Blog - Melissa Dinwiddie | Create the Impossible™ | Innovation Keynote Speaker & Consultant

September 10, 2010

Compulsive Video Blog: Me & my ukulele, playing He’s Just Not That Into You

This is what happens when you’re compulsive:

You make it very clear, to yourself and to your readers, that you’re going to be posting less frequently, because you have some really big-ass commitments for the next several months – getting a new partner blog launched, for example – and you’re headed out of town for the weekend, and suddenly you decide you must make a video. Now. Just because.

So you make the video with your ukulele – which doesn’t take very long, so it’s not really keeping you away from your other commitments (like packing to leave in the morning), right?

But then you import the video into iMovie, and you discover that the sound of your ukulele is totally distorted. Like awful bad.

So you proceed to spend the next hour or so trouble-shooting, trying different settings in iMovie, trying different settings in System Preferences. Re-recording a zillion times. But nothing works.

Now you’re really annoyed, and getting this damn video posted becomes a mission. You will not leave until you can get it done.

But technology is a formidable foe, and you are defeated. At least for the moment.

So you post the original video, with the awful sound quality. (Thereby making the hour + spent on trying to sole the sound problem an utter waste of time.) Because suddenly you’re completely obsessive about getting a video up on the blog.

Figuring out the sound issue can wait, but the post must be posted.

So tell me, was it worth it?

Happy weekend, everyone!

PS – If you like this song, you’ll enjoy my CD, Online Dating Blues. No ukulele – it’s me and a jazz trio (I’ll play uke on my next CD) – but check it out and let me know what you think!

September 7, 2010

7 reasons why my hero is a car thief: Chris Guillebeau & The Art of Nonconformity

I admit it: my hero is a car thief.

Well, okay, a former car thief, but still.

Who is my hero? Chris Guillebeau, whose Unconventional Book Tour for his new book, The Art of Nonconformity, starts today.

Okay, the car thief part is a bit inflated, though Chris did indeed steal a car at age 15, a tidbit I learned in a Question the Rules (affiliate link) interview. What he’s done in the intervening years, though, is a lot more interesting than this sensationalist factoid.

And truth be told, I have a lot of heroes, both the long-dead kind (Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth I, Sojourner Truth, to name a few) and the contemporary kind (Gloria Steinem and Jill Robinson spring to mind).

But Chris occupies a special place in my pantheon of heroes for a few simple reasons:

1) Timing

(Mundane, but true, and the only reason that has nothing to do with Chris. Timing may not be everything, but it’s a big thing.)

When I first discovered Chris and his blog, The Art of Nonconformity, my life was at a turning point. I’d tolerated “pretty good, but not what I really, really want” for years, but a series of personal crises had gotten me to a place of desperation. I was finally ready to make a change, but I had no idea how.

Right at that moment, this guy appeared on my radar who was actually living what he really, really wanted. Not settling for what the world told him he could get, but dreaming big, and really going after his dreams.

And making a living at it, to boot!

Chris showed that maybe what I really, really wanted was possible after all. I was primed to listen and learn.

2) He’s a beacon for the rest of us

Chris isn’t just living the life he wants; he’s also leading the way for all of us who want to live the lives we want. His writing, his impressive line of Unconventional Guides (affiliate link) – all are crafted to help people with big dreams to make them reality.

Chris first shows you that it can be done, and then helps you do it.

3) He makes his own rules

From stealing a car (okay, probably not something to try at home), to dropping out of high school yet still graduating with two bachelor’s degrees in two years, to volunteering in Africa for four years, to creating several profitable online businesses, to setting a goal of visiting every country on the planet by the time he turns 35 (at the time of this writing, he’s at 149/192), to creating a massive following and thriving business through generosity, to self-funding a 63-city book tour, Chris has never done things by the book.

4) He goes after big goals

Did I mention his goal of visiting every country in the world by his 35th birthday? And writing a book? Then there’s the World Domination Summit he’s in the middle of organizing, to bring like-minded nonconformists together in one place for a few days.

Oh, and I think changing the world counts as a pretty big goal.

