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.

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?

Embarrassment. Fear. Dread. Uh oh. What will happen if they find out?

You know, I used to feel this way all the time. I used to feel this way about every little thing under the sun. And you know what?

I still feel this way a lot.

But now I remember what it is, and what to do with it.

What I don’t do is act on that fear—on my good days. When I feel it, I try hard to listen so that I can confront the thing I’m afraid of. What? What was that? Afraid of what people will think if you don’t shave your legs today, huh? Terrified? Imagining what they’ll say about you? Creating pariah scenarios in your head?

Oh yeah, really?

Time to get rid of all the razors and see what actually happens.

(Would you like to hazard a guess as to whether anything actually happened?)

As important as unrepressing myself href=”http://www.squidoo.com/meganelizabethmorris#module12988024”>http://www.squidoo.com/meganelizabethmorris#module12988024 was to the direction my life has taken—to everything I do now and everything I want to be, and all the skills that are allowing me to move forward—I’m still afraid when I post something to do with sex. “Sex is bad,” something says. I will be rejected for being willing to discuss it in public, it says. But you know what? That rarely ever happens. (I just did it again yesterday in a spectacularly entertaining and ridiculous way, so I’ll let you know if I get any more fallout than usual. That is to say, none.)

The thing is, I really care about the public dialogue about sexuality, even if I don’t write about it often these days. So knowing that I fear that discussion is really frustrating for me. Knowing that, I want to confront it whenever I have the opportunity. I think it’s the right thing to do. I think our fears need to be confronted.

That’s how we grow.

It’s not just about sex. It’s not about dating, or marketing, or cold calls. It’s not about parties or chatrooms. It’s not about flying in planes or swimming in deep water or moving to Africa. It’s not about having fuzzy legs, either. It’s not about polyamory or veganism or making new friends or launching a new business or any one thing.

It’s about you. It’s about who you’re meant to be. It’s about the person you can grow into, the person you’re moving toward, the person that happens if nothing squelches you. You don’t set out to be squelched. You set out to be amazing. So why would you let anything get in your way?

Get rid of all the razors in the house, or start writing about the topics that scare you, or whatever else you have to do to confront that voice in your head. Hell—it might be the only thing you have standing between you and greatness. You’re not going to let that stop you.

Are you?

This is a meme that bears repeating. Mac users close to my heart: Substitute Ctrl-Cmd-Power or hold down that power button—well, don’t actually; I’m just trying to exercise a little consideration. Anyway, you have to admit that Ctrl+Alt+Delete has a sort of ubiquitous grace…

Bob Poole made a great post yesterday about rebooting yourself.

What if there was a ctrl+alt+delete for our lives?

Would you be tempted to use the keys and reboot your life? Sound tempting? Maybe you’d do things differently. You’d stop wishing it were Friday – every day. And, you’d find a job or a career that you love.

Work and play would blend into life. If only there was such a set of keys.

His post was thought-provoking, and I immediately brought up a text document. “Make a list of your strengths,” he said, so I did. I wrote:

But when I came to the impossibility of failure part, I got stuck.

This may or may not be true—my perception is constantly changing—but I feel right now as if I accept most situations the way I would if failure was impossible. I base decisions on what I want, what feels right, and not so much a fear that the world won’t allow me to have what I work for. The circumstances I find myself in now—the amazing projects, the wonderful people, and freaking awesome opportunities—are all the result of leaving fear-based thinking behind. Marty’s Evil Empire is based on him having left his full-time job because we knew we could (must) succeed, and my progression towards taking only projects that inspire me is based on an intention to value happiness and meaning over money-for-misery, or convention.

I’m sure you can tell that I’m very proud of those decisions, but there is something missing. There is something in my way. What is it?

Only fear. Look at that list of strengths again. You’re a talented, strong person. Tell fear to get lost.

I have been rooting fear out of my life—I have conquered it in so many ways. I have become downright astonishing at standing my ground instead of running scared. I have continued to strengthen my fearless-decision-making muscles, and I exercise them every chance I get. So is it fear, still, that holds me back?

It might be.

It really might be—only in a different way than I’m used to seeing. And I simply may not be close enough to see the next step. Even if I haven’t gotten to a place in my life where fear doesn’t hold me back, it’s heartening to be able to imagine it, and see the measure of that growth.

