They’re not going to eat you.

They’re not going to take away your water.

They’re not going to give you a tummy ache.

They’re not going to steal your pants.

They’re not going to hurt your dog.

They’re not going to breathe fire on you.

They’re not going to make you drink the dish water.

They’re not going to spray skunk on you.

They just want you to scratch their bellies.

Several people just sent you their own, heavily-marked-up versions of the document you created. Getting their feedback took forever. Somehow they’ve made it worse than before.

Let me guess. You asked them for feedback, or you said, “let me know what you think.”

These seemingly innocent phrases open up the doors that separate our normal universe from a parallel universe called The Feedback Zone. Only use them with trusted colleagues.

No one actually dies in The Feedback Zone, but your content never looks the same again.

Escaping The Feedback Zone isn’t easy, so let’s try not to go there in the first place.

Remember this for next time.

You need to give each person one very specific thing to look for.

Here are four sample requests based the job title or role of the person you’re asking—which is based on their personality type. I’ve made wild over-simplifications here, so please don’t take these job titles as definitive personality-type indicators. People are complicated. This is a starting point. Use these scripts word-for-word, or repurpose and make them your own.

(You can use personality type to inform the way you create content, too. See the Content Dreamhouse for inspiration.)

1. Getting feedback from The Engineer

(Other possible job titles: Administrator, Executive, Physician)

In a nutshell: Engineers love The Feedback Zone. They’re efficient and thorough and they can’t help but see all the ways you’re doing it wrong. Nothing personal. Their superpowers are logistics and resource management. Managing processes, marshaling the troops, and generally being on top of things you didn’t know existed.

“We’re just about to pass this off to production. Can you review this and let me know if anything here is factually inaccurate? If I don’t hear from you by tomorrow, I’ll assume everything is correct, and we’ll post it.”

You just saved yourself from: Death by a million edits. Dilly-dallying while they puzzle over the most efficient, correct way to put it. When they know what facts to look for, they forget about their natural inclination to spot every single possible inefficiency. You don’t have to wait as long for their feedback. When you get it, it’s in a form you can use.

2. Getting feedback from The Designer

(Other possible job titles: Photographer, Artist, Web Developer)

In a nutshell: They’re natural cool-finders who live in the moment, notice everything, and love to use tools. They’re concrete thinkers who don’t always follow every metaphor. They will keep you grounded if you let them.

“This will take 5 minutes. Can you read this and let me know if there’s anything that’s unclear or doesn’t make sense? If so, maybe you can help me. What is it you think I’m trying to say? How can I be more clear?”

You just saved yourself from: Having to follow up with them several times because they didn’t know where to start. Hearing unhelpful feedback like, “Maybe I’m not one of your people, but I just don’t get it.” By giving them a specific thing to look for that fits the way they process information, you made it easy for them to get back to you quickly. And you get feedback on any areas where you might have gone overboard with the metaphors. I do this often.

3. Getting feedback from The Strategist

(Other possible job titles: Project Manager, Architect, Analyst, Professor, Lawyer)

In a nutshell: Can see systems others can’t see, and love to understand how and why things work.

“After reading this piece, what unanswered questions do you still have? Is there one critical step or idea we’re leaving out?”

You just saved yourself from: Getting back several pages of feedback and analysis, ideas to consider adding, nuances to explore, and ruminations way beyond the scope of the actual topic. By asking them for the single-most critical missing element, you focused their feedback on what you could use today.

4.  Getting feedback from The Writer

(Other possible job titles: Entrepreneur, Author, Coach, Designer, Catalyst, Photographer)

In a nutshell: They’re natural advocates who love to support causes, people, and ideas they believe in. On a covert mission to change the world. Addicted to metaphors.

“What did you love about this? Are there any parts that felt off, and how would you improve them?”

You just saved yourself from: Getting strong emotional reactions without any specifics on what they’d improve or change.

Got any feedback requests you’ve used with success? Am I way off base about your zone? Please do share in the comments.

