The Gift of H1N1. It Is Not Ebola, People.

I was going to write a piece about the hidden benefits of the hysteria around H1N1:

  • that people are freaked enough to do the right thing, which is stay home
  • that people are calling their doctors or health hotlines as soon as they notice symptoms to get advice
  • that people are doing  research about flu shots and H1N1 shots and making educated decisions for themselves
  • that people are paying attention to health alerts
  • that companies – like the one I work for – are distributing health alerts, scheduling flu shot clinics, encouraging good handwashing practices and handing out antiseptic handwash and making it easily available in common areas
  • that companies are telling workers to stay home if they are sick
  • that companies are hiring hazmat teams disinfect the offices of people who are sick with H1N1, making them feel like they have ebola, not the flu.

Okay, maybe not the last one. But true story.

I was thinking that there is an upside to the H1N1 hysteria: that our employers are being proactive and making sure that people know it is better to stay home.  That, somehow, companies were taking the health of workers seriously. That people know they have ‘permission’ to do the right thing. (I wish that non-salaried workers were getting paid to take time off because otherwise, even if they want to stay home, they often can’t because they need to pay the bills. I don’t know how to fix this problem.)

That we are taking our health seriously.

So, yay, H1N1 hysteria!

But then I was up all night, sandwiched in my bed between two snoring, hacking, wheezing, whining, feverish agents of infection.

My kids.

This is what you’re supposed to do when someone in your family has H1N1:

  • Keep your child away from others to stop the spread of infection.
  • At home, keep your child away from other people in the house.
  • DO NOT share eating utensils, drinking glasses, washcloths, towels, beds, pillows, etc. until everyone in the household has been free of symptoms for five days

This is what I did:
Brought both of my sobbing, hysterical, coughing, infected children into bed with me and held a sweaty baby in each arm all night.

As I laid awake between my two fire/virus-breathing baby dragons, imagining every wheeze and cough spraying infection into the air and into me – I had some great imaginary symptoms by 4 am – I connected with the ancestors.

This is a parent’s dilemma throughout the ages. The plague. Measles. Various contagious fevers. Deciding how to handle viruses and infections and diseases that are highly contagious through contact and, back in the day and still in lots of parts of this world today, have a very strong chance of killing you and your entire family.

What do you do?  Do you stay away, or do you hold your suffering, contagious baby?

I held my feverish, infectious babies.

And thanked the gods and goddesses of all religions and all places that  it is only the flu.

October 29, 2009 | filed under: Bodies, Family, Love, Money, Work

1 person has we need you too.

tyler perry. what you do to me.

tyler perry.

love his backstory: broke, homeless, an escapee from horrific childhood abuse, he chose to write. He wrote. He wrote eleven plays and toured them around the country. He found an audience, and a passionate audience, and he leveraged the loyalty of that audience to get a movie deal. His first movie, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, cost $5.5 million dollars to make and grossed $50.6 million in box office receipts. Since that movie, Tyler Perry made eight more (Madea’s Family Reunion, Daddy’s Little Girls, Why Did I Get Married?, Meet the Browns, The Family that Preys, Madea Goes to Jail, and I Can Do Bad All By Myself) and grossed nearly $400 million dollars.

LOVE that.

love that he started in the the-ah-tah darling. How arty. You know I love The Artists.

love that he built an audience and leveraged their passion for his work into movie-making for the masses. I see analogies there. Ahem. Writing. Social media. Platforms. Influence. Audience. Passion. That’s all I’m a-saying.

love his fucking fearlessness. Tyler Perry recently wrote a wrenching email to his fans:

I’m tired of holding this in. I don’t know what to do with it anymore, so, I’ve decided to give some of it away…

 

Memories at 40: Not long ago, I was asked to speak at an engagement. I walked in and I was told that they had assigned a person to take care of me while I was there. She walked up to me, all of 5’2″ of her, and asked if I needed anything. I looked at her and started to sweat. It took me back thirty-something years to her apartment. I couldn’t have been more than 10 years old when I went over to play with her son and Matchbox cars.

 

She opened the door in skimpy lingerie. There was a man sitting on the couch, smoking. She told me that her son was in the bedroom. I was there playing with him about 20 minutes when I heard the man arguing with her. He said he was leaving and slammed the door. She came into the bedroom and told me that I had to go home. She told her son to take a bath and she locked him in the bathroom. I was at the front door trying to get out, when she came in and laid on the sofa and asked me if I wanted the key. I told her I had to go home as it was getting dark. She put the key inside of herself and told me to come get it, pulling me on top of her.

 

Memories at 40: “What the f*#K are you reading books for?! That’s bull*#*T!”

 

“You F*#*ing jackass! You got book sense but you ain’t got no mothaf*#*en common sense! You ain’t sh*t and ain’t never gonna be sh*t!” I heard this every day of my childhood. As my father would beat and belittle me, he played all kinds of mind games with me. He knew I loved cookies as a kid, most kids do. So he would buy them and put them on top of the fridge and when I would eat them he would beat me mercilessly.

