Two-Oh-One-Oh

Good Lord, it's December already and it looks as though this blog thing has been.. shall we say, sporadic?

Giving good thought to what this blog is supposed to be all about - Ideas (forget Big Ideas because those are hard to come up with, consume way too much time, and require the kind of fortitude and undivided attention I'd rather divide.), I've decided that this shall be about Littler Ideas. Manageable Ideas. Nonthreatening Ideas. Brilliant Ideas. After all, this, I claim, is the space in which they can be nurtured and grown. Besides, it's all most of us with bright dreams and full time jobs have the time or energy for.

With that being typed, I can tell you that I've also been giving lots of thought to ways in which I can bring lots of terrific Little Ideas to my personal life in order to grow a bigger and better 2010.

Whew. 2010. I think that may be the first time I've written that. (By the way, how will you pronounce that? Are you a modernist going with Twenty-ten or traditionalist sticking with Two thousand ten?)

Back to growing Little Ideas. See, I'm feeling the whole hope of a new year thing and have been inspired by various Happiness websites like, well... The Happiness Project for instance. But I'm not going to follow the project online because that probably involves more commitment than I've time for. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make one tiny resolution per day in 2010, and they're going to be the kind I can complete in a single day and therefore easily keep. They're also not going to be the kind that'll set me up with a dreaded daily task in order to fulfill empty self-improvement goals. They're just going to be the kind that'll force me outside myself and get me to to live mindfully and purposefully, if even for one resolution.

The tiny, manageable, less than earth-moving resolutions are going to look like this:

Day 1: Make (from scratch) a thank you card.

Day 2: Spend time with my spouse watching one entire televised sporting event from beginning to end.

Day 3: Do 1 nice thing for someone I really can't stand.

Etc.

The challenge is to come up with 365 new little things to do in 2010. And, then, of course, write a weekly wrapup of them Right Here. See? There's the goal right there, the place where this Little Idea rolls right up into its bigger one, to regularly write throughout the coming year.

Easy, right? That's it. That's the 2010 Biggest Little Idea I could come up with.

Boca, Steal This Tweet

If you've ever wondered what really goes on in your local police department, I'd suggest you find out if your city or town sponsors a Citizen's Police Academy. Then sign up.

At the very least you'll figure out what goes on during the in-between times, the stuff they don't show on TV, and if you're my kind of lucky, you'll get an exciting ride along with an officer who helps make the 10-week program all worthwhile.


When we last left on in this blog, I posted about the last place my curious nature had taken me, and that was to a stint as a kgb_ agent, answering text questions for pennies on the dollar. What it earned me was a shiny new Palm Pre and the chance to take my recent Twitter obsession mobile. Then I began to wonder who might be tweeting right here in my neighborhood. Add to that setup the healthy dose of Cops my husband has subjected me to for years, and toss in my need for constant learning.

Enter Chief Dan Alexander (@bocachief) and the Boca Raton Police Department spokestweeter (@bocapolice). As soon as I saw a message about a Citizen's Police Academy (CPA), a ten-week course about our police department, covering Everything-I've-Always-Wanted-to-Stick-My-Nose-Into-But-Never-Had-The-Chance, I jumped, tweet first.

"Sign me up" I tweeted, wriggling my toes in juvenile excitement.

I think the poor volunteer coordinator must have heard from me three times before class began.


"Sorry. I'm like a little kid with this." I explained.

I could hear her patiently smiling on the other end of the phone. She must get that line a lot.

So back to the CPA. My class happens to be the largest they've had, with 40 of us eager citizens standing in line to become informed on the machine that is our police department. The list of topics was impressive, covering everything from the high-tech communications system, to SWAT, to Crime Scene Investigation and all things in between. I settled in the first day, wondering what new bits of information I'd learn.

Turns out that the biggest lesson I learned had nothing to do with the proper usage of a tazer or the number of patrol cars on the streets of Boca Raton, It was the fact that police officers have to be some of the most tolerant and patient people on earth. Want proof?


