What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
Curing phone call dread
Hey, so this is one of my self-work-themed noozletters that people always used to wish they could comment on. Now you can! Enjoy.
When you really don’t want to make that call …
There’s nothing like a case of phone call dread.
Just to be clear, I’m not talking about general “I have no time” stuff or even about your average low-grade procrastination avoidance situation. Also assuming this isn’t about some peculiar phone phobia of yours that kicks in whenever you have to push buttons or something.
This is when you’re dealing with one specific sticky and uncomfortable interaction that you just don’t want anything to do with. For whatever reason, this one is loaded.
How loaded? If you’ve been there, you know the feeling … all the yuckiness of procrastination combined with sweaty palms, coughing and whole-body anxiety. Pretty unpleasant.
Granted, nine times out of ten you already know why you don’t want to make the call, but for the purpose of this exercise, let me toss out some real-life scenarios.
Three scenarios
One would be the “If I talk to this person, he’ll drag me down” phenomenon, which is what my friend Scott deals with on a nearly-daily basis. He finds some of his clients so energy-draining that he pretty much dreads every interaction. Maybe the person you’re dreading is coming across as an energy vampire too.
There’s also the example of a couple of women I worked with recently who can’t stand making follow-up calls to potential clients. Not cold calls, mind you. Calls to people who have already specifically expressed interest in hiring them.
Still scary, because if you have a “what if they’ve changed their mind?” or “what if I’m bugging people?” question lurking in your brain, making the call is pretty much the least appealing thing you could want to do.
Then there’s the kind of call dread that’s all about unpleasant confrontation. I experienced this one recently myself when a studio where I taught a workshop “lost” my check, and didn’t want to write another one.
Of course in some way, it almost doesn’t matter who you’re calling or what it’s about — or whether it’s the thinking-about-it part or the not-doing part. When it’s one of those calls, it’s hang-wringingly awful in a jittery, guilt-laden, hyperventilating kind of way and you just don’t want to deal with it.
My fabulous technique: let me show you it
Generally speaking, when someone comes to me with a specific issue, we spend a little time untangling some of the deeper patterns at work instead of just rushing in to apply techniques.
However, for this particular situation, I happen to have a super genius technique that works just about every time. It’s such a valuable tool that I find myself constantly thinking, oh boy I wish everyone knew about this so I could stop explaining how to do it.
So please think of this technique as a “you really need to have this one in your toolbox” one.
∗Even if you’ve never, ever experienced phone call dread and never plan to, just learn it and save it for a rainy day.
The technique — a “mediation exercise” if you’re not a wacky energy person, and an “alignment exercise” if you are — is pretty easy to do. In fact, it’s so simple that I’m pretty much counting on you not being impressed by it.
All I can say is 1. it works like a charm and will knock your socks off every time, and 2. if you want to know why it works, we can cover that part some other time.
Just saying: even if it sounds kinda wacky or just plain stupid, do me a favor and play with me here. You know, that whole “don’t knock it til you’ve tried it” thing.
Wanna practice?
Here’s how it works.
STEP ONE: Stop guilting yourself for five minutes about how you think you really should be making that call, and sit down with a pad of paper and a pen.
STEP TWO: Make a list of things (qualities, characteristics, whatever) that you and the person you’re calling have in common. As many as you can think of is the rule, but if you want more specific instructions that that, how about this:
Try coming up with half a page if it’s, say, the phone company, and more if it’s someone you have hard-core entagled emotional patterns with. Let’s say at the very least you want to try for ten things.
–> If it’s someone you don’t know at all (for example, you’re calling your insurance company and you have no idea who will be picking up the phone), then generalize:
“I’d hate working at a call center and I bet this person isn’t crazy about it either. I’ve had jobs where I had to put up with crap to make money and that’s probably what this person is doing too. I hate it when people take their anger out on me, and no doubt that this person deals with a lot of that too.”
And so on.
STEP THREE: Read your list at loud as if it’s a conversation. Don’t worry, you’re not going to have to say any of this in real life. This is just for you.
You can do this conversation-thing as though you’re describing the person in question to a friend (“So this guy, Joel, is really stressed out at work, just Iike I am …“).