 

My mother was out one night, as she loved to play bingo, and my father came home…mad at the world. He was drunk, as he was most of the time. He got the vacuum cleaner extension cord and trapped me in a room and beat me until the skin was coming off my back. To this day, I don’t know what would make a person do something like that to a child. But thank God that in my mind, I left. I didn’t feel it anymore, just like in PRECIOUS. How this girl would leave in her mind. I learned to use my gift, as it was my imagination that let me escape. After he was done with his rant he passed out. Since my aunt lived two doors down, I ran to her. She saw me and was horrified. She loaded her 357 and went to kill him. Holding a gun to his head, her husband came and stopped her.

 

Memories at 40: I got a call not long ago from a friend. He told me that a man that I knew from church when I was a kid had died and he didn’t have any insurance. His family was trying to reach out to me to see if I would pay for his funeral. I quickly said no, but I wish I would have said yes.

There is something so powerful to me in burying the man that molested me.

I wish I would have dug the grave myself.

 

Memories at 40: I was about 8 or 9 years old. I had a crush on a little girl across the street. She would come over to my house and we’d play. She was about 12 or 13. One day she stopped coming and when I asked her why, she told me that my father was touching her. I didn’t believe her, so I talked her into staying one night. We were both asleep — she was in one bed and I was in another. I opened my eyes to see my father trying to touch her and her pushing him away. I moved in my bed trying to make him think I was waking up. He looked over at me and left out of the room. Not long after that, he beat me mercilessly for something again. Another mind game set up, so I told my mother what he had done. The blood drained from her face. We left that day. We were at my Aunt’s house and he came there about 1am. Not long after that we were back at home. Nothing would compare to the random, drunken, violent beatings I would receive from then until I was 19.

 

Memories at 40: We would spend the summers in the country, with my father’s adoptive mother. As a kid I was always sick. I had asthma and he hated it. He hated that I wasn’t strong and viral like him. He hated that I couldn’t be in the sawdust, pollen and the raw lumber like him. He hated that I liked to read and write and draw. He hated that me and my middle sister were darker-skinned than him. He didn’t think he could make a dark baby. He just hated everything about me I guess. Anyway, I had to go to the doctor every Tuesday to get shots to control my allergies. When his mother found out she said, “Ain’t nothing wrong with that damn boy…he just got germs on him. Stop wasting all that money.” When my mother left to visit some friends I heard what sounded like water running in a tub but it was sporadic. She came and got me out of the living room leaving my Matchbox cars on the floor. She said she was going to kill these germs on me once and for all. She gave me a bath in ammonia.

 

Grateful at 40: I was asked recently how I made it through all of this, (half has not even been told) and my answer to that is…I know for a fact that there is a GOD. When my father would say or do those things to me, I would hear this voice inside of me say, “That’s not true” or, “Don’t believe that” or, “You’re going to make it through this”. I didn’t know at the time what “it” was, but today I surely have no doubt that “it” was GOD. That voice always gave me comfort. It allowed me to hold on. It kept me from being strung out on drugs, from dying when I wanted to commit suicide. It kept me from being a gang banger or drug dealer. Worse than all of those things put together, it kept me from being him. It brought angels to comfort me after every foul, harsh word or every welt on my legs or back. GOD, only GOD.

so. Tyler Perry. He’s brave. He’s real. He tells it. He wrote his way out of poverty and pain. What’s not to love?

errr…the movies? I’ve only seen two. I laughed awkwardly and I wished that I didn’t and wished for more of a, well, craft and so no, I don’t love them. They kinda make me wonder when Martin Lawrence is gonna show up.

they make me itchy. they make me wonder why big ostensibly ‘black’ films often feature black men in dresses. Dave Chapelle – and by no means am I suggesting that he’s a thought leader – wonders about this too. He thinks it is a conspiracy by the white Hollywood establishment to publicly disempower and humiliate successful black actors. Or at least I think that’s what he thinks. He was a bit incoherent and twitchy when I saw this on Oprah so I may be filling in the blanks.

I don’t have a problem with incoherent and twitchy. I actually appreciate it. It leaves lots of space for interpretation.

I don’t have a problem with drag, either. But it does make me wonder why we apparently need to see rich, powerful black men in dresses.

this in turn makes me pause to note that if putting a man in a dress is a way to humiliate him, then my god it must be humiliating to be an actual woman. [Note: I am a woman.]

so then I worry that – despite the fact that Tyler Perry identifies with strong black women – maybe his films mock women. Then I wonder what are his movies really saying about women. or gender. or sexual orientation. or or or.

and I wonder ’bout all the bitch-slapping of Tyler Perry. I worry about my casual use of the term bitch-slapping because it is painfully accurate here which makes it all the more violent and disconcerting. I mean, think about what ‘bitch-slapping’ means and the context from whence it springs. Pimps controlling ‘their’ bitches. The ubiquitious naming – by everyone, it seems – of black women as bitches. Again, the allusion to feminization and feminized abuse makes it all the more humiliating to inflict on a man. I just did it now.