What are the benefits of your product or service?

Answer the question and you’re in business!

Everyone has the same answers: Save time and money. Increase profits. Feel great.

You wish you could just say that, but it turns out people need a bit more meat on their benefits. People need word-pictures painted, and stories told, so they can feel it and sense it and get it.

If you had just the response your people wanted to hear, then you wouldn’t be looking for help in the first place.

And if this question was truly effective, then you wouldn’t see it everywhere. Someone would have it behind lock and key, like a secret recipe, and they’d be charging a premium for you to even see the question.

It’s a trick question. You’re supposed to hire them to find the real answer.

Early in my business, I spent many months unknowingly inflicting this question upon innocent clients, wondering why it wasn’t inducing golden descriptions.

The problem was the question.

So I took a page from coaching and brought in a magic wand:

If you had a magic wand and could change your clients instantly, what would that change look like? What would be happening?

I liked the magic wand question. It’s playful, jars them out of questionnaire mode, gets them entertaining possibilities. They start telling me what people are experiencing, painting pictures—not just reciting bullet points.

An improvement, but I wasn’t there yet.

Some people totally blank, even when presented with a magic wand. They’re oriented toward the present. Not only have I brought them into the abstract future, but I’ve also added a metaphor. Magic wand, future, I don’t know.

For others, the image in their heads is so complex, they don’t know how to translate it into words. They revert back to the same old answers they’ve been writing down on every other questionnaire: Save time, save money, make profits.

Sometimes a magic wand prompts people to think of their own desires. “I’ll be getting more high-end clients!”

If only a magic wand could make that happen.

At last, after reading Switch by Chip Heath & Dan Heath, I came up with a question I’m happy with, that’s getting more meaningful written responses than before:

Let’s say you wake up tomorrow and discover your service/product has been widely adopted by all of the people who need it in the whole world.

The problem is, everyone who’s worked with you or bought your thing remains anonymous. The only way to know who they are is by looking for signs.

What’s the first, tiny sign you’d see that would make you think, “AH! That person must be one of my customers!”?

Why this is better: It gets you to describe observable, specific signs—rather than abstract concepts. It brings your awareness to the people who use your thing, rather than to your own implementation or process.

Of course, this is just one question, and I’ll need to interview them, research audience triggers, add specific proof points and results, address objections, and describe the process.

But at least they’re not sounding lame when they initiate me into the benefits, and I’m not wasting their time by asking them to answer a useless question in writing.

Plus, I get to keep the wand.

I could have done more because of Scrivener, but instead of more copywriting, Scrivener helped me develop a “unified system of everything” for content creation, which turned into The Content Dreamhouse. (Lovingly designed and illustrated by Sarah Bray.)

I wish I had a proof point for exactly how much more productive Scrivener makes me, but I can’t bring myself to abstain from Scrivener long enough to test it.

After 5 years of using Scrivener, the difference has been so great that having proof isn’t worth going back to Word.

It would be like spending another week in high school so I could tell you exactly how much better life is after high school.

If you have a business, and you create content, then Scrivener will make you feel like you just grew an extra, parallel brain.

It’s like if one day you awoke to find yourself lying in bed with two left brains and two right brains, and they were working together in a kind of double-brain double-dutch to produce twice as much as usual. This is possible thanks to Scrivener’s double-pane feature and the way it lets you quickly create files within files within files, then drag them around. (Too technical? Just download it and start playing with it. You’ll see.)

This is so much better than Word it’s ridiculous.

Here’s why I recommend Scrivener to anyone who needs to write anything:

1. It keeps all your thoughts so you can search them later, find the patterns, and unite them to create a new body of work.

This feature came in handy last year when I couldn’t bring myself to write a blog post, but was writing up a storm about my own processes. I took iPhone snapshots of all my journal entries and uploaded them to Scrivener, then began to look for patterns. (One of the outcomes of seeing these patterns? This.)

