Lewis Hyde: “My book is dedicated to my late father, by profession a physicist with a specialty in optics. As the dedication says, it was he who first told me about ‘Dollond’s case,’ an eighteenth-century patent dispute involving telescope lenses in which Lord Mansfield ruled that ownership of an idea belonged not to the person who kept his invention secret but to the person ‘who brought it forth for the benefit of mankind.’”

Confession: I still haven’t read The Gift. It fascinated the life out of me when I started it, but something else was going on at the time — and right about then, I stopped reading non-fiction for awhile and crawled into a happy Jacqueline Carey fantasy fiction coma. As delicious as that was, I’m starting to crave my non-fiction again now; I’m listening to Ariely’s Predictably Irrational (because TED sent me his follow-up book, and I can’t bear to read them out of order), and the venerable Cory Doctorow has reminded me that Lewis Hyde’s wonderful volume on creativity and gift-giving is still sitting right there next to my bed, waiting for me to remember that it exists.

Context: There were too books that grabbed my attention when I attended Seth Godin’s Linchpin Session in January: Hyde’s The Gift, and The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. The War of Art, of course, is epic. If you haven’t read it, grab a copy; it won’t take you long. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s brilliant. If my stash space for extra books wasn’t completely overflowing with Linchpin books right now, I’d be buying up copies of Pressfield, too…

At any rate.

I was staring into space yesterday morning, half zonked on “tea”. (Look, there was maybe a quarter of a shot of whisky. I promise. I was not knocking back ounce after ounce, it was a tiny bit of whisky in a mug of boiled water. It’s not even all that tasty, it’s watered-down whisky — if I wanted to have a party, I’d be at the Merlyn Welsh creme liquor I brought back from Penderyn. And I wouldn’t do it in my pajamas on a deserted Sunday morning. I’d invite you and all your closest friends. Duh.)

…Staring into space, yes, mindlessly flicking through RSS feeds to occupy my whimsical but dysfunctional Sunday morning brain… and I came across this:

Lewis “The Gift” Hyde talks Creative Commons and sharing (Boing Boing)

Great. Just great. The man already has two books out that I wanted to read (the second is Trickster Makes This World, and it looks fantastic). I put off reading The Gift for a measly seven months and he comes out with a third one, heavily overlapping Creative Commons issues and such subjects as I typically adore. Where the hell are my photoreading materials? Am I going to have to blast through these? Like I don’t have enough to do already?

And the thought process goes on, but ultimately, no, I probably won’t blast through them. They’re all going to be too good (and I doubt the formatting of those in particular would be all that easy to photoread anyway). It’s obviously time for me to get back in the game. Limber up my eyeballs. Just in time, too — because as I’ve been sorting through posessions and abjuring Marty — Man With the Strength to Carry Big Boxes of Books — to cart them away to Good Will, I’ve been realizing how much some of these books mean to me. And how lusty I feel about reading some of them.

Mmmmm, good books. I would open a bookstore… and only carry books like these. (Is that a viable plan? Who wants to go on in this with me? Speaking of books, I should probably give a way a few copies of Linchpin, while I’m thinking about it…)

Ahem.

As close to my heart as these narratives are — the ones in Linchpin, The War of Art, and indubitably The Gift though my dogear bookmarks a page at the bare outset of the second chapter — I cannot abide being kept from them by little things. The electric bill, for instance. The random distraction of telemarketers. The empty gas tank or refrigerator. The urge to bathe, or eat. Mere trifles.

And if you want to understand why, you’ll probably have to read them, too. ;}

The last moments of this morning’s dream were focused on a package of fishnet nylons. On the back was an advertisement targeted at Burning Man attendees planning to have sex on the playa in black fishnets and stripper-style ruby slippers — you know, Wizard of Oz. And the slinky body in the photograph was nude, unshaven, and kneeling on a four-poster bed with desert-dusty sheets. I thought, wow, Burning Man is sexy. And then I woke up.

While particular associates of mine are headed to that great wide festival, I am here in Austin on a comfy couch, sipping whisky tea — there is no tea, really, just whisky — and nursing my sinuses after engaging in crazed maple syrup debauchery near the end of the last week or so. It was Marty’s birthday, you see, and nothing would do but maple candy. Delicious, nutritious (!?) maple candy.