I worry when people start tearing down a rich, famous powerful black man. I wonder what that’s all about. (Actually, I don’t wonder what that’s all about.) I’m not even cool with dissing Kanye for being a jackass unless you’re Obama because otherwise it degenerates into the N word PDQ. I even worry about Michael Vick. Lots of times people are just waiting for a reason to bitch out a successful black man. And there’s the word bitch again.

I worry that to diminish a black man we put him in a dress.

I worry that to be made or compared to a woman is to be diminished.

I worry that this kind of man/woman discussion reinforces notions of gender and sexuality that are problematic and constraining and oppressive and the mofo problem in the first place.

I worry that I’m only worrying about gender ‘cuz I’m a white woman and that’s my thing. We’re hundreds of words into this essay and I haven’t even mentioned the fact that Spike Lee draws a direct line from minstrel shows to Tyler Perry’s movies that engage in and perpetuate stereotypes of “coonery and buffoonery“.

then I worry that I’m not dealing with the black thing because the only form of oppression I understand is gender and then I wonder, how the fuck am I going to champion my black, biracial babies if I don’t make sense of black means and what black is constructed to mean and the histories of the images I consume?

so a twitter debate that morphed into a most excellent rant by Damian J. Denson (@HypnotiqOne) rocked my world. It is not the only answer, but it is good.

Gotta luv|Hate w Perry but this T[hanks]giving his work will undoubtedly B screened by my fam. They will laugh & cry. I cant complain.

In defense of Tyler Perry (Yes, in defense): When I go home for T-giving, I will undoubtedly be a part of screenings of your recent work. In spite of the Black elite proposing I practically pause each and every DVD and proselytize about abhorrent imagery and coonery, I won’t.

Critiques of Perry & his work happen abt twice a month these days n my feed. These new Blacks have really “gotten over.” And they bother me. Perry & I have a certain Love|Hate, but I’ve never seen my mother, grandmother, & aunts laugh so hard by a bootleg recording of a stageplay. Tears. Choking. Laughing. Screaming. Giggles. Tears. Smiles. All from what “they” now say we should be ashamed by. I’m not. I won’t be.

Madea could have been based on many an Aunt (or Uncle for that matter). And I won’t disown the family that I see reflected in Perry’s work.

Should more multifaceted stories be told? For sure (Perry even agrees, ie. Precious). So to that I say, make them.

But I find it very offensive (and elitist) to tell other Black people where to find humor or good storytelling of THEIR liking. So keep making your movies, Mr. Perry.


hmmm mmm. Assent. Ascent. Yes. Thank goodness.

and thank goodness for everyone stepping up to start and have this conversation. Thanks to Tyler Perry. To his audience. To Spike Lee, the intellectuals and elitists and their critics, too. To Damian J. Denson. Well said.

and Precious. Can’t wait to see it. So glad Tyler Perry is famous and makes wacks of cash and can throw it behind a movie like this.

love that he did.

______________________________________________________________
you can find Damian J. Denson on twitter as @HypnotiqOne. I wish I wrote his bio:

Damian J. Denson. Professional Proselytizer. Freelance Writer. Cultural Critic. Doctoral Candidate. Mama’s Boy. Scene Stealer. Your Lucky Charm.

 

October 28, 2009 | filed under: Meaning, Money, People, Power, Sex, Sex and the Suburbs, Work

no people have we need you too.

I’m Going to Be a Hundredaire!

The PORN T-Shirt. Here’s The Deal.

Jenny from workinonaramp has written this post about the PORN t-shirt – the backstory and where you can buy it, please go buy it – so I guess we really are in business.

We’re deliberating between being millionaires or artists. Hugh McLeod gets us. (Conceptually. He’s never actually heard of us. If he did, Jenny would lose her mind. Kinda like if Malcolm Gladwell stepped out of my fantasies into the flesh and said, hey! let’s take our laptops to the coffee shop and hang out. In New York. And kiss.) Jenny’s leaning to the artist/millionaire compromise.

I would be happy to be a hundredaire. I mean, do you see any forms of converting readers to buyers on this blog? (Other than the PORN shirt which was totally imaginary until lots of you wanted to buy it?) Internet mogul I am not. Yet.

The PORN T-Shirt. It Is Urgent. We Need You. What’s In It For You.

So please support my art (the writing) and my very achievable goal of being a hundredaire and buy yourself a super sexy PORN t-shirt. We’re only selling it for a week. That’s our business model. A new t-shirt each week. So the PORN t-shirt is only for sale for another five days. Tick tick tick. Please buy it.

(In internet marketing language, that’s called creating a sense of urgency. Aren’t we crafty? Also, on the store we have, we can only have one item at a time. So we’ll change the item weekly so you won’t get bored.)

