God, Sex, and Dazzling Sentences

“I’m fucking for God.”

I didn’t say it. Martin Luther King Jr did.

(IF possibly imaginary CIA wiretaps-and-transcripts and biographers Taylor Branch, Marshall Frady and “friend” Ralph Abernathy are to be believed.)

I read that line twenty-two years ago and never forgot it.

I was fifteen. I’d just seen MLK’s “I have a dream” speech. Water was in my eyes and fire was in my loins. I was moved by his passion. I wanted more of him. I wanted him.

Alas, he was dead.

And so the biography aisle at the local library would have to do. I was ready to be inspired by his larger-than-life excellence, righteousness and heroics: Time Magazine Man of the Year (1963). The Nobel Peace Prize (1964). The Civil Rights Movement. Loving husband. Devoted family man. Divinely-inspired poet/preacher. Martyr.

Oh yes, I wanted lots of that hot stuff.

Greedy, I started with the biggest, thickest book (that’s the way I like most things).

I was looking for the story behind those soul-stirring speeches and unflagging commitment to justice. I was looking for a manual of how I too could become that extraordinary and selfless. I was looking to worship a hero.

Instead, I read pageafterpageafterpageafterpageafterpage (you get the idea) detailing my beloved MLK’s affairs, orgies, and just plain lewd talk.

Now, that wouldn’t phase me. Some might even say I like that sort of thing. But then…

Then I was fifteen, idealistic, and a virgin. Then it was all very simple – and confusing.

And so I’m still mad at the writer of that biography. I was convinced he was lying. I suspected he was a sheet-wearing racist who wanted to discredit a great man – because you’re either a great man or a cheater. I hadn’t yet expanded my morality to include both/and. It was either/or. And so MLK had to be one or the other: how could he be a man of God and a man fucking for God?

I can’t remember the name of that writer or the title of that book but I still remember that sentence.

‘Course, the biographer can’t really take credit for it – that’s (allegedly) allllll MLK, baby – but it has stayed with me and formed the basis for two of my pet theories:

For connection. For communion. For ecstasy. For transcendence. For rapture. For redemption.

And maybe for some holy words.

Like: I love you.

Or: Love each other.

Because in the beginning was The Word.

August 25, 2010 | filed under: Meaning, Sex

20 people have we need you too.

Everything is Not Okay

We don’t need to bathe in grief or anoint ourselves with holy misery. There is, after all, a mastubatory element to counting our flaws, calculating our sins and enumerating the wrongs done to us. It is indulgent. It solidifies our already resilient excuses. It is…icky.

But oh, how grim circumstances plant the seeds of a good story. Often, when I’m the midst of existential despair (every six weeks or so) or have been wronged egregiously, I comfort myself with the knowledge that this will make a great story some day.

Set me up at a cocktail party (or a blog!) and I’m good hours of storytelling entertainment. But even an endless stream of pretty stories has a dark side. Sometimes we build personal narratives the way we do prisons: to keep the bad things in.

And when we disparage ourselves, luxuriate in our flaws, and spin intricate histories woven through generations of Why We are the Way We Are, we cast ourselves as the inmates.

So…this is not an engraved invitation to a pity party. This is not a Be Miserable! manifesto or an incitement to the inaction of complaint.

This is simple truth talking.

While we probably don’t need to stroke ourselves with tales of incapacitating woe, we do need to acknowledge that all of those things – sickness, misery, death, loss, divorce, random unkindness, broke, discrimination, frustration, heartbreak, loneliness, soul-deep disappointment – are real, inevitable and mostly (mercifully!) transitory.

Transitory, not simply “temporary”. As Alexander Graham Bell – and I think we can trace “social media” back to the party-line phone – said, “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”

So misery – or even joy – is transitory. You walk through it and land somewhere else. You walk through it and your life is transformed. You walk through it and you are transformed.

Grief is mourning that which has passed. A time, a togetherness has been lost. A new time is at hand. Periods of intense emotion – or even being insulated from any emotion – herald the end of one experience and the birth of another. A new life is upon you.

But in the squall of grief, in the hardened eye of despair, this is small comfort. What is even less comforting is denying and fighting the fact that pain and suffering exist.

Why are we compelled to deny our realities and the full spectrum of our feelings?

Within ourselves are entire orchestras of emotion and possibility. High notes, low notes, sour notes, dissonance, heart-rending harmony. We are not one note in a symphony. When we confine ourselves to one sound, one note, one colour, one mood, one tweet, one endlessly repeated facebook status update, we abbreviate all that we are.

And that’s a lyrical and mmm-hmmm easy-to-accept truth. But the more urgent and pressing truth is this:

  • when we squelch our grief, we deny ourselves the breadth of experience. We deny ourselves the richness of life. There is a divinity in pain. There are truths in heartache. There is a reckoning in slammed doors. None of this is to be courted for the sake of experience – though artists often paint and write and create and dance in the fire of a self-destructive struggle with exactly that gas and those matches – but it is to be endured. It is to be acknowledged, even savoured, in the moment. Once when I was heartbroken and valiantly fighting the fissures with “It’s all my fault; I shouldn’t be this upset; I need to buck up…”, Dave told me: Be sad. Cry. Feel it all and let it pass. And that is essential advice.
  • to be relentlessly chipper we must ignore the sometimes disheartening demands of daily life.
  • when we wave the “everything is awesome” flag, all the time, we inadvertently shame and silence people in the midst of very real suffering.
  • and…it is a lie. When we only glaze our faces with pasted smiles and only adorn our profiles with cut-and-pasted positivity, we lie. We seek to impress others with outwards signs of happiness. We hope to impress ourselves too or else we content ourselves with appearing happy and well. We lie. We lie to ourselves, we lie to others, we build lives and relationships on sand and salt and lies, and then we wonder why it all tastes fake, like tears and mud.  We wonder where our true friends are – the ones who’ll be with us through the grit we hesitate to admit.

