My life mission of the moment, that is. I don’t think I have enough hubris, right now, to think that this life mission will always be my life mission. (Though honestly, I can only imagine it being similar.)

It’s something like this: To stay engaged. To fill my work with meaning.

And then there’s this other part…

This part where I understand how human beings are pack animals. How deep down, we are social and need connection to survive, and even more than that, how we are creative, every single one of us, how we crave new ideas and new experiences. Yes, we fear change. But we still build. We still dream. We push forward, even as we feel our safety is rooted in things staying the same.

But our safety isn’t rooted in things staying the same.

Maybe that was true when we lived in the wilderness, and staying out of a predator’s territory was a protective impulse. Maybe it was true when there were warring tribes, keeping each other at bay. Maybe it was true when we were without reliable ways of sharing and disseminating information, learning (by ourselves!) at astonishing rates, or when we weren’t capable of connecting with one other person across the planet with a few clicks of a mouse or the whir of a webcam (or an IM, or a text, or a poke).

Now we do. And we can. And so now, the game is changed.

That creative nature we’ve been driven by is at the forefront now. We are free to grow ourselves without the consent of any institution the minute we have access to the internet. With that one tool, we can build anything we can imagine. The steps from living on the street with a laptop to standing on the roof of your very own highrise are quantifiable now. Every journey is different, and every person has their own strengths. But we are so very much more powerful now than we’ve ever been, in the history of the world.

Now, safe means letting ourselves tap into that. Safe means learning and growing and changing and becoming better people, helping our communities become better, letting the tide rise so that everyone experiences some kind of positive impact.

I’ll bet you can imagine how that makes me feel. It thrills me. It fills me with this crazy, deep, abiding meaning, this feeling I don’t entirely understand and have often been driven by without really knowing where I was going. I still don’t know where I’m going, and this thing is still driving me.

It was that feeling that made me build That Idea Blueprint Girl, even knowing that it was just a step I was taking in the grander scheme of things. And so this next step—Ideaschema, which you may already have come across in the last few days—may also be just a step I’m taking in the grander scheme of things. But this step, by God, is scalable. And I have such plans.

I’ve explained already that I wasn’t expecting it to move this quickly, but who can predict something like this? It’s like an act of nature. It is an act of nature, it’s a result of somehow being tapped into the bigger picture in a way that maybe human brains aren’t even meant to entirely comprehend. (Or maybe I’m not that enlightened yet. Who knows?) This sort of event is what fuels me. This is what I live for. So when it wants to happen, I help it happen. Maybe it’s fate. Whatever it is, it makes me profoundly happy—keeps me engaged, gives me meaning, makes my world turn.

So I have all of this going on in my head… and I look around me, and all I see are unhappy people.

They’re everywhere.

They’re unhappy and they don’t know why. They’re unhappy because they feel stuck, they feel like they don’t have options, they feel like they must follow a particular set of rules in their work and living out their lives and they expect to continue doing that until the day they die. Even in people behaving normally, smiling, talking, I see these little signs of unhappiness. Little echoes that tell me these people are resigned to following the rules, because that’s all they know. Their innate creativity has been quashed. They are people in chains, going through the motions, living in some kind of freaky real-life Matrix.

And maybe throughout human history those people mostly just had to stay where they were, but that’s not the case anymore. Maybe throughout human history the percentage of people who could rise out of their ruts was tiny, maybe it was infinitesimal. Maybe that’s why we have famous historical figures, people who did the unexpected. But now is so different. Now is so different, now we have this one tool we never had before, and the things you can do with this tool, if it’s not already blowing your mind, I promise it will.

This silly internet thing, we go on and on about it but we never really understand what it means.

It means that you’re free to do that thing you wanted to do when you were twelve.

It means you can say to hell with your job because you can make a new one. From scratch. By yourself.

It means—this amazes me, I still haven’t gotten used to this—it means that if disaster strikes enough times to put me out on the street and broke, all I will need to build myself back up is a laptop, an internet connection, and a friend’s couch to live on for awhile. I have never been more sure in my life of that statement. I can’t even get used to typing it, it amazes me so. Because then I wonder why I’m ever afraid at all, if that’s true. And then I know it’s true, and the fear goes away.

The thing is, I want those unhappy people to know. I want you to know. I want you to feel this way. I’m only a few steps into this bigger journey I’m taking, and the effects it’s having on my life are so astonishing. I have never felt so free or so powerful. I’m not making gobs of money. I’m not living in a ranch house in the country. But I feel incredibly alive, and I know that the part where it gets easier—where there’s a little more money available, where we’re not constantly pushing forward to make sure the rent gets paid—is very close.