The shirt will make you look hot, I promise. I mean, how can you not? The t-shirt says PORN and the logo is so awesome.

I didn’t design it, of course. My friend Heather’s husband Tyler did but he doesn’t want me to link to his graphic design site or anything because that’s just how selfless and altruistic he is.

If you want to vote with your voice for what should be on our next shirt, check out Jenny’s gallery of imaginary t-shirt sayings and tell us by comment or email (kelly at kellydiels dot com).

Or, volunteer a saying. We reward the chosen with a free shirt. We also reward graphic designers who make the words look pretty with a free t-shirt.

The Call To Action. Please Buy the PORN T-Shirt.

So far we have given away more t-shirts than we have sold. Internet moguldom may seriously elude me. So please go buy a shirt. (In copywriting language, that’s a CALL TO ACTION. This post is absolutely littered with them.)

And please talk to us! Tell me in the comments what you want to see on next week’s shirt or email me at kelly at kellydiels dot com.

And thanks for laughing with us, not at us.

| filed under: Money, Work

no people have we need you too.

gratitude, the not-there-yet, and windy autumn nights.

grateful.

for my friend Ricardo Scipio, a finder of lost children, who is an artist and his art is his life and just by who he is reminds me to stay wild. stay free.

to have a secret mentor (it is a secret in that she doesn’t know she’s my mentor) who told me: you’re hot shit and The Real Deal and should be getting your ass published as widely as possible

to have a champion who tells me and everyone else that I’m a lunatic with bulldozer charisma and he’ll read anything I write

to have a sort-of stranger tell me that I’ve got it and should stick with it

to have a friend who tells me she’s proud of me, daily

to have a friend who also tells me he’s proud of me but that I should get over myself and can he touch my breasts, almost daily

to read things like this and this and this

for The Bloggess

for windy autumn nights that feel like possibility and to finally be able to feel the possibilities. to feel the wind through the holes in my soul. for fiery gorgeous fall. for real

to have my heart heard. by you.

thank you.

 

October 27, 2009 | filed under: Love, Meaning, People, Work

6 people have we need you too.

The Imaginary PORN Shirt is Now Real, and You Can Buy It.

My last blog post, the very classy piece where I said Jenny and I were going to launch a t-shirt company – based on my conversation with my friend Heather – generated many, many emails saying “I would totally buy that shirt!”.

So here it is. The the imaginary PORN shirt design is no longer imaginary. It is real, and you can buy it here. Please do.

Mom, I am so sorry.

(much, much love to Heather’s husband Tyler Williamson for the design.)

( And to Heather for making him to do it.)

October 26, 2009 | filed under: Money, Sex

8 people have we need you too.

My Love for My Friend Has No Bounds. It Is Almost Pornographic, and I’m Pretty Sure There Is a Business Opportunity in There, Somewhere.

My love for my friend knows no bounds and truly we are soul sisters from a different mother. This conversation is proof.

Heather: What did you get your boyfriend for his birthday?

Kelly: I wrote a story about him and then plugged it into Wordle. This scrambles all the words and makes the repeated ones bigger or in different colours. Someone did that with Obama’s inaugration speech and you’ll see word clouds on lots of blogs. It is kind of like a snapshot of the passions and themes of your life. Then I printed out it out and took it to a t-shirt shop and had them put it on a t-shirt. So that’s what I gave him. A word cloud t-shirt, and sexual favours.

Heather: Wow that’s good. I love that.

Kelly: I know. I’m so fucking awesome. But he says he can’t wear the shirt.

Heather: Why not?

Kelly: Because it has the word ‘porn’ on it and his son will read it and ask what porn means.

Heather: See, this is what happens when you teach kids to read.

Kelly: I know! But it didn’t even occur to me that this would be a problem. The word is less than a cm high. Also it didn’t occur to me that the word ‘porn’ was offensive. I would totally wear a t-shirt with the word PORN emblazoned 5 inches high across my tremendous cleavage. I would wear it daily.

Heather: Me too! I would wear it too! I would wear it to the playground with my kids.

Kelly: I would wear it to work.

Heather: I would wear it to my bible kiddie play group on Thursday mornings.

Kelly: I would wear it to CHURCH.

Heather: You don’t go to church.

Kelly: Heathen.

Heather: Heather. My name is Heather.

Moral of the story: we’re starting an inappropriate t-shirt company, possibly with Jenny from workinonaramp. ‘Course Jenny doesn’t know about this. And neither does Heather. It is a secret business plan. I have to keep these things secret because last time Heather and I made a business plan, her husband vetoed it. We were going to teach classes and put together a how-to video series on a particular sex act but apparently that is inappropriate.
______________________________

Note1: Just so we’re all clear where I stand on privacy (don’t believe in it) I DID ask my friend Heather if I could write about her and if so should I use a nom de plume for her.

Heather: “Of course you can blog about me! You don’t even have to ask! You can use my full name! Just don’t write about my lazy eye!”

