5 posts tagged “friends”

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Whenever I'm about to reinvent myself in a significant way, I find myself reading a lot of Emerson.  Today I came across something he'd written that I'd not heard before, but I found it both provocative and essential:

     “I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.”

        -- Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Being neither American nor inclined to want to be beaten with a large stick ~grins~, I'll simply say that this observation spoke to me personally.  It identifies one of my greatest internal conflicts: stickiness.

I have always considered myself to be a very passionate person.  Having said that, this nasty little poke with a stick from Emerson's 1800's brand of wisdom has me asking myself if I have the right to claim this label at all.  I do feel things fiercely and deeply, and that is wonderful fuel spurring me on when I go running headlong into the next thing that calls.  But there's the rub: so many things do call, and my ability/desire to stick with them is often my greatest challenge.

This is a problem if you look at it in almost any light: makes it tough to stay put, stick to a career, be happy with one person, or to ever really feel full or know the true sense of the word "enough".  Some people might call it OCPD, or ADD, or simply fickle or even selfish and irresponsible.  And yet I've managed to be successful in spite of it.  While I do look back and feel at times a sense of grief over recognizing this as a deficit in the traditional sense of a person's life, I am also deeply grateful for living in the place and time I do.  In the niche that I've managed to carve for myself it's served me well.  As a journalist, being constantly propelled by "the chase" is a delicious habit.  It keeps me hungry, curious, always running after the next story to share.  As an artist, it keeps me buoyant and colourful and constantly inspired.  God bless the internet and Second Life, for those two mediums have provided the most provocative and fertile playground for the two most intrinsic parts of my inner life as a breadwinner and insatiable consumer.

Where this is a challenge is in personal relationships.  There are people that I connect with in a very rich and heartfelt way, and yet no matter how much I enjoy their company, I rarely seek it.  I do tend to hold people at arm's length.  Even my closest friends and family know what a gigantic pain in the ass I can be when it comes to simple, normal things.  I hate talking on the phone.  I don't do well with a lot of small talk, and within minutes of reconnecting I am often restless and uncomfortable again.  A pretty boring, run-of-the-mill personality disorder I'm sure, but an inconvenient one when you really do care a great deal about the people that you have so much trouble wanting to connect with in a deeper way.

There are exceptions.  It's at odds with my bleeding heart, because at my core I remain a better world scout and always will be.  My partner Baron is also an anomaly in many ways, perhaps because he's so much like me and doesn't question or seem critical of the quirks.  But Emerson's observation does have me scratching my head and asking myself how much I may want or need to confront this particular issue if I really want to move forward in my life.

Do I really have passion, or merely appetites?  Constant, glorious, intense appetites, but appetites nonetheless.  It's not that I haven't found my niche.  In fact, I've found it again and again.  It's that in spite of the thrill of the chase, and often getting what I want, I still feel quite empty at the end of the day.

I know because of the few anomalies that do exist in my life that there is a great reward attached to cultivating a more mature and intimate relationship with the people and opportunities in my life, and in my gut I know that I do want to know what it feels like to say "this is enough" and finally mean it.

In those instances I've allowed myself to let it in, what I am gifted with is richer, deeper, simpler and more enduring happiness and peace of mind.

So, tonight I'll thank Emerson for poking me with a stick, and hope that I'll be wise enough to really listen and finally choose it for myself.

Party in the Basement Club

Baron and I had just finished putting out the new vendor in the Ironworks and Light shop and decided we needed a little play time.  We noticed that a spontaneous party had broken out just a stone's throw away from where we were standing.  "The Basement Club" is a smokey little hole in the wall beneath one of the shops on Sanctum Sanctorum.  Baron threw a wonderful concert and party there last year for my birthday, and since then people have sort of adopted the space.  How could they not?  He filled it with rich, dark wood, old crates, lush ferns and a walk-in humidor, all fashioned after a sultry little "cigar lounge", speakeasy-style.