Evernote keeps your searchable thoughts too, but Scrivener lets you create files, sub-files, and sub-sub-files. If one section would work better somewhere else, I just drag it up.

2. It keeps all your research materials in one place—including PDFs, Word docs, emails, and PowerPoint.

The biggest misconception about writing is you need to just sit down and start doing it. From scratch.

I guess, if you want it to take forever, and it’s a fantasy novel.

But if you’re writing content or copy, you’ll have lots of research and notes. You won’t need to eat lunch at your desk every day if your research is in one place, copy-and-paste-able.

I only sit down and start writing on a blank page once I’ve read through all of my research materials in Scrivener.

Most of the time, though, I’m reading through Scrivener and typing up notes and thoughts in the margins.

I’m never truly alone with my thoughts on a blank page. I’m always having a conversation with either my research material or with my clients.

By the way, I use the “Research” folder in Scrivener as my main writing folder because I don’t like to keep Research and Drafts apart, and only Research keeps your PDFs and Word docs.

3. It lets you create templates for projects.

I have my own systems and frameworks for client intake, messaging, case studies, testimonials, websites, bios, launches, etc.

One Scrivener file holds them all.

4. It lets you brainstorm 15+ variations on a single headline or concept, then scan, consolidate, and pick a winner.

You know how sometimes your brain checks out and you don’t know what to say? Scrivener to the rescue! Just keep typing without filling up one document with your rambles. Hit Command + N to create a new file for every thought or idea. It’s easy to break up complex posts and ideas into their parts, and to name each document and subdocument so you can see at a glance how they fit together.

If you don’t have an idea, then give that file a title with the question it needs to answer. You can come back to it later.

5. Scrivener makes editing faster, gentler, and less ruthless.

Scrivener comes with a built-in slush pile. A slush pile is where ideas go when they aren’t essential for moving along your story (or your buyer’s decision). There’s always a chance you’ll use these parts elsewhere. Put them in the slush pile to avoid awkward goodbyes.

To display your slush pile, click on “Inspector” in the top-right corner of Scrivener. Use “Document notes” in the lower right pane as your slush pile.

6. Scrivener lets you collaborate, kind of.

You can export files as Word docs, so you don’t need everyone on your team to use Scrivener. But this is a good place to keep master topics and templates, and to store working drafts.

You can collaborate with Scrivener by keeping it in your team’s Dropbox folder. Just be sure not to check it out at the same time. Dropbox usually warns you when the file is already open elsewhere.

Once the draft is complete, you’ll want to put it into Google Docs so people can give feedback and make comments and edits.

If tracking every single change is important for you, then you may want to switch to Word at this point. What you give up in collaboration you gain in control over which changes to accept and which to reject. It depends on how many people are reviewing it and how much you trust their edits.

Do you have Scrivener? Did I miss your favorite feature? Please do share in the comments.

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‘WHAT’S THIS? A DREAMHOUSE, YOU SAY?’

I’m a writer, so of course I tend to think about writing a lot.

But what if you’re dyslexic and you’d rather talk it out? What if you feel more inspired photographing stuff as it happens? Or rapping along to someone else’s beats? Or telling everyone else what to do?

What if you have a whole team of people, each with an approach that only works for them?

Or what if, like me, you change in fundamental ways from one day to the next, finding it impossible to stick to the plan, yet craving structure?

For many of us, creating content is like being in 7th grade all over again and having to write a report on Egypt IN YOUR OWN WORDS.

I’d rather live in a Dreamhouse.

I tried this, but it didn’t work, and I think it’s because my muse isn’t like an Olympian goddess.

My muse is more like my dog.

My dog knows nothing good can come of being called into my office when I’m about to write.

He won’t come to anyone who calls him—not even to me. Like today, he looks at me, wheels around, and heads off in the opposite direction.

All he wants to do is sleep, and he knows he can do that anywhere. Why not go somewhere mellow, in the sunshine, where people don’t need him so much?

