I have emptied
my shelves of books
my closets, of clothes
my lists, of good intentions
not just to make room
for whatever comes next
but to see
what is here right now:

the light
the dark
the rich
the worn
the choices upon choices
suddenly on display
when their numbers dwindle
and they no longer have each other
to hide behind.

Boy,
is it ever there,
all that here:
more room
than I dreamed of
when I was drowning
in the lack of it
more quiet
than I could fill
if I sang for a thousand years.

But if for a moment
I can set down
these last, sad items—
my misspent past,
my pre-soiled future—

A hairline crack
lets the real light come pouring in,
enough so that even a blind old bat like me
can see that I am only really scared
when I am there
and that every single breath
is a free ride back to here

xxx
c

Image by vige via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

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Weird, one-off disclaimer: Apologies if this gets nerdier in places than our regular program. I’m still processing the events and information of the past week, and via sleep-deprived filters. Which means that given my own standards, I probably should wait to post about it here, but given my iffy memory, I thought it best to strike while things were still relatively vivid in my mind.

Rumor has it that last year, attendance at SXSWi—that’s the Interactive (or “nerd”) portion of the Austin-based South by Southwest festival—increased by 40%.

And that this year, it increased by 40% again, making it bigger than either the Film or Music portions of SXSW, both of which have been around far longer.

Even if the numbers aren’t quite as staggering, it hardly matters: the reality was more so. On this, my fourth trip to SXSWi in five years (I skipped what would have been Year #2), there were more people here/there/everywhere than even last year, which was crazy-packed. And I’m not even talking about parties, which, save one quickly-corrected exception, I’ve learned to avoid altogether in favor of the mix of planned meetups and small, impromptu gatherings of friends (usually with a ratio of one old friend to two new, to keep expanding The Circle of Awesome).

At (impromptu) drinks on Sunday night¹, a couple of old-timers were telling tales of South-bys past—specifically, of the first particular South-by they passed in the hallways, rather than the sessions.²

It’s no news that some of the best stuff that goes down at any conference is of the decidedly unofficial variety; that’s the whole reason behind BarCamp and its fancier forebear, Foo Camp. But hearing it confirmed by two now-established pillars of the design community made me wonder why other longtime members of Camp We Were Here First are so angry about the growth of the conference in recent years. Didn’t they first find each other in the sessions of the conference in the halls, and move it to the halls themselves? And weren’t we all here now, together: a bunch of old- and medium-timers, who met the same, weird way, through a crazy-quilt of Internet sites, social media hubs and real-life hallways, fueled by a mix of intention and openness?

Why the fuck is everyone so goddamn angry?

Of course, it’s not everyone; it’s not even all the oldsters. It may be just a vocal minority who’s ticked off, amplified by the echo chamber of the social web. It may even be me drawn to some icky-but-human, lowest-common-denominator gossip. I get dark when I get tired.

But I’d have to have been far denser than I am not to detect the noticeably rising tide of hatred toward newcomers, who were being labeled either clueless tech n00bs or opportunist douchebags (or both), but were definitely charged with interfering with the “real” reason for the conference.

Okay. So what is the real reason for a conference? Education for all? High-level exchanges with peers? As someone wisely suggested³ on a recent post lamenting the dumbing-down and up-sizing of SXSWi, if you want to make it more about the focused exchange of knowledge and less about lazy, lite™ and/or dig-me sessions (not to mention booth babes, sponsored parties and other corporo-effluvia) move that shit to Rochester, NY in the middle of winter: you can enjoy all the high-level conversation you want, unmolested.

I had a rather different experience with content at SXSW 2010: I attended more panels this year than I had in the previous two put together, including one excellent core conversation on interviewing best practices. And in case it’s not obvious from the context I’ve tried to establish here (hey, I’m fuzzy!), there would have been no conversation on interviewing best practices had SXSW not grown in size to include the bloggers, podcasters, videobloggers, and yes, mainstream journalists who are now drawn to South-by.

(And speaking of mainstream journalism, thank God-or-whom/whatever that the tent is big enough now to include them. I, for one, would like to see journalism survive into the next century, and that’s not going to happen unless people on the other side of the tech divide—the “right” side, the one that’s been coming to South-by since the beginning, the NEW side—extends a hand and helps them over.)