A handful of groups and secret societies have spawned around this hidden little space, and also at The Standing Stone Pub.  It's wonderful to see the spaces come alive with people that just seem to "fit there"

This got me thinking today about something that Baron does very, very well.  He understands the intrinsic value of "attraction" versus "promotion".  He knows that if you cultivate a space with character and ambience and care that the right people will naturally find it.  He diminishes the retail side of our SIMs in favour of creating wide open spaces that beckon people to explore.  He's passionate about interactivity, especially when it means we can secretly inject opportunities for learning along the way.

We joined the crowd in the Basement Club this afternoon, largely German, and kicking up their heels to some fine Irish Rockabilly music by the time I walked in.  Baron was sitting in a deep, comfy chair, smiling like a Cheshire Cat.  I know that smile.  I see it when we break our hermit-dom and get out on the sims to mingle (something we are trying to do more) and have the pleasure of seeing how people are making our spaces their own.  That smile is like Christmas.

We're seeing this happen at the Opera House too, where first life magazine photo shoots are being done, concerts with first life artists and opera singers being planned, and even a Gilbert and Sullivan production afoot with an off-broadway crew.  None of these things were our doing.  We simply created a space and allowed people to find it and decide how it would come to life.

We're about to do a major overhaul of the sims once again, with a fourth one arriving imminently.  It's nerve wracking to think about the beloved haunts that will disappear to make way for the new, but I'm learning with time that one of the most valuable things Mr. Grayson imparts is that constant reinvention is the stuff of passion and renewal, and it's always better than ever when it's done with an eye to creating spaces that allow the accidental communities they attract to shape the life within them as they grow.

There's a difference between "attraction" and "promotion", and a reason that Baron has never been one to advertise.  He knows the wisdom of creating something you truly love yourself, and letting the right people find it.  The rest simply takes care of itself ...

Baron will laugh, because as he said earlier today, in all the time he's known me, I don't think I've ever had more things go wrong than I've had go wrong today.  Chalk it up to going public with the challenge to be thankful ... ~grins~

In spite of a 24-hour period that is fit for a soap opera, I've had a smile on my face throughout most of it, and have had the chance to say personal thank you's to a number of people in my life.

There are a few I want to thank here, not because they are more important than the rest, but because they are very present in both my daily first and second lives at the moment, and remind me that I truly do have an awful lot to be grateful for.

To Riversong Garden: you inspire me!  I still see the quiet little bundle of miracles I met a few years ago, but the side of you I've come to know this past while is quite incredible.  You are a confidant, fearless leader with so much integrity and love.  I continue to watch you move mountains that I never had the courage to tackle myself, and I'm wildly proud of you, and so privileged to be influenced by you in my daily life.  I've never known a person more surrounded by miracles, and more responsible for their presence in the rest of our lives.  You amaze me more every single day.

To Zeke Poutine, my Fairygodmother-in-Garters:  you are one complicated, cigar-smokin', chocolate-luvin' biawtch!  And I say that in the most loving and respectful way ~grins~  You've got more layers than an onion, girl.  I do not know a single person on the face of this earth that pours more of herself into her community without asking for a single thing back, and yet so unapologetically sucks the marrow out of life.  I fell in love with your quick wit and big old brain at omidyar.net, but came to know you as a much more complicated, watermelon-cannon-toting kinda chick in gold lamé pumps once we began to jointly terrorize Second Life.  If there are two people from my first life that I most want to connect with outside of the Second to continue to scandalize the continent (in a "better world" kinda way of course ~winks~) it's you and Riv.

To Pam Omidyar: many of us could write a book about the ways that you move us.  The example you set from the moment you opened your digital doors to us, rolling up your sleeves and getting dirty in the trenches right beside us, was not only surprising, it was a lesson to keep close in our hearts.  I love you because you make your own damned chicken pot pie, love your kids fiercely, go surfing in the waves in first life and come back to play with poseballs in the second.  I love you because you take on politicians and everyday people alike.  I love you because my father taught me why being enzymes was important, and you continue to echo that call of your own.  I love you because the very first thing I read when I landed on your doorstep was (and I'm paraphrasing) that what was happening in Darfur was bullshit and you weren't going to take it anymore.  If I ever decide to grow up (and that's a big if there) I want to be just like you.

