We are so Blessed~

My heart pounds in me, but no, it's shaky.
I'm shaky. Fearing I won't live to share my share
Maybe that's all easy,

But just in case I don't wake again:

I say, Lo' — I did wrong when
I thought I was doing smart,
And I thought I thought
I was framing the wise but Oh.
Oh. Oh... I did you wrong Miss.

Don't fight me here,
Because I know you know I did it wrong,
I turned off my heart to find my right to success.
I turned my eyes to my
Shoes to see where I should walk.

And so my stars grew dim to my skin,
But my heart it smoldered inside me,
And would not turn down the scream.
Of my hands on my chest.
I wretched chest explode in silence
On the year.

How could I give up that gift of heart
Aligned to hands upon
Those stars in your eyes?

There's not enough days left in me to live
To give me away the year!
To break my heart so wide, to make a soul explode WHY?

When we are so alive why...?

Utter Relief

I shoved my hands into my pockets and headed for the icy walkway, washed over by the breakers off Lake Michigan.

I wasn't going to say anything rash, "Like Hell I'm staying another winter.  I'm out of here or taking a spill to slap my skull on the ice and sink into the thick wetness and void of it all."

Michael was beside me, two inches taller, his pace was an easy lope all his own. "You do what you need to do." His voice was husky and even, but he was asking too. "Where are we headed?"

We had smokes and pints of whisky stuffed into our jackets. But will we ever ride motorcycles through the city ever? I wondered.

At the bottom of it, Michael was looking to see if I was actually out or just complaining. And I was desperately hoping yes and no at the same time. He couldn't fight, or even protest beyond a shrug either way.

"Hey we got a problem" says Michael, and you know? That's the most generous thing a body's ever said to me.

While I'm out here searching desperately for an exit sign, he's talking about us, he and I... are we in this together or not? Guys from Chicago who haven't made out, they don't talk about 'Us'. I didn't even notice, of course. Fucking narcissist I am.

But Michael had the decency to act like he's got a problem if I leave Chicago because he just can't see himself leaving, you know? It's not a socialized thing, but it's classy, him calling it out when I start walking the icy breakwater around the Planetarium in January.

"Hold up. That's my death right there" He's looking at the black water splashing against the dull gray ice. "Not today, you know?"

"But every day we choose to die," I said, staring out at the steel wool sky "every smoke over whisky instead of breakfast. What's this but a faster road to silence?"

He shrugged, eyes down, and stepped back "Like I said, we've got a problem".

Imsmothered by meWITHout

Im ripe
In myantic tasks,my
Reactive emotions.
Distressed then unresponsive.
NowI don't likeMe WITHOUT .
Myunsure motions,my
Inflated intentions
Are aspirations
Only. Dreaming
For that someday when
Imtogether
WITH .

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”

― Frank Zappa

In My Dream...

I had been fighting with my rat
A tidy blond creature,
White whiskers and smooth tail
She shared her mind with me,
Like talking, but no words, just
A complex barrage of motion and thought
Always inside me, pushing deep

I had to get her home, but
She wouldn't make the trip,
"Too far and dangerous!"
I cupped my hands around her, tight
"No! No!" She started screaming
Biting the web of my thumbs

I pressed around her thumping chest
And she started ripping at the flesh
Of my palm, scrabbling claws into fingertips
Hands couldn't let go of her!
Bloody and cramped, my grip
Streaked red eyes and frothing breath
I had to get her HOME!

I squeezed her tight in one hand, to open doors,
Run up stairs, people stared, disturbed, blurted
What am I doing?
I can't explain, she was screaming too loud
Broke her own tiny shoulder against my clench
I heaved myself against the crushing doors of a bus
Trying to balance and hiding my stinging hands
In my belly, my dark suit staining with blood

Up the stairs I felt her slippery, sticky fur - matted wet
Heart rattled in my hands, twisting and turning
Against my left hand as my grip
Slipped off the knob and left blood

I finally dropped her inside a glass jar,
Where she spasmed and pounded herself
A bloody mess against the side
Screaming against me, against the dream
Not caring at all that we were home

Fuck It

I do not know
What poison you are
Talking so cut it out
With a small winking
Pen knife poised to
Deny, elide, slice off.

I did not blow $1K
White rails built from
3 month's living like
Church mouse scrapings
Those 100,000 pennies
In one tiny pile

I am not charging into the dark
Won't, can't, am not
Fighting the burning blood
Splashed in hot jets
Across her smile, a back-handed blow
To the hope she kept tucked
Safe away for some slight tomorrow.

I will not show you
The curse on my lips
Curled back in rictus play
At a grin while sermonizing
On having compassion for
Your own self loathing brand
That is most certainly something
I do not know.

When Words Drown Me With Love

I think Rilke might be curing me of atheism, though e.e. cummings certainly makes it palatable. I believe that Whitman makes hard truths more beautiful even, and I still turn to Plath like a moth to flame, and then turn away at the last minute. I just don't love Sedaris, though he really is funny, but then what?

If I was trapped in an elevator for hot sex and good conversation I'd want Bacall with me, but John Cameron Mitchell would get my sympathy vote.