It’s close because it all depends on me, and because I care enough to do something about it.

It’s incredibly important to me that you understand this part.

You can do this too. Your neighbor Arlene can do this too. Your son can learn this as he grows, your father-in-law can start a business in his garage, and goddammit, if you’re unhappy, you can find the thing that makes you happy and you can do it.

All you have to do is believe you can, and try!

So I made this thing.

I did it in three weeks. I busted my ass to get it out before I left for New York. (I only mostly succeeded—I’m writing this from my Aunt’s apartment in Chelsea.) And I think, I hope, oh man, I really believe it might be what you need to get yourself started.

It’s a way for you to remember how creative you are, and a system you can use to generate the kind of ideas you need to move in the direction you’re craving. It explains how to generate those ideas, and how to plan them, and how to put them together so that they’re ready to be expressed, and how to actually express them, whatever that means: A business making felt flower hats. A copywriting service. Your dream of running a salon, that band you wanted to put together, or that one evening when you got together with friends and had some beer and suddenly realized that if you worked together, you could really make something of yourselves. Any of it. All of it. You can actually do it. Don’t let anyone else tell you that you can’t.

If there is any chance it will help you, you can look at the Idea Catalyst Kit. It launched yesterday and today, and a lot of people I respect have said some pretty amazing things about it. (Some of the testimonials that came in honestly surprised the hell out of me, but it was very gratifying.)

It’s discounted so that anyone can afford it, and I’m waiting to see what else I can do to help. Because this really means something to me, do you see?

Whatever all of this is, it matters to me.

It matters to me that you have what you need to act.

That you get out there and do that thing you’ve been wanting to do.

And then you can be happier, you know?

That’s what I’m waiting for.

There is so much cool stuff going on here.

Listen First – Sell Later Hits Seth’s Reading List

Bob Poole’s fantastic book, Listen First – Sell Later, is on Seth Godin’s “latest reading” book roundup list at Squidoo. I’m kind of gooshy and happy about it, since I edited the book and feel somewhat proud / proprietary of it for that reason—plus I love it to pieces. This means you have absolutely no excuse not to pick it up, especially since buying it through Seth’s Squidoo page means donating money to charity, probably Acumen Fund if I had to take a wild guess. GO. DO IT.

Megan Makes Music, and Probably an Album

I’ve been having CRAZY conversations with my sister this month. About writing music (oh my, do I have ideas) and recording, and the availability of studios in LA and the possibility of me just flyin’ out there and putting an album together with her keyboardist, who is also a stunning classical pianist. We don’t have any bits and pieces ironed out, but it’s looking like a good bet; paired with the advent of Awesome Music Project No. 0001, which I have yet to detail for you lovely people, it looks like my adventures in Pittsburgh hail a new age of Megans and Musicks. I can’t send you to look at (or listen to) anything yet, but it’s coming. Soooon.

Free Idea Consulting at the Freak Revolution

Early this week I finished up the final version of the really exceedingly excellent Freak Revolution Manifesto, which you don’t get to see until they release it on the 28th. Uh. Sorry. But it’s great. I can’t wait for you to see it! In the meantime, Pace and Kyeli are running a video contest for the best world-changing video and the deadline is just about 24 hours from now—Friday, September 25th:

Submit inspirational and uplifting videos, approximately one minute in length, telling us something about what’s wrong with the world, how you’re making changes, what changes you plan to make in the future, what you want to see more of in the world, or something along those lines.

They are offering ridiculous scads of prizes, including Idea Blueprint Girl free consulting swag, thank you very much. ;} The due date is Friday, so you have a BUNCH of hours left to submit something that will take you two seconds—okay, two minutes—to put together. People, give it a try. We need more world-changers. You might surprise yourself!

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It’s been a whole weekend since I did That Scary Thing I Did, and I have to tell you… it doesn’t stop being scary just because it’s done. Probably because it isn’t actually done!

I often find myself under the delusion that forcing the good change will get it over with and then I won’t have to “suffer through it” anymore. Launch the damn thing, and I won’t have to do the launch anymore. But here’s the thing, folks: You can leap into the freezing lake, and you’re done leaping. Yes, the leap (launch) is over.

But you’re still in the freezing lake!

