Had a great conversation this afternoon with @mnheadhunter. It's nice to get to know someone in person who you have followed quite a while only virtually. It's also good to be able to relate to someone's experiences as an entrepreneur. There's a lot of good, but it comes with hard work, persistence, and an indefatigable spirit. You just don't give up. Mainly because failure, while welcome as a learning experience, doesn't seem like an option. This is who you are, entrepreneur. At SXSW this year, I heard Jason Fried of 37signals talk about his new book, ReWork. I recommend it. It is in some ways iconoclastic as far as business books go. Let's face it, business books are sort of like women's magazines: they point out the flaws in the system (want to lose that last 10 pounds in biz book speak is how to climb that ladder/make more profits/hire the right people/get out of that rut) and then they offer a logical route to solve that pesky issue.

If beauty magazines, diet books, and business treatises actually solved the problems they proclaim to fix, they'd be out of business. And that doesn't make for a happy publisher, right Conde Nasty? Seriously, they're quite alike. So it's nice to read something a bit different. Especially when the trajectory of your life feels more ess curve than Point A to B.

On the other hand, although working less, sleeping more, having more fun, etc. (Fried's advice) seems akin to Spring Break for business, it's also common sense, a la Dr. Mom. It's spring in Minnesota and just as life is popping back into our recently frozen world, I too am coming alive with possibility. Winter is so tough here that I think I get frozen - I pause a bit too long and lose my footing. Then just in time Spring swoops in explosively and makes us remember we are alive. Flip flops and shorts and energy return. We don't need the return of warmth and sun to enable our renaissance, but it sure helps. I read this poem today and see so much of this season and its impact on our lives in it. We alone can flower from within (I know, sounds cheese-tastic). The beauty of a new season is sensed before all else. Whether you "shoot, kill, and eat" at work or have a place that is less dependent on your hunting for sustenance, it's reassuring to know that the seasons will guide us, nature itself, where we need to be. Exactly at the right time.

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;

~ Galway Kinnell

Some days I picture my life as a tree, one that is still growing and changing. If you were to fell me today my story would be short. Each year is a ring. You would find several indications of years of drought or hardship followed by fulsome decades. But in the pith, that essential central part, there’s an indelible vitality that signals to the world: I may be down but I am far from out. Life is full of ruckles: those creases that turn up our lives and rattle our bones, if not our nerves; and yes, sometimes those too.

At times I feel nostalgia for my old home. My woods. My oaks. The big oak tree where the barred owl sits and chimes “Who cooks for you?” 

Who cooks for me, indeed, dear owl?

The deer that tread pathways through the snow, mashing in buckthorn berries pre-pulped by overflying birds, perpetuating that non-native pest that is the scourge of the community. But I don’t mind. I like the deer highways. The oblations in the snow where the does lay in rest, somehow staying warm.

There are days when the birds start singing again after a too long time of only hearing frozen windbells clatter in the arctic breeze. When the birds start singing I know that life is returning, months later, but it will be back. And life goes on among the oaks. Each day a whole culture of wildlife living out soap opera storylines in the sub-boreal forest.

In the cockled scheme of things, this human life is but another ring in the larger universe. One destined to do what it may but ultimately just another trace: a gathering of stories and actions, a heap of impatience, a gypsy heart, a thin-skinned soul of barely hidden emotion, deeply invested in doing something that matters. To be an oak, oh to be an oak: for to “sell my life for money” is too often the default we surrender to in this society. Ambition the grease, time the skids. I’m taking some time to think about that before I get up.

Black Oaks 

Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary,

or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance

and comfort.

Not one can manage a single sound, though the blue jays

carp and whistle all day in the branches, without

the push of the wind.

But to tell the truth after a while I’m pale with longing

for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen

and you can’t keep me from the woods, from the tonnage

of their shoulders, and their shining green hair.

Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a

little sunshine, a little rain.

Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from

one boot to another—why don’t you get going?

