Friday Frisson (special “this heat, it fills me with rage and lethargy” edition)

The Killer and the Poet. Over at Copyblogger, Sonia Simone dishes out the Real Talk to copywriters. Witness: You and I both know it’s not about putting pretty descriptions of sunsets into your copywriting. It’s about caring about language and making the words sing. You’re damn tootin’.

Twitter 101 (for businesses). It needed to be said. (And hey, if that’s not enough info? Give me a holler. I haven’t really announced it but social media workshops are on my menu now, y’all.)

This post at dinner party is lovely, and makes my heart ache just a little bit. My best girlfriend is in town for the summer. She lives on the opposite side of the country from me, and our time together is slowly coming to a close. (Also, she loves sandwiches.)

This star crown, made by Miss Emily herself, makes me absurdly happy. I think I may need to copy her.

Unseemly? Untoward? Very likely, yes–but I can’t resist showing off (again) the gorgeous bike that Mr. Gibson put together for me as a tenth-anniversary present.  Swoony-swoon-swoon. Le sigh! I love her. (She needs a name. Any suggestions?)

Lastly…OMG NEIL FINN SHOW COMING UP SOON, OMG! (I’ll, uh, leave you to guess which dates he’s there…)

Happy weekend, friends. xoxo

photo by basheertome. used under creative commons license.

Like Erin Brockovich, But With More Clothing*

9: number of years I’d been alive when I produced my first magazine; it was called Superkid! and featured completely fictional interviews with celebrities like Ricky Schroder and Christopher Reeve, as well as a fashion feature (in marker) on the return of miniskirts and the gorgeousness of cuffed suede booties

1: number of times I have portrayed a circa-1750s, pregnant good-time girl onstage

1: number of issues of Superkid! that was published, as hand-drawn magazines are a real pain to reproduce

2: number of people in the audience one night when the theater company I started with friends was doing a run of The Acting Lesson–and one of the two people was my mom

1: number of times I have told a massage client that he had 30 seconds to get dressed and get out, and to try the back of the LA WEEKLY for the type of massage he evidently wanted

2: number of fistfights I got into with boys on my tenth birthday

2: number of fistfights I got into with boys on my tenth birthday which I lost

1: number of older brothers named Bob I made up in the third grade

5: number of men named Bob who have been influential in my life (long after the third grade)

3: number of instruments I play/have played

7: number of names I currently answer to (Mexican families are nothing if not inventive with the sheer volume of nicknames they heap on a person; not to mention the whole changing-my-legal-name thingie)

* In case you’re like, huh?

George: How many numbers you got?

Erin Brockovich: Oh, I got numbers comin’ outta my ears. For instance: ten.

George: Ten?

Erin Brockovich: Yeah. That’s how many months old my baby girl is.

George: You got a little girl?

Erin Brockovich: Yeah. Yeah, sexy, huh? How ’bout this for a number? Six. That’s how old my other daughter is, eight is the age of my son, two is how many times I’ve been married – and divorced; sixteen is the number of dollars I have in my bank account. 850-3943. That’s my phone number, and with all the numbers I gave you, I’m guessing zero is the number of times you’re gonna call it.

(Thanks, IMDB.)

Now we are ten. Or thirteen.

Thirteen years ago today, Mr. Gibson and I became an item. Ten years ago today, we became husband and wife.

I’ve learned a great deal from this long stint. For starters, aside from writing, being obnoxious and just plain existing, I’ve never done any one thing for this long. And who knew (maybe you did?), but sticking to something day in and day out, choosing something over and over again, makes an incredible difference in your life. In your soul. (Granted, it’s markedly easier to stick to something that’s brilliant, hilarious and super hot. I mean, just for the record.)

Happy anniversary, Mr. Gibson. Thank you for your love, your patience and your willingness to wake up next to me every morning.

Elimination Dance

The following is a guest post I did over at When I Grow Up Coach.

It’s last winter. I’m working full-time as a proofreader/copy editor for an ad agency. The branch I work for is based in-house at an automotive corporation. The automotive folks are fantastic; the agency directly providing my paycheck is, how you say, a joke. I’m miserable. I’ve spent many, many hours sending out resume and cover letter after resume and cover letter. Arranging furtive phone interviews in the ladies’ room and from my car, I am in awe at how I’m just not getting hired. It’s never been this hard for me to find a job. Becoming a stay-at-home-mom is totally out of the question; our family needs to be a two-income family. (Los Angeles is many great things, but inexpensive is not one of them.)

I feel beyond stuck. And beyond guilty, reminding myself of the statistic I heard somewhere: if you are lucky enough to live in Southern California, assuming you’re not below the poverty line, you’re doing better than 97% of the planet. It comes in handy sometimes, but in this situation, working-class guilt is a tremendous debilitator. Because even though I’m more burnt out every day, more tired and dull and just lame, I feel like I’m being greedy for wanting something fulfilling out of my Monday-through-Friday.

But I do. I want more. A lot more. And I am beginning to think I’m never going to be able to make it happen. Partly because, although I know what sets me ablaze and what I am really, really good at, I’m not sure how to transform those things into a job. Also, I am busy blaming my inherent interest in the world at large for the position I’m in. If I were the type of person who has always wanted to be a chemist, or a baker, or a cop, I wouldn’t be in this quandary. I’d have found my niche long ago and settled in for the long haul.