There’s pleasure and  pain in knowledge, truth, life. Reality is a fucking mess and yet in that morass we dig in and we grow. We grow and we grow and we glow.

And buried therein are the tangled roots of juicy fear and fearsome joy.

August 16, 2010 | filed under: Meaning, People

18 people have we need you too.

Choice. Commitment. Freedom. Cats. ARRRR Matey.

“Learn to go through one door and many others will open for you; try to go through five doors at once and you’ll go nowhere.” – C. Andrew Ramsey, M.D., a psychiatry professor at Columbia University

Ahem. It has recently been drawn to my attention that my moaning, bemoaning and *bitching* (let’s be honest) about men and commitment is a form of projection.

The men in my life aren’t commitment-phobic.

I am.

Ooops.

Sorry, guys.

———–

Here’s how it goes down:

I start dating a guy. I get a little starry-eyed over him which means I get a lot scared. So I shit-test him (thanks, Seduction Community for the lingo): Does he have my back? Will he run when things get scary? How can I freak him out to find out how reliable he is?

I know! I’ll talk about marriage and babies!!!

And it works *almost* every time.

ALMOST inevitably the dude thinks I’m too much, too soon and retreats/disappears for period of time spanning somewhere between three weeks and three months (two outliers: eight years and nine years each).

But wait! There’s more!

Almost as inevitably as the hasty retreat is the advance. After three weeks/months, he comes back and says, Ok. I’m all in. It’s all on the table. Love, marriage, babies. House in the suburbs. White picket fence. I’ll paint it for you, baby.

But by that time, I’ve got a new dude, so I smile regretfully (and smugly – because I KNEW I WAS THE BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO YOU!!!) and make noises about ‘timing’.

And then I turn and look at my new dude with narrow and skeptical eyes and think, WTF? The other guy wants to marry me and you can’t decide if you’re in or out?! Get in or get out! I WANT BABIES, NEW DUDE!

And he runs away for three weeks to three months, realizes the error of his ways, comes back…

and wash, rinse, repeat.

So I use commitment as my shit-test to avoid commitment.

Because I am the one who is scared.

————-

Some maybe-scary stuff:

Maybe I don’t want the white picket fence. (But I do want the baby). Maybe I don’t want the conventional suburban marriage. (But I do want the lasting love). Maybe I don’t want the house. Maybe I want to live a little more nomadically. Maybe I don’t know how to get the life and partner I want because it is so far from the map I’ve been trained to read and follow. Maybe I don’t want a relation-ship. Maybe I want a pirate ship.

———-
It isn’t that I’m afraid to choose a partner. I am oh-so-capable of being fiercely loyal and loving.

It isn’t that I’m afraid of committing to someone I love.

It isn’t that I’m afraid of losing my freedom. I don’t think that choosing one path is a loss of freedom. I think walking it IS freedom.

It is that I’m afraid that by choosing and committing to a partner that I will have to live the life I’ve already rejected.

It is that I’m afraid that the kind of love, family and life that I want is so far removed from suburban reality that it might not be possible. And so I’ll die alone with cats.

And cats do bad things to furniture and I like my upholstery on the unshredded side.

———

The problem with choice, commitment and freedom is that we’ve framed them up so that an abundance of choice is freedom, commitment involves choosing to winnow down the choices available to you, and therefore commitment to a particular path or person or choice equals a loss of freedom.

And that’s crap.

An abundance of choice is the mirage of freedom.

We think we can do anything and so, dazzled by an array of crazysexycool opportunities, do nothing at all.

Freedom is not a buffet of opportunity.

Freedom is the ability to choose and live your choice.

Think about the opposite of freedom.

Slavery.

In slavery, you are not able to choose or live your choice. You’re not able to decide your destiny, create it, live it.

It isn’t necessarily the absence of choice that defines a lack of freedom – though that’s certainly a huge part of it – it is the absolute foreclosure of the ability to LIVE your choice.

In our society, going to university is an option. We think everyone’s got it.

So yay! I can go to university! The option is there! I can see the campus!

But…

  • if I can’t afford to go
  • if no one in my family or community shows me what that looks like
  • if the culture of the university is alien to me
  • if a million things in my day-to-day reality mean that I cannot realize a university education

then that option is meaningless. There’s no freedom there.

Freedom is the capacity to turn your option into a choice and live it.

Freedom is making the choice real. It is choosing. It is narrowing the options down and living with and through the one you choose. Freedom is a privilege and that privilege is commitment.

Come what may. Hell or high water or himalayan kittens. Spectre of death-by-cats-and-pirates and all.

—————-

PS – Speaking of pirates and pirate ships, this is my house key. Symbolic, much?


June 23, 2010 | filed under: Love, Meaning

29 people have we need you too.

Screw Inspiration. Do It Anyway. Every Day.

“Between the page & the writer is a magnetism more compelling than any other relationship.” – Betsy Warland

and this is true. For me.

But I have another ongoing, eternal relationship that is fraught.

 Inspiration. Creativity. My muse.

Here’s the truth: sometimes writing is hot lava. It burns, flows, cannot be contained, and obliterates every obstacle in its path. It will not be denied.

When writing is like that, it is easy. It is creative. I instinctively take risks because I’m too carried away with it to be responsible. To make it eat its vegetables.

And so I get seduced by the easy, the high, the flow. I think, that’s what it ought to be like.

And that’s how I get writer’s block. That’s how I get stuck.

(Or as Lianne Raymond so beautifully and wisely reframes it, “becalmed”.)

