Then a whole bunch of real life crap happened. April was an unexpectedly tough month for me.

No, that was my grown up filter using the words unexpectedly tough.

April sucked, my friends. It SUCKED.

Daniel and I adopted an 8-week-old puppy — my first puppy ever — and I got to learn some hard truths about myself. For example, I become a shell of my former self on just 4 hours of sleep per night. And to be my creative best self, I really do need  4- to 8-hour chunks of empty alone time and space most days. When I don’t get them, I flail and plot my escape and I questioned all my life choices to the point that I saw fear in Daniel’s eyes. That made me want to weep.

No, that was my grown up filter again. Made me want to weep, geez.

I spent 2 or 3 days each week in April weeping. I pretty much became the anti-me.

As it turns out, I am not the amazing puppy mom that I imagined I would be. I hate much of it actually. There’s a fun pill to swallow: I hate being a full-time mom. She’s just a tiny dog, arrgh, this should be easy! For frick’s sake, I have friends who raise a gaggle of human children with laughter and smiles on their faces most days!

Guilt piled high and dug deep within me this month. At least I can take comfort in the fact that 20- and 30- and 40-year-old me were all correct to trust their own intuition on this whole mom thing. No actual children were harmed in the making of this blog post or this life of mine.

Also during April my neighborhood partner-in-crime, Knox, left the country for a month, leaving me in charge of event planning for a giant neighborhood-spanning summer event. Ugh. Bleh. I love my neighborhood, and getting closer as a community, and I’m really looking forward to our new event (Yay Hopscotch CD–1.8-miles of fun!). But a solo large-scale event planner I am not. I can do it, and I’m even pretty good at parts of it (like blogging about what’s happening–surprise, surprise). But most of the tasks involved drain me of energy. Presenting to large groups? Convincing faceless strangers at the Seattle Department of Transportation that a temporary hopscotch path of flour, sugar, and water won’t hurt people? Bleh. Draining.

And there wasn’t much energy to drain in April, since I was running on 4 hours of sleep a night and already drowning in guilt about being a terrible mother, and partner, and friend.

Message received universe.

Transitions help me learn about myself, and, wow, do I have a lot to learn.

On the up side, going through several transitions at once meant that I got to learn about myself in almost record Lori Land time. Didn’t feel like an upside at the time. Felt more like I was a bug being stepped on by a giant shoe and its deliberately nasty wearer.

I asked Bas for forgiveness for working far slower than I had planned. Instead of being upset, he drew me a funny “This Sucks” doodle, and checked in with me to see how I was doing more often, and then sent me an amazing map doodle of Lori Land (yeah, that’s going in the book!), and then he did an entire fun doodle trailer for the book so I could imagine the end.

I asked Daniel for forgiveness too, repeatedly, for dumping so much on him and being so entirely not myself for so long. Really, you’d have to go to reality TV to find a worse wife than I was in April. He of course was amazing. Doing more puppy parenting, working from home so I could get a little time to myself, picking up home and yard chores that I usually do, making me juice.

Asking for forgiveness comes easily to me now, it seems. But forgiving myself? That’s apparently what I’m working on now.

Sometimes life allows us to savor transitions, and other times just surviving them sounds pretty damn good.

Don’t beat yourself up if this is not your time to savor a transition.

Ask for help or at least allow yourself to be helped.

Make time for self care, even if this means allowing others to do a whole lot extra for you right now: people who will help you make time for yourself.

Forgive yourself and survive this time around.

“You can always savor the next transition, right?” I said to myself this morning. “And ditch the guilt, girl. It’s just not you.”

And in an instant, the moment I feared would never come again is back.

I’m back to savoring.

Back to wanting this exact life.

Back to work as play.

Back to me.

I even love that damn little puppy.

So cute!

So fun!

So wonderful!

Expectations, meet 8-week-old puppy. Prepare to be dashed.

Eva likes to flip her food bowl upside down, scattering food across the room, most of it ending up under the heavy kitchen appliances. She likes to sniff around in the yard for 20 minutes while we all get soaked by the cold spring rain and then come inside and immediately pee in the media room. She prefers chewing on expensive chair legs and spendy catnip-filled cat toys instead of the huge box full of dog toys left to her by Sydney and Grady. When she does pick up a dog toy, it’s always one with a loud squeaker or one that plays Christmas carols when squeezed (thanks Grandma). She broke through a barrier to the basement and went truffle mining in the cat boxes. She pooped on my favorite pillow. She found a hole in the fence and escaped to chew on rusty bits of things in the neighbor’s garage.

These are her habits.

Then there are her needs.

Puppy needs to go outside every 60 minutes during the day to do puppy business. And she needs to have her mouth removed from a chair leg every ~20 minutes (and a chew toy placed into it at roughly the same rate). Ok, that one might be my need. At night, she needs to go outside every two to three hours, and she has the energy to play loudly for at least 30 minutes each time before she drifts back to sleep. These are not really negotiable things. They are what teething puppy, with little puppy bladder, needs.

And they are our new schedule now, whether we like it or not. And more often than not, I DO NOT. I do not like this schedule.

Last night some visiting friends said “Oh, she’s so wonderful! Has she brought a new energy with her into the house?!”

Um, yes, she’s turned me into an exhausted, half-brained, slow-moving zombie. I have zombie energy now. woo hoo.

Good Lord, how do you people with children do it? You all deserve medals and adulation and parades and buildings named in your honor. And spa gift certificates. I keep thinking about our friend who has two sets of twins. I would lose my entire mind.

Lori with 4 hours of sleep a night is a very different creature than Lori with 8 hours of sleep. Sort of like the difference between a Hobbit and Gollum.

I don’t think as quickly. I snap into anger more easily. I’m not as forgiving as I used to be.

And I’ve been burdened with a surprising new guilt that I’m not doing anything right anymore—not puppy parenting, not cat parenting, not being a good spouse, not being a good creative partner. Bleh. Guilt sucks.

