A creative loophole:

That perfect letter. The wishbone, fork in the road, empty wineglass. The question we ask over and over. Why? Me with my arms outstretched, feet in first position. The chromosome half of us don’t have. Second to last in the alphabet: almost there. Coupled with an L, let’s make an adverb. A modest X, legs closed. Y or N? Yes, of course. Peas sign reversed. Mercedes Benz without the O.

Y, a Greek letter, joined the Latin alphabet after the Romans conquered Greece in the first century—a double agent: consonant and vowel. No one used adverbs before then, and no one was happy.


~ From Y, by Marjorie Celona, originally from the Indiana Review, republished in Best American Non-Required Reading 2008.

How can you not be inspired, like I was, reading this, to pose and consider everything remarkable about a letter? Maybe your first initial, or your last. I'm on the lookout every day for opportunities like this: to slip through an open doorway, an imaginative loophole, a slight tear in the fabric of all that right now insists. Because everything is happening at once, as it always is. Everything converging. Projects, deadlines, discoveries, presentations. It’s easy for me to just put my head down and run hard without stopping, without looking, without pausing for a handful of moments to practice doing what I love the most. And I found this to be the perfect thing to do today, mid week, now, on the seventeenth of November, with the world blue and brown and quiet with the promise of snow, amid everything else.


At the back door there are leaves that the wind’s tossed up in heaps, brown and crackling under our feet as we make a bonfire with friends, roast marshmallows and press them between crumbly graham crackers with chocolate; drink cappuccinos, and watch the children play. They take rakes with bamboo tines and heap the leaves until one or all of them are buried, laughter rising up with the sparks toward the night sky that is full of ink and diamonds; such a mess of grandeur, are the heavens above us.


The children turn on the porch lights; four boys in hats, leaves eddying up in the dark. Their shadows are eerie and huge across the grass, and then up in the sky, the waning gibbous moon, a pregnant C up there with the spilled milk of the universe, the faintest shadow of its darker side also there, barely illuminated: a C in reverse.


C: The letter that is at once the contents and the container, the balance of negative and positive space, the curve of palms, cupped, holding a bowl, and also the shape of the bowl. It is curiosity, and the top bit of a question mark in reverse. The final slight line in a pair of parenthesis, the pause of a comma, the arc of a story, a a smile turned on it’s side. It is the consonant that invokes creativity, the third letter of the alphabet, the symbol for chemical concentration, the speed of light in a vacuum, the abbreviation for carat, century, constant, cubic. It is the first note in C major, and the way my name begins.

It's your turn!

***

Take 5 minutes. See what you can write about a letter. Or share a link an image or post and I’ll be sure to take a peak.

An inventory of things found on my studio floor:

Things found on the floor of my studio: A blue letter O; two puzzle pieces; a small rocket ship; a cardboard tile with the word COMETS on it; a very small sticker stuck to the floorboards that says "Road Closed" in black against orange; another sticker, artfully pressed into a knot in the floorboards that says "YES" in all caps; a small black wheel; a spool of turquoise thread; a solitary striped sock; a red matchbox car; 1 pacifiers; 7 hair ties; countless snippets. I can only trace the origins of the final two from that inventory. This is what happens when I work in my studio with children underfoot.

It's such good practice though, to slow down enough to take an inventory of the details around you. Try it: Can you notice five unusual things within an arms reach? What are they?

Inspiration for daily art: lines + marks

1. Mine. 2. Collage Tipograficamente, 3. Collage and acrylic, 4. collage-067, 5. Collage 6x6 # 6, 6. collage-064, 7. Watercolor Collage

Hello! I wanted to share a few pieces that have been inspiring me as I continue with Daily Art, trying to make pieces that are simple; that play with positive and negative space; with online lines + marks or color. I am exploring what it means to make something quickly. To just do make something--following following through with the act of putting something on the page because this is what I committed to do. I am trying to slip into a grove of doing this as a creative habit, without worrying about meaning or intent or composition, as a way to exhale a little.

“Turning something into a ritual eliminates the question, Why am I doing this? By the time I give the taxi driver directions, it’s too late to wonder why I’m going to the gym and not snoozing under the warm covers of my bed….

