life lessons

World Domination (or: World Changing 101)

July 17, 2012 by Jessica Leave a Comment

I attended the inaugural World Domination Summit last June, and it was an amazing (life changing) experience. I didn’t know anyone else who was attending, and hadn’t been following any blogs besides Chris Guillebeau’s “Art of Nonconformity” and some of the work Leo Babauta was doing. I was in the middle of personal turmoil, changing up so many things in my life – and the thing that I remember the most clearly was this: the people I met at WDS loved and supported my story; unlike mainstream society, where people told me that I was crazy to be “giving up” a stable life and marriage, financial security, the American dream, everyone at WDS understood. In the middle of a room of 500 people who were out living unconventional lives (walking across America, traveling around the world full time, owning their own location-independent businesses, doing world changing work), I couldn’t help but feel like I had finally met my tribe.

Last year taught me to listen when the universe fell into place, to dream big and to live my life with unapologetic passion. I made initial contact with people who would become friends over the coming months, who would share in some of my biggest moments during the coming year. More than anything, WDS confirmed that was okay to live life on my terms.

Come this year, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. In fact, I tried incredibly hard to keep myself from thinking too hard about how this year would be different. I didn’t want to create expectations, so I mostly focused on the travel aspect – my cross country train trip to the west coast.

I just got back to the east coast, after spending 2 weeks traveling, including a few days with one thousand other world changers. I wrote most of this post on board a train on the way to San Francisco – last week I hinted at having most of this written up, and it’s time to let the experience see light.

If I had to guess, it will still be a while before I can completely process the entire trip, but my initial takeaway is that this year was yet another incredible experience. It was completely different from last year, but I think that the differences are in me, as opposed to with the conference. There were lessons learned from the first year, and new challenges presented by doubling the size of the crowd, but the same level of awesome still pervaded the weekend’s events.

(Side note – I decided last year that I wasn’t going to take written notes, because as soon as I start writing, I cease to be present to the experience. It worked well last year and I continued the tradition this year. Everything below is from my memory of the weekend – these are my impressions and takeaways, and all mis-rememberings are my own).

To recap the entire conference would result in a post of ridiculous length (above and beyond this “pared down” version of over 1300 words…), so instead I present you with some of the things that resonated most with me:

Brene Brown opened up the speaker portion of the conference on Saturday morning – she challenged us to be open, vulnerable and uncool, allowing ourselves to fully experience life. She also coined what may very well have become the favorite response of the weekend: “suckit”. And, most importantly, who can forget the rousing Glee rendition of “Don’t Stop Believing”?
Hearing about Scott Harrison’s work with Charity: Water was one of the most personally inspiring portions of the weekend. Being a part of the environmental and nonprofit worlds, it was amazing to hear about how the charity is functioning and to see a bit behind the curtain of an organization that’s changing the rules in their industry. I came out of the session with a personal reaffirmation of the volunteer work that I am doing with Earth Week, the WeArePowerShift leadership team and 350.org. I will be giving my birthday to Charity:Water this year (taking a hiatus from my normal charity giving to local causes).
Pace and Kyelie’s afternoon session on why our dreams are not enough was both fun and inspiring; they taught the group how to make our ideas sticky, about the ripple effect, and I particularly enjoyed learning about the “monkeysphere”. (I’ll admit that my favorite part was being able to give out monkey stickers to those with whom I had truly authentic and open conversations over the rest of the weekend – you know who you are!) Likewise, I enjoyed a session with Nathalie Lussier, who taught us why women are built to rule the world – girl power!
Grant and Adam’s film, “I’m Fine, Thanks” was premiered on Saturday night at the Mission Theater, and brought an entire theater full of people to tears. Seeing Grant’s story laid out on the screen – the conscious piecing together of the “perfect life” over a series of years, only to find later that it was not the right life for him – was so close to my own story that I could not stop the tears when they welled up.
Chris Brogan’s opening talk on Sunday morning, about embracing your own inner superpowers and not being afraid to be your own unique self, was both hilarious and fitting – plus, he handed out superhero and supervillain cards… what’s not to love?
The attendee lightning round, where a select few were chosen to talk about projects they were currently working on – my good friend Brandon kicked off the session in style, talking about his work with the documentary “Kids of the Gulf” – Adam Baker talking about his experience making the “I’m Fine, Thanks” documentary – the boob cancer song, complete with pink ukelele. In particular, I love that every person in that theater had an amazing story to tell, whether they were highlighted or not.
JD Roth’s closing presentation about living an unconventional life in an ordinary world, complete with a call to action.