Busted lips taste blood on the knife

M,

I want to go to play-parties because because because. I want to experience, revel in, and witness the nuanced and the raw. I want to be wanted and to feel powerful in wanting others. I have freedom to be he who roams through conscious, sensuous and community.

But then there is the you and the I. Our society of two. We're an exclusive community just now. How to consider you as my lover when I'm off at play- maybe creating some boundary beyond, "Lovership=now" beyond, "...no hard feelings." NOT an invitation to exclusivity, nor what you want probably.

And yet I will open my mind to you wanting something from me besides puppies. I suspect, when you weep in my arms while I'm buried inside you, it is because I am withholding soul-nectar from you, and offering mere sugar-water. This doesn't fit the shape of your desire.

We want different things from play-, you and I, though they are not the knots that bind us anyway. We are joined at hearts I suppose, each a basket stuffed with flower petals and berries, boxed up inside and waiting for someone like -you, like -me to lift the lid. I feed from the bounty of your delectable tropes. I lap up your shining eyes and swallow. Feel thick trickles from your throat's Whitman, so different from anyone else's Whitman. Your perceptions are palpable: buttery glances, cherry-pursed lips, Sugar-crystal shouts of anguished surrender to your affection. You have pinned yourself beneath my glass, and then cry to me for help.

I'm licking your wings,

John

Wabi - Sabi

Wabi stems from the root wa, -harmony, tranquility, balance. Wabi's roots connoted sadness, desolation, and the morose, but now carries a more positive nuance: simple, humble, and attuned to nature. Someone who is perfectly herself, and never craves to be anything else, is wabi.

"The joy of the little monk in his wind-torn robe" is wabi. A wabi tea-man feels no dissatisfaction even though he owns no Chinese utensils with which to conduct tea. Zen is wabi, content with very little and free from indolence or anger. An understanding of the wisdom of rocks and grasshoppers.

Undertones of abandonment cling to the word, sometimes used to describe the helpless feeling you have when waiting for your lover. It also carries a hint of dissatisfaction in its underhanded criticism of gaud and ostentation.

Sabi by itself means "the bloom of time." It connotes the natural progression of tarnish, hoariness, rust -the extinguished gloss of that which once sparkled. It's the understanding that beauty is fleeting. The word's meaning has changed over time, from its ancient definition, "to be desolate," to the more neutral "to grow old." By the thirteenth century, sabi's meaning had evolved into taking pleasure in things that were old and faded. A proverb emerged: "Time is kind to things, but unkind to man."

Trapped Between...

Faith & Numbers

Tracking my shaman's command to me, "Good, keep painting, make ten more and I'll sell them. Make ten more. You are meant to do art now --dwell in the fire"

Then plucking out the bright coins of my financial adviser, " Every day add ten clients to your pipeline. Call them cold --you can do this, it's hard, but I believe in you."

I AM NOT WORTHY OF THIS LOVE.

How can I live with the weight of it?

I float in the tub, muscles clenched and submerged.
A desperate staving off of,
"What's next?"
But then my tomorrow will flood my sleep tonight.

I took pictures of what I wrote while I wore a velvet smoking jacket.
I can't find pieces to construct an altar, only images to download to the feet of the monitor.
But I need THINGS, GOD I hate that. I HATE things.
Food, money, clothes, shelter.
I want to strip my heart from them, take that with me, those
Flavors and colors and sweet memories attached to stuff
Decouple them from the grimy substance of mass.
FUCK things! They burden my eye's desperate
Desire to shuffle off the weight of my spine.

Karl Marx Was A Liberal Economist

So I've found an economics essay that warms my heart. It trundles through the history of the study of money in action with a rambunctious appetite for the broad and the off-hand. Nice.

Economics is the kind of science I love: it touches every aspect of human life, like law, political science or philosophy. Walk into a bar and order a drink. This is clearly a political action: you are a human, who gets served by an other human, and this is normal. In what kind of society does this happen? Why? Political science to the rescue baby. This is also a legal action: ordering something is making an implicit contract with the bartender and the whole bar. And of course, it's also an economic action, since you're paying for goods, and hopefully a bit of service. [more]

l0La

So I really miss Lola, she lives in Seattle, so I Photoshopped a picture of her and posted it, and that's half a phone call at least in my book.

Fury

...it hounds me. every step, all my moments of weakness, even wine pulls it on rather than dismissing it. Only now there is comfort in the fury.

I rest into it, or attempt to. No patience, a sense of loss. I have had this process, a series of peaks and valleys between grace without comfort and awkward stabs at ease that evoke furious self doubt and brash lunges into darkness. I express my fury alone, drunk and miserable. But at least fully expressed.

Chipping Away Into Me

...once more is present in me
In my choice dismissed

By a clipped purse
of the lips --askance.

A hot ball in my belly where
My emotion roils oblique

Left with decision to tighten
Out to the right but inside
---------------
When I write this stuff it only grinds away, I'm stuck with this tightness inside, no outlet, I'm only staring at what's wrong but doing nothing. Nothing. The fear and anger part. Fear. Anger.

I hate it when I write this stuff, trying to describe myself using poetic tropes that I never fit into. That the status of my being can't fit into.

I'm feeling the broken of my record but I can't jump the grooves...only skip staccato. It hurts but not enough. And what is the payoff here? What do I win by sticking to my story?