For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists

of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money,

I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.

(Mary Oliver)

*Thank you, Stephanie P., for the poetic inspiration.*

Reading New York magazine is a guilty pleasure for me. How can one not enjoy the things that get Gotham city in a huff or frenzy of delight? Where else can you read about the Ax Men of Tribeca, see a real life Urban Woodsman, learn that by age four, your educational life in NYC is sorta predetermined. And, finally, catch up on #genXiconicgoateewearingumaex, Ethan Hawke…Who has a thing for Kris Kristofferson. Which is funny… because SO DO I? OMG. In all seriousness, reading a line from this article, stopped me cold… and prompted this digression on failure.

Ethan asks his zen master Kris Kristofferson: “What does it feel like to survive a lifetime in the arts [you can fill in your own blank here] with your integrity intact?”

Kris Kristofferson replies: “What is even more difficult than failure, is when you are perceived as a ‘success’ and you are failing.”

Can you relate?

For a while I was unable to admit it to myself. I’m a failure junkie. If you’re someone used to achieving, okay, overachieving, hitting goals early and then raising the bar yet higher, you may not identify with this. Perhaps you will. It’s those of us who are driven by a deep-seated desire to accomplish and be recognized who are often least able to recognize why we do it. Fail. Fail big. Fail so big you can’t imagine anything worse. Yet you’re still alive, aren’t you? That’s what I have to remind myself on those mornings when the anxiety about failure eats my lungs for breakfast, leaving me gasping. But even though I like to fail, it's done so in order to succeed, and it’s important to feel like I am perceived as successful. Right? Right.

We are constantly reminded to extend ourselves far past our grasp: dream big, success is on its way. Anyone can have it if you work hard enough. Many of you will know that intelligence and hard work aren’t sufficient to guarantee success.  I’ve met more self-proclaimed high IQ-ers than I care to recall, who have been embittered by life’s failure to provide for them.

And that’s the key. Life doesn’t provide for you. You make it. There are some mysterious powers at work, sure. A dash of luck, a dollop of being in the right place for the work you’re doing (a la Richard Florida, sorry), and a soupçon of emotional intelligence (okay, maybe more of a giant spoodle). We are whatever we think we are. If you perceive yourself as a failure, maybe it’s time, like I am doing, to redefine your definition of success and failure. After all, if you don’t, someone else – nay, the world that changes at the speed of light – will. It will feel slightly dangerous, but it will bear you the ripest fruit.

For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is - to live dangerously.
Friedrich Nietzsche

When she turned 49, entering her fiftieth year, my first professional mentor, Pat Barr, explained the Judaic jubilee year concept to me via Leviticus: “you shall not sow, you shall not harvest its after-growth and you shall not pick what was set aside of it for yourself. For it is a Jubilee Year, it shall be holy to you; from the field you eat its crop." (Leviticus 25:10-13)

Raising money for breast cancer research and advocacy, she asked to have donations made out in multiples of seven. I wrote a check for $98, a princely sum for my pay grade at the time. Pat lived three years longer and then died of metastatic breast cancer. Her contributions to the fight to improve survival and eradicate the disease are still reverberating today. Pat believed in the power of policy to change public priorities. This imprinted in my operating instructions and governs my orientation to public issues. Her legacy lives on.

It is often said (and attributed to Rudolph Steiner in relation to child development) that every seven years, our cells renew. I equate it to the turning over of a great lake to re-oxygenate – breathe life.

Virtues, deadly sins, seals, hills of Rome, days of the week: seven is considered powerful in almost every culture, religion, and even in mathematics (well, duh) where it is one of those magical prime numbers. An aliquot. Tupac even had a theory about seven days.

