I got a bit muddled this afternoon and went out on the porch with my markers to sort it out. I dribbled my brain out onto the paper for awhile, finger painting, listening to the wind and the rustling of branches and the sound of quiet Austin heat (104 degrees, to be precise). What I finally came up with was the sort of complete divine inspiration that makes you groan and complain about all the hard work before you smarten up and say “Thank you, Universe, for being so generous with your sublime wisdom…”

And then you sit with your head between your knees waiting for the dizziness to subside.

Ow.

The only part I can share with you now—the only part that lends itself to words, though I’ve got the rest down in rainbow marker doodles in my notebook—is this: “Stop selling. Start helping.”

The thing is, I think selling is fine. There’s nothing wrong with making a living—there’s a lot right about making a living. Being able to support yourself doing what you love is essential for those of us who intend positive changes in the world around us. Hell, it often makes the difference between being able to make those changes and just dreaming about them! But making good things happen can be a weird, winding path. And sometimes the way isn’t clear. Sometimes you just have to listen to your impulses.

Sometimes your gut says crazy things, and sometimes it says things that make perfect sense. In this case, I can’t ignore it. I don’t completely understand the options here, but I seem to know which way to walk.

It’s just that it’s scary, and I know you know all about it. I’ve been rolling without a safety net for almost a year now and there’s a (rather large) part of me that just wants all the money to show up already. You know what that feels like. It’s difficult to do anything but follow the cash; it’s difficult to pull yourself away down the path you’re meant to take when the path with the little baby money plants with the sprouting dollar bills just looks so easy. Oooh, there’s my rent payment, you’re thinking. There’s the electric bill. Ooh! There’s next week’s groceries! That’s the path I need! Right? Right? That’s it, isn’t it?

It’s not.

Your gut is telling you it’s not.

The money plants don’t stand the test of time, and their path doesn’t have heart. They don’t bear fruit for long. They won’t make you happy—no matter how good they look now. So you have to decide—I have to decide—what I really want. What is meaningful to me. What brings me joy. What makes an impact. What takes me forward in the direction I really want to go, deep down in the soul of me, what draws me forward with more than just the urge to pay my bills. With the urge to…

Well, I think you know the rest. It’s that really important thing. The light. The Point.

Anyway…

We are so overdue for the next Idea Free-For-All.

What do you say, guys? Monday?

What do you need help with?

This is an, ah, administrative announcement. ;}

I’ve hooked up this blog’s RSS feed with the RSS of That Idea Blueprint Girl so that everything flows through one inter-tube. The RSS chicklets on both sites have been updated to use that tube, hereby dubbed the Global Megan Feed. I’m not integrating the two sites (yet… ever?) but connecting the RSS feeds makes the most sense from every standpoint I’ve examined thus far.

In all likelihood the individual feeds will continue to exist in my FeedBurner account—but just in case, you might want to subscribe to the Global Megan Feed or its email counterpart to avoid confusion later on. (You’re probably perfectly safe staying subscribed to either individual feed as long as you like. If that’s what you want to do, would you email me? Knowing that folks specifically want these delivered separately will give me a good reason to make sure those feeds stick around, and certainly inform my RSS decisions henceforth.)

With a single posts feed, it will be a lot easier to track my complex dance of creation across the web. There’s a Global Megan Comments Feed, too, in case you’re interested.

Ah, administrative experimentation. I promise there is cheese at the end of this glorious maze.

I read last week on Boing Boing about Javanese batikers who aren’t interested in copyrighting their work. What? They don’t want exclusive protection for their intellectual property? Whyever would someone do that?

I think I have some idea.

Traditional copyright often seems to be all about money these days. It might be about other things, too—but wow, it is sometimes hard to see anything else through the fog of money. I think money is awesome, personally. But it is not a substitute for real life, or living in the world. It’s not a substitute for the exchange of energy that occurs when someone makes something beautiful or helps someone else solve a problem. It’s not a substitute for human connection or meaningful work.

