Reason #4638 to hire a copywriter: Upcycling

My dear, adorable friend, Jenni Avins just astounds me. I may have mentioned her to you before. She has a blog called, Closettour, and she is, in the true flavor of a Gen Y’er (I think she’s in Gen Y—regardless, she’s younger than me), turning the world upside down and doing it her own way. She has boundless energy and she…well…she just makes the coolest shit happen.

Her ‘genre’, if you will, is a mash of fashion, sustainability, history/origin/storytelling and journalism (read: new media).

I wanted to share one of her webisodes with you so that 1) you could get a hit of her—the enthuse will stick with you all day, and b) because its concept, I think, is spillable to our focus here. (That would be, in case you got lost, ‘writing where you want to go’—’writing’ being code for ‘however you create’, of course.)

In this webisode, Jenni is trying to clean out her closet. Which is exactly like me trying to clean out my writingroads.com cache of posts and drafts. I mean, how can I throw any of it away? As for the completed posts, each word has meaning and memory. As for the hundreds of drafts I have, ummm…I might use them someday. Those of you wondering, ‘Why would you want to throw any of it away?’ I love you.

Alas, in the midst of her heart-wrenching struggle to closet-thin, Jenni heard about these extraordinarily magnificent English women that call themselves Junky Styling. Kerry and Annika take your old clothes, the ones that you just can’t let go of, the ones that might still serve some sort of critical purpose…and make them new again.

They don’t call it recycling, they call it—upcycling. Because they are making your items better. They are bringing them up—to now. To what you want now, to what you need now. And they do it in a way that lets you hang on to the past, the what if, the hope, the thread.

For all intents and purposes, if you are someone that likes to hold on to things, the women of Junky Styling are actualizing our deep belief that all of those items—be they skirts, one line random thoughts, sweaters, poems, scarves, postless titles or whatever—were purchased or devised and then held on to for a real reason.

So I started thinking about how amazing it would be to have Junky Styling for words and ideas. People that take ideas, scraps of words, worn out prose, random concepts, hopes, futures, bits of brilliance that just didn’t match the rest of your message or ad or article—and upcycle them. Turn them into clear, concise, wordy perfection–exactly what you need now.

And then I remembered that we already have people that do just that.

Oh, how I love my job.

Behold Jenni Avins below in all of her Closettour glory:

CLOSETTOUR: Wardrobe Surgery with Junky Styling from Jenni Avins on Vimeo.

Because periods can’t be captured on a pad

Just like my post about choosing a word, Andi Fisher is likewise and entirely to blame for today’s post. Because she just sent me the most extraordinary book. I highly recommend it for women AND men, really. It’s called Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation. Mind-blowing is the only way to describe this book. I am bamboozled.

Plus, authors Elissa Stein and Susan Kim make such a point of talking about how no one talks about menstruation (except me) and how it’s so taboo that even the ads that sell products for it don’t actually mention the word. Nor do they utter the words: vagina, ovaries or blood. Which is like talking about writing without discussing words, pens, paper, computers…you get the point. Anyway, as a result, I felt compelled to climb up on my blogbox and shout MENSTRUATION at the top of my lungs.

Aren’t you lucky?!!!

Note: this post is not just about menstruation, though I’m thinking I could just change my tagline to “WRITE WHERE YOU WANT TO FLOW”, but—in this post—menstruation does serve as my, er, petri dish.

Did you know that doctors and scientists still don’t understand everything about menstruation? It’s 2010 and they don’t know exactly why women menstruate (not all living things do, you know, though all living things manage to reproduce ~ think about that for a minute) and they don’t know how menstruation works, exactly.

See? I told you. Bamboozled. No one knows. Because:

• It’s a woman thing. So who cares?
• It’s so extraordinary and miraculous and mystical, it can’t be known.

I’ll let you do the math.

It has also become abundantly clear that we (people) have become solely focused on the portion of menstruation that we can, um, see. (Well, some of us, anyway). Which would be the ‘messy’ part. The part that is external. So focused on this, we are, that menstruation has become synonymous with ‘getting your period’.

Yet, however, though, wait a second and back up folks—menstruation is not just 4-6 (on average) days of bleeding. It never stops. There is no petits vacances. Every single moment is part of the ‘cycle’.

Yes, Julie. We all know this. We didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.

Yeah, but have you really thought about it? From ages, let’s say, 12 to 50, a woman’s body is doing extra work —either building up or tearing down, preparing for a party or taking down the decorations—a vast, complex, mysterious work. Never stopping (unless to do something relaxing like growing a child or producing 100s of gallons of milk).

