My big brother is celebrating his anniversary this week. Twenty three years ago, I stood with a huge group of people at the front of the hugest possible church crowd in a blue satin bridesmaid dress.

I did not know anyone. But it was a party, and I managed to quickly find the other 17 year old girl who didn’t know anyone either. She knew someone who knew someone who brought her, but her family had just landed back in America after years spent as a missionary in South Asia.

Perfect. Coolness and popularity were as far out of her reach as they always were for me. Tanya and I hit it off and spent the whole afternoon in perfect giddy companionship. Partway through she said, “You’re a lot of fun! My cousin said you were hard to get to know.”

Someone knew who I was? and by inference, someone had tried to get to know me?

Why?

After Tanya described the cousin, I remembered. She was a nice lady in her early 20s and had stopped from time to time to speak to me. I always assumed that she, like my brother and nearly every other married grownup in my life, was engaging me in conversation out of a sense of Christian charity for the next generation. Therefore, out of respect for her, I had always tried to be polite, excusing myself as quickly as possible and letting her off the hook.

I had read it completely wrong. She knew who I was and wanted to know more.

I was not invisible.

I’m not seventeen anymore, but I am still surprised to discover I am visible when I least expect it.

I can walk into a convention center full of people and have a series of intense conversations with people I have never met and with whom I will never speak again. I used to think this was shallow. Why didn’t I make true relationships with this people? I must be deficient not to follow up and cement this connection that obviously had such promise. But they vanish like fog in the afternoon.

Email, LinkedIn, Facebook and G+ help me at least have a tenuous thread to these amazing people I couldn’t stay in f2f contact with. I am a devotee of the Christmas letter, making sure to *lick envelopes* to keep my friends and family in my life.

Then  I read Superconnect: Harnessing the Power of Networks and the Strength of Weak Links. I like the Power of Networks, because I am a telecommunications expert. That is a powerful network. So…these authors assert and give evidence that the most powerful connections in our lives–the ones that set us on new paths and ventures–come almost exclusively from people we barely know. Our close connections are tapped out; they’ve given all they can. To strike out in a new way, you need something new.

I remember thinking this when I set out to start dating again in 1999. I was in my pond sitting on a lily pad, and all the frogs and fishes swimming by were not what I was looking for.

I needed a new lily pad. Maybe a new pond.

What’s a girl to do? Hello Internet, my old friend. I got a lot of new connections. One of them is sitting on our couch right now reading pundits on his iPad. Our anniversary is next month. It worked out.

Once more I find myself in need of new frogs. I want to find a way to promote my writing.    My books, the ones I’ve published and the ones I am about to publish. But that’s not all.

There is this. This. Right here: my Wonder Weekly. It has surprised me lately by becoming visible.

Of course, it was not by accident. I decided I needed to believe in it–in ME–again this year. I was going to act as if it were important. I began to do a series of things to let people know about it. On the path to figuring out how to do that, I started to make connections.

I made one connection, which led to another, and this frog started leaping. I told people, with my mouth, about this. I signed up people by asking for their email addresses and using my hands to type these addresses into my database. I doubled my subscribers.

But then a connection I made told me how to start connecting using twitter. And then a friend I met on twitter led to a super awesome book on how to organize my promotion efforts. Look at me go!

Last week, for the first time, someone I do not know signed up. I shrieked and told my friends that I would never feel this famous again. I am writing for the world now! After all this time, I am ready for it! These words matter, and they make a difference to people. I *should* be read by lots of people I don’t know.

Wait. There is more.

Another somebody, a very old friend, made a connection for me to someone new, and I signed up for a class. I take classes, but not like this one. This was a leap; I don’t know if it’s a new pond or not but all of the scenery is different from this lily pad.

I guess that’s the point.

Back to reality. In the middle of the night, my daughter called to me. SIGH. It’s going to be another long night. Fish out the iPhone and the earbuds, start one of my favorite podcasts so I don’t lose my mind with boredom sitting at her side to keep the scary monsters at bay.

I pick one I hadn’t listened to in a while, Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders. They talk about how to find venture capitalists, how to pick a founding partner, when to sell, recommending ‘Fail Fast’ and a whole host of Silicon Valley rarified air that I find inspiring.

