who do you think you are

"Who do you think you are?"

Who do I know I am? I stand before me to receive that which must be believed.

I am a dreamer, a doer, a believer, a prover. Mainly to myself. I visualize what I will see then write it down when it comes to be so I can thank God for it later. Yes, I keep track of the times that my mind makes true--it is astonishing what thoughts can do. When you have a one-track mind that is set to success, the universe won't rest on it. That is of course if you have the right attitude, you must be practicing gratitude. Thank your creator for giving you rocks and water to hike and swim, for your arms to embrace your family and friends, for delicious meals and music to dance to. For moments of romance. For the positivity that flows into your brain. For the ability to stop and slow down your mental train.

Think great, do great, wake early, meditate, and thank God for the ability to conspire and create your inevitably fabulous fate.

likes and hearts and gold stars

I once asked man who has been blogging for over a decade which of his posts do best with his audience. He said it doesn't make any sense--some get crazy-shared and others rarely make a peep through a like or a retweet. He used to put predictions on which ones he was sure to knock out of the park, but after 12 years of writing, he is still in the dark.

Few things feel better than when you put your work out there and people care. They "heart" it, say it's smart; they have never seen anything like it and they "like" it. They really like it. Our ego will never tire of this flattery because to the ego it matters, but to the powers that be that live beneath, we know that it is unnecessary. Of course we are wary. Putting work out there is scary. But it will not affect whether I not I continue to create. That is innate. And the work is more for me. I aim to help a lot of people (eventually), but we have to start somewhere and that somewhere is here and it is process and play and trudging through muck, and wiping away the gelatinous sleep from the corners of my eyes that get stuck.

I think we know generally what get the crowd fired up. Sex and hot-button issues, underdog-takes-the-gold tales that may require some tissues, controversial political themes, Ryan Gosling memes, and when all else fails, vids of pugs and kittens attempting to bite their own tails. All the above are sure to get some attention if situated in the right place at the right time. But my intention is to move within and improve my improvisation on themes that mean something to me. This is the only way that I will continue to pray and offer work to the altar of my creative muse. Sacrificing lines and time that may not be my idea of good enough--not seasoned just the way I like, but will suffice. I will practice not for perfection and not to prove myself, but to improve the craft. Oh, and to enjoy it too. Who says you can't "heart" your own art? Start now.

morning person

Good morning, person.

Are you reading this before noon?

Do you work best before the sun peaks?

“I don’t know”? Me too.

It was recently discovered that there are genes that determine morningness

so it is a “thing.”

Yet, like so many things that we cling to and assert our identity to, it often times becomes a mental hindrance if you are trying to create change.

you say you’re not a morning person—that your best inspiration strikes after dark. 

That might be true.

But what I have come to starkly realize for myself that when you start taking action consistently and you actively seek inspiration, it comes; you don’t have to wait for it to find you. 

‘Cause if you do, you may be waiting forever.

Progress isn’t made from a lightning epiphany someone had just once in bed wearing their mismatched socks. It is made from someone taking stock, doing the work, regularly. Sometimes slowly. Whether it’s before dawn or after dusk is inconsequential. Everyone moves differently.

For some time, I had been fascinated by successful people’s morning routines. I studied people whose work I was consistently enamored with and wanted to know what they did to start their days. Some of them meditated, some wrote plays, some did pushups. Some, like Marie Forleo, started it the night before by outlining her day in her planner. Big ups.

Not much did they have in common other than the fact that each of them did seem to have a morning, i.e. woke before noon. And none of them were eating donuts or any kind of junk. When you’re in a sugar stupor it can put you in a mental funk. 

Regardless of what their process was, they were making things happen just because.

My process is a constant experiment in being comfortable being uncomfortable. At the present, I do pushups, meditate, and write. And if the rest of the day doesn’t pan out, I did something for me before the first light.

