Poetry Thursday: Right here, right now

And now
that time has passed
and this one is here

And this
and this

So? How did it go?

Did you live every minute?
Or did you let a few skitter past
on small wheels of worry
without squeezing out
the last, juicy bits?

What about this quiet hour?
This hazy afternoon?
This sinkful of dishes,
this quick pee,
this run to the mailbox,
this trip to the 7-11
for eggs
and M&Ms?

Did you live those, too?
Did you live every bit of them?

Some day,
if we are very, very lucky,
we will look back
from rockers on porches,
from benches on seasides,
from beds on wheels,
from our own two rickety feet
at those nothing moments
with such wistfulness
and fury
it would stop those young people
scooting around on their thought-cycles
dead in their tracks.

Never wish a moment
past the next one.

Never a better place to be
than this very one.

Never a guarantee
of any other one

after this one...

xxx
c

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

Maximum-value packing: getting from here to there in one attractive piece

This past trip to Tacoma was significant in more ways than just initiating me into the TEDx experience: for the first time in too long to remember, I got from here to there (and back!) with something resembling ease.

Some of my new-found attitude can be traced to exactly that: attitude. While I will likely never be worry-free, I've whittled it way down just by acknowledging I'm the worrying kind. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but just giving my worry a little bit of voice, rather than my old way, of ignoring it and/or telling it to STFU when it got loud-ish, has made all the difference. Because when I pause to listen, (a), I feel heard, which takes care of a lot of the problem; and (b), I actually take steps to deal with some of the wacko problems that come with being me, which, in turn, makes many of them go away.

Worry #1: What will I wear?

On the surface, this always seemed nuts, as I had more than enough clothes to wear right there in my closet, most of which I really enjoyed wearing. But they were rag-picker clothes, the wardrobe of one who views value shopping as sport, and clothes as a mode of expression.

I cannot believe it took a twentysomething straight male to point out the glaringly obvious, but when I read this post by young Jesse Thorn on the dangers of buying thrift-store ties, it all fell into place: thrift-store acquisitions, however mint and spiff, are the pieces other people let go of because they couldn't make them work. They can be fantastic sources of cool accent pieces, but the odds of finding cornerstone wardrobe items are razor-thin.

During the Great Purge of '09, I unloaded everything ill-fitting, irretrievably stained/torn, etc. That removed some of the stress of packing; I no longer had to worry about bringing this sweater I always wore with that shirt to cover up the blotch/rip/etc. But after my trip to DC this year, I had a packing revelation when I realized the stress I was enduring over whether to wear the cute navy-blue thermal tee on the plane or save it for an out-and-about day could be completely eliminated with the purchase of identical cute navy-blue thermal tees. I immediately went online and purchased six. They did not arrive in time for SXSW, alas, but man-oh-Manischewitz, packing for Tacoma could not have been easier, style-wise.

The corollary to this is anti-worry is equally "no duh!" simple: most everywhere I travel to sells everything I need. Last summer, a friend's mother died while I was in town on a jeans-only trip; amazingly, I found an Actual Department Store that sold clothes, and bought some appropriate pants that would not embarrass me or her family. A Christmas Miracle in July.

Finally, there's a gigantic bonus-extra to this wardrobe methodology: dressing daily is equally mindless, with the same fantastic Style Quality Control. Gretchen, I should have listened to you sooner!

Worry #2: What if I miss the plane?

I am the daughter of one of the world's most frequent flyers. Literally. My father is now deceased, but in his day, he was one of an elite group of lifetime AAirpass owners, a privilege for which he paid $250K (a pittance! a pittance, I tell you!). Said AAirpass entitled him to fly first-class on any American (or partner, back in the day) flight for the rest of his life, which he did for almost 20 years, sometimes six days per week. On a whim, he told us, he once checked with the airline to see where he stood in the pantheon of all-time big American Airlines frequent flyers. There were two people ahead of him and they were both professional couriers.¹

For a guy who could get on almost any plane to anywhere, he was notoriously nuts about getting there early. I've already missed as many flights in my life (one) as I believe he missed in his (not owing to acts of God, anyway). I used to fry my circuits every trip over getting there in time, until I finally arrived at the magic number: two hours. Yes, I get to the airport two hours before every flight, no matter how early the flight is taking off. It is absolutely insane, but in a perverse stroke of irony, it keeps me from losing my mind.

I look forward to the "me" time, and, occasionally, will treat myself with trashy magazines at the airport. Which brings me to my final worry...

Worry #3: Everything is so expensive!

I am not exactly cheap, but I'm not exactly a carefree spendthrift, either. It chaps my hide having to exorbitant prices for staples like water, wifi and trashy magazines. (Okay, those cost the same everywhere, but I almost never buy magazines for full newsstand price.)

I used to carry my cheapskate mentality when I traveled. Then I discovered a miraculous new modus operandi: plan for what you can, and let go of the rest. As I do in my talk about communicating, I advocate a 99-to-1 ratio of planning to letting-go. I generally plan for snacks and sundries at least a week in advance, and with checklists, to coincide with the last regularly-scheduled trip to the store.

I also finally dedicated a Dopp kit and attendant Ziploc quart bag to traveling supplies. They are fully loaded and ready to go at all times (except now, when I just realized I rotated my toothbrush out, and, like a good Mormon, need to replace my stock).

Now that mostly everything is in there, I feel better about not cheaping out on the stuff I either left behind or want to treat myself to because I am at the airport two hours before a 5am flight. Good for me, good for the economy!

***

I travel nowhere near as often as Dad, or friends like the Chris-es Guillebeau and Brogan. If I get to that point, and a part of me really, really hopes I never do, at least by air, I'll adapt further.

But these small things have made a mighty difference, both in how I anticipate a trip and how I enjoy it once I'm there...

xxx
c

¹For you doubters, here's a little story about some litigation around the fabled lifetime AAirpass. While it goes without saying my dad was scrupulously honest about using his own AAirpass, we did joke about how he should have gotten one with initials-only, rather than first-initial-plus-middle, so that I might continue to fly as C.A. Wainwright after he'd passed on to that great Admirals Club in the sky. Well, I joked, anyway.

Image cropped from photo by David Masters via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

The upside of love, the downside of focused practice

If you put to me the question of how TEDxTacoma went, I would easily and enthusiastically reply with a resounding, "FANTASTICALLY!"

Putting aside how seamless the whole travel experience was (a subject worth exploring in a future post), as well as how much I always enjoy being in the Pacific Northwest (and how my delicate moods affect my enjoyment of things is another thing worth exploring, in more than a post), it was like being on a steady drip of love and inspiration, two things I am always willing to mainline.