Kelly: “Can I link back to the original post called Does My Ass Look Fat in This Blog? where I said you had a lazy eye?”

Heather: “No!”

So I didn’t link back to that post. That’s what a great friend I am.

Note 2: Heather has had two surgeries for her pathologically lazy eye and now you hardly notice when she’s looking at you and beside you at the same time. Fortunately she’s hot and has great cleavage so it doesn’t even matter. God is fair, after all. Heather learned that in Catholic school and I learned that at my imaginary church.

————————

Update: My imaginary PORN shirt is now a reality and you can buy it. Seriously. Please do.

October 25, 2009 | filed under: Love, Money, Sex, Work

19 people have we need you too.

How NOT To Interview Someone


Banana Interview, possibly by Banksy, Cans Festival London. Photo by Jo Barton.

Last night I interviewed Danielle LaPorte for a guest post I’m writing for Write To Done. A few minutes in, I thought:

wow. I am really NOT doing this right, or well.

I’m awkward. I’m a bombshell in text but shell-shocked in person, and my darlings, I bombed this interview. I was abrupt and awkward and interrupt-y. The only thing that saved it was my subject.

Danielle LaPorte gives good quote.

Two Different Kinds Of Un-journalism

Earlier in the week, I interviewed Josh Hanagarne for the same forthcoming piece. My interview with Josh went sideways, too, but not in the same way.

That interview with got wayward and unruly and sprawled across the couch like a long-legged, lazy teenager. And then it emptied my fridge and drank all the milk and after that I’m pretty sure I agreed to co-write a useless e-book or a manifesto or learn German or read Proust or have a baby or something that’s going to take a mofo lot of time.

(Note to Janette Hanagarne: There will be no baby. I don’t even like your husband like that. Swear.)

Still, I was in this interview rather than on top of it so maybe it was a win. I got good, useable, quotable stuff AND a new project. That is good. My journalistic focus, professionalism, and objectivity: not so good.

This is okay with me because objectivity is a myth at best and at worst just weak. It is pretentious – who can write without a point of view?? who would want to read that??? – and results in split the difference journalism.

Split the Difference Journalism

Arianna Huffington says that the essence of vivid journalism lies in “getting away from the notion that truth is found by splitting the difference between the two sides, that there is always truth to both sides.”

In other words: get a point (of view). Split the difference journalism is staid.

Split the difference journalism is tepid and disingenuous. It requires you to camoflage your point of view in service of our golden calfs, Critical Thinking and Objectivity. It’s crap. It’s officious. I know because I wrote some officious crap when I was trying to be objective. My review of Lessons from the Fatosphere, for example, is bullshit. Utter bullshit. “Pretty good book”, my ass.

Truth is, I loved the book. I love Marianne Kirby and Kate Harding. How could I be objective? Why should I? How is it more honest to find fault just to find fault? How is that kind of review more honest or balanced than when you make no secret of your passion or your perspective?

(Dear Readers: You MUST read Lesson from the Fat-o-Sphere. Go now and buy it.)

Observation 1. Trying to be objective and A Journalist makes me lie. I doubt this is unique to me.

Observation 2. Split the difference journalism: blech.

Observation 3. I was a mess when I interviewed both Josh and Danielle, but in two completely different ways. What gives?

Interviews. Journalism. What the Eff is My Problem?

When I interviewed Danielle, I had questions; I knew the story; I had a script; I had my journalism hat on. What could be the problem?

In short: all of the above.

I was so focussed on getting through the interview, and getting the questions answered, that I didn’t stay in the interview. I started it like it was already half-way finished. I tried to sell the house while neglecting to the basic housekeeping like introducing the piece, it’s working title, and where and when it will appear. That’s just bad manners.

What else did I do wrong? What would I do, differently and better, next time?

Oh, my darlings, I’m so glad you asked. I now have a list. It is not short but I’ll give you the short, bleedingly urgent version. I embrace public humiliation in order to save you from the same fate. How very JC of me.

How To Interview Someone Better than I Did. The List.

  1. When you’re organizing the interview, be clear about how much time you need and how much time can be offered. That way you can plan an appropriate number of questions and won’t need to rush through. Allow time to digress a little.
  2. Introduce yourself and the purpose of the interview. Give a little background. State the name of piece.
  3. Explain how you’re capturing the interview: recording? notes? photographic memory? Wishbone?
  4. Chat. Enjoy. Connect.
  5. Don’t be a slave to the script. Your interview questions are just the start. They’re there when you need them. But a really great, revealing, interesting interview results from the connection, the wandering, the digression. Follow the breadcrumbs. Eat them.
  6. Have faith that you’ll get something you can use. Don’t be so outcome oriented that you are half out of the interview before it gets going. In other activities it is called foreplay.
  7. Chat. Enjoy. Connect. Digress.
  8. Be in the interview (and the universe!), not outside of it or worse, on top of it.
  9. Fuck professional, boring, faux-objective journalism. What’s your objective in conducting the interview? To get a story so you can tell a story. Stories are based on an experience. You want your interviewee to give it up, get naked and give you great quote, so you need to go there too. Do it. Mmmmm.
The Real Story. That’s What Interviews Are About.
Once upon a time, I had a long and steamy online flirtation with a hot man. When we finally met, I couldn’t get it together. I really liked him so I couldn’t say a damn thing. It was too high-stakes. I wanted a specific outcome too intensely to relax. I got frustrated – with myself – and blurted out the great blurt of all blurts:

I wish we could just fuck and get it over with so I wouldn’t be so tongue-tied and shy.

