In this post I write about going back to school – sort of – and schlepping the rest of our crap from France to Spain in a stinky van with the sun full on us and a panting dog.

When I declared 2009 my year of exploring writing through writing, I felt I couldn’t do it alone.  I wanted guidance.  Like when I was in graduate school.  Yet unlike graduate school during which getting feedback on my work was as fun as being fed to a wood chipper.

That was then and then there’s now. Although I’m once again feeling like I don’t know shit, it’s not as daunting as when I was a writing student in my twenties.  Perhaps because I’m crankier. Attitude is tremendously helpful in keeping one’s spirits up.  Also my handpicked tutor is someone who understands the eggshell nature of a writer’s ego and knows how to say what needs to be said without coddling or crushing that ego.  That is a rare talent.

Where does one find such a person?

Luck?  Fate?  Opportunity?  A couple years ago I hired a copywriter to help me polish a script for an animated viral video as a promotional thingy, something I could post on YouTube.  The collaboration process went great, but the project never got past the paper stage.  Long story as to why.  It was a bummer that the project had to end up DOA, but the silver lining to the whole affair was getting to know a wonderful writer who later agreed to be my writing coach/mentor/guide for a while. For a fee, I should add.  As it should be.

A bit about the nitty gritty, like considerations, organizing and asking.

I thought long and hard about what I wanted to achieve by working with a writing coach/mentor/guide sort of person:

• Write several articles and essays polished enough to have a fair shake at publication, even if I know the chances are slim the article or essay will be accepted.
• The ability to self-publish and self-promote is a Plan B I’m willing to fall back on.  But not without first giving Plan A a serious go.
• Write a more journalistic article.  For kicks.  For the challenge.  To see if I like it.
• Force myself to choose a central point for each article, research the intended publication, clarify the intended audience, organize an outline and actually use said outline as my guide.  Whenever I blog I pretty much write the post as I go, off the top of my head (ahem, as evidenced right here and now), very much in the moment (ditto).  It’s a pleasant, loosey goosey, unvarnished approach, but it’s been the main modus operandi for a while and it’s made me a lazy writer.  I can live with being lazy about certain things, like ironing or vacuuming the inside of the car. I’m not ready to surrender to being a lazy writer, at least not yet.
• Hone my abilities to assess what’s going on in my rough drafts.  Am I trying to be too clever?  Am I being a scaredy and skirting the raw material?  Am I blathering?  Am I mongering metaphors?  That sort of thing.

I also considered numbers and reality.  How many articles did I want to write?  Over what period of time?  How much lead time to allow from first rough draft to final product?  How much time could I realistically commit each week, each month?   How much could I budget for this assistance each month?  I didn’t want to suck all the joy out of my dreaming and scheming by addressing practicalities, but the practicalities would have to be dealt with at some point.  Better to do so while they were more manageable.

Then I put my thoughts into writing and emailed a request to my first choice (OK, only choice) in writing coach/mentor/guide, remembering to say please, and adding that there would be no hard feelings whatsoever if this wasn’t something she had the time or inclination to take on. If the answer had been no, I can promise you I would have been disappointed and a little sulky.  But no hard feelings. Happily, though, the answer was yes.

What About The Stinky Van And The Dog?
Last week we drove back to France in a stinky rental van to pick up the rest of our stuff.  I had eight hours on the outbound trip to analyze the smell but cut bait on that line of thinking for reasons I hope are obvious.  Instead, I focused on being a lap pillow for our dog and the scenery that gets more beautiful the closer you get to the Aude and Herault departments in France.

It was a quick trip. Three days. Sixteen hours on the road.  Five pee stops.  Four cans of Coke Zero.  Two bags of chips.  Two Kit Kat bars.  Two ham and cheese sandwiches (each.)  One small dog who had the best seat in the van.  Zero fruit.  Nutritionally we were very, very naughty.