I’ve speculated (often) that my biggest obstacle is lack of resources—money, manpower. But at the same time, if someone else came to me and told me they lacked resources, I would point to their brain and tell them to use that. “That’s all the resource you need,” I’d say, and I’d mean it. Perhaps I need to be just a little bit more clever.

Well, okay. I can do that.

So now it’s your turn. Take a look at Bob’s post, and start your own Ctrl+Alt+Delete file. What are your strengths? And what would you do if you couldn’t fail?

Just thinking about it is taking me into more uncharted territory. But oh, man. I love uncharted territory. ;}

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?

Marty and I have been watching Back to the Future. (He bought all three of them the other day.)

When I was growing up, I wanted that almanac—with all the sports scores for the next fifty years. The Perfect Solution. Fast, reliable, easy money. Solve all my problems. Exactly what I needed. And I wouldn’t even have to work for it!

But what do you get, exactly, when you get the Perfect Solution? You don’t get new skills. You don’t get new knowledge about yourself. In fact, if that Perfect Solution gets screwed up, you’re right back where you started and not particularly better off. (I’ll bet you’re pissed, though.)

If I had ever gotten that almanac (by some strange theatrical twist of fate), I could have made a lot of money really fast. But I wouldn’t have learned anything new. And if I suddenly found myself back at square one, I wouldn’t have any way to change it. Except maybe to wait for another Perfect Solution.

That’s why “winning the lottery” isn’t going to help. Getting a quick fix isn’t like changing what you can do. Changing what you can do means you can change your fate at any time. Not just once.

You don’t need an almanac from the future, or a lottery win. You can find another way. And then, no matter what happens, you’ll know that you can change your fortune. You can make $20, and then $50, and then $500, and then $10,000. You can connect with one person, and then a thousand. You can do anything. But you don’t gain those skills by having someone or something save your ass. You gain those skills by saving your own ass.

The real “Perfect Solution” is to learn, grow and act.

So stop waiting and get DOing!

The embed isn’t perfect (and the links aren’t clickable, it seems), but you can download the ebook yourself right here. So please do! ;}

My latest last-minute, three day project: Becky Blanton’s Stay Hungry campaign.

Let’s pretend you’ve read all about Daniel Pink and Johnny Bunko, and skip forward to the good stuff. Do it now? Say “Thanks”? Or Stay Hungry?

This one’s a no-brainer. I’ll explain why.

You can tell yourself to “do it now”, filled with determination, but if you are truly staying hungry for more growth, more challenge, more change, you won’t have to convince yourself of anything. It will happen, because it has to.

You can give thanks for everything you have, every day (and I’d recommend you do). I bet the world has already given you much to be grateful for. But if you do not have, first and foremost, a desire to move forward, to create, to experience more… if you are interested only in your current set of understandings and experiences… isn’t that a little… ungrateful?

Let the world be abundant. Don’t shut it out—stay hungry for more.

The desire to stay hungry is what makes all other precepts function. A driving hunger is at the root of all growth, all success. It keeps you off the couch and out in the world, discovering, learning. It’s what makes us better. Not the hunger you associate with poverty and scarcity—I mean the hunger in wanting something. Wanting something more than ever before, knowing that you’ll do whatever it takes to make it come to pass. A dream. A passion. A project. That hunger is essential to your process. You’ve felt it before. But you need to feel it again.

Again and again and again.

Becky did the crazy thing (the wonderful thing) and actually wrote her idea for Lesson Seven. She even put together a website. At Becky’s request Marty went ahead and illustrated her idea, manga. There were mucho project goings-on with enthusiastic assistance from many. And then I packed it all into a PDF, along with stories about all the people Becky has written about—people who are staying hungry, people who are doing something—and here it is, all finished. It’s been a hell of a ride. I strongly suggest you read this ebook. (Pretty short—LOADS of fun. And zombies!!)

And if you want to really support us—Becky, who deserves it more than anyone I know, and Marty, who has worked generously and incredibly hard to finish so hugely much in one weekend—you can go to JohnnyBunko.com and vote for Stay Hungry. I’d appreciate it if you would.

Don’t settle. Don’t stay satisfied for too long. Press forward, make something happen.

And dammit, stay hungry.