Did I mention that the day Eva moved in was the same day that my partner on our brand new June 1^st neighborhood event—Hopscotch CD—left for a month to visit Argentina? “Sure!” mid-March Lori said to Knox. “I’d love to cover for you. Will be no trouble at all!”

But neither of us had any idea how big the event would grow. How many neighbors would want to be involved. How many groups would like us to come and talk to them about the event. How many hoops our dear City of Seattle would need us to jump through.

How actually kind of hard it can be the first time around to co-imagine and create 1.8-miles of neighborhood family fun.

I’ve responded to more email in the past 3 weeks than I did in the previous 6 months. And again, these are kind of not negotiable things. They are what’s needed right now to make the event what the neighborhood needs it to be. I love my neighborhood, and this is what I am called strongly to do, and I’m doing it, and I’m grateful.

And I’m kind of a total mess right now too.

All of my dearly beloved, energy-giving creative work—the Collective Self blogging, our Different Office story gathering, and most importantly the new book Bas and I are creating about (irony anyone?) savoring transitions—has been unceremoniously dumped on the back burner while I’ve been trying to dig my way out of piles of email and meeting invites and washing puppy poop off a pillow again.

I thought I was managing pretty well until I had a full-scale meltdown to a wide-eyed Daniel on Sunday—sobbing and questioning every life choice I’ve made in the past five years. Not my finest moment.

And then yesterday this image for me from Bas, all the way from The Netherlands, showed up in my email Inbox, just in case I needed it.

That’s me in the middle there shaking my fist at the universe. Thanks for the image, Bas. Without it there would have been zero Collective Self blog posts this month.

Hmm, so not only have I not been holding it together pretty well, like I’d hoped, but the fact that I’m not holding it together well is so obvious it can be felt all the way to Zandvoort.

Good Lord. I’m writing a book about savoring transitions, and I’m too exhausted to write it because I’m going through multiple transitions at once and can’t savor anything right now.

I’ve spent three weeks angry that I can’t even write for the book, let alone finish it. A little angry because I fear I’m letting Bas down, but mostly angry because—while I cannot speak for the rest of you—I really need to read a book about savoring transitions right now!

My universe has a seriously weird sense of humor.

Surviving several transitions at once is what I’ve been doing the past three weeks. On Sunday afternoon, post meltdown, I thought, “Enough. Time to get to the savoring part already!”

So I began thinking about my own go-to question for moments like these.

What am I learning right now?

I think I’m learning what new parents and new event planners the world over must eventually learn to have even the remotest chance of thriving during transitions: how to find stillness in the middle of real life.

For at least another few months, I’m not going to get the 6-hour chunks of empty time that I’ve needed in the past for writing. I’m not going to receive stillness in the way my soul longs for. But I still want to write. I’m not me unless I’m writing. So what the #!$@ am I going to do? (Hmm, this may be my new go-to question.)

A few things are happening to me this week—good things, I suspect, now that I’ve had a nap and am willing to honestly admit it. I am…

Saying NO (thank you) even more. Letting go of anything that is an energy drain or that even has the potential to be an energy drain (well, except puppy, of course, and meetings with the City that we need to do for the Hopscotch event to happen: this is not my moment to let go of ALL energy draining things).

Asking for, or at least accepting, more help. Taking Daniel up on his offer to work from home on Fridays. Taking Ben up on his offer to come wear the puppy out a few times a week. Next week, perhaps puppy-play-time happy hour at our local dog center that Fisher told me about.

Learning to be ok with the mess. For example, I used to get the house into tip top shape for coworking Wednesdays. I used to empty my office of clutter before sitting down to dream and think and work. Now, 40% of puppy toys into the basket and the big pieces of food off the floor count as a thorough cleaning. I’m becoming adept at finding spinning galaxies of wonder within dust bunnies and deciding that it’s a better karma move to just let them be.

Accepting feeling like a mess and learning to share it. I’m tired, I’m cranky, and I’m on edge right now. This is what I am at the moment, not always. Do I really think all the amazing people around me can’t deal with that? Oh ye of little faith!

Learning what it REALLY means to offer my entire self and schedule to the universe. I’d thought I’d done this years ago when I said “I will move where I am pulled to move.” and then began giving ample time to listening and going in the direction of my energy and joy. But when the universe tugs at your pant leg and wants something of you every five minutes—and you respond with love most of the time—that’s giving yourself fully. Each time you respond in love that’s a selflessness guru in action. I’ve done it 70-ish% of the time for just three weeks. I’m exhausted. This is really hard!

Finding stillness in smaller moments, like…

In witnessing Daniel’s total-bad-ass puppy parenting skills.

In watching Bas become a world-class artist.

In watching our new girl grow confident in her fur and wiggle with glee as she makes friends with new people in the coworking space. As she goes out to explain to the birds in her yard who’s boss.

Or in the email messages from neighbors planning to have yard sales, and photo-snapshot stalls, and food stands, and glitter tables (glitter tables!) along the Hopscotch CD route.

Asking for forgiveness more. Bas, I’m sorry I’m so distracted right now—I had no idea what I was getting myself into this month.  Daniel, I’m sorry I’m such a mess right now—I had no idea what we were getting ourselves in to.

Forgiving myself more. Instead of guilt, yesterday I began again to treat myself like I would my best friend. Giving myself pep talks and cheering myself on. Celebrating the little victories: no puppy accidents in the house for 3 days in a row! Holy crap we’re a bunch of geniuses!

Letting go of the guilt of not being the perfect mom, spouse, and creative partner. Guilt serves none of us well. Perfection is ridiculously overrated.

I am writing this as Eva sleeps below my feet, right where Grady used to lay. She got her first set of shots this week and the ok from the vet to be out leash-walking now. This morning I walked her in a circle up and down the block until she passed out cold.

I am a genius.

Because there she lies: stillness with a pink and black speckled nose.