Or as if you’re talking to the person yourself (“I have the sense that both of us feel uncomfortable with confrontation or conflict, so that’s something else we have in common …“).
STEP THREE AND A HALF: Usually Step Three starts working its magic and at some point you just let out a big sigh and realize that you’re going to make the call now, but if this isn’t happening, repeat Step Three while gently tapping under your eye.
You just keep your index and middle fingers together and bring the pads of the fingers about an inch (2.5 cm) below your eye and tap there. Don’t ask why. Just do it.
That’s it.
Oh, let’s have an example
Okay. I’ll just give you the rundown of what I did when I had to call the studio to get my check written. And yes, there was much private fretting and fist-shaking until I remembered this technique. Here’s what my describing-my-list-to-my-friend part looked like:
So I’ve never met their accounting person and don’t know anything about her, but I can imagine that if she works in a yoga studio, she has to be at least a little bit of a yoga person, right?
Actually, she probably just wishes things would resolve themselves in a harmonious way, just like I do.
I don’t know if she enjoys her work, but she helps people, just like I do. Even though it’s annoying that she doesn’t want to okay another check, there could be a good reason for it that I don’t know about.
Now that I think about it, I realize my anger right now is really directed towards a bunch of different yoga studios I’ve worked with that have had a lot of flakiness in their dealings with me.
This woman’s an accountant for heaven’s sake. She probably hates flakiness. In fact, she’s probably sick of bubble-headed yoga teachers losing their checks all the time. She’s frustrated, just like me ….
The results (AND a surprise ending)
At this point, I was totally empathizing with the poor woman in accounting having to deal with all those cupcake-for-brains people, and not just once every few months like me, but all the damn time.
It seemed completely obvious that the thing I wanted to do was to call her right now. I figured, if I make it clear that I get her situation, and that I’m not actually one of those mush-headed flakeroony people, it’ll be fine and we’ll hash out some solution together.
So — and here’s where it starts getting wacky — now I’m feeling great, so I open my computer to dig out her phone number. And in my inbox is a message from my contact at the studio: they just decided to write me the check and it’s all taken care of.
Yeah, I completely dissolved the not-wanting-to-call thing, AND got the result I wanted without ever having even made the call.
Plus the relief and the joy (and it is seriously joyful) of realizing that even the people you’re busy hating on in your head are busy dealing with the same kinds of fears, anxieties and resentments as you are.
There’s no moral of the story here. Just a “take it from me” request.
Learn this technique. Use this technique. Because at the very, very least it will make you feel better about the thing that’s driving you batty, and give you some interesting insights into your own issues and patterns.
Betty Boop is my business coach
And she could be yours!
But to backtrack for a minute. I was in Ann Arbor this weekend so I did what everyone visiting Ann Arbor does and went to Zingerman’s for brunch.
If you went to school at the University of Michigan, know someone who does, or have ever met a townie, you know that Zingerman’s has the best sandwiches this side of pretty much anywhere. All those people who make a four-hour drive just to pick up a reuben aren’t crazy. Devoted, maybe, but not crazy.
Or if you listen to NPR, you’ve heard co-founder Ari Weinzweig talk foodishness, food history, foodie-ism and other things food-related. Or if you’re interested in business, you’ve read about their phenomenal success story in Inc. magazine and in Bo Burlingham’s excellent book Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big.
And in my case, I’m actually all those people. Yeah, it’s not easy being an Inc.-reading, NPR-listening, born-in-St-Joe’s-hospital Ann-Arborite and own a business, but someone’s got to do it. Okay, fine, lots of people do it.
Anyway, everyone agrees that Zingerman’s is the best and that they’re clearly doing something right, and that yes, even a plain bagel-with-creamcheese there is a toe-tinglingly great experience.
But the thing that really made an impression on me on this visit was realizing that the Zingerman’s guys and I go to the same business school.
If you’re a company, here’s how to impress me
The best thing about Zingerman’s from my perspective is that it’s a hugely successful local company that never acts like a company. It acts like a family, but one where everyone actually likes each other.
The people who work there are all genuinely friendly and seem to be having a good time at work — and not in a “Listen up everyone, word just got handed down from corporate that we’re all supposed to smile today” kind of way.