I start depending on the inspiration. The lightning flash. The earthquake. The explosion. And then I’m distraught and frantic and absolutely unable to produce because my fuel – the lava, the steam, the smoke – is buried so deeply I can’t dig through to it.

But here’s the thing: those creative explosions are inevitable but not predictable. And they’re incidents. Huge Fucking Incidents.

(Or, in my secret language with Dave, HFIs.)

HFIs cannot roll forth every day, and who would want them to? I don’t have the emotional coping skills to manage a HFI every day. I’m still recovering from Saturday when I had to steam clean the sofa and repaint the living room wall – all before 9am.

There was an incident with a bookcase-climbing six year old. We will not speak of it, here.

So HFIs are instances of cataclysmic creativity. They’re waves. Ride them when they’re rolling.

And other times, practice. Train. Do.

Keep doing.

I’ve written about it before, in another context.

Will power. Will power is great, when you’ve got it, but it is best for sprints, not marathons. When you’ve got it, use it. But build your life so that you don’t depend on will power and flashes of motivation or bursts of creativity. Build your life and your creative practice so that you’re steadily producing with or without the molten flow of inspiration.

And, if you do that, you get yourself out of the break-fix, stop-go, roar-hiccup cycle of creation.

And I think that’s a good thing. That rhythm is too syncopated for creative undulation. It asphyxiates my confidence in my own abilities.

So, inspiration? pfffffooey. I’ll kiss you when you’re here and forget you when you’re gone. And while you’re gone, I’ll still be writing. And when you get here, I’ll have even more skills and tools to bridle you and ride you.

Because I’ll be practising every day whether you show up or not.

Inspiration, you are On Notice.
——————-

Dave Doolin and Sean Neprud have turned me on to Deliberate Practice.

Dave’s practice teaches him how to write WordPress plugins, very quickly, as he demonstrates in his WordPress widget plugin tutorial. And he writes every day because that’s his thing. He studies his craft and he practices it. Daily.

Sean’s practice keeps him creating even when the Day Job is eating his life – and this is a Mofo Essential Life Skill, if you ask me – and the results are poignant, mundane and harrowing. His series on the daily grind is gripping.

Good things and great art emerge from boring, unrelenting effort. That’s Deliberate Practice.

(Justine Musk, the most talented Tribal Writer EVER, is imbibing the elixir of Deliberate Practice, too.)

And I’m deliberately practising with Bindu Wiles’ 21.5.800 challenge: 21 days. Yoga 5 times a week. 800 words a day.

Why I’m doing it:

  • because writing 800 words a day whether I “feel like it” or not is deliberate practice. It is a big eff you to my contrary, oft-absent muse.
  • because I’ve found the more I talk to my body, live in my body and move my body, the more I can create. The more I live in my head and consider my body as merely the vehicle that gets my gorgeous brain around, the more my brain swells up, gets high and mighty, and writes all kinds of bullshit.

Why You Should Do It:

  • because all the cool kids are.
  • Just kidding. Sorta.

PS I’ll be writing more about creativity and deliberate practice tomorrow, and listing off the ways I’m inviting creativity into my life and my body as a ‘deliberate practice’.

I’m trying to structure my creative practice so that I’m no longer dependant on HFIs of inspiration.

(Which is kind of like waiting to win the lottery, if you ask me. Hoping to win the lottery is not a financial plan. And waiting for Inspiration to visit is NOT a creative practice. So let’s not wait around.)

Let’s create whether or not creation is kissing our asses, pens, and paintbrushes.

June 9, 2010 | filed under: Meaning

44 people have we need you too.

Red Shoe Blogger: A Manifesta

http://longawaypix.com/blog/

Let’s mash up reality and assume that Dorothy wrote The Wizard of Oz and it is a memoir told through the lens of pharmaceuticals and it is to be published next year.

Dorothy has written a great book: part trippy fantasy, part freudian/jungian/wonky archetypical therapy, part love letter to friendship, and a prefeminist, feminist, post-feminist meditation on the nature and power of femininity wrapped in a trendy, little-dog-carrying, hot-shoe-wearing package.

It is Sex and the City meets Eat Love Pray meets Little Red Riding Hood, on acid. It is a journey. It is a great book. It must be read.

Dorothy knows this. She feels it right from her soul to the soles of her ruby red shoes. She can see the future: a movie. Musicals. The talk show circuit. Oprah. Much money, much love, much conversation, and a place in popular imagination.

It can be all of these things, not because she promotes the flying monkeys out of it – which she will, and absolutely should do – but because it offers a watery answer to our thirsty, questioning souls: you are the author of your own affair.

(Plus there are weird scary creatures who learn to love each other and grow as twisted, maturing moral entities and we all know that stuff sells. I hear a little book called Twilight is doing quite well these days.)

So this book should sell. It needs to sell. Dorothy wants it to sell.

Even more than that, Dorothy wants it to be read, to land, to take root, to grow, to inhabit, fertilize and animate our popular imagination.

If I was Dorothy – and I am – I would start a blog before I even started writing the book. I’d go all Seth Godin and build a tribe on Twitter. I’d find my people. I’d give them somewhere to find me. I’d get on the cluetrain. I’d Oprah. I’d firestart. I’d listen to Leo Babauta when he says he doesn’t believe in SEO. I’d make friends. I’d work the aich-ee-double-hockey-sticks out of ProBlogger and spend serious time with Outspoken Media. I’d figure out the lessons learned by our pantehon of blog gods and best-selling writers. I’d figure out the mechanics of demand and distribution and audience and I’d build it and they would come. And if they didn’t come, I’d go get them and then hug and pet and feed them because that is the purpose of promotional tricks and lassos and rodeo ponies and hoopla.