You either tough it out and get used to the temperature, or you freak out and wail back to shore to find a fluffy towel. And all your friends call you a big whiner. And since I am determined that there will be no wailing, and no shelter-seeking, I am going to enjoy this fucking lake.

I just need a few minutes, you know? After you stick with it awhile, you notice that the lake isn’t really that freezing. It’s actually pretty nice—cool, crisp. And I’m speculating here, because the lake still feels pretty freezing, but I think the water gets to be just lovely. And once that happens, I get to float on my back and feel the sun on my skin and look at the clear blue sky and the tops of the trees… and relax.

So bear with me while I’m getting there. Don’t mind that look on my face. I’m just getting used to the water. ;}

Why is the lake so freaking cold?

I guess I just never jumped into a lake before. Not this kind of lake.

For most of the years I was running my design firm, I was really intent on “doing it right”—which meant, I thought, pretending to be a Real Live Business With People In Suits and Secretaries and Maybe Even Cubicles. It was only later on in that decade when I realized that pretending was a stupid game, and I didn’t like it, and it made me miserable (even though running my own business, compared to working one of the commonly available food service jobs in Youngstown, made me very happy). Encounters with clients made me incredibly nervous during that time—when would they find out? What would they do? The rejection suspense was just ridiculous.

A lot of that stress fell away when I decided, hell with it, I’d be myself. As I built my new network (the right one) I was much happier working for myself as myself, working with people who liked me and were like me, and not worrying so much about being called out as some kind of fraud. But I was still restricting my official business to web and print design. I must have thought I had to. I must have thought no one would take me seriously if I didn’t have that label.

The universe doesn’t screw around, though, when you’re meant to do something (I suppose!). Over the next few years, I found myself doing a ton of work that really wasn’t web or print design—it was a lot more like idea design. I didn’t know what to call this or how to sell it, so I didn’t; I did it for friends, for myself, and I sometimes threw it into the mix with clients I felt comfortable with—but usually for free. It was only very recently, after expanding my network of friends to include the Triiibes community, that I let go of the need to have a label and started doing that idea design work for money. Who cared if it was weird and I didn’t know what to call it? I had happy clients, and people who loved me, and that was all that mattered.

Of course, you know the problem already. You can market labelless to friends who love you, but it’s pretty much impossible to market labelless to strangers or acquaintances. There was no moving up for me here unless I wanted to funnel a lot more energy into making friends. Which is cool—but man, I need downtime, too. I am not strictly an extrovert. I had a feeling that kind of hardcore networking was going to wear me out.

So I decided, once more, that I needed a label.

But I was done with boring labels. I was done with labels that didn’t properly encompass the scope of my playground. I know I’m supposed to “pick a thing”, but I’ve never wanted to “pick a thing”, even in college—Opera? Graphic design? Internet culture? Business-building? No, I’m not going to focus on one and drop the others, screw you people. Ah, my theme song.

And I did find that label, if that’s the right name for it. Sometimes I wonder if I actually found a calling.

So why is it so scary? I don’t get it.

Dude, I don’t get it either. I’ve been searching my soul for the answers this weekend, trying to understand the reluctance I had to move forward and the reluctance I still have to talk about it.

Why is it so scary?

You know… I was always really small-time.

In fact, especially after I dismantled Virtual Magpie and started doing my kind of business just as myself, I didn’t have a standard that anyone was trying to hold me to. No one could try to define me from outside me. They didn’t have anything to base a definition on, unless they’d read through most of my blog—and then, usually, they got it right.

It feels safe to be able to avoid definition that way. It feels safe because the only standards I stood by were my own, and I could do whatever I felt was right at the time and not worry about someone else looking at my setup and deciding I should be doing it differently. It was between me and my client. If they were happy, that’s all I cared about.

But now, something has changed.

I almost feel like this gives the rest of the world leverage.

What that means, I don’t know. I know that it makes me afraid. But I think that fear is borne of insecurity, of the idea that I’ll never survive being judged by someone other than myself—and that if I can keep things quiet enough that my only judge is myself, I’ll do okay.

Furthermore, I always knew that I was building Idea Blueprint Girl as a vehicle for me to do what I loved on a larger scale. Small-time wasn’t getting me where I wanted to go.

And oh, big-time is scary.

But there’s something else here, too.

I can help people much better this way. They can see what I do, and ask me to do it. They don’t have to depend on me to find them and suggest it. It gives them power and it gives me an easy way to connect with people who can use my help.