With a class of 40 personalities, some of us squirmed in our seats as our presenters were interrupted several times during the course of each of the evenings. Yes, we were a curious bunch, but interrupting the speakers quickly began to become a point of irritation with several in the group. And I've got to give those presenters a whole lot of credit because they handled each question with professionalism and patience, delivering brief but complete answers that completely satisfied the query.

That's when I figured it out.

One of an officer's biggest challenges is to cut through to the crux of a problem or situation and filter out what's unnecessary. In an environment where everyone wants to Tell Their Whole Story, the officer has to keep in mind that it is just that- a whole story. And we've all got a million of them. One of the biggest talents or skills comes in listening to the thousands of stories they hear a year, and filtering each one down to its essence. Each one's got to feel like a psychology lesson topped with a 10-page literary term paper. And all of it due that day, most times that moment. I also got to see that skill and talent at work in the field with the officer I had the opportunity to ride along with for four hours. She's the person who really drove home what a tremendous asset a good conversation "distiller" can be, especially because she allowed each person to walk away feeling heard while still extracting all information necessary to her investigation. Customer service professionals could take good lessons from that officer.

The second lesson I'm taking away from my 10 weeks is that social media and community relations are a match made in public relations heaven. My interest in the CPA was piqued mostly because I saw Boca Raton as a progressive department making use of new technology to reach out to the community. In Florida, that's an effort not to be taken lightly. We're a state of transplants, especially in South Florida. Many of us have left our sense of belonging to a community behind, along with our winter coats and snow shovels. We're not just Transplants, but Uproots, accountable to fewer people than ever. The communities we've left were in some sense safer ones because of a communications network of neighbors, family, and friends. Back in my home of Rhode Island, it was a pervasive belief that if you messed with someone, you could be sure his cousin, uncle, friend, or neighbor was probably going to be close by to give assistance or give you up. The network of accountability was tightly knit.

Establishing new communities in far away places means leaving a void ready to be filled with something new. Departments like the Boca Raton Police Services are re-creating that sense of a network of neighbors and friends who have a direct line to each other in times of need, whether the need is for information or assistance.

I'm not sure how much convincing it's going to take to have other police and community service professionals follow the lead of those utilizing Social Media as a community assistance tool, but I hope they're well on their way to researching what's happening here in my neighborhood. I've gotten a glimpse of an exciting model, a terrific Big Idea.


CPA graduation is tonight. I'm going to see if I can convince my family to throw me a graduation party. ;)

Breaking Bread with your Monster Under the Bed

To continue the thoughtstream from my last post on creativity and human potential, I'm pointing you to CNN's article:

How to Fail Your Way to Success.

The message is a simple one I'd come across with through reading and studying eastern philosophies. The buddhist view seems to be, as blogger and teller of stories Communicatrix explains, to lean right into it. Move towards it, and sit down with it. Make it a cup of coffee and a poundcake if it means you can get comfortable in its presence. List what you don't like about this monster and think through each bullet point until you can feel the emotions that come with the failure, then decide, one by one, whether you can accept it.

It's ironic that for the most part, every time I've failed spectacularly while attempting something new, I've been pleased with the resulting story I get to tell. And I actually smile hard or laugh whenever I recount each one of them. What's more, I'm nearly compelled to announce my failures. Just like this: There's the time I got stuck (impaled!) on a fence between the Daytona Airport and the Speedway during race week, poised in full view of several sports network trucks with running camera equipment.

Or maybe it was more like the occasion I moved up from riding a Honda 250 to a Sportster 1200 for the very first time and actually tried using the instructor's lessons on putting only one foot down when coming to a full stop. I survived, the bike's clutch handle and exhaust pipes didn't.

These were very small and personal failures. No fortunes were lost this time, and in the end, I'm infinitely more pleased with myself for trying than I am upset with the failure.

