If you wrote your own personal Best Of 2009 List, what would be on it?

I just wrote mine and like any really honest inventory there’s always something revealed: what really matters and a theme or two.

There were plenty of events and accomplishments I could have put down on my Best-Of list that would make sense, such as: having written a novel (albeit at the speed of light). But in my heart it wasn’t fulfilling. I actually felt more moved and excited by the first poem I finally wrote this year, just yesterday. There’s a message here obviously.

What a Best Of list can show you is a potpourri of: What you did; a theme of a year; movement and direction; and point to goals/themes/commitments/devotions/whatever-you-call-them for 2010.

So, I invite you to write your heart-felt personal Best Of* list for 2009. See what you find there.

*What counts as a best-of? Some examples to get you started:

A big-ass accomplishment: You arrived somewhere new and great in your work life, personal life, creative life, spiritual life, child- and pet-raising life.

The internal stuff: You reacted to that same ol’ button-pushing situation in a new and improved way. And YOU know it. Or, you had a conversation that was at a higher level even if for five minutes.

Courage: What did you do that took courage and faith?

Action: Where did you take action to begin to move in the direction of your dreams (even if dreams are fuzzy)? In-the-moment moments: Did you walk in the dusk and stop to look at the silver fairy dust and ethereal light and declare, “Oh WOW”? Because stopping to notice this beauty, some might say, is mastery.

Anything else that whispers in your ear. Trust your instincts of what counts for a 2009 Growth-worthy Best-Of Accomplishment.

Here’s to a kick-ass 2010. You’ve earned it, don’t you think?

After dinner theater at the Mishel household, where they sometimes say "I'm not creative."

I’ve hear this way too often:

“I”m not creative.”

Well let me renounce this type of proclamation with a quick story:

About ten years ago I’m working at a dot-com start up in a creative director positon. I need an idea and I’m talking to one of the smart IT guys and he gives me a pearl of an idea: simple, elegant, perfect — creative to the T.

And then he says, “But what do I know, you’re the creative one.”

This moment has stayed with me as a whisper, a temptation to wonder: What would people do with their working days, their daily lives, their yearly goals if they saw themselves as innately creative?

Imagine if everyone woke up in the morning and went through the day believing they had access to a creative state that they could harness whenever they wanted to — what would your life look like?

My credo is: If you breathe, you’re creative.

Being creative isn’t about being an artiste. It’s about how you express yourself that is uniquely you, and rising to your full potential to move through this chaotic, messy, wonderful, heartbreaking and exhilerating experience of life.

So, as you consider your bad-ass creative self, I’d like to give you a list of all the things you do that are creative. Why? Because you are always creating something: an act, a product, an expression, a thought. And it’s all you. Some acts are more creative than others. And leveraging that creativity is when life comes more easily, we have breakthroughs, we communicate more flexibily with others and we just have more goddamn fun.

Here are all the ways you are being creative in your work and life:

Walking down the street

Having a conversation

Balancing your checkbook

Managing other people’s money

Staring at your screaming kid and wondering what to do now

Figuring out how to write that email to your boss worded in just the right way

Lying in bed at night chasing your thoughts

Reading a book

Taking a photo or posing for one

Having a really bad day or week or even year and reaching for all the ways you can get through it

Giving someone a hug. Receiving a hug. 

Cooking a meal or walking up and down the grocery aisles

Getting out of bed in the morning

Getting dressed

Driving around town

Saying hello to a stranger you walk by on the street

Picking up the phone to call a good friend

Writing your status on Facebook

Buttering your bread

Reading this

Breathing

Hey, I’m no doctor. But I’m going to say this anyway.

There is a LOT of talk right now about the pros and cons of getting a swine flu shot.

What if we put our attention on staying healthy rather than preventing illness?

What would happen if most of our news and information was about all the great ways we could stay healthy and we all focused on that?

Here are a few tips I’ve learned recently for good health*:

Take Vitamin D3. If you have sufficient Vitamin D3 levels, your chance of getting sick goes way down.

Get probiotics in your diet. That’s yogurty stuff and there’s also the supplement form. I don’t know much more about the details here. But probiotics help keep the flora well-balanced in our gut so our digestive system stays nice and healthy which = higher immunity system.

Stay hydrated. Yes, it’s still about 8 glasses of water a day and drink the first one upon waking.

Sleep. Make it sacred. If it’s a choice between working out and sleep, pick sleep as a default.