We stayed with friends, stocked up on olives, ate dinner at a restaurant with the most amazing mermaid tiles in the ladies WC, said our goodbyes to the village and some of its villagers, hit the road, our dog panting from the full sun filling the front seat as we returned to Spain.

To this chapter of our lives we can officially say “le fin”.

In this post I revert to writing about a spring festival, paella fit for the gods, and a dog who is very nearly accorded that status.

Last Thursday was the last day of this year’s Falles, a springtime celebration that goes on for about three weeks only in the Valencia region of Spain.

Falla in Denia

Neighborhood groups in the region’s towns and cities spend months, weeks, hours putting together their falla, a paper mâché statue.  On the final night of the festival, always St. Joseph’s Day, the statues are burned.  It’s kind of like the Mummers in Philadelphia only it involves statues and fire, rather than brigades of  men dancing in crazy costumes.  Actually I’m not sure what made me think there’s any similarity between the two.

Costumes, Denia, Falles

At any rate, the closest Fallas outside of Valencia was in Denia, a coastal town about 20 kilometers from us.  It has a nice marina, and on the last day of the Fallas they were holding a boat show.  So in addition to searching out the paper mâché statues, we ogled boats.  And then we watched part of a costume parade.  Temperature wise it was near perfect at about 68 degrees, but the girls in heavy brocade dresses had to be burning down.  Maybe it was the costumes that made me think of the Mummers comparison.  Still, the link is tenuous.

I love the way the kid on the far right appears to be head butting whoever is front of him.

Paella man, Denia

BUT, the thing that capped the day  was the man making paella out of his truck parked down a little side street to which we were led by our quivering noses.  One whiff,  and we were ravenous, ready to buy the whole dang truck, the doomed paper mâché thingy also in the street, the cat sleeping on the sidewalk, and whatever else they wanted us to buy to get our hands on that pan of savory rice, peppers and chicken.

But it was not for sale, the paella that is.  Can’t vouch for the cat or the truck.  The statue’s fate was already sealed.  So why, pray tell, was the man with the van there, taunting  we poor tourists with those plate-licking aromas? Apparently after the statues are burned there’s great merrymaking in the streets with music and firecrackers and nothing remotely saint-like. (Thoughts of St. Joseph weak as wee embers.)  The brigades who make the statues also dish up their own unique paella to feed the frenzied, fire-cracker tossing masses.

So, this man’s paella wouldn’t be available for serving until much, much later in the day. Like near my normal bedtime.   I can’t imagine waiting that long.  Who am I kidding?  I most certainly would have if it weren’t for the dog.

The only reason we didn’t hang around for a plate of that paella was some simple math involving our dog’s bladder and stomach.  The paella was being made at 1 PM;  it wouldn’t be served until about 9 PM.  In the eight hour period between,  our dog would need a pee, his dinner, and another pee.  Because that’s what he’s used to.  That’s the only reason I can only yammer on about how good that paella smelled as opposed to how good it tasted, not to mention the attending side shows of effigies, street discos and small explosives.

Disappointed and ten times as hungry, we walked back to the marina where we’d espied a restaurant that served seven or eight different paellas.  We ordered a Valenciana with rabbit and chicken.  It was good.  But not as good as the paella from the guy with the would have been.  I just know it.

I hope our dog realizes how much he’s loved.

This post is the roughest of rough drafts. Eventually it will be part of a series of “suggestions” about side projects and coherent – hopefully.

Today of all days – the day I want to encourage readers to be willing to flounder and not get entangled in ambition – I’ve been floundering through a wretched case of writer’s block and metaphor mongering. The whole effing day.

It’s been hell.   I don’t know where the hours have gone.  Tim is seriously mad at me right now, because I haven’t torn myself away from this suffering to help him choose something for dinner.  I – the one whose nickname is “trough” – haven’t even allotted a few minutes to the discussion of dinner.  And now the day is nearly gone, and what do I have to show for it but a disgruntled significant other and a shitty first draft (to borrow from Anne Lamott who knows all about this stupid sort of conundrum I’ve created for myself).