It’s a simple act but doing it the same way each morning habitualizes it–makes it repeatable, easy to do. It reduces the chance that I would skip it or do it differently. it is one more item in my arsenal of routines, and one less thing to think about…” ~ Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit

If you're feeling brave, join us! Just a few simple marks on a page; a photo; a squiggled line; a bit of fabric sewn. This is a way to pay homage to your creative heart.

xoxo, Christina

Daily Art + Unabashed joy

I watch my son sitting across the table from me in the golden afternoon light, drawing. He draws effortlessly, without thinking of it as a creative act. It is simply a means, a process, a discovery. Every morning before school he draws; every afternoon, he produces copiously, without caution, without expectation. He makes pictures because they are adventure: the representations of the story track running in his head. He draws in a way that is utterly his own. Complex lines: cogs, wheels, wires, motors. He draws pitched roofs and internal stairways, porch lights and door bells, cars with drive-shafts, oceanscapes with pirate ships, secret potion machines, fantastical creatures, and night skies filled with five pointed stars. These, he’s just mastered, and he draws them in everything now, along with words and letters, filling up secretive corners on every page where he practices invented spelling; summoning the magic of phonemes and consonants to make word sounds.

And he draws all of it, without even realizing the work, the effort, the certain shortcomings of his ability; he draws all of it joyfully, filling page after page with deep, wholehearted practice.

I’m in awe of this. Of him, now, at six and a half, before self doubt has any leverage at all; before there are any inklings of “perfect,” in his bright mind. Before this effortless creating slips away and the unwanted cacophony of standards, criticisms, expectations, and reviews fill its place.

Now there is simply the joy of drawing lines for the sake of it: Drawing without any critique at all, without any consideration for audience or perception. His art is the work of wholly self-absorbed wonder, and I am taking notes.

This week I have been asking: What do I need to do to allow myself to create as recklessly and easily?

What creative constraints do I need to put in place to quiet the analytical chatter at the back of my mind, ever full of commentary, critique, and doubt?

When I was finishing the illustrations for my book I discovered the immense power of creative constraints: Of having certain parameters that defined the scope of the work. I have found that for me, incredible creative force emerges under such circumstances, and in the context of daily practice, I’ve been experimenting with constraints as a way to short circuit my inner critic, and find my way back to the simple joyful state of art as play; of making as wonder; of creating as joy.

This week, I’ve been inviting myself to show up for 15 minutes to make a piece of art—and to be joyfully, gently, gratefully satisfied with whatever emerges from that process. As V-Grrrl commented in my last post, "I’m first and foremost a writer"... and I know this resonates with many of you as well. But there is something so profound about working with images. It’s good cross training, at the very least: to slip out of your comfort zone, and create with the pure raw material of image.

I’m going to keep doing this for the entire month of November, sharing my pieces every week in this set, and I am wondering:

What if you were to join me? What if you were to you accept this invitation, and explore your child-self; your creative, adventurer heart?

THIS IS YOUR INVITATION.

I’ve created DAILY ART flickr pool here

...if you’d like to join me on this adventure... I'll be posting more observations and discoveries about ways to get started this week...if this is something that you'd like me to share... I would SO LOVE to have you join me.

I'm also curious: When was the last time you remember being creative without worrying about meeting a deadline, or if you were "doing it right" or being "good enough"? When do you find yourself slipping into an un-judging creative groove?

An autumn glimpse + Do What You Love Shared Stories Feature:

Just wanted to share these photos from a woodland walk with my sweet Sprout yesterday afternoon. It's such a different pace: To go with just him through the woods, noticing, looking, laughing. It was a good break between projects and potty training and school pick up and all the other "shoulds" and "musts" of a busy Monday.

Also, I wanted to let you know that a some of my words + images about creative process and finally doing the work that I love are up over at Do What You Love: Shared Story Series this week.

What work do you love? Does it make it to your daily to-do list?

A glimpse into my studio right now:

Working on illustrations for the book. Mixed media collage + digital + graphite sketches.

//

Also: A midsummer migrane; cicadas singing into late evening.; trying to remember to drink enough water + follow garment care instructions for washing; wishing for decompression; wrapping up projects for the summer semester; singing songs to Sprout until he falls asleep in my arms (a rare occasion for us both.)

Two Necessary Reminders:

Brilliant advice from Brian Buirge + Jason Bacher

And this:

When we trust ourselves, we become both more humble and more daring. When we trust ourselves, we move surely. There is no unnecessary strain in our grasp as we reach out to meet life. There is no snatching at people and events, trying to force them to give us what we think we want. We become what we are meant to be. It is that simple. We become what we are, and we do it by being who we are, not who we strive to be. ~ From The Sound of Paper by Julia Cameron

Maybe this

Walking up from the garden the wild daisies will shout your name. You will pause on a mown path among waist high wild grass, and stare and the small white flowers that reach up and up on slender branching stalks like little stars, and you will wonder how you never noticed them before. You will stand there in the summer heat and wonder how it became summer at all. The heat will lick at your skin, the thermometer registering 96 degrees, the sky hazy and bare save for distant thunderheads that trundle up against the edges of the horizon, white and pale pink with early evening.