No wonder we get cramps, no wonder we bloat, no wonder we’re exhausted, no wonder we get a little fucking bitchy.

And writers, artists, masterminders? For as far back as I can remember, my imagination has been working overtime. Writing stories in my head about people I see walking down the street, babysitters, teachers, what I want life to be. From, and I’m estimating here, about age 5 until I die, my body has done and will continue to do extra work—either building up or tearing down, preparing for a party or taking down the decorations—a vast, complex, mysterious work. Never stopping (even while growing a child or producing 100s of gallons of milk or ______. Please, insert your own pursuits).

No wonder we get cramps, no wonder we bloat, no wonder we’re exhausted, no wonder we get a little fucking bitchy.

In both cases, though, creating. All the while.

Image credit: recycled stardust

Up and back

Once upon a time, many moons ago, I taught a yoga workshop at Kripalu about stability. In it, I took people through examples of the five basic groups of postures (standing, seated, supine, prone and inverted), and helped them find their strength and anchor at each stop.

The first point for anchoring was the place where the body connected to the ground, and so it changed depending on the posture set. For instance, in a standing posture, it would be your feet. Inverted, your hands or head. Prone, your pelvis. You get the point.

But the second point of stability never changed, it was always the engagement of the core. Physically speaking, you could qualify ‘core’ as ‘abs’ – but it’s really more involved than that. It requires a deep lifting up of the perineum*—as if you were trying to lift your pelvic floor towards your navel—at the same time that you are pulling your navel back to your spine.

After the postures, when they were quite comfortable with this feeling** of engaging their core, I’d have them stand up and face a partner, palms touching about shoulder high. I’d tell Partner A to relax these new found core muscles completely. Then, I’d tell Partner B to push them over–which they did instantly.

Then, I’d have them come back to face each other once more, and I’d instruct Partner A to engage the core this time. When I gave Partner B the ‘go’ signal, Partner A simply couldn’t be moved. S/he was like a rock…or tree…or mountain (something that was seriously grounded and immovable).

Their reaction involved a lot of head smacking and disbelief. “That’s it?” they’d ask all accusatorily-like. “That’s all I needed to_____???” Be strong, stand my ground, get some balls, believe in myself, have a life, not be a pushover, feel secure, etc., etc. and on and on—just fill in the blank.

“Just about,” I’d say. And to this day, I use that first point of connection to the ground and my core muscles when I run, bike, blade, swim, write, talk to people, network, work in general, need to stand up taller, love, do hard things, do happy things, etc., etc. and on and on—just fill in the blank.

Try it. On your next business call or when you walk around the grocery store or when you call customer service to get your damn money back. Connect some part of the body strongly to the ground, pull your perineum up and your belly button back towards your spine. Your chest will lift and your shoulders will drop down automatically. The crown of your head will reach up and away leaving your neck long and open. See how your voice sounds, notice how you feel, evaluate the outcome of your task.

But there is a catch. Because there’s always a catch.

The connection to the ground is always available and your core is always there, in your body and , therefore, wherever you go. BUT, you have to remember to use them. That part is up to you. Just like Dorothy…who had the power to go (up and) back—all along.

Image credit: Stephen Mitchell

*if you don’t know, your perineum is the place at the absolute bottom of your torso, your ‘south pole’ if you will. Sometimes, in the locker room, it’s called the t’aint (cause it’aint your good bits and it’aint your bum – but somewhere right in between). And that concludes the anatomy portion of this post for today.

**fyi, when you practice this engagement a lot (and especially at the beginning), it can cause a lot of sexual energy to bubble up because it involves your pelvis and everything your pelvis contains. I’m just sayin’ – and I’m not responsible. So there.

Word…to your mother

This post is entirely Andi Fisher’s fault. (I ‘spose I could give Elizabeth Gilbert some credit, too…but she gets enough as it is. So I’m giving it all to Andi.)

You see, Andi wrote this GENIUS post yesterday. About how every city has a Word. And so does every person.

My brain took off in a torrent of thought. Faster than I thought my synapses could fire, I thought, yesofcoursethat’sbrilliantwhat’smyword

firethatwasmyfirstthoughtbutthat

can’tbeititmustbesomethingelse

butwhatbutwhatbutwhat.

And then! There was brain silence. So much so that I could hear the air moving through my teeny, tiny ear tube fuzz.

And then, the questions came pouring in. Why was the first word that popped into my head ‘fire’? Who do I think I am that that would be my word? And why is it so hard for me to claim my word? Because that’s really the issue. It feels pompous and egoful. Though, oddly, on Andi it seemed nothing short of vibrant and lifeful. Hmmm…

And then, I thought: This whole discussion is egoful. So is this blog—because I’m writing about me and my life and my writing and my experiences. Which, I suppose, makes sense because it’s my blog.