I know. I’m classy. I understand that some people frown on sex as an icebreaker. I absolutely accept the validity of that position. Really, I do. Because the truth is, real – not sex – is the ice breaker. Real is what you need to get, to get connected.

Interviews are much the same except that I’m not looking for great sex (swear!), I’m looking for a great story.

Five $&*#ing Lessons I Learned from Being a Bad Interviewer
  1. Fuck journalism.
  2. Fuck objectivity. It is a lie, anyway.
  3. Fuck my pretensions (please).
  4. Be human. Give some love. Show up. Keep it up.
  5. Mistakes are surprisingly nutritious.

So, as a direct result of my how-not-to-interview debacles, that’s the how-to-interview list. Now, to turn back time.

Except, of course, I don’t really want to turn back time. I prefer to eat my mistakes whole which is just good advice. I did it today.

Today, I was on the other side of the interview. I was the subject. I was trying to land a new writing gig and the interviewer asked me: how are you at interviewing people?

I was honest. I got real. I said:

You know what? I cocked it up last night. Here’s why. Here’s what I learned. Here’s what I’m gonna do better next time…

(Note: I realize that some people think that saying ‘cocked up’ in an interview is inappropriate. I totally accept the validity of that position. Really, I do.)

The gig: I got it.
The guy: he loved me long time.

Real. It works. And that’s how you interview someone.

__________________________

My interview with Danielle was for an accidentally epic how-to-get-a-book deal series with from advice from published authors to a wannabe (that’s me). Here’s a list of all the pieces in that monster series.

The how-to-get-a-book-deal piece, in full:

How to Get a Book Deal. An Evolutionary, Biblical Approach. (This Is Why I am a Writer And Not a Scientist.)

The How To Get A Book Deal Interviews, with:

Chris Guillebeau (Art of Non-Conformity): How To Get A Book Deal. Thirteen Questions with Chris Guillebeau.

Erin Doland (Unclutterer): How To Get A Book Deal. Thirteen Questions with Erin Doland (of UnClutterer and Author of UnClutter Your Life in One Week)

Leo Babauta (Zen Habits): How To Get A Book Deal: 13 Questions with Zen Habit’s Leo Babauta

* I also did phone-interviews with Josh Hanagarne and Gretchen Rubin but get very, very sad when I think about doing more transcription

**My phone interview with Gretchen Rubin – in which she gave me some personal advice that really landed with me – inspired me to be a little nicer, online. Gretchen Rubin is my Jiminy Cricket.

Guest Posts at Write To Done (these triggered this whole series):

Guest Post at Write to Done: How to Get a Book Deal: Part 1 – Printasauraus Rex Vs. The Blog: Publishing 2.0

Get Thee A Blog, and A Big One: Guest Post At Write to Done

October 22, 2009 | filed under: How To Get a Book Deal, Money, People, Work

7 people have we need you too.

Balance. Hah. I Heart Unbalance, and Bounce.


Photo: I (heart) balancing rocks by James Jordan.

Work life balance: what a waste of time.

Googling “work-life balance” is like getting dropped from the sky, hard, probably by aliens, into the middle of an August cornfield: the stalks (and the stakes) are so high and plentiful that you can lift your eyes to the sky and see the heavens – the end of it all, sweet haysoos – but not much else.

(Did you know that there are “corn-maze consultants”? Neither did I until I googled directions to my local corn-maze at which point I discovered, to my surprised and delighted horror, that there is an entire corn-maze INDUSTRY. There is art, too, but only pilots and Canadian geese can appreciate the hidden wonder of it.)

I digress. I’m glad that corn-maze consultants can invent jobs around their passion for vegetables. That’s the only explanation for this phenomena, really. I’m convinced that some dude got carried away with the ‘do what you love’ philosophy and voila! a new niche.

I’m also willing to bet that corn-maze consultants are intensely, overwhelmingly busy 2-3 months of the year and just basically make peace with the fact that their lives have gone tilt-a-whirl. They don’t chase work-life balance when it is time to rock out the cornfield.

(I do believe I’m going to have to interview a corn-maze consultant to find out if it is as glam as all that. Maybe it is rock-star. Maybe there are secret drug lairs and groupie grottos and THAT is what you’re trying to find when you pay your $5 and wander around for two hours, getting your shoes dirty and thinking: I just paid $5 to wander around in some guy’s field. Effing hell. What a racket.)