Besides the fact that you can make money doing what you love without necessarily having to protect it with exclusive copyright (which I believe, unequivocally), there’s a separate point here about doing what you love because you love it—not for the rewards, which can be wonderful, but for the experience, which is beyond price.

You can line this up with any number of specific explanations of why you do what you do. The batikers call it gratitude for God’s work. Burners call it radical self-expression. Tolle calls it being in the Now. If you like cliches, you know that it’s all about enjoying the journey, rather than aching for the destination.

It’s why many coaches and gurus ask this question: If you didn’t need the money, what work would you do?

That’s because the work isn’t about the money, and can’t be about the money if you’re going to succeed. We talked about it in the Tribes Q&A ebook, too:

Selling goods (such as concert tickets, albums, or T-shirts) is NOT what makes you a living. Connecting people and giving them a place in the world IS. There is a huge difference between focusing on one and focusing on the other. Making a living—making money—is only a pleasant side effect of doing this right. But it is a side effect that happens all the time.

We do what we do because we want to make a difference. We want to be happy; we want to make someone else happy. We want to create something from nothing. We want to have quality and meaning in our lives. It’s not about how much we can manage to get paid to do it. It’s about making sure that we can do it.

That’s the only reason money enters into the equation. It’s an exchange of energy and value, that’s all.

Oh yeah, and one other thing…

I decided that for the foreseeable future all Idea Blueprint Girl consulting calls scheduled on Fridays will only cost half of what they normally do. I want to make sure that someone who wants to work with me doesn’t have to reject the idea out of hand because of the cost—and this will help. If you can’t afford my rates, that’s your day. (I might change the day later—but for now, it’s Fridays.)

I’ll schedule as many calls as I can on those days without completely exhausting myself, so if that thrills the bejeezus out of you, grab a slot.

So what if you have no money?

That’s okay too. Tomorrow morning I’m going to open the first Idea Free-For-All thread at That Idea Blueprint Girl, and it will stay open all day. Once it’s up, you’ll be able to find it on this page. If you have projects to cook up and problems to solve and want to do some ideastorming, stop by and share your questions—we’ll find solutions for you.

See? No exclusive copyright, no exchange of cash. Works just fine!

“Take yourself, for instance,” he went on saying. “Right now you don’t know whether you are coming or going. And that is so, because I have erased my personal history. I have, little by little, created a fog around me and my life. And now nobody knows for sure who I am or what I do.”

Reading Castaneda last night, I realized that this is what I’d done. It feels so good to know that no one can pin you down! You can do whatever you want, if you have the guts (and the stamina) to make it work. I was making it work. I was equal parts intensely proud of myself… and running myself into the ground. I didn’t want to give it up—I still don’t. But geeze, there will be more challenges. This isn’t the only hard thing I can do in my life. This isn’t the only place where I can persevere and prove myself.

Ooh-hoo, not a chance.

Navigating the Trenches

I’m visiting my parents in Youngstown this week, and I’ve been almost constantly conscious of the weird impulses I get just because I’m in an old, familiar place with old, familiar smells and the associated familial people behaving in familiar, familial ways. It’s reminding me of how far I’ve come in a relatively short period of time. Obviously I’m not this person anymore. But who am I?

Damn good question.

Driving around town to go to lunch and pick my mother up from the airport I noticed that I vividly recalled every single spot where a car I was piloting had broken down. Here is where the drive shaft fell out of my Volvo on the highway. Here is where the copper-colored Ford LTD (that BOAT!) puttered out, thick white gouts of smoke streaming out behind. Here is where I hit the deer in the middle of the night, here is where I spun across the ice into a ditch. Here is where I bumped the curb and blew out a tire.

Such small memories, almost completely inconsequential to my life, and I remember them in perfect clarity. Almost certainly because my amygdala categorizes them as Dangerous and Worthy of Note, but still—interesting, isn’t it? And it reminds me how valuable it is to make a point of remembering good things. To stick them in our heads and repeat them like a mantra. To paste them on the walls, loop them in our iPods, write them in lipstick on mirrors. The good parts, what are the good parts? Otherwise, what do we remember about a place? The awful hammering we woke up to. The dust of construction. The friendships that fell out. The dog bites. The busted fingers. The bad sushi. Oh, the bad sushi. I’ve got some clarity on that one, I’ll tell you.

