There’s something about seeing and being near beauty that inspires awesomeness.  Have you ever checked out some of the amazing handcrafted instruments to be found on Etsy?  They make my eyes happy and my fingers itch to tickle some strings.

Just looking at this Ganesh mandolin above is like music.  It’s delicate, original, a touch playful and is just begging to be held and played.  Like the fine instrument it is, there’s just no bad angle to it - a masterpiece!

This handmade stand-up bass (made out of a snare drum and a cymbal) is a heavy metal take on an acoustic bit of musical awesomeness.  This is another one of those instruments that would look just as good embellishing your home as it would strapped over your shoulder.

Another great re-purposed and re-built instrument is this quirky but beautiful cigar box mandolin.  There’s a bit of a revival going on with the cigar box stringed instrument community (see some history here), you can find a musical cigar box to buy or plans to build your own because being musically DIY / crafty is kind of the most amazing thing ever.

Thumb pianos (also known as kalimbas) are another one of those instruments that I’m just dying to have around the house to pick up and play.  I think this electric kalimba is pretty cool.

And of course, to play all of this great music – you have to be looking good too  Mandolin t-shirt, anybody?

After watching my shortie play with her shiny new SpongeBob LEGO set on Christmas morning, it seems like LEGO-related imagery is popping up all over the place in my little Web world.  And this makes me happy, but that shouldn’t surprise you.

The Guardian has an interesting collection of 2011 news headlines in LEGO (see their entire Flickr gallery here) which perhaps make some of this past year’s big events more poignant and awesome at the same time with the addition of space creatures and LEGO monsters.

The royal wedding gets a bit more pixelated (by Flickr user allyhook)

A simple tribute to Steve Jobs (by Flickr user lego27bricks)

But if you want to get more timeless, there’s this great ‘Classics in LEGO’ set by Flickr user Balakov that recreates some of the world’s most famous photography with everyone’s favorite colorful little blocks.

Or opt for the always amusing and amazing A LEGO A Day blog – self-explanatory, yes.  But you’ve got to see it to fully understand its awesomeness.

What kind of imagery has captured your 2011?

I love these fun photos from photographer Allen Sailer on ‘The War Against Christmas’ – a look at exploding Christmas ornaments filled with random substances.

A nice break from your typical red and green ornamentation, right?  If only putting away Christmas decorations were half as much fun as these!

The Interwebs is chalk full of amazing content, stories and knowledge – here’s a sampling of this week’s readable brain candy from my personal bookmarks.

• The (In)Efficiency of Local Food | The Etsy Blog - Not entirely sure how I feel about this post, but it’s an interesting look at the implications of the locavore movement.
• Goodreads | Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution by Michelle Moran - A free e-book of some tasty historical fiction, for those winter days when only Madame Tussaud and revolutions will do.
• Reconsidering Arial - Checking out the usability and aesthetic perks and flaws of Arial vs. Helvetica for the web.
• Blinds.com CEO builds $75 Million company debt free - A ditty on building a business on a dime and the Web (I start working with this great company in the new year!  Very excited).
• Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream - Indigenous, activist and scientific viewpoints and calls to action on the state of our planet and how everything we do is 100% connected.

Massive thanks to the 20SB Summit folks and BrandAboutTown for organizing a really cool blogger-focused conference event earlier this year.  I spoke on a fun panel, but the highlight of the trip was hearing Scott Belsky (of the Behance Network) present.

He’s an absolutely fantastic speaker and I think we all got a brain full from this guy  Here are some of his nuggets of awesome:

“Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”  How can we defy the odds and make our ideas happen again and again?

Creativity / ideas + organization and execution + communal forces + leadership capability = Making Ideas Happen

Where is your sacred space for you to think?  It is a competitive advantage — create windows of non-stimulation during the days.  Time to shut down and focus on 2-3 things you really want to make an impact on.  Sketch, read, think, process, do, grow.  Repeat.

It’s worth spending energy on how you organize.  Sure you can write and blog – but is your daily organization an afterthought?  Take time to audit how you organize yourself.   Creativity x organization = impact you make with your ideas.

“Organize with a bias to action” — attraction breeds loyalty in productivity systems too.  Harvey Weinstein movie producer took copious amounts of notes during day, regular stuff in black and actionable stuff in red (at end, he and all of his crew would know exactly what to do with the notes.  Productive and simple).