This low-key foodcentric happy family thing permeates the entire organization — everything from goofy amiability of the note printed on the recycled napkins to their Jews and Blues southern dinner event (please introduce your brain to the concept of Creole Matzoh Ball soup) comes across as sincere, funny and personable.
If you have a business, you’d call this “staying on brand”. Or if not, you can just call it being mensch-like. It’s smart. And it works too, but only when this “be human” philosophy grows organically and isn’t forced. Which is why Zingerman’s wins, because they get it.
“Authenticity”: you’re doing it wrong
Of course, lots of companies try to get away with presenting an “authentic self” as their brand. But using an artificial personality as a marketing strategy bombs every time because it never stops feeling phony and contrived. Hmm, maybe because a construction of authenticity is — by virtue of existence — a big fat lie.
If you’ve ever called Tonik insurance and been forced to listen to their irritating “we can’t take your call because we went out for pizza — just kidding, we’re actually, like, totally busy here” answering message, you know instantly that this is a front.
You can practically picture the 30-something copywriters hired to pretend they’re 20-somethings in the hopes that they can make the company sound “like, all real and authentic and stuff”. Blech.
It would be way more authentic — and reassuring — if they said, “Hi, we’re a giant corporation with more money than we know what to do with. We don’t actually care about you personally but it’s important to us that we give you that impression.” In fact, I’d have a lot more respect for any company that was that upfront about how they do business.
Real-live-human-being-ness: it works
The reason the whole Zingerman’s thing works is that their entire business is based on the idea that you can just be a real-live human being, and do things the way you’d do them even if no one were watching, and that this is a good thing.
It is a huge relief as a business owner to see this modeled for me and to see it working. I’ve pretty much been trying to do things this way from the beginning, against just about everyone’s advice.
For example, I’ve never understood why my website is supposed to say stuff like “About Us” when it’s really just me and my duck. Or why I need to write about myself in the third person and list a bunch of boring credentials. Or to say things like, “But wait, there’s more!”
Mostly I do things my way because the way I’m apparently “supposed” to be doing it is uncomfortable, unappealing, and unnatural to me. But over time I’ve come to recognize that on the rare occasions when I just do what everyone else does because I think I have to, it’s no fun.
The result: I end up feeling miserable — and people pick up on the cognitive dissonance, so it doesn’t work anyway.
But when I do things the Betty Boop way, everything is in flow … and Selma and I are much happier.
The Betty Boop marketing philosophy
I’ve come to the conclusion that success in everything you do pretty much all boils down to your willingness to just “be human”.
Or as Betty Boop puts it, in an unforgettable way that will, once heard (warning: this is what the German endearingly call an earworm), never leave your head:
“Be human … won’t you even try?”
I’m including the “Be human” song and semi-disturbing (no nudity, but animal violence and a bizarre revenge subplot) video clip for your benefit, so that you too can claim Betty Boop as your own personal marketing coach.
Also, for the record, I have to say (though I probably shouldn’t) that if you’d told me a year ago that there’s nothing in the entire world funnier than watching a cartoon cow being punched in the face, I would have been shocked and horrified.
However, you would have been right. It really, really, really doesn’t get funnier than this.
Book Review: The Design of Everyday Things
So I read about three nonfiction books a week, mostly biggification and self-work (what regular people call business and self-help). Rated on a scale of ducks: 1 duck = Stephen Covey (yawn) and 5 ducks = Malcolm Gladwell (do a little dance). Books worth reading are image-linked to independent bookstores.
The book: The Design of Everyday Things
The author: Donald A. Norman
The rating: 4.5 ducks
Years ago when I was still tending bar in Tel Aviv, this one bar I worked at was set up in kind of a weird way that meant you had to pull open two different doors in order to reach the part where the bathroom was. And everyone would get this part wrong.
Despite the fact that each of these doors was clearly marked with a “pull” sign in both Hebrew and English, everyone (read: not just drunk people) would push instead. And even after years of working there on and off, and hanging out there to the point that I spent more time at the bar than in my apartment, I still — often as not — made that mistake too.
Guess what? The most common reaction– “Wow, could I be any more of an incompetent idiot?” — is wrong, and The Design of Everyday Things is here to help you make the mental move away from it. I’m pleased to report that once your brain has been introduced to the concepts in this book, you’re much more likely to realize, “Ooooh, it’s not me, it’s just bad design.”