The students at Puget Sound University ("PSU" in their parlance) who coordinated, produced and participated in the event, swept me off my feet. I'd forgotten how uplifting it is to spend time around great bunches of young people, period, but I'd perhaps never experienced as an adult what it's like to be around a group of smart, loving, enthusiastic and focused young people like this: so much energy funneled into changing the world for the better, it's positively overwhelming in every sense of the phrase. BIG fun.

And Michelle Jones, the professor who went to TEDIndia last November and brought back with her the fire to create a TEDx conference here, this April, yes, less than four months later, as schools break for the holidays, is my new, real-life hero. Like the best heroes, she shrugs off the title, she's too busy doing stuff to piffle about with nonsense like that. But she's no humorless zealot, either: every moment around Professor Jones¹ is illuminating because, I think, she is pure light; I believe her when she says (which she did, after much getting to know her and prodding) that every single day of her life is as filled with joy and energy as that day we all spent basking in talks, songs, dances and conversations about passion. (Albeit, you know, slightly less epic in scale.)

If, on the other hand, you ask me how I did, I would say, fine.

The room was (mostly) with me, the feedback was good, and my opening talk did what I think it was slotted, and designed, to do: start the day off with a bang. If there is one thing I am rarely accused of, it is of being low-energy. I pulled out all the stops for my 18-minute talk on "connecting to and communicating with passion," and let the energy flow. I managed to use my talk as a real-time demo of my thesis, which is that when offering oneself up as a conduit for passion, one's job is to spend the bulk of one's time preparing, then get the hell out of the way. At some point, the videos of all the talks will be uploaded to the YouTube channel, and we'll see if it comes across in recorded form. But right there, right then? It worked. That part, anyway.

What could have been better? The list is, if not endless, significant in length. The stories could have been tighter. The transitions could have been smoother. I was Gene Kelly, in other words, when what I am aiming for in all my work is to be Fred Astaire: I made it look sweaty, not easy; the seams were showing.

It's an odd thing, how one behaves towards oneself once one has committed to achieving a certain level of mastery. I find myself dreading the debriefings because of the inevitable well-meaning (and very useful, in their time and place) Mister Rogers' like reactions to my self-critiques: "You did great, I'm sure!" and "Don't beat yourself up like that!" and "You need to really acknowledge what you've accomplished!" Make no mistake: I know what I've accomplished. I gave up a career I could explain to people, that paid me well, that had prestige and significance in the mainstream world. Then I gave up another one. I gave up hours and hours (and hours and hours) to focused practice. Even more to unfocused wandering, which for me, was far more difficult. I know what I have sacrificed to get here, and I know exactly how good I am. And for a variety of reasons, most of which were within my control, all of which are terrifically clear and obvious in hindsight, I gave a B-/C+ performance on Saturday. Not compared to the other speakers; compared to what I am dead sure my capabilities were going in.²

And this is how we grow: not by celebrating every single solitary thing we do as a work of genius, but by honoring each effort by building on it to do the next thing. Is it okay to pause and enjoy our lovely victories now and then? Yes. Of course. Why not? Is it okay to applaud effort, and acknowledge that we are in there fighting, grappling with the Ugly, doing the work, even if the results are sometimes inelegant? Sure. Here and there, anyway.

I did my job as best I could given the circumstances. More importantly, I know more about what I need to do more of (and less of) next time.

Most importantly of all, though, the joy of the day was not dimmed by my non 9.9 performance. I acknowledged the blow I inflicted on my own ego and kept it in its place.

That may not be a critical component to becoming the consummate professional, but it's integral to becoming a compassionate human being...

xxx
c

¹Which she never, ever refers to herself as, by the way, this capable young lady with multiple advanced degrees. I just went through all of our correspondence around the event and not once, NOT ONCE, was there an auto-sig with a string of alphabet soup after her name. Nor an exhortation to save the goddamn planet by thinking before printing out an email. And she's moving into a tiny house, not rearranging deck chairs in the Container Store like the rest of us plastic-"recycling", email-sig-planet-saving poseurs.

²I did also, of course, compare myself to the other speakers as well on wide range of specific (to me) metrics, this is one huge way I've learned what works for me with my own public speaking. But it would serve nothing to share my analysis here, so I won't. I will say that I was profoundly moved by all of the talks in one way or another, and that never happens. Never. Not even at Ignite. This TED was truly an amazing experience.

A non-spectacular shot of the fantastically fun a cappella group, Garden Level, singing at TEDxTacoma, used under a Creative Commons license.

Frrrrriday Rrrrroundup! #04

An end-of-weekly roundup collecting fffffive of the fffffantabulous things I find stumbling around the web during the week here, but which I post on one of the many other Internet outlets I stop by (or tweet at) during my travels. More about the genesis here.

Imagine it's Monday. Now, what would make things better? Exactly. [Tumbled, via @mulegirl on Twitter]

Seth Godin is brilliant when he talks about marketing and inspiring when he talks about the need to conquer fear and make stuff. I'm not surprised that he's also incredibly astute at parsing the reality of why we fall for real estate. [delicious-ed]

Whose fans are dumber? Yeah, there's an algorithm for that. [Stumbled]

I've written extensively about my love for Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk on creativity and admitted out loud that Jill Bolte Taylor was my inspiration for the talk I gave at IgnitePDX, but with his talk on music and passion, conductor Benjamin Zander became my official muse for TEDxTacoma . [Facebook-ed]

Like my friend Merlin noted, this is what the future looks like. And I like it. [Flickr-faved]

(One final, unlinked note: keep a good thought for me tomorrow morning, okay?)

xxx
c

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

Poetry Thursday: Glass houses

I wonder about the people
who used to bother me
when I was younger
and where they all went
since I got old.

The rotating hotties
in public displays of affection
who turned my stomach.

The cheaters at Monopoly
who roused my righteous indignation.

That solipsist who
took TWO parking spots
to protect his goddamn Porsche.

What happened to them, anyway,
those stupid, stupid girls
who set us back 50 years
as they prowled the mall on Saturday
in full drag makeup
dressed like Prostitute Barbie?
When were they replaced
by these sad young ladies
who try so hard it breaks my heart?

Where did they go,
the noxious sycophants
and outrageous blowhards
and double-dippers
and holy rollers?

Who sent all these enraging idjits packing
and let in all these glorious clowns?

I should write them a thank-you note
and I will
just as soon as I've finished
cursing out
this delusional wreck
of an unsolicited advice-giver
and this able-bodied old man
who is clearly only handicapped
by his sense of entitlement.

