Tell me how you do it
I'm feeling stuck. I come here to write, to share, and I just look at the screen. It's been an intense couple of weeks. The end of a semester. A dear friend visiting with a heavy heart. A week of being "on" at all times with the boys. Not enough sleep. Deadlines, still, always. This is my "vacation" time and I'm struggling with deciding what to tackle on the infinite to-do list that has been accumulating while I've been studying and writing. Hard to give myself permission to just read Bossypants and nap.
Do you feel like you can really, truly, unwind and relax in your own home? Tell me how you do it. I need some instructions.
These are things that happen
These are things that happen when I circle back into this present that is mine: sunburn on unaccustomed cheeks; blisters on my palms after an afternoon in leather gloves raking lawn debris; the unexpected delirium of forsythia and daffodils; bumblebees; wet marks on my knees from kneeling to look among the clover.
I cannot help myself: I slip into a neighbor’s yard and pluck a handful of daffodils, carrying them in a closed warm fist up the drive, pulling the boys behind me in the red wagon with the other. I grin secretively the whole way. I smile rinsing dishes; but am near to tears when the red-winged blackbird swoops low across my path. These ordinary things stun me. The way my life folds back around me, and this is where I am: in the thick of spring, at the end of a dirt road, with a restless cat, two boys, and a writing deadline waiting for the evening.
All day the sky was blue; all day it was just me and them; two changeable constants. Mood swings, bare bellied tickles, cookies and milk, sand at the backdoor. Five loads of laundry; sun dappled sheets; jumping on the bed; exercise.
It will be this way all week: just me and them the sky. T is out of town on a business trip so it will be us, making the best of allergies and hilarity; less urgency, but no less full throttle: “look mommy, look! Did you see, did you see?” So this is what I’ve been missing.
tonight
“Mommy,” he says, sitting up like a small bird in his top bunk, “I just have the feeling stuck in my head that the lightening can strike and kill me. “ I can’t see his eyes, but I know they’re huge; red rimmed from allergies, lashes so long they get crisscrossed when he rubs them.
I’ve been in class since one; in meetings since eight this morning. I’ve had a cumulative fourteen hours of sleep in the past three days. There are circles under my eyes; I haven’t exercised; deadlines still defining every waking hour.
I hear him sniffle, rub his nose, squirm under the covers, his thin torso still propped up on an elbow. I can see his silhouette: he’s watching the window, even though the shades are shut.
I want to snap at: Stop being silly. You’re fine. Go to sleep. I want to plunk the little one into his crib instead of holding him in my lap, rocking as he squirms around, not settled either, also anxious about the storm that has arrived suddenly, just as T drove off for a meeting. I can feel the impatience thick on my tongue.
Instead I take a breath. I zero in. I let the breath expand the place where my ribs join; let my love for these two boys flood me like the storm.
“It’s okay," I say softly. "I’m right here. Mama will be right here,” and then I begin to whisper, “Shush, shushhhhhh.”
And the lightening comes, the thunder comes, the sky grows dark, darker. The windows pelt with rain, and I rock and whisper and then begin to softly sing Brahms’ lullaby, until I can feel Sprout’s body soften, his hair suddenly damp and warm with the onset of sleep. And I keep singing.
I keep singing as the lightening lights up the room, once, twice, six times, twelve. I lose count and keep singing until I can hear Bean settle, curling like a small animal in his covers. I sing until they are breathing in time, steadily, evenly, with the sweet magic of sleep.
what it's like :: midweek
Dark to light, then light to dark: a filigree of shadows on the windowsill, a spattering of rain on the outside of the glass.
I spend the day mostly in doors, watching the world from windows, focused, determined, tired, anxious, triumphant, moody, and delighted at once. I look toward the near future of concurrent deadlines and feel the way my heart pummels my ribcage for more breathing room, more time spent doing little, but that’s not what this time is about. This time is about passion and pushing through: when the hours are fractions, the minutes precious, and the outcomes hopeful.