This is great news. When things are designed properly, they work without you having to work. It’s easy to default into an automatic state of self-blame — this book serves as a useful reminder that this is not a healthy pattern.
It’s also a terrific intellectual companion to Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think. You can apply the ideas in here to so many things. Especially useful (for me) is the way you could apply these principles to thinking about how people use your website. How they interact with the visual and design-based clues you think you’re giving them as opposed to what they’re actually experiencing.
Ironically, the book was originally called “The Psychology of Everyday Things”, which misled most of his ideal readers to think it was actually about something that didn’t interest them. (But wait — it interests me! Write that book too!)
More ironically still, many of the diagrams in the book are actually not very easy to understand. (Which makes me think I — and Donald Norman — should also read Edward Tufte’s book Envisioning Information, which I know of mostly by way of Calyx Design).
Still, the primary ideas are completely genius, and absolutely as useful and relevant as ever:
- A “push” sign on a door is, for all intents and purposes a manual. When something is designed correctly you know intuitively what to do and how to use it without having to think about it or worse, guess, or worst of all, ask someone to explain it to you.
-
What looks or feels like user error is actually a design error. In other words, you’re not an idiot or mechanically inept because you can’t figure out how to program the VCR.
It’s the job of the design to make everything obvious. (Thank you!)
- We tend to explain things away when in fact we ought to pay more attention to them. If the dog is barking, go see if someone is lurking outside your window instead of telling poor Muffintumbler (okay, clearly I don’t have a dog) to be still and shut up.
How this stuff relates to the whole “changing your habits” thing
I’m going to guess that our Mr. Norman didn’t intend this to be a guide to “working on your stuff” (though, on second thought, his interest and background in psychology say otherwise). But who cares because a. you can still use it that way, and b. I’m physcologically incapable of not relating things to the work-on-your-patterns process.
If anything, this book is a reminder that it’s not you, it’s your patterns. Case in point: when you pull a door instead of pushing it, you’re not the moron. It’s your patterns showing up.
The pushing is a pattern and the name-calling is a pattern. And what you’ve got now is a couple of opportunities, namely:
- The opportunity to notice when you automatically heap abuse on yourself or repeat the things you learned about yourself from others. (Personal example: My own pattern is thinking: “Oh, I’m clumsy.” When this is actually me just repeating what my mother says about me.)
- The opportunity to separate what is hard for you because of traits or qualities in yourself, and what is hard for you because it wasn’t designed with you (or anyone, for that matter) in mind.
- The opportunity to shift your thought from “what am I doing wrong?” to “where do I assign blame to myself, and is it possible that there are other things going on here that don’t actually have anything to do with me?”
All this is the stuff that it’s not necessarily fun to notice or learn (okay, it sucks) but gives you some useful clues that you get to use in untangling your issues. Which you want to do because it gives you the freedom to stop tripping yourself up and start doing stuff differently.
Bottom line
There’s a reason this book is a classic. I took it out from the library twice (I can be slow that way) before realizing that it belongs on my shelf because I’ll be referring to these concepts forever. Get it here if you like or at your local independent bookstore.
(Thanks to JP Collins for recommending this to me twice, which, by the way, is the best way to get me to read something.)
Ask and you shall receive? Or, whatever, maybe not.
The Art of the Ask
One thing I hugely admire about Naomi-my-internet-crush (aka Itty Biz) is the way she totally asks for things. “Huh. What type of things does she ask for?”, you ask. Well, pretty much anything she wants. It’s fantastic.
It’s not just the way she asks for what she wants since I’m also in mind-melting awe of the way she gets it … but that’s another part of the equation altogether. Actually, it’s so far out of the equation, it might not even be up on the same chalkboard.
The thing I’m thinking about right now though is how Naomi sums up her philosophy/outlook/whatever in such a completely different way than I would. For her it’s basically all about “If you don’t ask, you don’t get … so I’m asking.”
The concept — especially the way she freaking lives by it — rocks my world. Talk about applying your philosophy to real life. Love it. Want it.
Thing is, the phrasing just isn’t working for me. And here’s why.