Press play at 2 AM on a friday morning, and I found this. A magician and a mechanical engineer?

Ferdinando Buscema told a roomful at Stanford about what he does.

I would not have been able to understand him if not for my new class. He said that there is a place for the unexpected and unbelievable in business. If there is a place for it in business, there is a place for it everywhere. He did the impossible, not just with playing cards. He did it with his life. He took his magic skills and his engineering mind and made the connection.

We need to believe, we don’t need to act like everything is so separate. More things are possible than I realized. And here’s the resonance for me: “The world is not made up of atoms; it’s made of stories.”

Yes. Yes it is. And stories are what I do–just like this one I’m telling now.

I tweeted about it and told my stranger-friends about this amazing message. I am delighted but not surprised that found this man–he’d even given a TED talk. This guy was incredible!

Wait. It gets even better.

Remember last week when a stranger signed up for my Weekly Wonder? I said I would never feel this famous again.

This morning, Ferdinando Buscema signed up for this newsletter.  Out of the haystack of the internet my new hero found the needle of me. I am visible in a way I never ever expected.

Hello Signor Buscema! Thank you for believing in yourself and trusting the world to have a place for you to be in it. Thank you for putting yourself in front of a camera and telling everyone in the world about what is possible.

It was not possible that you should find me. But you did. I ask myself again:

Why? Why me?

It feels like magic. And when I think about magic touching me–my life–I am so excited I can barely breathe. Magic is not like lightning, it strikes the same place more than once. I recognize I have a gift. My ME, when I show up and live it, use and and share it with people, is magical.

Hey everybody! It’s been awhile since I had visitors. Welcome to the blog!

I’m kind of a homebody, set it my ways, and I suppose I got into the habit of talking to myself.

Blogging to myself.

But, there is a lot here. And I am so excited to see you here…those visitor traffic reports make me feel loved.

…I am almost thinking of turning on the comments again. Now that there is more traffic than just salesmen…

..maybe…could happen.

But while you are here, look around! make yourself at home.

very groovy, actually.

Some stuff started to click, and now things are clicking.

things are ticking

…is that the pilot?

*click*click*click*

OH YEAH! WE ARE COOKING WITH GAS!!!!!

“What is with all these people throwing their hands up?” my friend was saying to me.

He wasn’t talking about me, but I knew I was guilty. There was THIS thing, and then ANOTHER crazy-making other thing that I needed to rant about.

I was beginning to see his point: throwing my hands up in the air, to give up and give in to frustration is the stance of the victim. If I do that, I am letting life give me a stick-up.

“Hands in the air! Give me all your valuables!”

My most valued thing is my ability to do something in the world. Getting my hands in there and doing what needs to be done, that’s all I’ve really got. Here, you can take my wallet and my watch. I won’t need to keep track of the passing of time if I am doing nothing with it anyway.

I was born to do the things that I can do–to be more precise, to do the things that only I can do.

That takes getting engaged. That takes using my strength and my heart and my hands to grapple with life. So glorious to realize that I can take my hands down, put them at my sides and get some leverage on what matters.

But what matters? What should I do?

I should do what matters to me. It’s as easy and as hard as that.

I get to do what I do. I get to be me.

Doing what I do means taking the chances my days give me. I should leap at the chances to engage with the world around me and the people around me.

In the elevator last week, door opened on a guy in a t-shirt.

“Going up?”

I asked him what he was there for.

“I am here for voice-over work.”

Oh. An actor.  And now we were at our stop. “Good luck, I hope you get the part.”

“Oh, I already have it.”

We separated; I had to pick up my package.

I live in the shadow of Hollywood. I have had dealings with actors before. He stayed in my mind, because he was far less arrogant than most actors I meet. He didn’t treat me like a two-dimensional audience like they usually do.

He was still waiting in the hall when I came out with my package.

I wanted to talk to him some more.

But I had no reason to.

Except…life is to engage with.

I had no reason not to. Dive in!

I approached him, “What’s your name? Should I go like you on Facebook?”

“Oh, I’m not on Facebook.”