Just as soon
as I'm done...

xxx
c

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

No more!

I've been giving little talks for long enough that a part of me insists I should have some kind of system down.

One that not only has me starting earlier and working more methodically, but that provides some sort of framework and steps for proceeding; some kind of handy-dandy, E-Z-1-2-3!â„¢ process for getting talks out of my head and onto paper before they come back out of my  head.

Alas, there is no system yet. While I marvel at my friend Cliff Atkinson's excellent "Hollywood screenplay" framework for content creation (which I'm currently re-reading about in his wonderful book, Beyond Bullet Points, for inspiration), using bits and pieces of it as well as Nancy Duarte's and Garr Reynolds' brainstorming techniques from slide:ology and Presentation Zen, respectively, something obstinate in me refuses to budge from my old, familiar pace 'n' blather method. Sorry about that, neighbors; sorrier than you know.

However, one massively helpful thing I have begun doing is admitting that this spazzy and backwards way of working is, for better or worse, currently my default way. Out loud. Or rather, out loud on my calendar. At some point last year, in a fit of pique, no doubt, I added an all-day event to my gCal "work pods" calendar titled "NO MORE!" In caps, so I couldn't miss it. In burnt orange, just in case.

Now, when I have something big coming up, like my very first TEDx talk, up in Tacoma, this Saturday, I stick a bunch of burnt-orange "NO MORE!" jellybeans on the days leading up to it. Instantly, those days are shut off, devoted solely to whatever is already on there or whatever big thing I have coming up. I have even learned to stick the burnt-orange "NO MORE!" jellybeans on the other side of the big event, for recovery time.

Because sometimes, the best way to keep going is knowing when to stop...

xxx
c

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

Hey! Disclosure! Links to the books in the post above are Amazon affiliate links. This means if you click on them and buy something, I receive an affiliate commission. Which I hope you do: it helps keep me in books to review. More on this disclosure stuff at publisher Michael Hyatt's excellent blog, from whence I lifted (and smooshed around a little) this boilerplate text.

Book review: The Guinea Pig Diaries

My favorite kind of learning is the stealth variety: where you don't realize you've learned something because you're too busy being engaged and (God willing) entertained.

With The Guinea Pig Diaries, nine immensely readable stories (and a clutch of highly enjoyable appendices, end notes and other writerly add-ons), A.J. Jacobs jumps straight to the top of my list of People I Officially Endorse Learning From. This book is smart as hell and you can dance to it, proving that you don't have to be a pompous gasbag (or even an earnest gasbag) to assist your fellow travelers in their quest for useful information.

Jacobs' not-so-secret approach to researching his stories is, as the title suggests, that he approaches his job as a journalist by treating his life as a series of experiments.¹

The sly awesomeness to this approach is that it allows him to deeply explore topics that would otherwise be dangerous territory for an upper-middle-class, educated, Anglo male from the First World. When you're at the top of the privilege food chain, you risk alienating a huge portion of your audience by even broaching the subject of the subjugation of women; if, on the other hand, you can truthfully recount your real-life experience with being treated as an object (posing nude at the behest of a female celebrity) or a "wife" (ceding full control of decision-making to your own, real-life spouse), not only do you gain credibility, you garner some enormous good will. Especially if you're hilarious at your own expense in the recounting.

Not all of the topics are especially inflammatory: there's great, thoughtful stuff in there about nature and purpose of truth, courtesy of an experiment in something called "radical honesty", and some wonderful observations about the importance of character from a delightful piece on George Washington (who apparently didn't start out with much of the stuff, go figger!).

Even the essays you might consider puff pieces going in end up being substantial in their insights. "My Outsourced Life," a piece that in a slightly different form ran in Esquire several years ago, took a trendy topic, the growing number of Western folk who were turning to the Far East to get their dirty work done more cheaply, and without any big fuss managed to make some really good points about power, mutual respect and personal responsibility without ever veering into...well, pompous (or earnest!) gasbaggery. This is like the non-consumer-object version of what I've come to call "selling-fu": Jacobs invites you into his conclusion not by ramming his thesis and data down your throat, but by lining them up in an irresistible (yet truthful! and transparent!) fashion.

The older I get, the more I realize that there really is no way to change any mind that's not ready to be changed. But you can start building bridges with the right thoughts and techniques, so they're there to cross when the people on the other side are ready. A.J. Jacobs is building excellent bridges to further conversation, and I, for one, am happy to cross over and keep talking...

xxx
c

• Buy The Guinea Pig Diaries by A.J. Jacobs on Amazon
• Visit A.J. Jacobs' website
• Watch A.J. Jacobs' talk on his Year of Living Biblically at the 2007 TED-esque EG Conference

¹It's even got a name, "immersion journalism", and plenty of modern practitioners: Barbara Ehrenreich, for example, who wrote one of my all-time favorite read-and-re-read books, Nickle And Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. Although AJ is way funnier. At least, in the book.

Images (left to right): Photo of A.J. Jacobs © Nigel Parry, originally in Esquire; © 2009 Simon & Schuster; Design: Jason J Heuer, Photo: Michael Cogliantry.

Yo! Disclosure! Links to the books in the post above are Amazon affiliate links. This means if you click on them and buy something, I receive an affiliate commission. Which I hope you do: it helps keep me in books to review. More on this disclosure stuff at publisher Michael Hyatt's excellent blog, from whence I lifted (and smooshed around a little) this boilerplate text.

Ice cream for everyone!

Maybe it's a reaction to the stress of not knowing what's next, even though I've had a full four months to suss the sucka out. Maybe it's the Resistor whispering sweet uglies in my ear as I near some kind of (oh please oh please oh please) creative breakthrough.

Whatever flavor of fear is to blame, I have been horrified to note of late a creeping desire to trash-talk, whatever, whomever, whenever.

I know it's no good for me: even if it wasn't the #1 poison the Four Agreements warns against (which it is) and even if happiness handmaiden Gretchen Rubin hadn't discussed the downside multiple times (which she has), I literally feel awful now when I gossip. Sick to my stomach, plus a little dizzy. And that's on top of the self-loathing that kicks in.

Fortunately, my friend Dave Seah introduced me to the ultimate spell-breaker for lifting the hex and clearing the fog that a good, and by "good," I mean "bad", gossip session induces. I was at the end of a long jag of gnarly, personal posts to our Google Wave project, not gossipy blips, per se, but that kind of venting that's just to the side of it. When I finally copped to overindulging and confessed to the weariness it had brought on, rather than batting back a similarly heavy reply, or a snarky joke, or just ignoring it entirely, as though it had never existed, Dave said the exact perfect thing:

"Okay, then, ice cream for everyone!"