But I would only do that if, like Dorothy, I had something wizardly to offer: the journey. The passion. The learning. The love. The living. The lessons. The magic. The really, really great content. Please.

And this is what exasperates me about the ‘blogging and social media for money’ superhighway. So many times I follow the yellow brick road laid by an enterprising blogger who’s working the system – rocking the comments, manufacturing controversy, guest posting, paper-training SEO, tweeting – and when I get there and pull back the curtain…nothing. No wizard. No magic. No message. Just a lot of mechanics and whirling buttons and a robotic, soulless special effects machine.

Honestly, that’s what a lot of problogging and blogs and social media enterprises are looking like these days. It is turn-key blogging. It is execution unsparked by ideas. It is a waste of time and tweets and it won’t make you money.

Straight up: I LOVE money. I want money. I make money and you should, too. I want you and Dorothy and every other problogger out there to have as many tiny dogs – more! – as you and your minions can carry.

I just want you to make that money from selling wisdom, truth, experience, art or sparkly scarlet maryjanes (and if you are, I’m ALWAYS in the market for red shoes, so please put me on your mailing list).

I want you to make an offering. I want you to have something to offer. I want you to be a Red Shoe Blogger. I just made that up.

A Red Shoe Blogger is not blogging exclusively for money.

A Red Shoe Blogger has a mission and is animated by passion and all the tips and tricks and hacks and tools and tweets are harnessed in service of that divine, cosmic, helpful, genuine, meaningful objective.

That mission is Home.

So this is what I want from all the Red Shoe Bloggers out there: I want you to buck the system, or work the system, but know that the system is not a slot machine that will pay off if only you keep pulling that arm and never ever run out of nickels or take a pee-break.

Success is not only about the systems.

The home address of success is passion, talent (let’s be honest), creation, contribution, collaboration, conversation, and community.That is where hot sweaty abundance and cold hard cash reside (FYI, they’re totally a couple) and I wish more bloggers lived there too.

Because, after all, there’s no place like home.

___________________

Red Shoe Blogger was my first guest post for ProBlogger in October 2009 – and, as I tried to say yesterday, it is my manifesta and my mission.

Is this your mission, too?

image credit: Jennifer Longaway


May 21, 2010 | filed under: Meaning, Money, People, Purpose, Work

45 people have we need you too.

How to Get Unstuck, Part 3: You Have Everything You Need and All You Need is Love. And to Launch Something. hint hint.

The third part of getting unstuck is people.

Sometimes I have to pinch myself because my life is a reverie. My life is like a dream I dreamed when I dreamed of beautiful people.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever before had the kind of love and loyalty that I have in my life right now – and all I can say is thank God and thank Twitter and Thank God For Twitter.

There is a perception that Twitter is frivolous and we’re all talking about our last ham sandwich – and we are, and that’s ambient intimacy – but I have met incredible, inspired, talented, heartfelt and heart-full people on twitter.

People who’ve become my soul’s people, my sisterfriends, my brothers-in-arms, my mothers, my lovers, my compadres.

So I could wax lyrical about Twitter, but that’s not the point.

The point is that right now, and during the past year, every time I was stuck I have been overwhelmed by the visceral, tangible support of people who want to love me up (and do).

Just over a year ago, I had a new place, a newish job, and was newly single. Life was fine. I was going to work and taking care of my kids and running on that hamster wheel every day and it all meant…nothing.

So I started a blog and discovered another blog that rocked my world, and, dare I say it, changed my life.

Yeah, I’m talking about White Hot Truth with Danielle LaPorte. I read it obsessively. It lit me up. I learned things. I stayed motivated. This thing I was doing – writing, blogging, making meaning – seemed…

possible.

And so one fine day last June, I took a day off work and drove to Whistler for a firestarter. And on the winding highway on the way to Whistler I wrestled with my identity, my purpose, my practicality, my comfortable suburban life, and my bills. (As in: how is this cute thing I do – writing – gonna pay ‘em?)

Finally, forty-five minutes into the drive and thirty-six years into my life, I gave up the fight. I gave up the stuck.

I said, fuck it. I’m an artist.

And everything Danielle said in that firestarter was for me and everything in that firestarter affirmed that I must scrape back the bullshit and be faithful to my purpose. That I must be true to who I am.

An artist. A writer.

I got misty-eyed and emotional only moments into the session.

And when I got home, I found an e-mail from Danielle:

you are one talented writer. You’re hot shit and the Real Deal and you should be getting your ass published as widely as possible.

I cried my eyes out.

I needed that.

I needed that to keep going.

I kept going.

____________________

Now, almost a year later, writing is paying the bills. I still get stuck, though. I get stuck because I take too much on. I get stuck because I’m wed to what I should do rather than what I want to do. I get stuck because there’s something I want to offer and I’m scared to offer it. I get stuck because it is easier to start a piece or an essay or a book than it is to finish it.

And people – my mentors, peers, friends – are what un-stick me every time.

I wrote a piece about Dave Doolin last week – about how much his consulting, his website, and his book have helped me improve my blogging.

And then, a couple of days later, I wrote a piece about how I was stuck.

Within moments of posting that piece, I had a text message and then an e-mail from him. Minutes after that, we were on Skype talking to each other and he was totally in it to win it with me.

Dave and I had been making noises about writing a piece together but hadn’t actually done it…and that night Dave told me we were going to write that piece together, now.

So we did. We texted on Skype and wrote a post together using a shared Google doc. We wrote the piece from start to finish in forty-five minutes.

This was huge to me.

It was huge for three reasons.

First.
Something wasn’t quite right in my life – I was stuck – and here was my friend instantly, 100% in it with me, helping me muddle my way through it.