You see over the weekend I set a posting schedule (at least every Monday) and added to the landing page of this blog.  When I set this up, of course, writer’s block was not on my mind.  It never is.

Still, I’ve decided to post this rough draft, in its crude and self-conscious state, because:

A) In it I’m talking about the willingness to flounder, and if I tried to deny the fact that I’ve been floundering for hours now, I’d feel like a complete phoney.

B) I can live with making an ass out of myself.  I cannot abide being phony.

C) I will have stuck to my deadline which is a learning curve in and of itself.

Where I’m coming from:  flounderances not allowed.

In the past I set myself up to fail by not giving myself room to flounder.  This was true for things I did purely for the pleasure of them, like sketching, and for things I did to enjoy earning money, like life coaching. I never gave myself the OK to dabble or screw up.  Whatever it was I was doing, it had to be “it”, the thing that would let me make my mark in the word, so I’d better be damn good at it.

Hoo – it was a lot of pressure.  Really awful, joy-killing, misery-making pressure.  The pressure to succeed became kind of like a straight jacket.  I was equal parts miserable and desperate to squelch it from leaking out.  I mean, what if the fact that I was both failing and miserable was {gasp} apparent?   I’m sure it was., and probably more ways than I realize.  There’s no point in counting.

Maybe it’s a mid-life crisis thing, but when I reached my fourth decade a few weeks ago, I decided I needed/wanted to be less straight-jacketed moving forward, less the textbook high achiever who wouldn’t ever really drink the Drano but joked about it whenever the pain of floundering hooked me in the mouth and yanked.  And yanked.

Where I’ve headed:  OK, Flounder

After trying to juxtapose fishing tackle with common household chemicals in a prior sentence, I’ve confused myself with the muddle of metaphors.  And if I’m confused, well….

Also, not sure why I’m so stuck on pounding flounder – the fish – as a metaphor.  It doesn’t work on many levels, not least of which is that flounder are hardly the lookers of the fish world, what with being flat and having both eyes on one side of their head.  If you see them stuffed and presented, it’s likely with crab and on a dinner plate, the only place their looks might win prizes.  They’re also overfished.  Sad. Also unhelpful in making my point which has yet to come together.

One thing worth noting, and perhaps this will save my ass and recover some sense of logic that has been lurking just out of reach for hours now (five at last count): flounder swish in the muck by choice. They hunt where other fish won’t.  If that kind of creativity and a resourcefulness can be found amongst fish…if a fish create opportunity from flotsam, there’s hope for non-fish, surely.

What really matters.

One of the biggest leaps forward some of us will ever make in life is to not stop ourselves from trying because we’ll spend a decent chunk of time flailing in the mud.

If, however, we don’t let floundering get the better of us, we’ll get through it.  We’ll recover our ability to have ambitions that don’t overpower everything.

How nice it is when we can work around them when we need to, something that came easily and effortlessly when we were once a small fry and Go Fish was just an easy game with which to wile away a rainy afternoon, not a game of do or die.

Back in February when I had my chat with word-istas Stephanie and Wendy of Empoword, I shared with them how I’ve been using their products.  I didn’t say that just to flannel the nice women who agreed to an interview with someone who has no connections to Oprah.  I really do use their window clings and notecards for attitude management.

Clearer than a string around the finger, when I want to remember to keep a certain attitude I keep a certain cling or a note card in sight.  For example if I’m going to have a difficult conversation, one of the ways I prepare for it is asking myself how I want to show up: with strength (the “strength” cling), with a sense of humor (the “giggles” card), with self-management (the “balance” cling), whatever.  With cling or card at hand, I’ve got a 70/30 chance of sticking with my intention.

When I have my druthers and mange to plan my day before the day is half done, I go so far as to also consider the tone I want to take with it. Into my Empoword pack  I rummage, and fish out a card or a cling.  These act as day-planning tools that are nowhere near as annoying as an alarm or pop-up message. Bonus.