I get that change is hard. I get that everyone’s default reaction to it, mine included, tends to be fear (sometimes expressed as anger or sorrow). But everything was new sometime, just as everyone knew nothing and no one at one point. Are you still only friends with the people you knew when you were seven? Do you still watch only The Brady Bunch and/or Matlock? If so, please, please work on expanding your own Circle of Awesome, wherever you choose to start your search. Even if you start with Netflix.

My own Circle of Awesome has grown to include all kinds of people: the ones who have been there a long time and the ones who showed up for the first time this year; the freaks and the other freaks who are scared of those freaks and the freaks who don’t even realize they’re freaks. People who eat meat and people who won’t even eat their vegetables cooked. People whose eye for design dazzles mine and people whose use modal windows makes my heart sieze up.

It’s less a circle than it is a busy, constantly growing series of circles that overlaps like a Venn diagram with a z-axis. Yours might look different. Yours must look different. You might have to look harder to find Your People in some places than others. You might decide that some places are best avoided altogether (especially when you’re running low on tolerance and/or capacity).

Does this take time and energy to manage? You betcha. Do my worlds sometimes collide in a way that is nervous-making and even uncomfortable? Uh, yes. Yes, they do.

But I’ve been surprised and delighted at how my life grows richer the more I expand my definitions of what works for me to include the generically excellent—love, tolerance, humor, playfulness—and leave behind the old cues I used to rely on: what “looks” right, what sounds familiar, etc. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to find the good in everyone, much less that I’ll bring us all together in one room to sing “Kumbaya,” but that probably has more to do with me and my insecurities than them not being able to find their own areas of overlap.

It is a process of looking for the positive rather than the negative, and of moving, not stopping.

Except to rest, of course. Which is a process I will be heavily involved with over the next 48 hours…

xxx
c

¹Okay—technically Monday morning. What? It’s South-by, Jake…

²That’s a term old-timers use, by the way—”South-by.” So now you can pretend to be an old-timer. Until they change the secret handshake again.

³Alas, I cannot find it now, but I’m fairly sure it’s embedded in the lively comments section of this post by long-timer Jolie O’Dell. I’ll add here that if I’d been groped in public (or private, without my permission), it would have colored my perceptions, too. I have a healthy fear of crowds that stems from a Who-concert-like experience with a line for the city bus during my high school years that has me steer clear of any situation where crowds are likely to gather.

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Each of the four years I’ve been coming to SXSW, I’ve learned a little something different.

The first time, it was about the value of coming to a conference, period. The next time, about learning to take the time I needed, regardless of the enticing hoopla happening around me (and also about not skipping a year, if you can avoid it). Last year, my Stuart Smalley year, apparently, it was about being myself, no matter how uncool I suspected that was (something that an intervening year has only confirmed).

This year, it was about terrifying myself. Not pushing my boundaries, not stretching just to or slightly beyond the limits of my comfort zone, but hurtling myself in harm’s way and seeing what happens next. Specifically, pushing my way onto the most terrifying panel I could imagine: a two-minute, on-the-spot presentation improvised to 10 slides I had never seen before in my life and which had been prepared with the intent of maximizing audience laughter and enjoyment, not of making my job easier. A tradition sometimes known as “PowerPoint™ Karaoke,” and which a friend here dubbed “business improv.” (Which sounds like the world’s most horrible anything, but hey, I’m biased.)

Anyway. It was the opposite of rolling off a log (which I gather is easy, if not exactly fun), yet I managed to enjoy it. Especially the part when it was over. Okay—I exaggerate, as is my wont and prerogative. But really, now that I have made a fool of myself in front of 600 people, I can move on to  bigger and scarier challenges: making a fool of myself in front of 1,200 people! Or on national television!

Terrifying yourself is like building up muscle, as it has been told to me that muscles are built: you push things hard enough so that you are uncomfortable and the muscle tears a little; scar tissue builds up; the muscle gets bigger; you get stronger! Lather, rinse, repeat. (The act of terrifying yourself, of course, not that last action you used to do it.)

Also, if at all possible, I suggest the diving-in-straightaway-and-getting-it-over-with timing strategy. Gretchen Rubin (who ripped it up on the book stage) and I were both congratulating ourselves on having our respective moments of terror over with on Friday, so we were left free to enjoy the rest of our SXSW weekends.

Oh—and speaking of rest, one final note: there must be blissful (if brief) periods of rest in between the daredevil acts of muscle-building. Rest that includes things like hanging out with friends, taking in other people’s feats of derring-do, and permission to write short blog posts.