That kind of loyalty means everything. And this is why I love Twitter (and Dave) with an unholy passion: because I first talked to Dave on Twitter. Now he’s my friend and he’s got me when I’m stuck. Wow.

Second.
I’m not a team player (don’t tell anyone). I am a writer. I like to do things by myself. Also, I’m pretty book-smart, which means I’m still scarred from years of group-work in high school where well-meaning teachers matched me up with kids who saw me and saw an easy A. So my experience with group work (slow, and all on me) is why I don’t much care for collaborating.

Recently I’ve had people – really lovely, talented, compelling people, people I really do want to work with – approach me to collaborate on projects and I’ve turned them down simply because I thought I don’t like collaborating.

But writing this piece with Dave etched a new collaborative groove in my head. Usually it takes me two to three hours to write a piece; when we wrote together, it took forty-five minutes. It was fast and it was satisfying.

It was fast because as I was writing something, he was finishing another sentence, or editing a paragraph I had just written; or as he was writing something, I was inserting digressions into the middle of his paragraph or pulling the threads through the piece. The back-and-forth and the pace and the creation was rewarding.

So that was a clicky lightbulb moment: collaborating can feed the creative process instead of stalling it.

Third.
I was stuck last week because I had a number of pieces started and zero pieces finished. I was frustrated. I wasn’t crossing anything off my list. And the less I finished, the less I finished. Over and over. Not finishing was feeding and breeding more not finishing.

And Dave instinctively knew that what I needed to get moving, to get unstuck, was to finish something. Anything. Now.

And so we started – and finished – that piece, together.

And I was lightened. The whole week hadn’t been a waste, after all.

Good-bye, stuck. Thank you, Dave.
————————–

So that’s how Danielle LaPorte helped me get going, and keep going when I first started out, and how Dave Doolin helped me get going, and keep going, last week.

Your people will get you unstuck if you let them.
————————–
Which brings me to my Big Stuck.

For a while, I’ve had the feeling that what people want from me (and what I want to give them) is not Yet Another Boring E-book.

I’ve felt that what we need to do, together, is connect.

I’ve felt like what I have to offer is writing, and love. (And writing is just a channel through which love flows.)

I’ve wanted to offer classes and consultations about how to develop your unique writing voice, and how not to be a boring writer.

(Please, let’s not be boring bloggers. There’s so much competition for that. There’s none for being you.)

But…I Am A Copywriter. I should be doing that – not hanging out on Twitter all day and talking on Skype and answering questions by e-mail.

But that stuff – the answering questions, the helping, the loving – is what I love to do.

Recently I was telling my friend (insert mental air quotes around that, please) F that my best qualities are also my worst qualities. My best quality is that I’m a Lover which means I take care of the people around me. My worst quality is that I’m a Lover, which means I make other people’s missions my own, and sometimes more important than my own.

F said, maybe helping other people with their missions IS your mission.

Maybe he’s right. I thought the same thing just a week ago when I read Danielle LaPorte’s The FireStarter Sessions vook (video-book).

In The FireStarter Sessions, Danielle insists that you MUST do what you love. You must lead with your strengths. You must choose the things that light you up so that you can light the way for yourself, and for others.

I write and I love and even my writing is loving. The things that get me really excited are helping other people. When someone e-mails me and they have a question, or they need help, a close review, or advice, I’m all in. I’ll drop the things I should be doing to do that.

I can look at someone else’s writing and instantly, instinctively know if it needs sugar or salt or more heat. I know how to season it and cook it. I know which ingredients are missing, how to amp up the emotional contrast and tension, and what technical tricks – rhetoric, typography, poetic devices – will work.

I understand how to train your writing voice to sing. I love editing your pieces. I love talking to you about your writing and encouraging you to take risks – and I’ve done that quietly, informally, and freely for several writers and bloggers.

So that’s what I want to do, and what I’m going to do – and what the people around me have encouraged me to get unstuck enough to do.

So let’s do that.

Do you want to write more persuasive, emotional, meaningful pieces?
I’ll download to you everything I know about writing and teach you to do that.

Do you want to unlock your writing voice?
I’ve got the keys.

Do you want to know how to build (and make money from) a blog, all while juggling a job, family, and life?
I can show you how I re-framed every single obstacle in my life – full-time job, single mom, two kids under five, very little child-care or support, no money, no time – into an opportunity and out of those opportunities created a rapidly growing blog, new business and new life for myself.

Do you want to guest post for A-list blogs?
I can tell you how I did it so you can do it, too.

Do you want to blog better? Do you want to know what you’re doing right (and maybe what you’re doing wrong)?
Dave Doolin and I will review your blog – the art and the science of it – consult with you, construct a report for you, and tell you how to do it better.

And do you want it in a face-to-face class or do you want it on the phone?

Because baby, I can do it both ways.

—————–
How Not To Be a Boring Writer: The Workshop

Vancouver, Saturday July 17th, 25 spaces available, $50 per person
E-mail to reserve your space (or to organize additional dates! Hell yes, I’ll travel!)

Red Shoe Blogger

I review three of your pieces and then we work together on the phone to amp up your unique writing voice.
E-mail to book a session ($100)

League of Extraordinary Bloggers

The Art and the Science of Blogging. Blog Review, Report, and Personal Consultations with Dave Doolin and Kelly Diels.
E-mail to book your blog review ($150)

May 20, 2010 | filed under: Love, Meaning, People, Purpose, Work

41 people have we need you too.

How to Get Unstuck, Part 2: Trust Yourself, and The World. You Have Everything You Need.

The second part of getting unstuck is faith.

Faith that you have everything you need.

I have a convoluted relationship with faith. For a long time, I thought faith was something you bought on Sundays with the clink of coins on a shiny plate or the whisper of dollars disappearing into a basket.