5) He models generosity

It’s all very well to create the life you really, really want and step on people along the way. Or to make a fortune from exploiting people. Chris is just the opposite.

Not only is he generous with his time (he gave me a fantastic Thriving Artists Project interview), his energy (did I mention 4 years of volunteer work in Africa?), and his information (unlike some people I know, Chris is not tight-fisted here), but he’s generous with his money as well.

The Unconventional Guides affiliate program (yep, that’s an affiliate link), which has paid me back and then some for all of the courses I’ve purchased from him, has a 51% commission – the most generous I’ve seen.

But that’s not all: Chris is donating 20% of all royalties from the sale of The Art of Nonconformity to the AONC partner project with Charity: Water for at least 12 months following publication. And for each reader he meets who purchases the book during the Unconventional Book Tour or World Domination Summit events, he will donate an additional 80% of his royalties, for a total of 100%.

Is this guy cool, or what?

6) He’s a model of running a profitable business ethically, and with customer service that cannot be beat

So this one is kind of embarrassing (for me, not for Chris).

Months back, I wrote a review of the $100 Business Forum, an online course that Chris ran with Pam Slim. The course was top-notch, but I found the Ning platform they were using frustrating. I was writing my review late at night, when I was tired and cranky, and, well, I clicked “publish” when I would have been a lot better off sleeping on it and reading it again with the objectivity that a good night’s sleep can bring.

When you’re tired and cranky, sometimes you don’t realize how much it infects everything you write…

The next morning I woke up to a personal email from Chris, and a complete refund for my course tuition.

Needless to say, I felt awful, and I immediately purged the gratuitous crankiness from the review.

(I also made a mental note to never publish a review when I’m tired and cranky.)

And Chris instantaneously became my Customer Service Hero, because I realized that with that $100, he had bought himself a customer for life. And isn’t that what all of us business people want?

7) He doesn’t let fear stop him

On page 59 of The Art of Nonconformity, Chris shares a few of his fears:

I’m only on chapter 3. Will I ever finish writing this book?
What if it sucks? What if I get bad reviews? (Or worse, what if no one pays attention?)
I’m afraid of the forces of mediocrity and lethargy. I’m afraid of becoming too comfortable or getting lazy.
When I travel, I’m afraid of trying to speak another language.
Sometimes I feel paralyzed. People say they want to travel with me, and I think, “Oh no–then they would figure out that it’s not always that exciting.”
I’m afraid that people will think I’m faking it.
I’m scared of getting older and missing out on something I should have already done. (In the words of John Mayer, “I’m only good at being young.”)

Did you see the one about being afraid of trying to speak another language? Yet Chris has been to 149 countries (and counting).

Rock on.

****

In short, Chris is my hero because he inspires me, and helps me believe that I can set big goals and achieve them too.

Would you like to be inspired? Do you want to set your own rules, live the life you want, and change the world? (And help out a great cause at the same time.) If you’ve ever thought, “There must be more to life than this,” The Art of Nonconformity is for you. It’s an easy read, but the kind of book you’ll want to go back to again and again.

In the words of Tyler Tervooren from Advanced Riskology, it’s How To Change The World for $10.08.

You can’t get better than that!

PS – I also recommend catching up with Chris in person on his Unconventional Book Tour. If you make it to the San Francisco stop, I’ll see you there!

September 6, 2010

Weekly Review #23: Balance, backups & changes afoot

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?

Here’s the funny thing: I was finding it hard to tap out my thoughts on the keyboard tonight, so I decided to just record them on video. But being me, I couldn’t quite stop there, so I still typed in (and expanded upon) the important points below.

Which is, perhaps, a good lesson that recording myself on video may be a good way to clarify my thinking. Note to self. (And important point #5, if you think about it.)

Important points:

1) Purge and sort to get some clarity back into your life

Thank you to Lori for her comment on my last video post. I don’t like to clean/sort/organize/purge, but I always do better when I’m surrounded by order, rather than chaos. Still, I’m so resistant to doing it, that I needed the reminder of how beneficial it would be.

Hooray for reminders!

2) Back up your blog(s) and website(s)!

Don’t procrastinate on this one. Seriously.