Apply the Action Method

The action method is 3 things:

1. Action steps – immediate to-do’s
2. Backburners
3. References – these can cloud action steps (Moleskines full of notes, but actions and notes are combined and nothing gets done)

Google holds ‘standing only’ meetings (even phone calls) — to get through them, don’t commentate rather content-ate (pressure to avoid that)

Grow a culture of capturing action steps – are you capturing everything that’s actionable (‘did you capture that?’ is an important phrase for meetings to make sure stuff gets done).  Be sure to also create a backburner ritual — go through list of back burner items (monthly beer and cross out) to keep things fresh and give your brain another place to go when you are hungry for a little bit of newness.

Let’s talk about email

On EMAIL!  Scott’s big suggestion: emails less than 3 sentences have 60% faster response time than longer emails.  Short and sweet — and communicate actions first, don’t lead with summary and non-actionable stuff.  And never, ever forget to include a numbered list if you’ve got more than one topic to cover.

You can hack the subject line too, to make it easier for people to know how to respond to your email before even opening it.  Every email subject should have an FYI or Action to increase responsiveness and productivity.

The typed word is easily ready into — be sure to take disagreements offline (or misunderstandings) – CALL THEM to straighten out, then reply all with decision / consensus.  Act as quickly as possible to clear the air and keep the positive and productive vibes flowing.

Progress through prioritization

Progress begets progress – surround yourself with milestones, project updates (inspiration to come up with ideas is easy, inspiration to take action is much more actionable)

Prioritize your projects visually — try an energy line  (extreme / high / medium / low) — on bulletin board to keep it public and in your sight.

• Only a select few things get to be in extreme and high – force yourself to make difficult decisions, teams always disagree so it’s debated
• People that miss deadlines on group projects usually do so NOT bc they don’t care, but because no one prioritized

Reduce your amount of insecurity work — this work are all of those little things that don’t move the ball forward, beyond assuring us that everything is okay (we fill our days with it because we can — not because it’s important).

Also be aware of “switching cost” – re-adjustment time to get back to what you were doing.  Avoid it.  Plan better.

Optimize to surpass your horizon of success —   do individual ‘A / ME’ testing.  Change one little thing in your workflow and see how it goes for a week.  Works?  Keep going.  Doesn’t?  Try something different.  Implement and study t he impact of little optimizations – not too many at once.

Tap into the Communal Forces around you

Share ideas liberally —  Seek competition — competitive forces can be your impetus to act, so be sure to pace yourself with other designers and folks in industry.

Tap the power of circles — Impressionists met to discuss progress, work, challenges.  Create a SMALL circle with regular meetings, mandatory meetings (miss this many – you are out) and a leader to enforce accountability.

Fight your way to breakthroughs – apathy screws people over. Fighting is a good thing, if you care you are willing to fight it out.  This is important to remember when working with a team.  Don’t become burdened by consensus – the lowest common demoninator we all agree on isn’t too amazing.

Find your sacred extremes (polarizing elements, but the ones you really believe in) — ‘I will compromise on everything, but XX’.  These will help guide you during heated debates and project work in all the best ways.

Lead your creative projects to the finish line

Leaders talk last – when Jack Welch walks into a room and says ‘here’s what I think – what do you think?  no one speaks up.  Silence your inner visionary long enough to hear what your team thinks and buy engagement from your team – fully utilize your team’s skills.

Find and empower the ‘hot spots’ on your team — they may not always be the leaders or loud people, find who really is the power house and focus on them.

Develop others through appreciation — how do you give feedback?  How do you ensure to improve the outcome without being negative?

Act like a professional storyteller at a workshop — a Cape Cod workshop has each storyteller share a story they are working on and the other storytellers stand in circle and each share 2 things they appreciated.  Then the storyteller re-tells the story again in middle of circle naturally emphasizing the elements that were given great feedback.  This critical storyteller feedback circle continues in a 3rd or 4th round, improving each time through positive reinforcement.

Value the team’s immune system — your team’s ‘doers’ are the immune system (they kill off things that could dilute the project), but when solving a problem or retrying something new — you have to suppress that (like in an organ transplant) at first.  You don’t want the rigid common sense to kill off a great idea or spirit of creativity.

Judge based on initiative (not experience) — this is how you hire and engage // most experienced person is often what we look for by default, but sometimes that’s not what you need.  Instead, seek genuine interest, you want an initiator.