It will be past eight. Crickets will be chirring in the grass, and below you in the neighbor’s pond a bullfrog will sing its tuba song. You will stand there looking at the way everything has gone right on living without your attention. The evidence of summer’s fecundity is everywhere: wild grapes are taking over the apple tree, blackberry brambles crowd the path; and each year the wildflower meadow presses more urgently against the deer netting you’ve staked up to claim a small plot of soil as your own for cucumbers and tomatoes.

You’ll stand there looking and looking as though you’re starving for this very thing: these daisies and wild asters, this tangle of grass, these swallows swooping low. And maybe you will realize that you have become homesick for this very thing: for summer, the way summer is, and for you in it.

And though there are things that you must do: screens to sit in front of, dishes to be washed; you’ll pull on a swimsuit instead, take a dark blue towel and walk barefoot down the gravel drive, along the dusty road and up the hill. There will be a fence, but the gate will be open and you’ll slip through onto the neighbor’s land and then down toward the small spring fed pond.

The path will be newly cut. The grass will cling between your toes. The quiet will be full of sound: sheep, frogs, the trilling of evening birds, the hum of mosquitoes.

As you walk you might hear a screen door slam. Lights will glow yellow in the windows of houses, and when you arrive at the pond the water will be black.

You will slip in, hands parting the water.

Maybe you will float on your back and watch the way the inverted world becomes a bowl. You’ll exhale in a way you’ve forgotten, with your whole lungs until your body begins to sink and then you’ll take another deep deep breath.

Maybe you will move as silently as you can from bank to bank, your eyes just above the surface, the sky rippling as you move through it.

Maybe you will float until your body finds its balance. Until you can lie perfectly still, suspended, your back a beautiful curve, arms above your head, feet falling down to where the water’s colder.

Above you the sky will turn to rose and then violet. Bats will cross the heavens. Frogs will call in a sing song back and forth across the pond. And finally without really meaning to, your eyes will find the first star of the evening, right there above you.

Eventually, you’ll climb out, pond water falling from your thighs and hair like tiny gems. The air will still be warm, but your skin will be cool and damp as you walk up the path. Maybe you will be inclined to run, like a child again. Maybe you'll laugh, as your feet twirl, your arms spread wide, your hear lifting off the nape of your neck like dark ribbons.

Maybe fireflies will mark path back home at the edges of the road. Maybe the air will be sweet with the fragrance of honeysuckle as you come up the drive.

The end of a really good week

We made chocolate chip cookie dough just for eating after dinner tonight; then wandered along the paths T just cut through the meadows. So many flowers. Grass up higher than the boys' heads. Bats swooping low above us. Sundown making everything golden and lavender.

This week was good. It was beyond needed: to have some time with my three boys. To write. To rest. To run. To recalibrate a little.

++

Sprout is suddenly, finally, talking in sentences. "My hands are filfy, Daddy!" he said tonight, holding up flour covered palms after rolling dough out for chapattis with me. Unlike bean who talked in sentences at about 18 months, sweet Sprout has taken his time. But now, in just the last week or two is words are tumbling out nonstop. He makes all of us happy. From the day he was born he's had this buddha presence: he is calm and centered and joy-filled and it rubs off on everyone around him. Bean adores him, even though they fight endlessly over ownership of insignificant objects: long sticks, particular crayons, certain books, matchbox cars.

Bean is all elbows and long legs. He rides a his new bike with gears and hand breaks like a pro, and gets up with aplomb and bravery when he takes a spill on uneven terrain, blood often running down a knee. He's decided wants to grow his hair long. For now we're kind of rolling with it. We lovingly call him mop-head. He wakes up with a tangled shock of semi-curls, and lures Sprout out of bed, and then the two of them come find us. It's still one of my favorite times of day, then, in those first moments of morning when we're all there together, still sleep and warm and trailing dreams.

++

The manuscript is now a complete draft. There are some rough chapters, but everything is there now, in place, in sequence, and my mind can hold it all at once. That's been so hard: I can't really explain it. There is something about the linear medium of the computer that makes it really challenging for me to see all the parts as a part of the whole. I went to UPS today and printed the whole thing at 1.5 spacing with wide margins for marking up. It's about an inch thick, and made things feel real in a way that they haven't until now:I'm writing a book. Really. Truly.

Now, if only I can stay in the groove when I get back into the swing of things at school + work.

+++

PS: I'm craving some new summer tunes. Do you have any suggestions?

Wednesday + Thursday { only this }

Last night gail force winds + ground lightening took our power out right at dinnertime. We went to my in-laws, made pizza and put the boys to bed there, then came home late to a still-dark house. Above us, stars, and in the woods so many owls. We followed a single flashlight up the stairs, and then we found our way to each other in the dark.

Tuesday {in pictures}

Hello friends.

I'm finding this so restful: to notice the small things of daily life and to share them here with you.