I leave in the morning carrying fried egg sandwiches; drink too much coffee; and spend the first half of every week mostly sitting, creating things in abstractions: in pixels, in code, in words.
I drive down the muddy road, navigating ruts so deep they suck the wheels in and cause the underbelly of the car to scrape. I drive past feels burgeoning with runoff, past new grass starting to be green, past the trees fluffy with buds, past the coltsfoot like a thousand small suns blooming at the side of the road.
Some days I drive in silence. It’s the most I can do to true to some kind of center: following one thought after the next, listening to my heartbeat, finding my breath.
Other days I’m too exhausted, and I need a different kind of force to make my inner compass stay the course. I put on bon iver, white hinterland, adele, and turn the volume up until I can feel it in my pulse.
I go, say yes, do, create, ask, answer, appease, promise, push, pull, question, stumble, fall down, get up, try again. And then again, all over, and again.
When I come home some days under a twilight sky, and I find the full throttle mess of the house. I can’t win with the laundry. I never could, but now I don’t even try. A clean pile is better than a dirty pile; forget about matching socks. I come home to the prospect of dinner: sometimes made by T, sometimes an abstraction I must dream up from the bare shelves of the fridge when neither of us have had the time to stop and replenish.
It’s an underfoot, all at once, messy, strenuous, silly, glorious time: dinner, with my three guys. Teaching the boys ones manners at the table is an endless, often hilarious uphill battle. They are primal: they want to eat with their hands. They want to make us laugh. Blowing bubbles into milk never gets old. Stuffing cookies into their mouths whole seems to be the only way to eat them. Then teeth brushing straight way; snuggles; books; pajamas; bed.
I sing to them in the dark, and it’s often then that I get a glimpse of the long view: how this time is so perfect and fleeting, how they’ll be teenagers in an instant, and I’ll be so much farther on my path. And I grin, looking forward to it, and grin being in it, even when there isn’t enough time to pause, or hesitate, or linger for but a moment. Then I turn the lights out, kiss their soft cheeks, and return to the brightly lit corner of my studio where projects are waiting to unfold.
hello, sunday
Hello rain and wind and skies torn like shreds of cotton. Hello blue and green, poplar pollen and birch catkins. Hello little boys playing with friends in the sandbox. Hello deadlines.
Oh yes. Deadlines. On them like honey butter on toast today. Still, I wanted to drop in + share a few things I've stumbled into this week that I simply love:
♥ Skinny Love cover by the amazingly talented 14 year old Birdy.
Noise Trade. (More awesome music.)
Over my shoulder by Gracia + Louise.
Little Indian Girl ~ a must read for any mama with a quirky/different/special kid. Oh how I love the way Alegra writes.
What have you found this week that you love? Share please. I need rewards for pushing through the mountains of work that lie between now and next weekend.
Right now
Between now and the end of the semester is a complex choreography of dividing every hour into fractions. There is persistence, determination, and an unavoidable lack of sleep.
Between now and the end of the semester there is a book deadline: the revised chapter titles; and another chapter. I dream in type. I dream the Scrivner interface. I dream sentences, and when I wake feel myself swimming towards the now of this book, this chapter, this day, with everything I have.
Between now and the end of the semester spring will bloom for certain, the buds on the lilacs tell me so. The grass will sing syren songs. The peepers will show up. The air will warm. And I will be indoors hunched with terrible posture at my desk, making things happen.
And right now: there are so many things I should be working on that I don't know how to start. Every project feels like a glass ball. Which one do I toss into the air first? What do you do when you reach a point like this? How do you take the first step toward the rest?
My Tuesday Muse
This boy and I get to spend Tuesday mornings together, and how I love this time. He is my muse, this little one. He reaches for the world, grinning, offering joy, laughter, and his face upturned for kisses, cheeks jammy, eyes sparkling. How I love him.
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Also--My guest post is up over at 3six5 today. Go take a peak. It's such a cool blog--and just got nominated for a Webby!