Johnny B. Truant‘s recent post, Freaky WordPress catastrophes and site crashes, and how to prevent them, was a painful reminder of my own experience (pre-blog) of my ecommerce ketubah site being downed by hackers almost a year ago. For a month.

Oh, the pain.

I’m grateful to Johnny for kicking me into gear. The systems I already had in place (daily automatic database backups and every-few-days backups of everything on my hosting account), though good, are not enough to save my @ss if the unthinkable happens again.

So. Several hours that I could have spent making art, or writing blog posts, or doing client work, went into researching backup and security systems. Much less urgent (seemingly) than a lot of the stuff on my mile-long to-do list, but a helluva lot more important in the long run.

The upshot?

1) I set every one of my developed domains up with Sucuri.net, which monitors your sites, detects unauthorized changes (ie, hacks and malware), and (best of all) cleans everything up if they ever are hacked.

2) I bought and installed Backup Buddy, a premium WordPress plugin that allows you to back up not just your database, but your entire site. Automatically. And restores your site if you ever need it. You can back up to your server, Amazon S3, a FTP/FTPS account, or an email.

I also just signed up for Amazon S3 and sent my backup to their server with the click of a button. Voilá!

I will definitely sleep better at night knowing my data is backed up!

(Now go back up your stuff!)

3) Changes are afoot: I’m partnering on a new site!

I’ve hinted about this, but now it’s official: I am the new partner in charge of a yet-to-be-launched site called 365 Days of Genius (the link is not working at the time of this writing… stay tuned).

365 Days of Genius is just one of several networked sites in the 365 Days of Everything family, a network which so far includes 365 Days of Style, 365 Days of Growing Things, 365 Days of Startups, and about 20 others (and growing).

The 365 Days of Everything concept is the brainchild of Heather Claus, who has brought together an amazing group of partners to run the various sites, and I’m excited about the opportunity to learn and grow in this community!

Given my (ahem) complicated relationship with the concept of genius, I found it especially amusing that Heather tapped me for 365 Days of Genius, which, in case you’re wondering, will be all about creativity, out-of-the-box thinking, innovation, how the mind works, and yes, genius.

I’ll share more later as we move toward launch. The point for now is that launching this new site is going to take a lot of my time and energy for the next several months, which will probably mean fewer posts here for awhile.

Just FYI…

4) Become an organ donor

One of my mentor/heroes, Tim Sweeney, has been ill, and today I found out that he is going to need an organ transplant.

Major shit, people.

But Tim being Tim, the email he sent to keep people posted of his condition also included an appeal to do a simple thing that could save a life (probably not his own): register as an organ donor.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had the little “donor” button on my driver’s license since I first got a driver’s license. What I didn’t know until Tim’s email, though, is that there is now an online registry.

A few clicks on your keyboard, and – bam – you’re in the system, and should the unthinkable happen (which, of course, we hope never does), you’ll be logged as a donor whether you have your little donor card on you or not.

Did you also know that one donor can save eight lives?

Think about it. Make a difference. Do it, now, and tell your friends and family to do the same.

—–

Whew! For someone who couldn’t get any words out a few hours ago, I still managed to write a lengthy post. Nobody would ever accuse me of being concise.

As usual, write your comments below.

That’s it for this week!

September 3, 2010

Time Out to Rant About My Damn Cat and Her Nasty Habits

photo of fluffy cat — Plotting her next pee-on-the-bed escapade. (I have a sneaking suspicion she's on the Anti-Icky Poo payroll.)

Author’s note: I am not on the Anti-Icky Poo* payroll. I do not get kick-backs. I do not own stock in the company, though perhaps I should. Just sayin’…

One of the great pleasures of having a cat is cuddling with it in bed.

Thankfully for my cats, there are other pleasures besides this one, because the fluffy one’s maddening habit of peeing on the bed has barred both of them from the bedroom.

Honestly, I am not a violent person, but finding a puddle of cat pee on the bed is enough to make the most dedicated pacifist go ballistic.

I’m talking fantasies of throwing the cat out the window.

The second story window.

(Fantasies, people. Fantasies. Geez. Don’t have a cow. Admit it, you’ve had the same fantasy.)