So today isn’t the diligent push I originally planned for my Sunday. I’m not particularly awake, I may not really be all that sober. What better way to spend a Sunday morning than in relaxation, speculation and… well, whatever else I can dream up? I certainly don’t need any more “tea”, but one is plenty. Breakfast is turkey and eggplant lasagne, don’t make that face, it’s amaaaaazing. You are jealous of my turkey and eggplant lasagne. You may not know it yet, but you are.

The balance between “life” and “work” is impossible to strike for some of us. That balance doesn’t exist, more often than not. “Life” and “work” aren’t necessarily all that different. But after years of refusing vacation — years, I’m not even kidding — I’m starting to look at my time and think, oooh. Better take a break. An on-purpose break, a refilling-my-reservoir break.

So yesterday I read a lot, and today… I’m just going to take today as it comes. It won’t exactly pay my rent (without a miracle), but it might heal the rough edges on my spirit. And I’m going to need it, whether the push comes today or tomorrow or next week. It pays my rent by proxy, by building me up. We all need to sleep in, now and then. Or to imbibe first thing in the morning. Or to say, To hell with the plan, because I know what I need right now.

And no matter what else is going on, what we need isn’t always to jump back on the workaholic wagon. Or ever, almost certainly. Wasn’t Johnny going on about the value of laziness in entrepreneurship? The man has a point, yo.

Where the hell is my lasagne? I’m starving.

When you spend three weeks in Wales doing a thing you’ve been planning and thinking about for… honestly… four years… you end up feeling like you’re flying through the air a lot. And not so much just because you spend a cumulative 20+ hours in jet planes and over the Atlantic ocean, but maybe a lot like flying dreams — swooping dreams. And occasionally, like my smartphone must feel every time I accidentally hurl it through the air. (That’s been happening a lot lately. Uh.)

In this case, flying through the air (figuratively, at least) makes me think transition transition transition, and wonder what I can do with that. Because I spend far too much time in my head, and in periods of moderate stress I certainly overanalyze the living shit out of whatever I’ve got my hands on. What is the nature of a transition? I abandon that one, because hell if I know. How can I use this transition in a sneaky and clever way? Ooh, that one I can sink my teeth into.

And once I’m nearing the end of the transition (or at least the most obvious bit of it), I realize that not only do I feel fantastic about using this transition to accomplish whatever I happen to desire, I am also fully aware of the fact that the transition is almost entirely out of my control. At least, in any sort of conscious, purposeful way. And that whatever is going on now, it tastes a hell of a lot like fate.

Of course, it’s not necessarily fate. And disempowering myself by saying “fate” instead of “Megan” is not really what I’m going for here. (Not a good idea, either.) But the more I dwell on the whole situation, the more “fate” sounds like “Megan”. The more I do, the more I’m it.

It feels really, really good.

So where do we go from here?

I didn’t have the luxury to ask that question when we returned from Wales on August 15th. We got home in the evening and my manic, sleep deprived brain decided that I’d better unpack. (Unpacked luggage has a long shelf life in this apartment — not that it was a conscious decision, because I guarantee you it wasn’t.) And then we slept for three months, and then we woke up August 16th and got to work on the inevitable catch-up. Three weeks in Wales is a lot of alternate dimension mojo for any workflow to contend with, I’m sure you’ll agree.

And today… today I woke up in a different way. You know that weird clarity? Where you’re almost seeing right into the future and feeling a tingle, like your Spidey-sense, telling you exactly where to look for the next moment? (Or the next zombie, if you’re Marty.) That’s what I’ve got floating around inside my head, under my skin. Going, ooh, ooh, pick me! pick me!

Yeah. Zowie!

But first things first: Wanna hear about our trip!?

Check this shit out — on SlideShare, or download the PDF right quick.

When I talk about change and growth and dynamic human potential — along with our opportunities to catalyze and reflect same — listeners seem to assume that this is my true passion.

When I talk about music, listeners seem to assume that music, truly is my one great passion.

Internet, business and design often get relegated to the edges; those must be her “day job”, people think. (Shameful!)

But it doesn’t work this way.

Indulging more than one passion at a time is challenging, for sure. It makes me feel like I have two full-time jobs. Three. Four. It’s not sustainable and although I feel drawn to attempt it every so often, it will be better when I take one big thing at a time, accompanied by a gentle stream of little things. That’s why you haven’t heard much from me in the Think Tank the last week: I’ve been in Wales. Singing.