A few other fun events and moments throughout the weekend:

All the informal meetups starting on Thursday, and running through the weekend. It’s what I love most about this experience – it’s about the people!
Dancing like a totally uncool person (thanks, Brene) at Crystal Ballroom on Saturday night, completely unplanned – the motion of the dance floor under our feet – finding unexpected dancing partners and moments of pure joy. Dancing again on Sunday night at the closing party, Bollywood style.
Iron Chef dinner before the movie screening on Saturday. Rooftop dinner with friends on Sunday, watching the sun set over Portland from the roof of one of the tallest buildings in the city.

And, as you might have heard, during his closing remarks, Chris did indeed reinvest a sizable donation back to the attendees – he had an anonymous donor who covered enough of the costs of this year’s event that there was a surplus, and Chris made the decision to give each of the 1,000 attendees $100 to invest in making change moving forward. It’s been over a week since his investment, and I still can’t find the right words to explain it… and after deleting paragraph after paragraph, I think it’s time to throw in the towel.

I have plans for my investment – half is going toward a business project that’s been in the works since this spring, and the other half is going to charity. I think I’ll probably invest it with Kiva, through the team of folks over at the Impossible League.

This year was another amazing year for WDS – like I said before, very different for me, but mostly because I am a changed person from last year. I was delighted by the focus on doing good and making positive change that was apparent this year. We have the power to change the world, and because of a weekend in Portland, we are even better equipped to head back out into the world and do so.

Let’s do this.

Image credit: Armosa Studios

Adventure (and why it’s best together)

July 10, 2012 by Jessica Leave a Comment

I have been traveling for the past couple of weeks, and I just wrapped up six days in Portland, OR for my second World Domination Summit. I have a post about the event that’s mostly written up… but like all truly good things, it needs some time to simmer before I post it up.

So instead, I’m writing this short post today from my hostel in San Francisco – I arrived this morning via the last leg of my cross country train trip, and spent the afternoon walking around the city. I’m headed out shortly to attend an environmental talk and to catch up with some friends from 350.org.

My mini lesson for today is this: surround yourself with amazing people. It’s like I wrote earlier in the year, about making alliances that allow you to live a powerful and impact-ful life. Life is short, and beautiful. Grab your friends, keep them close, and go live life to the fullest!

Stranded (or: going with the flow when you’ve got no other choice)

July 3, 2012 by Jessica Leave a Comment

For the past several days, I’ve had the Aerosmith song “Amazing” stuck in my head. Well, to clarify, I’ve had a single line of the song stuck, which has resulted in the rest of the song bouncing around inside my skull.

Life’s a journey, not a destination – and I can’t tell just what tomorrow will bring.”

I left Charlottesville last Friday, a sunny, hot (99 degrees and a heat index above 106 degrees) day on a train that was running less than 30 minutes behind schedule. We had to go slower than normal due to heat restrictions, and were running several hours late by the time we hit the West Virginia line.

I was relaxed in my seat, reading the book I brought along for the trip, not worried about the delay – I wasn’t leaving Chicago until Sunday afternoon, so my schedule was pretty darn flexible. As the evening progressed, I noticed dark storm clouds up ahead. I thought it would be pretty cool to experience a nice solid thunderstorm from a train – it’s not like airplanes, where weather can cause delays, reroutings and cancellations, right?

Right?