Don’t forget to laugh. And breathe. And do the things you like to do. And play. Be creative.

Very few things in life are as serious as doing the things that keep you feeling whole, healthy and relational.

Here’s to thinking about how to BE HEALTHY rather than preventing illness.

*Thanks to Dr. Mark Adams of onvo for the great health tips.

Gomez Mishel, RIP

This is a tale about the power of creative thinking. And a beloved family dog, Gomez, RIP.

Last night my niece, Taya called me in tears. Her family dog, Gomez age 11, died that day. She was heartbroken, and crying her little heart out. After one lame-o comment about death being the cycle of life (pathetic, right?) I asked her to tell me everything she wanted to tell me in that moment. 

She started telling me in detail about a memorial project the family was going to make and display under Gomez’s favorite willow tree. Suddenly the crying quiver was gone and her voice carried a sense of strength and excitement. She couldn’t hold the sadness while her focus was on the act of creation. Ah, the power of the creative mind!

Next, I started telling stories of spending time with Gomez, and of course they included her, too. And the next thing I know, she was giggling and laughing. I was surprised, I admit it.

The point is, she had her cry, I let her feel sad but when we decided together to go into creative mode – her telling me about the memorial art project and me telling a story — there was a joyful presence hanging out in this space, instead of all dark, wallowing sadness. I mean, how many times can you say “I’m so sorry” and not feel a bit lame.

It reminds me how focusing on the act of creative thinking and doing is so good for a human heart and soul.

So, what are you going to create today?

Taya, getting creative for the camera

Even the sun rises on "quitters"

“I don’t want to be a quitter.”

It’s the American rally cry. To quit is to be weak, a loser, a person of questionable moral fiber. And so we stay in the job, in the same types of relationships, we do the same sports, read the same books and carry on in the same way of thinking — even after any of these may have stopped working for us.

And of course there are all kinds of positives about sticking with it during tough times. However — what about the times when quitting might be the best thing to do?

Maybe our resistance started when we were young kids doing a sport or playing an instrument we hated but our parents said, “You’re not going to be a quitter.” But what if you had quit the swim team or piano lessons, the scout group or dance classes and instead found that you liked tennis, writing or calculating quadratic equations?

Seth Godin writes about the joy of quitting which gets the ball rolling on this topic.

With that in mind, the question here is:

Is there anything that you could quit – or let’s say RELEASE – that would let you discover something you’d rather do?

Is there something you could let go of that would make you breathe more easily and add a spring in your step and give you a bit of an excited rev in your engine to go forth and manifest?

It can take a lot of courage and discernment to be a quitter.

Letting go and being open to the faith of new possibilities takes balls.

Also, giving yourself the space to leave may give you the moxie to jump in and try new things. You don’t have to be imprisoned by sticking with it if it continues to be unfruitful and sucky. We’re not suffer-mongerers here!

So, with all this in mind –- how can releasing a person, place, thing or behavior make your life even better?

We’ve all said it, and probably multiple times:

“I’ve always wanted to ______________.”

But how often do we do that thing — the trip, the class, the food, the book, the sport, the conversation — whether it taps into our sense of adventure or creativity or romance or dream job or personal development?

Some of them can’t be that hard to do.

Here’s what got me thinking about this.

I was watching a sport video by a group of base jumpers who traveled to Norway to do some nutty extreme adventure sport in which they hurl themselves off some of the highest cliffs and do a bit of “flying.” 

It’s probably waaaaay more far fetched than any “I’ve always wanted to …” most of us have ever claimed, and it went like this:

The video stars with skiiers dropping and flipping down the steep cliffs of Norway with water below and a voice explaining:

“What we’ve always wanted to do is go off a terminal cliff, rip our skis off and then fly away in a wind suit.”

Mhhm! Those words that come after the “always wanted to part” are almost funny. They put images of Paris in the Spring in the leage of of a home-delivered basket of kittens. Of course, it’s all relative, still …

This outrageous “always wanted” made mine seem so… doable. And cozy and safe, because some of these guys die doing this stuff. And so, a ticket to a Swimtrek trip in the Greek islands is comparatively easy. Taking a painting class — piece of cake; my reading list? It almost makes me laugh, no, actually — it does make me laugh. It’s so easy to do some of these things. Reach out pick up book lie down let some time go by. Sit down, pick up phone, pull out credit card, recite or enter a series of numbers — first big step, done.