To my partner in business and everything that matters, Baron Grayson: there's not enough room in this blog ~winks~.   You're a man of few words and I know that when you say them you mean them.  My life is happier, fuller, crazier, more passionate and so much better with you in it.  I will never stop be grateful for the Marmite, the Phantom, ice skating, whirlpools, mountaintops, pirate ships, the cello, Apophyllite, adventures in chocolate, holodecks, birthday concerts, fish that come to life, junk cameras, the breakfast table, Roan Inish, Margaritaville, ghosts, pennies from heaven and a hundred other signs, miracles in a chapel, Rome and the power of "ugh ugh".  Here's to magic and adventure, to laughing until our faces stay that way, and to many more years of serendipity, baby!  Never in Darkness.

For you all and for so many more people that enrich my life, I remain thankful every single day.

ThankFest!

Friday, March 16, 2007

24 hours of gratitude in cyberspace

ThankFest! 24 Hours of Gratitude in Cyberspace: Friday, March 16, 2007

It's a challenge. It's a dare. It's a double-dog-dare! For whatever I can do to convince you of the urgent nature of being thankful for even just one day, I will.  I invite you to join me on this quest: for just 24 hours, I want you to be the Ghost of Gratitude Past, running through the halls of cyberspace in your socks shouting at the top of your lungs to everyone who will listen and who you know. Tell them why you're thankful. Tell them about some small, insignificant thing that turned out to be the one that changed your life. Tell your teachers, your coaches, your mentors and friends. Tell your children that night as your tucking them in something about them that makes you utterly thankful they're a part of your life.

Join the Thank-a-Thon for 24 hours starting Friday, March 16th, 2007!

You've only got a day to get the word out, so fire up Twitter, baby! Tell every Who in Whoville that you'll be blogging, emailing, faxing, campaigning to build the troops that will march into the halls of cyberspace and give thanks. Got a blog? Use it! Some other digital pulpit? Preach from it! Whatever you do, take a moment to explain why you're thankful that day.

Need a kickstart? Ideas shared here.

Know people who aren't connected? Have them write it, phone it in, paint it with a fingertip on a foggy window and take a picture to send it in. Help them share it someplace, any place, online, so it can be part of the living tribute we'll be growing in our digital gardens that day.

Then tuck a link to your own ThankBloglet it into a comment in response to this posting so we can watch the flow ...

Consider it humanity's family album of the things that change our lives when we simply pause to give thanks. Make it an International Day of Thanks; a tapestry of gratitude leading to cascades of uplift that will infect our other days. While we have different days that we pause to celebrate and to be thankful in our various nooks and crannies of meatspace, let this be the one day that unites us without a tragic history, or dogmatic tale to tell, about how and why we gathered to give Thanksgiving a little early this year.

Then on Friday, March 16th, 2007, give your thanks, capture it digitally (words, pictures, sound, whatever you're inspired to do), and return here to dive into the portal that will be open to connect you with the digital scrapbook to share your link.

Let this be the day that inboxes are swamped with no-spam invitations to enlarge an even bigger organ: our heart.

Sue.

Tell a Friend You're Thankful

A very good friend loved me enough to kick me in the ass.

It's been one helluva year, and I may be facing radiation therapy ... again.

To say that it's left me a little low, and frankly rather cranky, is a monumental understatement. I've gone through a period of nearly a week where I just haven't been very much fun to be around, and instead of getting sucked into the pity party, someone that I care about very much told me to pull myself up by the bootstraps, stop feeling so damned sorry for myself, and look at all the things I have to be grateful for. Then he named them, one by one. Once I got done being good and bloody mad, I realized that he was right. The one thing that's got me through the toughest times has been my staunch refusal to elevate self-pity to a fine art. I tend to be annoyingly buoyant at times, and while it's the headspace I inhabit most often, it's not where I've been lately.

