I’m eating raw again! I expect this “experiment” to last much longer, as I have been pining after it for months and months and know how much happier and better it makes me feel on a day-to-day basis. I’m aiming for 90-100% and learning a lot of excellent recipes, as well as starting to understand some of the logistics of eating primarily raw food and, well, how to do it. This is exactly what I was missing when I tried it before, and so far results are fantastic.

An overview of my fantastic results, having begun three days ago:

• The food is freaking delicious.
• I don’t have to worry about burning anything. (Ha.) Or accidentally setting dish towels on fire. (HA!)
• I’m not having any issues with cravings, because I’ve been craving raw food for months—this is just getting what I want. (Not sure how long that will last, but it’ll be okay.)
• I can go running or do other exercise right after most meals, if I want to. Raw food is super duper light and I don’t really feel it (like, for instance, the “heaviness” of cooked food), except in my rising energy levels and general good feeling.
• I don’t feel tired or worn out or anything like that. (This is so much better than using caffeine and crashing all the time.)
• Cooked food is already starting to look largely unappetizing. Wacky!
• I feel great. Some parts of the day are “normal”, but some are getting a little weirdly zoomy. Example. (Oh yeah, I forgot, I’m always like that…)

My fridge is stuffed full of green leafy things and bags of nuts, and I have lots of fruit on the kitchen counter. The juicer is primed and at the ready. Green juice is DELICIOUS! I have leveled up to 28, and 28s eat primarily raw food. ;}

Yesterday Marty and I ate a pomelo / pommelo / pummelo / shaddock (I’m going to stick with “pomelo”, I think, in the interests of our sanity). It is a huge grapefruit-like thing, but less tart and more sweet. Marty called it the Grapefruit That Time Forgot, because it looks just like a dinosaur and we had to gnaw into it like cavemen. He also liked it because, chopped in half, it looked like a brain.

Devouring my half-pomelo, I felt like a wild girl on a sandy shore before the advent of human speech. Eating with my hands! Words just aren’t appropriate, you know?

It was a bit messy, but utterly worth it—and really, not as messy as some of the other strange produce I’ve eaten (read: tried to eat). I have decided that I will plan a gathering for the express purpose of eating pomelos. We can lay a tarp out in the living room. It will be just like a cuddle party! Except with pomelos. And… a tarp.

Okay, different from a cuddle party, but similar because of the glee.

I am experiencing a little bit of detox, even this early on; my skin is kind of dry on my hands and I know from reading Steve’s raw trial that it’s probably not just because of all the washing of fresh vegetables. But I feel pretty mellow and happy (and also pretty silly) so I foresee good things. I think I need a better blender, though. Y’all find me a blender company to sponsor my raw adventures, and I’ll talk about ‘em. (Am I famous enough yet?)

La la la fresh growing food! My life is good.

I have a confession to make.

I’m a (super) lazy reader.

I have always read very quickly and easily—reading is fun. Reading is a relaxing, soothing activity. It’s like trying to absorb information while sleeping; it’s effortless. This made especial sense when all I read was fiction growing up (sci-fi, fantasy, dragons, witches, magic horses, you got it) but it continued to be the case when I started to educate myself about people, sex, business and the universe. Reading was “work”, but it was still just as easy.

At a certain point my desire for information began to outstrip my reading speed. I tried not to crave information, but it’s so hard! Listen to me whine. I spent more of my time reading, but the books tended to pile up anyway. I stopped buying everything on my list. I started choosing material more carefully, researching reviews, picking up the ones I knew would be really perfect and letting the rest go. This was a great approach, but it has one flaw: What do I do when the really perfect books breed and multiply?

That’s exactly what happened. I couldn’t choose anymore. There were just too many! How much time was I really going to spend reading?

I decided to learn to read faster. I took a photoreading course (after coming across Steve Pavlina’s posts) and was very pleased! I’d never done any sort of speed reading and I loved how fast I could get through nonfiction, even long before having mastered any of the unconscious processing techniques. But there was one problem, and it’s the problem I’m working to solve now: I’m a lazy reader!

For all its awesomeness, photoreading takes effort. Maybe more accomplished photoreaders than I don’t notice the effort, but many of the photoreaders I’ve met came from hating to read. I came from loving to read, and the idea of taking a relaxing activity and turning it into homework is something I can’t help but balk at. Of course, I still read all my fiction the “usual” way—fiction is less suited to photoreading anyhow—but I’m finding it difficult to adjust and use photoreading as my automatic solution, every time. Part of my brain is a little offended that I’m taking this awesome, relaxing work and making it… work.

