Mark My Word

By January 1, 2009, the present tense of the following statements will no longer be fictional:

• My business is virtual.
  
• I work anywhere I want, anytime I want, for as long or as little as I want.
  
• I work with people that totally know their shit, ALWAYS deliver when they say they will, but above all, are FUN to work with.
  
• We laugh constantly while "working," come up with totally original/completely inspiring/innovative business projects that make us TONS of money -- 24x7, with minimal continual maintenance/upkeep. We do this while simultaneously bringing happiness into the world and watching out for the environment.
  
• We meet once a week, face-to-face, to discuss whatever needs to be discussed, assign specific action items to owners and bullshit/have some fun. Apart from this meeting, we're all free to execute our action items wherever/however/whenever we want as long as they are ALWAYS COMPLETE by the next meeting and delivered with quality that meets/exceeds group expectations. Those expectations are clearly laid out in each meeting so that there is no confusion in execution. When in doubt we reach out to each other as necessary ,to clarify.
  
• We spark the creativity, ingenuity and genius in each other as well as with everyone we work with. We catch fire from each others sparks and ignite the fire in others with our passion and enthusiasm.
  
• We only work for clients/contractors that we like. We are successful, not because we are competitive, but because we are collaborative. The money is never more important than the enjoyment we derive from our projects and working with cool people.
  
• We celebrate every success and learn from every non-success. There's no such thing as a failed project, just one that didn't go quite as expected.
  
• I wake up in the morning and tune-in to my original center. I dress and plan my daily activities as inspired by this inner voice. I feel light-hearted, clear-headed and excited about facing the possibilities of each day.
  
• I express myself freely/openly/honestly/authentically. If this means I make colorful use of the words "fuck" or "shit" more times than there are minutes in the day, then so be it. The people around me view it as a lovable quirk, rather than a lack of business polish.
  
• People fascinate me. The opportunity to meet new people excites me. The thought of all the synergistic combinations possible when you bring together unfamiliar entities, in unexpected/uncontrolled/go-with-the flow ways, fires me up.
  
• I walk around fully awake and in tune with the moment. As a result, the world around me lights up and is a constant feeding ground for energy, beauty, wonder, new ideas and inspiration.

The Rain is Gone

The past couple of days have been making my head spin. I contemplated letting it all settle down/sink-in before writing about it, but I feel like I have to get it down while it’s still fresh in my mind and not watered down by over-analysis and the passage of time.

Posted recently about being confused about what I needed to change. Felt like change was imminent but I didn’t know what direction it was coming from/didn’t know what I should be doing. Came to the conclusion that I was being impatient and not letting the process take its course. So I left it and let it sit for awhile.

Turns out it really is true that you can’t know something before its time because I discovered the thing that I had to change was ME. If someone told me that straight up at the time that I asked it, they would’ve gotten a WTF look in return. The answer seems so broad and all-encompassing, but it’s very clear to me now. And the interesting thing is that nothing has changed externally, but so much seems to be shifting inside.

The shift seems to have started with the usual blog surfing. Again, synchronicity found me at the Creative Everyday blog -- I followed a link from there to a blog called Crossroads Dispatches. (wow, I just now realized the significance of that naming!!) To me, reading that blog is like reading the writing of someone who’s traveled the same path that I’m traveling on but is thousands of miles ahead of me. It’s almost hiking your way along some wild unbeaten path that you thought you discovered, only to see a tell-tale yellow flag signaling that not only has someone come before you, but they’ve been kind enough to leave clues (or clews as she would call them) to help you find your way easier. I wonder now if she named her blog Crossroads Dispatches with this type of symbolism in mind?? Maybe someday I’ll work up the courage to ask.

One of the first posts I came upon that caught me went to an article that said:

“…people nowadays also set great store by being original, but you can’t really be original by taking thought. That sort of originality is a false, is an artificial, originality. It’s not the real thing. You can only be original, you can only produce something original if you are original. That doesn’t mean being eccentric, it means in a way being yourself, it means being in touch with yourself, knowing who and what you are; having or developing insights, vision, having imagination. If you can be yourself in that way well you will be creative in the sense of producing something original, something which partakes of the nature of creativity.”