Gain confidence from doubt — if 99% of people don’t believe in it:  you’re either crazy or you’re really on to something.  Status quo oils the gear of society and keeps things going — nothing extraordinary is ever achieved through ordinary means.  Be extraordinarily unique, bold and awesome.  Great things will follow.

The last couple of months have been an exploration of and in awesomeness.  What it is, how to obtain it, how to maintain it, how to maximize it.  I have the Awesomeness Fest to thank for that.  Four days of growing, dancing, laughing and camaraderie in a tropical island paradise.  I’m still glowing from it.

Part of the challenge in expecting great things from yourself and world is the daily grind that can take some of the polish off of your mental shine, if you let it.

It’s a gift to take yourself out of daily life in order to see it better – and see beyond the everyday haze of habit into what is to be.  But the real kicker is keeping that vision and passion alive when you return home.  When life as we knew it kicks back into gear.

This amazing post by Deanna Zandt (‘Hanging out on the plateaus of ordinary’) really hit home for me around this:

We mistake passion for “EVERYTHING MUST FEEL AWESOME ALWAYS.” And then we end up deeply disappointed when it doesn’t, when it just feels average….  It reminds me of this mistaken passion for work. We want to be in the thick of it all the time and, as it turns out, we’re missing a lot of good opportunities there on the plateaus of ordinary…. we have to spend sometime considering—and likely changing— what we think is awesome.

Every day actually is awesome. (…every moment is awesome, and every moment gives us a chance to make another choice about which thoughts to entertain and which thoughts to dismiss. Every moment gives us another choice about what action to take or what action to cease.)  And it might be, on the surface, exactly the same as the last moment, the last hour, the last day.

In that sameness, in the ordinary, in the equanimity of average, we are given the opportunity to explore. Up to us to answer the call.

A similar sentiment is the basis for a really great book I’m reading (thanks to my lady pal Erica’s most perfect suggestion) called Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life by Karen Maezen Miller.  She reminds us that beauty and the ‘perfect life’ isn’t out there somewhere on the horizon, it’s right there with you the entire time.  You just have to be brave enough to see it for what it is, love it and act on it accordingly.  How concurrently boring, terrifying, exciting and wonderful.

“My life was going to begin on some other day, when I had myself situated somewhere else…”

Lately, I’ve been focusing on a particular image during my morning meditation and prayers to keep me basking in the preciousness of each every day moment.

I picture myself standing in the middle of a giant field of tall grass, an expansive purple mountain range so far behind me I can barely see it and a dancing blue ocean miles ahead (the monumental and defining moments I’ve already climbed and will swim through in many tomorrows to come).

As I focus on the unbroken flatness around me, the wind picks up and I can hear each and every blade of grass move and see every shift in the clouds with the change of the sunshine splashing around my feet.  What was plain is suddenly highly detailed and perfect;  the ground is firm and the sky alive.

It could and should be a boring scene – one that no photographer would think to bother capturing, no poet feel inspired enough to ink.  But it’s real, alive, normal and – most importantly – is exactly where I’m standing at that precise moment.

“I went looking for a change of clothes and found the path to peace.”

Slowly but surely, I’m beginning to really see that the flatness and expansiveness of the plateaus of life are actually when life happens.  The sitting in traffic, the endless work meetings, the yard work, the hastily prepared dinners after a long day, the morning battle with the five year old to not wear the pants with the holes in them that she took out of the Goodwill bag.

They are beautiful.  They are perfect in their boring unglamorousness.  My life at that exact moment.  The seconds from which every other moment to come stems from.

And THAT, my friends, is what is truly awesome.  But it’s up to you to make them that way.

My grandfather, George Derr, was at Pearl Harbor 70 years ago today – a handsome young man going about his daily routine until the sunny Hawaiian skies came crashing down.

He made it out alive, but was the only person on his deck to do so.  The question of ‘why them and not me?’ probably raced through his brain more than a million times on that one (can you even imagine)?  Obviously I’m very grateful that there were other plans for him.

When I was dipping my toes in the sand and water of Maui last month, I thought about him.  How he moved about on December 7th, 1941 just one island over – not realizing the kid he had morning coffee with would be gone within the hour, that nothing would be the same by7:56am.  Somehow the backdrop of perfect sunshine, mountain ridges and immaculate beaches made the thought of such violence and sadness all the more grotesque.

I never met him, he died when my mom was just a teenager, but his sailor suit and smile lives on top of my dining room bookcase in a small frame.