If you’ve never met, then you can’t just come up and pat him on the head, the way you might do with a normal dog.

You have to pretend you don’t notice him at all, sit still, and wait for him to come up and sniff your shoes.

Don’t make eye contact until he’s completed his investigation, or he’ll run away and you’ll miss out on the greatest love of all.

It is only once he believes that he alone is the interested party that you may then reach down and pet him, with humility.

Not on the head, please. That’s fine, right there.

You will also be permitted to give him a treat at this time, signaling your commitment.

He can’t at any time suspect you care more than is appropriate for a stranger, or for someone who is about to write in her office.

But once he knows you’re just here to play, then he will be your pal, and you can have great adventures together.

So when it’s time to write, here is what I tell the muse who is like my dog.

An Invocation to Dog

No big deal.

I’m just opening stuff on this little machine and clicking and clacking and letting ideas come out.

And then moving them around so they make sense.

Or deleting them if they don’t.

It’s really not a big deal.

And even if it was, it wouldn’t be up to me.

Since I am here, I might as well write something.

And while I’m writing something, I might as well entertain myself.

Where’s the ball?

This is the only kind of muse invocation that works for me—maybe it will work for you, too.

If it doesn’t, you can also sun yourself on the floor for 2 hours, then wake up and start writing.

Whatever you want to do, you know, I don’t really care.

Commenting policy: If I like your comment, it will be approved. I don’t always comment back, but I will nod my head and tent my fingers and say, Ahhh, yes yes yes. Your comment need not bother with fancy footwear or rational undergarments. But it does need to feel comfortable—both for you to write and for others to read. If it doesn’t feel comfortable, and if I decide I don’t want it taking up people’s brain spaces, I will let it softly float away. Perhaps one day it will return to you, and you can tuck it into bed.

When I was a kid, my stepdad bought an Ooga horn so he could pick me up after school without getting out of the car.

I’d be on 2nd base in kickball, and the Ooooooooga would call me out.

Everyone laughed, but I knew the guy behind the windshield wasn’t messing around. Run. Both. Ways.

One day when the music teacher kept us late, I came out to find my stepdad. He put his hands around my neck and squeezed until I understood I was never to keep him waiting again.

I don’t think about this much. It happened a long time ago. I’ve moved on.

But do you ever notice how you tend to fixate on certain business issues?

Mine was keeping people waiting.

Every deadline was an Ooga horn, but I didn’t see the connection.

My fear of keeping people waiting actually kept people waiting even longer, because I kept having to talk myself down from the fear.

It kept me from creating new products.

In my fear of keeping people waiting, I had created a business that kept people waiting.

What do you do when clients are waiting for you?

I tried getting rid of deadlines. Obviously! But that didn’t work, because then people were waiting and feeling uncertain, so I brought them back.

At this point, I had my a-ha! moment. Saw the Ooga horn connection. Realized I could experiment with this.

Here are the approaches and tactics that worked for me:

1. No more proposals with specific deliverables. Now we have mutual agreements. I say, “We’re committing to work together for x months, or the equivalent of x hours of my time a month. We’ll meet once a month to plan out what makes sense that month.” Sounds risky, because what if they need to know exactly what they’ll get first, or what if they just want to start with one little thing? For me, having lots of people waiting for a bunch of little things reflected a lack of commitment for both of us. I wanted a handful of committed people rather than 15 people who “just want one or two things.” There is freedom in communicating what’s true for me and what I want, and in giving others permission to say “yes” or “no.” (I learned that from my client, Annette Saldaña.) If my business isn’t reflecting what’s best for me, how can I give my best to others?
2. Not deadlines, not milestones, but windows of momentum. This isn’t about the work being “on time” or “late.” This is about momentum. Every day, I commit to keep moving. When I’m working closely with someone, momentum is all that matters. It’s how I measure success on my own projects as well. What doesn’t work: Trying to force a solution in response to the fear of waiting. Insights whisper. They need naps. And they’re worth waiting for because they solve so many problems at once.
3. Build a comfortable reception area. Waiting doesn’t need to feel like you’re on hold at the dentist’s. If someone needs to wait before I’m available, a book sets the stage for our work together, like The Art of Possibility (thanks to Sarah Bray for recommending) or Selling to Big Companies.
4. Give self way more time than you need—instead of as much time as you hope you need. I avoid self-trickery by waiting until I’m tired to schedule blocks of time in my calendar. Also, new requirement. 1 afternoon nap a week.
5. Become okay with the worst happening. “I will never have a good idea again, people will all tell each other how terrible I am, and I’ll have to sell hot oatmeal breakfasts to the neighbors.” It sounds ridiculous, spelled out like that. But I also became okay with it. Whatever happens, at least I kept showing up. I can live with that.
6. Think of clients as sailors who play tennis. My clients aren’t parents waiting in the parking lot, or children waiting to be picked up from school. They’re sailors who play tennis on their ships. I’m the tennis pro who visits, gives tips, and sets up matches with interesting people. Ultimately, they’re responsible for their game. This also helped me manage my time. Four ships a month is a good number for the kind of work I like to do. We can play mixed-metaphor doubles.
7. Say ”yes” to the opportunity that excites you, even if you’re booked. I was asked to give a writing workshop for a team. I said “no” at first. Clients were waiting for me, I was busy, I’d never given a writing workshop to a team before, etc. But the team and the organization were too cool to resist. It felt right. Best decision ever. Preparing for this workshop opened up a dreamhouse of possibilities for what could happen in my business next.
8. Close the door to new clients. I’m going deeper with the clients I already have. Doing this has given me space to create the “system of everything,” rather than customizing a new solution for everyone.

People are still waiting, and I am still working on the things they are waiting for, but I am also working on my relationships with people and the things they wait for. And I’ve managed to carve out a bit of time each day to work on this new thing, which won’t have a waiting room or reception area of any kind. (We’ll all be too busy creating and living it up.)

Commenting policy: If I like your comment, it will be approved. I don’t always comment back, but I will nod my head and tent my fingers and say, Ahhh, yes yes yes. Your comment need not bother with fancy footwear or rational undergarments. But it does need to feel comfortable—both for you to write and for others to read. If it doesn’t feel comfortable, and if I decide I don’t want it taking up people’s brain spaces, I will let it softly float away. Perhaps one day it will return to you, and you can tuck it into bed.

You can hear everything if you put on the wireless headphones they give out. It’s also fun to take them off.

After about 15 minutes of dancing, you’re ready to go.

It’s a nice metaphor for editing.

Editing feels stupid at first. No one knows what you’re doing over there—they can’t hear the music. But they can tell if you’re into the music, and that’s what counts.

Writing is like the secret music in your headphones. Editing is like dancing.

Editing is best in short bursts, and in the right mood. You need to keep it loose, but dance with intention, my friend.

Want to grab a pair of wireless headphones and try it?

INSTRUCTIONS FOR YOUR 10-MINUTE SILENT EDITING DISCO:

Pair up with a friend so you don’t have to dance alone.

Start your dance mix, set a timer for 10 minutes, and start EDITING. But only for 10 minutes.

Then take a nap. (You can only DISCO twice if you take the nap first.)

Use these questions to guide you. Make tweaks, but don’t get pushy. Keep moving. Do the easy parts first.