What the hell? my brain says, indignant. Who do you think you are?

I’ve been mulling this over for a few weeks, and I’ve thought of a few probable solutions. I still photoread quite well (if not perfectly), so all I need to iron out is my motivation.

I speculated recently about starting a super-fast readers club, so that anticipating conversation about many different books in short spans of time would give me a “reason” to read them fast and be ready to discuss. (I’m letting that percolate. Something might come of it. Right now, I’m taking advantage of the Alternative Alternative MBA, and that’s a great “reason”—though maybe we should have another discussion, sometime, about why I feel I need more of a “reason” than just wanting to read the damn book!)

I’m thinking about coming at new books from a direction Seth suggested a few months ago: Use information to do something, not just learn something. This is great because photoreading involves setting a purpose for yourself, information you’re looking for, questions you want to have answered and identifying the most useful parts of the book—and the next step, after finding what you want, is to use it to make something happen. Well, of course! If I start to associate reading with an active approach (instead of with relaxing and getting all the information I want without expending any effort), I may find that my motivation as regards reading changes a lot.

This is all just speculation so far, but you’ll know what it means when I start making posts about books and actions together in the same space, instead of just gushing about my recent reading crush. It’s time for this to happen. I have a hell of a lot of books to get through, but feel free to translate: I have a hell of a lot of change to make.

“I see you. You are a worthy challenge. Right now I do not believe I can face you. But I intend to become strong enough to eventually face you—and win.”

~ Steve Pavlina, “Fanatical About Growth“

Over the past few years I’ve made a lot of dramatic changes in the way I eat. I nixed corn syrup, then wheat, then sugar, then meat, then dairy. I eat almost none of that now, with very few (and very particular) exceptions. At first, as you might imagine, it put a cramp on my social life because eating out was no longer my default activity. Not only did restaurants not serve the kind of fresh raw and vegan food I wanted, they had all these items added to almost everything on their menu—even when it wasn’t actually necessary. (If you ever give up wheat, you will be shocked at how often it’s added to everything under the sun—same with sugar, same with dairy! Don’t even get me started on corn syrup.)

Because of my sudden seeming restriction in food choices, I started to realize other things about typical restaurants and the food service industry in general—mainly that meals out are almost always ridiculously overpriced for the startlingly low quality of food. I can eat fresh produce for a fraction of what I’d pay at a restaurant. Why eat out at all?

I’m sure there are exceptions—Casa de Luz notable among them—but I haven’t found many.

If you’re a meganpreneur (or indeed, any flavor of businessperson) you’ll have noticed another wrinkle: Business meetings. I was suddenly aware that having meetings for business was going to get a lot more complicated, because I simply wasn’t interested in eating out (or even having coffee) and that had been my primary method for making new project connections. Everybody eats. Everybody drinks coffee (or some other Starbucks fare). I no longer had any desire to meet new contacts at the local coffee shop, because there simply wasn’t anything I was willing to ingest there.

In fact, it was a happy coincidence that I changed the way I accept new projects—otherwise I’d be in a quandary!

This all happened fairly recently, but I think I’ve reached a nice lull; I almost never go out to eat and I like it that way. I’m hoping to even further decrease my likelihood of doing so, because it just doesn’t feel right to me for the most part. I do the things that feel good—Casa de Luz is one of them!—and try NOT to do the things that don’t.

So it was a nifty discovery this morning when I caught up on Steve Pavlina’s blog and found that as part of his juice feasting experiment he’d written about this exact issue—meeting and connecting with other people without needing it to be about food. I loved hearing his insights—and if you’re interested, they’re worth a read.

I was very lucky that my current business partners were willing to work around my sudden wont to decline Chuy’s meeting invitations, and that some of them are as interested in natural health cuisine as I am. I am very lucky that I have a good space for business meetings in my living room, and that I almost always have business meetings with people I know well and am comfortable inviting over. (Someday I will need to confront my hermitude and invite people I don’t know yet, but that will happen in good time.)

Food for thought—ha! ;}

Here are the next three items from yesterday’s People I Adore post—I didn’t intend for them to be separated into neat little categories, but that’s what seems to have happened! The next three are all people that I’ve never met in person, but have nevertheless managed to have a profound effect on me.