But, luckily, because all of you are egoful as well, you take everything that I say and you try it on your own brains/hearts/bodies/desires. I’m just The Gap, but you’re in the dressing room trying it all on for size—and finding the pieces that fit, kicking the ones that don’t to the side, even picking out some items that aren’t your style…but you’d like to see if you can pull off. (Maybe in the dark, maybe somewhere no one knows you, maybe in your own kitchen, maybe on your keyboard.)

But, I digress. And I have a word to suss out. Why, when I’m so, so, so full of words…can’t I find the one that defines me?

I wondered, what if I’m not just one word? What if I’m a phrase? A sentence? A paragraph? A poem? A blog post? A short story? A novel?

I started making a list of words. I wrote about ten down, but I just couldn’t claim any of them. I felt like now I was the one dressing up…in the Big & Tall men’s store. They didn’t fit right and didn’t feel like they were mine. (Though they smelled nice.)

So, I stared at my computer screen trying to pull it to me, I want it, you know. I really want my Word. My ‘Julie’ Word. And then that was the only word I could hear. My name. My favorite name. I’ve never met a Julie that didn’t fit the bill. There’s a certain something to us Julies. Just ask us.

And when I say it, JULIE, out loud. I can claim it. I get it. It fits. I’d be proud to wear it around my neck, on a t-shirt, tattooed on the inside of my wrist…I mean, it already surrounds me like that fuzzy glow around streetlights on wet nights. An amorphous halo.

Most people fill up their names. They become synonymous with them. To the point where you can’t imagine them being called anything else—often by the time they’re a few months old. A person’s name isn’t just what you call them. When you hear the name, your mind/eyes/heart/hands fill up with a ten-dimensional image.

And so, I searched the Worddom, and this is where I landed. My Word is Julie.

I did, however, take a poll of those that I love and that love me back. I asked them for their thoughts on my Word, and here’s what they had to say: determined, creative, passionate, trouble, unpredictable, aggressive, independent, appetite, compelling, vivacious, glowing.

‘Trouble’, ‘unpredictable’ and ‘aggressive’. Those words came from the mouth of my very own Mother—interestingly enough—since she also and originally gave me the Word that, in the end, I feel defines me best.

She saved ‘Julie’, kept it close—on her way to motherhood, then through the two sons that came first. She knew I was coming. She knew I would be Julie.

She thought, I’m sure at the time, when I came out all small and pink and loud from the get-go, that it would be that simple. “Julie!” She proclaimed. Apparently, she got a little more than she bargained for.

Well, at least more than one word…

Image credit: biphop

NOTE: I did not search far for this image, it came straight to me. Not only is it cosmically in honor of Andi, my favorite Francophile, but the translation couldn’t be more fitting. I knew that ‘mot’ means ‘word’ in French which is why I thrilled to find the image, but (here’s the good part), according to Andi and her French hubbie (and my online french/english dictionary), the definition of ‘mot’ on this paper is: “fit, like a glove that is returned’. If that’s not poetic bamboozlement, I don’t know what is…

So…what’s your word???

Backasswards

Tremendous author alert:

Her name is Kate Chrsitensen and her writing is. Just. So. Good. I was in deep need of a book that wasn’t anxiety-inducing, scary, deeply upsetting, about business or annoying. Her book, The Great Man, landed in my lap (thanks, Orly)…and now I want to devour everything she’s written.

I have five bullets for you:

• Excellent prose: luscious and so smart.
• Hilarious. In that witty, kicks you in the ass kind of way.
• Drenched in NYC-ness.
• Picks people and all of their ooey, gooeyness apart—as if with steel-tipped toothpicks.
• Strong female protagonists. (One that I love, two that I tolerate.)

But it was page 67 that got me. Reached out, grabbed my eyeballs and poured in this gem. Ready? (and I promise this won’t spoil anything…):

My mother was the lover and my father the beloved. From watching them, I drew the conclusion that it’s best to be the lover, the one who adores and pursues. Love is tangentially about power, and the beloved has less power than the lover, all appearances to the contrary…One person is the adorer and cherisher and the other is the adored and cherished. Whenever Mom (the lover) distanced herself from Dad (the beloved), which was rarely, believe me, he sort of fell apart.

Oh, how I love the word ‘tangentially’.

Now, I don’t know about you…but I had this reversed in my befuddled brain. I thought when you were the lover, you had less power because you wanted more than you could have. You were tortured, without, in need.

