Collaboration

Gentle readers, as many of you know, at the beginning of this year, your MatchGirl joined the street team of Seth Godin's Domino Project. I believe I reflected on it for the first time in February of this year. And I got my first big jolt of inspiration after devouring Godin's Poke the Box- and wrote about it here.

The thing is, dear ones, your MatchGirl continues to be inspired and motivated by this project, even though it has officially come to an end.

What is it that's kept me so motivated?
It's keeping in touch with the other members of the street team, scattered throughout the world.
It's watching them take deep breaths and do the scary things they weren't sure they could do.
It's being part of the community.
And it's keeping the collaboration going.

Your MatchGirl is a big fan of collaboration.
Of coming together.
It's part of why she was so excited to help in the founding of Work It Brooklyn. And why she continues to encourage all of you to come together.

Through working together, we can make good ideas great.
We can make small accomplishments big achievements.
We can turn the germ of an idea into something that will change the world.

No one can do it alone, though.
I promise you that, gentle ones.
No matter who you are. No matter how big your personality. No matter how much money you have. No matter who your parents are.
Anything you do solo in this world can only be made better by coming together with other smart people. Whether they code or write or market or keep your ego in check. If they give you answers and keep your ego in line (no matter your talent) they're worth your time.

What's the best collaborative project you've worked on? What inspires you to keep connecting and collaborating? I'd love for you to share your stories with me.

Jobs For The Future? Rethink Education

Gentle readers, your MatchGirl read an interesting piece over on Seth Godin's blog on the weekend, and she thought she should share it with you, here.

The piece is entitled Back to (the wrong) School and it shares some perspective on the evolution of the modern public school educational system - where it started and where we're at. As kids all over the country embark on another year of school, your MatchGirl thinks this is something that we need to look at.

I don't have kids. Some day I might. I might not. But I think about the educational system in America - my mother is a teacher as are several friends - I hear a lor from them, on their views on what works and what doesn't and how kids are treated (and how parents, teachers and administrators are treated). It's been a long time since I've been in a public school classroom, but I'm not without perspective. I wonder what can be done to fix a system that is so very broken.

And I wonder how many people actually care.

I remember going to school board meetings when I was a kid and having old men stand up to speak against new initiatives, saying "It was good enough for me, it should be good enough for these kids." These guys are still around. And their voices are loud.

We live in a country that places such little value on education. We live in a society that makes fun of and diminishes smart people. We live in a country where people decide who they'd like to be President by whether he's a good bowler or if they'd like to have a beer with him. We live in a society where if you are different, you are bullied.

And it's getting worse.

As this election season gets under way, your MatchGirl worries for the future of America. She worries what will become of the schools. She worries what will become of the next generation, and the one after that. Not only is the country not creating jobs for the future, we're not even making sure the next workers we're raising can do the ones of the present.

It's Alive!

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. If we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

When did you feel most alive recently? Where were you? What did you smell? What sights and sounds did you experience? Capture that moment on paper and recall that feeling. Then, when it’s time to create something, read your own words to reclaim a sense of being to motivate you to complete a task at hand. - Sam Davidson 

This prompt is a tough one, gentle readers. So much has happened to your MatchGirl over the course of the past year - so many amazing things - that I'm not sure I can quantify one moment over another. When I felt the most alive?

A lot of things have happened. Highs and lows. Near nervous breakdowns. Ecstatic moments of life. And I know they will keep coming. It's hard to think seriously that one moment could make me feel more alive than another.

Some cool things have happened. Some things that certainly made me feel "alive."

I stood on the top of the highest point in Bogotá and looked out over the city, feeling like I could go anywhere- that that one stop on that journey was just the beginning of great things to come (it was).

I walked out of my apartment one Sunday afternoon to meet a friend for a drink and saw that friend, that man, suddenly in a whole new light (you can read about that here).

I held my friends' preemie son and heard him coo, happy and healthy and strong, even though born nearly 4 months early.

I went to a friend's house with Boyfriend one night when the snow was just beginning to fall and left three hours later with snow still falling and the whole world covered in white, up to my knees. We walked down the middle of Manhattan Avenue and Greenpoint was silent and clean.