That quote is so in line with so much of my recent thinking/feeling -- stuff I hadn’t even yet journaled/blogged about because I was still formulating my thoughts in my mind. On top of that I would add that people seem the most unhappy, the further they are from their original selves, the further they are from their "original centers."

A lot of the other posts as I read them were all about letting go of yourself/your expectations and the accompanying worries and disappointments that stem from them. The reason I italicized “as I read them” is because I strongly believe it may not have been the original message she intended, but it is what I got from the post because it is what I needed to get from it.

She’s talking a lot recently about inspiration and about how it CANNOT be forced. She’s totally right. You have to make yourself open to it in whatever way you make yourself open to it. I think it’s different for everyone. That’s probably where a lot of people struggle – they look to others, their parents/friends/mentors/the experts to give them the answers, but only YOU can answer the questions for yourself. It’s certainly where I struggle. But the fact is, only YOU know what the questions are that need to be answered. To look to someone outside of yourself to help you define who you are is like going on one of those crash/fad diets – it may work for a while, but sooner or later you’ll be back where you started.

It’s only through doing the difficult footwork of getting to know and define and FIND for yourself that you get back to where you’re supposed to be – how you find your way back to your “original center.”

The second part of it all is to not just be open to inspiration, but be willing to follow it, and as much as it is within your power, to do so without hesitation, expectations or reservations.

Today, I was sitting at work when an Outlook pop-up appeared reminding me that I had a Toastmaster’s meeting today. I debated whether or not to go, but in the spirit of the go with the flow/follow your whimsy/muse messaging that I seemed to be receiving, I decided what the heck, I’m going. I got to the meeting location only to discover I had arrived 30 mins early. This was during lunch hour, so I didn’t want to waste the time just waiting around. Then I looked across the street and remembered I had been wanting to check out the Redwood City public library for awhile. I walked in and my jaw just literally dropped. It was so much more than I expected. It had a total Borders/Barnes & Noble feel to it – not dark and musty like the public library I remembered from my youth. Instead it was the kind of place you want to sit around, lounge and really just take your time browsing in. I have been putting off doing my artist’s dates because I couldn’t figure out where to go for just an hour that would inspire and recharge me, but it looks like I’ve found my place.

I checked out a couple of books for my son and then headed back to Toastmasters and lo-and-behold, what is the topic for the day? BEAUTY. Beauty in all it’s forms and all the various ways we come across it in our lives. [I’m almost tripping over my jaw at this point.] One of the main speeches given was actually about how the speaker had spent one afternoon following HER whimsy/going-with-the-flow, on a day that could otherwise have been perceived as one disaster following another, and how that had resulted in a very pleasant, memorable day for her.

If you think about it, what did I actually do in this 90 minute time period? I went to the library and attended a Toastmasters meeting. But because of the state of mind that I was in, I got so much more out of it than just a trip to the library and a meeting. For me, that 90 minutes was about reaffirmation of the messaging/synchronicity of late. It was about finding beauty in the simple things, not by forcing myself to find that beauty, but by being totally caught off guard by the beauty of a simple thing and letting myself get swept away by it.

I don’t really understand it all myself. But I don’t think I’m supposed to. In a sense, I think analyzing it too much would take away from the experience and may even be akin to “looking a gift horse in the mouth.” I just want to say thank you, God/the universe/the infinite for a day of simple beauty and the mindset to appreciate it.

Live the Questions

Haven’t journaled in a while – I’ve had trouble getting over that funk I wrote about in my last entry. Through the beauty of journaling, I can see that I’ve managed to spend the better part of a month in this funk! Time waits for no one.

I had been going to my usual places for inspiration/synchronous messaging – the Artist’s Way (but the chapters for the past 2 weeks have not been so inspiring for me), my favorite blogs: Ali, Wish Jar, Danny Gregory’s…nothing, nada, zip.

Last night on the way home from work, I was thinking about writing (maybe a poem) about how I was feeling like I was standing at the edge of a high precipice, so close to the edge that I could feel the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet tingling. I’m afraid of heights and I hate that tingly feeling, so I would never, under normal circumstances, stand that close to any ledge. But looking down, through the swirls of gray clouds/smoke that I imagine would swirl around beneath that sort of ledge, I see some kind of fire or light, some indication of a promise of something INCREDIBLE, waiting for me at the bottom, if I just take that enormous leap of faith.