Feeling the beat
Today I got to interview two more amazing artists for my interactive documentary project and it was just about the coolest thing ever to watch Mikey Welsh paint, and see the easy smile spread across Steve Budington’s face as he read this Leo Steinburg quote aloud:
"A work of art does not come like a penny postcard with its value stamped upon it; for all its objectives, it comes primarily as a challenge to the life of the imagination, and ‘correct’ ways of thinking or feeling about it simply do not exist. The grooves in which thought and feelings will eventually run have to be excavated before anything but bewilderment and resentment is felt at all."
.
Pretty damn awesome. When I drove away from Welsh’s studio, my head was bursting with ideas and I had the music blaring.
I’ve been doing that lately: cranking up the volume and letting the music take over. It’s something I never, ever in a million years would have done even two years ago. I never really had a thing for music: never let it in; never let it move me.
I’m not sure why, except I grew up in an ultra quiet house with only classical and the unquestioned opinion that all other music was somehow not as....what?
It is so crazy to unpack my outmoded perceptions. Being in grad school is doing that: putting me in the boxing ring with my perceptions and letting the old me and the new me duke it out. It gets messy sometimes.
But the music thing has just been awesome.
It's also something I’ve found as an thread that connects many of the artist’s stories. Music is the lingua franca of the creative mind in motion, maybe. I’m getting that now; I’m feeling it wholly. I'm letting myself slip into good tunes in a way that I never entirely have, loosing myself for a few seconds, singing at the top of my lungs and grinning with the windows rolled down and the cold spring air rushing in; or running hard to a good song on the treadmill.
I'm curious what your experience with music is. And I also want to know: what music are you loving right now? I want to branch out and explore. I need some good tunes to get me through the end of the semester!
on my path
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations--
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.
~ Mary Oliver
+++
Thank you, thank you for your words! I'm soaking them up as I plunge into an intense week with tight deadlines for school, facing things I don't know how to do and time constraints I don't know how to meet. I'm so excited to share this book. To make it good, and true, and beautiful. I love that it has illustrations, and can't wait to share some peaks at my process with you, just as soon as I come up to breathe again.
Today I sit at my kitchen table by a vase of iris and roses (thank you my sweet sister!) and watch fat wet snow fall hard. I keep coming up against the boundaries of what I'm capable of in code (Action Script 3.0), and keep fumbling until I get beyond them. This process takes hours, with hardly anything to show, and I'd be frustrated except that none of it really matters, save for how I'm learning, always and again from what I cannot yet do. From every misstep, I learn the location of solid ground; from every failed attempt, wrong turn, or narrow miss, I find my path more clearly.
The Big Deal
I am driving toward home. The road is rutted, and wet spring snow is falling in a blur against the windshield. There is the froth from a cappuccino from my favorite coffee place in a paper cup beside me, and good tunes on the stereo and I’m returning from two more interviews, my mind is brimming with the way these stories that I’m gathering all circle back to this:
Do what you love. Say yes. Risk everything. Practice, and practice some more. Then do it all again.
And then I’m at my mail box and all week I’ve been opening it looking, waiting to find the fat envelope I’m expecting. The promise, the whole thing spelled out in ink and official forms, and today it was there, and I signed and slipped the papers into a new envelope and stuck them on the wide bay window sill by the door so I won’t forget to bring them to the post office to send out by certified mail first thing in the morning.
And just like that: I’ve signed a book deal.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Life In The Present Tense: A Field Guide To Now will be published by Globe Pequot Press and available in book stores in September of 2012!
I’ve been waiting because it feels so good, so almost too good to be true good, that I wanted everything singed and sealed before I shared here.
Because this is it. This is the beginning of the rest of my life. The beginning of what I want more than any other thing, and it’s happening.
It’s happening because of your backing, and encouragement and trust in my process and my heart is wide ocean of gratitude.
My editor,* Mary Norris, found the book via Kickstarter and has been pushing me the past several months to hone my proposal and dig into my vision of what I picture for this book and it’s oh so good.
An I can’t wait to finally start sending out the long promised backer rewards. Cannot wait to make prints, and pull together postcards, and chapter snippets and a podcasts and sneak peaks and just pure goodness. Stay tuned.