Instead, I’m the type of person who finds a million things fascinating. I want to learn about almost everything. I know a little about a lot, and a lot about a little–most important: words and connecting people. My interests would require a few more lifetimes for satisfactory exploration, to say nothing of my hobbies. Needless to say, my work experience is varied. Checkered. Some might say random. I’ve worked in PR, film and television production, publishing, sales, the spa industry, the automotive industry, the dot-com industry. I’ve been a manager three times, a massage therapist once, a director of editorial once and an assistant too many times to count. And that long, meandering path has led me here, to a job that should have been fantastic and was instead awful.

I’m a bit of a pathetic clod at this point, quite frankly. And then along comes February 2. I am laid off, given a short severance option and a box for my belongings, and then escorted out of the office. (My boss doesn’t say good-bye, make eye contact or even remind me not to let the door hit me in the arse. Stay classy, boss man!).

Well. Everything changes.

I had four weeks of my normal paltry paycheck coming, and after that, about 60% of that paycheck, courtesy of unemployment benefits. I had no idea what to do. It was surreal. It was a tiny bit scary.

But mostly, it was effing magical.

I felt as though I could breathe again. As I recall, my first act was to send out a text — before even starting my car — saying, “I’ve just been laid off. Hallelujah! Let the rest of my life begin!”

And did it ever. Let me back up a bit, though, to just a few months before the layoff, when two seemingly small things set the stage in a way I couldn’t have imagined. Thing one: I read an article in (now-defunct) Domino magazine about a book called Style Statement and the two women who’d produced it. It seemed like a fabulous book, so I ordered it. When it arrived, I flipped through it and saw a photo of one of the two women, the lovely and amazing Danielle LaPorte, and thought, I need to know her.

Thing two: at the urging of a co-worker (whom I hadn’t seen in months, but ran into as she was eating lunch in my building because she’d gotten lost on the way to a meeting–true story!), I attended an event put on by a local nonprofit organization called WriteGirl. (Fantastic organization, by the way.) Colleen Wainwright, aka The Communicatrix, whose blog I’d just started reading, was one of the speakers. Just before I left I saw her in the courtyard and totally accosted her. I told her how cool I thought she was and that I loved her writing. To her credit, she didn’t call the police, but rather encouraged me to email her.

So I did. I emailed her to say that I very much needed a session of her particular brand of kung fu, but I was completely broke and would she be interested in a barter? Mind you, this was terrifying to me. And I told her as much, saying I was afraid that she would think I was uber-lame and that she and all the other awesome internet ladies would laugh me off the internet. But, you know, what did I have to lose, really? So I hit send, and less than a day later, she responded, saying absolutely she was interested in bartering. (Owning a massage table: handy.)

The Communicatrix session resulted, partly and perhaps most notably, in my making some changes to the blog I had then. I began posting interviews every Monday with people I thought were interesting. For the very first one, I emailed Danielle LaPorte, again ignoring that awful fear that I was nowhere near cool enough. But, like Colleen, she too said yes. And then so did lots of other people (Mark McGuinness, Andrea Scher, Peter Green and Daniel Pink, to name a few, and of course the lovely Michelle Ward! *Note from Michelle: I didn’t put the “lovely” in there – I have Emma fooled!*).

So then I got laid off. And I sent out two to three different email blasts, to different groups of people in my life, letting them know I was looking for work and what my skill set was. And I blogged about it. And Tweeted about it. And Facebooked about it.

And this is the part I still can’t quite get over: it worked. It totally worked. Friends (including Danielle and Colleen) recommended me, thus sending freelance work my way. And the people I did work for recommended me to other people. A web designer in my area started following me on Twitter. We got to be friends and planned a meet-up for local freelancers and creatives. Then we became business partners: we co-own Litmus Studio, a brand identity agency. We create and refine all levels of brand identity for remarkable people and organizations. (The “remarkable” bit is very important to us.)

All of which is immensely pleasing to a girl with enthusiastic interest in nearly everything, but particularly using words to connect people with themselves and with one another. If I’m doing my job well, I become a part of a different world with each project, each client. I learn about different markets, aspirations, likes and dislikes, worldviews–worlds, period–plus, I get to do the thing I love most: write and create.

Quite frankly, it’s a little bit like a fairy tale. All that stuff you hear about how great it is to be your own boss? Yeah, it’s true. It’s also time-consuming, confusing and nerve-wracking at times. But the worst day of working for myself still beats the best day I’ve ever had working for someone else.

Truly: I had not realized that being this happy was an option.

Image by margolove via Flickr/Creative Commons license.

Restless on the Mountain

I’m restless. Itching to embark on a new project. Eager to create something fantastic and thrilling. Completely lacking any sort of direction or notion of what that new thing should be. It’s like being on the verge of a sneeze, you know? I’ve been learning like crazy, these past few months, adding to my tool kit, as I like to think of it. Ingesting. Digesting. And I feel so certain that I’m ready to fly. But nothing’s happening just yet. Which leads me to believe that maybe I’m not ready.

Earlier this year I had a very clear and somewhat startling vision in which I saw myself standing at the top of a mountain. That image switched to one of the same mountain, this time with huge, 3-D block letters at the top — like, Schoolhouse Rock-style. They spelled out JET. And I could hear the word JET being shouted in some strange way, sounding a lot like a jet engine. Well, wacky though this all might sound, when the vision was over, I was totally over doubting myself. I knew for certain that my time to soarwas nigh.

I’ve been preparing. I’ve picked up quite a bit of speed. But I ain’t a jet just yet. I’m so eager to take off I can taste it. Patience is hands-down the least of my virtues. On the other hand, faith is perhaps the strongest among them. I’ll wait if I have to. Which is good, I suppose, since it’s looking like it’s not quite time to hit the warp speed.

Image by cmiper via Flickr/Creative Commons license.