I laughed out loud when I read it, the sticky ugliness vanished in a poof of delightful, and immediately, God was back in her heaven and all was right with the world.

Since that exchange, Dave and I have used it at least twice more in the Wave and I've found myself using it quite a bit in the course of my day to get myself back on track from all kinds of derailments: Accidentally read another horrible thing about racist fear-mongering while you were on the interwebs? Ice cream for everyone! Crabby friend on the phone attempting to launch a bitch-fest? Ice cream for everyone! Catch your own ungrateful self complaining again? Ice cream for everyone! It's short, it's easy to remember, and it doesn't dangle loosely from my bony wrist.

So. Weekend over? Tough week ahead? Stupid guy cut you off in traffic on the way to work?

ICE CREAM FOR EVERYONE!

Unless you have a better one. Eh?

xxx
c

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

Frrrrriday Rrrrroundup! #03

An end-of-weekly roundup collecting fffffive of the fffffantabulous things I find stumbling around the web during the week here, but which I post on one of the many other Internet outlets I stop by (or tweet at) during my travels. More about the genesis here.

What does an artist do when she finds herself deeply in debt? She explores her relationship to money by illustrating every purchase for a year. In other words, she draws, and thinks, her way out of it. [delicious-ed, via @gelatobaby on Twitter]

I've been following my friend Cookie Carosella's wonderful (albeit frequently horrifying) tales of middle-aged dating for a while now. This hilarious story of passive-aggressive matchmaking and what it wrought is your perfect introduction. [Stumbled]

If you haven't seen young Lin Yu Chun's startling homage to Whitney Houston's cover of Dolly Parton's classic "I Will Always Love You," you are in for a treat. An eerie one, but no less amazing and heartfelt for being so. [Facebook-ed]

This single quote of Anne Lamott's from a recent Salon interview so perfectly summed up my criteria for what I may, and may not, mine from my life for my writing, I felt it deserved its own post. [Tumbled]

I wish I could use every fantastic photo I find in my searches to illustrate the posts on communicatrix-dot-com. [Flickr-faved]

xxx
c

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

Poetry Thursday: Magic

I used to wish
I could blink my way
to happiness
like Samantha on Bewitched

making things appear
or disappear
at will,
myself included.

Okay, I still do.

Standing in line
after ever-lovin' line
at LAX,
I transport myself
in my thoughts
to my destination

instantaneously
without baggage
or more than the moment
it takes to twitch my nose.

If I am lucky
something shows up
to remind me
of how much magic
there is in airports
themselves:
the terrazzo underfoot
the screens, both silent and blaring
the overpriced water in plastic
the baggage carousels
the light through the glass
the air, cooled or heated
the thousands of stories being carried
from one point of the globe
to another,

almost instantaneously
to someone who considered herself lucky
to secure a berth
on a boat
bound for land
she had not even seen on a map.

If I am lucky.

And these days,
I almost always am...

xxx
c

Image by U-g-g-B-o-y-(-Photograph-World-Sense-) via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

What's under all that crap?

I'm curious: now that you're four months or so into the process of slowing down and doing less , washing the metaphorical dishes in your psychic kitchen sink, if you will, and clearing off the piles of metaphorical papers on your psychic desk top, if you will , what are you uncovering?

, Dan Owen, in the comments to post on Monday, April 12

I have been thinking about Dan Owen's question in the comments of Monday's post since shortly after he wrote it, and finding answers, or ideas serving as leads to them, everywhere I turn, ever since.

Okay, to be completely honest, I've been thinking about these things on and off for much, much longer, but in my usual perverse way, having someone else pose the question spurs me on to actually structuring my thoughts and putting them down in some kind of semi-orderly fashion.

So, with all of this excavation, this decluttering, this clearing away of physical crap and mental distractions like, oh, the pursuit of livelihood, what am I finding underneath? Thus far, the answers seem to be "the usual" and "more layers", which is to say, "the usual."

The usual, Part 1: Fear, love and the tender heart that threads them together

Here's a good-times truism, and I'm only being half-facetious: when one finds oneself getting angry, outraged, incensed, self-righteous, smug, or any other feeling that is not either fear or love, there's probably fear rooted just underneath.

To make things even more delightful, unless the fear is of being eaten by a bear or some other immediate threat to survival, it's probably attached to some need for love. When I act like a jackass, deliberately withholding love, even though (or worse, because) I know someone wants it, it's about fear.

And "love" doesn't always present in the moment as a grace-taxing apology for a major transgression or showing up at a friend's house at 6am with your truck to move their piano cross-town; it can be as simple, and excruciatingly difficult, as an acknowledgment of success. The Chief Atheist (rightly) used to accuse me of throwing compliments around like manhole covers, and he was right: in my world, achievement was a zero-sum game; ergo your success diminished mine; ergo to me, offering praise felt like cutting off a non-returnable piece of my arm and handing it over knowing that if you did anything with it at all, you'd glance at it ever so briefly before tossing it mindlessly over your shoulder for rats to gnaw on. Or something like that. It took years of working with my first-shrink-slash-astrologer to even make a dent in my fucked-up scarcity mindset, and realistically, it's something I'll likely struggle with for years to come.

However. My hating it doesn't make it go away any faster. To the contrary, my hating it makes it even less likely that I'll be able to overcome it and move into the happy space where my friend Bonnie truly does reside¹, a place where "Any time I see someone succeed I am happy, for it affirms my belief that I live in a world where success is possible." Nobody gets to the happy place by blowing past the bullshit that stands in-between; the only way to it is through it, and brother, there are days when in-between might as well be a three-mile, naked wade through a razor-lined vat of gelatinous battery acid.

Most days, though, the walk is uneventful, the pain points are easily overlooked and the scrutiny easily avoided. This is where you actually can score big payback if you, I believe the expression is "double-down" on the observations.

The usual, Part 2: How many layers of protective coating can one person have, anyway?

Why am I craving this second cup of coffee? Am I really wanting more caffeine in deliciously bitter delivery form, or do I want a do-over on my first cup, a reboot of the day?

Now I want a cookie. Or do I? Am I hungry for this taste, this size, this shape, this texture, this many calories of energy? Or am I hungry for some not-doing? For, specifically, some not-doing of this? Or maybe for a reminder that yes, I can treat myself and treat myself well. (These are SCD-legal cookies; it's a whole other discussion when the thing I want is an "illegal".)