1. When you wrote this, did you allow yourself to write 4 pages for every 1 page of copy you intend to use? Or were you trying to force the outcome to happen too soon?
2. Read it from the perspective of three of your favorite clients, and report back.
3. Send this to someone who gets you. Say you only want to know the parts that moved them or that sparked their curiosity or excitement.
4. Did you write this in a bad mood, or from a fearful place? Time to delete. Remove all but one of the explanations you find. And see if you can cut that explanation in half.
5. Anything else just feel off? Embellishments that ring false, or phrases that sound defensive or aggressive? What’s behind that? (Write about how you want it to feel, but don’t try to wordsmith it just yet. How can this feel true?)
6. Are there unnecessary words? Sections? Can something be cut & used as a blog post instead? (Are you trying to do too much convincing within the sales page itself, without using other types of content?)
7. What’s the simpler way to say it? Is that simpler way the truest way for you to say it?
8. Does your call to action provoke their curiosity?
9. What’s the one thing you want them to do? Is every element on this page serving that intention, or are you packing it with more stuff in hopes there will be something for everyone? Do you need to break this up into sub-pages or a series of emails or posts?
10. Did you use bullet points, or did you intentionally not use bullet points? Either way is fine, as long as you thought about it.
11. Did you do the scanners a kindness by incorporating headlines and bolding places to catch their attention?
12. Do the headlines make you want to read what’s beneath them?
13. Does anything in here provoke a “duh…” response from your people, and how can you tweak it so it doesn’t?
14. Does anything in here provoke a “huh?” response from your people, and how can you tweak it so it doesn’t—without over-explaining?
15. Are you playing hard to get, or are you falling all over yourself to persuade them?
16. Does this incorporate insights from customer interviews and testimonials?
17. Does this take a new approach or say it in a way no one else is saying it?
18. Is there a clear problem this solution is solving?
19. Is the problem presented in a way that gives the reader a mini-epiphany about the nature of the problem?
20. Is the problem something one might actually feel proud to have (or at least RELIEVED to read about, like someone finally gets it?) Or, are you making the problem sound shameful, condescending, embarrassing? Is this a smart-reasonable-intelligent-creative-person problem? Or an unsophisticated-person problem?
21. Are you pandering to the audience by telling them they’re smart and creative? (As if they don’t already know.)
22. Where is the surprise, and can we move it to closer to the top? Maybe so it’s the headline? What’s the most surprising thing you can say about this? How could you reverse what’s expected?
23. Does the first sentence leave them feeling incomplete and needing to know what you mean by that? This is good.
24. How are your transitions? Does it transition smoothly from one point to the next?
25. Do the headlines incorporate problems & benefits?
26. Did you address the most important objection?
27. Did you cover the benefits they already want—sneaking in a couple they never would have thought of?
28. Did you give proof points, if possible, for the benefits? Can you track them down–or ask for support?
29. How do you feel about it overall? Are there parts that just don’t feel like they’re grabbing you, for some inexplicable reason? Like they make sense and they’re correct, but they’re just not pulling you in?
30. Type-os?

Commenting policy: If I like your comment, it will be approved. I don’t always comment back, but I will nod my head and tent my fingers and say, Ahhh, yes yes yes. Your comment need not bother with fancy footwear or rational undergarments. But it does need to feel comfortable—both for you to write and for others to read. If it doesn’t feel comfortable, and if I decide I don’t want it taking up people’s brain spaces, I will let it softly float away. Perhaps one day it will return to you, and you can tuck it into bed.

She didn’t actually like to hide in trees, but it seemed better than the alternative of dressing up like an astronaut and wearing one of those gigantic glass globes and a jet pack and zooming through the air at high speeds, like so many of the other bunnies had learned to do.

She would sit there in her tree, on top of a 6-foot mound of kibble she’d collected from various parts of the world.

And she would shake and tremble, her whiskers quivering uncontrollably.

And she would look up at the sky at all of the bunny astronauts who were flying to and fro with their jet packs, and wonder why she couldn’t bear to come out of her tree and strap her jet pack back on.

This bunny couldn’t bear to go back up. Maybe she’d seen too many bunny crashes in the past. Maybe she just couldn’t leave the safety of this tree. It felt so cool and dark and quiet.

She realized she was terrified of heights. Had it always been this way? She couldn’t tell.

Perhaps this fear of heights had made her seem like one of the bravest bunny astronauts, because she was very good at pushing herself to do things she didn’t actually want to do.

Except that one day she realized she wasn’t able to push herself anymore.