See? You really can learn something at SXSW…

Photo ©2010 Jeffrey Zeldman via Flickr.

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Referral Friday is part of an ongoing series inspired by John Jantsch’s Make-a-Referral Week. For more about that—and loads more referrals for everything from cobblers to coaches to gee-tar teachers, start here. Pass it on, baby!

Roughly 15 years ago, when I first moved to L.A., I read a story in the L.A. Times Travel section about a little town tucked in a magical valley about two hours from town. (Okay—90 minutes: traffic was better in 1995.)

I was looking for day trips back then—ways to escape the relentlessly suburban landscape I had yet to appreciate, without breaking the dwindling bank that was sustaining us. The article mentioned places to eat (fine) and hike (uh, no) and even spa, if you were so inclined, but what drew my attention—and ultimately me, to Ojai, again and again—was mention of a little open-air used bookseller named Bart’s Books.

I think I spent two hours and $75 I could ill afford there that day. I’ve spent many times more since, but now I’m savvy to the very drill the author mentioned in the piece: save up your books, bring to Bart’s for credit, come away with more books.

There are indoor rooms with finer books, but without question, what makes Bart’s Bart’s (and makes me want to buy it and live there one day) is the sprawling outdoor area. The books do get dusty, and in places, a bit moldy: there ain’t much precipitation here in SoCal, but we’re generally ill-prepared for what we do get.

No matter. The books are impossible to find and a delight to look for; mustiness just adds to the experience. I’ll confess to a slight dip in my interest level with a changing of owners a while back, but I have all kinds of problems with change, so let’s just say it’s me. Truth be told, there have been some nice, if subtle improvements over the past two years, chief among them how many more of my books seem to get accepted for trade-in. (Or hey, maybe I’m just reading a better class of book!)

If you’re doing a tool up or down the California coast, consider making a small detour inland to walk the magical streets of Ojai: maybe get a bite, maybe do some shopping, maybe even get yourself a little hot spa action.

But if you do turn off to Ojai, you must stop by Bart’s. All books are more enjoyable for being browsed under sunny blue skies…

xxx
c

Image by communicatrix via Flickr. You may reuse under this Creative Commons license.

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Up early,
aloft,
pre-caffeinated,
I do what I must
to put myself in places
of discomfort.

Why?

Do I long
to thread my way through
throngs of strangers
in recycled air,
heart beating too fast,
nerves flaying at the mere thought
of all that proximity?

Hell, no.

What do you do,
all you happy people,
but remind me of how alone
I really am?
How cut off
in my own skin
and awkward
and remote?

I don’t feel this
at home
at my desk
by the same sunny window
with the same cup of coffee
at the same hour of each new day–

Such lengths
I go to,
trying to make time stop
and the world a little safer.

But the world,
for all my efforts,
remains dangerous
and wonderful,
horrifying
and exquisite,
a place where dreams are dashed on rocks
as easily as they are born out of thin air.

Besides, shit changes
every second,
whether you notice
or not.

So I board a plane
and walk into a new place
and thrust out my hand
and open my heart
over and over
again.

What choice do I have,
a soul alone,
split off from the source
and stuck in a tiny body
with an obnoxious brain?

You are my rocky path
and my salvation, both.

Here I come.

xxx
c

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A mostly monthly but forever occasional round-up of what I’ve been up to and what I plan to be. For full credits and details, see this entry.

Colleen of the future (places I’ll be)

• South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, TX (March 11 – 16) Sometimes called “Spring Break for Nerds,” other times called “that week where you see how much you can shout over music at loud parties without losing your voice,” SxSWi has become my favorite conference of the year. I’m notoriously squirrely about pinning myself down to events, panels and any other hard commitments, finding I do better when I can roam free and meet up at random. That said, I’ll be joining the stellar lineup of Mike Monteiro’s famed Battledecks! panel (think “death by PowerPoint karaoke.” And pray for me.)
• The Astoundingly Simple Secrets to Making Social Media Work for You (March 23, online at Freelancers Union; $30 for members, and membership is free!) If you missed my talk at last year’s Creative Freelancer Conference, this is your chance to catch the new and improved version (see? good things come to those who wait). And while we’re at it, if you’re interested in attending this year’s CFC in Denver, you can get an additional $25 off the Early Bird price (ends March 12) using the code “4D”.