How is it I've found myself back on the Twitter home page/in the Facebook stream/checking email again? Again? Again? What am I looking for? What am I avoiding? Where do these two things overlap?

Of course, sometimes checking email is just checking email and a cookie is just a delicious treat. The trick, and yeah, the pain, is in the awareness. It was not The Goody-Good Times staring down my Best Year Yet failures from 2009 and realizing that they were almost identical to my failures from 2008; of all the things I hate (and because I lack the enlightenment to view them with dispassionate interest and/or compassion, I hate many), I probably hate wasted potential the most. Drives me batty.

On the other hand, there they are. Clues! Instructions, even! On what to do next, or at least, what you might want to take a look at.

So for me, Dan Owen (and anyone else who's interested), under that addiction to coffee, to the Internet, to Comfort TV, to certain controlled substances, is fear: of what happens when, if, when I finally do write a book and it's my turn to be judged by everyone and (probably) found wanting. Of giving my best and my all to what it is I have said I want for so long now and not having it work out, whatever that means. Of money turning me into a lonely  ogress, as I have seen it do to so many of my loved ones before me. Of not being enough, definitely. Of not being loveable, most likely.

In other words, same-old same-old.

But each time around the mountain I have a slightly different view of it, and feeling towards it. In my oh-so-slowly-dawning awareness, I feel the beginning of what might be the promise of eventual compassion and detachment, not bullshit, human, take-my-ball-and-go-home detachment, but a release of attachment to outcome and with it, the potential of opening my heart to love on a more steady basis. Or, um, on a basis. Yeah, that.

It is crap. But come on, it's pretty hilarious crap, isn't it?

xxx
c

¹I swear, it took me years to believe it, but it is true. Which is not to say Bonnie doesn't have her own issues; she'd be the first person to admit that she does. But man, are they not this, and boy, while I wouldn't trade, I really, really hope to experience this state of being some day before I die.

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

Book review: The Book of Awesome

The Book of Awesome will not make you more so.

It's neither prescriptive nor is it wildly illuminating. After all, most of us can sense the difference between good and bad, easy and difficult, delightful and not-so-much, and when we're thinking clearly, we know how to open ourselves up to the light and steer clear of the stuff that pokes, stings, smarts, bogs or otherwise makes life, well, less awesome.

Here's the thing, though: it's easy to forget how colossally awesome life is most of the time. How almost unbearably fortunate most of us are in so many ways just because we get to wake up in the morning, stretch our relatively healthy and make our stupid beds. That whole Be Here Now thing the Buddhists are always (gently, patiently, eternally) harping about? If we were wired for it, we wouldn't need those pesky Buddhists; we'd just BE.

Fortunately for himself, blogger-newly-turned-author Neil Pasricha remembers to remember, and fortunately for us, he is HI-larious while doing so. Oh, yes, my friends: while reading The Book of Awesome, I laughed loud enough to startle the neighbors no less than a dozen times. TWELVE TIMES. Which made me physically feel awesome in addition to being freshly able to appreciate additional awesomeness around me because, as Pasricha and many others have pointed out, laughing is quite good for you, physiologically-speaking.

Some of the entries (chapters? items?) are also quite moving. There's a beautiful piece toward the end serving as a tribute to an awesome friend of Pasricha's who died tragically young, and the piece that closes the book, well, I won't give it away, but I will say that it alone is possibly worth the cost of admission. Well, it and the HI-larious laughing parts.

If you're already a longtime fan of the blog, you'll notice some duplication of entries, although the book is carefully edited for the best of the best, plus what I felt was really great flow. As a fan of the intimate and thus far irreplaceable something that happens when you read words on pulverized dead trees, I would consider getting a copy to dip into as needed, to remind yourself to BE HERE NOW (and maybe, just maybe, find the AWESOME in the moment). Even better, I would definitely consider getting it as a gift for your sad friend or your Internet-free friend, or even your sad, Internet-free friend.

AWESOME is as AWESOME does...

xxx
c

• Buy The Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha on Amazon
• Visit 1,000 Awesome Things on the interwebulars

Yo! Disclosures!

1. The advance review copy of The Book of Awesome upon which I based this review was provided to me for free, and may vary from the book you purchase (although I didn't find any errors of a spelling or typographical nature, so, you know, kudos to Neil, Amy Einhorn and Team Awesome.

2. Links to the books in the post above are Amazon affiliate links. This means if you click on them and buy something, I receive an affiliate commission. Which I hope you do: it helps keep me in books to review. More on this disclosure stuff at publisher Michael Hyatt's excellent blog, from whence I lifted (and smooshed around a little) this boilerplate text.

Image (left) by beadmobile via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license. Image (right) ©Amy Einhorn Books/Penguin Group Inc.

Make the bed, clean the sink

My father did not start out a tidy type, and I am my father's daughter: most of my life has been a battle between me and stuff, me and dirt, me and disorder.

Oh, I could (and did) endlessly re-label and sort the files in the canary-yellow file cabinet I requested and received for my 13th birthday. That's not real order, I now realize: that's low-level OCD masquerading as order. A disorder, manifesting as order. Because while I worked and re-worked taxonomies in my head, on paper, then on the file tabs themselves (this long, long before I knew what "taxonomy" was), I was not preparing myself for work or for thought or for anything; I was soothing myself as best I could in a time (pre-teen) and space (my maternal grandparents', a.k.a. "Gloomy Manor", a.k.a. House-o'-Alcoholics and the Enablers Who Keep Them Going) that were very anxiety-provoking for me. (My sister and I also indulged in the sitcom-perfect passive-aggression of singing rousing choruses from "If Mama Was Married" while we did the dishes together, but that's another nugget of tragicomedy gold for another day.)

These days, I have all but abandoned my poor, poor file folders. Oh, they're there, and they're (reasonably) neatly labeled, but there are so few, it doesn't take long to find what I'm looking for even with only medium-good filing habits. I spend more time keeping the IKEA desktop they support clean and cleared of clutter, because that does seem to help me get my work done. The fewer things I have lying around me in stacks and piles and other smoldering and/or moldering piles, the easier it is to write, to think, and most importantly, to keep my spirits up. I am of little use to myself or anyone else when they are otherwise.