The other criminal racket that perturbs me is the work-life balance syndicate. It has franchises everywhere and it is selling you (me) turn-key, uninspired solutions:

1. Outsource your life. Increases your expenses to pay for services so you can have time.
2. Simplify your life. Reduce your expenses so you don’t have to work as much and can have time.

The objectives are the same the but the approaches are vastly different. And neither approach works for me.

There’s a hidden assumption in both solutions: that you have enough disposable income that you can make sacrifices and pay to gain time; or that you have enough disposable income to spend frivolously and therefore those expenses can be pruned judiciously in the service of free time.

Either way, both formulations pivot on the assumption of enough, or more than enough. I suspect the eternal work-life crisis comes from the hidden truth that many don’t have enough (any!) disposable income to outsource anything, and, given that information, you’d be safe in assuming that there are few, if any, expenses that can be ‘simplified’.

I also suspect the quest for balance displays a truly sad truth: that we’re doing too much of what we don’t like, and isn’t rewarding, and not enough of the cosmically important stuff. So the seeking of work-life balance is really about taming the job and the bastards that wear you down. ‘Cuz when you love it, really love it, yes you need rest, but even the work doesn’t feel like work. Because it is play, mostly.

I’m not there yet. I know I’m not alone.

So, what to do when you’re workin’ 9-5 (I am all about 70s women, this week!), raising semi-humans (that’s what they feel like, this week!) and trying to break out and charge after your vision? (And let’s not bitch that we’re busy: Kelly Diels, I’m a-talking to you.)

Balance? How weak.

Let’s think about balance. Think about teeter totters. Equilibrium is hard to come by, and when it does, you just want to start bouncing up and down again. I know this for a fact. I have kids. The thrill is in the wobble.

(Did you know that teeter totters are an endangered species in North American playgrounds? No word of a lie.)

Think about tightwires. Think about raised bars. Sobriety tests and white lines. Skating and weak ankles. Weak ankles, period.

When I set up a situation where it is imperative that I don’t wobble or fall, I’m in trouble. It helps not to mull on it (bad blog post! bad!) and just keep going. Hold on. Move. Holding on is a form of movement but it is most definitely not balance. Hold. Run. Charge. Close your eyes. Leap. Leap-frog. Keep it hoppin’.

I’m lucky. I’m in love, with my life, my kids, my work, my dream and my extras. They’re all wearing me out just as fast as they fuel me. It is a bizarre high-speed stasis.

Define it all as life and you’re good. Overscheduled, overwrought and overwhelmed, yes, but at least then you’re not guilty about your lack of balance. Feeling conflicted about being conflicted and guilty about feeling guilty is a lot of work.

Guilt, in general, is a waste of time and energy. It is a smokescreen for a real emotion. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find something real, like anger. Sadness. Aspiration. Those are worthwhile. They’re fuel for something bigger and better.

In the end, the quest for balance is bogus. Love your burdens. Love them hard. And when your loves knock you down or your weak ankles trip you up, stop worrying about balancing – ‘cuz you’re not – and bounce.

October 21, 2009 | filed under: Family, Meaning, Purpose, Work

5 people have we need you too.

Inspiration in Strange Places

Never underestimate the power of a sitcom theme song.

October 20, 2009 | filed under: Meaning, People, Purpose

10 people have we need you too.

Yourself and How Others See You. Reflections and Beauty Pageant Replies. A Design So Vast.

Sometimes, when the question is “this, or that’, the answer is “Door Number 3″.
photo: Three Threes by Sam Javanrough (wvs on flickr). You can find more
of Sam’s work at Daily Dose of Imagery.

I

Me: I’m trying to find my people.
Friend: I would have thought that you’re trying to find yourself.
Me: I’m not trying to find myself. That’s a battle I surrendered, long ago.

I lied. I only raised the white flag recently, after being provoked by Kate Harding’s excellent essay/polemic/battlecry, The Fantasy of Being Thin. Charge!

The reality is, I will never be the kind of person who thinks roughing it in Tibet sounds like a hoot; give me a decent hotel in London any day. I will probably never learn to waterski well, or snow ski at all, or do a back handspring. I can be outgoing and charismatic in small doses, but I will always then need time to recharge my batteries with the dogs and a good book; I’ll never be someone with a chock-full social calendar, because I would find that unbearably exhausting. (And no matter how well I’ve learned to fake it — and thus how much this surprises some people who know me — new social situations will most likely always intimidate the crap out of me.) I might learn to speak one foreign language fluently over the course of my life, but probably not five. I will never publish a novel until I finish writing one. I will always have to be aware of my natural tendency toward depression and might always have to medicate it. Smart money says I am never going to chuck city life to buy an alpaca farm or start a new career as a river guide. And my chances of marrying George Clooney are very, very slim.

None of that is because I’m fat. It’s because I’m me.