As the storm whipped by overhead, I realized that I might have underestimated the power of the dark clouds above. For a short time, I was even a little concerned that mother nature might have conjured up a tornado, just to make things extra fun. At around 8:00 pm, straight line winds blew through the valley, tossing tree limbs through the sky like tiny specs of fluff. The train had stopped completely because high wind warnings had been issued, and they were concerned about getting derailed by the wind.

(I learned later that the storm had produced wind gusts up to and above 80 mph, and the type of storm was a derecho.)

As darkness fell and the worst of the storm passed we started to move forward again, this time even more slowly, so that the conductor could see any detritus in the track ahead. As we rolled along, huge chunks of tree scraped along the side of the train, bumping and grinding down the cars. We left the Hinton station just before the storm hit, and it took us four hours to reach the next station at Prince, WV. I fell into a fitful sleep across two seats sometime around midnight, expecting that by the time I woke up, we would be moving again.

Dawn broke, and through heavy dry eyelids I peered out to see how much progress we had made. Looking around the train, and then looking out station-side, I saw that there were people out and about, despite the early hour. I pulled my shoes back on and walked forward through the train until I reached the open door. Hopping out, I went to find out what was going on.

Already-long story short, we sat at that railway station in Prince, WV for 20 hours waiting to continue on our journey. The storm had torn up trees and power lines, depositing them on the tracks for miles and miles ahead of and behind us; it had washed out roads, took out power to most of the state (and beyond), and caused a “state of emergency” to be declared in multiple states (including Virginia and West Virginia).

At 8:00 pm the next night, buses finally arrived – they took us to a rest stop in Kentucky where we boarded a second set of buses that eventually took everyone to their final destinations – most of us on board bus 63 were bound for Chicago, with a few others headed to stops prior. We arrived at Chicago Union Station around 10:00 am (central time), around 24 hours late, which left just enough time for me to head to the hostel, take a shower and walk back to Union Station to catch my 2:00 pm train to Portland.

*Sigh of relief*

Side note: apparently, 232 passengers stranded in the middle of West Virginia is a big enough story to make national news.

Now that I’ve laid out the background, let me explain more why I decided to share this particular experience here:

Note: I wrote this post on Monday afternoon, aboard the westbound Empire Builder, and it is now being posted from a hotel room in Seattle after another thwarted attempt at reaching Portland. The past few days provided some amazing social commentary for me, and put to the test some of the key tenants of my current life.

1. Life’s a journey.

This one’s pretty self explanatory – I planned on arriving in Chicago with over 24 hours to explore the city, but Chicago wasn’t my destination. I was just passing through. In fact, even though I’m stopping in Portland for a week, it’s not my destination. San Francisco after that? Nope. Charlottesville once this particular trip has concluded? Not so much. Seattle wasn’t even in the plan, until a split second midnight decision when I found out that there had been a derailment on the tracks headed to Portland – and yet here I am.

It’s all about the journey. It’s about what we’re experiencing at this very moment – there is only now. I’m not guaranteed to even make it to Portland (though it’s the plan) and if I waste the moments I have worrying about how things aren’t going to plan, then I’m wasting my life. The experience makes one heck of a story, and I’ll add it to the list of life memories that have brought me inevitably to the space that I occupy at this given moment.

2. People are community oriented.

It’s weird how sharing an intense experience can bond you with people who would have otherwise stayed strangers. I’m not the kind of traveler who sticks to herself – I generally connect with the people around me as I travel, sharing stories. Most of these people won’t become a major part of the fabric of my life; I spend time connecting, and our paths cross for some small segment of time. After that, we move on with our respective lives. Chances are, we won’t cross paths again.

But then there are those who we bond with in times of struggle. Much like my sisters with whom I bonded during our shared time in that DC metro holding cell, I forged connections with those who shared our common time aboard that stranded train. There are likely a few who I will keep in touch with moving forward, creating and weaving our own separate stories, but we will always have those threads of shared experience in common, connecting us.

