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Debriefs, Surprises and Soon-to-Be Busted

Step By Step - calligraphy art by Melissa Dinwiddie (watercolor ground, Ziller ink, walnut ink)So let’s take stock of how my intentions are going so far, shall we? In keeping with the first of my 3 words for 2012, Self-Compassion, my big intention for January is to get better, and more, sleep.

Specifically, I’ve committed to getting to bed, lights out, by no later than 11pm every night this month — a shift of 3 full hours from my usual 2am bedtime.

I call it…

The Great Bedtime Experiment Debrief

It’s been a week since I started the Great Bedtime Experiment. How’m I doin’?

I’m pleased to report that I’ve succeeded in keeping my commitment, and it is dramatically helping my energy and quality of life, as expected.

What I didn’t expect is the “side effects.”

To wit: for the first couple of days, I was surprised to find my tension and stress level much higher throughout the day than normal. My usual M.O. has been to just keep working as late into the night as necessary, until I literally had to stop. Now, with a “hard endtime” to my days, I no longer have that “luxury,” and the perceived limits on my time added some extra felt-pressure — “gotta get X,Y & Z done, NOW!” — that I hadn’t felt before.

I swear my blood pressure rose several points for a couple of days there.

Thankfully, that began to stabilize as the week went on, as I kinda figured it would.

The ritual of shutting down started to become normal and my perspective on the shape of my day began to adapt and adjust.

I’m much more conscious of planning ahead, and though I’m still in major catch-up mode (inevitable, when you’ve been living in last-minute, push-til-the-wee-hours-whenever-necessary land for as long as I have), it’s shifting, and it feels great!

Surprises

One thing that’s really surprised me is that the Great Bedtime Experiment has revealed how seriously overextended I am.

Let’s be clear: I knew I was overextended, but somehow pushing late into the night had masked just how overextended. There’s no hiding when you face a hard-stop at the end of the day, and 7 items are still staring at you from your “must get done this week, preferably today” list, uncompleted.

I knew I had a tendency to overestimate just how much I could get done in a day — I just didn’t realize how much I overestimated.

So.

What to do? It’s a situation that cannot be sustained.

Reality Bites

I started by writing down every single thing I do on a regular basis that takes up my time. Then I looked at that list. Something has to give, but what? I honestly don’t want to give any of it up! I still haven’t come to any happy conclusions, beyond possibly posting less here on the blog…

I have, however, allowed myself to drop some planned projects from my “foreseeable future of 2012” list — such as my long-held dream of creating a Uke Diva site, with video tutorials on how to play my original songs on the ukulele.

…which I’d hoped to have up by the end of 2011

…which obviously didn’t happen…

Yes, I’m still very eager and excited to do this, and I’m not letting it go entirely, but I just have to be ruthless about my priorities, and with only space for 4-5 pots on my stove at any given time, this pot is just going to have to wait. I’ve got other bubbling pots to attend to right now, which are threatening to burn or boil over if I’m not careful!

So.

Meanwhile, my sweetie and I are in agreement that this new, earlier bedtime regime is working very well. We’re both much better-rested (though I still seem to be a lot sleepier than I’d like [what’s up with that?]). I’m no longer totally steamrollered when I get up, and come to think of it, I don’t feel on the edge of a migraine all the time.

Unfortunately the Great Bedtime Experiment hasn’t yet eliminated my tendency toward insomnia, but the month is yet young.

The Other 2 Words

Meanwhile, I’m also very pleased with my attempts to integrate my other 2 words for 2012, Practice and Untangle.

Mornings are highly creative times for me, and I love to spend the first hour (or more!) of my day sitting up in bed, writing in my journal. I do some “morning pages”-style brain-dumping, but my journal (good ol’ paper and pen) is where I strategize, brainstorm ideas, and more often than not, pen drafts of blog posts (like this one!), sales pages and emails.

It feels like Lazing Around Time, since I’m sitting in bed in my pajamas (as opposed to sitting in front of my computer in my pajamas), but in fact, I get some of my best, most important work done there!

It’s a practice I’d let slide, and although I’m not able to do it every day, it feels good to be incorporating my morning strategizing/writing time back into my days.

Two other rituals I’ve started (or, rather, re-started) are going well too:

1) My Write-Ride: Every day, usually in the morning, I hop on my exercise bike-cum-satellite work station and write. Yes, I sometimes pop over to email, Facebook, etc., but one of my big goals for 2012 is to publish, and I’m committed to working on something for publication every day, with a target of at least 700 words, or an hour on the bike. (Sometimes the Write-Ride is more of an Edit-Ride, which is why I decided not to be a total stickler about the number of new words produced.)