Once upon a time, I would have been horrified at the prospect of taking time off of one thing to do another. Looking back, I can’t even really untangle the why and wherefore except to say that turning off was scary — it meant that I would drop a ball or three, and suffer for it later. These days (especially with Charlie in my corner) I have a better perspective on all of that. And I have little systems that I’ve built over time, organically, cell by cell… that allay these fears. Thank goodness, too, or I wouldn’t be able to show you these:

Each one of us is infinitely complex. I don’t have “a passion”. I don’t have “two passions”. You and I, we have current projects and past projects and future projects. We want to move towards the thing that most resonates with us, right now. But I’m not “a singer”. You’re not “a life coach”. Marty isn’t “an illustrator.” Although we are tempted to define ourselves using those labels, even when we admit that each label is surrounded by a unique lasagne of human complexity and experience, the labels give us the short end of the stick. The truth is, you may not always be an accountant or a craftswoman or an illustrator. Sometimes you will be more that thing, sometimes you will be less.

And while it is necessary to have some label for everyday use — “Hi! I’m Marty, and I do illustration work for a living!” — it is unwise to think that “the label, plus some” is what you are. It’s not true. You’re you.

And I’m me.

And these are the things I do (right now).

And that’s enough.

So Tuesday I’m watching this documentary about stupidity and they’re explaining why television is so full of stupid. The people in charge of television, you see, want to reach as many people as possible. They don’t want people to change the channel or get bored, so they do the things guaranteed to keep the MOST people watching for as long as possible. These are often stupid things, common denominator things, sex, violence, explosions… Not as much with the intellectual inquiries, asking hard questions, challenging assumptions.

We can’t do much about this, because we have little control over the television industry. Television is something only certain people have influence over, and most of us aren’t that person.

Horribly, something similar could yet happen to the internet. Parts of it aren’t so hot. Parts of it are downright dangerous. Parts of it inspire fear and uncertainty in people who aren’t used to that sort of thing.

I think this is okay.

The world isn’t really a safe place, either. There will always be bad parts of town (whatever that means where you live).

But it doesn’t really work to outlaw the bad parts of town. Sure, you can regulate certain spots. But notice what happens to highly controlled parts of town, and you’ll see a trend. Everything is pretty and pleasant, but everything looks the same. Nothing is all that challenging; a kid growing up in the classy gated development with a curfew doesn’t pick up the street smarts of a kid growing up in the thick of a poor neighborhood in a bustling city. And so you may actually prefer to live in the classy gated development, but you should think twice about wanting to inhabit a highly controlled, “nice residents only” internet.

The beginning of somebody’s control over the internet means policing it, which takes us closer to content regulation. Going further down that road means that content valued by some but not all starts to be at risk.

The intense, intelligent, experiential exploration of human sexuality native to certain corners of the web gets labeled “porn”. What if someone is offended? What if someone’s kid finds it, and then we have to be responsible for the twisted, sexually corrupt adult that child (oh, inevitably) becomes?

The bits-brilliant hackers, hats of all colors, who learn their trade in the trenches and broaden the creative spectrum of what can be done in a space like the internet start to be more and more restricted, because, well, what if something bad happens? What if they’re one of the “bad guys”? We take rights away from all people in order to superficially protect ourselves.

To say nothing of what happens when you question a prevailing system like the government, or challenge big business to maintain a little bit of human decency.

It’s a long and winding road. Yes, the internet is still a dangerous place. So is New York City, and London, and Berlin, and hundreds of thousands of other places. Their complexity, good parts and not-so-good parts, makes them beautiful — makes them challenging and organic and interesting, makes them places where we can learn amazing things. People still go to the jungle; they havent outlawed that yet. People still go to India and South America and Mexico. They ar not all deterred by the paranoia, by the assumption that if something bad might happen, something bad wikl happen. Each of these places has great value and soul for exploring. We may seek to make people safer if we can. We may try to solve problems whenever possible. But we don’t bar entry or blow these places up based on their subjective flaws. (Well, most of the time.)

We have something now in the internet that gives each of us the power to explore the world, understand more about what’s going on around us (and inside our heads). More than that, it’s the power to connect with our fellow man and make the world a better place, without endless corporate restriction and fear of business model death (BMD, right?). Are we really going to give up that power in order to have neat rows of Cape Cod houses with identical flowerbeds and white picket fences?

Are we going to give up our right to experience and self-education? Let the folks “in charge” dictate our lives like our parents did when we were six? Give up our prized, long-developed survival instincts in order to I’ve someplace sterile and safe?