“You’re an actor right? Are you in anything?”
“Nothing you would know…”

“Well, I’m trying to be a fan, but I am having a hard time figuring out how.”

He laughed, a shy laugh.

“So you only do voice work? You should get a job doing animation.”
“No, animation means you have to have a funny voice…like a cartoon voice.”

“That’s true. Your voice is kind of gravelly. I know! You could be a dog.”

“I like dogs.”

“There! Tell your agent to get you a dog.”

It was a lovely conversation, which was very much the sort of conversation that I tend to have. He laughed, and it restored my faith in actor-kind.

This engage-with-life idea was working.

Yeah! Go forth and express self-hood! Don’t repress! Dive in!

So that evening I go express myself into a flame war online.

…Really? REALLY?

Someone was threatening to set his hair on fire to prove that I was wrong.

Sigh

Not everybody is going to love me all the time.

There are going to be people who don’t see it my way, and some of those people are going to decide that someone’s hair needs to be set on fire.

Yikes! It can be so unexpectedly dangerous to be me. THIS is why…*hands thrown up*…

Here I go again. Didn’t I just get over that? That’s not fun anymore. There are obstacles, there’s bound to be. But if I hang on to the truth of what I know, and I keep trying it will be ok.

With the possibility of way better than okay.

Italicizing Foreign Words

I guess I had let myself get into a rut.

a few spots, habits of places and conversations.

Yes, I do like to go to the same spot and get exactly what I expected

Sometimes.

But there are happening spots, here on the World Wide Web.

And I’ve shaken up my routine a little.

It’s fun to get out there.

Hi Everybody! The show starts wednesday. Don’t Miss It!

There are times when it is possible to decide to be happy. Other times it seems impossible to make that choice.

I think that choosing to be happy is always in the options at any time.

But sometimes it’s not within reach.

Today I can reach it and I’m so happy

“We are just going to have to read translations.”

My book club friend and I had been talking about what book to read next. We’re choosy, and we have already run through so many–MOST–of the good ones.

We’ve shot the canon.

So. For our next book to read, what do we have left? I refuse to spend the rest of my life re-reading books. There must be something more out there.

By chance, the next weekend, I was introduced to a spanish language undergrad. “Can you point me to a few good novels from Spain?” I asked.

“Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Zee-Ay-Eff-Oh-En.” She assured me he was the real deal.

The Shadow of the Wind is where I began. One of the major catalysts for the action of the story is a place called the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.

Now, taking a moment to be personal here, I am a writer. See that? I just wrote that.

As I have learned more about writing and written more, I approach books differently. I am now always aware of the author when I am reading. I used to be able to forget about the author, but now I am aware of the author’s choices when he or she decides to tell the story a particular way.

For example, I read Until I Find You by John Irving and loved it. Hooray! a new author! I went to read more of his works. Then, not very far into the next book, a little boy got his eye put out in a freak car accident. I could not forgive the author for mistreating a little kid, and refused to finish the book. I don’t think he had to do that! Even if eyes of little boys are sometimes put out in real life. I didn’t think the author had to go there.

Back to Zafon: the Cemetery of Forgotten Books is an enormous labyrinth, a very secret place, where books will be protected. They will not disappear, they will be preserved and saved. The stories’ action start or is affected by this place.

In the next story by Zafon, The Prisoner of Heaven, the hero is an author. He writes sensational horror for money, and finally gets a chance to write a REAL story. He writes and pours his soul into this one, and it is dismissed by the critics. His evil publisher pulps all but a very few copies, and he is devastated.

He knows this one is better than the popular stuff he has written, and goes to the mysterious bookseller’s shop, staggering with  broken heart and having nowhere else to go.

‘You once told me of a place where you could keep a book, where it would never be destroyed and be safe forever.’

Oh.

Oh, Zafon. I understand now. That’s what the Cemetery of Forgotten Books is about.

I am preparing my latest book for publication. This one is the one that matters. I have spent ten years running my soul through a meat grinder to tell this story. And I am about to make it into a book, which has every likelihood of being ignored.