This commitment has helped me bust through a block that had kept me stuck for weeks on my e-book, and I’m finally at a point I thought I’d never reach: actually looking forward to my writing time each day!

On the down side…

2012 is shaping up to be much more focused on writing than on art-making, and I confess I’m sad about letting my art time slide, but I remind myself that whatever mode I’m creating in, it all counts as time in the Creative Sandbox. (Fellow Passion Pluralites, remember, you can do it all, just not all at once!)

I’m also taking steps to make teeny-tiny little art-making moments more likely to happen: like clearing off my drafting table, and stretching a sheet of watercolor paper to have at the ready for a spontaneous moment of smearing/dribbling/brushing paint/ink/gesso.

2) And last but not least…

I made a secret commitment to myself at the start of the week that I would try out doing something — one thing every day — to rid myself of clutter.

My thoughts are very organized, but my environment, not always so much.

Now that I know some tools that work well to keep me motivated, I thought I’d put them to work on a big goal that has been all-too-easy to put off for way too long.

Here are the drivers that I know work for me:

  • Time-limited commitments. “Every day forever” feels impossible, and makes my inner rebel want to run for the hills. “Every day or one month” feels like a fun game!
  • Public accountability. That public may be a single client, waiting on a project; or my ArtSpark subscribers, who expect art delivered in their inbox on a particular schedule; or it may take another form. As long as there’s an element of wanting to avoid letting people down, my ego is vain enough to kick me into gear so I don’t!
  • A tribe/gang/team facing similar challenges. There’s some overlap between this driver and public accountability, but a tribe, or community, or support group is more than just an accountability group. Our successes inspire each other, and counseling each other through the times when we get off track helps strengthen our own resolve.

These elements are part of what make my Creative Ignition Club and Creative Ignition Circle so powerful. (There’s still room in the next Circle, btw! Starting Tuesday, 6pm PST. Click here to snag your seat.)

Soooo… Knowing all that, I decided to try yet another experiment this month:

The ClutterBusters Pilot Program

I have to admit, I’m a bit giddy about this one. I’ve already cleaned out a desk drawer and purged & sorted my crammed-full bathroom mirrored cabinet, and tomorrow at the first ClutterBusters session I may start tackling my file cabinets.

It’s going to take a big change — and change is hard — but I am dedicated to creating the uncluttered home and studio of my dreams. And if you’ve got your own Closet of Doom, you can join me!

You can read all about it here. No charge for the first month, except the request that you offer your feedback whenever I send a survey.

And now, as this review-of-the-week-that-was has gotten long, I’m going to sign off and turn it over to you.

How was your first week of 2012? Have your intentions colored anything in your life so far? What’s going well? What are your challenges?
xo, Melissa <3
PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

WDS: Why In-Person So Totally Rules (Hint: Hugs) | Weekly Review #61

What the hell happened to my late Sunday (which, granted, is frequently effectively early Monday) weekly review post??

Here’s what happened:

Friday morning I flew to Portland for the much-awaited World Domination Summit (#WDS), where 500 unconventional souls – bloggers, travel hackers, entrepreneurs, writers, artists and creatives of all kinds – gathered to meet, get inspired by each other, and basically charge our mutual engines to change the world.

Why, when there are so many pressing demands on my time and money, did I spend hundreds of dollars and four precious days at an unconventional conference?

Because although the digital world is wonderful…

Nothing can compare to actually being in the same room with other people.

I know from experience that something magical happens when you’re in the real-life presence of other real-life, warm-bodied, flesh and blood human beings.

Online courses are great (I’ve gotten more from Action Studio than I can possibly articulate).

Facebook, email, Twitter – all of these have brought me new friends and opportunities.

I’ve listened to dozens of recorded interviews over the past year (not to mention conducting them), and been inspired up the wazoo by them.

But none of these can hold a candle to meeting people in the flesh.

Which is exactly why I was among the first batch of WDS registrants when Chris Guillebeau opened the shopping cart last year. I had no idea what the conference would be like, but these things I knew for sure:

  1. A conference produced by Chris would be excellent, guaranteed
  2. A conference produced by Chris would draw amazing, fascinating people

I was right on both counts.

My only gripes about the event itself were on the level of “Gee, it would be nice if the info on our name tags was printed in larger fonts, to be easier to read” and “Gee, it would be nice if our name tags also included our Twitter ids, since that’s how I know so many folks!”

Everything from the venue, to the mid-morning snacks (yogurt parfaits with blueberries! mixed nuts! bamboo skewers of fresh fruit!), to the line up of inspiring speakers (my notebook is full, and I’ll be processing for weeks), was well-thought out and executed with excellence. Not to mention unconventional.

