Remabulous

31 for 31

As I promised yesterday, here is my list. It was amusing to have people vying for certain items, and when one of them was achieved just yesterday, there was a debate as to whether it should be replaced with another one for the year. I don't feel I am limiting myself to only 31 things. It is more that I feel I sold myself short a little bit last year, and let things happening around me keep me from doing what I dreamed of some of the time. As a coach, I cannot let myself lose the momentum that I hope to nurture and inspire in my clients. So I WILL get these 31 things done this year, as a tribute to myself and to those I work with every week who break out of the box and take scary steps forward all the time. I'm in there with you... so here's my list:

image: Robby Garbett via flickr.

Manifesto for 31

As per my tradition, I have made a manifesto for my new year. I am resolved to make 31 a bigger, better bolder year. I have 31 goals and will write them up when I am not posting from a beautiful beach in Malibu on my phone. Here is the Manifesto for 31:

This year, I will be braver, make more noise and wear something wild every day. I will take more risks and wear clompier shoes. I will find more clients and teach more. I will try more new things. This year I will have more adventures and say yes to the exciting and no to stress and anxiety. I will do so much that I will run headlong into 32, out of breath but ready for more.

The wish list: dealing with blogging as it balloons from micro to macro.

Recently, I got involved in a discussion over at Gwen Bell's site about what has happened to blogging as a medium. Essentially, a medium that started as online journaling has exploded to become the new online journalism. It's only natural that there would be some growing pains.

So what needs to change in order to accommodate this new growth? Any good business needs to be prepared for success. A blog is, in many ways, like a business in this way since, even if you're just doing it for fun, dealing with an active blog can be quite overwhelming when it suddenly takes off. Both times I've been to BlogHer, I have heard people bemoaning the fact that they now can't respond to all their comments and e-mails, because there simply aren't enough hours in the day, whether they are full-time professional bloggers or if they are working another job during the 9 to 5 week.

I set out to make a wish list of features that blogging needs to now have inorder to make room for all this new attention, but realized that something else entirely is at stake.

image: kevindooley via flickr.

How to say thank you to those sites and people that matter.

There has been quite a flurry of commentary on twitter and on sites about Seth Godin's idea that clicking on ads for sites and blogs you read is a way to say thank you. Given the amount of response this created, from tweets about how he'd gotten it all wrong, to alternative commentary on the idea, it is clear that online advertising revenue as well as supporting those who create online content is a hot topic right now.

Since Seth has since published a clarification post, I'll let that stand as his thought on the matter and take this a step further: if clicking on ads isn't the right way to support and thank bloggers, writers, and web experts, what is?

Here are the thank you options I have discovered that do acknowledge and support the content that you love, without the tricky pitfalls. I thank Seth for opening the discussion on the topic and for taking a risk with his idea... this is the way we move forward!

image: jcbonbon via flickr.

Small adventures.

I am back at the novel this week, in preparation for the novel writing class I am taking this fall. (By the way, I think there is one spot left for a lucky writer, so if you live in Los Angeles and have a novel draft getting dusty in a drawer, get in touch my my teacher Edan from Writing Workshops, LA)

It strikes me that these small moves forward are what make the difference: sitting down and writing five pages this morning, getting a new shower curtain, starting to look for a new home.

When we're knocked off course, it's usually harder than we think to get back to center. Because center isn't in the same place it was before- it's somewhere new entirely. This is what amazes me most about the bravery of my clients: people who come to coaching do so because they want to move their center. They want change. And guess what- even if it's going to a better place, it's still scary. Here's my top five list on how to stay centered in chaos. It's been saving my life lately...

image: the trial via flickr.

Househunting with Osho.

I am househunting. In Los Angeles. When I found my current apartment, I had one day to search and I ended up with a place that has a lot of charm, not as much space as I'd like, and about a block between me and the fire station. It's been a good home for the past two years, but it is time, for a number of reasons, to move.

For the last two weeks I have been wrestling with finding a place that suits me and that I can afford. In cities like LA, the sense of what is affordable is so distorted that I have to keep calculating what I'd be paying in rent per year to keep my perspective. On a monthly basis it all just feels like a bunch of silly numbers. And since the place pictured here is good compared to some I have seen listed, I should perhaps find out where it is and snatch it up.

This process has been frustrating in a way I didn't anticipate. I am good at finding places for myself. I usually have such good karma for apartments that people make me rub their lists of desired qualities so they have the same luck. I have counted on that ability, and over the past weeks it feels a bit like it has failed me. I have had two places that seemed like very good options, only for them to be rented before my appointment to see them. I am left dreaming that this was home- and I missed it.

