What's Your Point?

I've been coming up with a lot of blog post ideas lately. And while earlier posts tended to be snarky and extremely opinionated, as of late I'm all about inspiration. Kind of like when Oprah made the announcement some time during the '90s that she was going to give up the traditional gossip/talk show format and go with shows that did nothing but share information to help people out. Yeah, kind of like that.


Anyway, I was thinking today about American culture, the American dream. I was thinking about the kind of culture I grew up in. The Midwest culture. And I was thinking that it infused me with an idea about the "point" of it all. See, where I grew up the point seemed to be, by and large, to get a job, get a family, live in a multi-bedroom house that was at least "nice" and raise your kids in it, nicely. If you did that and were paying your bills without serious struggle then you'd done it. You'd followed the point.


I remember being a kid and thinking of myself in a white house with a picket fence and some kids and a dog and for whatever reason let's say I failed to see the appeal. And though I knew that wasn't it, I didn't have any ideas what the alternative point "should be." I remember coming to the realization in late adolescence that I would never be able to read all the books I wanted to in my lifetime because work would inevitably get in the way. And so I started to fantasize about decades of retirement spent in a log cabin in Montana surrounded by books, with nothing to do but read them. Still, "the point" eluded me because retirement plans were after it.


When I moved to NYC a different kind of "point" came into view. Sexy, glamorous, moneyed lifestyles seemed to be it. Be as hot as you can be, no matter what it takes, get as much money as you can, travel as much as you can. Okay, fine, how do I do that? While New York's point seemed more appealing than Michigan's point, I still didn't quite know what to do.


And then today it hit me. Last night was a flurry of activity, I was writing my butt off, applying for more writing jobs, looking up resources for my website project and when I finally quit I was so tired, yet exhilarated, that all I could do was crash into my pillow. I woke up this morning excited about the possibility of hearing back from the jobs I applied to last night, about working today, working tomorrow, and what the future would bring with all of these balls I have up in the air. 


Last week I got my first copywriting job for a series of beauty lines and products. My writing is going to be on the packaging, sitting on store shelves. The week before that I got an opportunity to write a bio for Mary Shelley for a publisher who focuses on classical literature. They're also looking for writers to do forewords for their books. I put my name in and the contact happily assured me he liked the bio, and that he would keep my name on the foreword list. To have a foreword, I wrote, introducing a great piece of literature is almost too exciting to contemplate. To have a foreword I wrote on a book shelf in a book store, is just, the end.


And then today I heard back from a small, niche, print magazine I'd applied to over a week ago and got offered the opportunity to write a fashion article for them. My first article in print. AHHH! I felt like I'd "made" it. I felt like some of my hard work was maybe paying off. Did I mention I'm currently -330 dollars in my checking account? By paying off I meant that I seem to be making small steps toward being a real writer, a successful writer. Someday...someday...


And then something became crystal clear. It's not about someone else's point. Never that. It's about yours.

Out Of The Box

This is going to be short. All I have to say is that out of the box thinking is more than just being creative or finding a market niche. It's taking a project and idea by the balls and pursuing it. 


Some MFA students end up with successful careers as novelists. Some MBA students end up as successful executives. 


Mark Twain, as far as I know, did not attend an MFA program. His writing was based on wit, experience and life. Many of today's small business owners do not have business degrees. Many millionaires, like the guy who invented a special razor ergonomically designed to shave heads bald, did not attend Penn state or Harvard. 


The point is this: You don't always need spreadsheets, beta tests, financial models or classes that parse the minutae of great literature to be successful. 


What I think you do need is to be willing to take a stab at the dark. Maybe hit up some MBA watering holes and pick some brains : ) or even send an email to your favorite author's publisher. With every question you ask, with every article you read, you come closer to your goal. And you're out of the box.


There's nothing wrong with higher education, I LOVE education both formal and informal. But action is what counts at the end of the day. And falling on your face is part of everyone's path. Mark Twain HATED lecturing (his fans loved it) but he had to because so many of his investments failed and he needed the money. 


That might even be another point: don't take for granted what you do well.

What Did You Love To Do When You Were a Kid?

I was just watching a video on youtube, conducted by Gilt.com, with Gerard Yosca. I chose to watch it because one of my clients wants me to write a few hundred words of introduction to good old Gerard for her own interview with him. 