Don’t ask = don’t get? Always? Not doing it for me. Too many minuses in it. Too many rules.
I can almost feel a subconscious block downloading into my brain. And it’s coming from a (potentially problematic) assumption that’s hiding out in the equation — of the kind that linguist Suzette Haden Elgin would call a stowaway.
“Don’t ask = don’t get” is really an If-Then equation that doesn’t necessarily always have to be true.
Don’t get me wrong. Asking is absolutely a skill worth honing. Asking people for stuff. Also asking yourself for stuff. All of it. Whether you want to take it on as a conscious life practice or you just want to land some schwag, totally worth your while master the Art of the Ask.
So I’m just going to institute a teensy edit into the phrasing. From here on out — for me, anyway — the don’t-ask-don’t-get rule will be known as: “Ask and what the heck, who knows, you might even receive.”
Actually, forget the receiving part. That’s not the point.
Way before you even want to think about the receiving, know that it’s the ask that’s important. Like I said, it’s a skill. And one that we (all of us, but especially us chicks we ladies) don’t always work on because it is tied up in a lot of scary. There are so many what-ifs that come along with the ask. Like:
What if I get rejected and laughed out of town? What if this person I like / respect feels awkward and uncomfortable and stops liking / respecting me? What if they say yes but secretly resent me? What if I lose all the confidence I’ve ever had and go slink under a rock and never come out?
Yeah, the what-ifs make asking really hard. The thing that’s helped me the most with learning how to ask is a concept I picked up from Mikelann Valterra from the Women’s Earning Institute in Seattle.
Here it is. The ask is the win. Even better, it’s the first win.
Which means …? Well, for starters, it means you mentally agree to shift your definition of winning.
From:
“Success means one thing only: I ask for the thing and I get the thing. If I don’t get it, I’m a big ole failure who should be pelted with tomatoes.”
to
“Whoah, I totally worked on my pattern and asked for the thing! Right on.”
That’s what the first win means. You asked. You pat yourself on the back for doing something which is (potentially) hard and scary. Then, if you get the thing, it’s the second win. But either way you have one thing to be proud of.
But wait, isn’t that kinda lame? Also: what should I do?
I’ll be honest here. When I met this concept for the first time, my initial reaction was an annoyed eye-roll from my inner-perfectionist.
C’mon, everyone knows you can’t trick yourself into thinking you don’t suck just because of some motivational lollipop. A win? But then I thought about it some more and realized, no, I can get used to giving myself credit for asking. Asking is a pretty big deal for me and working on feeling okay with it is a legitimate practice.
So nice reframe, Mikelann. Thanks.
Alright, so if the ask is everything (and I’m telling you it is), how are you supposed to do it? I think entire books have been written on this stuff, but here are a few examples. What to do, what not to do, and (bonus) what can happen when you don’t linguistically trip yourself up with a limiting if-then premise.
Examples of doing this asking thing *right*
You know how I met Naomi-my-internet-crush (aka Itty Biz)?
She emailed me and said, sweet, flattering things about me and my website. And my duck. I responded in kind. Then she said, “You know when your mother says ‘If you don’t ask, you don’t get'” and then came out with an ask. It was a legitimate ask and it didn’t violate my principles or my duck (horrors!) so I said, sure. And then we became friends. She asked and she got it.
You know how I migrated my enormous website to wordpress?
I asked Nathan Bowers who is a WordPress Consultant, for crying out loud, if I could ask him some questions. It felt a little like going out on a chutzpah limb but we’re Twitter pals and I decided that as long as I gave him an easy out, I could do it. And then he told me what I needed to know and then some.
And all he wanted in return was one tiny piece of advice which I was 100% happy to give and which apparently was all like, knock-yer-socks-off-ariffic. Or something. All I know is 1. he said I was a “super dynamo of helper-ocity”, and 2. don’t go bug him — hire him and give him lots of monies because he totally deserves it. Yeah, that’s right. Find your own Ask!
Anyway, these are both examples of Possible Situation #1: you ask, you get.
Examples of getting this asking thing *wrong*
You can’t really ask wrong. Well, you can, but in general the wrong way to do it is by not asking.