Then this morning, I got an email notification that someone had left a comment on my blog – it was from the artist that I had written about in my last post, Leah Piken (so nice, thank you, Leah!). I went to visit her Creative Every Day blog and what do I see, but a post about “letting go of the monkey bar” with a link to another blog that I follow, 37days. There, I discover that the thing I had thought about writing last night, has already been written, perfectly (by Danaan Parry) in the “Fear of Transformation” [emphasis added by me]:

“Most of the time, I spend my life hanging on for dear life to my trapeze-bar-of-the-moment…But every once in a while as I'm merrily (or even not-so-merrily) swinging along, I look out ahead of me into the distance and what do I see? I see another trapeze bar swinging toward me. It's empty and I know, in that place in me that knows, that this new trapeze bar has my name on it. It is my next step, my growth, my aliveness coming to get me. In my heart of hearts I know that, for me to grow, I must release my grip on this present, well-known bar and move to the new one.

It's called ‘transition.’ I have come to believe that this transition is the only place that real change occurs. I mean real change, not the pseudo-change that only lasts until the next time my old buttons get punched.

I have noticed that, in our culture, this transition zone is looked upon as a ‘no-thing,’ a noplace between places. Sure, the old trapeze bar was real, and that new one coming towards me, I hope that's real, too. But the void in between? Is that just a scary, confusing, disorienting nowhere that must be gotten through as fast and as unconsciously as possible?

NO! What a wasted opportunity that would be. I have a sneaking suspicion that the transition zone is the only real thing and the bars are illusions we dream up to avoid the void where the real change, the real growth, occurs for us. Whether or not my hunch is true, it remains that the transition zones in our lives are incredibly rich places. They should be honored, even savored. Yes, with all the pain and fear and feelings of being out of control that can (but not necessarily) accompany transitions, they are still the most alive, most growth-filled, passionate, expansive moments in our lives."

I think that’s what my problem has been: I’ve been holding on to my monkey bar and avoiding the void of change and then getting frustrated that nothing is changing. As is quite evident from my goal’s graph, I’m struggling to keep up with new habits and break the old, bad ones (they’re not even major changes!)

The epiphanies/realizations/self-discoveries are great, but nothing changes until I change. And the thing I need to change is my avoidance. I also need to learn to be more patient. I keep forgetting this above all. "Rome wasn’t built in a day", etc.

I found this quote on the Crafty Girl blog (yes, I’m a total blog junkie) and it’s also so perfectly fitting:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart

and try to love the questions themselves.

Do not now seek the answers,

which cannot be given you

because you would not be able to live them.

And the point is to live everything.

Live the questions."

-Rainer Maria Rilke

OMG, that was totally written for me…I’ve gotta post it somewhere where I can be reminded of it constantly.

Awakening

From The Book of Awakening which I searched for on Amazon after reading a post from a new blog I’ve just added to my list of favorites – Creative Everyday (http://www.creativeeveryday.com/). I was compelled to follow the link to the book because I had just the other night finished the bottom half of my calendar for the BPS class and here’s what it looked like:

See that word there in week 4? Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.

As I perused the pages using the Search this Book feature (which I absolutely LOVE), I received another message. This is from the January 3 passage, titled “Unlearning Back to God”:

“Each person is born with an unencumbered spot – free of expectation and regret, free of ambition and embarrassment, free of fear and worry – an umbilical spot of grace where we were each first touched by God…To know this spot of Inwardness is to know who we are, not by surface markers of identity, not by where we work or what we wear or how we like to be addressed, but by feeling our place in relation to the Infinite and by inhabiting it.”

When I first read it, I read the last sentence like this: "To know this spot of Inwardness is to know who we are, not by surface makers of identity…."