And these guys with the crazy flying squirrel dreams figured it out. 

And no, I’m not going to Greece tomorrow or signing up for a painting class this week. But it does get a person thinking about that list. Because sometimes that What-I’ve-Always-Wanted-to-Do list includes simple stuff like: make jam or go check out a new neighborhood or do a Sunday drive through the next town or say that nice thing to that nice person … easy stuff.

With that in mind, is there anything on your Always Wanted To list that you can start working toward right now?

Think about it.

This summer, I finally read Dante’s Inferno. I’ve always wanted to read it. And finally did. It’s just a book. But suddenly, other Wants became possible.

And if going to the Maldives is on that list, how can you bring a bit of the Maldives home, for starters?

Yum

Lately, I hear people talk about motivation levels. How they feel low, stuck, muddled, and in some cases, abandoned by the old fire of days past. And who are we when our old familiar ambitions leave us?

Of course there could be many reasons for low motivation, everything from being in a personal mojo descendent (my term for a natural tide of quieter energy); you may need more protein or iron pills or sleep or a new fall goal or some cold-weather strategies. Or maybe it’s something else–

What if your ambitions are changing?

Hey, it happens. And it can sneak up on you slowly or just feel like it all hits you in one fell swoop. I experienced this in my late 30’s. My old self-focused and career-fueled ambitions were gone and there I was left dangling: a bit dazed, confused and as a result, stuck. (Note: when you feel stuck think of it as a feeling, not necessarily the truth.)

In my experience, motivation drops can go like this: One minute you’re enjoying the high tides of ambitions that are focused on career, athletics, child-raising, creative projects and then, kaput. It’s like someone turned out the lights on your house of motivation. And you could be left feeling, well, let’s pull out those great judgment words: lazy, unmotivated, unambitious, stuck, blue, alienated — like a nice good-ol’ fashion loser, watching everyone race on by you to beautiful places.

Here’s my take on Ambitions: They have to change. And they can change suddenly and profoundly (life themes) and in small daily life ways (like reading or cooking). And in order to pick up on the change and act on them, things have to slow down. You have to make the space to reflect, accept and carry on with new and more better-suited ambitions. And hey — they may be broader and vaster ones too. That’s good, right?

So, here’s a way to reframe things:

If you feel stuck or unmotivated and all the self-doubt and nasty gollum voices are coming over to have a nice big party at your place, don’t give in. Instead, consider this:

Are your ambitions shifting?

And if so, what are the opportunities available to you now?

How can you harness all that delicious curiosity you have to explore this passage of time and see what you find?

It could be that your so-called lack of motivation is your body sending you a message to slow down, look up and move through the world with fresh eyes. Life in your body may not feel super comfortable right now but hang in there. This space may be one of preparation as you enter a new life space that is wonderful and new.

And keep your eye out for your new ambitions.

Have you ever had the chance to thank a favorite artist—or someone whose book or music or movies have brought you a lot of happiness or illumination?

I swear, it’s got to be one of the best feelings in the world.

I was a lucky, lucky girl Friday night. I got the chance to give a personal thanks to writer Nick Hornby. His collections of writings on his reading life are some of my favorite books around.

He was reading at the downtown Seattle library Friday night and it took a buddy system with my pal Liz to get my ass down there, and thank god for the buddy system. As it turns out, the auditorium reading room was packed to the rafters. Hornby read from his latest novel, “Juliet, Naked” – and then answered questions and we got to spend time with a very funny, decent guy.

A quick summation: He describes himself as being a writer who embraces optimism and joked that this may be why he has no writer friends in his homeland of England.

He also made a point that so much of what is considered great art is dark and tragic and ends on a note of despair and hopelessness. For him, having a laugh through a story, even if it’s a sad story, is imperative and thank god for that. I think he used the word “redemption” to describe the common theme that runs through his novels.

But what I love — his essays. I heard he was coming to town just as I was re-reading his collections of essays from his former Believer column “Stuff I’ve Been Reading.” (The books are: “The Polysyllabic Spree”; “Housekeeping vs. the Dirt”; and the newly discovered “Shakespeare Wrote for Money”.) And I will try to make this my last fan-posting about him for a while.