So, I figured this was a good time to go back and take my own advice. I decided to dig out something that I posted in my blog almost three years ago, after another round of tough stuff in my life. These seem like words of wisdom to be nudging myself with again now, and maybe they'll be of use to someone else who's in a difficult place too.

So, to my angel, and you know who you are, thank you for caring enough to call me on it ~winks~ Love you much ...

Blog re-run below ...

July 28, 2004

I recently attended a retreat where I was inspired by a question that our wise and wonderful leader posed:

I thought on this for a bit, and listened as people shared some truly astonishing technical feats that created various forms of uplift in the lives of people and the various organizations where they worked and played.

I really wanted to raise my hand. I had something good to share, but it seemed too simple.

I sat and listened a little longer, and was finally inspired to re-evaluate my own criteria for what made something good enough to share. I decided that the fact that it was small and simple wasn't a character flaw, but rather the thing that might make something inherently easy to reproduce.

I finally got brave and raised my hand, and decided to tell people a little bit about how I start each of my days.

The past few years have been rather blue. I've been through a few major surgeries, one that left the lower half of my face paralysed for a number of months, and the other that left me in a great deal of pain. One of my sons had been profoundly ill, cause still unknown, and missed almost half a year of school as a result. In addition, I'd shared a six year journey with my mom as she struggled with cancer, and found myself aching deeply as it came to an end in ways I couldn't possibly have prepared myself for.

I certainly was not in a "grateful" place in my life.

I found the days harder and harder to navigate. I found myself sinking into a well of self-pity, even to the point where I became bitter about what I "expected" from my life. That's when it occurred to me that, the way I'd been living it before this mess was infact the way back out of it.

I had become full of attitude, rather than gratitude, and it took a simple moment of reflection to realize the age old truth of deflecting your attention from oneself onto something or someone else where that attention could be invested in a better way.

So, I turned to the one thing that I knew could help me launch this personal mission of gratitude and hold me accountable: my computer. Each morning when I log on I go to my homepage, which is set at my customized view of "My Yahoo!". Beyond the various newsclippings it has found for the things I am interested in tracking, and the daily recipes and snippets it dispatches, it's first glance is my calendar, and the task list for each day. I've set up a few recurring ticklers to help me organize my thoughts for the day: what am I going to make for supper? have I watered the violets? had I taken a multivitamin? did I update my virus scan program? had I clicked at Care2.com yet today?

These were the things that greeted me each morning, and set the tone for the day.

I decided that something else needed to be added to this list. Here's what I placed at the top:

It seemed like a simple enough question, but the impact it had on my life was profound.

Each morning I gave myself the task of finding a reason to be grateful. I thought about people that had come in and out of my life the past few days, and others who perhaps I hadn't thought about in a very long time. I thought about teachers who had influenced me, and people who dotted my life's path and shaped the course it would take along the way. I thought about the girl in the coffee shop who had smiled at me and simply said something nice. I thought about the guy in the telephone repair truck who jumped out to open my car door for me so I could get in. I thought about the woman who stood up a city council and talked about why killing the pigeons on the church steps wasn't the right way to go. I thought about my kids, and how their simple, daily examples encouraged me to be curious, and passionate, and hopeful again.

So I started to say thank you, and something amazing happened along the way. People responded and reached back in generous and heartfelt ways. People who'd been feeling unnoticed in their own lives felt appreciated again. People who I hadn't connected with in years came back into my life and enriched it in ways too many to tell. People I'd seen as strangers were becoming friends I'd yet to meet.

The cascade of uplift was profound. This simple thing had not only rescued me from myself, but healed relationships, and cultivated special new ones, and even lead to new projects and opportunities in my life.

So knowing how powerful such a small and simple act can be, I'll ask you this:

Sue.