When Humans Take Back Morality

Hoby Van Hoose diggs into the roots of morality & ethics, only to discover they were in his heart the whole time...

Religion dictates that its code of ethics are THE code of ethics, regardless of how late they were tacked on. This common misconception has been deliberately propagated by the many religious factions - and it's high time we put an end to this. Morals were not invented by religions, they were highjacked by them. [more]

Alcohol's Apologist

A glass of wine has always been welcome at my table, loosening my fingers on the page. One beer, plus a few, has resulted in conversation so clear -when otherwise muddled smiles would have loomed between some stranger and myself. Alcohol kept me at it, pushing the limits of work and frustration. With Alcohol, I've screamed into the night and barked at the moon, gnawed at and sobbed into ruddy fingers. These are not things sober people do, to their loss, I suppose. When I needed to stop smoking, Alcohol was there to pinch hit. When my job, for the five-hundredth day in a row, was to scrub another toilet... Alcohol swept me off to greener pastures. Why does Mother Russia endure her winters? How does an amputee stare at that space where she once bent her knee? My God, all those lonely grandmothers waiting only for next Christmas, then Easter, then? Then, for tonight, like last night, there's a plastic jug to fill her weeping cup. For all these lonely souls, this is a jug of good friends. That fat congressman, eyes screwed up and red fist clenched against change, Alcohol loosens his tongue to Mercy or Peace. When he's caught in that cherry glow, heart pushing up past his throat and strangles his greedy mind. Was Roosevelt sober? Was Churchill? God no! It was George Bush who lacked a glass, and Jimmy Carter, mere placeholders between Nixon and Clinton. Now THEY were drinkers! Destined for hell, no doubt, but real leaders to cheer and curse upon. It's time to move on I suppose, some tee-totaller's lock against Demon Rum, Christ but I can't face that white sheet of abstinence. But Spirits can no longer be my friend and solace. But Booze is my only comfort at parties insisting a drink in hand. I must decline I suppose, be willing to have just none, but graciously? And then again?? Me??? Decline the next???? A good drunk (quoting another) said that when he was sober, "The days stretched out like a gray paste. Occasionally, to break the madness, there'd be a good day", and this kept him going, waiting for good days. It fell apart finally; he got tired of waiting. In that light, it truly seems like madness, but there's no right day for it — because good days are not my aim. So, despite the inevitable paste and placeholder status, I'm aiming towards the back of the wagon, at least after this next...

Extreme Fashion

I should be sleeping, yet the sartorialist tugs at my sleeve, uncompromising in his tight gaze and generous affection for the humanity of his subjects.

With My Heart On Duty

How to Live 14 Years Longer

Question: What are the factors that really could make your life longer and healthier? Every day we are barraged with a huge assortment of confusing and often contradictory medical advice. So, I'm pleased to report some simple advice that is likely to yield reasonable dividends in good health. Keep this checklist, and you can throw out the rest.
Study: A new paper (authors here) describes the relationship between lifestyle and mortality for about 20,000 middle-aged and elderly men and women living in Norfolk, a fairly rural part of England not far from London. The participants all began in generally good health and were closely tracked for 10 years. (The British National Health Service made illnesses easy to follow.) The study started with a detailed health and lifestyle questionnaire about significant medical history, smoking, alcohol use, and level of physical activity, reflecting both the demands of employment and recreational pleasures. The subjects' consumption of fruit and vegetables was estimated by blood tests for vitamin C, which for all practical purposes comes only from plant foods.
Scoring: The scoring was as simple as could be. A participant could collect from zero to four points. Not smoking netted one point. Five or more servings of fruit and vegetables a day (based on the measured vitamin C level) was worth another point. Some alcohol consumption, but not a lot, added another point. And finally, some physical activity, either at work or at play, added one more. A teetotaling smoker who works at an office desk and eats meat and potatoes instead of oranges while watching television—a low score of zero points. A cricket-playing nonsmoker who drinks five half-pints of Guinness a week and eats lots of apples and broccoli—a high score of four points.
Conclusion: What's the difference between zero and four? An astonishing fourfold difference in the likelihood of dying at a given age. This means that the four-point cricket player has the same likelihood of dying as a zero-point smoker who is 14 years younger. People who score in the one-, two-, and three-point range are at intermediate mortality risk, directly proportional to their scores. [more]

Time Walker Undone

What are these moments of looking aside? What am I chasing -besides the Holy & the Creative?

Happy Birfday Penny Dread

I would've written you something a bit more chipper but I know you're fond of baleful scrapes and stares. (My friend Alma Dea made the picture) ~ All my love John John

mantra monsters
under the bed & seats of dreams
searching for becoming by being
the koan's servants who lapse into petty
simplicity & spite
the face of our greatness

Sleepless

There is no excuse for sleeplessness and yet.

So how 'bout gently pointing out, "Hey Johnboy, go ta sleep now son. It's time."

So I don't seem to sleep, little wonder. Sleep is our trauma-preparation period. I'm a bit overwhelmed by trauma and so I prefer... yet I really don't.

The truth is I really am happy curling into bed with the brisk freshness of 10pm in front of me. The night gaunts howl though, no point pretenden they don't, I tell ya.