Stillness in the middle of real life is a nap.

And it is a peaceful, forgiving, cracked-open heart.

It is an embracing of what is even when what is isn’t exactly what you had in mind.

An offering and acceptance of friendship instead of guilt.

It’s giving yourself over, in love, every 5 minutes. Forgiving yourself when you forget the in love part.

It’s a way of being, and then a daily practice, and then a way of being again, and then a daily practice.

I’m not making it to yoga class quite as often as I’d like to this month. But I caught myself chanting “Om shanti, shanti, shanti” as we staggered haltingly down the sidewalk, learning the feel of the new collar and leash, figuring out how to walk, in step, together.

It’s so easy to recognize the shakiness of now as me.

A bit tougher to recognize the stillness of now as me as well.

But the stillness is me too.

The stillness is us too.

To all you other busy humans and puppies out there.

Om, peace, peace, peace.

This quote found me mid 2004 at the beginning of my marriage, my doctoral program, and the beginning of two years of amazing, life-changing work. That was a crazy year. Before then I’d been primarily Order Girl, individual superhero seeking many of the good things that her ancestors imagined for her: physical safety, financial security (money), expertise, seriousness (being taken seriously), respectability, and certainty. These were the tools of order, passed on to me by my ancestors, who used them to pull themselves away from isolation and fear. And these tools really worked for them in the past, at least in part.

And when I say ancestors here, I include my former self, Order Girl. Hey girl.

Once I’d felt all of these things within me though—in that very moment—it was time for me to begin letting them go, as hard as that was and at times still is. I don’t mean tossing them out like trash. I mean holding them lightly, swaying away from them, eventually circling back, and then moving away again. Dancing.

If I hadn’t been willing to let go of these tools, and let go of Order Girl herself, I think the tools would have become gods for me, idols. If I hadn’t let go, and begun to dance, I would have become something less than my former self, a mindless follower of them (Order Doormat?) in my unending pursuit of them. As if I believed that the old tools of order are it. All there is. All we’ve got. All we want. All we can be.

On the radio yesterday, I heard someone—it was either Tavis Smiley or Cornell West—say that you cannot simultaneously love money and love poor people. You can want money and love poor people, but once you LOVE money, there arises within you a callousness about poor people, about poverty.

To my ear, they—and frankly far more eloquently than I—were talking about this same dance.

The old tools of order take us only so far. Grasped too tightly, for too long, and they don’t see enough in us. Don’t expect enough of us. Cannot help us imagine ourselves beyond where we are right now. You know, the place where humans, open and eager to love and learn at birth, are led to believe that distrusting each other, hating each other, killing each other, and destroying the environments that support all of us are our only options.

That place.

We hang on too tightly to the old tools of order, and we cannot move ourselves beyond that place. We’re stuck.

So yes, brother Nietzsche, one must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star.

But I think for two it’s easier. Right Daniel? Bas? Smiley and West?

Because two can just dance.

As we dance we become sweet and shifting chaos ourselves. We feel new limbs and accept the gifts of chaos: uncertainty, fun, vulnerability, learning, flaws/connection points, freedom, and her fraternal twin, responsibility.

Yes there are still big, monster problems to solve, Order Girl. And yes, picking up a tool of order and using that tool to death has been the choice of many folks before me. And of me.

But it’s not my choice anymore. Not when dancing is a viable option. And dancing is almost always a viable option.

Play. Dance. Shake your booty in your pants. Renew yourself and others and notice that we become more responsible as we become more free.

To me, these are the gifts of chaos. They aren’t wielded. They’re not tools. They are received. Gifts.

Often we see them first in our dance partners, and then within us, as we notice that they are us too. I think our part is just to notice, to remember, to take hold of another hand, and to join the dance.

So if you are feeling alone in your decision to step away from the tools of order, dear Order Girl, accept at least this much good news…

You are not bat-shit crazy. You are human. And we humans long to dance.

Welcome to the dance.

As we talked about more traditional work, and about work in coworking and other collaborative work spaces, I said something out loud that I hadn’t put voice to before.

WORK is cracking itself wide open for us right now.

What we do. How we do it. Who we work with. Where we work. WHY we work. To what end or no end we work. What titles we shed and accept and create. What we choose to receive for our work. What counts as work. How work becomes integrated into ourselves and our lives and our communities. The relationship of being and doing. The relationship of work and play. The value of work itself. All of it.

Right now all of it is open and ripe for interpretation and for reimagination.

Work is cracked wide open.

For us.

Right now.

There was once a kind, humble, and smart guy who said “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”

He didn’t say when.

But to me it feels that now is when or the beginnings of when anyway.

Back in those days meek meant gentle, kind, and humble. To my knowledge, it hadn’t yet picked up the negative “human doormat” connotation some jerk decided to give it along the way. Being meek was about being present, being open. It was about taking the time to notice. Allowing time for others to do the same. About receiving.

And (holy crap, I may have just happened across a point in record time) here’s the thing about work cracking itself wide open.

To see it, to feel it, to notice it, to recognize it, and to do something about it, we must meet it cracked wide open ourselves.

Cracking open happens in too many ways for me to describe, but I’ll mention a few. Maybe it means making a leap of faith away from work that sucks the life out of you. Or allowing your hobby to take over until there is no time left for your day job at all. Or seeing potential in yourself and your community where others see none at all. Or being so drawn to people that you start giving them all your time and energy before you even fully notice it. Or it may be about losing your job. Or losing a person you love. Or waving goodbye to the you you used to be. Or caring so much for someone or something that you literally can’t do anything else but what you’re being pulled to do now for them and for yourself.

Nobody can tell us how to get there. But I can speak about what it feels like.

Some days, being cracked open feels so good it makes you weep for the beauty you experience. It feels like the whole universe is pouring into you, filling a joyfully self-emptied vessel until you have universe running down your face. Some days, being cracked open feels like courageous vulnerability and you notice that the only solid ground that actually exists are the hands that reach out to hold yours as you steady yourselves together. Other days, being cracked open can feel like being a walking open wound, broken, bleeding. But all days—all days—when you are cracked open you are present, you are noticing, you are receiving.