I saw two dear friends marry, in a beautiful, sun-filled room, and cried (I couldn't help it) when they danced their first dance as husband and wife - it was perfection.

Something that I have learned, dear readers, as I have been on the journey that I share with you here, is that every single moment matters. Every single moment is important to the next. It doesn't matter if that moment is spent watching some "trashy" TV. It doesn't matter if that moment is spent working on your pet project or having a drink with a girlfriend or spooning with your hunny or sitting outside in the sun with someone you've not seen for a long time.

These moments, each and every one of them, no matter how mundane they may seem, these are the moments that you should feel the most alive. Pay attention to every one of them - the smallest thing might lead to the greatest opportunity.

One Strong Belief

Your MatchGirl spent all day today, gentle readers, pondering the prompt put forward by Buster Benson on the Ralph Waldo Emerson Self Reliance Challenge:

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. 

- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

The world is powered by passionate people, powerful ideas, and fearless action. What’s one strong belief you possess that isn’t shared by your closest friends or family? What inspires this belief, and what have you done to actively live it?

It's an interesting question.

It's a challenging question.

It's a question that I cannot truthfully answer.

I love the quote from Self-Reliance that has prompted this thoughtful challenge. I have always been comfortable in my own solitude, in being my own self. And in doing my best, with lapses in my teenaged years, to stay true to that self. It's how my parents raised me. It's how my grandparents, on both sides, raised them.

As I've move through my adulthood, and especially as I now linger in my mid-thirties, I find that I share more commonalities with the people I surround myself with than there are differences amongst us. And I don't mean this answer as a cop out. I challenged myself all day, from the morning when the prompt arrived to the late evening when I sat down to type this reply, to come up with an answer that was true. That meant something. That would be fitting of this question.

I cannot, though, dear readers, come up with something that I know, that I believe, that I believe that any person in my inner circle does not believe. Nothing that's of importance anyway.

I believe in love.

I believe in friendship.

I believe in the power of community.

I believe we are amazing alone and we can be even greater together.

These are the beliefs that I live by every day. These are the beliefs I share with you, gentle readers, as I attempt to answer this question. It might not be the answer that was asked for.

But I certainly believe it's the right answer.

Fifteen Minutes To Live

We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Challenge:
You just discovered you have fifteen minutes to live.
1. Set a timer for fifteen minutes.
2. Write the story that has to be written.

My life changed when I was laid off, in November of 2008. This is a fact.

Until that time I had been totally - for lack of a better word - comfortable with my life. That year, itself was miserable. A lot of bad things happened that, in the long run, don't really matter as stories, just as the pieces that fell down and put me into the position to be who I am today. And to see that being someone is to keep striving to be better at being you.

On that day in early November, my boss called me into his office and told me that I was doing a great job. But the company was hemoraging money and, as one of only two salaried people, I would be working my last day that day. I was amazed. I had worked my ass off at that job. I had worked long hours. I had put sweat and tears (and probably a little) blood into that job - working longer hours than even the start-up owners themselves. And suddenly I was being asked ot pack my desk and being escorted out the front door.

I was devastated.
I moped.
I slept too much.
I drank too much.
I looked on Craigslists for jobs that were well below my intelligence and skill.
I was, to say the least, depressed.

And then one morning, I woke up.
And I started writing.
I started this little blog to share my feelings with the world.

And I found out there were more people like me. People who were smart and loyal and beautiful and cared about each other and their communities - online and local. And I started to make a whole new world of friends.

That's the important part of the story. It's about the community that you find when you put yourself out there - truly put yourself out there and let yourself see the world in a different way. It's about the people you meet who you admire and you want to be friends with - who you find inspiring and whom you hope you can inspire.

The most important thing I  have learned, over the past few years, is that if you just put yourself out there - heart wide open - open to pain and to joy and to all the amazements that the world has to offer, even if they terrify you, that is the way to your truest self.

Through sharing my hopes and fears and pains on this blog, I realized that there was a tribe of people out there - some near, some far - who felt those things, too. I met people who were terrified of starting over after being laid off. I met girls who felt like they would be single forever. I met people in my own neighborhood who love it as much as I do and who thought there must be a way to introduce those people to one another - to foster community and relationships. And the best part of all of that is I am still doing it. And I'm helping other people do it. And I'm trying to work with people who are more tech-savvy than I to make it happen more and better and bigger.