I’m approaching the end of my own seven year cycle. Let’s call it the ring cycle (sorry Wagner). It’s taken me a few months to think about it from a more detached perspective because for a large part of it I was so far “in” it, I couldn’t see my way out of it. A caged mind with the key just out of reach. But now that I think about it in the cold (hiya, Minnesota) calculus of distance and time, the mental binds that had seemed so monolithic have dissolved. Dust to dust. And I start to think about the seven-year cycles my life has had – five:

• 0 – 6: vulnerability, need, curiosity, and jealousy (hello, brother)
• 7 – 13: insatiable appetite for learning, polylingual spree, independence and differentiation
• 14 – 20: athletic prowess, awareness of ability and squandering of it in pursuit of “forbidden” pleasures, fluency in cultures not my own, sensual/sexual exploration
• 21 – 28: discovery of the greater world and of purpose, of death, of living, gypsy set to jet set
• 29 – 35: acquisition of material goods, willing entry into ties that bind followed by asperity, then a great awakening – cutting ties - and transformation.

And here I am, to paraphrase Marge Gunderson in that classic Coen Bros. film: “There's more to life than a little money, you know. Don't you know that? And here you are. And it's a beautiful day.''

Life is beautiful. I don’t know what the next seven years hold but I do know this: every day that has come before it has taught me something. That I still have a mind to cultivate, so much to learn, and the desire to try everything, makes me hopeful and impatient.

I know no restraint except those that I create. This makes me lucky and happy. Nancy Lyons of Clockwork Active Media Systems (and topping the list of my favorite introverts in the TC) has been asking a Question of the Day (QOD) on Facebook. By the way, Nancy, are you ever going to answer your own Qs? Yesterday she asked about whether we (her loyal respondents) were happy. It made me think about what “happy” meant. It does not mean: my life is perfect, zippity-doo-dah all night, all day. It means feeling satisfaction or pleasure, nay joy, in life. I have that in abundance. Believe me. It’s amazing what happens when you allow yourself to just experience it. Because in our culture I think we strive so hard for future perfection and forget that the present day doesn’t entirely suck.

If you’ve made it this far, through the long rambling about the pursuit of happiness and its connection in my life to cycles of seven, think about what makes you happy and how your life has gone through cycles: the seasons of you. Now think beyond yourself. Beyond self-preservation and ponder how you, wonderful you, can contribute compassion and hope. Drop by drop into the big ocean of humankind. It may save your life. It did mine.

One can be a brother only in something.  Where there is no tie that binds men, men are not united but merely lined up.  ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras

Jacques is my brother. Today is his birthday. When we were little kids we were close but then we grew apart as teens. Our parents' turbulent divorce had a dramatic impact on both of our lives and we grew further apart. He lived West Coast, I lived East Coast. I'd visit him in LA when business drew me there. When he was a kid, we'd wonder at the amount of food he was able to eat and gain nary an ounce. He was skinny to the point of looking malnourished but ate like a lumberjack. As a teen, his blonde locks, olive skin, and aloof mien made him irresistible to the girls. He was the golden boy. He's also incredibly ridiculously bright. Much smarter than me. Jacques and I - through no real preplanning of our own - turned out to decide to completely gut our lives this past year. Jacques migrated eastward, staying in Minnesota with me. I migrated south from the suburbs to downtown, solo for the first time in six years. Brothers and sisters have complicated relationships like any other family dynamics. I love my brother. I admire his talent (he's an artist and a writer). Things aren't perfect with us but it is nice to have family close-by and there for each other. Life isn't that complicated but we can make it so by dwelling in what could have been or why something can't be. My brother helped me move a mountain of stuff without complaint. He painted my office floor five times til the shine was just right. He bravely plunged into an occupational world he never thought he'd do - imagining a life of an artist, forever. I admire his courage. It's not easy to change. Most people don't. Please send a little wish into the universe that Jacques has a good year. He's due for one.