After I read that paragraph fifty-three times…I realized not only was Christensen’s (character’s) sentiment spot on, but that I already knew it to be true. I know both sides. When you are the lover—even though the pain and torment threaten to consume—you do have the power to stop at any moment…and walk away. That’s actually true.

But, sitting on the other side of the table—as the beloved—all of that love could disappear at any moment. And you have no control over it whatsoever. So there you are, beloved by this other person, wondering (in the back of your mind somewhere) when and if this magical spell you have over your lover will evaporate—as mythically as it appeared.

And if it does, it could send you into the tailspin of suddenly being the pursuer or it could just leave you all alone. But, in the meantime, it always hangs over you, like a spider on your bedroom ceiling, watching you, scurrying around, occasionally disappearing, then showing up again, soundless…ever threatening to fall.

Just look at the words themselves. Beloved is a noun, passive, sitting, lame duck. Lover is active, moving, doing, momentum.

How wrong I’d had it. And how much power I’d given up as the lover. Such a waste. A brutal waste.

And then I started thinking about other instances where I’ve assumed a lack of power—where maybe there was some. Or lots.

• Employee v. Boss
• Writer v. Publisher
• Child v. Parent
• Patient v. Doctor
• Mind v. Heart
• Dream v. Reality
• What else???

Oh. How I love good books. Written by fabulously smart women.

Image credit: Esparta

Nota Bene: Lucky points

My lucky points have gone up recently. I’m not sure why and I’m not asking. As someone recently said to me, “Don’t worry about why someone likes your work, don’t ask why, just take it all in.” I’m applying that philosophy to my luckiness.

This particular streak is supported, buttressed and inspired by kindness. Kindness in the form of a mentor. An angel, if you will, who literally pointed his finger at me and said, “You are magnificent…wanna see how far we can take it?” The first stop has been into a realm of work that I had never done before. (Well, not literally because it is content creation and writing, but just in terms of the medium of video/directing/editing….)

Of course, I did what any normal person would do when faced with such praise and with such an offer. I stopped breathing. Then I panicked. Then I called an emergency meeting with my Brain Trust. Then I dove in and started doing the actual work and realized that I LOVE it…and, miraculously, I can do it, too.

But I can’t possibly gloss over the amazingness of having someone, who is brilliantly good at doing this work and more, standing behind me telling me that I CAN do it, that I AM doing it and, then, fiercely taking every little success and thrusting me into the next stage of NEW.

It’s been a thrill and fire in my brain and belly. And it’s been a win/win. I’m helping his company and he’s helping mine. And, the joy we’re both taking from the match is just, well, sublime.

And who doesn’t want more joy? And who doesn’t want to challenge themselves to be bigger, better and badder? And who would turn their nose up at lucky?

The answers to those questions are definitively: ‘lotsa people’. I should know—’cause for a while, I didn’t, I didn’t and I would. But survey says that it seems I’ve released a healthy portion of those nasty behaviors. How lovely.

So, no questions asked, just working my ass off and soaking it in, this lucky…(and maybe refusing to change my socks—you know, so I don’t break my streak.)

Image credit: Rob Warde

Writing her first symphonies

First, she wrote her name. Now, she’s writing symphonies. Okay, not really…but sorta.

It’s nearly impossible not to write about watching my 4-year-old discover writing. Because she’s my baby and because writing is my soul sister. To see the two of them combined is…well…beyond the beyond.

Here’s what she’s up to.

She’s mastered the letters. She can identify them in books, on t-shirts, on my computer—you name it, she’s calling them out like muggers in a precinct line-up. And, she can write them. Not just her five, S-O-P-H-I-E, but all 26. Which is where the composing comes in.

She spends hours (in 4-year-old years, which is like 20 minutes in grown-up years) arranging letters into magnificent combinations. With her pen and paper, with the alphabet magnets and the smooth surface of our fridge, she creates wordy masterpieces. Sometimes they are short: P-O-H-P. Sometimes they are long: S-O-P-H-I-E-J-A-C-K-D-P-E-X-I-Q-W-N. Sometimes they make sense: P-O-D.  Sometimes they don’t: G-H-N-O-O-F.

But they always end the same—with the question: “What does this say?”

We sound them out for her, of course, because the point is to help her learn phonics. But I long for her to tell us what they say, you know? What it means in her mind when she takes the notes she’s been given and arranges them just so. In that way that feels like the sweetest sort of mastery…and connection…and song.

Sitting on rapture

I just had a good long talk with myself. Because I was driving myself crazy.