I was reading in bed this morning, a little Osho on the Tao, and came across the following quotation:

"Tao means to exist on the way, and to exist in such a way that the way and you are not two...Basho has said it as if it were a vast spider's web. Have you tried? Touch the spider's web anywhere and it starts shaking, trembling; the whole vibrates. Touch a leaf on a tree and you have made all the stars vibrate with it. You may not be able to see it right now, but things are so deeply related that it is impossible not to touch the stas by touching a leaf, the small leaf of a tree."
-Osho, from Tao, the Pathless Path

This was a beautiful reminder. While I have been mourning people "taking" apartments from me, I have been shutting down to how this process is meant to go. I haven't made my list of what I need from a home- something has stopped me. And perhaps it is that very block that is stopping me from finding where I am meant to live next. Plus, it does remind me that I have allowed this to pull me out of conversation.

One funny moment at BlogHer occurred when Amy Gahran was talking about the difference between monologue blogging and conversation. I realize I have been a bit more like the former, arriving at a party and yelling, "I am here now, listen to me talk!" rather than asking others what they have been up to and responding to their stories. I have been listening, but not responding as much as I'd like. This home thing has taken over. Do know I am reading, and loving everything everyone is putting out right now. Google reader is a gift of solace. Thank you for all you share- it shakes the web on this end as well...and if you happen to know about any 2 BR apartments in Los Feliz or Silverlake, don't hesitate to shake the tree a little harder!

image: greenkayak73 via flickr.

A visual representation of me, thanks to Jennifer at the Word Cellar

I am so thankful to Jennifer, at the Word Cellar, who came up with this fun little exercise... Use Flickr to answer a series of questions, then put together this mosaic as a visual representation of yourself. Her post explains how to do it... I love the result as well as the fact that I now know that visually, she and I share a few traits...

Credit where credit is due:

1. la santa bacia tutti [e uno], 2. My creation for the handmade Tiara/Crown swap (for Holly), 3. A different kind of garden., 4. Persistence, 5. cate, 6. #02 in the gathering dusk, 7. Ullswater barn, 8. Adam And Eve On A Raft, And Wreck 'Em, 9. The Photographer, 10. Where's that passport gone?, 11. Bali Ha'i, 12. caro's card on candice's keyboard

Emptying out.

Lately, it feels like I am being squeezed. There is so much pressure in the world around me that I feel wrung out. Househunting in Los Angeles is a different animal than it was in San Francisco. There are fewer beauties to choose from, and therefore a greater sense of loss when a magical place is given away, especially when right now I am dying for nothing more than to feel at home.

I often feel lots of pressure as a coach to have it all together. To be in balance and have it all figured out. But I am so far from being at that point. I have moments when I am calm and clear, but there haven't been many of those moments lately. What I am realizing is that my work makes me open to take on huge loads: loss, illness in myself and others, stress, and fear about starting and running a business. If I didn't go through all of this, then I would not be able to relate very well to others in difficulty. I would only be able to give what a friend calls "cardboard answers." I am so grateful that the conversations I have for a living are real and deep and wide. Speaking with clients about their lives and hopes makes it all feel worth it. A client going through a breakup or one who is scared about making enough money- I know how this feels, and I can speak from inside the experience.

It's amazing the gratitude I can fit inside this one body. I have to keep emptying myself out with this squeezed by the world feeling. I need to make room for something more hopeful and grateful. It hit me hard today, while talking to a client. How lucky I feel to have this life, even if it isn't all sorted out yet, and even if I got drunk last night and told the same story several times over. Even if I am far from perfect and much more wobbly than balanced. And even if I still cry these days. A lot.

image: 'empty' by atconc via flickr.

Wabi-Sabi life transitions.

Am currently reading Leonard Koren's book: Wabi- Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers. It had been sitting on the shelf in my inspiration bookcase for a few months, when a customer came into Book Soup yesterday and requested it. He was so enthusiastic to know that I had heard of it that I knew it was time to read it.

It is a simple quick read, and one that speaks directly to my life at the moment as well as the lives of those around me. So many people I know in Los Angeles and elsewhere seem to be at points of transition. And not easy transition, but painful and wrenching transition, either because of illness, sudden car accidents, break-ups, career changes, and many others. In the arena of there being three legs to the life stool (love and friendship, home, and work), it seems many of us are afraid our stools aren't standing up well enough to hold us.

This book is a beautiful example of how to trust these moments and just keep going... I'll share bits through the time I read it, because I think it is worth writing about more than once.

image: pictoscribe via flickr.

My animal familiar

This is pretty much the best animal equivalent I can offer of my emotional state recently. Amazing how you can run along and then suddenly life startles you into a faint. Ay carumba. Happy friday...