So you know where I’m going with this, right?

We’re bringing back meek baby!

Blessed are the cracked wide open, for we feel new possibility in chaos. We feel order in the apparent “mess” and we give it the space, air, and sunshine it needs to grow and become visible. And we receive it gratefully, humble, never entirely certain where it came from or where it’s going to.

And so here we are. Already present among the meek. Already cracked wide open. If we weren’t we wouldn’t have time for this, for us.

So we can stop worrying that we aren’t doing the exact right thing, reading the right article, meeting the right people, getting the right funding, putting the right thing on the resume, getting the major visibility, being asked to join the right group, or school, or job, or think tank, and everything else we’ve been told we should want. We can just stop. Stop worrying. Stop searching.

We are right here.

We are the gentle and the kind. We are the noticers, the receivers, the players, the goofballs, and the sharers.

We are the cracked wide open, and we are inheriting our earth one backyard barter, one bamboo bicycle, one song, one game night, one box of local vegetables, one story, one doodle, one homemade sock monkey, one photograph, one kind word, one swap, one share, one new best friend on the other side of the world, one cup of tea with neighbors, one game of hopscotch, one gentle response, and one gift at a time.

We are inheriting the earth because this story is the one that is persisting, sustaining itself, and thriving while other stories crumble to dust.

And we are in damn fine company.

Have you noticed?

If loving Monquette is wrong, Batman doesn’t want to be right

Now to business.

Today we played our way into a work meeting.

Not Batman, Sock Monquette, and I–I’m not that crazy yet. No, my friend and creative partner Bas de Baar and I played our way into work. I’ve noticed recently that all my favorite collective ideas–those that we actually follow through on and try out and experiment with and do and finish and celebrate–are those we stumbled upon while just messing around, while playing, not planning. And since today we happened to be on Facebook when this happened, lucky me, I can easily show you.

Important to me: The following conversation began and ended—as many deeply important human conversations do—with cats in costumes. But the idea that came from it, for us, is gold. And I learned again not to fear lightheartedness, and frivolity, and silly cats in costumes, and Facebook, and dear friends bearing apparently “time-wasting” gifts. I learned that they are all here for good purpose when we’re open to it. Please feel free to learn something else entirely or nothing at all from this. Teaching others isn’t my business. Learning is…

From Bas de Baarto Lori Kane

 Lori Kane Oh God, and she’s only been blogging two years longer than me! This is my future!!!

Bas de Baar You don’t know The Bloggess? Oh my, you are in for a treat… she’s awesome.  Like this…

 Here’s a picture of Wil Wheaton collating papers thebloggess.com

 Lori Kane Well, if my destiny is to have cats in suits so be it. But mine are going to be way cooler than seersucker suits with bowties.

 BATMAN Dog Cat Pet Rabbit Costume Party Halloween Cosplay Fancy Outfit Clothing  www.ebay.com

Bas de Baar Holy crap! I am in awe. Way cooler. Very weird. But cool. But weird.

 Lori Kane You started it.

Bas de Baar That’s true.

 Lori Kane I actually cannot imagine doing this to my cats. Although Batman would totally pull it off.

Bas de Baar Why would one otherwise need a name like Batman?

 Lori Kane Hey, I thought of another idea for doodle artwork you could do: coworking workspace documentation! http://indyhall.org/. Scroll down the page to see the floor plan these guys created for themselves. This would be another very useful thing for most coworking spaces to have (and none of the 14 in Seattle, that I know of, have one). And they could be done in fun ways (introvert fortress of solitude, chatty island, etc.) Just a thought…

 Coworking in Philadelphia – Indy Hall – a Community and Workspace – Est. 2006 indyhall.org  Indy Hall is home to the coworkers you always wanted. You’ll have endless opport…unities to meet new colleagues — and to become new friends — every day. Every week. All the time.

Bas de Baar Cool idea. I was toying with a related idea to have “pararllel universe” maps in buildings that point to spaces like chatty island. I got the idea from this mind boggling art thingy.. http://www.kcymaerxthaere.com/index.php/about/about_kcy

  www.kcymaerxthaere.com Kcymaerxthaere is a parallel universe that includes in its embrace our linear world—by which we mean our 3 dimensions of space—to the extent that places we encounter on what we call the Earth can become points of some kind of departure to these other realms….

Bas de Baar want one?

  Lori Kane If by “one” you mean a parallel universe map, ala Bas, then yes. That short video clip is kind of creepy. We have at least three universes here: the spaces as people who live here use them, the coworking spaces as I imagined them, and the coworking spaces as other coworkers have imagined and used them. So far, only the bathroom is consistently used the same way from universe to universe.

 Lori Kane I’d be happy to share with other coworking spaces…

Bas de Baar hahahaha! ok. lets work with that (yeah that site is not ready accessable but i spent a long time there and the ideas are quite intruiging — don’t ask )

Bas de Baar ok. we have another project …

  Lori Kane Batman wants a map in which the entire house footprint reads “bat cave”

The end!

To see some of Bas’ doodle artwork, visit Shinkonia.com and Different Office. To see us have more of these work meetings on the fly, or to hear more about Batman and Sock Monquette, visit our Facebook page: Bas and Lori’s Big Adventure in Trans-Planetary Storytelling.

Maybe most people slowly notice this planetary-wide-except-for-me shift to youth, over time, as they age, but I’m not most people. I was never a trend-of-the-moment human, not even at 22, and as a full-time writer and story wrangler who works for myself, I spend a ton of time in my own head, in my own world, so the whole thing sort of snuck up on me.

This isn’t a complaint. Age 42 is exponentially better than ages 1 through 41, which is terrific in itself, and almost more so in what that means for 43 and beyond.