Funny how quickly the fear overwhelms our better impulses, you know? And silly. Because when I think about how much easier it will be to take on projects that help people, it gives me a thrill. Just a shiver that kind of runs up my spine, or makes my skin tingle. What could I do with this? How can I change the way things work? What new corners can I air out? What wonderful new people will I meet? What incredible projects can I put together? How will I make a difference for them? What will happen next?

Remembering how thrilling it is reminds me why I thought it up in the first place—and that thrill dissipates the fear.

Wow. Can we bottle that headspace?

What does happen next?

Geeze, you got me. I’m just winging this whole thing. It’s so easy to feel strong and confident about pushing someone else’s project forward. I can see it objectively and understand how all the pieces fit together. I’m not stalled or blinded by deep-seated emotional obstacles. I know how easy it is to make something work. When it’s mine, the path is a little fuzzier. But I can still see it, most of the time.

I think I’ll just keep moving forward, and the rest will take care of itself.

What do you think?

I recorded this yesterday, but wanted to give Athena a little more airtime—so I held the video post for today.

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After an exhaustive search, I found the series in question: The Secret of the Unicorn Queen. I can’t find a really good primary link for it, but here’s the search in Amazon, and a fan listing of all the books in the series. Apparently the books were out of print, but they’re coming back (with all new, nearly-unrecognizable covers).

I wish I knew where mine were; they may all be in a box in Ohio, for all I know. But after making this video, I’d probably read them again happily, kids books or not! They were fantastic, at least from what I remember.

My CrossFit class today—my first real class ever—was amazing, incidentally. And I got through the whole thing.

Day-After Update: Marty listened to this video and walked wordlessly out of the room in the middle of it—I didn’t even notice. He came back five minutes later with this book, absolutely coated in dust, the pages yellowed, but otherwise in reasonable condition. I asked aghast where he had found it, and he said it was just in a pile with some other books he’d noticed the other day. It’s the only one we know of that I have with me in Austin, it’s the first book in the series, and I had no idea it had moved with me from Ohio.

It’s going on the shelf with the rest of my Really Good books—the motivating ones, the inspirational ones, the ones that really mean something to me. Well-deserved, I’d say, if accidental. ;}

A number of weeks before I turned twenty-eight I began to experience a kind of urgency.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that twenty-eight is only two years from thirty, or that twenty-seven is fairly close to twenty-five but twenty-eight is not. I began to feel that something wasn’t getting done quickly enough, that I had limited time (even a hundred years is such a small amount of time) and I had to move my ass to get where I was going. Something that couldn’t wait. Something important.

I began to feel that in my life I’d wasted far too many hours on deadening minutiae, and that I need to push hard to catch up. Twenty-two years until I’m fifty, I calculated. Forty-two until seventy. How healthy do I need to be to be pushing forward when I’m seventy and eighty and ninety? I need to be very healthy, I thought. And I simply haven’t come far enough to match the time I’ve used up. Time to move. Only two years until, what, the middle? The middle of what? Too far to go to be moving this slowly.

Who am I kidding? I felt this way long before I got anywhere near twenty-eight. But when I realized I was approaching twenty-eight, it got a lot worse.

When I tilt my head to one side, that all sounds like paranoid emotional workaholic crap. I hear that people have crises at thirty, so I should have one too. Here’s mine, and I’m an early bloomer! Isn’t it pretty?

When I tilt my head to the other side, I know that it’s absolutely true and I have to fucking get with it. There isn’t time for the kind of bullshit mainstream society engages as normal. There are things that need to happen now, and things that need to happen soon, and the clock is ticking on our ability to move them. If I sound like Keanu Reeves in some goddamn movie I guess you’ll just have to deal with it. This is how I feel.

It’s why when I see people sitting on their asses and languishing in the status quo it pisses me off.

It’s why I sometimes burn myself out because I forgot to (read: wasn’t willing to) take a real break. It’s why I get so frustrated when I seem to be slowed down, stalled out, becalmed or confused. Places to go. People to meet. Thoughts to hatch. Miracles to work. How can you just sit there? Aren’t you paying attention? We Americans, we’ve got it good. We can sit warm and cozy inside our fuzzy blanket of money and entitlement and instant gratification letting media and commerce jerk off our pleasure centers, and all the while we’re whining because we can’t quite get our way without expending some effort. Do I sound like a hippie or do I just sound mad?

How can we lay around distracting ourselves when there’s so much that we can do? Must do?