And I tried, many times, to get close to my God this way. By going to church – or temple or mosque – and sitting quietly and hoping to feel.

And I never did.

I tried. I asked around. I had conversations with friends who are madly in love with God, or Allah, and they feel it. One of my friends tells me how she truly feels the spirit when she’s in church, how church is a sanctuary for her, how the fullsomeness of Jesus’ embrace can make her weep. When she told me that, I took my jealous ass to church and warmed a pew. And…nothing.

I’m an emotion-driven creature, and that applies as much to sex and money as it does to meaning. If I don’t feel it, I won’t do it.

So I didn’t do it. The faith thing. For years and years – forever – I never considered myself spiritual.

And all of that time, I thought I didn’t have faith because I didn’t have Religion.

There’s a difference, of course – but I only recently learned that.

I learned that from Danielle LaPorte, who claims and communes with and is the Divine Feminine –  AND  she’s a self-professed, certified and pedigreed “spiritual mutt“, as well.

I learned that from conversations with Ronna Detrick, who is a spiritual warrior, reclaiming her Christianity – and her faith and feminism – from dogma. From erasure. From automatic. From rules.

Because rules are for lazy people – and that I learned from Siddhartha Herdegen, philosopher, “Islamic finance scholar” (Siddhartha? Islam? I gotta know more!), wannabe economist and understated, poignant writer of The Principles of Failure.

His piece about rules and lazy people is living with me.

Siddhartha defines lazy, not as “ignorant or gullible or any other pejorative descriptor attacking a person’s mental abilities,” but as “a state of conserving effort or energy.” And he says that we make rules to conserve mental effort.

Effort is expended in all kinds of ways, mentally as well as physically. While we’re probably most used to seeing people avoid physical effort, the same tendencies apply to mental work as well.We will avoid it whenever possible.

This is because mental work is hard. Anyone who’s tried to understand Stephen Hawking knows this. But even thinking about things more mundane than the vastness of the universe takes its toll.

Thinking hard is one reason couples fight during home construction and remodeling projects; the stress of making the innumerable important decisions weakens their mental capacity to tolerate each other’s imperfections.

Have you ever looked at a whole aisle of different kinds of shampoo and inwardly groaned at all the choices?

One of the ways we’ve been able to avoid mental work is to make rules. We have to think hard about some things to reach a decision and come up with the best possible course of action. We don’t want to do that every time so we develop a rule. The next time we’re in that situation, or a similar one, we can simply apply the rule we’ve previously developed. Easy peasy.

So after we’ve decided on a brand and formulation of shampoo we are satisfied with we make it a rule to always get that kind of shampoo and shopping is less mentally taxing.

Rules are shorthand. And so (maybe; sometimes) is religion.

My experience – so far – with religion is with rules. Religion as rules and rules as a shorthand for moral decision-making – and making religious-, rule-based decisions in the best interests of your family, community, and culture.

Individual – and feminine, just ask Ronna, or every Catholic woman who ever wanted to be a priest –  sacrifice is a recurring theme.

There’s wisdom there, and I can see it, but it isn’t mine.

And so, because I don’t have religion, and in fact am intensely repelled by the way the female body and experience gets constructed and controlled in most major religions, I thought I didn’t have faith.

But I do have faith. And I’ll tell you how I know that.

On Friday, I did something profound, meditative and woo.

I drove to FedEx.

You know when you go to conferences or retreats or workshops with granola-crunching types (I am currently barefoot and enjoying a breakfast of granola and raisins, so I know of what I speak) those new-age police-types enforce mandatory intimacy with trust-building exercises?

(You show up to hear about X and suddenly you’re threading string emerging from your neighbours waistband through your shirt-sleeve and out your pant leg to your next neighbour and pretending it’s fun and you’re such a good-and-transparent sport.)

(I hate that shit. Every time I sign up for a conference or a retreat I pray the leaders believe in personal privacy and organic – not forced – intimacy. My prayers almost always go unanswered.)

(Ah, faith.)

The reason that conference throwing/retreat organizing/kumbaya fascists make us do those things is because those activities are ice-breakers. Those things crack you open so the learning they’re about to throw down has somewhere to pool. Those things create a shared emotional experience and intimacy – and community – emerges from that shared emotional experience.

(Dave Doolin told me so. He doesn’t only teach me how to blog.)

So trust-building exercises…build trust and create intimacy.

And I wanted to get intimate with the universe. And myself.

(oh, so many ways to read that last bit.)

So I drove to Fedex.

There’s a backstory. Of course.

I was in Richmond (a suburb of Vancouver) checking in with a supplier, and after that I needed to go to FedEx, which, conveniently is located at the airport in Richmond.

Less conveniently: I don’t know my left hand from my right (unless I wear huge and wildly fake rings on my left hand, which is what I do most days), can’t tell time on an analog clock, and navigate by landmarks (you know the yellow church with white fence? Not there – turn at the next street just past the boxwood hedge) and mountains and the ocean.

If I’m driving towards the North Shore mountains, then I’m (perhaps obviously) driving north. If I’m driving towards Mt Baker, and it is the only mountain on the horizon, then I’m driving South. Whatever side the ocean is on is west. Abbotsford is almost always east and almost always a mistake.

Street names elude me. Maps confound me. Ask for directions? NEVAH.

And Richmond? Richmond’s landscape is flat, open, and devoid of good landmarks – except the airport – and mountains. Richmond’s roads, on the other hand, are as clotted, clenched and tragic as a failing heart. Always.

I worked in Richmond for almost two years and still, all I know how to do in Richmond is get to my former office, the bank, Amanda Farough’s house, the coffee shop, Ikea and the airport. Basically if you spin me around twice in Richmond and I don’t land somewhere Swedish for common sense or a hangar, then I don’t know I am.