Something struck me toward the end of the video. The interviewer asks him "how it all started." And he goes into a beautifully succinct description of his major moments that led him to where he is. From the time he was little he loved to craft. It all started making pom-pom pets and selling them for 10 cents at his Dad's butcher shop. Then he went to Parson's school of design with the intent to study advertising, but it wasn't creative enough. Then he decided to study fashion, but didn't want to learn how to sew and drape and every outfit he sketched had a belt with it. So, he decided to try and make a belt. And he did. Eventually he became a very well-known, very successful jewelry designer, which is why people who have sites that sell jewelry clamor to interview him. At the end of his little speech he says that jewelry-making is going back to what he loved to do as a kid, which is to "make things". 


There are a couple of points about this that stuck out to me and I have always suspected are keys to a happy, successful working life. 1.) you've got to break some eggs. Your path to self-discovery and your true passion often comes in one ah-ha! moment that takes years to build up. Those years often include going down paths a little distance, realizing it's not for you and then turning around. 2.) We're born with a predilection for loving to do something. If we can recall what that is, we might be on a solid path toward what will make us happy as adults. Einstein's life turned around as a child when a family friend brought him a book about science and he fell in love. 


Not to bore anyone with my story, but in the vein of Gerard Yosca, it goes something like this: Little girl loves being read to. Though, she doesn't yet know how to read, she scribbles on pieces of paper, pretending that she's writing. Once she learns the alphabet she makes her parents buy her the sparkliest, pinkest-covered spiral bound notebooks at the drug store and with each one intends to write a novel, she's about 8. Life happens. Writing isn't practical, she tries to forget about it. Plus she never finished any of her novels anyway. At 15 it crops up and she accidentally starts writing poems. Then she stops. Aged 21, on a trip to Paris, she has a self-discovery that she's a writer. She tucks it away and knows it's true even if she never writes anything. At 24 it crops up again and she offers to write on a fashion blog b/c she loves clothes too. Goes to Business school, finishes with no clue what to do with herself. Moves back to Michigan from New York as a freelance writer. And somewhere along the way had an ah-ha! moment; it made perfect sense because this is what she loved to do, even before she knew how. 


Over the years, she went down several different employment roads, and decided never to work in a stuffy office again helping someone else make money off their widgets. Is confident she's on the right track and that someday, will have a life as fabulous as Gerard's. But for now, can be compared to him being broke, making his own jewelry in his kitchen as a 20-something with a dream.

My Dad Keeps Me Humble

I was on the phone with my Dad the other day, telling him that I am pretty burned out on spending all day by myself in my head. And since I've moved back, I need to branch out and make more friends. I also began to tell him my grand plan to start bartending/serving a few nights per week downtown to free up time to build and manage the websites I'm involved with and focus on their profitability. And also to be out in society talking to people.

Because at the end of the day, I don't care if it's in Vogue, GQ or whatever. I'm just not down writing for other people. I just can't stand the idea of working for someone else(s) in the long term.


Anyways, I start saying how I'll make good money working part time and he kind of interrupts and says that serving is an admirable job by virtue of its description/name. I keep talking and say that there are career servers in NYC at the best restaurants who make six figures per year. Why the fuck did I even say that? It's not like I'm going to do that. I guess I needed to try and class-up my moonlighting gig. But, good old Fred put me in my place and said "There are a lot of career waiters who work in dives and diners too." 


He didn't need to say anything else on the matter. His tone of voice said it all. "It's perfectly okay not to be wealthy, honest work deserves respect no matter what it is or where it's at."


My Dad keeps me humble. That guy on the far left.

My Mission Statement/Isn't This What Blogs Are For?

What's Yours? What is it that you want above all other things? What kind of difference do you want to make in your life or in the lives of others? I believe this is the heart of finding our purpose. I've thought long and maybe even hard about what I want. I've read 30 billion articles online and in print about advice to find what that is. I've read new age spiritual books about handling life. Detachment, helping others, self-respect all of these ideas have been floating around in my head for the last couple of years. And by Jove, I think I've got it. One of the great things about diversity of the human experience and the human personality and the human brain is that we all have something we feel passionately about. It's just that when we're young, we tend to believe that we have to subscribe to others' passions or else ours isn't valid. And that's not true. 