Colleen of the Past (stuff I did you might not know about)

• Interview at the Get Inspired! Project Thanks to the awesome and ever-generous Dyana Valentine, I was interviewed by Toni Reece for her year-long project aggregating the insights of all kinds of people into what it takes to stay inspired. We had great fun (Toni is a master interviewer!), which you can either read or listen to at the project’s website.
• storytelling at w o r d s p a c e spoken word evening My friend Brenda Varda invited me to share a story at her rebooted salon evening, so I shared the one about how we lost most of my childhood stuff when Mom couldn’t pay the storage fees. You can read about my experience here and here, or just go watch the video on YouTube.
• Dying to Be Born After being both inspired by Seth Godin’s multi-contributor ebook supporting Linchpin and disappointed to find so few feminine voices contained within, yogini, certified Martha Beck coach, and all-around terrific lady, Lianne Raymond, decided to “answer” Seth’s project with one of her own. This one is heavy on the feminine but still all about the issues Seth’s contributors (including yours truly!) discussed. My contribution is a brand new, heretofore unpublished poem. So all you Poetry Thursday freaks who haven’t already, go download that sh*t right now!

Colleen of the Present (ongoing projects)

• communicatrix | focuses My monthly newsletter devoted to the all-important subject of increasing your unique fabulosity. One article per month (with actionable tips! and minimal bullsh*t!) about becoming a better communicator, plus the best few of the many cool things I stumble across in my travels. Plus a tiny drawing by moi. Free! (archives & sign-up)
• Act Smart! is my monthly column about marketing for actors for LA Casting, but I swear, you’ll find stuff in it that’s useful, too. Browse the archives, here.
• Internet flotsam And of course, I snark it up on Twitter, chit-chat on Facebook, post the odd video or quote to Tumblr, and bookmark the good stuff I find on my travels at StumbleUpon and delicious. If you like this sort of stuff, follow me in those places—I only post a fraction of what I find to Twitter and Facebook.

xxx
c

Image by madnzany via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

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Many moons ago, going solely on a hunch, I stumbled upon doing the dishes as a way of setting things right.

It was a magical bit of accidental reframing for me. Dishes were an especially loathed task growing up, for all sorts of reasons having to do with feminism and feeling trapped in a life and a house not of my choosing.

Ironing, on the other hand, was a quieting, calming task I chose. Like most of my favorite soothing things, it required just enough attention to disengage my brain from whatever it was currently sweating out, and not so much that I couldn’t have Brady Bunch reruns on in the background.

Sweeping Changes: Discovering the Joy of Zen in Everyday Tasks, helps reframe all kinds of potentially irritating chores into balm for the soul (not to mention actions that get the house nice and clean.) Author Gary Thorp, a lay-ordained monk in the Shunryu Suzuki Roshi tradition, explicates the dull to-dos of maintaining one’s life and space—the scrubbing of toilets, the preparation of meals, and yes, the sweeping of surfaces—in Buddhist terms: how we care for the things around us determines how we care for ourselves and the world around us.

If we approach a dirty sink—or carpet, or even (or especially) a toilet with loving kindness and our full attention, we improve our ability to approach the more complex challenges of life the same way. And if we go one level deeper, we start getting in our bones that the Buddha lives in everything: not just the clean sink underneath, but the dirty water that fills it. We honor the space walled off arbitrarily by the exterior of our home but not at the expense of the space outside of it, because we see that everything—the floor, the dust, the mites living in the dust—are all part of one, big, interconnected system.

I loved Thorp’s friendly, light, easygoing style so much, I probably read the book too fast. If you pick up your own copy (there are new hardcover and paperback copies available starting at $5.99 and $10.90, respectively, with abundant used copies for far less), I’d keep it by the bed or other (ahem) temporary reading station to dip into here and there, for inspiration. Maybe it’s different for zen cats, but us civilian kitties can get balled up in our Buddhist underwear pretty darn quick.

If you take nothing else from it, I’d suggest taking these two things: pay more attention to your tasks, and less to how perfectly you do them.

Easier on the surfaces and what lies beneath yours…

xxx
c

• Buy hardcover version of Sweeping Changes by Gary Thorp on Amazon
• Buy paperback version of Sweeping Changes by Gary Thorp on Amazon

Image by CarbonNYC via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

UPDATE (8:51 am): In my rush to post, I neglected to mention that John E. Simpson’s comment on a previous post originally pointed me to this wonderful book. I’m horrified, not only b/c I’m such a credit-where-credit-is-due apologist, but b/c I want to maximize the chances I’ll find other great book (and other) suggestions in the comments section. My apologies, John!