It’s better because this is the year. This is our year!

This is the year when…

I began to notice how utterly amazing everyone around me is, because I finally stopped being overly preoccupied with how utterly amazing I am (or am not) most days.

All my work became play; all my work colleagues, friends and playmates, because we recognize that we have the power to be and do whatever the hell we want to be and do. And we want to play and be awesome together.

I began to fully experience my community as my self, so being self-centered has shifted from a negative to a positive.

A major shift of power within. Before I could hear a universe of wonder within silence. This year, we began calling it forth. “Come forth, wonder!” Drawing it to us like lightning to a lightning rod.

This is the year I walked through death and heart break and came out still standing on the other side. A new creature, more loving, more empathetic, and more utterly amazed by human beings and what we can survive and thrive through than kid wonder ever suspected. We are so astonishingly strong, woven of a cloth more resilient than I could have previously imagined.

This is the year I decided that mystery, wonder, freedom, fun and utterly amazing creatures rule my world. Today, right now, not some day. The year I stopped believing that somebody else’s story was more true, that some other voice more important than my own.

This is the year I joined the gift economy, receiving gift after gift for the value I provide and just as often for the sheer fun of giving and receiving. The year I stopped worrying about money (most days). The year the abundance of my world snapped into view for me.

“We see things as we are, not as they are.” someone far smarter than me said. And I listened, awe-struck, realizing, finally, that all I have to change is me.

This was the year I loved my own life more than any other life I’ve read about, or seen, or imagined, and I thought to myself, without a trace of guilt for it: “Damn this story has a good writer.”

This is the year I noticed that I like being a resting spot for others. Not a stationary rest spot: not a pee break on life’s highway. More like a sailboat. A place for us to rest together, among friends, and feel ourselves as the waves for a while instead of flailing alone, trying not to drown. Thanks coworkers.

This is the year I first noticed that I’m a writer, when somebody else called me that, thanks Bas. I was never a fast learner.

The year I first wondered in earnest if I might someday be a poet, because more and more of my self-selected mentors are. The ability to bend silence: ooo, I want it.

This is the year I made peace with the fact that the questions that find me keep changing, never allowing me to rest on expert laurels. The year I learned to rest, instead, within the laugher of my friends. What a relief. Thank God.

This is the year I spent 7 months depressed (my previous record was 2 weeks)—the start of which was realizing my mom, who has Alzheimer’s disease, will never read my new book, or any future book I write, and the end of which was getting to cry on her shoulder, with her, and be comforted by her when my dog died, and I remembered what matters most about having a mom, and I knew that I still have it, and always will. Thanks depression.

The year I was changed from “long-winded” to “wending.” Thanks Natalie.

This is the year I let go of personal responsibility for any success I might have as an individual. That’s up to my community now, thanks all. And the year I accepted the responsibility for almost everything else, because I’m strong and I want to and I can, so there.

The year I became a little more comfortable with paradox, and life, and humanity, and my self, and with discomfort (take that, discomfort). And a bit more comfortable with death. I’ve been living the afterlife of those I love who passed on, and we’re still smiling, still loving and laughing. Thanks Grandma Kane and Dan and Grady.

The year I gave myself over to gratitude most days.

This is the year I finally proved to myself that crying equals strength (thanks Bernie and self). That being a woman means powerful beyond measure not powerless (thanks waves of extraordinary women that keep washing over me). The year I came to believe that creative, self-aware quirky humans, not evil assholes, run the world (thanks social network).

The year I more fully experienced flaws as gifts, because they are gifts. We make them so.

And we run our world. We really do. I’m leaving blame behind.

I still write like a girl, play like a girl, throw like a girl (thanks boobs), cry like a girl, and still give advice like a girl (“the work is finished when you’re crying together in public, not before then”).

But I listen with my whole being, as a woman, now, and I accept the responsibility that comes with total freedom.

And so do those I’m with. Together, we fucking rock the world.

So Deep Thought was right about 42.

Goodbye kid wonder. Hello Wonder Woman.

Invisible jet and golden lasso? Check.

Superpowers? Check.

Tiny waistline? Nope. With better vision, it’d be a shame not to redraw amazing.

And this was also the year I began to draw again.

As near as I can tell, we need just three things to do it: dear friends, silliness, and our true self. Pain also works, but I recommend silliness over pain when you can swing it, which you often can with dear friends, I’m learning.

At some point, friendship + silliness (or pain) + your true self = knowing each other’s hearts. And when we know each other’s hearts, and trust each other completely, it’s only a matter of time before unbelievably cool things begin to happen. Mind reading is just the tip of the iceberg.

So let me tell you about three dear friends of mine: Bernie, Natalie, and Bas. I love these humans. Writers all. Silly all. Perfect playmates for me all.

I haven’t met them in person yet. I’ve known all of them for roughly 1 1/2 years. None of them live close to me: Bernie, at 2,200 miles (~3,600 kms) away is the closest, while Bas, at 7,900 kilometers (~4,900 miles) lives the farthest away. They aren’t my only friends who read my mind recently, but they are the three who did so from the farthest distance, which makes them Olympics-level champions at mind reading. And they are all people with whom I feel 100% free to be myself. Not my day-job self (not that I have one of those anymore) but my whole, true, silly, fun, frustrating-at-times, wending, messy self.

I noticed this year that sometimes these people read my mind. Sometimes they appear to feel what I need—before I can recognize what I need—and they’ll share just what I need, just as I need it. All of them have anticipated a difficulty for me and taken steps that smoothed my way. They’ve all taught me what I needed to learn, just when I need to learn it. I am amazed by this ability and can’t say much about it (ha! yeah right) except that it very much appears to be more a function of heart than of head.

That, and it feels like magic. It makes me feel 6 years old again, back when I could believe in magic because I could feel it.

Let’s skip to the examples.

