff. It's really easy to get passive about the serious woo-woo stuff, and that's always dangerous territory; everyone remembers that one episode of The Twilight Zone where William Shatner and his young bride narrowly escape the clutches of a tiny, mechanical fortune teller who casts a terrible spell upon the less fortunate couple who decide to give up on skeptical thinking and entrust their future to a devil doll in a diner jukebox.

Wait, we don't all remember it? For the love of all that's holy, drop everything and go watch it now!

As you've likely surmised by now, I'm an adherent of the belief that pretty much any course of study or action can be a meditation, and that whatever you start applying your considerable (really! it is!) will to begins to "attract" more of the same. It's Yellow Volkswagen Syndrome, if you like: you become oriented towards cattle ranching or long-distance running or pie, and you start to see longhorns or times to sneak in a run or flaky crust wherever you go.

Me? I pull stories from life. And the more I do, the more I see stories, and the more I attract the kind of people who like to read them.

Not sure they'll ask for something like this again anytime soon, though. Although, you never can tell: sometimes, the stuff you pursue pulls you in some mighty interesting directions.

Questions?...

Image by gsloan via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license, and you really should go look at the full-sized, uncropped version.

*new-favorite word alert!

**won on a bet! Now there's a future post for you!

Clutter, other people's stories and the ache of letting go

Longtime readers (and compulsive types who click deep into the "about" section) know that I've had two previous lives of roughly 10 years each, career-wise, before coming into my own as the communicatrix you know and love.

First, I wrote ads. Big, and small, but mostly big, TV ads for cars and cereal and gelatin products, among many, many others. It was a fun job in many ways, but the ROI on it sucked eggs, for me.

Oh, it paid well enough. Until you broke down that big salary + bonus into hourly increments, that is, and then it didn't. And when you factored in the amount of brain juice that went into it, and what ultimately came out, it really wasn't, for me. Some of my compatriots would likely have written ads for free, for the sheer joy of it; for me, it finally came down to something I did for money, and the money wasn't enough to keep me there.

Next, after a few misdirected efforts (*cough* screenwriting *cough*), I settled into a new career: acting in ads. Well, I acted in a bunch of stuff, including a ton of sketches, a half-ton of plays and a (small) handful of film and TV projects. But all "blink-and-you'd-miss-me"-type stuff.

That also paid well enough, although again, not nearly as well as you'd think when you broke down all the eleventy-seven-billion hours you put into training and auditioning. Probably 98% of the working actor's life is spent either interviewing for jobs, getting ready to interview for jobs, or driving around looking for parking to interview for jobs. Eventually, the Crohn's, the experience I had because of it as much as the physical legacy it left me with, forced me into retirement. The ROI, while it was definitely better than advertising, just wasn't good enough to warrant the wear and tear on my body and psyche.

So I retired. Or stopped auditioning, which at my level is a de facto retirement. My agent, Mr. Cris Dennis of Film Artists Associates, one of your finer human beings, insisted on calling it a semi-retirement, and keeping things open in case something good came up. Cheered by the depth of his kindness and faith in me, I agreed, and things chugged along quietly enough, until last week, when I went in to read for a series of perfectly fine spots for what I'm sure is a perfectly fine product...and I hated it.

I hated getting dressed up. I hated driving there, and parking. I hated putting on a suit that no longer fit after two and a half years parked on my ass in front of the computer.

But mostly, I hated that I wasn't good at it anymore. Oh, I got a callback, so I didn't suck eggs. But I've been on the other side of this equation and I know that if you're even in the ballpark in some way, lots of times they'll call you back. And physically, I was a dead ringer for what they were after.

It's probably obvious, but just in case it isn't, this is a much, much harder thing to let go of than some goal of getting out there and hustling for consulting clients. I gave up a lot to go after my dream of acting, and letting even this last, mercenary bit of it go, because let's face it, no one is in commercials for the glorious acting opportunities it affords, is far, far more melancholy-making than letting go of my ad tool portfolio or a dream of some potentially gargantuan but wholly unrealized revenue stream. I became an actor to Tell the Truth, and a small part of me feels like a loser and a copout for moving away from it and into writing-plus-whatever-the-hell-else-I do-now.

On the other hand, it has never been clearer or more obvious that my job now is to tell my own stories, not other people's. So tell I will, and devil take the hindmost.

I made a hard phone call on Wednesday afternoon, just before close of business. I told Mr. Cris Dennis that this time, I really am hanging up my spurs. I can't half-ass anything anymore, and I can't give acting that good stuff I was in the prime of my dream. I leave this job to my dear girlie, Annie, who is rocking the world where I like to think I would have left off, if I'd been half as talented as she is*.

Oh, and I also told him that I'd meet him for lunch next week. Just because the journey has taken a little turn doesn't mean I have to leave behind the people I met on the way.