We've been keeping a jar of markers and fresh paper at hand for quiet times, and today had many moments where the boys just sat and colored. I love the way Sprout is learning to draw: circles first.

I made some fresh peach preserves yesterday with some not-so-great peaches. Just a little sugar + water + a hint of vanilla and they cooked down into something lovely to have on biscuits this morning.

Today was all dappled with sun and shade. I love the way the field grasses blow in the wind.

While I was writing Bean and T made a sign for our nightly visitors. Bean has since observed that perhaps he needs to add a checklist to clarify exactly what makes a skunk a bad one. We have several this year. We always do. T has twice encountered them in the coop, though they've yet to spray anyone. Still. Bad skunks take note.

Manuscript progress today for sure. It is wild to be working on something this big. It terrifies and thrills me in turns. I've decided to focus on just finishing the manuscript. Once it's in, all my backers will be rewarded (with a little extra surprise in addition to what they signed up for) for their patience. Until then, I imagine I'll be pretty quiet on that front: creating beautiful chapters.

What are you up to this week?

Always this

On the gravel drive, a sleek-skinned slug moving slowly, antennae swiveling about. A bumble bee, flying along side me as I run its wings moving a thousand times faster than my feet. Horses in the pasture, does at the edge of the woods, a new fawn, thrushes, blackbirds on the wire and buttercups by the armful strewn across the fields. This is my prayer, my alter here, to move among this tall clover, to run one foot after the next, and to take note of this always and again blooming glorious day

Community + belonging: online vs.offline

// Good morning. Here are a few glimpses of my favorite (new) place to get coffee. Bikes + bright, bold lattes and big reclaimed wood tables. A place to collide, connect + get work done... which has me wondering about a topic we've been discussing in class lately: what is the value of online communities vs. real world communities. How are they different? How are they the same?

Not social networks... but real communities that have similar functions and values to real world communities: places where like-minded people connect, share, participate, and exchange value.

I'm so looking forward to your thoughts.

What do online communities look like in your view? Where do you go online to share? To participate? To collaborate? Do you have a voice there? What about influence? Are you recognized? So curious to read what you think.

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Signs of life

Riding 33.2 miles per hour on a back country road does something for your soul. It makes you grin, for one. It makes your hair, pulled back in messy braids yank like kite strings in the wind. Being that close to the pavement you see things differently. No, you feel them. The fragrance from every newly blooming roadside flower hits you like a cloud blossoms: magnolias, cherry, daffodils in front of every farm house the color of breakfast: scrambled eggs and pale yellow butter.

Where the sun has been the longest the heat lifts off the road embracing your calves and thighs and bare arms with sudden softness and warmth; and in the shady pockets where the road dips down, the cold air comes at you like something from a dream.

You see things: beaver ponds abundant with newly chewed logs and saplings. Geese with long black legs and wide feet, paired off, nesting. Turkey buzzards with wings as wide as your arms, their shadows quick and black across the road. New lambs, some just days old, their knees knobby, their ears swivling at the whir of your wheels as you ride by. A bearskin tacked to the side of a woodshed; two women sitting on lawn chairs smoking cigarettes, their pale legs bare and almost glowing in the late afternoon son.

This is what happens when you stop holding so fiercely to what you must do: the world gets all up in your face with its green and manure and potholes, and it’s utterly glorious.

For 26 miles the only thing you think about is whatever is right in front of you: every pebble, sharp curve, rut, and roadside marsh. You see a blue egret on one leg; a swarm of insets illuminated in the mossy golden light; a hairy brown goat let loose to wander in front of a barn; a barefoot teenage boy with shoulder length hair walking up to the open door of a grey log house.

You feel only this: the way your body does this thing nearly effortlessly in concert with this sleek machine; improbably balancing, moving fast, faster, until it’s only an intuitive, kinetic and immediate, and not a thinking thing at all. And when you return, the world is closer and newer, and you are more of it, than apart from it. Yes.

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.

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!

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.

And soaking up all the goodness over at the Right Brainers Business Summit has made me realize: I’ve been approaching money and strategic planning and many other elements in my life much the way I was trying to approach snow boarding: from a left brained slant that feels utterly foreign.

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?

Halted

I've got a world class sinus infection and there is nothing like it to halt me in my tracks; to arrest all my momentum and force me to pause. The floor is freckled with crumbs, with legos and bits of string; sun and shadow making triangles and lines, a geometry of this moment right now. I curl up on the couch and do nothing and realize immediately that I don't know how to do this at all. I'm falling behind even as I close my eyes, turn my face toward the sun and feel it hot on my cheek.

The boys zoom by in circles on their plasma cars. Bean dressed in full pirate regalia; sprout in a spotted shirt. The house plants need watering; my to do list is longer than the day.

I am so ready for spring.