Totally loooove this stuff. These are the types of books that make you develop your own personal, intimate, adoring relationship with an author and wish you could call him up at 2am and blurt out, “I so agree why hans’t anyone ever admitted to this!” Because the two of you think so alike there must be an instant friendship created. Instead I put passages on my blog or email them to people or reread them a thousand times and commit them to memory so I can giggle over them when I need a laugh. Of course they always pop up when I’m listening to someone speak earnestly about a very serious, personal conversation and I have to manually hold the corners of my mouth down.

So, after the reading I bought a couple of books and really wanted to stand in line just to be in person with him and say “Thanks. You have made me laugh and think in new ways. And that matters, so thanks.” But the line was massive and I hate waiting in lines so my pal Liz and I decided to bolt and here’s what we got for our  brilliant anti-Communist line-waiting ways:

We ran smack into the author.

Right outside the library, away from the hundreds of people standing in line waiting to meet him, was Nick Hornby and one other fellow, having a smoke. I couldn’t believe it. So I approached him and like any fool of a fan thanked him for coming and told him I bought the ”Shakespeare” book and yes, I was a total cliche, telling him how much I loved these essays and he assured me he was returning to his Believe column again sometime next year and I gave a little cheerleading jump and he gave me a shy but seemingly delighted smile (or did I imagine it; I swear, I think I saw the beginnings of a crush) – and off we went.

I left stunned at our good fortune and also laughing a bit at the image of the crowd waiting for Hornby and how just yards away, right behind their backs, literally, was the object of their affection standing alone.

But what struck me most was how elated I felt. Elated and excited and deeply fulfilled at being able to simply say thank you to a writer who made me laugh and think and want to read more. Who cares if I’m one of a million saying thank you. It still matters. It matters to me, as an art-appreciator and a writer; it matters to my humanness and I think it matters to Art and humanity. I think it’s important that we keep thanking the artists who add meaning and explanation to our lives and to what it means to be human in a crazy world. It’s important to be a fan!

Simple stuff.

But the simple stuff is always what matters the most, anyway.

Check out the Hornby bibliography. Treat yourself.

Ok, the inspiration behind this post is important for one reason.

It’s funny as hell.

And the man behind it all is writer Nick Hornby,who is coming to Seattle this Friday eve, so it’s a good time to re-pimp him. 

Hornby wrote a pair of my favorite books several years ago, while writing a monthly column for The Believer on his monthly reading habits. The books were: The Polysyllabic Spree and Housekeeping vs. Dirt.

I’d advise everyone to get one of these immediately. The essays are smart and funny and human — and tie into the fact that many of us as readers think everyone else is so much better read than we are that we keep buying books in the hopes that owning them will suffice and cover up our dimness. And it’s more than that, too, aside from an intriguing memoir of sorts and some beautiful descriptions and insight and a good diverse reading list — with excerpts! I suggest PS first and then H vs D.

I”m going to give you a sample from H vs. D. It’s from a month where Hornby decides to try reading some new stuff.

And the new stuff is not a book on the peregrine falcon as he wanted it to be, but a sci-fi novel. And he hits upon the ultra-geeky sci fi type of book and this is not a slag at sci fi which  I actually quite like stories that are speculative and futuristic but not like the one below.

I actually read this section today — well the part in bold — to a someone I was talking about work with today and I think it actually helped me get the editing gig – which is translating technical instructional weepifying text into something that a clerk can read and feel smart about.

Here we go, from p. 58 – 59,  Housekeeping vs. The Dirt. The part in bold is the sentence I re-read about a million times over the last few days.

“When I actually tried to read ‘Excession’, embarrassment was swiftly replaced by trauma … And nothing in the twenty-odd pages I managed of ‘Excession’ was in any way bad; it’s just that I didn’t understand a word. I didn’t even understand the blurb on the back of the book: ‘Two and a half millennia ago, the artifict appeared in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe. It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared. Now it is back.’ This is clearly intended to entice us into the novel—that’s what blurbs do, right? But this blurb just made me scared. An artifact—that’s something you normally find in a musuem, isn’t it? Well, what’s a museum exhibit doing floating around in space? So what if it did nothing? What are museum exhibits supposed to do? And this dying sun—how come it’s switched universes? Can dying suns do that?