This awesome woman I know, Penny Hoff, decided to self-publish a book of her writing, called Fitness Rants For The Chronologically Enriched. Penny is a yoga/fitness instructor with a seriously great, very wry sense of humor and her writing is motivational, but totally not preachy (read: the rare kind that doesn’t get on my nerves).
Anyway, she self-published without asking anyone for advice because (I think that’s why, unvalidated theory here) she didn’t want to bug people.
And the book ended up being unbelievably expensive. $42.50, in fact. Per book. So even if she was willing to not make any profit at all and just break even, she was going to have be the best saleswoman in the world to move these things.
I know at least five people we know in common she could have asked about this, including me, but she didn’t and I don’t blame her for that because I do stuff like that all the time. Asking is hard. And awkward. And scary. That’s practically the whole point of this post.
$42.50 per book. Ugh. And that’s your example for Possible Situation #2: you don’t ask, you don’t get.
For the win: Examples of doing it wrong and still *winning*
The better you get at asking, the better you get at being able to receive help and support. Which is one of the hardest things there is.
Luckily, you can feel better now about the depressing example above because I’m an exceptionally nice person. Well, I have my moments. Even though she didn’t ask, I sent her some suggestions for different ways to give people more while actually making money from the book so as not to feel like she was scamming people. Because she’s not like that.
And then sent her straight to Booklocker where she was able to republish her book for 42% less. Go Booklocker. If Booklocker were a car, it would run on integrity.
This is an example of Possible Situation #3: “you don’t ask, but you still get”.
Ha! You didn’t ask, but you got it anyway.The best thing about Possible Situation #3 is that it’s like a finger in the eye to that crotchety old “you don’t ask, you don’t get” rule.
It turns it around and morphs it into something more like this: (said in old lady voice with yiddish accent): “Okay, so you didn’t ask. Is it a crime you didn’t ask? Too bad for you, bigshot, because you’re going to get what you want anyway, whether you asked for it or not, alright? Good. Good? Good.”
Okay, this post is already way longer than it was in my head. So I’m going to stop writing now. But I would love it if you would go out and ask for something. Even something really small. Start where it doesn’t feel impossible. Maybe you’ll get it. Maybe you won’t. But you’ll get better at asking.
[Bonus practice for people like me who can easily think about this kind of thing all day: Since there are probably other If/Then equations that you live by that could be messing with your game, any ideas as to what they might be?]
An open letter to my Twitter stalker burglar
But let me catch everyone else up first
I read a post the other day about the fear that unscrupulous so-and-sos could read your Twitter* posts and use information about your where-abouts to (god forbid) break into your home.
∗ collective stream-of-consciousness internet-ey thing
Anyway, if you’re over 55 and/or related to me, this thought will scare you silly. If not, it’s completely possible/likely that it’s a direct hit to the funny bone for you.
But moving away from you for a minute … I have something to say to my Twitter stalker burglar.
Hi there, Twitter stalker burglar
There is so much I’d like to be able to say to you. For one thing, your ingenuity: it is impressive.
You obviously work very hard at what you do. Which is admirable. And intense. I mean, most people would just stick to easy stuff like casing an actual neighborhood or stealing someone’s mail (I hear identity theft is very trendy right now). Not you, though.
What really gets me? All the steps you’d need to take to burgle someone via Twitter. Honestly, I get a stress-headache just thinking about it. Let’s make a list so it’s not so overwhelming.
You’d have to:
- Follow thousands of Twitter folk and devote a huge chunk of time to tracking all their updates just in the hopes that someone announces a jaunt out of town. That’s probably already half your day.
- Then you have to find out if that person actually lives in your city or state. If not, you could alert a burglar friend of yours who happens to be from those parts, if you have one. Silly me, you’re probably only following people where you’re from.
- Once you have your mark and you know when they’re leaving town, you need to nail down their address.
- Now the hard part. Once you’ve nailed down the address, you still have to ascertain that it’s their actual abode, and not the place they have their mail sent to because most people with businesses have both and don’t give out the former. That might take some complicated hacking, but you’ve got time on your hands so it’s no big deal.
- Then it’s time to find out if your intended “burglar-ee” (sorry for not being more familiar with the jargon in your field) has arranged for a housesitter or is letting their brother-in-law stay over. Or if they have dogs. Or an alarm system.