Check out the view to my right when seated near the stage of of the main meeting hall, for example:

Nice rear view at WDS

(Seriously, what other convention hall have you been in with such a great rear view?)

But the biggest gift of the conference was the people.

The magic of attaching bodies to Twitter avatars I’ve known for months. Of sharing oxygen and connecting with people I knew from online, and people I’d never heard of before.

Chris could easily have brought all the same people together online for a telesummit, and the messages would have been inspiring. It certainly would have been a whole lot easier and a helluva lot less expensive for him and his entire team of volunteer ambassadors.

But Chris knew that in-person would be more powerful, and I’m profoundly grateful that he did.

When Andrea Scher and Jen Lemen of Mondo Beyondo passed out Sharpie markers and asked everyone to draw a word on their skin, the energy in the room was electric. Drawing a temporary tattoo on my hand wouldn’t have had nearly the same power in the isolation of my studio. Plus for the rest of the day, I mingled with 500 other people with their own unique Sharpie tattoo – an instant conversation starter.

"Powerful" - temporary tattoo from #WDS

When DJ Prashant got the entire crowd up and doing Bollywood dance moves, well, let’s just say this scene would be impossible to reproduce with a telesummit (video courtesy of JD Roth):

And hugs from the likes of Pam Slim, Danielle LaPorte, Pace & Kyeli, and Chris Guillebeau himself? Nope. Not happening at a telesummit.

But yes, so totally happening this weekend. And a lot more hugs besides.

Which may, by themselves, be enough of a reason to go to that next in-person event you’re considering. Yep. The hugs. Simply cannot be beat.

They even made the painful catch-up that I’m in the middle of now that I’m back home worth it.

I’ve already signed up for next year. And I already have my goal in mind: more hugs.

Insomnia, Action Studio, and Popcorn Epiphanies | Weekly Review #58

So how’m I doing in my quest to re-invent my life, follow my evolving Blisses and create the life I really, really want?

I just spent a week in a time machine.

At least that’s how it felt. The past seven days have gone by in a flash, but on the other hand it feels like last Monday was about a month ago.

Why? Well, Monday marked the start of Action Studio, an intensive course with Sinclair of Self-Activator to hone in on your brand and build a new income stream in 30 days.

Since then I’ve been immersed in exercises to discover my primary and secondary brand archetypes (Creator, flavored by Caregiver, Sage, Every Woman and Lover, if you’re curious), and wrap my head around how that applies to my business.

All with the support of the most loving, brilliant community of women + one guy I’ve ever encountered.

Did I mention it’s intense? Let me tell you: it’s intense.

As in epiphanies popping like popcorn. As in rethinking every single thing we’re doing, from the ground up. As in “cast members” regularly admitting to liberal doses of tears in between the excited revelations.

Yep, major shifts are happening, and it’s a glory to behold.

Want the inside scoop? Check out the gossip from the set, posted Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays by three of my amazingly talented fellow cast members over at the Action Studio site.

The downside of popcorn epiphanies

All this intensity has me bouncing off the walls with excitement as I bubble over with a new sense of clarity of purpose, direction, and ideas.

It also has me utterly exhausted, because when I get in a super-creative phase like this, my insomnia kicks in.

Insomnia. Sucks.

Sometimes, however, exhaustion is a gift. Kinda like getting walloped upside the head with a 2×4 by the Universe is a gift, if you’re willing to take the lesson such wallops are there to teach.

In this case, I’m getting clear that the overextended schedule I’ve been scrambling to keep up with is simply unsustainable.

Yes, I like being engaged in lots of projects. Yes, I prefer being busy to being bored, but this is ridiculous.

So tonight I made some decisions that have been brewing for months. Decisions I’ve been in conflict about, not yet ready to implement.

All of them aligned with my new, clearer-than-ever understanding of exactly what I want to be doing and with/for whom.

Do you know what it feels like to stand on bedrock? To stand right in your sweet spot?

Thanks to a mere week in Action Studio, that’s where I am on the inside. Finally.

It feels amazing.

Now my job is to bring my outside into alignment with my inside. In other words, I have a lot of work to do.

And given that I already have more work on my plate than any sane human would try to juggle at one time, it’s really, really clear that something has to give.

Destruction makes space for generation

Letting go of something (“destroying”) is always hard, even when you know it’s to make space for a bigger dream. But when your goal is to live the life you really, really want, not just the close-but-not-quite life, it’s gotta happen.

The only way to rock out the great is to let go of the good, dump the “almost right but not exactly.”

Scary, and painful, but true.