My beloved Bernie invited me to join a Google+ group this past month, saying “this group is a “little” “heady” – but I thought you might enjoy and perhaps give it some soul.”

That week, I’d begun quietly removing myself from many “heady” Facebook and Google+ groups—that is, groups in which the vast majority of what goes on is talking about, debating, and arguing about theories. “Too much head, and not enough heart and soul” had been in my mind as I decided which groups to leave, although I love Bernie’s shortening this thought of mine to “heady.” I didn’t tell Bernie that I was doing this. I didn’t tell anyone. And I haven’t pulled myself out of a single group that Bernie is part of, so he couldn’t have witnessed it. But there he was, telling me to improve a heady group by giving it a little time and bringing it the soul it needed. Wow. I joined the group he recommended and decided to stick with one of the groups I’d been about to leave a while longer. He’s right. They need me.

Then there’s Natalie.

As my heart was quietly breaking over the life-threatening illness of our dear dog Grady in mid December, she prompted her talented artist daughter, Frankie Blue, to make me this avatar.

I love it. And it came at such a perfect time I couldn’t quite believe it.

Later, near the end of December, in my own mind I made the decision that we would need to put Grady to sleep. He hadn’t eaten a meal of his own volition in almost 5 weeks. He’d dropped from 53 to 39 pounds, despite the fact that we were syringe feeding him more calories a day than he used to eat. He began to lose the ability to walk. Nobody knew of this painful thought in my head, not even my husband Daniel, because it was too hard to give voice to.

So I was feeling alone, beyond sad, and in a stunned, helpless place that meant I wanted to speak to no one and do almost nothing. I felt wretched. I knew I’d be saying goodbye to one of my dearest friends of the past 12 years in the coming week. I felt horrible for making the decision at all and also horrible for not making it sooner. On December 29^th, beyond hanging out with Grady, I had energy for just one thing: I read Facebook to see what some of my favorite humans were up to.

And I found this list, created that day by Natalie, for me, apparently completely out of the blue.

This gave me the courage to talk to Daniel about Grady being ready to move on. Without words exchanged, and from the opposite corner of the country, Natalie’s heart knew that mine could really use this right that moment. Wow.

And then there’s Bas: my creative partner-in-crime who has rapidly become a new best friend this year.

From The Netherlands, Bas so often reads my mind and anticipates my needs that for me it now feels like a completely commonplace state of being for humans who live on different continents. He shares links to articles almost the moment I think to myself “Hmm, maybe I should read about that.” He uses new-to-me words that feel like they were just on the tip of my brain, waiting for me to say them out loud: this fall, words like the slow web and transplanetary storytelling. He shares ideas that I recognize as mine the moment I hear them: “Maybe we should call Different Office a creative co-op?” (I’d thought this weeks prior but failed to tell him about it before he thought it too.) This fall, when I was freaking out because roof patch repair folks accidentally trapped four baby squirrels in our attic (while Daniel was away on business, of course), Bas and Simone (his fantastic wife) worried across vast distances about stressed-out me and mama squirrel and her babies. They sent us music to sooth our souls. It worked. It took 18 hours–the last few of which we were all rocking out instead of stressing out–but we got all four babies reunited with mom.

So how do you read a mind across thousands of miles/kilometers?

I know it has everything to do with being dear friends, being silly together, sharing your pain, and sharing your self to the extent you possibly can. I know it has something to do with profound trusting of your friends, your self (at least for a moment), and the nature of the universe (again, at least for a moment)–a trust so profound that it lives beyond individual thoughts and the skeptism of grown-ups-ville. And I know we don’t control it in the traditional sense. We don’t think our way into it exactly. We believe in each other, we care for each other, we give our attention gladly to each other, and somehow we make and find space for the amazing to show up and happen.

I don’t think we learn how to do this at all. I think we wake up and remember that we can. We unlearn that we can’t. We remember the existence and the power and the sass and the amazingness of the 6-year-olds still within us, always within us. Turns out, those 6-year-olds are still holding hands.

For more perspectives on the subject, consult your own 6-year-old self and the people you are silly with. You could also maybe ask Bernie, Natalie, or Bas if the mood strikes. They may call me crazy, but from my perspective, they are all old hats at this.

We sleep on the floor in the living room with you

When you can no longer use

The stairs up to bed

We hold your head and feed you

When the disease spins lies to your brain

Saying that eating is a bad idea

We stop time together

Putting the world on hold

To make our brief hours here full, warm, and happy

We invite best friends over to play

Right on through our shared pain

Until there is only laughter

And we reminisce

Like that time you just knew

How an almost perfect moment could be improved upon by one stolen sock

We listen closely

Past the jagged nagging of our breaking hearts

So that we can hear and know when you’re ready to go

Then we sit beside you, telling you how much we love you

Through tears, without shame

Dragging our sorry selves to a state of rest, peace

So that uber-empathetic you can feel more peace than sadness as you leave us

We go home without you

Through a bright cold world that feels hollow

Down abandoned streets

To a house that echoes empty

And we begin without you to warm ourselves

By honoring you

And through you

Honoring ourselves.

You didn’t only teach us

Like we thought you did

The amazing way that you loved your whole life

Nope

You taught us

How we love

This is how we love

Huh. Wow.

This is how we love.

Thank you, Grady.

Our hearts feel hollow in the hours we feel helpless. Hollow and empty.

We feel angry when nobody in the expert crowd seems to be able to help us. Angry.

And our hearts feel full in each moment we get to do something useful for him. Full.

Hollow and empty > Angry > Full

And then this weekend, a man in Connecticut walked into a school and murdered 27 people. Twenty-seven people, mostly very young children. It hurts my fingers to type it.

Hollow and empty.

I wept, feeling the pain of the experience and the grief of those families. Their grief. Our grief.

Angry.

I wondered what the hell makes a person do something like this and how in the world it could happen and when in the freaking world our culture is going to learn to slow down, and notice the signs, and offer the hand of help and love every single time help is needed.