* Yes! I finally get to say that. It feels amazing.
++
A week or two ago I found is the scrap of paper on which I scribbled this dream, before I could even imagine how it might be possible.
It's proof: ask, and the universe answers.
Do what you love. Say yes. Risk everything. Practice, and practice some more. Then do it all again.
All the love in the world,
Christina
Utter failings and exquisite truths
It hit me today while I was running that I don’t tell stories here nearly as much as I used to and I miss it, and I can see that you must miss it because the comments dwindle when I post sporadically and tersely with just a few scraps of observation from my day. And the truth is, your comments mean the world to me: not their quantity so much as their depth. I love what you have to say. I love how you see your worlds, and how you see mine. And the truth is, my readers here have saved my life many times over, and I mean that with no hyperbole at all.
When I started this blog six years ago it was my only creative outlet: I’d just move to a new town with my husband and six month old Bean, and I had no friends living within five hundred miles of me, not to mention no friends anywhere with children. This blog was my lifeline. I laugh now when I tell people, but I truly got at least 90% of all my parenting advice for raising Bean from the people who shared their lives through their blogs, and who shared my life by commenting here.
And gradually, I found my voice here, through telling stories about my kids, my muddy dirt roads, my heart full of wanderlust, my hunger for doing more and seeing more and being more; because you were listening.
I dreamed the idea for my book here; I shared the news of Sprout’s arrival here; I spilled the messiness and heartache of tenuous times here and man, I am so, so grateful for the inspiration, insight, and pure awesome that you bring to my life.
All this to say: I want to share more here, not less. I want to keep having this space be a place that I go to find my center: to find my words and hear your words. And it’s sort of slipped off the map a little in the past months because holy hell, grad school is no small thing.
I’m in the midst of cool project for school this week; an interactive documentary, to be exact. (Though if you ask me what an interactive documentary is, I’ll have to say wait and see—because I haven’t found a single example of what it is I’m trying to do. It requires action script code, and video editing, and interviewing, and graphic design and interaction design and animation. See?)
At it’s core is a series of video interviews with local artists who are all utterly brilliant, and intimidating, and awesome. They’re the kind of people I want as mentors. The kind of artists who have made it big time in their fields. The kind of artists who make me proud and terrified to call myself an artist.
I can’t wait to share it, but it I’ve still got a couple of weeks of work; and a lot of learning to do.
Right now it’s pushing me beyond every single boundary I have.
I’m interviewing people I never met; I’m designing a browser interface that accounts for emergent interactions; I’m learning to make lines do what I want them to do in Illustrator. This all but petrifies me.
But mostly the interviewing people I haven’t met part.
I’m good once I get to know someone, but those first awkward moments are a heat flash away from pure agony. Add to that the fact that I’m shooting video (a thing I am learning to do on the fly, as I go) and oh lord. Deep breaths.
Today I interviewed Maura Campbell who is fierce and fiery and passionate about her craft. My batteries died in my HD Flip just before the end; and then further embarrassment ensued because I couldn’t figure out how to open the damn thing. (Thank god for smart phones. I had the how-to googled in under a minute.)
Really. This happened.
And even though I was mortified, I was thrilled, because here’s the thing: I knew, even in the moment, that the battery malfunction I was having was just another way of falling down.
And learning to fall is necessary in learning to fly, or leap, or risk anything. Because it’s the people fall and recover that become rockstars and superheroes. It’s the ones who fall and get up time and again that discover how to make their dreams fly.
And if there’s one thing that has really gelled for me this winter it’s been this:
Falling is ok. Failing is part of the process. Doing both with frightening frequency means I’m pushing beyond my comfort zones, and that I’m learning. Big time.
Also that bravery doesn’t come from waiting for the perfect opportunity or knowing everything in advance, or getting it right the first time. Bravery comes from googling how the hell to open your video camera and replace batteries in the middle of an interview, and then recovering composure.