So, here it is: I want to stick a pin in the all of the areas of life experience that are currently surrounded by bubbles of pomposity, exclusivity and pretension. I want to burst those bubbles and invite everyone in who's interested in attending the party. Furthermore, I think the idea that education is a privilege instead of a right is totally backward. People saying that are just perpetuating a notion that makes it harder for everyone. (Ironically these are people decrying our system's flaws who often work for a non-profit trying to promote education. This is like a dietitian going around talking about how impossible dieting is.) It doesn't have to be. It's all about your attitude and the knowledge that you arm yourself with that makes the difference. We actually have a system in place that offers a lot of help to people putting themselves through school. Not only are there grants, loans and scholarships there are colleges and universities and trade schools to suit every schedule and every aptitude for learning.  There are a surprising number of opportunities for loan repayment too. I should know. I used the system, in the absence of my parents having a college fund for me, to educate myself. I want to get Thomas Jefferson on this country's a**. I don't want anyone to feel left out. But what's more, I don't want anyone to be left out. Rather than try to overhaul one flawed system with another that's bound to have flaws because we are only humans after all. I want to facilitate people using the current system in place to work for them.


That's my mission statement. What's yours?

Saying It Over and Over Doesn't Make It True...

But, it does make it believable. Two years ago I had this brilliant idea for a website. So, I looked into making it happen. I even built a prototype through godaddy.com. Then I found out about all of the sexy, self-website-building companies out there and abandoned by initial efforts to make something cooler, hipper whatever. Moving, boys, transitioning to full-time freelance writing put it on the back burner.


But since I've come back to Ann Arbor I've roped my two best girlfriends into starting the site with me, expanding on my initial idea to include their interests and ideas for a "lifestyle" online publication. I'm not going to say more about that on here. But, I will say that in doing market research I've come across a whole lot of douchey online "literary" and "lifestyle" websites their owners call "magazines" to give them more credibility. I've seen some cool stuff too, don't get me wrong. 


But the cool stuff doesn't give me cause to complain. It kind of speaks to what's great about the Internet. The democratization of information presentation. Say it three times fast. I dare you. The point is that people with new, interesting ideas to re-package old info, people who are creating new info, people who just come up with really cool visual shit rock. And thank god they have an inexpensive way to share their awesomeness. 


BUT people who create a "magazine" with this mission statement: was founded to discover and share the stories of creative and inspirational people. Through photography, video, and the written word, we let artists—and their work—speak for themselves. Are just wasting my surfing time, killing my buzz. What does that even mean, really? With all of the print publications covering "art" and "inspirational" stories, not to mention the bazillions of other sites trying to do the same thing, I have absolutely no incentive to keep reading. It's just a bunch of pretentious crap. A bunch of punk kids with a modicum of experience, promoting themselves and their friends.. and whatever. Is it any surprise that it's based in New York?


It's hard for me to understand the fine art/fashion/cultural world in terms of their insistence on speaking in their exclusive language, looking down on us Phillistines. Creating their "magazines" and garbage-ing up the Internet.


Perpetuating the idea that only certain people can understand what you're about, and only speaking to them is a joke. Plain and simple. It's a principle born on insecurity. There's one chick, Amber Rae, who puts out an email once a week, sharing stories of young people who started their own businesses (based on their passions), written in their own words, that is truly inspiring. She wants everyone to reach his or her own potential, whatever that may be. And there are others like her. And that is a good use of my time. Don't listen to the hype. Don't believe that you have to say a painting is good because someone tells you to, but doesn't deign to explain why. Don't believe that an "intellectual" story has merit just because someone claiming to be literate puts it online because they have an MFA in douche baggery--I mean creative writing. 


Don't start to believe, just because you've heard it over and over, that a website is a magazine. It's a website. Just because someone is under the age of 45 does not mean they hold the key to Pandora's box of "cool." You know? There are super cool people of all ages.


Art, fashion, culture and the love of food and wine can be shared by everyone. There isn't one person who needs to be left out when it comes to the enjoyment of these experiences. And anyone who gets off on the idea of being misunderstood deserves their fate: life lived in a place built on pretension, ironically devoid of meaning, heart and soul. Peopled now by hangers-on, those desperate to belong, spitting and sputtering away on nothing but fumes.