Does this pride-in-taking-the-dare over embarassment-for-the-defeat hold true for you as well? How can we keep this feeling in mind and use it to our advantage when we're poised to take our next leap?

We'll have a hell of a story. Do you have one to tell?

Your Next Big Idea: You.

Here's a snippet from comment left on my last post on how to screw up your next Big Idea:

"How do things change if the purpose of your big idea is *you* and not *the idea*? "

What an excellent question, and my assumption is that the writer is asking about promoting their personal brand. Well, it's quite obvious from the long hair on my head and the fact that I don't have my own action figure that I'm no Seth Godin, but I don't think the rules should be changed one iota whether you are asking strangers to look favorably upon a person, place, or thing.

I'm an advocate of promoting things, Big (and small) Ideas, and even people, by the artful weaving of damned good stories. We already know that storytelling is how we most authentically connect to each other. Advertisers who spend hours crafting even the smallest tagline are attempting to condense an entire story, relying on common knowledge to fill in the rest. Do we give that same energy to our own tagline?

As an experiment, write out the story you tell yourself about yourself when no one is looking. While most of us throw a lot of negative self-talk around, why not indulge in crafting yours out in its entirety, then when you've finished your masterpiece run back through the tale and toss out every negative point you've made. Take out the part about how you always say something stupid in the meeting, trip on your high heels, or miss the error in your blog post. Remove the lens of clients, family, and friends, because if you look at yourself through their eyes, that's when you'll have the tendency to describe what you do in cliches.

Rather than: Senior Database Programmer

You are: Knowledgeable in the craft of finding meaning in random bits of information. Weaver of bytes. Restorer of order from data chaos.

You get the idea.

Take your new story from the reworked positive pieces. This is your forward-facing personal brand.

Use it to tell your new story often, and tell it consistently. Create your blog, dream up your posts, write your 140 character tweets, and pimp your LinkedIn profile with this new tale in mind. Let it go viral whether through word of mouth or your social media bio. Append as your story grows and allow everything you publicly post filter through it. That's how you live the Big Idea that is You. Now, I'm off to take my own advice.

So, what's your story? Because that's the Biggest Idea you'll ever have.

Vera's a Natural Blue

I’d heard Vera’s distinctive voice and thought her singing style fell on the right side of a moaning wail. Though I didn't know who she was, with a single verse, I understood a lot about where she came from.

Friday night is one reserved for dinners with friends from my last job but since leaving a few years ago, the threads that connect us are wearing thinner. I’m beginning to resign myself to our drift away from each other, and there was a time I would have waved it off as inevitable. As I get older, though, I'm not so glib. I find something a little mournful in the fact that during a life we go through people. People go through us.

A few hours into this particular Friday's get-together, my sister and I left the restaurant and headed for that tiny hookah bar I keep complaining about but can’t seem to stay away from. Shisha is apparently now good stuff in my book. But it’s a trendy way to spend an evening and we’re aware of wasting idle time with yet another passing fancy. We’ll enjoy hookah bars until the next hip thing comes along and justify our visits with the fact that the establishment supports local artists, including our most talented cellist friends. It's when the artists become overrun by the late night arrival of the fashionista crowd that we’re apt to roll our eyes at their air-kiss greetings and bulky designer purses. Last Friday the scenery was no different. Except for a few minutes when Vera Hall grieved and cried.


There were only a dozen of us in a room meant to hold no more than 30 or 40. We hunkered in groups under dim red lamps and talked mostly about nothing. But when you’re in a hip bar, you feel the need to behave as if you’re engaged. Conversations about nothing aren’t just common, they become necessary to keep the ambiance.

Vera sang a Natural Blues. When Moby’s recording began, and before the sampling of her 1937 song, it was just background trance music softly pumping energy into the room. When Vera's voice rang through, at least ten of us, including the bartenders and servers, stepped outside race and class to cry our natural blues with her. We sang the tune’s repeated chorus to no one and everyone, stopping in mid conversation to become absorbed in the lyrics, letting our gaze wander to a painting on the wall, or to the front door. I watched as we all began a synchronous bob and soft wail, closing ourselves off from everyone and reaching out to no one. For a very short time, in the middle of a place we were supposed to appear guarded and fashionable, our need to sing a common song was greater.