If I had to sell it to a publisher who had a right to destroy it, I might be in the same spot as the brokenhearted hero. It *could* be destroyed by unscrupulous people.

I am not giving up my rights to my story, because I don’t have to. But with great gifts come great responsibility. I will have to find a way to tell the whole world that they need to hear my story. And the whole world is notoriously uninterested in me.

It is possible that this ten year story will bear the same fate as my little 5 month Miriam the Camel Driver story; a few people read it and were delighted.

A very few.

I know there are at least 10 people who will read this Big One. And I know that many more people’s lives would be changed if they read it too.

Be fickle, Fortune, and let this one be discovered. But if not, even if my 10 were the only ones that read it,  for the sake of ten it is still worth it.

What else was I gonna do with those ten years? My soul was going to be ground up anyway.

If you haven’t got your health, you haven’t got anything. So, with my busy life, I’ve been turning to meal shakes.

I have a big plastic cup and a fork to mix the powder and the water. I take this with me all over the place, because I have to go all over the place for my job.

I have a few plastic cups, but I have one fork I try to use.

Chris and I took special care to select and purchase our silverware set, and we love the feel of our soup spoons and the heavy butter knife handle.

My travel fork is one that I’ve stolen from a cafeteria. It is a crappy little fork, and that is how it should be. I am super careful to protect this fork so that it will stand in gaurding against the *real* loss of the precious household fork.

I want to hold on to the bad fork so I don’t even risk losing the fork I really care about losing.

This reminds me of another societal crappy thing we work very hard to protect. George Carlin famously refers to the Seven Dirty Words. Of course, there are more than seven. They are words we protect. The dirty words, the cuss words, the profane and the naughty ones.

They are held in reserve, not said on the radio or on TV. Well, they are said on cable–the kind of cable you have to pay extra for.

The dirty words are protected, even though they are expecially tough. In fact, the protected words are so very strong that they have an unbelievable array of meanings. Nearly unlimited. And they are some of the oldest words of any language, english included.

Why are we so careful to protect them?

I was raised to never ever use these words. I never ever heard my mother or my father curse. My dad, when upset, said “Good Night!”

None of my friends said swears. We were even reprimanded from the pulpit not to say “Gosh!” because it was too close to taking the Lord’s name in vain. It was decided that only an exclamation of “Man!” was acceptable.

They wuz crazy.

At my current job, when I started, I noticed immediately that I worked entirely with men.

Men who cussed.

Here’s the thing about cussing: Cussing is a form of escalation. It is a yellow alert. It’s intimidating. It’s threatening.

I made a very quick decision; to fit in I would bring it. If the boys were going to cuss, I was going to cuss more.

It’s not that hard.

But I felt I needed their respect and to be seen as an equal.

On the  threat spectrum, where zero is no threat, cussing is a step down the continuum that ends in somebody getting killed.

I don’t want to get killed. I dont’ want to get beat up or even punched once.

So. In the same way that my crappy fork stands in protection of my good silverware, cussing stands in the place of bodily harm.

It makes sense that we are careful, and that I should be careful with the bad language. It is incredibly powerful and does it’s job very well.

There was a study done recently that talks about these powerful words even having a painkilling affect. Many of us instinctively yell one out when we hammer our finger or stub our toe. It turns out, it works.

Except. We start to build a tolerance if we over use the words too much. We have to protect them, and ourselves.

They are that special.

Dude at the gas station in front of me was trying to cash a check.

“No we don’t do that here. Go to the bank.”

“When does the bank open? This is my ride home”

“10 am. It is 7:30 now”

That’s a long time to wait.

I followed him out. “What do you need?”

“Oh, I’m just trying to get home.”

“What do you need? Gas?” I didn’t know if he has a car or was riding the bus

“Yeah…”

I rummaged in my purse. I wanted to give him a five, but all I had was 20s. I gave him two ones.

” oh thank you! Let me give you my business card so you can hit me up.”

” oh that’s ok.”

He took my two dollars to the cashier to buy gas. Then I thought, oh that may have been him making a pass at me rather than him offering to repay the money

Or it could have been both.

Sometimes it’s hard to be a Good Samaritan in a dress. Still felt pretty good.