This is why I have added "clean dishes" as my last household task before heading for bed, the bed that is always made 10 or 12 or 16 hours before: it lifts my spirits at the beginning of the day to see a clean, fresh sink just as much as it soothes me at the end of one to slip into a made bed. I feel cared for, I feel safe, I feel hopeful. My friend Gretchen Rubin says this is the #1 change her readers tell her they've made which has had a significant impact on their happiness, and I can see why. It's do-ably small, but has a magically high ROI. Maybe it's because, as she implies, it instantly creates a look of order. A bed is a rather large thing, after all. But I also think there is something about starting out the day with a small bit of control that is a big part of the benefit. And so, to cap it, for the past several weeks, I've been playing around with finishing off the day as Dan Owen does, by making sure the kitchen is ready to go first thing in the morning.

The result? I feel so much better on days that begin with a clean sink that it's now a regular part of my routine. No matter how tired I am, I clean the dishes. And because I've had to do it a few times when I'm very, very tired, I've also gotten a bit better about clean-as-you-go maintenance.

I am very aware that without awareness, this lovely, Fly-Lady habit could morph into another manifestation of OCD. My sister and I also joke about how, in the last decade or so of our father's life, you could not leave your iced tea on the end table while you went to the other room for a magazine, for fear it would be "cleaned up" while you walked there and back. If it's possible, he decluttered too much; in the end, he had no tolerance for any personal artifacts, save a photo or two that, if I'm honest, were probably mostly there for showin', not blowin', as the saying goes.

On the other hand, I have no doubt he held us in his heart, which is where these things really matter. And that is what I try to remember matters to me: what and whom I hold in my heart, and which habits and actions go the furthest towards keeping them secure there.

Making the bed and cleaning the sink are my signals to myself that I am still fortunate enough to be able to exercise some control over my destiny. They are actions that show respect for the space I'm lucky enough to inhabit and the time I have been given to work on what I want. They mark the beginning and end of a day lived the way I want to live: deliberately, thoughtfully, with enough order and support that creativity can flourish. I do not make the bed to bounce quarters off of nor shine the sink to see my face reflected within: I attend to structure, to the vessels, and trust that whatever it is that keeps floating ideas my way will keep up its own good work. We each of us have our part to play.

I am grateful I can make the bed; I am happy I can wash the dishes.

God, or whomever, or whatever, can take care of the drying...

xxx

c

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

Frrrrriday Rrrrroundup! #02

An end-of-weekly roundup collecting fffffive of the fffffantabulous things I find stumbling around the web during the week here, but which I post on one of the many other Internet outlets I stop by (or tweet at) during my travels. More about the genesis here.

If you aren't already madly, head-over-heels in love with Roger Ebert for his brilliant body of work and his spectacular lemons-into-lemonade reinvention as the Busiest Dude on the Internet, you will be once you read this wonderful essay he wrote about his father.  [delicious-ed]

No, I don't have an iPad (yet). But after seeing this terrrrrific batch of crazy drawings by my friend, Nathan Bowers, when I do get one you can bet that one of the first apps I'm getting is Harmony. [Tweeted]

Engaged as I am in the ongoing throes of my own decluttering, I find much of what my friend Brooks Palmer writes inspiring, illuminating, or both. But I especially liked this piece on clutter-buster meeting clutter-buster, which has all kinds of good stuff in there: learning how to connect with someone, the benefits of being kind to ourselves and others, and as always, understanding our deeper attachments to stuff. Oh, and if you're L.A.-local, I hear there is still a spot open in Brooks' upcoming private Santa Monica workshop. [Stumbled]

I have not seen, nor heard, a more spectacular example of full-on-retro, unabashedly individualistic web design since, well, probably that Peter Pan guy. But Yvette's Bridal, with its links to just about everything, portraiture inclusive, is a whole lot more joyous and a whole lot less creepy. [Facebooked, via @zeldman on twitter]

And finally, because a week ain't a week in my book without a corny cartoon pun, this excellent, unabashedly corny one. [Tumbled, via The Practical Archivist]

xxx
c

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

Poetry Thursday: Walking alone

There are things
that you alone
must do
and that you must do
alone
regardless of how the rest
of the world
is humming along

Resting
in the middle of commotion
running
while the world is asleep
leaving
when life is comfortable
staying
when the fleeing looks good

You may be wistful
or anguished
going to bed
while the party rages

You may be odd man up late
tending to your baby ideas
on long, cold nights
before they hatch

But how much worse
will you feel
when the thing in your heart
lies buried
under a thousand perfectly good reasons
why you couldn't help it now.

No time is right
No time is wrong
Each minute, each hour, each day
extends itself wordlessly
for you to do with it
what you will.

What
will you do?

What
will we do
if you don't?

The life you write for yourself
is yours alone
but the lives you touch
are everywhere,
on into eternity.

xxx
c

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

What's up and what's gone down :: April 2010

A mostly monthly but forever occasional round-up of what I've been up to and what I plan to be. For full credits and details, see this entry.

Colleen of the future (places I'll be)

• April L.A. Biznik Happy Hour at Jerry's Famous (Wednesday, April 14; 5:30 - 8) The flagship Los Angeles Biznik event gets a new host this month: in addition to myself and my prolific co-hostess, Heather Parlato, Biznik-er Kelly Harrington is stepping up to shake hands, high-five and otherwise make the fine small business folk who gather for drinks and nosh and chat feel welcome. It's free to join us (we ask that you buy a little something to support Jerry's), but you'll need to join Biznik here first (which, hooray!, is also free).
• The Career Clinic radio talk show (Saturday, April 10; 10am PT; 12pm CT; 1pm ET) I'll be talking decluttering as it relates to business, creativity and productivity in general with host Maureen Anderson on the April 10th edition of this Internet radio chat show (look! I can use British terminology!). You can join the discussion by calling toll-free (888-598-8464), or sending email to thecareerclinictalkshow AT gmail DOT com. Query away, I will answer ALL, even if I know the answer or not. Which should keep things interesting! (UPDATE: Maureen just followed up to say that while there is an Internet stream, the show is a regular, terrestrial radio broadcast, which means you can hear it over your actual, regular radio on Saturday: noon Central this Saturday on AM 1100 in Fargo (which streams at www.am1100.tv). AM 1410 in Portland will air that broadcast at 4p Pacific time Friday, April 16th (streaming at www.kbnp.com). AM 1230 in Spokane will air the show at 11a Pacific time on Saturday, April 17th (streaming at www.ksbn.net), and 92.5 FM in Rushville, IL will run it at 11p Central time Saturday, April 17th (streaming at www.wkxqfm.com). Sorry for the mix-up, and thank you for clarifying, Maureen!)
• TEDxTacoma (all-day Saturday, April 24; Tacoma, WA) Unfortunately, my pal Chris Guillebeau had one of his many, many schedule conflicts and couldn't make it to this PacNW flavor of the famous TED conference-offshoot series. Fortunately, he hooked me up with the fine people organizing this one-day gathering devoted to the discussion of "passion", how to find it, what to do with it, and everything in-between. I'm beyond over the moon about this (which puts me in outer space or right back where I am, depending on your viewpoint), as well as the chance to get a little PacNW fix before the main event this fall. And the lineup, well, let's just say I'm the worst house on a great block. Which is just how I like it!