Did it dawn on you that you’re a self-made morning person, too? Tweet me your early-riser ritual @alisonperrie. I’d love to hear from you.  

improving yourself

I am taking a One Night Stand Up comedy workshop tonight and I am psyched. Yes, that is really its name and one of the same reasons I wanted to participate. It was also fate. I had been searching for a stand up class in Austin, but my options were austere. what I found instead, was a lot of improv. Improving my delivery and honing humor writing is a skill best learned lonely on-stage with mic and a sense of the audience. But like the curious polyama I am, I wanted to know both. After a brief Quora scan, I can say that both improv and stand up can teach life-skills that traditional academia just can't. Here is a few situations to see which school of funny would serve you for each.

When Everything Goes to Hell

Improv will be your life-vest. It is the best for going-with-the-flow as it is by nature, unscripted.

When You're Selling Shit on Craig's List

Use your stand up chops to write a compelling ad to empathize with your future toaster owner--win them over with a good one-line headline and you'll get their bread.

When You Forgot a Key Ingredient for the Dinner Party Recipe

Improvise with style by swapping in a new flavor profile and while your dinner guests chew trying to decipher what you subbed for basil, dazzle and distract them with a story about that time you fell publicly on the beaches of Brazil.

When You're Pulled Into the Sales Call

Stand up wins here. You got brought in for a reason, because you know your stuff. Here's a stage to deliver the goods by an audience of your professional peers. Get the deal, and you'll get free beers. Cheers!

what's around

There's nothing scarier than a blank page. Have you heard this line? Excuse me, that was a typo, it's actually a 'lie.' Have you ever seen the music video for Crossroads by Bone Thugs 'n' Harmony? The Angel of Death, a tall, stoic, dark man with dark glasses approaches and touches the forehead of an older gentleman on his porch playing cards. Upon his fingertips his eyes turn black and he falls backward to the horror of Wish Bone, his card-game compadre. It's terrifying. I loved the song--always will, but that image used to give me nightmares as a kid.

Blank, black eyes. That's scarier than a blank white screen.

"But what do I write about?" You whine. You write what's around. What's taking up space in your head. What happens in your body when the rain flings itself against your window pane in torrents. Write about what's hanging up in front of your face as you face your blinking cursor. And you better have something up there. If you don't, I'll send you something. Just e-mail me your address and I'll drop something in the post that you can post in front of your face to remind you everyday of why you wanted to make in the first place. And when you're sick of writing where you are, move. Go to the movies, the museum, go to a spot that's beautiful outside that no one else has noticed yet.

You could also pay attention to how you present yourself to the world and find the themes that scream out to you. Have you ever done a word cloud on yourself? It's super-fun. Go to Wordle.net (word of warning, you may have to install Java first), Copy and paste all the words from all of your online profiles--social, dating, job sites--throw your bio in there too. And see what concepts balloon. Then write them on sticky notes and put them on the wall and everyday start with that so you will never be scrounging for inspiration or a title again. Talk about getting unstuck. I have done this with the answers that I've gathered from speaking with people who have deemed themselves to be multi-passionates like me, and that is how I start formulating the morning's post each day. It just takes a little looking in and looking out if you want to be creating consistently.

Once you say "YES" to noticing, the world is an enticing place.

you are not the work you make

You are not the work you make.

You are not the words you write and say; the lines you draw. You are not the connections you make.

The sculptor knows the hand she shapes wet is not hers. She makes nail beds; carving the winks and kinks of the knuckle, She knows once it is formed that she must let it go.

We make things, we say a thing, we build a thing we throw some symbols together in an open space and justlikethat it works.

You heave and sweat and make love all night and feel sick mornings later and stop bleeding and nearly a year later you heave again and you birth a child. He’s beautiful even if he’s not. He looks like you in the slightest nuance even when he doesn’t yet, and you celebrate and you pop champagne and although he was made from you in heat and love in strings of stories told in chromosomes, he is no longer yours. And he will break your heart a million times before you realize it.

We are not what we bear. We are not what we give or receive.

We are the thought that counts. We are the decisions and the motivation behind it. We are the people we sit with and share with. We are behind the smile, we are the kindness. We are what we walk away from, what we fear.We are what we do every single day, but after we do it, it is not ours. We can’t own it. We can be grateful for the effect that what we made has had on others. We can thank our God for allowing us to be the portal for which something we are proud of has entered this world.