And on Friday I was in a unknown neighbourhood in Richmond (which is basically every neighbourhood in Richmond except that of my former office) and had to get to FedEx by some unknown route (which is every route in Richmond that doesn’t lead to the highway home).

Now I’ve been to FedEx many a time, because when one is in the proposal writing business one gets pretty intimate with courier offices, especially at 4.52 pm on the day before the damn thing is due. And FedEx is at the airport, which is a pretty significant landmark, usually well-marked by big green signs and purple and orange planes (I would like to thank FedEx for the large purple and orange planes parked beside their building. That was a super helpful clue). So I decided to trust in my tax paying money at work (good road signage), my ocean-based sense of direction (it was on my left – you know, the hand with the ring), work with my profound aversion to asking for directions, and intuit my way there.

And I did it and it was an unabashedly woot woot experience.

It was a beautiful sunny day, I took my time, trusted my instincts, trusted my basic experience and knowledge of the way the world (aka “Richmond”) is plotted, and felt my way to FedEx.

And that was my simple, satisfying trust-building exercise with the universe and me.

I’ve written before  about how this year at New Years I didn’t set SMART goals, nor did I break them down into milestones and plot out my path. Instead, I conceived of my goal as my mountain.

I can see my mountain. It rises above the houses, the city, the hills. It is off there in the distance but so large I can almost touch it. So large and so close that I can see it from everywhere I am. I believe – I know – that if I walk towards it long enough, eventually I’ll turn around and find I’ve climbed halfway up.

So this trust-building exercise I did with the universe – and myself – is like my mountain. I believe that if I keep my eyes trained where I want to go and trust in my general knowledge, intelligence, experience, talent, work ethic, judgment, and friends, then I have everything I need for the journey.

I have faith that the universe is both chaotic – but not malevolently so – and fairly orderly and is not going to swallow me up while I’m on my way. Or if it does, it isn’t personal. And I still have everything I need to get back on my way.

So this little woo-woo trust building exercise that looked like a drive to FedEx was about talking to my soul and saying it’s okay when you don’t know what the streets and landmarks look like, because you just keep your eye on that mountain – or the building beside the purple and orange jets – and you’ll get there.

It was about faith. In myself and in the universe.

And of course ‘the universe’ is just my hippy-dippy way of saying God.

——————————–

This piece is part 2 of the answer to ’stuck’ – which is where I’ve been, business-wise, for the last several weeks. If you want to follow the series – and hopefully, get unstuck with me – here’s where to start:

the question I ask myself (wherein I wonder WTF is wrong with me)

How to Get Unstuck, Part 1: There Is No Stuck (wherein I decide nothing is wrong with me and that creativity requires rest. Holy newsflash.)

May 18, 2010 | filed under: Meaning

55 people have we need you too.

fear is a professor

This is what I think about fear:

Fear has a function. Fear is supposed to alert you to things that might harm you. When you’re feeling scared, your reptile brain is taking care of you. That is his job.

Trying to run from fear, or suppress it, or deny it, or even overcome it is then pointless. Fear is a reptile. It will outlive your best mammalian intentions.

So this is what I think you do with fear: you treat it like a feverish, crotchety professor who secretly adores you and wants you to be better, but makes your life a misery because he marks the hell out of your essays and takes you to task in class.

You pay close attention to fear, get close to it, and then you question fear.

You get curious about it. You ask fear:

What is this? What is this about? What is true, clear and present danger, versus anxiety and worry? (Oooh! oooh! I know this one: fear is a response to a material threat in your immediate present; worry is a hypothetical threat that exists in your mind rather than your reality.) What are you trying to explain to me? What are you trying to keep me from doing? What would happen if I do it? Will this kill me? Is what is true, for you (fear), also true for me? Do you want to lock me in a box to keep me safe? Do I want to live in that box? Is my world that damn dangerous? Can my ego survive falling on my face or my ass? (YES)

And it is best to sit on the sofa and snuggle with your fear-professor while you ask these questions.

That’s also how you get straight A’s in university.

Or so I’ve heard.

___

thanks to Paddy Hare and his heartfelt series of blog posts on fear for inspiring this piece.

April 22, 2010 | filed under: Meaning, People

32 people have we need you too.

oranges and offerings

Kelly Diels: how are you?

Jasmine McAllister: I’m fine, you?

Kelly Diels: overwhelmed

Jasmine McAllister: preaching to the choir, honeybits

Kelly Diels: it is a high quality problem, I think, so I shall try to refrain from complaining

Jasmine McAllister: we all need to vent sometimes

Kelly Diels: what I need to do is structure my business more effectively. And I will. And it will be GOOD!

Jasmine McAllister: ooo, when you do, can you show me how to do it too?!

Kelly Diels: one of my clients, Erica Cosminsky, is giving a course on exactly that – about how to grow your business beyond what you can do yourself. And as I wrote her sales letter, I was entirely seduced by her content. I need to take her course.

Jasmine McAllister: I gotta try to stop trying to run several businesses at once

Kelly Diels: you need a bigger, better team, baby

Jasmine McAllister: amen sista!

Jasmine McAllister: I’m enlisting my hubby

Kelly Diels: ooooh I like your style. Should I marry so as to procure some free yet skilled labour? I could totally do that…

Jasmine McAllister: NO

Kelly Diels: …especially for the sex part. Speaking of marriage, I had my tarot cards read by my friend/genius web developer Amanda Farough last night

Jasmine McAllister: and…

Kelly Diels: it said I’m going to get married again! And have more babies!

Jasmine McAllister: Wow!!  How do you feel about that

Kelly Diels: I was delighted. I screamed out loud in happyrelief about the babies. I love being married. I love babies. I am a goddess. I need a domestic crew to worship me.