And at the end of the interview when we were standing in her paper strewn office, and she was telling me about how writing is requires being utterly selfish with one’s time, I asked her the question I always want to ask every creative person that I come into contact with: How do you balance this with the rest of your life? How do you do this and children?
And in not so few words her answer was this: you do the only thing that you can. When her kids were small, she wrote, fervently, in the center of the living room as her kids, four of them, twirled around her. When they were bigger, she retreated to her bedroom, leaving them with the warning: interrupt only with blood, or fire.
And that’s what makes her brilliant.
It has nothing to do with balance, with being a ‘perfect’ mother, or with having the right time and the right place to begin. It has to do simply with persisting. . With daring to dive every day towards what you love to do most. Always.
And it was such an awesome interview because I got to be reminded of that.
closer now
Hunger brings them close, but I don't see them at first; I'm at the sink filling a water jug for the chickens, watching the water spill across the dirty dishes left for later and then I glance.
The sunlight moves, and in the shadows they're there. Six deer, maybe more. They move like quiet trees, they move like shadows. Their fur is dappled with the sun. They cannot know that inside, on the windowsill the branches I've brought in are blooming now. Forsythia, yellow and urgent with what's to come.
Outside I walk across hard packed snow, the mud turned back to ice; my breath rising in clouds, my nostrils flaring in the cold. 14 degrees and it's nearing the end of March.
This is when I forget everything (dandelions, the smell of lilacs, the song of the peepers): just before it happens
+++
Some inspiration I've been finding:
This gorgeous painting (and all of her paintings really).
My Heart Wanders. Don't you just want to pick this book up and thumb through it?
This poem. You simply must go read it.
And these words. So true.
Where are you finding inspiration? What are your days like now in early spring?
My favorite part
Sprout still sleeps like a baby: his arms thrown up above his head, pacifier in his mouth, legs askew. His hair is almost damp and soft, so soft; his fingers curled into his palms.
Bean sleeps with long legs pulled up to his chest, on his side, curled with a hand under his cheek. He's kicked his covers off the way he always does, and I replace them, tugging them softly up around his chin.
It's this that is my favorite part: the way the day ends and I have them.
That they're mine; these two boys.
And even when I'm gone pulling long hours and making dreams come true, they're ready whenever I return to yell "Mommy!" as I come through the door; to throw themselves at my waist, sticky-handed and too loud, the house a tumult of their messes.
(Being their mother is one of the best things in the world.)
Things that delight me
Spring riding today: blue squares all the way. Easy turns. Wide grins.
Buying a new moleskine. The reporter kind with plain white pages. I the way the pages feel flimsy and effortless; the way ink shows through & the way words tumble after each other to be put down there in my messy handwriting.
A secret I can't wait to share really, really soon.
The way the light lasts longer and longer every day.
Mapping out my schedule for summer and blocking off whole days for writing, no excuses. (Or perhaps I have the best excuse.)
What are six things you're delighted by today?
The Unnamed
I keep thinking of the people, unnamed who wake up in the morning, leave their houses and return to the Fukushima plant wearing frail protective gear and thicker prayers to protect their bodies soaking up more radiation than is reasonable, sustainable, possible.
Do they say goodbye in the morning? Do they kiss the kids and women and men that they love? Do they wail uncontrollably in their cars driving towards the reactor, or are they convinced, confident and cool?
What does it feel like to be a civilian volunteered up for this enormous task: insurmountable and devastating both now, and in years from now when their white blood cells drop or tumors spread, when their hands quaver and their minds grow dim? What does it feel like to go unnamed so long, to return day after day, failing, hopeful, frantic, resigned?
I keep picturing them standing in their kitchens in the morning eating bowls of steaming broth, but their kitchens have likely been destroyed. Their homes, neighborhoods, all of it. So where do they go at night? And where do the others go, also unnamed, the thousands without shelter, food, heat?
My hands flurry across the keyboard until they end with the sentence above and then they stall. I start, stop, delete, start again.
I can't think of words that fill the gap in my chest; the ache; the way my heart is filled with everything: hope, promise, prayer, sadness, wonder.