The thing I know is that by being your true self - not apologizing, for either your strengths or your weaknesses, you gain so much. You meet the most amazing people. You find your tribe. You learn things you might never have known. You are offered experiences that, were you hiding behind a facade of what you think you're supposed to be, you never would have been privy to. It is a terrifying way to live, at times, with your heart on your sleeve. But, for me, there has never really been any other way.

The best thing that ever happened to me was getting laid off in November 2008, at the height of the recession. It put me on a path that I never would have gone down otherwise. And I can't imagine living any other way.

Go Go Go

Sunday night, I saw something amazing happen. I watched someone I know win an Academy Award. I watched him accept his award in his usual, easy and funny way. I watched him tell his girlfriend she was his dream come true. I watched him become a trending topic on Twitter. I watched our mutual friends fill up his wall on Facebook and tease each other about who was and who wasn't an extra in the film (your MatchGirl, gentle readers, *was* an extra). I whooped out loud when they called his name. I can't explain the feeling of excitement when you watch someone's dream come true. When it's someone who you know.

It's magical.

But here's the thing, dear ones, it's not magic. It's work. It's a lot of hard hard work.

And it's inspirational. To see someone, a regular person, someone you were just singing karaoke with a couple of months ago, reach this. This epitome of success.

I think I feel more emotional and excited about it because I have been spending a lot of time thinking about going and doing and innovation. I have been spending a lot of time thinking about ideas and how to spread them. I have been spending a lot of time thinking about how to not only think outside the box, but to build a whole new box. And I feel inspired.

Yesterday I mentioned that I have been working on a lot of new projects and I linked to them in a post. But here's the one that I didn't talk about. Here's the one, gentle readers, that has your MatchGirl filled with ideas and inspiration and excitement.

The Domino Project is the latest project from Seth Godin, with a simple goal: "get books to readers who want them. We identify great authors, establish smart partnerships, and use digital tools to give readers ideas they can spread." And I was accepted as part of the street team for this new venture.

The biggest perk so far (aside from meeting, IRL and online some really amazing people), has been that I received an early edition of Godin's new book "Poke The Box". It's a slim missive, no chapters no footnotes, no Table of Contents. It is, however, chock full of inspiration. Of ideas. Of reminders that the the people who wait to be picked are never the rule-breakers, the deal-makers, the innovators. The people who are afraid to fail - afraid to fuck up - are the ones who can never succeed.

Dear readers, your MatchGirl knows that some of you are still unemployed. She knows that many of you are under-employed. She knows that a lot of you are spending time trying to figure out what the hell you want to do. She knows that some of you are working in jobs that are not quite right and trying to fit into them. She knows that many of you are working in jobs that are not quite right and trying to make them fit to you. And your MatchGirl, gentle ones, wants you to to buy this book. Or borrow this book. But most of all, your MatchGirl wants you to read this book.

I read it over a couple of days on my commute to and from work. And as I read it, I smiled. I felt excited. I felt inspired. I felt like going into the office and kicking ass and figuring out what I could do that was different, that was unexpected, that was outside of my "job description." I felt like going home and getting online and telling you all about what I was reading. I felt like organizing events and pushing boundaries and trying to make not only my life better, but your life as well. I felt like launching my new projects and pushing them forward as hard as I can.

There are a lot of great quotes in there.

There are things I need to go through and pull out and share with you.

But for now, while I'm still full of excitement and inspiration; while I'm ready to work my ass off; while I am ready to begin, I share with you this:

This is a manifesto about starting
Starting a project, making a ruckus, taking what feels like a risk.

Not just "I'm starting to think about it," or "We're going to meet on this," or even "I filed a patent application..."

No, starting.

Going beyond the point of no return.

Leaping.

Committing.

Making something happen.

There are so many other inspirations your MatchGirl wants to share. There is so much I know we all can do. If you read the book, and I hope you will, let me know what you think. If you read the book and you have questions about the project, let me know. If you read the book and you think it's drivel, let me know. I'm really excited to hear what you guys have to say about it.

Finally, dear ones, I leave you with this: Have you fully understood the cost of not starting?

Go.

Go.

Go.