And then, slowly, Full.

Full, as I watched person after person attempt to help in their own ways:  from sharing their own pain and confusion, to committing to perform random acts of kindness for every life lost, to sharing stories of hope, to sharing ideas for how to fix things and sharing data on trends, to images of support from other countries far away, to people sending the holiday gifts they intended to give their own children this winter to children in the school and families devastated by the shooting. And even though I personally don’t agree with every idea that was offered to help, something struck me this time around.

Everyone was trying to help.

Everyone is trying to help.

And my anger vanished. It just left.

The vets and specialists who’ve been disappointing us with their inability to diagnose Grady?

They are trying to help.

The people offering their perspective on the Connecticut tragedy?

They are trying to help.

And I thought, “That’s it. I’m taking the next 3 weeks off. I am hollow. I’m completely empty. I cannot think, let alone write. I need to rest. I need to sit here, take care of my dog, take care of my family and my self, and figure out where and who I am again.” Because who I am was a mystery to me again.

But the universe had other plans for me.

This morning, I learned that my friend Dan just passed away. Happy, most days. In the prime of his life. So funny, and fun, and full of life. Quitting smoking. Telling funny tales of exploits on the city bus that always made me laugh. Fostering long conversations on Facebook that stunned me in their openness.

Dan fell down a flight of stairs Sunday night, broke his neck, and left this world, just like that. No media coverage. No fanfare. Just gone. When—just a few hours earlier—he was spinning another terrific tale on Facebook.

After a career of helping others publish their high-tech work, he’d begun writing in earnest himself. One of his latest ideas: an erotic novel that would help straight men actually understand women. Because after a lifetime of being a gay man surrounded by dearly beloved and best-friend women friends, he knew a lot more about the heart and soul and, yes, even the anatomy, of women. God I loved him.

Not fully believing that he could really be gone, I went to his beloved Facebook page, hoping it was some twisted joke. But no, there I found hundreds of friends pouring out their souls to Dan. Telling stories. Saying goodbye. Talking about how much he’ll be missed. And, again and again, the simple phrase: “I love you Dan.” I love you Dan.

Hollow > Empty > Love > Full

Anger, this time, lasted less than a minute. Not because I’m oblivious to the tragedy of his death. But because in the depths of my emptiness, and feeling utterly hollow, I am—surprise!—fully and wholly present now, here, to remember Dan. I even hear Dan—who was always laughing—still laughing. In large part thanks to his massive community of Facebook friends.

He was amazing. A light in my life. We were so lucky to have him.

And instantly, just like that, my energy came back.

I didn’t need three weeks off. Because this question came:

What happens when we hit fully empty?

I wonder how you’d answer this question. For me, the answer is simple:

Love (including Joy. Laughter. Play. Reminiscing. Release. Relief. Peace). Followed by feeling Full and more Whole again.

We can spend our brief, precious individual lives too busy to think. Too busy to give our full attention to those we love. Too busy to notice that everyone actually is trying to help (even those who piss us off most days). Too busy to notice when the people around us reach out a hand for help. Too busy to notice when we ourselves need help, let alone ask for it. Too busy to notice the million ways, every day, that our universe (or God, if you prefer) stretches out helping hands and voices and thoughts and experiences and images to us to help.

An empty and hollow human heart is an ideal receptacle for love and peace. It’s not something to be scared of, or hidden, or ashamed of, or ignored. It’s something to be shared: filled with laughter and memories and silliness and love. Thanks to everyone I know—and especially to Grady dog, and the people of Newton, Connecticut, and my friend Dan this week—I now know this for sure.

We don’t appear to have much control over when we hit full empty. And I don’t think I’d want that control even if I could somehow practice my way into having it. Because the surprise of becoming empty, and then more empty (surely I’m fully empty now), and then even more empty feels part of an important process of life and growth. And the surprise of what you find in your emptiest, most hollow moments is precious too.

For example, there’s that moment when you realize that your own anger is the only thing standing between your heart feeling empty and hollow and your heart feeling full and at peace.

The only thing.

What a moment that is. A gift.

And then there’s the moment when you realize that you’ve blindly backed your way into understanding yourself again and found a new perspective on what you’re going through:

Hollow > Empty > ? > Love > Full > Whole

Between Empty and Love, there is a moment. What will you give to this moment? For me, today, it’s space for less than one minute of anger. It’s ok to be angry. But I just decided that that’s all the time—Anger—that you will get from me this week. Life is too precious. The memory of those we’ve lost too important. In each moment I get to choose between hearing Dan’s laughter and being angry about his untimely death, I chose Dan. He’s still laughing. And now I’m giggling with him, through my tears. And I find my broken heart full again.

Doodle by Bas. Thanks Bas!

Catching the bus in the fog

And sometimes the fog lasts months, or years, not days.

I’m just emerging from a 5-month Collective Self fog myself. As a writer, I’m learning, there’s no hiding my fog from others. It seeps down into and around my life, which is my work, and seems to dampen and dim everything.

For months I’ve been trying to get myself out of the fog I’ve been in. Almost everything I tried failed.

The last two things I did, though, worked amazingly well. They are:  step 1) announcing out loud “I’m stuck! I’m a total mess! I need help!” to a handful of friends and family I trust and asking out loud for their ideas and help and then actually listening to them, and step 2) reading my own blog, reflecting, and then writing, writing, writing until the fog cleared.

Step 2 is what my writer and blogger friends suggested that I do. So bloody obvious I wanted to kick myself. Four months trying to figure things out on my own, and it never occurred to me to read my own work.

So actually these two steps were more like steps 67 and 68 in my flail-alone-and-continue-to-fail for months process. If you’re a writer, I strongly recommend them as steps 1 and 2. Flailing alone for 66 steps is overrated.