 The urge to weep tears of frustration was already upon me even before I read the short prologue, which seemed to describe some kind of androgynous avatar visiting a woman who has been pregnant for forty years and who lives on her own in the tower of a giant spaceship. (Is this the artifact? Or the dying sun? Can a dying sun be a spaceship? Probably.) By the time I got to the first chapter, which is entitled ‘Outside Context Problem’ and begins ‘(GCU Grey Area signal sequence file #n428857/119),’ I was crying so hard that I could no longer see the page in front of my face, at which point I abandoned the entire ill-conceived experiment altogether. I haven’t felt so stupid since I stopped attending physics lessons aged fourteen.”

***

Nick Hornby is reading at the Seattle’s Central Library, Friday Oct 9 at 7pm. The book he’s promoting, Juliet, Naked, is not science fiction.

Web sites, email, blogs, Twitter, Facebook — everyone’s a writer these days. And it’s a good thing.

The tricky issue becomes: How do you sound like you when you write?

The growing trend of entrepreneurs means a lot more people are going to have to do writing that really matters. Because Web-based bizzies are built on words rather than brick and mortar. And for any of us moving through the modern world we know it: Words matter.

First things first on the topic of finding your voice:

You already have a voice.

And now you get to learn how to harness that perfect unique voice and put it into your writing.

So we can really call this How to Sound Like Yourself When You Write and Not Sound Like Your Copy Came out of Some  Biz Writing Manufacturing Plant.
A few things happen when you start writing in a natural way. The process becomes easier, the flow is more conversational and everyone gets along better. And … you may even (get ready for this)  like it.

Remember, you’re having a conversation

Here at Write Now, we concentrate on crafting profitable and engaging conversations between you, the brilliant creative biz owner and your perfect customers. The more naturally you write, the better the experience for everyone involved.

So, here are some tips for conversational writing.

Rule #1: Write the way you speak

If you find yourself writing sentences you wouldn’t say out loud in a million years, scrap ‘em. If you’re stuck, pretend you’re speaking to your perfect customer. Speak out loud. Write that instead. When you write how you speak you are literally catching your voice. 

 Remember: If you throw your personality out the window when you sit down to write (and you’re going to hear me say this a lot), you sound like everyone else out there. And probably like you have a twig up your arse and don’t have many original thoughts or ideas. When you get comfortable writing closer to the way you speak you sound like yourself. Voice!

I’m on a mission, I admit, to free the entire world of this kind of shit: Our B2B bandwidth modalities incentivize our customers to reuptake their inhibitors through maximizing our polarity torts. This kind of writing is a sin against nature, and I don’t even believe in sin.

Rule #2: Use grammar-of-the-day

If you’re at a grammar crossroads, go with conversational grammar over Strunk & White or AP rules. Again, we’re having conversations here, not applying for a copy editor’s gig at the New York Times.

 Example: Instead of writing With which hand did you pick up the tennis ball? go with Which hand did you pick up the tennis ball with? Yes, we can end sentences with prepositions.

This is not to say I approve in any way of this kind of thing: Me and my partners would have went to the end of the world for your success …. That’s just plain bad and wrong.

Rule #3: Know when to add the needed dirt details — don’t withhold

Make sure you offer information to support a detail, concept or idea when it’s needed — just as you would in a conversation. As you revise your writing, imagine the place where a live person might interrupt you and ask for more details or an explanation.  Example:

Instead of: I’ve discovered three unique ways to help business folks kick ass and move to the top of the mountain in their working life. To quote a Dale Carnegie … Write something more like: I’ve discovered three unique ways to help business folks kick ass and move to the top of the mountain in their working life. They involve discipline, a keen sense of play and wearing pink shirts, but we’ll go more into detail on that a little later. There’s this  Dale Carnegie quote … 

Whoever’s reading this will want to know something about these three unique ways ASAP. Screw Dale C. And by addressing the unique ways up front (being withholding is not a great writing tactic by the way) you get to express yourself in a true voice, just as you’d do it in conversation. And your audience can trust you’ll be hanging with them and anticipating any questions, and answering them along the way. And being yourself = authenticity = building trust.

Rule #4: Have some fun for goodness sakes we’re not saving babies here

Well some of you may be saving babies because the written word has this kind of power. But the message here is: Relax. Be yourself. Enjoy this new way of doing business that embraces authenticity and a natural writing voice. Transparency is in. And so is appropriateness and respect — as in, you may swear like a sailor with your pals but maybe not with clients – but you already know that.

Let yourself play around, experiment and enjoy the process of letting your voice out in your writing. You never know what — or who — you may discover along the way.