Wait… Come Back

Dear well-meaning person,

I am me.

And as cheesy as it sounds, I am the only be I can be.

If that scares you, I’m sorry you’re afraid, but just because I am an unknown to you doesn’t make me dangerous. On major points of faith we agree. The expression of that belief differs dramatically but we are both children of the same God. If you don’t understand me, at least don’t assume the worst. I may not take it well.

I’m sensitive to things you may find silly, but that doesn’t make me a crybaby. I see things differently than you but that doesn’t make my views wrong. I go about my life in a different way but that doesn’t make me bad. I think about things you probably never think about but that doesn’t make me untrustworthy.

Please don’t project your fears on me and try to control what you don’t understand. I’ll only retreat further from you and that will possibly make you even more afraid of me and what I do.

And that won’t get us anywhere.

Yours Truly,

Me.

I guess it’s been so crazy these days that I’ve failed to put the announcement on THIS blog that my OTHER blog has launched!

Without further ado… I present: The Alternating Current: A Resource for People with Too Many Passions. I started this blog because although there are several books for people who just can’t seem to sit still in one career, despite being intelligent and definitely competent, there isn’t much in the way of an online presence. Both Barbara Sher and Margaret Lobenstine, who have inspired me and this blog with their books, have their own sites and discussion groups, I felt that there needed to be an extra layer of information dissemination — to get the word out even more about Renaissance Souls and Scanners. Not only that but I wanted to share my own journey.

I discovered Margaret Lobenstine’s book over a year ago and although I hadn’t put any of her (or Ms. Sher’s) concepts to work until recently, I finally knew how to describe my seeming scatterbrained-ness. I’m not lazy, not a dilettante, nor am I unfocused. I’m intelligent, competent, and excel at whatever I put my mind to, but I also get bored easily and a typical career-oriented life is torture to me. So lately I’ve been putting their life designs into effect in my own life, taking a bit from both authors (among others) and actually accomplishing things. And for the first time ever, I feel like I’m doing what I’m made to do. If you try to get a job title out of me, be prepared for a litany of stuff I’ve done and am doing.

I’ve been scouring the template for my new blog. I’ve found random German phrases as well as bad English grammar. I’m almost afraid to officially launch until I can fix every single mistranslated or untranslated snippet of text… I do not need any more excuses to not launch. I’ve already changed the design about 5 times before I settled on the theme I have now. ugh.

Just watch this spot for the official announcement for the new blog. If there’s German where there should be English, I hope that my readers will be forgiving and just gently point out the errors…

A few months ago I got a call from a reporter at the Associated Press regarding an article on disaster preparedness. She got my information from eHow.com since I’d been writing articles as their computers expert. For 20 minutes she asked questions about how to keep your data safe in case of a hard drive failure or house fire. At the end she asked me what made me an expert. I told her. My first computer was an Apple II. I was four or five years old. I’ve been working with and on computers ever since then. I’ve been a web developer, network administrator, help desk tech - all in the past 10 years. She essentially said “Oh.” I’m wondering if she was looking for a Ph.D in computer engineering.

I still haven’t heard from her about that article.

Do you really need a Ph.D in engineering to know how to keep your data safe? Would people reading an article on disaster preparedness really feel better to know that a Ph.D said exactly what I, an apparently know-nothing web devloper, said? What really makes an expert? Someone who knows the theoretical junk behind how things work or someone who knows how to actually make things work?

This is not the first time I’ve dealt with this. People want experts, and I’m not sure what an “expert” is… Do I need the education an letters behind my name? Really?

After reading a blog that tweaked me a bit, I wrote a well thought out disagreement to that particular post. It’s been almost five days and the comment still hasn’t appeared on the site. I spent a good amount of time crafting my rebuttal, hoping to have a real conversation with this blog writer but I was denied. The comment has been approved - over a week or so after the fact.