So I spent the past week skimming all three years of the Collective Self blog posts. Good God I’m long winded. Still, among the posts, I found old friends: a few so dear that I gave them a proper read from beginning to end. And as I did so, to my surprise, a story emerged from the fog…

Bloom: The Search for Those Living the Larger Story

There is a story in which humans are scurrying, self-centered villains, some arrogant and unconquerable, others passive and helpless, and all on an inevitable slide down toward societal and planetary destruction. The Doom story. You’ve heard it. It lives inside us in our own fear. And for good measure, it’s also on most TV channels, and broadcasted 24×7 from most major news outlets, and preached by “leaders” selling doomsday insurance and cheap plastic personal flotation devices and umbrellas for when the real $#&! hits the fan. It is a story of scarcity, experienced and told from a distance.

Then there’s the story I personally experience walking around my own neighborhood most days: one of community, playfulness, helpfulness, reimagining our lives together, growing food, hugging a friend, painting walls and sidewalks and rocks and faces for the sheer magic of it, making do with what we have, sleeping on trampolines to watch shooting stars, creating our own personal Sabbath days, sharing meals, working together with friends around the kitchen table and across oceans. The Bloom story. It is a story of abundance, shared by friends. It doesn’t get as much TV air play, but it’s transmitted through smiles and belly laughs and hugs and goose bumps and tears of wonder and empathy.

The question many ask these days is which of these stories is the larger story? Which the larger truth and which the smaller one? Which story is more long-lasting and which will come and go, or eventually pass, a chapter in a larger tale?

These aren’t my questions.

I am a story wrangler. I find and gather community stories that will last.

And because I happen to do so with dear friends on the other side of the world, I also happen to be gathering cross-community/culture/planetary stories that will last.

Here’s a secret that I hold. If The Doom Story was truly the larger story, I wouldn’t exist at all. I wouldn’t be needed. Yet here I am, living proof that Bloom is the larger story. I don’t need to find proof of this. I AM proof of this. This is why politicians and pundits doling out candy fear-sicles don’t faze me. They aren’t the big story. We are. And I know it.

So my questions are “Where are those living the Bloom story?” and “Who are they?” and “What are they doing?” and “What are they like?” and “What stories are they telling?”

My quest: find them.

My task: ask the questions, document the stories, be inspired, live, play, and share the stories with people who need them most, which includes the people who tell them themselves. And always—always—includes me. In case you hadn’t heard, we do this here now: www.differentoffice.com and www.differentworkbook.com.

To find Bloom stories, I follow my own energy, pay attention to what I myself most love to be and do, live my own story, and then I listen closely and watch carefully for that same energy and love elsewhere. By doing so, I become my own divining rod. Which is good, because the last thing I want to do is to try explaining to some IRS agent why a Bloom Story Divining Rod is a legitimate business expense.

Different Office, Different Work, and other sites and books and things we come up with are my task.

Collective Self, however, is about my quest itself. It is my own story.

And so far, in all its long-winded, geeky glory, it goes like this…

Chapter 1 – What is our nature as self-organizing work groups?

Our hero visits happy, successful work groups to learn how to work well with others. All blog posts July 2009 – November 2010, and periodically thereafter. Lighthouse post: July 29, 2009: Definition of self-organizing work group

Chapter 2 – What is our nature as self-organizing groups?

On her journey, our hero is surprised to learn that some amazing groups never end—those centered on love, friendship, fellowship, humor, passion, and/or joy. From them, she learns how to become part of and help sustain amazing groups that don’t end. All blog posts November 2010 – July 2011, and periodically thereafter. Lighthouse post: January 7, 2011: What is a self-organizing group?

Chapter 3: What is our nature as community?

A rag-tag collection of free-range chickens shows up and helps our hero begin to figure out what community is, how community sustains people, and how to sustain herself as community. All blog posts August 2011 – May 2012, and periodically thereafter. Lighthouse posts: January 9, 2012: What is community? and May 15, 2012: What is community?

Chapter 4: What is our nature as collaborative space?

New community members show up and ponder the nature of space, collaborative space, and our own nature as space and space holders. Our hero becomes collaborative space by unlocking her front door. Periodic blog posts since February 2012 through today. Lighthouse posts: February 24, 2012: 10 steps to offering free coworking in your home and July 19, 2012: What is a friendship incubator?

Chapter 5: What is my nature as an individual?

Turning inward (helped by friends), our hero learns about herself as an individual, battles her own demons, and begins to understand how to tap her own strengths. Revealed in every blog post despite my best efforts to hide it. Personal favorites: August 29, 2011: Learning about myself through the doorway of self-organizing groups and June 11, 2012: On being off balance and how it totally sucks and totally rocks and August 30, 2012: If money is a red herring on the way to freedom, how else can we keep score about how free we are? And this post.

Chapter 6: What is our nature at play and as storytellers?

New wonky, quirky, funkasillilicious characters emerge and begin to play and create together: play gurus, fun mavens, gameshifters, story gatherers, story home builders, and story tellers. Our hero begins to remember what it means to play and who she really is. Holy crap, I’m a writer. Good Lord, people, why didn’t one of you tell me?! Periodic blog posts since March 2012. Lighthouse post: March 6, 2012: The beginning of certainty: a chicken’s tale

Chapter 7: What is our nature as culture?

A rag-tag crew hops onto a little raft together and begins an adventure to find humans who deeply love their work and the space they’ve created around themselves to work in. They find themselves joyously and geekily gathering signs, flags, stories, images, and words to describe the as-of-yet unnamed culture they are finding themselves part of. “What exactly is this culture we’re part of?” we wonder. P.S. The jury is still out, but my latest thought is that it might be called Bloom culture. Periodic blog posts since September 2012. Lighthouse posts: September 15, 2012: 15+ signs that we’re part of slow web culture and September 18, 2012: Blessed are the quirky, they have already inherited the earth.

And I can see possible future chapters now too. For example, what is our nature as writers/bloggers? Story wranglers? Friends?

Holy shit. Wow.

So that’s my story?!

Cool.