It wasn’t until I was retyping the quote for this entry that I realized I had misread it. Isn’t that weird? Maybe that’s how God/the universe/the Infinite communicates? In small whispers that are there one moment and gone the next, easily missed if you are not in the proper state of mind to receive the messages…

That first reading really struck a chord with me. It seemed to resound strongly of the messages in my recent journal entries, encouraging me to yes, get off my butt and find myself – the self that I was when I was born, when I was closest to God, before I fell under the influence of all the “surface makers of identity” like the media, the pressures of society, parental expectations, my own insecurities which stemmed from not knowing who I was. What did I like before I was told what to like? What did I want to do before I was told what I should do? Who was I before I was told who I should want to be by the bombardment of ads, commercials, teen magazines, high school peers, books, all the external, surface influences I subjected myself to?

The passage goes on to read:

“…the nature of becoming is a constant filming over of where we begin, while the nature of being is a constant erosion of what is not essential.…When the film is worn through, we have moments of enlightenment, moments of wholeness…moments of clear living when inner meets outer, moments of full integrity of being, moments of complete Oneness. And whether the film is a veil of culture, of memory, of mental or religious training, of trauma or sophistication, the removal of that film and the restoration of that timeless spot of grace is the goal of all therapy and education….this is the only thing worth teaching: how to uncover that original center and how to live there once it is restored. We call the filming over a deadening of the heart, and the process of return, whether brought about through suffering or love, is how we unlearn our way back to God.”

I like that – “the nature of becoming.” Is that what I’m going through? The process of becoming…[sounds so dramatic (and I’m so not dramatic)]. I started off the year with my stated goal being to learn to do what I love and love what I do, but maybe in order to do that, I need to first find my “original center” and ground myself there. perhaps that's the key to being happy -- finding your way back to that spot and living from there.

You know how they say God made man in his image? Maybe that's why we're all so different -- because God is so complex -- we all reflect different aspects of him, and when we try too hard to be something we're not -- to be like someone else, or worse, everyone else -- we drift away from the part of us that is most like God, most like the person he want us to be.

I think I need to get this book…

Rantings...

In the shower as I was getting ready for the Partner Fair on Sunday morning, I started thinking about how fortunate/blessed I was feeling that I was discovering all this stuff about myself now, during the course of the Artist’s Way exercises and my BPS class, but how much cooler it would’ve been if I had started this self discovery at a younger age, perhaps even before college. Wouldn’t it be cool if there was some sort of a program for teens that guided them through all the angst we tend to go through as we’re struggling to define ourselves? [I think the idea was also partially influenced by reading Kerri Smith’s “Letting Yourself Soar” lecture.] We have all these courses in high school that teach about Math, History, Science, etc. but nothing really that helps us with the considerable work of defining or getting to know ourselves. At least when I was in school there wasn’t, if they DO teach this kind of thing nowadays, somebody let me know.

I started thinking about how maybe people are unhappy because they don’t know themselves well enough to know what will make them happy. The kind of stuff we learn in school doesn’t prepare us for dealing with the real world and all the emotional/psychological turmoil that goes into trying to figure out who you are and what kind of life you want to live. John Taylor Gatto wrote a book a while back, called The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation into the Problem of Modern Schooling where they talked about how today’s school system had originally been set up by the government and big business to mass produce workers with enough basic knowledge to work in their factories (a good summary can be found at http://www.thememoryhole.org/edu/school-mission.htm). These schools weren’t set up to give people the tools to figure out how to define themselves as human beings, how to figure out what would bring the most happiness/fulfillment into their lives, to determine what their rules/values were and how to stick by those rules/values once defined. But that’s the true stuff that we need to be prepared to deal with as we move into adulthood. For many of us, coming out of school, we aren’t armed with the tools or the wherewithal to answer these questions for ourselves. Instead, all we have are images of what the media tells us the answers are – buy this car and everyone will think you’re successful, wear this label and you’ll be cool, be this pant/dress size and everyone will admire you and you’ll be happy.

Instead of taking a good hard look at ourselves and determining our own value systems, we pick whoever seems to look happy and try to pattern ourselves after them. The problem is that we’re DIFFERENT. Every single person is different from everyone else. Instead of taking the time to figure out ourselves for ourselves, we let other people and other external forces like the media, influence or tell us what we should be. Then we let ourselves be judged by other people because we haven’t defined ourselves using our own definitions, so we don’t know if we are being ourselves correctly!