I just don’t understand.

No wonder I’m feeling urgency. I’m overcompensating for my culture.

But is it really overcompensation, or is it exactly what needs to be done?

I used to feel obliged to let people know how bad I did in school. I never did my homework; I wrote stories and drew pictures through my classes, as much and as often as I could get away with it (and sometimes when I couldn’t).

I read paperbacks and comic books—it’s harder for the teacher to notice if you make sure to have a pile of textbooks on the front corner of your desk. (At least, that was my theory.) My grades were middling, because I had to keep them at a certain level to avoid too much trouble, and to avoid getting kicked out of the theater program.

Even in college, when I had chosen my own focus, there was a theme: All of my performance and studio grades were excellent, but I stumbled through theory and history classes, though I made a bigger effort now that I was an “adult”. I didn’t read fiction in those classes, but I did do business planning and ideastorming about things that had nothing to do with music. Don’t get me wrong, I was interested in those classes—just not the way I was supposed to be.

When I truely “applied myself,” I was brilliant.

But I didn’t do that very often.

I am no longer defined by my technical performance in school—not even college. I’m defined by what I’ve done, and what I go on to do with what I have. I’m defined by what I’m willing to learn, and how steadily I’m inclined to grow and change and help others. I’m not a failure because the schooling I had wasn’t quite right for me. My life is getting better and more amazing constantly. No one cares that my grades were lame. And even “school” isn’t what I thought.

School isn’t some series of institutions with structured exercises and grade point systems.

School is me. The most important school has always been me. I just didn’t discover that until after I was grown up.

It doesn’t matter what you did before.

It only matters what you’ll do now.

You know, I didn’t expect Wanted to be such a good movie. I thought it would be fun, but I didn’t expect it to feel so purposeful for me. I don’t know if you’ll see the same things I did, but for me it was very clear. What do you do when the universe speaks to you?

“Insanity is wasting your life as a nothing when you have the blood of a killer flowing in your veins. Insanity is being shit on, beat down, coasting through life in a miserable existence when you have a caged lion locked inside and a key to release it.”

Now quit considering this solely in context of the movie and just pay attention for a second.

You are an amazing complex machine—and “machine” doesn’t at all connote just how incredibly perfect you are. You are capable of absurdly amazing things. You can break bonds, divide oceans, move mountains. You can do anything. To forget that is insane. To take your life for granted is insane. To waste your innate potential is horrifying. It’s shameful. It’s… Dude, it makes me want to cry.

You have so much that you can do. There are so many people you can help—there are so many ways in which you can make a difference. Little ways, big ways. Add them up and you can’t even imagine the effect that one person has on the rest of the world. You can’t even guess. Why would you hand that power away? Why would you pretend you’re something else? Something… ordinary?

Why would you let life destroy you without putting up a fight? This is why I dig superhero movies, man. Because they’re fucking real. The story of any superhero is our story, it tells us how we get up off our asses and do something true.

Why would you stand around and be a victim of circumstances when you could be out there changing something?

That’s insane. And it’s sad. And it gets me riled up. It makes me angry. It makes me make faces, gesture wildly, it makes a big question mark appear over my head, ping, this is a Megan who is confused. Because I just don’t understand how any of us can waste ourselves that way.

I just don’t.

I can’t think of a single good reason. I don’t want to hear the same old excuses. But I’d love to know why.

Why, when you have the tools to do something different?

Why did you writhe out of the muck and sprout eyeballs? Why did you eat and grow and defend your little swath of mud and eat and grow some more? Why did you battle encroaching foes and procreate and drag yourself slowly, painfully up the food chain? Why are you here? Why is having arms and legs so grand? What’s the point of your big, complicated brain if you don’t use it?

What are we here for, if not to make things happen?

What are we here for, except that we can?

Early yesterday morning Seth Godin wrote that the world is getting smaller every day. You—yes, YOU —have the ability to touch and change the lives of people you’ll never once meet in person, often from your living room. The ways in which we affect the world around us are sometimes thrilling, sometimes humbling, but all of them are important. The smallest thing that makes a difference is still very necessary.

I’ve already started to hear whispers and reviews of Jacqueline Novogratz’ book, first from Seth and then from others. It’s called The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World. There’s no doubt that it’s worth reading—the way it was, doubtlessly, worth living.

Ms. Novogratz actually founded the Acumen Fund, and the things they do are heartening. As high-impact positive enterprises go, the Acumen Fund is impressive. (Not to mention that they have truly great champions.)