Seth Godin, agent of change. I don’t even remember when I discovered Seth’s work, but he has become such a powerful and positive influence for me that it hardly matters. I could tell you a hundred different awesome things about this man (not the least of which are his sense of humor and engaging personality) but I’m going to settle on just a few: He is a maker of tribes and inspirer of leaders. He wrote a book called Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us that cracked open the top of my head and flooded the room with light, you think I am kidding? I am not kidding. I have not grokked a tiny fraction of what he has planned, but I know it’s gonna be good—and I’m looking forward to it. If you haven’t read his book, it’s next on your list. (I know these things.)

Steve Pavlina, developer of smart people. Ooh boy, the crazy things I have done to myself after reading Steve Pavlina’s blog! I will just tell you the big one: For at least four months in 2008 I was single-mindedly dedicated to seeing if I could become a polyphasic sleeper on an equiphasic schedule—that means 20 minutes every four hours. I did some amazing things in those four months. I ate mostly raw, and discovered surprising things about sleeping and eating patterns. I also discovered a lot about myself, strengths I didn’t know I had, weaknesses I wanted desperately to improve. Steve made me a willful proponent of self-experimentation, and opened my mind to incredible possibilities. His blog and list of podcasts are still first on my recommendation list for people starting to explore their own personal development. Even more, Steve is a seriously good guy, a clear thinker, and a builder of potential (in himself, and in others). Trying to put him and Seth in the same post is ridiculously stretching my ability to write concise paragraphs, I’ll tell you that.

Havi Brooks, great destuckifier (and Selma, fabulous duck!). Ask me and I’ll tell you about the unbelievable dream I had, in which the answer to my question was Shiva Nata—but for now, I’ll tell you about Havi. One of the many wonderful things Havi teaches is a yoga-like practice that creates and connects new pathways in the brain: That’s Shiva Nata. This is something I had been searching for for months; I tried creative learning exercises and looked for specific kinds of games, and had no idea this practice existed! Shiva Nata fell into my lap precisely when I needed it, just by randomly clicking a link in one of Havi’s posts—it was one of those awesome bombs, and it has been amazing see it change me, bit by bit. Because of how important Shiva Nata has been to me in the (very!) short time I’ve been practicing it, and because of how useful and phenomenal some of her posts are, I couldn’t help but add her to this list.

I promise to finish in the next few days. Thank you for reading about my fantabulous list of awesome!

I haven’t done a Megan bits & pieces (or “information dissemination”) in awhile, and hell knows what I’ll end up calling it, or when it will get posted. But who cares? It’s a list of links. I’m sharing. ;}

Projects…

• The Usual Error Project Launch. Just what it says. We launched a gorgeous Usual Error Project site in October!
• Marty’s tubes, apparently, runneth over. Community Commission No. 2 is funded, Marty’s traffic spiked, and he’s doubling Tasty Flesh every week.
• Super Seekrit Triiibes Project [Triiibe-only link]. If you can see it, you can help! If you can’t you’ll have to sit tight, ‘cause I’m not telling yet! But it’s whole lot of work, and a crazy lot of fun!
• Zombie Marketing for Artists in the works! I’m kind of excited about this, in case you couldn’t tell. Not a lot of info yet, but more will be on the way!

Processing…

• Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. Finished, and in thrall. Working on my notes!
• The Tribes Casebook. Nope, I haven’t finished it yet. I am loving it, though. I will post links from my favorites as soon as I’m done!
• Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth. Grokking slowly, building Megan maps. This is a great, great book.

Eating…

• Coconuts, and delicious coconut milk. Glory. (Today I put the juice & meat in a blender and made a slightly thicker concoction—it’s good, but it needs work!)

To you I wish a beautiful Thursday, and hordes of coconuts!!

I recently made a post in Pavlina’s Personal Development forums because some people were asking about the PhotoReading seminars that Learning Strategies offers, and it just so happened that I attended one last weekend. Of course, y’all knew that, but I mostly talked about my hypnagogic hordes of bugs. Oops.

This particular seminar happened in Dallas (in Addison, which is just north of the city) and was instructed by Millicent St. Claire. I link to her site because she’s fantastic to work with, but I’ll tell you right now that her site doesn’t manage to put across just how awesome she is. It’s a great site, but she is very real and effective in person. She’s also incredibly warm and vibrant, engaging, and excellent at what she does.

The seminar was split into three sessions: Roughly 6p-9p Friday evening, 9a-7p Saturday, and 9a-6p Sunday. I was thankful for Friday’s brevity after my long drive from Austin (I got on the wrong branch of 35 North, so I was on the road about four and a half hours), but Saturday and Sunday I arrived in class super early to play with biofeedback games and talk to people and relax. The classroom was a great environment for anybody wanting to learn something. It was wholly non-traditional, intensely creative, and very focused on accelerated learning right down to the details. There were poignant quotes on the walls, beautiful posters, 3-D stereograms for photofocus practice, cups of rainbow-colored markers, fresh white paper, and scads of brain toys on the tables. (Man, we had a ball playing with those toys.) It was like the best kindergarten ever.