We still hear you, Ms. Hall.

cuss words

Though I don't make it a public practice, I'm really quite good at cursing. The reason I hold back is because I've learned that there are some skills you shouldn't show off. No one is impressed. And if you come across an individual who finds the talent intriguing, it's the sort of interest you might get when admitting to having a tongue ring. Their main point of concern is thinking about where your mouth has been.

Why do I mention the absence of cusses? Because I've been reflecting on my writing voice and notice that I still can't use a good swear word. I can't bring myself to do it because I've watched in horror as my mom strangled herself on a few of them. And like hers did, my public vulgarities tend to get stuck on the roof of my mouth. If they make it onto a page at all, it's a drooling, sticky mess. But you can still give me plenty of credit for enthusiasm, even if the actual delivery falls flat. Believe me, the skill is there.

Add to that ability, a fact: My father was a sailor.

I was born to curse.

But I've been put off by my mother's choked attempts. When given both opportunity and motive to deliver a verbal branding, she'd chill the heated and reckless words. At her angriest, I imagine a sailor's vocabulary did a hot dash up her throat only to a cram on the tip of her tongue. There, she'd strip the Adults Only rating, then free the sanitized version to rush from her lips like a too-big bite of watermelon

Though mom's vocabulary during these fits was suitable for a saint, her body language suggested a fury on the level of a Cat 5 hurricane. Even in the chilly Northeast, I seemed to repeatedly provide the right atmospheric conditions for those storms to develop.

Conducting chemistry experiments was how I liked to spend my time after school. I'd lock myself in the bathroom and pull out every tube and bottle under the sink, choosing a liquid of each texture and color. I'd mix them one by one and intensely study the bubbles, fizzes, and pops. If my work took too long to complete, mom, suspicious and concerned, broke head first into my laboratory. The sight of the sink's oozing mess seemed to directly result in a lowering of barometric pressure and the light drizzle of profanity.

"Dog_gone It!"

I once got too enthused about the curve in a pair of cuticle scissors and how it neatly fit onto the line of my brow. In response to my trimming, my mother was able to gather herself into a pretty decent sized squall.

"Give me those scissors! Look what you've done, you GOSH [stop] DARN kid!" That was a pretty good bluster considering her earlier attempts resulted in nothing more threatening than, "OH!" (pause for the weather report) "go fly a kite!"

There was a time I made her so mad that she wound herself up like a Kansas wind storm. This happened when I found unexpected success in striking a damp and stubborn match, then tossed the incriminating evidence in the trash. As my mother heaved pots of water into the basket, her expression tornadoed into an unrecognizable rearrangement of features. Roiling clouds of emotion expanded and crackled in the space between us. Moisture gathered around my eyes and I wondered how hard she'd swing when adrenaline finished its pump through her popping veins. I stood frozen while she searched for speech, and when it was located, her tone suffocated me more than the pantry's whirling smoke. The woman had wrung herself into what I thought was a hopelessly tangled knot. I stood balled in tight fear and waited for the whipping sound of fast unraveling, or maybe even a thunderclap release of fury, but she suddenly stopped billowing and gave up. Instead of reaching out and wringing my neck, she opted for a higher road and pulled herself into a posture more proper. I still wasn't sure I should trust her hands, but after flying up high in a LordHaveMercy maneuver, they landed safely, one on each slim hip.

"I cannot bloody be-lieve you've done this!"

What you would have said to yourself, were you standing there with us in the middle of a storming ghetto kitchen, is that she was quite properly and royally pissed. That was the first time I considered the effects of trying on a more White and British voice.