Colleen of the Past (stuff I did you might not know about)

• The Astoundingly Simple Secrets to Making Social Media Work for You Here's a little secret for you: while I really enjoy in-person speaking events the most, I work extra hard on the virtual ones, especially the webinars. The emotional lossy-ness of the web means that to communicate successfully via these weird hybrids of teleconference, live events and PowerPoint shows, you have to plot things out twice as carefully and project three times the energy. No, you won't get to ask questions at the end (which is why you should come see me in person!), but I cover a ton of ground, including surprise Q&A at the end. Big bang for your buck. The webinar is not available for purchase yet, but sign up for Freelancers Union now anyway, and check back.

Colleen of the Present (ongoing projects)

• communicatrix | focuses My monthly newsletter devoted to the all-important subject of increasing your unique fabulosity. One article per month (with actionable tips! and minimal bullsh*t!) about becoming a better communicator, plus the best few of the many cool things I stumble across in my travels. Plus a tiny drawing by yours truly. Free! (archives & sign-up)
• Act Smart! is my monthly column about marketing for actors for LA Casting, but I swear, you'll find stuff in it that's useful, too. Browse the archives, here.
• Internet flotsam And of course, I snark it up on Twitter, chit-chat on Facebook, post the odd video or quote to Tumblr, and bookmark the good stuff I find on my travels at StumbleUpon and delicious. If you like this sort of stuff, follow me in those places, I only post a fraction of what I find to Twitter and Facebook.

xxx
c

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

Book review: Epilogue

A part of me wondered why I was drawn to pick up Epilogue, Anne Roiphe's memoir about the year-and-change (some pun intended) she experienced as a newly-widowed woman, when I spied it on the library shelf.

And, I confess, that part of me continued to wonder as the rest of me worked through the inevitably sorrow-filled stories of Roiphe's earliest days post-loss: the mundane acts rendered surreal by the combination of shock, numbness and grief; the creeping realizations that however much of a life she had left, it was suddenly all she had left, the only certainty left to her. I am going through a phase of loss and loneliness and uncertainty in my own life, albeit one brought on myself; was I looking for clues on how to behave? Or of what lies ahead? Or of how to behave based on what lies ahead? Roiphe is 26 years older than I am; she is also almost exactly  one month older than my mother would have been. Am I just (foolishly) trying to assemble clues about my future by mining someone else's past?

Slowly, page by page, anecdote by anecdote, the reason for reading, and for writing, is revealed: the stories are connection, and connection is everything. The stories are vehicles of truth, and truth, however painful, is the only way to bring light to life. Truth and love. Roiphe's memoir is strung together by a hundred tiny stories of telling the truth rather than shrouding evil with silence, but it is also peppered with wonderful, hopeful story-lets describing the healing power of music, the crazy grace of a perfect, random moment, the perverse persistence of biological desire one alternately wishes for and away.

Funny, touching, shocking, enraging stories: a nightmarish story of attempted strangulation by lawsuit, which is strangely balanced by the nonsensical, stubborn insistence of her deceased husband's ex-wife to receive the full month's alimony for the partial last month of his life. A woeful story of a former friend who turns away; a string of new romances that mostly stop before they get a chance to start; a crushing story of a family rent by first the hiding, then the revelation of a family member's secret.

Threaded through are the gems good and modest writers leave without fanfare for our surprise and delight, that "trying is not the way to loving", or that psychoanalysts are the archenemies of the secret (lowercase, please, there is not an ounce of New-Age-rhymes-with-"sewage" in first-wave feminist Anne Roiphe). I am already dreaming up capes and costumes for Leslie and my first-shrink-slash-astrologer, both of whom are absolutely superheroes with attendant superpowers, IMHO.

Maybe you, like me, will have to apply yourself to the early-on pages of Epilogue with a bit of faith. This will come together; the glimmers I see here and there in these threads of stories will weave themselves into a whole that offers support, that helps carry me forth through this rough spot to the next bit of smooth going.

Roiphe herself is not much for faith. At first, she soldiers on for practical reasons, because not to do so would devastate those she would leave behind. She neither believes in a hereafter where she and her beloved "H." will be reunited, nor is she at all certain that a renewed interest in (or availability of) earthy delights is around the corner. But her stories, and their messages, and their energy, finally carry her forward, too. And somehow, in the end (or at least, by the end of her story here), we feel it together: that the point of a life, to paraphrase Jonathan Swift, is to live all the days of it.

xxx
c

• Buy Epilogue, by Anne Roiphe, on Amazon
• Read Wikipedia entry on Anne Roiphe

Book cover design by Christine Van Bree, © Harper Collins; photo of Anne Roiphe © Deborah Copaken Kogan

Yo! Disclosure! Links to the books in the post above are Amazon affiliate links. This means if you click on them and buy something, I receive an affiliate commission. Which I hope you do: it helps keep me in books to review. More on this disclosure stuff at publisher Michael Hyatt's excellent blog, from whence I lifted (and smooshed around a little) this boilerplate text.

Buying less, renting smarter, Part 1

My first shrink-slash-astrologer warned me early on that I'm a floaty type.

Which is to say, I enjoy wandering from thing to thing, but this can leave me very, very ungrounded. I think she even suggested carrying around a piece of hematite as a possible solution, and I dimly recall trying it for a bit: I found an old hunk lying around in one phase of The Great Purge of '09, and dispatched it to Goodwill forthwith.

Anyway, I know that looking at things soothes me and I suspect that having one reason I tend to collect them is that having them around grounds me.

Looking through new-to-me stuff, almost any stuff, from garage sales to flea markets to high-end department stores, is weirdly relaxing and comforting. When I'm browsing the stacks or the back 40 at the Kane County Flea Market or the racks at Bloomie's, a part of my brain that usually won't shut up is finally able to, but I also feel deeply cared for. Whereas other wonderful-to-me activities that also shut off that part of my brain, walking on the beach or doing Nei Kung or hooping, for example, are more stimulating than soothing, and still other experiences, like looking at art, are generally stimulating without being soothing.