How do I pick my words?  How do I know which one is “it”?  Well, as someone who tends to overthink and make everything more complicated than necessary, with this stuff I play clueless – let intuition do the walking and gut do the answering.  Really.  This is a chance to let things be easy as pizza dough…because it’s not liteary theory…thank heaven.

This morning I did have my druthers. This is the word du jour:

What can you do with one word?  Does attitude create an outcome?  Do stickers that aren’t sticky really stick to stuff?

Through a mutual friend, (the “wonderful Kyle”) I was introduced to two women  – Stephanie Ross and Wendy Lutter of Empoword (pronounced empowered) whose company operates on the principle that one word can rock your world, who personally operate on the belief that attitude is everything, and offer non-adhesive stickers that actually adhere.

Their goal is their customers’ goal: “healthy, vibrant, fulfilling lives”.  To help their customers achieve just that they’ve create a line of products that place one-word affirmations on coffee mugs, t-shirts, note cards, water bottles and non-adhesive stickers.  These are things that you can see, touch, and have in hand throughout the day.  As a result, it’s that much easier to remember your goals, and how you want to approach them.

On a day when it was 4 degrees Celsius in France but 4 degrees Fahrenheit in Minnesota (Minnesota – way colder) where Stephanie and Wendy live, play, and work from their homes, we chatted about many things Empoword.  But not about their stickers. (I can, however, vouch for their adhering qualities from firsthand experience.)

THE WORDS

Melissa: I know we’re supposed to be focusing on you two, but I have to first tell you that your buttons and clings have been saving my butt lately.

SR/WL: Oh wow!  We love hearing that kind of feedback.

Melissa: I’ve had to navigate a couple of really hairy conversations in the past couple of weeks.  And unlike hairy conversations of yore when I approached them with anger and all guns blazing, this time I wanted to start them from a calmer, kinder place.  So I kept the “love” button in my pocket before, during, and after the conversation.  Or, I kept the “breathe” cling right where I could see it.   It’s such a simple and intuitive concept, those one-word buttons and clings.  I took to them like a dog to a peanut butter treats.

SR/WL: Yes! They’re simple and yet all of these products have been developed with great intentionality.

Stephanie: That’s the root of the concept.  We’ve seen how overwhelmed people become with different products and programs.  Then they become disempowered.  So we wanted people to have something they could easily have in front of them or near them all the time, as a reminder.  Every time they see an Awake cling they can remember to be present .  Or, as with you, when you saw the Breathe cling you remembered to slow down, to check yourself.

Melissa: How did you go about choosing and developing this stuff – the words, the colors, the symbols?  So many people want to create a product but get completely hamstrung and overwhelmed by the development phase.

Wendy: To get our original words we surveyed over 100 women.  We sent them a long list of words asking them for feedback on the ones that most resonated with them.  The response was amazing.  Women wrote back to say that looking at certain words caused them to look at their life or made them realize they wanted certain words in their lives.  It was fascinating. Stephanie and I knew we could pick words but we wouldn’t have really known what would really resonate with others if we hadn’t surveyed.

Stephanie: We pair every word with a symbol so that both sides of the brain are activated.  The visual activates the right side while the left side does the cognitive analytical piece.  The symbols themselves are deliberately generic so that everyone can pull in the interpretation of it that has the most meaning for them.  That’s what makes the symbol different from a sign, like a Stop sign.  Signs have agreed upon meanings.  Symbols are open to interpretation.

The color palettes are based on unconscious attractions and also resonate with the word itself.  You’ll never see a breathe product in red, for example.  You’ll always see that word in more healing colors of green or blue.

Melissa: Any plans for new words?

SR/WL: We can hardly wait to add new ones!

Wendy: There are a couple coming out in the next couple of months:  Ageless and Smart.   And we plan on introducing about three more by the end of the year.  People can go to our blog and vote on the words they want to see.