3. You can learn a lot about a person by how they act in an emergency situation.

I’ll admit, this part was challenging for me at several points. When you’re faced with an uncertain situation, different people will handle things very differently – the more secure people are in themselves, the better they handle unexpected challenges. I kept having to remind myself that the adventure of life comes with a heaping helping of, well… adventure. Otherwise, it can get pretty boring. Everyone had different ways to handle our unexpected delay, but most handled it with compassion to the strangers around them.

I know sometimes it can sound like woowoo bullshit, but I truly believe that a person has quite a bit of control over their lives – not so much in the “what is happening” part of life, but in how you react to your circumstances. Upon realizing that there is nothing you can do to change the here and now, how do you react to it?

Taking things in stride is far easier said than done, but I have made it a point recently to try to do just that. Would I have rather spent the night in Chicago, exploring the city and eating amazing food? Duh. But did I let what could have been ruin the experience for me? No – that’s the difference.

When life hands you lemons, right?

The next time life takes an unexpected turn, take a deep breath and let yourself experience it. If there’s something that you can do to change the situation to be the way you want it to be – by all means, make that change! But, if the situation is totally out of your control, give yourself the freedom to experience it fully.

It may suck for a while, but I bet it will make one hell of a story. Allow yourself live your story – you’ll thank yourself for it later.

Bookworm! (or: recapturing a lost love)

June 12, 2012 by Jessica Leave a Comment

Confession: I used to be a huge bookworm.

I taught myself to read when I was young. (Before you give me too much credit, my parents read to me every night from the time I was a baby, and I know that I picked up a lot of my reading comprehension from that activity.) If my memory serves, it was when I was around the age of 6 that I had a reading primer that I carried around with me, sounding out letters and picking out the familiar pieces. It didn’t take long to start piecing together words out of letters, and soon sentences out of words.

And then? I was hooked.

You couldn’t take me anywhere without a book. My parents severely limited the amount of television I watched (one show during the week, and one on the weekend – thanks, mom!), so I had lots of time to be a kid – I ran around outside and played with my dogs, kept myself entertained for hours in some part of my imagination or other, and read voraciously.

This carried on through elementary school and into middle school. Even when I entered high school, I kept my face in one book or another – AP English classes, stuff I read on my own, books my parents kept on the bookshelves at our house – it was all fair game. When I was in high school, I worked at an art gallery during semester breaks, and I read behind the counter when no customers were around; those summers, I would tear through a novel every day.

Then, college hit. I was in the Honors program at JMU my freshman year, as well as being in the marching band and the countless hours of required classes and ensembles for my major. I stopped reading for pleasure, because I simply had too much other work to do. My hours were precious, and usually spent in the basement of the music building.

Cue graduation from college, starting a teaching career, and the years that passed afterwards…

Somewhere along the way, I lost my love of reading. It got delegated to the “things that take time I don’t have” list, and started to gather dust. There have been several attempts to pick back up where I left off over the past decade, but none have stuck.

Now? It’s time for a change. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about why it’s important to spend your life learning, and reading is a huge part of that for me. To be a great writer, one must consume vast quantities of great literature, and success points to those who take time to read. I read a blog article recently that indicated that the most successful writers and bloggers usually read a book a week.

Just this morning, I read a Matt Madeiro post titled “How to Start Reading” – a timely reminder that building a habit has less to do with forcing yourself to get back into something, and more to do with taking small, consistent, achievable steps in the right direction. If you’re having a hard time finding your way back into your reading habit, I highly recommend that you pop over and read that article.

I’m taking bigger steps right now. I’m reading a Paul Theroux book at the moment, in preparation for my cross country Amtrak trip to Portland, OR. I leave in a couple of weeks, and I want to write about the trip – the Theroux is providing amazing motivation.

And, in the name of continuing education, I have a stack of yet unread books awaiting my hungry eyes. This is one restart that I intend to keep rolling – even if I have to go so far as scheduling in time for reading, it’s important enough that I’ll do it.

How about you, dear reader? What have you been reading recently, or are you like me and in need of a restart?

If so – small steps. Or big steps. Whatever works for you – just start!