The War Prayer by Mark Twain

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue... [more]

Heidegger: On Silence

"In talking to one another, the person who keeps silent can 'make one understood' (that is, he can develop an understanding), and he can do so more authentically than the person who is never short of words. Speaking at length about something does not offer the slightest guarantee that thereby understanding is advanced. On the contrary, talking extensively about something covers it up and brings what is understood to sham clarity - the unintelligibility of the trivial. But to keep silent does not mean to be dumb. On the contrary, if a man is dumb, he still has a tendency to 'speak'. Such a person has not proved that he can keep silence, indeed he entirely lacks the possibility of proving anything of the sort. And the person who is accustomed by nature to speak is no better able is able to show that he is keeping silent or that he is the kind of person who can do so. He who never says anything cannot keep silent at any given moment. Keeping silent authentically is possible only in genuine discoursing.... In that sense one reticence makes something manifest , and does away with idle talk. As a mode of reticence makes articulates the intelligibility of Dasien (human being) in so primordial a manner that it gives rise to a potentiality-of-hearing which is genuine, and to a being-with-one-another which is transparent."

Query: "What is the coach providing/being/doing that allows a person to be open in this way?"

We are animals first, and I suspect that's a key point here. Before we had words we communicated through gesture, expression and eye contact. These feelings of ours live in us beneath the words. I cry alone pretty regularly these days, and it has a different flavor than crying in front of others. The pain stops and starts when I'm alone --fully open and ragged, then it's gone and I'm back to what I was doing before or moving on. It's different than the rising roll of tears I experience with other people. That may not always be true for me and not at all be how other people experience their pain, but the communication of pain is different than simply the expressing of it. The coach is providing a framework to the expression through exchange, and that framework holds the feelings aloft --it is then clarified and refracted back to the person expressing. They can remember it more clearly and they can see the impact.

When I am alone my expression of feeling is powerful and valuable but it can be lost from the thin context of being alone, like talking to myself --it's just not as sticky as exchanging words with another person and hearing them back through another's lens. And note that reflection happens even in silence, because of what the coach is doing: connecting through gesture, expression and eye contact with the person expressing their feelings.

So what is happening when a coach is present to receive another person's feelings in silence? And how is that silence more powerful than speaking it? The silence allows emotion itself to be the primary subject at hand. Existing at the precognitive level yet written large by virtue of having a witness.

Our minds (where language exists) twist and deflect our emotions to suit the moment, they are not consistent. Deep emotion needs only a place to hang in the air to become a resonating bell. The silence is half of it, the other half is being there. The coach is being present.

Merry Christmas

Happy Birfday Ms Suzette

A Softer World

XKCD

Step step

I am feeling healthy and loving who I am

ur changing ur life

Oh Christ... I spose so, yes. It's a dark curtain now yes, but that's how Penney would have it. I hear my broken record of choices set back to when I was four.... consoling my mother and feeling her fat tears squashing me against her breast. Pushing through the booze I'm left with light fingers and my stone tongue... or taking wing.

Yes~

Nyarlathotep

Nyarlathotep... the crawling chaos... I am the last... I will tell the audient void....

I do not recall distinctly when it began, but it... (more)

Motion Gallery

One of the most gorgeous videos I've come across....

Damn fine day

So I'm not in bed and it's 2:30 in the morning and I don't want it to stop. I spent the day sailing with a client and his company exploring the purpose of his business...yes, this is my life and I love it.

and and...

and the most important thing was when I told my mom how being her support when I was four years old hurt me and also created me as a great coach and she said, "I'm sorry." It was so simple and real. She got that it was a gift and she got that it hurt...she never said anything like that to me before and we cried.

I love my mom.

I Don't Feel Like a Full Fledged Member...

I'd like a little compassion from the inside please. I've often had this tendency to say, "I'll get it together soon but for now I'll..." and then take another hit. Hit. This has resulted in rough play from my brain. I think my brain is just trying to let my little voice, the kid inside, get his day in the sun, but it lays down the hurt pretty bad. little compassion please.

Evolution is Just a Theory

At some point or another, this challenge will come up --in your own mind or from somebody else. One clear response resonates with my point of view.

The Ends of Art

"For it is ultimately the function of art, in imposing a credible order upon ordinary reality, and thereby eliciting some perception of an order in reality, to bring us to a condition of serenity, stillness, and reconciliation; and then leave us, as Virgil left Dante, to proceed toward a region where that guide can avail us no farther" -- T.S. Eliot

The *Shape of Business*

Business has four sections, and it's very useful to know which one (or
what mix) you're working in to see where you are:

External Relationships:
Advertising, Suppliers, Outside Retailers, Marketing, sales, Etc.
This is your connection to the outside world, where you present
yourself & your art. The most important distinction to make here is
that what you present is often different from what others get. In
other words, think from the receiver's point of view rather than your
own...what do they see & what to they really want?

Internal Processes:
Scheduling, Production, Delivery & Documentation. How you track what's
going on in your business is a set of practices that should fit your
personal style and get the job done right. Some people remember their
schedules in their heads while others print out procedures for getting
out of the house and into the studio every morning. It is an evolving
practice that will grow with you your entire life. It is the living
expression of your art in the World and having a written map of that
process frees your mind for creating more art.