We have to flounder around picking out a major on the basis of who knows what, getting the grades, getting a “good job,” getting a stable career, meeting the perfect partner, spawning the perfect kids. But how do we know that this will make us happy? Humans are all so different from one another…how can there be one commonly conceived path to happiness/fulfillment? Why does everyone buy into that same dream?

Wouldn’t it have been cool if we had had classes to help out with things like defining our own commandments, assessing our own self images and determining for ourselves what is/is not attractive about our own bodies, listing out our values and beliefs and the reasoning behind those things so that when the time comes to defend or stand up for those things we know why we’re doing it to the deepest core of our beings. It would’ve been cool if we had been encouraged to explore our individuality as opposed to having been forced to conform to a common mold. Why do we all have to excel at Math AND Science AND Reading AND History AND whatever else to be considered good students? Why can’t we define our own subjects, determine our own curriculums based on our interests? Why can’t we pick our own teachers for that matter? People whom we admire and respect without having to be told we should. Sort of like the apprentice/master craftsman relationships of the Middle Ages, but more collaborative and less cheap, slave-labor-ish.

What would the world be like if we celebrated our differences instead of fighting over them and trying to get everyone to see things the way we see them? What is it about us that makes us want to convince everyone that we’re right? How can there be ONE single truth when we come from so many different perspectives and backgrounds and economic situations?

Why aren’t we encouraging/making mandatory the regular practice of self-reflection and contemplation? And giving ourselves the tools not just to question, but to FIND the answers we come up with?

It seems like such an enormous undertaking, but it’s necessary and worthwhile. All the cliché’s about journeys beginning with a single step, the Daffodil Principle, etc. are totally true. You can’t get anywhere new by just standing in the same place. You’ve got to take the first step and then have the courage to take the 1000 incremental next steps afterward, one step at a time. We've got nothing to lose except our fear/self-doubt and our true selves to gain.

Hitting the wall...and bouncing back

Got up this morning and, despite having stayed up late AGAIN tweaking the blog, was able to fight back the urge to go back to bed and instead ran up to grab my morning pages journal. Did all 3 pages despite all the excuses my sleepy brain came up with. Good to be back on that horse again. [Score: creative awakening (CA) – 1, self-sabotage (SS) – 0]

But afterwards, while feeding Ryland his cereal and playing swords with Logan, I noticed I felt a little deflated – the same kind of feeling I used to get after “Rec” [short for “Recollections in Christianity” – these weekend retreats I used to go to when I was in my late teens]. Everybody would come out of those weekends on a spiritual high, feeling close to God and optimistic and glow-y about the world, but always, after the singing in my head died down, and I was back in my own room, back to the normal routine, the high would go away and I would kind of hit a wall and get that “ok, what now?” kind of feeling.

Inevitably (not being proactive enough back then to go out and try to FIND the answer to that question – actually, I don’t think I even had the self-awareness at the time to recognize the question) the further and further away I got from the event, the further and further I would slip back into my old ways, until I was back to the same old self I was before.

That’s how I am in general, actually. I get all fired up and gung-ho about things when I’m starting them out, and then some unidentifiable thing happens, and I just suddenly lose interest – it happened with photography, make-up artistry and countless other artistic pursuits. While I was pregnant with Ryland, I completely lost interest in scrapbooking even! (but not in the purchasing of supplies, of course :P)

When I felt that same feeling this morning, I got a little panicky -- was worried that this might be signaling the end of my creative awakening (already?! what a short trip!). I tried to think of something creative I wanted to work on for the day and I couldn’t think of anything. I picked up one of the books I have that usually gets me all fired up, but it didn’t do anything for me this morning. I didn’t even want to start on this evening’s entry for the blog. Then I thought, “Awe, nuts, it’s happening again. I got myself all worked up over these self-discoveries and realizations over the past few weeks and now, it’s starting to fizzle…I’m going to end up my same old self, and fail my goal for the year, before I even reach the end of January!” [Score: CA – 1, SS – 1. Tied game]