Since I like these things or like the way they make me feel, it's really hard not to want to take some home with me. If I feel good in some object's habitat, it follows that I will also feel good around it when it's been removed to mine. And sometimes, I do. But often, I do not. This is where the clutter problem lives for many of us, I'm guessing, trying to replicate feelings. (The other part lies in wanting to hang onto them.)

When I am full-on monk, this problem will either go away or I'll have mad ninja skillz for dealing with it. For now, though, I need to be around stuff sometimes, and I need to have some stuff all the time, in order for my life to work the way I want it to.

The trick, then, for me, is coming up with ways to comfort myself that do not involve the acquisition of stuff I don't need, even cheap stuff. Because in addition to the cost of acquisition, there's a cost to maintain the stuff and to get rid of it, even with second-hand stuff, if you're going to do it responsibly.

The library is a terrific substitution for any browsing because the stuff you get there is the least "sticky", there are penalties for not getting rid of it! But even renting "for free" from the library comes at a cost: how much time am I spending returning stuff, checking due dates on returning stuff, rounding up stuff to return, etc.? So these are the ways I've come up with to minimize library "waste":

Book in advance. (No pun intended!) The Los Angeles Public Library has a searchable online database you can use to find an reserve books, which are then delivered at no cost to the branch of your choice. When I find a book I know I want to read that looks like it's been out for a while, I jump on the site, plug in my member number (which I have saved as a keystroke shortcut in TextExpander), and have it sent to me.

Walk to the library. When you live in L.A., you spend most of your mobile time in a giant backpack called "a car." The combination of picking up reserved books and walking to and from the library to do it has dramatically reduced the amount of books I haul, and is good exercise, head-clearing and better for the environment, as well. I'm really nervous because budget cutbacks have already reduced hours (and salaries, sadly) at my branch, which is older and smaller and likely to be an early candidate for closures. But I'll cross that bridge when they blow it up. Or something.

Limit browsing time. I used to go earlier in the day (a luxury of the self- or unemployed!). Now I go towards the end of the day, an hour or less before closing time. Which is earlier and earlier with every budget cut.

Keep a dedicated holding area. I wish I could remember where I got this tip, because implementing it has dramatically reduced my late fees. I have one small shelf devoted to library books on loan; the only other place in my apartment they're allowed to be is on my nightstand.

Manage due dates with a system. Before they moved to a fee model, I used LibraryElf to make sure I didn't rack up ridiculous overdue rates. Now that I'm bringing in less and reading more, I burn through books quickly enough that it's not an issue, but if you have problems getting stuff back on time, either a calendar reminder input into your own calendar as soon as you get home, or a LibraryElf subscription, might not be a bad idea.

That's probably already about as anal as it gets when it comes to a library strategy (although I didn't get into my Windex-ing the covers upon arrival at home, never know where that stuff has been). But if there are other things I'm missing or could benefit from, I'd love to hear them...

xxx
c

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

Frrrrriday Rrrrroundup!

While I enjoy spreading the small-biz love via Referral Friday, I've been itching to create some other feature that both collects the fantabulous things I find stumbling around the web during the week here, rather than on third-party sites, and rustles up a little friendly P.R. for the deserving people who make them.

Of course, you can always track all the crazy stuff I bookmark, Stumble, Tumble, Facebook, star or tweet at any of those locations. Or all of 'em in one horrifying deluge of a fell swoop at FriendFeed. But, you know, only so many hours in the day, right?

Note! I am, uh, noting the original notation at the end of each item for two reasons.

• First, as a way of externalizing my thought process in bookmarking shared content. Why does one thing get posted to delicious while another gets retweeted on Twitter? Beats me! No, actually, I do have a semi-sorta strategy that I should probably outline at some point. But seeing things in action is (i.e. having examples to look at) is often more useful than plain, old telling.
• Second, as a rather shameless and transparent attempt to get you to connect with me in one of these other places. Because empire-building is all the rage these days, at least, it is here

Finally, the only three links I don't share anywhere else first are the ones that occasionally make it into the "little presents" column of my monthly newsletter. For those, you must subscribe! But as subscribing will make you thin, rich and happy beyond your wildest dreams, frankly, I'm baffled as to why you haven't signed on already.

Okay, then. Excelsior!

There are many, many reasons to follow Nathan Bransford, the generous literary agent who shares all kinds of nifty insider info to make writers smarter (and hopefully, keep the eager riff-raff from further beleaguering an already battle-weary publishing industry). But this odd one-off on why idiot writers might not know they are made my week. [delicious-ed]

Do you think Apple's iPad, debuting tomorrow, will revolutionize the publishing/computing/other industry? Or is it all just a bunch of hype and expensive nerdery? Either way, you must not miss my friend Alissa Walker's brilliant "unboxing" post. Delicious! [but not delicioused, tweeted!]

I've been enjoying the blog of one of my new, met-at-SXSW friends, Rogue Amoeba founder Paul Kafasis, since I got back from Austin, but this post on postmarks made me laugh out loud. Which is kind of annoying, because last I checked you were not supposed to be successful, good-looking, smart, nice AND funny. Especially (decades) before you turn 40. Hmph. [Stumbled]

This was passed around Twitter like a doob at a Dead concert, but on the off chance you missed it, Frank Rich wrote a brilliant and insightful opinion piece for the New York Times on the real roots of Tea Party rage. [Facebooked]

Last, but almost foremost, I would be staggeringly remiss if I did not point you to the inspiration for Frrrrriday Rrrrroundup!, my online pal, the London-based writer Delia Lloyd. Her own brilliantly curated Friday Pix feature is a guaranteed curation of timesucking awesomeness week after week, damn her eyes. Here are all the back issues; before you wave "bye-bye" to your weekend, you might want to subscribe to her blog so you don't miss another. [Not bookmarked this week, but HEY, she's the inspiration, fer cryin' out loud: she gets a slot!]

xxx
c

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

Poetry Thursday: If only

It's so sad, isn't it?

The way he eats/
she drinks/
they sit around and shoot up sitcoms
all day long?

What a waste of life.

Can't they see
how much better off they'd be
swimming laps/
eating seaweed/
doing hot yoga/
loving Jesus?

Can't they hear
what all of that Guitar Hero
is doing to their arteries?

Don't they know
the only "off" valve
is meditation/
marathon running/
mopping floors/
making sweet, sweet love
tied to the bedposts
under the moonlight?

How does someone end up
like that, anyway,
in the suburbs/
on Skid Row/
all alone
cut off
from everything?

If only
they would listen to me.

If only
they could learn
to help themselves.

If only
they knew
that anything was possible
that they are the agents of change
that love starts with each one of us.

If only they knew
what life could be.
What a world
we could live in...

xxx
c

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