All those times the car broke down, that’s not my LIFE.

But that fact is still something I need to consciously remember.

Realizing That I’m Real

The real kicker, I’ve noticed, is to realize that there is a real core of me that isn’t affected by external pain. Although my body remembers the bad stuff, the bad stuff isn’t me. It’s a bizarre trap we all get sucked into, and, a la The Power of Now (which I’ve just started listening to and is probably going to be one of my Favorite Books Ever), I am currently all about reminding myself that there is a part of me that isn’t touched by any of it. Not even just a part—my whole real self. How’s that for metaphysical!

And along those lines, it’s my whole real self that is still me even if I can suddenly describe myself to someone who doesn’t know me. My whole real self is still me even if I decide to continue building a fog, obscuring or removing personal history in order to stay “safe”. Safety doesn’t make a difference to that core Megan, anyway. Safety is overrated.

I’d rather live a brilliant, meaningful life than just be safe.

And so I took the fog away.

It’s getting clearer all the time!

This is a wacky road I have decided to walk. I just realized that—without even thinking—I had marked all my Idea Blueprint Girl content by-nc-sa, instead of by-sa. Not because I didn’t want to share it with money-making entities, but because I’ve gotten so used to the idea that we need to keep things from other people who might make money off our hard work, I didn’t even notice the mistake! On a site meant for the free dissemination of ideas, bruiting the dangers of idea “protection”!

Riot.

I fixed it, of course. If I want people to be able to benefit from my ideas, I don’t want to restrict them to only those who won’t make money from them. As vilified as money gets to be, it’s important to remember that in its purest sense it’s just energy—an exchange of value between individuals and entities. The most balanced way to be able to create value for other people is to be able to receive some kind of value in return. Money isn’t the only way to do that, but it’s the most prevalent way and probably the most logical way, at least for the moment. (Maybe. Accepting challenges on this point.)

The “non-commercial” part of that license is the hard part of the leap for most people, myself included. If I’m not the only person who can make money off my idea, who’s stopping someone else from taking all my business? That thing should be me, not a law. I should be able to ensure my own success by putting forth effort, being quick on my feet, and making the best thing I can possibly make. If my thing is better than someone else’s thing (for my people, that is), if I am clever enough to make something people really want, I’ll be okay.

It’s like natural selection, right? If I am faster than the bear, I don’t have to be lunch. ;}

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?

Brooke Thomas sent me a note not long ago letting me know that she was organizing a graduation gift to commemorate the end of Seth Godin’s Alternative MBA program: For Seth, from the almost-Alternative-MBAs. That is, those of us who submitted an application but didn’t make it into the program!

This was a bizarre coincidence, because I had noticed previously that the Big Thing I was getting ready to launch happened to coincide with the end of the program, and I was forced to reflect on the last six months of my life—six months I might have spent working on projects in New York, but six months that, at the same time, I had done really great things with anyway. Successes I was proud of. Projects I wouldn’t have traded for anything.

As it happens, I’d been putting off this launch for about a week already. Ah, psychology. It’s never quite there, you know? But really, it was already done. Brooke’s note meant I couldn’t put it off any longer.

Also as it happens—today is Seth’s birthday. I can’t think of a better day to make my first official launch post and kick everything off. Thanks to Seth Godin for all his nudges, inspiration, and awesomeness. I wish you a very, very happy birthday.

So that’s it, right? Time to show you the good stuff!

If you want to know all about my project, you can read the Squidoo lens I put together: Idea Blueprint Girl: The (Home Study) Alternative MBA of Megan M.

Or you can go straight to That Idea Blueprint Girl, and start browsing.

Things are about to get pretty interesting around here. ;}