Finances:
Budgeting, Income & Expenses, Taxes, Etc. Money is more than just
dollars. It is a flow of energy between people, describing what they
agree is of value. Avoiding tracking your money doesn't eliminate
expenses & income, it just hides details from your consciousness, but
you always know on the inside. Being willing to face your money flow
takes courage and support --it's worth it.

Development:
Training, Education, Expansion. Personally expanding your skills &
abilities is the greatest gift you can give to yourself. Intentionally
creating a personal development path, from daily meditation to
personal-finance-seminars, will insure that you serve your art
powerfully. Be willing to set aside your ego and explore what you
don't know.

Working in any of the four regions of business should serve your
artistic vision. Whenever you choose distributors, make sales, explore
new possibilities...any business activity --ask yourself, "Does this
serve my art?" If it doesn't, explore an alternative route that does.
The business of art can be hard work and knowing your artistic vision
is being served provides vitality and clarity to your business
practice.

Breathing, breathing...

Breath is the sound inside you
Days open like dandelions to kiss the sun
Glow beneath your chin like spun gold
Abundance runs apace with your heart
Reaching out to sing with the joy of it
Voice carrying the timbre of confidence and adventure
Laying a path of light to guide you

Thee, Thee, Thee

Before you criticize someone...

...you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

-- Jack Handey

Damn fine day

Before sleep I just want to say thanks to the Universe for providing me with one of the most focused, busy & emotionally intense days I've ever had the privilege of creating.

Thank you~

S trying on *lifehack*

What is this trick of constancy? I dodder on the edge of what I presumed was common: S.O.P.

But instead I keep getting this hot blush of a reminder that consciously developed patterns are not common or easy.

The source is Love...that I know.

*Why Do They Hate Us?*

The article examines collected Al-Quaida writings for insight into the goals and beliefs of the organization. One quote that startled me was a response to George Bush's "They hate our freedoms".

--Bin Laden himself dismisses Bush's accusation that he hates America's freedoms. "Perhaps he can tell us why we did not attack Sweden, for example?"--Slate

Evolution - *What you need to know*

I been thinking how I oughtta write something like this and then the Interweb did it for me.

Truth to Power

There are so many great women who aren't empowered when it comes to men. I don't think it has to be that way and both men & women could be happier -- a LOT happier, if choice and power could go along in their relationships with men.

For actually sensible free-market discussion *click*

If you read one thing on the blog to learn, I'd say it's here. Finally someone who gets how markets and economics works.

Before tax fraud please *click* here

There's little to explain our predilection for predictable behavior, but it's like our relationship to shit. See, shit DOES smell... but it's warm.

...and *suddenly* i wasn't trapped by life at all

We have paths to tread, more songs from our heart, more light through the lens of our soul to reveal. You are blessed my friend, just take that in.

My purpose is to generate opportunity~

*inspiring* my elders

I love giving away great pop culture. Passing it on to validate our short attention spans and flirtation with pretentions.

Cash at your finger *clicks*

Where can I learn to make the internet pay for me really? All I see is vertical connectivity...or is it? Is there a horizontal path as well? Is YouTube vertical because it's the only game in town or horizontal because everybody is playing on that field together?

Where IS the money? Advertising's great, but who's buying? I burn time on you tube and Gmail and blogger and GooDocs and that's purdy typical and...and I DON'T click through the banners OR the SponLinks. Nope.

So Amazon, Yahoo! shopper, ZipZoomFly and the other shopping malls. NewEgg especially. I gotta get the analytics to verify on this, but it feels like we still shop at the mall...

vision

I'm clearly looking at what is needed to get a resume and cover letter complete. I discover my demons and face them. I overcame my fear and struggle built around this.

I take small steps at a steady pace.

I research, plan, and execute with grace.

My purpose is to generate opportunity on Earth.

Breaking Through Maybe Maybe *Not*

Days of not enough words on the page. Not enough cover letter! Not enough resume! Not enough and short and paunchy and morbidly listening to Ze Frank think so i don't have to. I don't have to, but I kept listening to him anyway, chuckling and crying and wishing I were wired to act the way I thought I was s'posed to be. The way they said I'd be when I grew up, which never happened I guess, but it seems my grandfather hasn't either. Hmmmmm....

The cover letter is shaping up, at a glacial pace, and that'll induce amnesial self confidence in my ability to produce. Alone. At a computer. That's connected to Ze Frank's The Show like this one is right now....huh. One sec

Vision

I'm seen as valuable | I feel trusted, action packed, and healthy
I discover and generate new opportunities | I reveal & create new opportunities

I grin hard and wide when Trish bites me, all gurgling and flashing teeth like a rambunctious puppy. She makes me laugh...

Click *Here* for Earth Sammich

So we've always been creative, us humans. And now we get to inundate others with it. The cool thing is just how condensed it all gets with video.

I see my days getting sucked out by the creativity of others. the purgatory of vicarious existence.

I s'pose all I need:
Make my own, small even, and...
Love to get it out

Open Scared Open

I been called up in my heart, to the strong and clear place. This is where I serve the people I love. This is where I'm proud and excited and damned happy being who I am.

I'm ready. I'm here.
Y'all bring it.