Outside snowflakes are falling from a clear sunny sky, like crystals, weightless and glittering. The sun has risen, and the sap is rising, and the earth, tilted a little farther on its axis, is turning here towards spring.
A kind of prayer
Today I want to remember the way the orchids turn to the light; how heat waves rise from woodstove; and how cat’s purring vibrates up through my thin ankle bones where she has curled against my foot, the rhythmic whirring of her content traveling up my shin bones into the soft muscle of my calf.
Today I want to remember how tiredness makes me fragile; how I feel like something insignificant and slight, like paper tossed to the wind, and how I want to fold hope around my heart like a paper shield; a fleet of fluttering cranes.
What can anyone say now? What can we do except offer up what we have, and feel the way the urgency and tragedy as it fills up our own small lives with poignancy and grace and devastation?
Here, the world is softening; the swelling buds make the stark silhouette of twigs less distinct and edgy, and the hillsides are dappled with snowmelt and mud, and I’ll take hope wherever I can find it.
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Now we go down the muddy road
We go out because there is nothing else we can do. Staying indoors and getting work done is like trying to hold water in my palms; the boys slip out before I can stop them. Sprout barely has his boot’s on and Bean has run away ahead carrying a summer umbrella. I chase after carrying mittens, hats.
The big one is almost flying: wind catching the umbrella as he makes the turn. And from a distance his slight body has lifted off the ground.
I remember.
I once jumped off a toolshed as a girl. There was a wind storm. I held an umbrella high above me. It was the only thing I wanted: to fly. And it seemed so inevitable, so certain that I’d just lift off. I didn't hesitate at all.
I don’t remember falling. Though it’s certain I did because I’m here aren’t I? Or have I just forgotten some secret magic of childhood where flying is less impossible; where dreams blink in and out of reality just like shooting stars?
Now we go down the muddy road and everything is running quick, quicker: our feet, the snowmelt, the sap in every thick trunked tree and slender willow. Under the banks of snow at the edge of the road muddy water rushes: rivulets gathering and spilling, seeking downhill; seeking the eventual streambed, the pond, the river, the lake, the ocean.
The boys are soaked in seconds but giddy with the late afternoon sunlight and the softness of the air. They find sticks to poke in snowy holes; carve miniature rivers; make dams of snow.
Beneath our feet, slush the color of maple sugar. And though it is still long before the purple of crocuses;when I look up I can see the slight red fatness of buds on the maples. A swelling promise. Sweetness soon. And this weekend: daylight savings already.
Being Right (brained)
When I started snowboarding, I started with my left foot forward on the board. It’s the standard way to do it. Go to the mountain and you’ll see: almost everyone has their left foot first, and at first I didn’t even think to question it. Except that it was wild to try to get my brain to conform to the movement. For the first two times we went to the mountain I had to perform complex mental acrobatics to be able to get myself down the mountain. I had to visualize every single turn, and it felt strange and unfamiliar, but I couldn’t put my finger on what the feeling meant to me.
At first I thought it was just part of the process of learning this new sport. I’d ride the lift, fall off getting off, stand, clip my bindings and then begin my elaborate inner dialogue. I’d have to talk myself through each and every turn, as though I were translating the action to my brain from another language. And I’d make it to the bottom, baffled and astounded by the difficulty.
I’m not brilliantly coordinated by any stretch; but I am athletic and strong. And it felt strange to me that I couldn’t get beyond my own mind; that after two trips to the mountain I still couldn’t ride without extreme mental focus.
Then I talked to some friends who are boarders and one kindly told me to stand and then pushed me hard from behind.
I stumbled forward, right foot first.
“Ha!” she laughed. “You’re goofy footed. Try putting your bindings the other way around.”
I promptly got my bindings switched and the next time we went to the mountain the process was awkward, but already I could feel my body taking over. After a few runs, my mind grew quiet and my muscles began to lead: my body moving to it’s own remarkable choreography of balance and motion, my mind present only in the sensation.