Oh, well, if they didn’t say anything about it on Twitter, just assume you’re fine. It’s all part of the game.
- And of course you need a way into the house without any of the neighbors seeing you.
There are probably more steps than that, but I’m already boggling at your work ethic. So let’s just pretend you’ve already done all this and more — and now, after days of hard work, you’re in my house and ready to burgle the day away.
Please, make yourself at home. You’ve earned it.
Welcome. If you don’t know where to start, let me suggest that stack of old New Yorker issues. Isn’t Calvin Trillin the best?
In fact, if you like to read, boy are you in luck because we also have a ton of books. If they’re about history and design they probably belong to my gentleman friend, and if they’re about language and metaphor, or written by Seth Godin, they’re mine.
I hope you’re not looking for electronics because — and this is really too bad for you — we don’t have any. Yeah, we’re anti-television and things like that, and of course the laptops are with us because we both have online businesses.
Though now that I think of it, there is a little plastic radio in the closet. We got it from a KQED pledge drive. That’s right, San Francisco. It works at least half the time. You can totally have it.
You know, it occurs to me now that there might not actually be anything here that someone who isn’t us would value. And even then, we probably won’t notice. Though if you don’t mind, the blue mug was made by a friend of mine, so if you could leave that, I’d appreciate it.
Hungry? Please, help yourself. We’re all about bulk food, so I hope you like to cook. Let’s see, you could make quinoa. With an onion and the garlic. Mmmmmm. Bon Appetit.
Oh, and if you’re in a cooking mood, do make a lot so there will be leftovers for our house-sitters. You know, the ones we didn’t Twitter about because when you’re limiting yourself to 140 text characters, brevity is the name of the game. Anyway, I’m sure they’ll appreciate having something to eat.
But wait, don’t leave yet! You just got here.
There’s got to be way more for you to do here.
What are you looking for now? Cleaning supplies? I wish we had some to give to you, but we make our own from scratch. If you’re in a cleaning mood, though, you can make your own from borax and vinegar and stuff. It’s all under the sink and the recipes are on the side of the refrigerator. Ha ha ha, I’m just kidding, you really don’t have to clean. We’ll do that when we get back.
We do have a couple of DVDs. If you ever steal a computer from someone else you could watch them on that. They’re mostly yoga theory though. We also have Oh Brother, Where Art Thou. You’ll identify with that because it totally features people who steal stuff.
One more thing. If you want to take a shower, feel welcome to do so. I wish we could offer you shampoo and conditioner, but we make those ourselves too and finished the last batch before we left. Oooh! You know what, though? You should definitely take the soap.
Like in a hotel! That’s always fun. Plus it’s made locally and smells yummy. Seriously, we don’t mind getting more if it means we’ll be supporting local craft-ey people.
Let me see … is there anything else? Seems like that’s it. Do you need rainwater? I didn’t think you did but some of our neighbors collect theirs in barrels. We’re like that in Portland. If you want to steal yourself help yourself to some rainwater, know that this should be relatively easy.
Well, I’m sorry if you’re disappointed. Please don’t blame yourself. Or Twitter. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles. Better luck next time and all that.
A postscript for everyone who isn’t my Twitter stalker burglar
If you’re wondering where all the change-yer-habits techniques and random pearls of self-work-ey wisdom went today, please know that I’d planned to do this differently.
Here’s what my plan was: tie all this into a neat little package, and weave in various threads from the relating-to-your-fear theme. Like how, when you default into fear patterns — as we all do when stuff pushes our buttons, your fear becomes reality-defining.
Which means that the fear essentially acts as a filter, like a dirty pair of glasses through which you take in and analyze all the pieces of information that come your way.
I also thought it’d be neat to talk about ways to take care of yourself so that other people can’t intentionally or unintentionally press your buttons and manipulate your fears with their words. Or maybe the power of reminding yourself when you’re afraid that you’re allowed to be afraid. Or how it sometimes helps to insert a little humor into your fear in order to interact with it from a new perspective.
Good stuff. Thing is, though, I just don’t feel up to it today. So if you don’t mind rain-checking it, let’s do it some other time, okay? It’ll be fun. Maybe my Twitter stalker burglar will come too and we’ll all eat quinoa together and have a good laugh.