And she wasn’t sure whether she was allowed to just hang out on the ground in a tree and eat kibble and perhaps one of these days poke around and have a tiny adventure in the field.

What bunny astronaut does that?

How would anyone take her seriously?

Some of the bunnies would drop letters down from the sky. Letters seemed to constantly be falling here and there. All around the base of her tree was a pile of letters, most of them addressed to her, but some of them weekly or monthly updates with news from the other bunnies’ travels.

She loved getting letters! But the sheer number of letters eventually surpassed even her ability to reflect and chew and respond.

Her regular protocol no longer seemed to be sufficient. Open the letter, scribble your reply below, and find the nearest tree letter suction distribution system. They used those old bank tubes to shoot letters back up into the sky.

Meanwhile, letters kept dropping from the sky, all around her tree.

She didn’t even know which letter to read first, so she stayed in her tree, shaking and eating kibble.
Time passed too quickly.
The pile of letters grew so that she couldn’t even see the ground anymore.
The seasons changed.

This probably isn’t very sanitary, but she was so terrified of being hit by one of these letters, or being spotted by one of the other bunny astronauts, that she remained firmly ensconced in her tree, eating her way through all of the kibble.

She wasn’t sure whether she could teach spaceship piloting when she herself didn’t particularly want to pilot spaceships. Not full-time, anyway.

And so many bunnies seemed so perfectly happy up there, jetting to and fro. They didn’t seem to miss the field at all.

But maybe they did. She couldn’t really tell from the ground.

She really just wanted to find a patch of field that was clear of bunny astronauts flying overhead, maybe have a picnic in the grass, and enjoy a nice butter lettuce salad. With some cheese.

And sometimes she actually forgot she was a bunny.

One week she went to a bunny astronaut conference.

There she took off her spacesuit and hopped around and ate lettuce with other bunnies.

There were so many bunny astronauts she admired there, and it seemed they, too, missed their old trees. And made frequent visits back.

And she felt like she wasn’t alone.

And she resolved to do something about this tree situation. And all of the letters that had piled up so high around her tree.

She didn’t want to hide in trees anymore. Neither did she want to fly through the air full-time.

And neither could she read and respond to every letter, shooting them back up the trees in the little bank cannisters.

So she decided to reflect on this.

And to give herself permission not to respond to the letters, rather than guilt-resistance-guilt-resistance, which also didn’t seem to be working.

(Unless they were active bunny clients who were already enrolled in astronaut school. These she invited into her tree. And they ate kibble. And they did bunny-nata.)

And eventually they became the kinds of bunnies who had field adventures together. And they didn’t mind spending lots of time on the ground.

Once in a while, they flew through the air like they used to in the old days. But this time it felt different, because they were free to choose.

And this bunny became a semi-reclusive bunny who only hid in trees once in a while, evenings and weekends. But most of the time you could find her hopping around, gathering ingredients for blueberry pancakes. It’s her favorite.

You can still find her on a Sunday, making blueberry pancakes.
Or hopping through the field, softly singing through her whiskers, making up fairy tales about bunnies, hanging out with squirrels.

Commenting policy: If I like your comment, it will be approved. I don’t always comment back, but I will nod my head and tent my fingers and say, Ahhh, yes yes yes. Your comment need not bother with fancy footwear or rational undergarments. But it does need to feel comfortable—both for you to write and for others to read. If it doesn’t feel comfortable, and if I decide I don’t want it taking up people’s brain spaces, I will let it softly float away. Perhaps one day it will return to you, and you can tuck it into bed.

(To the intention and the spirit and the potential of the experience.)

And when it feels complete.

(It answered enough burning questions for a certain someone to feel ready to do the next, tiniest, baby-sized thing.)

And when there’s an a-ha moment in there somewhere.

(Epiphanies, lightbulbs, and Huh-I-never-thought-of-it-that-way moments. For best results, the insight will concern all of this DRAMA they’ve been having.)