Yo! Disclosure! Links to the books in the post above are Amazon affiliate links. This means if you click on them and buy something, I receive an affiliate commission. Which I hope you do: it helps keep me in books to review. More on this disclosure stuff at publisher Michael Hyatt’s excellent blog, from whence I lifted (and smooshed around a little) this boilerplate text.

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I had big plans for this weekend, mostly because I had even bigger plans for this week: Taxes! South by Southwest! My first experience performing (hopefully) at The Moth!

I was cat-sitting for L.A. Jan while she went off for a restorative weekend in the Desert, so I figured I’d get plenty done. I had nothing scheduled except an afternoon date with my sister. I’d be far from the distractions of home, so I’d be far more able to apply nose to grindstone and work work work. Get all those posts written and scheduled for my away time. Get my newsletter ready to go. Get my Moth piece written and rehearsed, my Porchlight piece started, maybe next month’s Networker column written.

Oh—and because there’s a washer and dryer on the premises, I didn’t even have to skip Laundry Day.

By Friday evening at 6, I was wiped out. I had half-heartedly wrassled with Jan’s wifi settings and when that failed, booted up her peecee laptop and half-started three blog posts. Nothing. So I did the unthinkable: I shut down the computer, threw in a load of whites, watched cable TV for two hours, and went to bed early.

I woke up the next morning refreshed and ready to have at it—only I didn’t. I did my Nei Kung and my reading. I picked up some coffee and some flowers at TJ’s. I did another couple of loads of laundry (I know—you’d think I had small children or something) and returned a few Very Important Emails. No writing. Nothing. The well was still dry. So I climbed in my car and drove to my neighborhood to do a few errands: check the mail, pick up a framed piece at the store, use up a Groupon that was set to expire.

My sister wasn’t in much of a conquer-the-world mood, either—rain and Oscar traffic will do that to a gal. So we bailed and continued on our respective putter-y weekend ways. I went home for a bit, thinking now that maybe the familiar setting would jumpstart things. I know, I know. But it seemed reasonable enough in the moment. Instead, I tidied up a bit, closed a few more email loops, and headed out to pick up some comforting old-school “Chinese” takeout¹ for the evening. Which I spooned into myself between watching Chinatown and programming Jan’s virgin remote. One hot bath (with graphic novel!) and some Saturday Night Fever later, and I called it a night. Or a weekend, for all practical purposes.

I had two interesting conversations about the weekend once I got back home. One was with L.A. Jan, who had a similarly fraught experience on her relaxing spa getaway, a generous birthday gift from a friend. She was shocked to find out how painful it was to get a massage—how out of touch with her body, not to mention relaxing, she’d gotten. It was a wakeup call, she said; that was the true gift (because hey, it’s hard to look at having horrific bodily reactions plus pain as a gift without some serious reframing.)

The other was with my new friend, Dave Seah, with whom I’m conducting the Google Wave with Dave™ experiment. He had an away weekend, too; he also was rather dreading being away from work for so long. But his weekend turned out to be delightfully restorative, filled with lively and engaging activities, illuminating conversations with friends, good food and plenty of chill time. His tone in the Wave was more alert and excited, more clear and focused, yet also stripped of any of the despair and/or mania that sometimes possesses us when we’re wailing over what we shall do, o, what shall we do? For the first time he seemed to be approaching shipping (in the Seth Godin sense of the word, from Linchpin) from a truly relaxed and realistic perspective: keep it simple, address the fears one by one, do it anyway. Not easy, maybe, but simple and direct, which is a start.

I have “shipping” plans for actual product this year—at least two books, plus a few other possible ideas. But I have also started “shipping” on my talking goals, and here’s how: by saying “yes.”

Yes, I’ll read a story at your event (even though no, I don’t have anything written for it yet.) And thanks, Brenda.

Yes, I’ll read one at yours, too, even if it means I need to sit down and come up with an idea and an outline by the end of the day. Twice. (And thanks, Bill and Josh.)