*Link* to Design Docs

Here's a mother lode of docs to template from

Heh

“A good ad should be like a good sermon: It must not only comfort the afflicted, it must also afflict the comfortable.”

— Bernice Bowles Fitz-Gibbon, Advertising Pioneer

Taming the World Wild Web

It seems Apophenia has seen the fissures in the egalitarian Internet.

Cutting up the web between the haves and the have-nots has been outsourced to clicky teenagers. Who else?

*Click* to Learn that Math is Real as Rain

It's an idea that shakes me actually. That Math is NOT like English or politics. It wasn't invented. It didn't evolve or get cobbled together to make things easier. Math always was there, endemic to everything that was there physically.

math is like feelings. Feelings are another state people can opt to ignore, but they cannot actually dismiss or change to fit the scenery. We can use different words to describe Math, but One of... or Divided by... are inalienable states of being. So with Anger, Joy, or Fear. Justified or deluded, that which we carry within ourselves is True.

Yep-

John is... pushing against the veil

I'm shaky and driven all at the same time.

i feel like I could win or lose and rise or fall. It is my openness to the unknown and to what I know deeply that will guide me.

Go!

checkin' In

I'm tight with my feelings now. There's hurt and breakthroughs all the time. Then I check out... for hours.

What's happening is:
I'm at my edge around work and schedules
I'm beginning to trust Treasure...breaking through love.
I'm at the edge of taking care of myself.

10 Tips for Writing Your Business Plan

1. Create a vision. It's tempting to roll up your sleeves and plunge right into the details of your business: evaluating products, studying market segments, and sizing up your competition. Yet it's possible to get so caught up in the process of planning a business that you lose sight of what you're planning for.

Before you get lost in the details, take a step back. Outline a clear vision and a coherent set of values for your company. Develop a mission statement and use it to define short-term goals and priorities. Once you have a clear road map for your business, you can plan your journey with more confidence.

2. A budget isn't the same thing as a plan. You can't create a solid business plan without a budget and a financial forecast. But a budget should be the product of all the other elements in your plan. If you don't have a clear picture of your industry, customers, competitors, and market conditions before you develop a budget, your numbers aren't likely to reflect reality.

3. Don't ignore your customers. This may sound obvious, but too many entrepreneurs assume they know exactly what their customers need without bothering to ask. Take the time to learn about your customers, and build your business plan around their needs and desires.

4. Don't shortchange the competition. If you assume your firm will be the only game in town or if you fail to take existing competitors seriously, you're asking for trouble. Your competitors can be a great source of information about what works and what doesn't.

5. Be prepared to take risks. Creating a business plan isn't about avoiding risk; it's about understanding and managing risk. That's why a good business plan anticipates possible challenges and includes a variety of scenarios for meeting those challenges. There's a difference between a calculated risk and recklessness, and your plan can help you make that distinction.

6. Get a second (or third) opinion. The most experienced entrepreneur can still benefit from a different point of view. Even if you're the only person involved in your business, find someone who can study your plan objectively and point out possible weaknesses you might have missed.

7. Expect the unexpected. Every business plan needs some wiggle room to allow for unexpected changes. Part of this involves creating budgets and marketing plans with some built-in flexibility; but adapting to change also requires you to accept that you might have to modify or even abandon business practices that worked well in the past.

8. Don't forget what makes you unique. A cookie-cutter business plan might help you get started, but it won't help you succeed. And while it helps to look at your competitors, don't model your business after them. After all, you're in business to beat the competition. Learn from your competitors' strengths, but also learn how to spot their weaknesses and use them to improve your own business plan.

9. What's the point? Building a business involves hard work and struggle. But it should also include a clear set of rewards, both for you and your employees. When you set goals in your business plan, include some concrete motivation that goes beyond the satisfaction of a job well done.

10. Don't skip the plan! Of course, the biggest mistake of all is failing to create a business plan in the first place. Planning is hard work, and there's no guarantee it will make your business succeed. But a good plan is still the best way to turn your vision into a realistic, coherent business.

One Week Since You Looked at Me

I've been a week out of vision quest. Speaking about it has clarified what I got. My heart's voice comes clear to me now, and I listen.

More on Vision later...

People are calling to get my coaching and business services. They've been excited about getting me on board as a collaborator, a mentor, a marketer, and a leader. Feels good. Somebody from the big boys, a large firm, will be calling in soon. I'm excited to see what they have to offer.

Somebody else's thoughts on collaboration

~Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales~

1) You need mechanisms in place for effective collaboration. Certainly, people can post bad things onto a wiki, a message board, or a mailing list. The real question is, What systems are in place to deal with this? The mechanisms of a wiki have proven highly effective and have to do with the ability of the community to revise the content or revert to a prior state, and the ability to block communication by people who are causing trouble.

2) Online identity is important. But requiring people to use real names online seems to be a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. When people decide to interact anonymously with no stable identity, then bad behavior is the usual result. The safeguard mechanisms mentioned above can address such a situation. Meanwhile, contributors who use a steady pseudonym can and do gain reputation capital in a way that establishes credibility just as a real name would offline.