I will not be going back to her blog again but I still feel I need to express my opinion. Without linking to this lady’s blog, I will just say her post was on how to deal with fear. Her solution was to replace the fear feeling with a better feeling - love. And that was it.  Supposedly writing down what you’re afraid of, then thinking of something/one you love should make the fear drift away and give you a feeling of confidence.

I hope I’m not the only one willing to cry bull on this. If you’re genuinely seeking to deal with your fears, this is just like sticking a big ol’ smiley face on a car wreck and walking away while people are dying in the wreck. Sure, you made it look happy (?) but the people are still dying. That may be stretching it, but if you mask your fear, shove it aside, or stuff it way down deep, you haven’t dealt with it and it will rear its ugly head again.

So here’s my way of dealing with fear:

1. Write down what I’m afraid of. For example, I may be afraid of making that big leap into self-employment.
2. Next to that, write down why I’m afraid. Am I afraid because I won’t be earning anything initially and am worried about the bills? Am I scared because I don’t know how to get started? Or is it because I’m really afraid of failure?
3. Now that I know WHY I’m afraid of whatever it is that I’m afraid of, I can attack each reason with fact, truth and practical ways to deal with my concerns.  I’ll take one of the reasons in step 2 for example: If I’m afraid because I don’t know how to start, I should find a mentor, go to my local Small Business Association, read books, ask questions. I should research until I’m comfortable with how to proceed.
4. My fear is now conquered. Mostly.*

I understand some of this is a little over-simplified but it sure as hell beats “think happy thoughts” as the way to conquer fear. A positive outlook on life is essential &emdash; I will not deny that, however the Pollyannaish stuff that’s coming out of self-help “gurus” is so not helpful. Deal with your problems or they’ll deal with you.

*There is something to be said about resistance. It’s a powerful force and I hope to one day overcome my own resistance to action. Read Art & Fear for a treatise on resistance.

It’s become a victim of plurk-preoccupation. Not to mention I’ve been sick with a narsty sinus infection that wanted to develop into bronchitis… I may be fending that off.

All is well, really… well, besides being knocked on my arse since last Friday by this stinkin’ virus. I’m working on a new web project for a new client, I’m developing a new class called “Visual Journaling for the Intimidated,” which will be an in-person class at first and will be online in a while. I’m working on a new blog and watching the hubster play the stock market to earn us some dough for our trip to Greece in September. So far so good!

Link Love Mondays will be back next week.

After lamenting for a very long time about my little “problem” with follow-through, a great gal on plurk mentioned that these “action sheets” from Behance are great for getting down ideas and planning projects. Not just planning, cuz I can do that all day and never end up with a finished product, but the goal is getting down the action items. Once I got down concrete items to DO, I did. And two projects are now on pretty Behance Action Sheets (I downloaded the action sheet to test it out & then bought a pack).

So now I have my new blog (under wraps for now - gotta keep the secret close ’till launch) designed, permission granted from appropriate parties & a few blog entries written. My second project is an art journaling for the uninitiated class - based on spiritual principles. It’s a repeatable 4-week class based around a certain theme, each class building on art journaling techniques culminating in a full-on collaged art journal entry at the end. So I have themes listed and class outlines for each week.

And I got a part-time web dev job to be my “good enough” job - gives me enough $$ for living and enough time to do the other stuff I love so much.

So, are there any tricks you use to manage your multiple interests (if you’re one of “those people” who can’t seem to find just one thing to focus on?).

Here are a few videos I’ve been watching on YouTube…
Love Yourself, Love Your Art:

Happy Dance:

Getting Through “teh suck”:

There’s a new-ish feature of WordPress that I decided to play with today. It’s the category to tag converter. My impression of the feature was that it would preserve my categories and just add the new tags that were made to the appropriate posts. Once I hit the “category to tag converter” link, I thought I was so clever… all my posts would be categorized AND tagged.

But alas… 270 posts are now uncategorized, but I have a nifty new tag cloud in my sidebar. *grumble*