Jasmine McAllister: I feel you!

Kelly Diels: In fact, I find it terribly disconcerting that so few people recognize me for what I am. Do you have the same problem? Do people insist on treating you like a mere mortal?

Jasmine McAllister: How did you know?

Kelly Diels: I could feel it, one goddess to another. We recognize each other.

Jasmine McAllister: If only people just could step inside the roles I give them

Kelly Diels: and lay oranges and offerings at your feet, just like in the good old pre-Bronze Age days

Jasmine McAllister: EXACTLY

Kelly Diels: sing it sister-goddess… I know your pain. People expect me to pay bills and take out the trash.

Jasmine McAllister: WTF?

Kelly Diels: I KNOW. Where are my devotees? Calypso, Circe, and Hera would not be impressed. Hera would eat someone’s child in retaliation for that kind of snub.  You know how she is.

Jasmine McAllister: LOL!!

Kelly Diels: oh honey I might have to cut and paste this into WordPress and pretend this is a blog post

Jasmine McAllister: You honor me!

Kelly Diels: as the goddess you are!

Kelly Diels: Do you like the movie Bull Durham?

Jasmine McAllister: low memory count on that one

Kelly Diels: I’ve been pondering goddesses the last couple of weeks and therefore have an overwhelming desire to watch it again –  despite the fact that I don’t like Kevin Costner, or Tim Robbins, for that matter.

Jasmine McAllister: me either!!

Kelly Diels: but Susan Sarandon….

Jasmine McAllister: yes!!!!

Kelly Diels: her character in that movie, I swear to the goddess, is a goddess archetype. She is knowing, she selects, she understands life, love, sex, poetry, baseball. Men become more vital and powerful from being with her. They come into themselves by communing with the divine feminine. And there is an exchange in that movie that moves me to tears

Jasmine McAllister: which one?

Kelly Diels: this:

Crash Davis: Come on, Annie, think of something clever to say, huh? Something full of magic, religion, bullshit. Come on, dazzle me.

Annie Savoy: I want you.

Kelly Diels: and that’s it. I recognize a woman who speaks magic, religion, bullshit.

Jasmine McAllister: you know who you are

Kelly Diels: oranges and offerings, please.

April 18, 2010 | filed under: Meaning, People

26 people have we need you too.

on coffee, masculinity, and the joys of being friends with boys

Z: hi

Kelly: hi. how was your day?

Z:  ball busting

Kelly: what happened?

Z: well I had a great time today having coffee with this beautiful woman…she had this low-cut top on that had me drooling. But when I dropped her off she refused to kiss me

Kelly: what a bitch! you should drop her and never talk to her again

Z: I wanted to kiss her

Kelly: I understand. Here’s what I don’t understand: men. Maybe. Do you think I ‘get’ men? As in, understand them?

Z: No you don’t

Kelly: Explain

Z: in my view… you have this view of men that is somehow not grounded in reality… they constantly disappoint you by being typical men and acting as men do…that tells me that you don’t really understand their make up

Kelly: mmmmmmmmmmmm. good insight. I’ve specifically decided to throw out my fantasies, and just deal with people, as they are, for real. That’s been really rewarding, so far… So tell me about a man’s makeup

Z: A man’s makeup is that we are basically fuck-ups…

Kelly: what?!

Z: We dont have any depth or tolerance for pain. We see everything in terms of… “will I get fucked?” We are not emotional creatures so an onslaught of emotion from a woman has us running for the hills or joining the foreign legion.

Kelly: That sounds like true lies. Like a cartoon of masculinity, babe. How do you explain fatherhood? Or friendship? We’re friends and I’m not fucking you. You give me emotional support, and love, and advice, and ask nothing, so you’re deeper than what you just described. And I have driven you batty with emotional demands at times, and you’re still here. Not in the foreign legion, or in the hills, even though you’re not getting fucked.

Wait…I’m checking my purse for your cojones.

Nope.

Nothing. You must still have them. Or maybe you left them at the coffee shop.

Z: I am talking in generalities. After that it boils down to the individual

Kelly: it always does, for sure. This man/woman business is kind of bullshit. The issue is more temperament than gender. If I were dating women instead of men, I’d still have the same Issues. I’d find women who retreated from my emotional needs just like I’m SUPERB at finding men who do that, too.

Z: You have wanted more from men than they are capable of delivering

Kelly: OH YES. So very true babe. You were one of those, but you know I love you anyway.

Z: You don’t love me

Kelly: WHAT? do you really think that? You mean the world to me. I reference things you say, in my own head. You’re part of me

Z: Really

Kelly: Really. I talk about you, and the things you’ve taught me

Z: What do you say’?

Kelly: To myself or to other people? To myself: you’re one of the voices in my head now. Part of my decision making process. To other people: you’re my rock.

I’m so lucky. I have you. I have ___ and ___, too. Although I’m a woman who apparently doesn’t understand men romantically, my life overflows with male friendship. I have three amazing men in my corner, absolutely and unwaveringly. Offering friendship. Asking nothing of me except to just be me. And showing up, consistently. It is almost better than a boyfriend.

Unfortunately no one is having sex with me.

*le sigh*

Z: I’ll have sex with you.

Kelly: No you won’t, but thanks for the offer. Hey, babe, can I write about this conversation? About your fucked up definition of masculinity?

Z: Yes. But end it with the fact that you decided to have sex with me out of pity…

Kelly: Nope. No pity sex for you baby. You get hot lovin’ or nothing…so let’s err on the side of nothing.

Z: lol. love ya babes

Kelly: me too. And thanks for the coffee.

April 5, 2010 | filed under: Meaning, Sex

12 people have we need you too.

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