3) A successful collaboration requires a shared vision. A good example of this is a successful wiki called wowwiki.com , a wiki about the online computer game World of Warcraft. There, participants work together successfully because they have a shared vision of the kind of work they are trying to complete: a comprehensive guide to all things World of Warcraft. We see the same pattern over and over: A charitable goal like that of Wikipedia is not necessary. Neutrality is not necessary. But a shared vision is.

4) Organizations are becoming flatter. Flat hierarchies are incredibly powerful and, due to technologies like wikis that allow peer-to-peer communication without a lot of barriers, flat hierarchies are taking hold across the business world. Maybe some people are hesitant, but there is an overwhelming adoption of collaborative technologies going on right now. If old-fashioned CIOs are not seeing this, they should be replaced.

5) Speed is incredibly important. A fast and flexible system will always beat a paranoid system that wants to get everything right before publication.

Time Walker

I am taking time out to pause, reflect, and order my thoughts. My actions are built on those thoughts into the future. My environment is clean and well tended: bills are paid immediately, my bed is made, my desk is cleared and ready for work.
I am a Time Walker, connecting my intentions to a well documented schedule. I'm proud and easy with the clear steps I will take each day into the future. My past schedule is a latticework of actions leading logically into a powerful career, diverse and fulfilling personal projects, and a vibrant relationship with my wife.
I create space for play, for upkeep and connection. I am living an intentional life.

Being touched

I am hearing across my circle of friends -friends from Arete, friends from the Circle, that I am being felt. That my heart is present and that stillness comes up from me and holds people. I was Course Supervisor for Arete this weekend, I embodied the course and the reflection from everywhere was that the team glowed. We were soft, warm, and clear. I embodied that, from my context to the way I smiled when breakdown spun around me.

Vision

I am reaching out to people who value my skills with people and ideas. They are excited by the prospect of hiring me to satisfy their clients by providing solutions through creative teams and inspired work. I am well paid and pleased by the caliber of people I work with and the environment we work in together. I feel deeply satisfied and excited about my work.

Purpose

To discover what's possible & to create new opportunities

examples:
discovering new ways to make smart homes
connect Cheryl w/ trish, bni, endor
discover andrew's dreams
interactive fiction

Vision

I am clear, open, and simple as I stand before Men. The fire illuminates faces and casts shadows across trench-coats and raised fists. "Ho!" and I set my log onto the fire.

Terms

Terms

Partnership: Creative collaboration & regular shared projects (weekly)
Adventure: Likes travel & exciting experiences in many environments. (Bi-annually)
Sex: Loving Connection & passion with desires met (weekly)
Complete: Has her own career, interests & friends, wanting her own time apart (bi-weekly)
Communicates: Enjoys abstract & idle discussion (Bi-weekly)
She trusts & respects me.

Still waters

Spent last night hanging out with my brother and his wife. They had just finished up packing and cleaning for their move-out and it was great to see them off this morning. I had felt sad on the drive up, but as soon as I got there, the sadness dissipated. It just felt real and good to talk, eat pizza, and laugh. His wife is excited to be going back to Montana to be with her horse, and we all talked about collaborating on a My Space web-site where they can post some of their music. The thing we like to do the most together is collaborate online and that's something great to look forward to. I'll miss them both, sure, but our arena of play isn't cramped by distance. Nice~

visioning my next job

I am listening to others, discovering what they want and clarifying their vision through intense listening and concrete translation of brainstormed ideas.

Presentation of ideas and plans, through public speaking, one-on-one meetings, and graphical proposals

I'm listening, I'm brainstorming, I'm reframing, and I'm presenting

I'm valued because I am a great listener, a great strategist, and a great speaker

Terms

Here's an initial list of my core values

Respect for the mind
Elan: I love jumpers, explorers, and firecrackers
Integrity built through consciousness and spiritual insight
Hard play and hard work
Physical passion
good, close conversation
Giving myself to others

Sitting next to my word

I don't trust my own word. Working with that today, It's been in surges. Not overwhelming emotionally. What comes up is the urge to make promises to myself I can keep. I let that go, it comes back with a different mask, like wanting to make a promise to Trish. I let that go too and sit there. Emotion about it comes and goes, mostly I feel relief.

It's my challenge, a compulsion to make commitments to myself that I don't keep. Clearly giving myself shit about not keeping those commitments isn't serving me, but that's the urge. It feels like floating, not making fix-it promises -but then a wave of energy, relief and sadness together, drifts through me.

I wonder how deep in this goes?

Getting love in there

Have I been too busy trying to be happy to love myself? I look at the rush of relief and warmth that's opened up in me as I start to accept my actions, and it's clear to me I've been holding my heart under water for years. Warm hot breaths, panting in the sweet air. Yeah, I been hard on myself for a while now.

I look back on the promises I've been making to myself for years and each one had the goal of making myself a better person, but I wasn't looking at why I needed to make those promises. I mean, I didn't need to promise myself to read more often, or get more connected to the people I loved. That all just came to me. One hell of a promise would be to let my next move be loving myself for who I am.