So watch for changes in this space.

And now I’m off to see if this is the night I finally beat the insomnia dragon. Hold a good thought…

 

Gradually Wandering Into Love

Originally published on Valentine’s Day 2011, this is one of my all-time favorites. It felt appropriate to bring it out again for another Valentine’s Day, in which I’m celebrating a month and a half being married to Miracle Man. Enjoy! xo,Melissa

Love Sparks Blogging FestivalToday’s post is my contribution to the Love Sparks Blogging Festival, started by Jasmine Lamb. All across the blogosphere, participants are posting blogs about love, in response to Jasmine’s request.

I’m staying close to home on this one, sharing something rather personal. Something I’m a little shy about revealing. But it’s what’s been on my mind, and what popped into my head when I got Jasmine’s invitation, so it’s what I’m sharing today. Hope you enjoy it.

I’ve never been big on Valentine’s Day.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s a brilliant ploy by the flower, card and candy industries rather than any truly meaningful moment in annual time.

This year, though, is a little different.

One year ago I had just been unceremoniously dumped, 2 days before Valentine’s Day, in what felt like a particularly shocking betrayal.

Little did I know it at the time, but my ex’s departure would clear the way for the entry, on Valentine’s Day itself, of new love into my life.

Though it took me almost a year to figure that out.

Because love, I’ve discovered, is not that weak-in-the-knees, sweaty palms, dry mouth, can-barely-speak-because-you’re-so-nervous-to-be-around-them feeling.

Nor is it that surely-we-knew-each-other-in-a-past-life feeling.

Or the oh-my-god-that-was-so-amazing-I-feel-like-I-just-touched-the-face-of-the-divine feeling.

Or the surely-I-will-die-without-you feeling.

I submit, in fact, that the feeling of being madly in love is actually a form of mental illness. May I point out to you that the phrase is, after all, “madly in love.” Witness, too, the term “crazy about you.”

Nonetheless, yes, I’ve experienced all of the above feelings, and they’re wonderful. I freely confess that I love being in love.

But as your mom may have told you, being in love is not the same as truly loving or as being truly loved.

Here’s a secret: every person I’ve ever fallen madly in love with has not, in the end, been a good match for me.

This is contrary to everything I ever learned about love, from fairy tales, from movies, from books and poetry and art. Even from my parents’ 50+ year marriage. (The lucky [expletive deleted]’s met when they were 19, fell in love, and are still happy to be with each other.)

Though falling is the more quoted mode of entry, I’ve discovered that it’s quite possible to gradually wander into love.

(Which makes me wonder how many people I might have wandered into love with, had I only given them more time.)

I’ve learned from experience that regardless of what other kinds of love you’re swimming in – infinite variations of filial, friendly, brotherly, spiritual, erotic, romantic, etc. etc. (English has a sad dearth of words to describe the vast number of types of love) – the being in love feeling is transitory. Often when it starts off strongest, it goes away fastest.

But sometimes it also comes back.

(Which makes figuring out when to end a relationship challenging indeed.)

Thankfully, the wisdom of experience whispered in my ear that if the being in love feeling can come back after leaving, perhaps it can show up where it had never been before…

Give someone enough time to show you who they really are, and you might be surprised at how your heart swells and opens.

A good match, it turns out, may have less to do with how crazy-wild-with-love you feel, than with how your life goes when the person in question is in it.

(Single people, take note.)

On Valentine’s Day one year ago I grieved the loss of an untrustworthy love, one that spoke a good line, but was perched on flimsy values. Rotten roots that disintegrated at the first sign of challenge.

Today I celebrate a steadfast love. One that kept coming back rather than running away. One that not only doesn’t flinch at challenges, but in every way possible makes my life go better.

I wish the same for everyone this Valentine’s Day.

Which is now – rather ironically, given my scorn for the holiday – my anniversary day.

Here’s to hearts and roses.

A Hero’s Welcome: The Art of Nonconformity Road Show

It’s not often that you get to meet one of your heroes in real life.

Even less often, I’d imagine, that said hero, upon meeting you for the first time in person, says, “You’re awesome.”

(I’m awesome? Can you say “disarmingly charming”?)

But Chris Guillebeau, author of The Art of Nonconformity (the book and the blog), is known for being unconventional in most things, so no big surprise that he’s also unconventional in his approach to hero-dom.

A Hero of the People

The very term “hero” conjures up images of someone apart from the rest of us. Chris, though, doesn’t set himself apart, but instead endeavors to make every single one of his followers and fans feel special.

I daresay he does an awesome job at this, which is one reason why he’s my hero.