• Staring at the screen.
• The blank one, that is.
• Not allowing myself to type even one word.
• Until I was positive it was The Perfect Word.
• Therefore, me = paralyzed, inactive, stymied.
• Not writing.
• Worrying.
• Ridiculous.

Just start, I told myself. Maybe not at the beginning…but somewhere in between, at some point along the way.

Because even those car ads that boast ’0 to 60′ admit that it happens over the course of X number of seconds. It is not instantaneous, it is a progression.

Albeit from static and silence to rapture.

Image credit: valkyrieh116

It’s the cushioning that kills

As I told you the other day, I just devoured and obsessively loved Born to Run by Christopher McDougall.

I loved everything about it. I love that it literally pulled me out my door to run on a Saturday night at 7pm—when I’m a certified, card-carrying, morning runner. I love that I think I’m going to go again tonight. I love that it has made me feel like anything is possible. (When you read what these runners have done (eg. running 100 miles straight across mountains in the dark), you suddenly know that you can make it for a measly ten.)

Most notably, I love that I learned this: cushioning is bad for us. Sounds weird, right? Many instances spring to mind where I would literally beg for a little cushioning—feedback on my writing, the end of a relationship, a pillow when you’re trying to sleep on a plane…I could go on and on.

Killer cushioning…since 1972

Did you know that running shoes, as we know them, were created as recently as 1972. 1972. Remember Chariots of Fire? It looked like those dudes were running in jazz shoes. Go back farther and farther until you get to the people who didn’t even have shoes (or go to remote places today where they still don’t)—they were still running. For sport, for survival, for food and because it feels really, really good. Many of them ran 50, 75, 100′s of miles at a time. Barefoot.

Duh. Of course they did. But in our westernized minds, we think we need fancy cushioned shoes to run. Because that’s what we’ve been told. By these guys:

Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman, Nike’s founders, created the concept of ‘jogging’ and they created a running style that had you reach forward with your leg and hit the ground with your heel first (up to that point, everyone ran by landing on the fat of the midfoot pad with shorter strides). Because there is no natural padding on the heel, you simply couldn’t land on it unless you suddenly had a shoe with a cushioned heel. [Note: read that last sentence again.]

In an astounding marketing move, these two men created a new sport (jogging) that depended on a new way to run (the heel strike), neither of which could exist without their brand new, never before seen, bright and shiny, product.

Excuse my French, but, holy shit.

I read this part of the book five times in a row, my mind churning. How many other ‘cushioned shoes’ have we been sold? And what have they done to our bodies, our minds, our crafts? How else have we cushioned ourselves and therefore deprived ourselves of our true connection to the art and pure love of what it is that we do?

• With the advent of cushioned shoes, running injuries skyrocketed. While they promised to make us go faster.
• With the advent of processed and fast food, obesity and degenerative disease skyrocketed. While it promised to make our lives simpler.
• With the advent of marketing schemes, bad writing that is unconnected to heart or soul skyrocketed. While it promised to make our lives successful overnight.
• And with the advent of _______ , _______ skyrocketed. While it promised to make our lives ______.

Go ahead, fill in the blank. And then kick off those shoes, bring your feet back to your ground…and see what happens.

Image credit: R. Motti

The opposite of mashed potatoes

There is this oddity that happens (my dad would categorize it under the ‘reversal theory’) with growing children. It goes like this: when they are extremely young (as in 4-6 months) they feel heavier when you carry them than they do when they’re a just a bit older (say 6-8 months). Even though they’re bigger and weigh more.

The reason is simple, it’s because these older babes are carrying their own weight. Their muscles are strong enough now to do so, whereas when they were smaller and lighter, they just hung in your arms. Like lumps of mashed potatoes. (minus the butter and sea salt, which is a tragic shame).

Making adjustments

This thought occurred to me when I was running this morning. I was trying to run my eight mile loop in my new cushionless shoes. But I ended up running 10. I couldn’t stop. And besides the shoes, I was trying out a new arm position because my pipes had been flying around by my chest pushing my shoulders up to my ears, causing some bad muscle cramps in my neck.

And the weirdest thing happened. When I lowered my arms, I became lighter and tighter. As if that one shift had pulled my body together in a way that lightened me perceptibly. And, as I said, I couldn’t stop running.

The self carry

I’ve been thinking about it all day, and I realized it was the same as the baby phenomenon. I certainly didn’t lose weight over the course of 10 miles, but I got lighter—because I was holding myself more efficiently and totally together, making me much easier to carry.

A simple shift—of the body, of the mind, on the mapped route. And suddenly, the ability to go farther, faster, stronger, easier. Holding my own self up. Look ma, no hands.

Image credit: dullhunk