Thankfully, I stopped myself mid-freak-out. Something made me recall the thing in The Artist’s Way about time-outs and the importance of “refilling the well” -- especially after a string of creative undertakings. Maybe that’s what this deflated feeling was? A sign that I’ve overdrawn my shallow well with all the energy and excitement I’ve thrown into my BPS assignment, the stuff I’m doing with my morning pages and The Artist’s Way at Work and my blog and the wireframes I’ve been working on for the Sales Kick-off this weekend. I took a deep breath and a good hard look at my kids and thought, “f*ck it, I’m just not going to think about it” and I played swords with my kids instead and chased them around the house. Then we spent the rest of the day at my cousin’s house in Sac, celebrating his fiancée’s completion of grad school. Spent time with my family, saw some friends I hadn’t seen in ages, had a beer, a glass of champagne, and 3 desserts later, and whaddya know? I found I made it through the funk J. Maybe time-outs really could be the answer? Even if they’re not, I’m going to pretend they are. For me. For now. [Final score: CA – 2, SA – 1. CA wins!! (this round) :P]

Hard to believe someone could go through all that mind-grappling in one day, isn’t it? But um yeah, it’s possible and um yeah, I do :P.

-- AGR

On a side note, had some trouble with this journal entry, since this is the first one after making my blog public. Felt self-conscious all throughout, like someone was reading RIGHT over my shoulder. Found myself using slightly more formalized language and had to go back several times to re-write. Just curious, does anyone else feel that way when they blog? Or are you all able to tune that out and still write with the same voice?

Synchronicity

Slept though the alarm this morning. Well, actually, I guess that’s not 100% true. I heard and I did wake up, just long enough to turn it off and go back to sleep :P. Stayed up way too late last night reading The Artist’s Way at Work – just couldn’t get myself to put it down. It was one of those times when I felt like God or the universe was messaging me directly through the words on the page. Everything just seemed to be hitting home and melding perfectly with the goal I decided on last night on the drive home. It’s really making me a believer in the whole synchronicity concept.

I started reading when we got back to our house with the boys while Logan watched TV. The Artist’s Way at Work is a book I actually purchased before Logan was born, while Glenn and I were both still working in the City. I bought it at a discount bookstore on a whim. When I tried to read it at that time, I quickly lost interest in the book after a few pages. I couldn’t seem to keep focused on the reading – the words weren’t striking any chords at that time. Then just last week, before I got the email to start the Heidi Swapp BPS class, I looked down at the bottom shelf of my bookcase, where the book had been collecting dust for close to 4 years, and just thought “hmm, maybe I’ll give it another go.”

For me, that’s the amazing thing about books and writing – it allows people to share their thoughts/feelings/emotions/experience with other people without having to be in the same room, country or even lifetime. That’s amazing. What’s even more amazing is that because people are so different and shaped by their own thoughts/feelings/emotions/experience that impact their perceptions and points of view, the same exact words read by two different people can be interpreted in completely different ways. And both interpretations can be right! How cool is that?!

Over the past year, I’ve daydreamed of writing some sort of self-help, advice book that would start off with an intro where I describe the synchronicity of books – how I’m not a professional psychologist or trained psychiatrist, but more of a human nature enthusiast – listening, watching, observing, analyzing, noting behaviors, communication patterns, expressions of emotion; how I am sharing what I’ve observed because “something” compelled me to capture my thoughts/experiences/observations on paper. Later on, someone else may be compelled, perhaps initially attracted by the color combination or visual appeal of the cover, to pick it up and read it. That compelling force is a manifestation of the synchronicity of the universe. The message contained in the pages of a book may not ring true for the person at that point in time, perhaps they’ll let it collect on a shelf somewhere for a bit, but when they or someone close to them comes to need the message, they’ll remember the dusty book is there and pick it up.

Wow, I’m really feeling the affects of not having done my morning pages today. The words and thoughts just aren’t flowing as they did with yesterday’s entry. I find myself hesitating, rechecking, and misspelling noticeably more. I must’ve edited the paragraph above about 50 times! The flow’s just not there. Tomorrow morning, it’s morning pages, first thing, for sure.

Having trouble capturing creative images for my Project 352 Photoblog as well. I’m just not capturing anything that’s visually interesting…I think I’ll have to Photoshop the hell out of something to get it worthwhile enough to post. I’ll start working on that now. Maybe I’ll have better luck with that than I’m having with this journal entry.

-- AGR