For each copy of The Blue Sweater sold this week, an additional $15 will be donated to the Acumen Fund. This will affect the first 5,000 copies sold, and the money is coming from an anonymous $75,000 matching grant. I suspect those copies will go quickly (especially considering Seth’s wide-ranging readership), but each of the people who buy them will be changing the world in just a little way. It will take almost no effort at all. It’s such a small thing to reach out make a difference, somewhere. It’s the little things that add up, and really count.

I want to be a part of that (and I ordered my book this morning).

I’m pretty sure you do, too.

I get a kick out of the way people look at me when I say I’m waking up at 5 the next morning.

Willingly.

Excitedly!

Or when I show them my (very) green vegetable juice for the day. Or when I announce that I’m embarking on a polyphasic sleep trial—22 waking hours for every 24. Or when I mention that I haven’t worked a “regular job” in the last five years at least, and I don’t intend to do so ever again.

You know. Stuff like that. Strangeness. Edges. Poking.

Is it possible that part of my motivation to do thrilling things is the fact that someone somewhere thinks I’m nuts? (In addition to improving my life, of course. Duh.) Is it just the exhibitionist edgewalker in me? (If that doesn’t give you a rockin’ mental image, I don’t know what will.)

Perhaps I should use this particular tactic to motivate myself more often? The ability to elicit strange looks and confused responses?

Would it work?

It might. It really might. But you know what’s better? The poking. I like to poke people. I get a kick out of poking people. Many people only ever experience real growth when poked, and without poking, I think we’d all get a little bit too comfortable. We need to be exposed to the things we don’t understand. Sometimes, we need to be confronted with them! We need to see that even considering our differences, we still manage to have things in common. We need to see that the diversity around us is healthy, positive—and more than that, essential to the forward movement of the entire world around us.

And maybe I’m just a little bit of a sadist. Because I admit it, poking people and seeing the freaked out looks on their faces when they’ve encountered a mindset they don’t understand, that’s entertaining. But it’s incredibly exciting, too. Because—what do you think will happen next? If poked often enough, forgetting isn’t an option.

Might they under go some kind of dramatic learning or new understanding?

Might they open up to more change and growth over the course of their whole lives?

God, it could be anything.

Doesn’t the growth potential just give you shivers?

Quite often I find that I use this blog to broadcast the advice my unconscious whispers in my ear. It’s usually excellent advice (that is, if it doesn’t get skewed on the way to whatever part of my brain puts it into effect—or if it gets there at all!). In this case, it’s telling me to do one thing at a time.

The number of things I’ve planned to change has snowballed since I first started to become more conscious and aware of myself and what I wanted. Though I’ve come a long way since then (!) I sometimes am a teeny bit overwhelmed by how very much there is left to do. This includes projects and adventures and the opportunity to help other people—and don’t get me wrong, it’s really important to take one thing at a time as a general rule, because more things get done that way. (Says the god-queen of multitasking. Yes, I’m aware of the irony.) But just for the moment (and because I’m prone to puns of hilarity, watch this, this is super funny…) I’m focusing on one thing: Changes to myself.

There are so many things to be done around here! I bet many of you feel the same way; it can be a little alarming. My impulse is to change them all at once. As quickly as possible! No time to spare, I have things to accomplish!

But if you’ve done your self-improvement homework, you know that changing everything at once just isn’t the way to do it. It’s way less likely to succeed, for one thing. It’s hard to stay focused when you have eight different fundamental fixes to apply to your life on a day-to-day basis. It’s a crazy spiral, and it gets super frustrating. The way to do it… is to focus on one of them.

For me, focusing on one at a time sounds like it will take way too long. Even if I gave each change three weeks—three WEEKS!—it feels like I just don’t have the time to spare. But when I really think about it, trying to make all the changes at once has not gotten me particularly far in terms of those specific changes. In fact, I end up serendipitously making completely different changes half the time—which is totally okay, but it’s not getting me where I want to go. I’m fine with serendipity and successful goal-setting. I’m not so crazy about “or”. (In this case, at least.)

And so the thing my unconscious whispered to me, today, as I was getting out of the shower, was this:

“Be brave. Let one thing at a time take three weeks or a month, and make it good. It will get you there faster, and it will stick better too. I can see this thing more clearly than you can. HEY! ARE YOU LISTENING!?”

That last part made me slip on the tile. Geeze, dude.