Joy lies in the fight, in the attempt, in the suffering involved, not in the victory itself.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

Things that I loved about Christmas 2009

Chinese food with new friends
Perfect playlist blasting
Taking out every possession and stacking it – ready to box
Thinking about things – material objects – versus people – and loss
Laughing about stupid stuff
Fighting and making up with brother
Wearing shorts with my vintage (1992) Uggs in the house
Rediscovering my stash of Elle Décoration
Buying a vacuum cleaner online
Trying to make life on the road more an adventure than a slog
Excited about the future but feeling fear about how divorce going down
Missing friends – alive and gone – who seem so far away this year (and to whom I owe everything, including a catch up phone call)
Noticing I have about 300 books on language, words, and culture
Running

What I was doing Christmas 1999

Living in Arlington, VA, taking the Metro to work on K St &/or Connecticut Ave
Close to family – I think I brought my grandma a basket of goodies
Liam still keeping us on our toes (miss the little fella)
Ending my high-tech PR gig and going to a “slacker” job (that didn’t quite work out that way)
Just starting life on the road
Missing my brother who lived in LA
My cell phone was chunky and didn’t have a color screen
Never ever getting married – single life rocks
Getting ready to go to NYC for New Year’s – where I’d be spending NYE at the World Trade Center lobby in the wee hours after walking through Battery Park with BF and freezing, seeking warmth, and finding it in the tower lobby
Five Guys was just revving up and was somewhat exotic (now it’s everywhere)
Playing tennis with Dad every weekend
Running

A public declaration of principles and intentions is never very shy about announcing itself; and so it is with the Green Art Manifesto. Presented here without comment.

A Green Art Manifesto

by Brendan Smith and Nicola Armster

@KTAndrea passed along a bunch of great grist from David Jamieson who's got OD-fu up the ying yang. This list really hits home for me. Now, more than ever.

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A CHANGE AGENT
You will always be in the process of development.
You will find yourself often being alone and feeling marginal.
You will find yourself experiencing higher and higher levels of resistance.
You will get more and more in touch with what it means to move in and move out.
You will need to be caring and confrontive; guiding and directive.
You will keep trying to see situations with different eyes.
Edges of your patience will be pushed (nothing moves fast enough).
You will know rejection intimately.
You will constantly be revisiting your own values.
You will live with the tension between blending and differentiating with the client.
You will struggle between doing what the client needs and what you need.
Your honesty with yourself will enable you to relate to others.
You will truly be yourself only when you know yourself.
Your greatest joy will be what you can do for others, so they can do for themselves.
You will come to understand that we must care for ourselves, because
no one else really can.
(c) David W. Jamieson

Those Victrola speakers still have me thinking about the past. And then there's the inevitable end of the year; hell, end of the decade list-a-palooza that I can't stop reading. I'm not a list-maker. I keep a mental inventory and have often been mistaken for a detail person. But that’s just my Virgo rising above my Aquarian Sun/Moon (See? See!)

No, I’m besotted by ideas—they are overtaking my life so consider this overflow as we segue out of the “aughts” and into the tweens of this century. Mainly, I have a great appetite for future think. In particular, I can’t shake a few ideas… ironically, both emanate from the past but in my mind will be hallmarks of the future of food. Why food? That’s easy. I’m obsessed with the food system from low to high to school and everywhere in between. Indulge me please.

• Underground Farmers Markets and Secret Suppers - In 2006, Joel Stein of Time wrote of Secret Suppers. Now underground dinners are commonplace in cities with a high index of foodnoscenti. In the future, look for more “secret” and underground food-related communal acts like that of ForageSF.
• C'mon Catdaddy: Bringing Moonshine to the Masses - If it’s legal is it still moonshine? North Carolina got moonshine back on shelves recently. In Virginia, Tennessee, and points south, you can find local varietals. There’s also New York and Massachusetts. Oh yeah, and Wisconsin, too. But Minnesota? Whither moonshine? If I have my way, we’ll be seeing more of this white lightning striking in Minnesota. By the way, if there's stuff out there and I just haven't stumbled on it, do me a solid and let me know, kthxbai.