More than anything, or at least, more than a lot of things, I would like to believe that I will make silver jewelry again, when I have time, so I should continue to hang onto the 16-year-old (some of it untouched) equipment I bought and hauled out from Chicago. Or that my apartment building will magically return to being the quiet, clean, sweet-smelling haven it was when I moved in 10 years ago and I can stay put, and 37, with difficult change behind me and freedom ahead. Or, recently, that the goddamn suit will fit again.

I start to wonder how much of the pain of letting go of clutter, emotional, career, physical, what have you, is fear, and how much is nostalgia. And, maybe, how much of nostalgia is fear.

In a way, it doesn't matter. We can sit around debating these things, or we can clean out the closet and the bookshelves and the mustier, darker parts of our souls and brains and hearts we would perhaps prefer not to look at.

It ain't easy. But so far, every time I've put aside the next decade's version of childish things, I've been astonished not only at the childish wonder that's been reinvigorated in me, but at how damned nice it looks in here, how damned good it feels.

Easy is for other people; we are after bigger things. Or maybe just other things. At the very least, some wiggle room.

Now, go close some doors so you-know-who can open some windows...

xxx
c

*Note: this is not an excuse to stop writing, missy-ma'am; you're young and able-bodied enough to do both for now.

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

Wiggle room

Sometimes constraints are good.

They swaddle babies, as I understand it, because it makes them feel safe. If you think about it, it makes sense: the little buggers are coming from a pretty restricted area, and the idea of flailing around in a whole lotta space must be as terrifying as, well, the idea of flailing around in space, period, for us. Adrift, in the vast beyond, total darkness except for whatever light is being bounced off of a random planet, or some giant chunk of astro-hell that flies in out of nowhere and bonks you on the head? Not my idea of a relaxing way to go through life.

On the other hand, too much constraint is no good, either.

You put a plant in a smallish container to seed it, then move it to a larger one when it its rootbed fills up the area, so it can continue growing. Not too much larger, that can kill it too, apparently. (I kill plants as a matter of course, so all of this is non-practical, book knowledge to me. Although if this thing about air-scrubbing plants is true, I may have to take one more crack at plant husbandry.)

There are a few constraints I know I need. Through trial and (grievous, abysmal) error, I have learned to embrace the deadline as my friend.

Similarly, I have learned to forge new friendships when I'm entering unknown (or known and dangerous) territory: they're called accountability partners, I have several, some paid, some not, and I highly recommend it as a practice. I have a self-created deadline set up with my friend, productivity whiz, Matthew Cornell. Despondent over the highly unmanaged state of my contacts and other information, I reached out for a lifeline, and there he was. We set us up a phone call, a series of follow up tasks and check-ins, and holy cow if I'm not making some progress! (Matthew, if you're reading this, I had another sync issue with @#%(! Google Contacts that set me back a bit, but I am making progress nonetheless.)

I also know that limiting my time with a particular project can work for me (done and OUT, rather than redone and redone), as can limiting my time, period. I've never been more productive than when I scheduled my whole ding-dong day, down to the five-minute break; I've also almost never been more miserable, so that's not an option.

The magical sweet spot for me is always enough, but not too much, to do. I go a little batty without something to aim my guns at, but I wither and die without a little space to stretch and grow. Wiggle room, that's really all I need to flourish. After the terror of letting One Big Goal go bye-bye subsided, I felt positively buoyant. There was suddenly room to breathe, and to think, and to create. I felt hopeful again, rather than doomed. And all I did was to take one thing off my plate. (Well, I also took an out a friend handed me, so a thing and a quarter, perhaps.)

As a result of this dreadful shock and subsequent revelation, I'm taking a cold, hard look at my calendar. What's doable? What's not? What can be put off for now? What can be put off indefinitely? Currently, I'm booking dates for March and out, even though there are some blank spaces still in February. Because while I could fill them, I know I won't be at my best here, there or anywhere if I do.

This focusing stuff is a bitch, I won't lie to you. A workaholic's tendency is to keep working, long after she's reached the point of diminishing returns, just like a couch potato's tendency is to keep watching TV and a junkie's tendency is to keep shooting H or popping bennies. (Sorry. Watching a lot of Dragnet lately during my HULU-hooping.) Because the thought of doing it differently is just too overwhelming: what would that be? How would it work? What does that even look like?

I'll tell you what I think it looks like for obsessives like us: doing one thing differently. There's a book about it I see each month on my shrink's coffee table; I flipped through it today and found some stuff in there interesting enough to warrant checking out the rest of the book, I think. (Have you read it? Let me know in the comments, would love to hear how readers of this blog think I might or might not like it.)

And now, I will get back to work.

Work, with a little cushion of wiggle room on all four sides...

xxx
c

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