Yesterday I was carving beautiful arcs down the mountain, and I could feel the way the motion was suddenly natural to me. Half down a run by myself I started laughing because everything suddenly came together for me: of course I’m right footed. I’m also right brained.
Because it is.
I’ve been trying to work within a left brained paradigm. Spreadsheets, for example: they feel almost painfully unnatural to me. Linear organization has always felt lacking. I can’t wrap my mind around rows of numbers without some form of translation. I’m always drawing pictures and diagrams to make things make sense.
And I realize now that part of my unresolved relationship with money comes from telling myself certain left brained myths: that successful entrepreneurs are left brained, MBA, straight talking folk who crush on Excell; and strategic business plans and growing money can only be approached through crunching data.
Pam Slim spoke at the RBBS a few days ago and I found myself relating deeply to what she had to say.
Pam shared that she grew up in a rich neighborhood, but without a lot of money, and reflected on how this shaped her view about money for a long time: "Things are imprinted from a young age. I remember always hearing my mom worry about money. There were some things that were set in my psyche about money early on."
Such as “Good people make teacher’s salaries” and for a long time when she didn’t “want to be greedy” about asking her full worth.
But asking her full worth is what has enabled Pam to become an investor in the causes she is passionate about.
That struck a chord. I want to give more than just being in the trenches. I want to invest.
I also loved this little bit of advice that she gave: “Document your assumptions every month. You forget what your assumptions are and you can’t measure your progress and make adjustments unless you revisit your assumptions regularly.”
So. Here’s to documenting assumptions.
What are yours?
Money, Passion + Vision
I've been coming to some big smashing realizations lately about money: making it, growing it, attracting it, and managing it. And about all the crazy, peculiar attitudes towards money that I was surrounded with growing up.
I know, right? This is so not a subject I'd usually write about here, but that's part of my breakthrough. I've silently harbored all sorts of inherited attitudes and assumptions about money for long enough. I'm ready to slough off, dig deep, and start fresh.
See, here's the thing: I came from a family that was poor by choice. Crazy, right?
My parents were poor because they were committed to work with a higher purpose. They were altruistic, spiritually minded, and broke. Always.
We never had enough money for any frivolity: fashion was scorned (because we could not afford it;) after-school sports shunned (no money for uniforms of for the extra gas to drive me to & from practice;) and and people in our community who devoted their careers to earning high pay checks were regarded as selfish, self absorbed, egotistical, or worst of all: materialistic.
I didn't really question any of it for a very long time. In fact I bought it all. Hook line and sinker. I'd say things like "Money isn't important to me. What I really want to do is change the world." Or: "I don't really care about money, all I care about is making a difference."
And you know what? That's bullshit. What does it matter if you grow the capacity of your own soul immensely, if the isolation of poverty limits you to affecting only yourself? Even Pema Chodron and Ticht Naht Hanh leverage the significant sums of money available to them to extend their reach: affecting thousands upon thousands of people. It's money that makes it possible for them to travel; to speak at workshops, to write books, to act on their inner fire.
I've started to dig to the bottom of all this in part because I've found my tribe at the Right Brainers in Business Video Summit (which is awesome by the way.) And in part because I've been following Danielle Laporte for a long enough to feel like her approach is finally getting under my skin (in the very best of ways.)
I love her unabashed way of aiming for it all: for the tripple bottom line AND changing the world. She is both a humanist AND an entrepreneur. She gives like crazy; she is ethical, she is fierce. She is someone who who is growing her soul AND selling her soul.
This is big. To find myself here, facing all the strange ambiguity I have towards standing in my own power around money. It's complex, confusing, and awesome. What better thing could I be doing at the start of spring? It's time for rebirth and growth and transformation. Pow! Spring cleaning taken to the nth degree.
So of course I'm curious. Really curious: what were (are) the attitudes towards money that you grew up with? How have they shaped your world view? How do these attitudes influence what you do?
Do you believe you are worthy of making a fat paycheck? Do you feel like your creative work can be richly rewarded financially? What are your hang ups? What are your success stories?