Snake Charmer

A summer party is where I, wrapped in standard issue Clubbing Uniform (breast-ratcheting halter, fat-arresting jeans), pose for the inevitable face-squishing female lineup, the "aren't we fun? aren't we hot?!" photographs meant to capture time itself, a singular moment never to be repeated. At least not until next weekend.

A party is also an event I attend while wearing a personalized version of the prescribed uniform only to find that each one of my friends has made a very similar personal choice. The revelation always comes when I see the Windows 7 version of my XP halter, and a copy in each color currently offered by The Limited. Some kind fashionista wearing the amped version will always try to make me feel better about the State of My Chic. I pay no mind to the word emphasis or verb tense.

"Oh, I remember that top in yellow. It looked so cute in that color."

Parties are where I drink just enough to blur the leading edges of an upcoming Monday, and where I dance the precise number of moves to preclude a breakout of frizzy hair. I'm a fairly decent hip jiggler. My riders are always slung low and at the ready, but at last Saturday's festivities I found myself hitching up the waistband. (better to make a run from the dance floor). I was on the lamb to avert a snake-charming professional.

I'll be the first to admit that I really do enjoy making the figure eight movements of a lithe bellydancer, but it's more often the gentle and flowing hand twirls that capture my imagination. I think there's a lot to be said for the smaller, unrehearsed gestures. Last Saturday's hostess was not of the same opinion. She'd invited a professional to treat us to whole body lessons.

As soon as I heard the finger cymbals, I hid behind my sister. Unfortunately, I was spotted. It's not my fault the girl is so petite.

A call to the dance floor is one I eagerly answer, but this time the sound of my name was like hearing drive-by Eminem over your Jack Johnson cd, a disruption you try your best to filter. I made a real effort to appear otherwise engaged and suddenly began a one-sided conversation about the proper mojito muddling technique, but the testing of my previous drink trials had made it impossible for me to appear anything less than loose and ready to party. I finally looked up at the chanting group lined on the dance floor and made a dismissive wave.

"No.thank.you.",  I mouthed in silent capitals and with extremely round vowels, then turned back to the topic of lime-to-mint ratios. But the rappers were persistent.

By the third request I noticed the group's movement toward me (stage-left!) and made a sudden break for it. I moved toward the kitchen, but was followed by the Poobah. The Grand Mistress. The Empress. The Bellydance Instructor Herself.

Herself found me behind the club soda. She told me she'd heard that I love the snaking movements and was very good at it. She been told (rat faces) that I would love the lessons. I could see the pinched little snarking going on behind her. The act of snarking took a lot of gall coming from girls with scarves around heads and bells around hips.

I don't do well when cornered, and so I lied. I couldn't help it. It just flew right out of my mouth like a trained messenger bird.

"I'm sorry, I can't."  

I punctuated my apology with a grave look, a semicolon for the benefit of onlookers.

" ; "

"Not since I had that horrible bellydancing accident."

To my (veiled, of course) delight, the confession was met with real horror. I heard a couple of screeches from people with active imaginations (stilettos, rug, snag) or maybe (snake arm, bracelet, bra strap). I can't say. People began to seek verification of the rapidly spreading rumor.

With a sharp intake of breath each conspiratorial whisper came.  "I heard you had a horrible bellydancing accident."  Apparently the idea of such an abomination bears verbatim repeating. I did not falter, just hung my head in an expression of disbelief that was mistaken for shame. What did I care? The trick was working. I was working the trick.

"Yes." I lied in a tone so low that it seemed to carry a resounding volume. And then, feeling the weight of my bald-faced lie, I grew bold and indignant. "Well it certainly wasn't on purpose!" I'd turn away, snaking hip first.