And although we love it, we must let it go. We must know that even if it never brings us a cent, or loves us back, to love it anyway. Make it anyway, give it all away. Enjoy it for the journey. We are better for it.

Originally published on 1/14/17 by Thrive Global.

Just

To be "just" is one of those words that is more than what it seems. It is a chameleon--adjective and adverb. Limiting and lonely, but fair. Who else recently has given us enough equity to keep us satisfied? Just just.

The limiting nature of 'just' can be cruel. And in the same vein, completely inaccurate. When we are just 'something'--tying that word to something that the English language has deemed intimate enough to dictate our 'us-ness'--a writer, for instance, we create a mental block. The writer is never 'just' a writer, at least in modern times. The writer is an expert researcher--a curious explorer capable of acquiring the minimum viable knowledge in a subject to make her dangerous. Often the writer is also an SEO specialist, if she writes for the web, capable and willing to hold long conversations that end up as interviews on podcasts. Like 'just', she is a chameleon too.

As creative beings, we need limitations. We crave to be corralled to an area of thought. We are able to take out our sidewalk chalk and go crazy, but not go beyond the gate. Also, not to use the red, as it is off-brand and gets less engagement than blue. That's fine, we say, we like the boundaries and we like them communicated. There is a limitation to our affinity for limitations, however. We like boundaries that frame, not cut into our space. If it is, we become distraught. We feel caged. We blame others for work that no longer works. We feel that we are owed something. That it is only fair. The thing of it, though, is that even though we are told we deserve equity, that we should not expect it to be fair. Either way, it ought to be accepted. Accepted as just, or not. It doesn't mean we stop or we use it as a crutch. A crutch can be a tool and we have the power to accept this just as is. 

unwreckless abandon

for Anne

"Take what's yours and leave the rest."

She said as I had just given a frustrated groan about the inaccessibility of The Kind Diet, a vegan lifestyle book whose recipes touted Japanese sea vegetables and umeboshi plum paste. I mean, I lived in the most accessible city in the world--New York, and I had no idea where I was supposed to buy a sunchoke in December.

Something about the line she uttered stunned me enough to shut me up. I have since used it as a sort of mantra to decide what goes on my plate through the buffet, what to feel when I listen to a TedTalk that makes grandiose claims, at a girlfriend's "shop 'n' swap," a social gathering where we bring items we no longer want in our closets and pick out something 'new,' if only to us. I have found comfort in this statement. Understanding what feels right about claiming ownership over a "thing" or "things" makes it easier to dissociate from the entire entity. You are leaving, but not without a piece of it--your piece. In this way, it is much easier to understand what to leave. It is much more difficult to know when to leave.

The truth is, we leave all the time. Everything is abandoned. And that is OK. Or maybe it just is. Side note, I just finished the Power of Now by Eckhard Tolle, so my thinking has been esoteric as of recently. We abandon the remainder of a rich dessert after a fully satisfying meal, the winter for a trip to more tropical climates, and we abandon our carts, to the dismay of e-tailers everywhere. We abandon our work everyday. True, there is a difference between hitting send on the last e-mail and packing up for the day so as to beat rush hour traffic and stepping away for the last time from a project you have been toiling at for months or years. Abandon can be extremely painful. It can mean failure, and often does. If you leave before you get what you came for, then yeah, it can really suck--the opposite of success. I used to think success was hitting a milestone, a benchmark--getting an accolade of some sort. I have recently asked others about their definition of success, and that was not an uncommon answer. However, to people to aspire to embark on creative pursuits, we must understand that abandon is inevitable. Eventually, the writer relaxes her knuckles from their poise on the keyboard, the painter pulls her brush away from the canvas. It often feels undone. But it may be helpful to ask yourself when in the midst of a project or a piece--do I have I all I need here without continuing or is there more I can offer? Can I learn anything else here? If we are not continuing to learn, it is likely we should leave.