Melissa: That’s your cue, audience peeples, to put your two-cents into the pot.  Here’s the link:   http://www.thinkempoword.com/community/2009/02/20/faith-or-hope/

ATTITUDE IN ACTION

Melissa: What’s different about your business?

Wendy: For one, we’re redefining how business is done and we’re building our business in a grass roots way.  It’s different from the usual male traditional model where you have to have a business plan in such a way and take out a certain kind of loan…the whole gamut.  From the beginning Stephanie I wanted to empower ourselves and be role models to our kids – not the whole superwoman thing, because that’s a set-up for failure as well.

Stephanie: One of the things we’ve learned is that while there are rules in business but that everybody writes their own story anyway.  I’ve yet to see a rule we don’t defy or that fits our model.

Wendy: So rather than a business plan we wrote an intention/action plan. There are some downfalls to not having a traditional business plan, but there have been some really wonderful things that have come out of it, too.  Most importantly doing it this way feels really true to us.

Stephanie: We’ve also brought our kids into the business, too.  The kids have done the initial drawings for the symbols, and we’ll modify them from there to turn them into the graphic drawings you see today.   They’ve been really helpful in the development of our ideas.

Melissa: While we’re on the topic of kids…sort of…was running a business a childhood dream for either of you?

Stephanie: We joke that we’ve taken to playing store to a whole new level, so the answer to your question is yes…sort of.

THE PARTNERSHIP-FRIENDSHIP

Melissa: I can already tell that you two know each other so well you can finish each other’s sentences.  You’re long term friends but also business partners.  How is this possible?

Wendy: When we started this venture we wrote some intentions and the number one was our friendship.  We consciously make an effort to work on that.

Stephanie: It is written down that the friendship is number one.

Wendy: We give and take a lot more than might be typical of other partnerships.  My husband, a fortune 500 guy, marvels at how we work things out and how we work together.

Stephanie: We can talk about anything to each other at any moment.  Just to give you an example, we’re a few hours into the work day and we’ve packed up some orders, done some business tasks, talked about our aesthetician, lifted weights, gossiped a little, and discussed politics.  This is how we operate from 7 AM to 11 PM, not just 9-5.

Wendy: We love to talk.  Actually that’s one of the reasons we work so dang much!  We’re always willing to put it all out there, talk through stuff, and figure things out together.  Beyond that, though, we’ve been through some pretty hairy times together.  We look back on that and just know that the stuff we have to deal with now is nothing compared to what we’ve come through together in the past.

FAN MAIL

Melissa: I love fan mail.  I love it like my dog loves peanut butter treats.  How about you?

Wendy: Oh yeah, that’s always rewarding.  Especially on a bad day.  Recently we got an email from someone who every day writes am encouragement message on the back of a cling and sends it to a friend ill with brain cancer.   She told us that it means so much to her to be able to send a meaningful gift to this person even when she feels hopeless.  Those are the little nuggets that keep us going and keep us committed to spreading our words, even in tough times.

WANT MORE?

To learn more about Stephanie and Wendy and Empoword visit their website: http://www.thinkempoword.com.  Their are lots of goodies to be found on their site, including quotes, affirmation how-to’s, and a free worksheet designed to help you with intention setting.  You can also sign-up to receive their Empoword of the month e-blast.

To join their community of intentionally affirmative wordists, check out their blog:  http://www.thinkempoword.com/community/

To send them some fan mail, you can reach them at stephanie@thinkempoword.com or wendy@thinkempoword.com.  (As we’ve  learned they gab throughout the day, so if you send your mail to one of them, the other will get your message too…possibly within seconds.)

To shop for their on-the-go affirmations and receive 5% discount to boot (sale items included), use this link ->  http://store.yahoo.com/cgi-bin/clink?yhst-35173576253056+HTFtHA+http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thinkempoword.com%2F+MG5