The thing is, when you get into the habit of keeping the door to the bedroom closed at all times, the cats obviously don’t get into the bedroom, so no peeing on the bed occurs, and you kinda forget that the reason the door is kept closed in the first place is precisely because one of the little monsters has this lovely habit.

And when your bedroom is at the back of the house on the second floor, it doesn’t get a lot of air circulation. So when there’s a heat wave it gets pretty darned stuffy and you think, “Gee, maybe I’ll just open the door for a few minutes to try and get some cooler air in there, so maybe I can, like, sleep.”

And you know there’s a reason you vigilantly keep the door closed all the time, but it’s been so long since the cat peed on the bed that it just doesn’t seem like a big threat. And it’s so hot, and you’re only keeping the door open for a moment, and for good measure you even put an enormous box left over from a recent delivery in the doorway, completely blocking the lower half (knowing full well that this doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of keeping a determined kitty out, but surely [you think] it’ll be fine for just a few minutes).

And then you blithely head into your now much cooler bedroom to get some much-needed sleep, and you reach down to pull back the comforter…

And it’s soaking wet.

[Expletive deleted.]

[More expletives deleted.]

[Foot-stomping, teeth gnashing, eyes blazing expletives. Also deleted.]

So you grit your teeth and strip the bed, doing your darnedest to keep the puddle of cat pee from dripping onto un-peed-on parts of the bedding, which is really, really challenging, because there are, like, a zillion different layers to deal with — the top and bottom of the comforter cover, the two-layer really expensive organic wool comforter, the top sheet, the bottom sheet, and the mattress pad.

(Which is, thankfully, waterproof, because long before your brain took a vacation and allowed you to leave the door to the bedroom open for a brief moment when you knew this was not a good idea, you had an intelligent moment of realizing that if you had to clean the mattress one more time you would more than likely go completely postal. So you invested in a waterproof mattress pad. To which the fluffy kitty at this moment quite likely owes her pathetic, fluffy little life.)

And you somehow manage to shlep all zillion pee-soaked layers downstairs and into your tiny little backyard to drape across the patio furniture, the bicycle, the rosemary bush (lacking any kind of clothes line) (in the dark, I might add, because the outside light went out before you even moved in and you have never managed to figure out how to open it to change the bulb).

And you spray the sh*t out of both sides of everything with Anti-Icky Poo*, which you buy by the gallon*, because although as previously stated you normally keep the door to the bedroom closed at all times (and sure as hell will be again, starting now), the fluffy kitty doesn’t limit her peeing escapades to the bed.

However, because the fluffy kitty doesn’t limit her peeing escapades to the bed, and you’ve been trying to get rid of the persistent kitty pee smell that welcomes visitors by the front door, there’s not a whole lot of Anti-Icky Poo* left in the spray bottle, or the gallon bottle. Which puts you in an even crispier mood.

And then you still have to put clean sheets on the bed, by which point it’s about an hour or maybe even 90 minutes later than you had intended on going to sleep, which also doesn’t help the mood situation.

If anything will put a girl in a ranting mood, that will.

Next time, I think I’ll opt for a Chia Pet.

*Yes, that’s an affiliate link for Anti-Icky Poo, so I’ll make a few cents if you click through and buy it. I buy it by the gallon at my local, family-owned pet store (support your local business!) This stuff works, though be forewarned, it can take weeks for the smell to completely go away.

September 2, 2010

Video: Spinning Your Wheels & Being Gentle With Yourself

Despite the image above, this post is not about love, or romance, or anything remotely like it.

The pic is a gilded section from a ketubah I just completed and shipped off today. After days of high-intensity work to get it and some other client projects done on deadline, for much of today I found myself spinning my wheels.

Yeah, I completed some big projects (I even painted a painting this morning!) But the afternoon I was slogging through quicksand.

And what happened? Instead of allowing myself a little break, I beat myself up about not being productive enough.

I couldn’t seem to get a blog post written to save my life, so I made a video instead. Just some thoughts spinning around in my head, about spinning my wheels, and being gentle with myself.

Let me know what you think.