Yes, I’ll stand up in front of a group of people at SXSW and do Death by PowerPoint Karaoke (aka “Battledecks”), even though I have no idea what I’m doing nor any way to prepare for it, either one of which thoughts is terrifying on its own but together, are positively stultifying. (And thanks, Mike.)

There will never be a right time to stop. There will never be a right time to go. There’s no rule book, here—or if there is, I haven’t seen nor heard of it. The only rules are these: terrify yourself only as much as you have to, comfort yourself only as much as you need to. Or, as Dave said at the very beginning of what turned into the Wave experiment, “Do not hurry; do not wait.”

I must give myself rest, enough to gain the energy to move forward. I must push myself forward, not give into the idea that I need endless rest.

Open and close. Rest and work. Yin and yang. The Chinese, as my white, working-class-Mass.-born instructor likes to say (only with less swearing) had this shit all figured out centuries ago.

Also? Stay on top of your laundry. Just sayin’…

xxx
c

Image by Daveybot via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

¹By the way, is it just Mister, or do all cats go berserk for hot-and-sour soup?)

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I am mad for deals, especially when they converge with my guilty desire for self-indulgence and my weird attraction for making a game of whatever I can.

Groupon, a daily deal for some various local goody, neatly satisfies all three needs in one digital swoop. After signing up for your city’s deals at the main website, you receive a daily email with a deal which you can buy into for a specified window of time—24 hours, usually. The trick is that the deal gets “unlocked” (i.e., available for purchase) only after the number of people willing to commit to purchase reaches some predetermined critical mass. (Here’s more about the “why” behind it and the inspiration for it, The Point, on Groupon’s “about” page.)

Not every deal will appeal to everyone; then again, how much money and time does any one person have? It seems like I’ve got less of both with each passing day. But I’ve scored some sweet deals for taking a small risk, not only delighted with the savings, but happy to have been introduced to some terrific new resource I might not otherwise have found out about (which is pretty much the incentive for offering door-buster deals as far as the vendors go).

One word of warning: if you’re a hoarder-of-happy like I am, beware—those expiration dates creep up more quickly than you’d guess. In the last week, I’ve gotten a haircut, my car detailed, and $20 worth of expensive takeout. Thank the heavens the relaxation types at the place I still have a massage coming to me get that some of us are foot-draggers (especially when the feet in question have a plantar wart we’d just as soon eliminate before humiliating ourselves in front of a total stranger…)

xxx
c

• Sign up for Groupon via this link and when you buy into your first Groupon, I get points in my account towards more Groupons OR
• Sign up for Groupon via this link and remain blissfully shill-free—I’m good, either way!

Available Groupon cities as of this writing:

• Albuquerque
• Atlanta
• Austin
• Baltimore
• Boston
• Charlotte
• Chicago
• Cincinnati
• Cleveland
• Columbus
• Dallas
• Denver
• Detroit
• East Bay
• Fort Worth
• Fresno
• Houston
• Indianapolis
• Jacksonville
• Kansas City
• Las Vegas
• London
• Los Angeles
• Louisville
• Memphis
• Miami
• Milwaukee
• Minneapolis / St Paul
• Nashville
• New Orleans
• New York
• Oklahoma City
• Omaha
• Philadelphia
• Phoenix
• Pittsburgh
• Portland
• Raleigh / Durham
• Sacramento
• San Antonio
• San Diego
• San Francisco
• San Jose
• Seattle
• Sioux Falls
• St Louis
• Tacoma
• Tampa
• Toronto
• Vancouver
• Virginia Beach / Norfolk
• Washington DC

(All of those city links? Also SHILL-FREE.)

Image by Joe Shlabotnik via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license. Especially good story and comments thread on this one, too.

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I have never won
one of those coveted
golden bodies
I envisioned myself holding
back in my girlish days.

But I know this lady
who has held several.

And as far
as I know,
she does not sit down
and polish them
afterward,
but gets up
and gets up
and gets up
and does the next thing
after the thing
that came before it.

For most,
the first thing
is to want a thing.

The next,
to allow yourself
to want it,
followed by
taking actual steps
toward living it.

And after that—
way, way after that,
most likely—
you discover that there is no “there”,
just the way
that you are going.

I know

I will hold the want
I have in my heart
as I walk
toward the vision
my heart is holding.

But mostly
I will walk
and I will walk
and I will walk,
stopping
only briefly
to say “hello”
and wish my fellow travelers
safe journey
on the way.

xxx
c

Image by miss karen via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

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