John's List o' sticks he uses to beat on hisself

-I never get any work done-
It feels this way, and I've been fired because of it. At the same time I can look back at a great portfolio of writing, presentations, and milestones I've nailed. One thing that I never give myself credit for is the work I do that's not on paper or part of release materials. People who work on projects with me appreciate the context I set, my commitment to establishing clear goals, and the fun I bring to projects. I'm a leader, which gives me the slippery task of supporting others and making sure connections are made. Those connections aren't listed or explicit components of the project, they're the glue which brought it together and the nimbus of excellence that makes it shine. It ain't listed in the specs, but it's damn fine work none the less.

-I'm a slave to distraction: my chat, my hobbies, and the World-Wide-Data-Hose-
At my heart I'm a communicator and a researcher. I absorb information, process it internally, and pass it along to others. It's a valuable skill for professionals, but I'm so often obsessed with my product. It takes time to reach positions where abstract skills are needed. Hell, I wouldn't lean on the opinions of my 19 year old self either. Now I'm at a point where I've got an actual store of knowledge that's valuable. I love listening to other people, and I love brainstorming on how to approach a project from a strategic perspective. I never wanted to be a carpenter or a coder, but I demand only my tangible work gets counted. Well that is useful stuff, but communication and abstract reasoning skills always get top billing on the jobs I'm most excited by...nobody is asking me to make widgets anyway, so how about I stop trying to pretend I should?

-I'm not in shape-
Well it turns out this stings because it puts me face to face with my humanity. It's not that nobody is in shape, but LOTS of people want to be in shape and aren't. My impulse is to call myself a norm and walk away disgruntled. It's HARD to work out. It hurts the body and the resistance is internal. Bodies and minds resist exercise, and I've got both. When I drop other things in my life: lovers, travel, work, and my bandoleer of friends I manage to get into shape. It feels good when I do that, but I also miss out on those other priorities in life... more on this later.

-I don't follow my schedule-
It's hard to do the same thing over and over for me, and it's hard to stick to a plan and remain a creative and adaptive absorber of life. I feel like there's something deeper, some avoidance rooted in my attitude from childhood, but there's also a slew of rich and exciting and damned useful experiences I've garnered from being distractable. I just ain't a Legume Comptroler, and I don't want to be one neither.

-I do drugs even when I don't want to-
Booze, cigarettes, and other exotics have been a part of my life since I was 14. I've got a LOT of pain buried in there, and I've been committed to being open and vulnerable most of my life in the face of that. Intoxicants have been a place for me to stretch out and touch both deeply wounded and actively engaged at the same time. The result is not perfect, but it's a full and valid way of being.

-I'm not a superhero-
This last is the hardest pill to swallow. I've always expected myself to contain every great trait of the people I see around me. My father works hard, so I must be a hard worker even if I won't take on his limited social life and lack of creative passions. My brother is able to focus on work, but his one-dimensional work doesn't interest me at all. My wife works out all the time, but she has no idea where Uganda is and she envies both my knowledge base and my ability to communicate it to others ~well it took time to do and learn those things, time that wasn't spent in the gym.

It's been a blind spot in my perspective, my lack of compassion for myself for not being everything at all times. So often, my coaches ask me what it would mean to me if I was normal and it throws me, "I'd be a failure" I think to myself. And so fine, I'm an eccentric fellah, just like I planned. But I never signed on for superhero status, so why do I beat on myself for being merely human? It's a good thing, shooting for greatness, but that's a full time task too. I suppose I know some superheroes, but honestly, they're not whimsical eccentrics with cozy hearts, it just ain't in the job description.

Rush of Sun

I made love like fire tonight, pushing edges and pleasing T madly. It was a great round out to a day in Dolores Park. I love my friends and it was a riot of fun talking, drinking wine and playing with their dogs on the grass. I talked to this homeless guy from Kansas for about 20 minutes. We've both lived here in The City for about seven years, and our reasons for loving it matched right up -it made us both laugh hard. Afterward, when T came home she was juiced from a day at the AMP course, lit up like a prowling cat. Now I'm just a soft glow with lively fingers. Night then~

Hello lampost, whatcha knowin'?

I took a long walk up and down Mission street today while the Subaru got an oil change. I had this saturated feeling of home and longing for more home. I love the noise, the mess, and the mix of The Mission.

I ducked into a Christian bookstore, wryly charmed by the self-righteous propaganda comic books and tear-sheets. I spent and hour in a cafe designing the critical path for a Burning-Man project I've got banging around in my head, and talked about potential career choices with my mechanic. I ended up at his place for dinner and gave his brother advice on his iPod accessories kiosk in Stonestown mall. And then got solid leads on potential design clients for myself.

Every day could look like this... it's my natural way of being.

Turning old tools into new tricks

Ran this morning. Up and down the Lyon street stairs, not to ragged exhaustion mind you, but with introspection. Run and run until my chest started to tighten, then torn. My body shouts at me for mercy when I run, threatening heart attack or aneurysm. My throat opens up, huffing hard, while calves and thighs cry for relief. I'd stop running until I missed the huffing, crying, ache in me. Missing that pain... I'm sure four out of five Men of the Circle of Men would call that a good pain. I'd imagine, at 75, that I'll jog right on by the bad pain when it comes for me. I want to run until I'm running, then my body calls out for cease & desist of this infernal running...hilarious.

Lightnin!

Tommy2Hats

Puttering around with this blog, it is useless and time sucking. Of course, it satisfies my vanity.