There were rules, too: No stress. Ever. And all that was asked of us was that we open our minds and Do The Thing—skepticism was welcome and invited, so we all felt very free to ask questions and make suggestions. There were even note boards for those of us who were too shy to ask something outright, and Millicent made a regular point of getting to those boards and getting questions answered for the whole group.

There were 38 people in the class. Two of them were younger than me (both pre-college, one several years younger than that) and most of them were older professionals—30’s, 40’s, 50’s, and one at least one septuagenarian with entertaining anecdotes and a great sense of humor. They were all very warm, open-hearted people with an interest in this thing that felt important to me, this thing I wanted to learn well, and that endeared them to me. By the end of the weekend we’d pooled our contact information so that it would be easy to create a post-seminar support structure in the name of helping each other and talking about our PhotoReading exploits. Millicent was very excited and encouraging on this score, and I think that made us even more hellbent on making it happen. I was constantly impressed at how on the ball she was in regards to creative, mindful learning all the way down to the bits and pieces; she a consistent motivator in all the ways that mattered.

Millicent used a whole slew of super-interesting techniques to help us learn. These were widely varied and ranged from neuro-linguistic programming to Brain Gym exercises to visualization and interpersonal conversations (and writing poetry!). These made a huge difference for me, and I made a point of writing many of them down so that I can look into them more in the future. (I will probably be blogging about some of them!)

Many of the techniques we used were not specific to the PhotoReading course itself. I bought the home study course quite awhile ago, so I was particularly curious about how much would be different in the seminar. The answer? Everything but the basics! We did a lot from the course, and all the important things were included, but we learned them in a huge variety of creative ways. A lot of these I had heard of before, a lot of them were new to me—and a lot of them were bits and pieces from other Learning Strategies materials used specifically for learning to PhotoRead. I loved this, because it let me see first-hand how I felt about methods and workshops that I’d been curious about but not ready to test on my pocketbook. (This resulted in me picking up other Learning Strategies offerings while I was there, since I liked some of the techniques so much and had a feel for their benefits—and there were special weekend discounts available to the seminar participants. That was awesome, since I likely would have bought those things anyway.)

I also loved having the opportunity to hear from seminar participants who’d done the seminar before, once and twice in some cases. Some people had incredible personal stories to tell about how PhotoReading has affected their lives and work, and some of those stories were amazing—just knocked me out of my seat. Some of those people were back to brush up on their technique, but after experiencing the weekend for myself I’m pretty sure I’d go again even if I felt completely solid. It only costs $80 to attend and audit after you’ve completed the first seminar, which of course is an excellent marketing strategy, because it makes me want to register again with other interested parties. I’m seriously, seriously thinking about it; it would be a fantastic thing to do with friends or family.

The seminar weekend in its entirety was unbelievably relaxing and empowering for me. I drove home from Dallas feeling really refreshed, proud, confident. There was so much positivity, so much creative productivity, so many reminders to me (and to all the participants) that we are powerful, unique, amazing. I spent a total of $550 to register (a discount because I had the home study course, and a discount because I purchased the registration in July), but if I had paid the full price of $750 I would still feel that it was the best money I’ve spent in a very, very long time. It was absolutely astonishing.

Ultimately I left feeling a) damn accomplished for a beginning PhotoReader! b) completely relaxed and excited to go back to work, like I’d taken a great vacation! c) thrilled with all the neat people I’d met and could keep in touch with, and d) incredibly, overwhelmingly positive about myself and my ability to deal with the world. That last one feels really good.

There’s no way I’ve covered it all in this post, because the weekend was packed full of fascinating experiences and new information. But if you want to ask me questions, please feel free. I love talking about it.

I love that it’s only 5:45 am, and I have the whole day stretching in front of me. It’s huge! Days have so much time in them!

The time between 5:15 am and noon feels like an entire day. When I run and shower and meditate around lunch time, it feels almost like sleeping, I am reset somehow—and then noon until the time I actually go to bed in the evening feels like another day. I have so much time now! It feels so brilliant and wonderful! I don’t know what I will decide at the end of the sleep scheduling trial I’m doing (as you might have guessed, I have not always had my alarm set for 5:15!), but at this moment I am so grateful to the universe that I made the decision to try it. It feels so fantastically good!