Labels (and why I’m cutting mine out)

June 5, 2012 by Jessica Leave a Comment

Labels.

They’re the reason clothing companies created “tagless tees” – because tags chafe and itch, and otherwise drive you batty. (My grandmother used to cut all the tags out of her clothes; as soon as it came in her house, out went the tag. Not so helpful when trying to identify an article of clothing by size, or looking for laundering instructions…) Of course, you probably realize that I’m not talking about -those- kind of labels, but you know what I mean.

As I have wandered along the path that is my life, I have subconsciously put labels on myself:

Environmentalist (hippie) (organizer) (ruckus-raiser) (activist) (tree hugger)
(semi) vegetarian (vegan) (localvore)
Musician (teacher) (artist)
Designer (web) (social) (digital)

We as a society tend to label ourselves and others according to the things we do.

Can I tell you how crazy it makes me that the first question folks ask when they meet someone new is “what do you do for a living?” – not “what kinds of things are you super-passionate about” or some other (deeper) question. We get caught up in these superficial interactions, as though knowing that someone you just met is an accountant, and you’re a dentist, and… where do we go from there? Zzzzz.

(No offense to dentists or accountants, it’s just the first two standard-type jobs that popped into my head!)

That being said, if what you do for a living really sets you on fire, absolutely consumes you, and you love it enough for it to define WHO you really are, how you want other people to see you? That’s freaking awesome. Kudos to you.

For me? I have recently come to the conclusion that while labels can be helpful in some cases (if fitting us into neat little boxes is actually helpful), they’re awfully constraining.

I’ve talked a lot about finding your “hell yes” – some of those labels above were at one point or other (or currently) a passion of mine. However, they are not all a hell yes right now. By identifying as any of the things above, I often find myself less willing to be open to something else. Like I talked about earlier in the year in my post about saying yes more, many times it would behoove us to let go of preconceived notions and try something new.

Tried something new and it’s not a “hell yes”? Don’t do it again.

Something that you used to identify with no longer a “hell yes”? No reason to hold yourself to it, if it no longer resonates.

This path we’re all on is different for each of us. Chances are, it’s going to meander quite a bit: curving here and there, occasionally taking a sharp turn, sometimes uphill and other times down. The important thing is to enjoy it while you travel it.

You may get tired of hearing me say it, but life is short. Enjoy your path.

And don’t worry if you have to rip the labels out along the way.

Willpower (or: what to do when you don’t wanna)

May 22, 2012 by Jessica Leave a Comment

Last week, I wrote about one tip that I use for keeping on top of procrastination. This week, I’ll admit that I am having a bit of a hard time keeping to my own tactics.

Here’s why. Sometimes, even when you have set a standard for yourself, bypassing the usual workarounds that would allow you to procrastinate your way out of doing what you are supposed to, you just can’t muster the desire to take the first step. Or the middle ones. Or even do anything remotely related to the task at hand.

You can hear your inner self in the background… “but I don’t WANNA!”

Sometimes all the tricks in the world won’t help you avoid the procrastination trap, and you end up facing down your impending deadline with the feeling that you just don’t care. No one else is paying attention, so why should you give a crap? It would be much easier to just give up and move on.

(Side note: if you feel like this most of the time, it’s probably a sign that you should probably re-evaluate what you’re doing – find your “hell yes” and be passionate about what you’re doing.)

That note aside, sometimes you just gotta suck it up and do it anyway. Push through, power on despite the perceived agony. (Second side note: it’s usually never as bad as it seems at the time.)

It’s like when your mom used to force you to eat your broccoli at the dinner table, because it was good for you. Or when Calvin’s dad (of Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes) used to tell Calvin that the things he hated doing built character. It’s kinda like that, only now it’s just you – no parental type telling you what to do “for your own good”. Now it’s just you, your amazing procrastination abilities, and your willpower.

Nike says: Just do it.

Once you manage to swear, complain and whinge your way through the task at hand, it will all be over and you can move on. Heck, maybe it will even help you get some momentum back.

Recap?

Quit whining and just do it.