"Accident" has, as of 11pm Saturday, become my default reason to explain away or avoid anything embarrassing. I've since decided that what really happened to the roof of my car this past February, the day I pulled the roof up to find tears in the seam, was actually a converting accident. The fact I recently had to rip up the carpet in my closet was not due to flooding, it was caused by an air-conditioning snafu, and while I'm at it, I'll tell you that if this post contains any errors in grammar or spelling, it is due to an awful writing mishap.

tung ring

(previously written)

I might have stepped off the edges of my uneventful day-to-day sometime between 8:00 and 8:30pm last night. What I believe happened is that I lost the groove, skipped a beat, hit a scratch in the record. At any rate, I'm kind of worried about this day. And I really need some sleep.

When I discovered I'd swallowed my tongue ring in the middle of eating a gorgeous yellow pepper with all-natural peanut sauce, I panicked just a little. It wasn't just the little pearl at the end that went missing, but the whole barbell. But I've known a few people who have done the same, so I figure I'll survive. David, who was none too pleased with the piercing in the first place, just shook his head, and a search on the internet for "swallowed my tongue ring" produced messages from high schoolers in full-fledged panic.

"OMG I swallowed my tung ring"

The responses did not make me feel better.

"What?! How could u do that? U R an idiot."


Within the next few minutes, my cat fell off the ottoman. What's unusual about that is not that he fell, but that he took a dive off of such a wide surface. It turns out he had a seizure, and then two more. By that time I'd called the vet, but he advised me that the cost would be tremendous if I didn't wait until morning, that I should monitor him and call back if he worsened. He got no worse, I got no sleep. He's at the vet now, and they're running tests. I'm not really feeling optimistic about this.

On the way to work, I did what I usually do when I have a crisis and called my mom. In the middle of telling her about my Troubles So High, my cellphone stopped transmitting my voice. I could hear her just fine, but I was caught in a black hole. Cut off. The new phone up and died.


My vacation starts Tuesday. I'm torn. I'm sorely in need of it. We are going home to visit family, and made plans for the trip because we fully realize that there are a few members we may not see again. But I wonder whether I will be able to leave our cat, even with people checking in on him. Aside from that, we've no idea what the veterinary costs will be and that's a big pill to swallow 5 days before a trip. Especially for a warm-hearted and generous handyman who takes care of elderly customers, and his idiot wife who likes to swallow stainless steel.

Please send good juju. I'm tired and need to get my groove back.

Pumpkin

We want pumpkin muffins because we remember living in the place of crispy macintoshes and ribbed globes of deep orange, and because we miss the teasing bite of sweet spice. Mostly, it's because commercialized seasonal offerings make up all of the Autumn we now know.

---

This is the second time our Starbucked paths have crossed today, so I take notice. He's taking his muffin outdoors, letting it carefully balance on a perch of ceramic plate decorated with paper lace. Creamy ivory clangs once as he sets his dish on a table, followed by the distinct rattle of a bouncing fork. His other hand wraps around a throw-away plastic cup that's much better suited for outdoors. Later I'll realize that in positioning the plate, he has precisely calculated the length of his arm's reach. I will understand why his feet are so stiffly planted in front of him to create a perfectly shaped lap.

He's making last minute seating adjustments with a small bit of ceremony, and he begins to try out his snack.

I'm engaged in conversation but remain aware of the images on the periphery. It's windy, and rather than lift the entire muffin to trap a bite in his mouth, he insists on delicately partitioning it with his fork. I take note of this because he's dropping bites that bounce from his lap whenever a strong gust pushes through and the accidental bounty is attracting what look like finches. He tries to catch but misses two forkfuls, then fills the stainless steel with a third and new portion.

Stubborn.

Because I move to a different table to escape some of the strongest breezes, my new seat allows a view of the still pink and deep damage that draws a wide scar around his jawbone. I take in the artificial aid tucked halfway behind his ear and then begin to actually see him even as I'm trying not to look. He takes another forkful and lifts it to a mouth and jaw that can't open wide enough. There's a small and dignified struggle, and a new bite of the pumpkin muffin he has spent his good time waiting for threatens to follow earlier bits and tumble with the next gust.

But he's insisting that he most certainly will harvest this bite of pumpkin and I'm happy to watch as he does just that.