On days like this, I realize I don’t know nearly enough about him.  I know that he was funny and loving, he brewed his own root beer in the basement, went out of his way to do little things to make his young daughters feel special and was great in the garden and kitchen.  He was a devout Catholic and adored my grandmother to no end (another sweet soul I miss deeply today).  Maybe just to know that he was is enough, maybe in the scheme of things we never know enough about the people we really adore.

For some reason, my heart jumps and thinks of him when I see Gene Kelly.  Maybe it’s their Pittsburgh hometown connection or maybe it’s because I’d like to think we would have danced in the rain together.  I imagine he would be proud of me for lots of things and less than excited about other stuff, that we would share a similar sense of humor, that I would never get tired of his stories, that he would be the best great-grandad ever to my shortie.

Like so many events that I was not alive to see, I have not forgotten and I will never stop being grateful for the sacrifices that have gifted me with the life I lead and the future I am able to provide for my own little one.  Thanks Grandad.  xo

Readitfor.me does, in fact, do just that (and I love it)
Let me preface this by saying that I was that judgmental girl in high school / college who looked down upon the Cliff Notes readers.  Don’t get me wrong, I bought them too – but used them as study guides after reading the books because I am just that nerdy.  Who am I kidding, I am still that girl.

Readitfor.me functions in much the same way, with the added benefit of helping me screen which new books I actually want to spend time reading all the way through.  It is a monthly subscription (about $30 for a personal license – worth it, seriously) that gives you a STUNNING recap of recent and important books that you should know.

But it’s not just a recap, it’s a learning tool to help you cram in the greatest books out there in your hungry brain segmented into four parts:

1. Learn - a gorgeously illustrated video (awesome for the visual thinkers out there, like me) that summarizes the book’s core concepts
2. Experience – fill out a handy workbook to make the ideas you’re learning actionable
3. Memorize – use the ‘memory palace’ memorization technique to commit the book’s highlights to memory
4. Act – a call to action to put a plan together to DO something with your new knowledge and tell a friend to hold you accountble

Letters of Note keeps the art of letter writing alive
This charming letter from Kurt Vonnegut to a fan is particularly interesting – self portrait and all.  Another site favorite of mine is Jimi Hendrix’s letter to Reprise Records about his Electric Ladyland cover art and notes.

This quote from Judy Blume on how to get kids to read the books you want them to: 

“I’m saying to parents these days, ‘Be careful.’ You know, you all want them to read the books that you read when you were growing up — often my books — and I say you will turn them off. The best thing to do is leave the books around the house and from time to time say, ‘I really don’t think you’re ready for that book.’ “ 

A Christie for Christmas – sort of continued by someone completely different, maybe
I wish we had as prolific (and awesome) of an author to continue on the ‘Christie for Christmas’ theme from decades past - imagine getting to look forward to a salacious new mystery novel every year under the Christmas tree.  Maybe I need to start the tradition in our house.

This new book, entitled Death At Pemberton is a sequel to Pride and Prejudice and general homage to Jane Austen.  What better stocking stuffer could you possibly find for a mystery novel loving book nerd?  In NPR’s words:  Think Pride and Prejudice meets “Clue.”  Yay.

Photo thanks to Flickr user ereadyRCPL

Kindle Fire is pretty hot
I’ve been avoiding getting an e-Reader because I am so fearful of having a different relationship with books and reading.  I love the intimacy, the tactile experience (can I be weird and mention how in love I am with how books smell?  LOVE IT) and all the space to scribble with whatever writing implement I have handy.  But man, am I hearing rad things about the ]]> http://www.happykatie.com/smart/books/literary-tickles-fancy-links-letters-agatha-christie/feed/ 0 http://www.happykatie.com/smart/books/literary-tickles-fancy-links-letters-agatha-christie/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Happykatie/~3/tqK9A_SFhpI/ http://www.happykatie.com/personal/hi/#comments Sat, 03 Dec 2011 03:45:55 +0000 happykatie http://www.happykatie.com/?p=1971

It’s just me, saying hello.  I think you’re pretty great and hope you have a super fantastical weekend.

We’re celebrating Adam’s birthday (The Big 3-0) this weekend, which means we’ll be eating vegan avocado chocolate cake and chocolate peanut butter pie:

Then opening up gifts and watching celebratory kung fu movies.

How about you?  Muppet’s Movie anyone?