Exactly. So I know who I am. I don’t always know who I will be but I’m well acquainted with the basic context.

Still, I know all of this from the inside out. Naturally I’m curious about the view from outside.

II

Lindsey at A Design So Vast often plucks my melancholy, needy cords. We share a dilemma: we worry about what other people think.

We worry about worrying about what other people think.

We’re conflicted. We’re conflicted about being conflicted.

We want to be self-sufficient machines who don’t require praise or reflections from other robots. We should be so grounded that it should be irrelevant. We shouldn’t be so motivated by the perceptions of others or by external validation. We ought to be healthily individuated, dammit.

We ought..we should..we shouldn’t…

Bah.Talk like that is a beauty pageant reply.

III

I slip into beauty pageant replies when I talk about men or dating or the man I’m dating.

When I speak about these things, I’m conscious of the fact that my words and actions are being measured against discourses of The Healthy Independent Individual, The Woman Who Doesn’t Let a Man Define Her, and How To Date Without Appearing Needy or Heaven Forbid Desperate or Even Worse Trampy.

I know that if I say I need a man, that I’m going to hear “you want a man, you don’ t need a man.” Because that’s not healthy. That’s not independent.

When I say that I need praise, I’m going to hear “isn’t that a bit co-dependent?”I’m not even going to go into The Rules. I don’t do The Rules. I do men.

So I often steer my stories into beauty pageant replies to circumvent judgement. I construct the emotionally, relationally healthy narrative.

Or I just don’t say anything at all, because I know that tales of my dating adventures might require a call to the Healthy Relationship Police.

Or I blog it. FTW.

IV

I think it is normal and universal, and yegads, healthy to need to see yourself in the eyes of others. To need to hear it. To require feedback.

It just is, and this is why: it is damn near impossible to get perspective on yourself because you see yourself from the inside out.

We seek perspective. That’s why we have mirrors. Some of them hang on walls. Others are found in the eyes of our loved ones and the impartial gazes of outsiders.

V

(I read recently that Chris Guillebeau is so shy that he doesn’t even answer his phone. Danielle LaPorte, who can rock the mic, writes about feeling awkward at parties and holding court in the kitchen with an audience of one…to these stories, I can relate.)

I used to say that I was shy. Nobody believes me. Maybe I’m not really shy. Maybe I’m just awkward and groups are not my medium.

So I struggle. It is an effort. It is shocking to me when that effort doesn’t show. I’m not alone.

VI

“There is no such thing as a complete lack of order, only a design so vast it appears unrepetitive up close.” – Louise Erdrich, The Bingo Palace

Think about the difference between these views: Google Earth and Google Street. Then think about the view of the world and the street from inside the house. This is vantage. Perspective. It is a shifty, slippery character.

No one view is more real than the other, no more “truthy” than the other. I see the world from inside the apartment – my own eyes, my own experience, me – more often than any other. That is why external perceptions are so damn interesting. And surprising. And needed.

Objectivity is in short supply when you’re the subject. That’s what subjectivity means. It is personal, partial, limited, incomplete.There is a difference between seeking to find yourself in the gaze of others and seeking reflections of yourself in both inanimate and flesh mirrors.

VII

Maybe the reason we tell ourselves that it is a problem to worry how others perceive us is because we’re trying to reduce an internal conflict.

We think there is a conflict between how a healthily differentiated adult functions (no need for validation, approval, reflections) and how we experience ourselves (embedded in relationships. needy. curious). So we call it cognitive dissonance. We strive to deduce that disharmony. Oil the friction.

But there is no conflict. This is the truth, according to me. There is nothing to reconcile. Shift.

VIII

Still, this conflict is an essential, eternal existential dilemna in western thought: the duality of mind and body. Inside vs outside. Society vs self. It is grand, Cartesian, effing Jude The Obscure, history of thought and philosophy stuff. I don’t even want to go there. Seven years of university extinguished my fire for this subject. It is a thought cul-de-sac.

There are other ways.

You can find a solution in adding to, or fractioning, or fracturing these dyads. Worship the gods of multiplicity. There is no objectivity, no self, no other, and no truth, so stop seeking it. Wait for Godot. Find Foucault. Tear it up.

Or you can erase the friction and find unity. Define it all as one. There is no distinction between mind and body, self and other. It is all one.

Or you can embrace the poles and oscillate between them. Develop, like justice, a theory of scales. It is both/and. Balance. Forgive yourself. Accept and embrace yourself and all your eternal, contradictory, heat-seeking needs for self-knowledge and the the reflections of others.

Marvel at it. Marvel at the old lady on the bus who speaks frankly and tells you look more put together than you feel. Marvel at the polish that shines all the shinier because you’re constantly working away at it.

IX

Think about oiled wood furniture.
Think about diamonds.
Realize that it is often unremarked effort that produces shine.
You’re privy to the effort so it is not a character deficiency to seek others to note the glow.

October 17, 2009 | filed under: Meaning, Purpose

10 people have we need you too.

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