The Unconventional Book Tour

At the time of this writing, Chris is still in the middle of his Unconventional Book Tour, visiting 63 cities in stops in all 50 US states plus all Canadian provinces on a self-funded tour to spread his message of unconventional living and changing the world.

A week or two before his San Francisco meetup last Wednesday (where I got to meet him), I opened a hand-addressed envelope to find a notecard with the following message on the outside:

You=Awesome

And a hand-written note on the inside:

Melissa –

So glad you’re coming to #WDS! (And thanks for being so amazing.)

CG

How could I not be totally inspired and impressed? The guy just has class.

Walking the Talk

If you’ve read much on this blog, you’ll know that Chris Guillebeau is a big reason why I’m finally on the path I’m on, following my evolving Bliss(es) instead of settling for what Tara Sophia Mohr calls a B+ life.

Truthfully, any number of amazing people could have served the function of setting me off on my Right Path, but Chris landed on my radar at a time when I was primed to leap off a cliff. He provided a model of how that leap might actually enable me to fly, rather than face-planting, and a model was exactly what I needed in that moment.

A model of doing what you love, and making a good living.

A model of doing what you love, and making a difference.

A model of not settling for B+, but really living full-out.

Ten months later and I’m well on my way to doing all of the above, so of course I had to make it to the Unconventional Book Tour / Art of Nonconformity Road Show!

“He looks about 12!”

I invited my friend Fawn, who knew nothing of Chris Guillebeau or the Art of Nonconformity (except what she might have heard from me).

Her tweet from the event:

At the Rockit Room with @a_creative_life for a reading by someone who’s apparently a major blogger. He looks about 12! It’s v cute.

“Apparently a major blogger!” Ha! In my (admittedly narrow) view, that’s kind of like saying the Beatles are apparently a popular rock band.

An Adult Fan-Girl

Knowing there’d be a crowd, I insisted we get there early, and was able to snag front-row seats upstairs in the bar where the meetup was held. A quick glance around the room revealed some A-list bloggers (whom Fawn also knew nothing about) making me feel like a fan-girl extraordinaire.

Ah, what ten months in the blogosphere will do to a girl…

Leo Babauta of Zen Habits did the honors of introducing Chris, and except for the fact that we were all in jeans in a dark bar rather than black tie in a fancy Hollywood theater, I might as well have been a bit player in the audience of the Academy Awards.

Heroes! Heroes galore!

Then Chris took the mike and gave his “ADD-Friendly” 15-minute talk about the Art of Nonconformity, in which he addressed several of us in the audience by name, called a few other people up to speak, and referenced the importance of connecting with the amazing people in the room probably more times than he referenced his own work in bringing us together.

Did I mention he’s my hero?

And he’s right, too: the people that I met that night played as much a role in the specialness of the evening as meeting Chris did. I met three very cool women, Michelle, Sophia and Shanna, bloggers all, each of whom was excited to write a guest post for my site-in-progress, 365 Days of Genius.

Hot damn!

The Introvert Effect

During his presentation Chris talked a bit about being an introvert, and how these kinds of gatherings have stretched him.

Yeah, I get that. Though many people have done their damnedest to argue with me on this point, the truth is I’m an introvert as well.

(Yes, it’s possible to be a “people person,” and a performer, and also be an introvert! If you don’t believe me, you just don’t know the true meaning of the word.)

So, at the end of Chris’s talk and my mini-schmooze, when I turned to face the specter of the very long line of folks waiting for Chris to autograph their books, my Inner Introvert told me in no uncertain terms that she was done for the night.

I felt kind of badly to miss out. I knew I could have dived into the crowd and met a whole slew of other amazing people, not to mention getting Chris’s signature in my copy of the book.

But the prospect of trying to penetrate the crowd was just beyond me at that moment. It’s something I’ve learned how to do, and even do effectively, but it drains the hell out of me when I’m fresh, and I was fully cooked.

So Fawn and I meandered off for a cup of tea at her place (while ogling shoe porn on her laptop) before I hit the road down the Peninsula to my own comfy bed.

A Summit of World Dominators

I confess, part of the reason I was able to concede to my Inner Introvert’s needs over my Fan-Girl’s desires was that I knew I’d get more opportunities to rub shoulders with Chris and a passel of fascinating, unconventional people in the not-too-distant future.

Six months from now, in fact, when about 400 of us will converge on Portland, Oregon for the World Domination Summit.

I’ll pack my copy of The Art of Nonconformity in my suitcase, and maybe I’ll get an autograph then.

Or not. As Chris so wisely pointed out, it’s the interactions that matter most. The other stuff is just frosting.

Yeah. Heroes.

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