Well you can, I guess. But I’m sure as hell not.

Remember my New York trip in January? I attended a wonderful Triiibes conference (the first of its kind!) and had a ton of fun with fellow Triiibes members, having dinner, exercising our brains, and attending the Linchpin Session book launch.

Now, Rex and David — two particularly brilliant Triiibesters — have shipped a video clipfest from the conference and associated events to commemorate the occasion and celebrate Seth’s birthday. While I’m sitting here floating in my own nostalgia, I thought you might enjoy a sneak peek into our amazing two days in New York City. Wanna?

Triiibes Conference and Linchpin Launch Part I (Rex Williams).
This is Part I of the Triiibes Conference in New York City in January 2010 where members gathered to connect, share ideas, have dinner with Seth Godin and attend his Linchpin Session where he launched his most significant book to date.

Triiibes Conference and Linchpin Launch Part II (Rex Williams).
This is the second half of the amazing event in New York in Jan. 2010 where Triiibe members gathered to connect with each other, share ideas, meet Seth Godin, and hear him launch Linchpin, his most significant work to date.

Wednesday night I had a terrible and beautiful dream. People were dying in complex and nightmarish ways, but one of them took his glider wings and flew, knowing it was his last opportunity to do so.

His flight was fast and desperate, waiting for the changes to his body that would end his life as he knew it. And in my dream, I shared his eyes. So while most of the dream was disturbing and upsetting…

The last minutes were a wonderland of beauty. Behind his eyes, I was soaring and diving over the ocean. I could see that world with such clarity, the rocks and soft green at the coast, the undulation of colors of the water, the towering, breathtaking cloud formations all around me in the deep blue sky. It was an alien landscape and the most astonishing natural wonder I can recall bearing witness to. I wasn’t the rainbow guy, but I could have been. I was busy flying.

Near the moment I awoke, the man with glider wings began to lose track of the horizon. At first the coast and the clouds made sense — swoop up on an air current, soar high above the water and stare intensely at the clouds, trying to memorize them, tip forward and let trajectory carry us pointed down, faster and faster, pulling up just as we neared the surface of the sea. But with each increasing level of his urgency, I lost the horizon as well and all was a churning stew of sprawling blue clouds and rushing air and crisp salty sea. 

And then… I woke up.

I don’t want to trivialize this dream, but I can’t help but draw a parallel or three between it and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (and I can’t neglect to include the beautiful blue clouds Marty and I commented on in Austin the previous evening). I haven’t read this story, but Marty and I had just watched the Swedish film based precisely on Stieg Larsson’s novel. It made me feel the same way. It had the same stark contrast of ugliness and healing — grisly in many ways, truly heart-touching in others. A lifelike balance of the very stuff life is made of.

There’s something about the right story at the right time that feels essential to my development as a person. Like my experiences in the sweat lodge, it feels as if it taps into some unconscious greater understanding of the nature of the universe and of ourselves, who we are, what we’re for. I don’t know yet what that is exactly.

Unless the experience itself is what we’re for. 

Maybe it’s as simple as that. 

I want to talk about poetry and story and the work you are trying to do in the world.

I spent twenty years in the non-profit world, and I’m here to tell you — good people, terrible storytellers.

Here you have a whole sector of humanity dedicating their lives to improving the world. And while some tell their stories brilliantly, what do so many still put in their newsletters?

Guys in suits holding giant checks. Wish lists of the most common and uninteresting items. Golf tournaments.

The very best piece of advice I ever read about communications was this: Don’t get between your audience and the issue they care about.

In other words: It’s not about you. If your people care about saving abandoned cats, don’t send them a newsletter about your damn golf tournament. (And, really, what does a golf tournament have to do with what you do, anyway?)

It’s not about you. And that’s true whether you run a non-profit or a coffeeshop or an ad agency.

But it is about your vision.

“The very least you can do in your life,” writes Barbara Kingsolver, “is to figure out what you hope for.”

What do you hope for? To meet your cash flow projections? Or to change the fucking world? And if you really want to change the world, why are your communications materials — your web site and slide presentations and videos — so often unbearably dull and lifeless?

Where’s your passion?

Simon Sinek, in a pretty great TEDx talk, asks his audience to think about the importance of the why in how we talk about our work. People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.

“And by the way…” he says. “Martin Luther King gave the ‘I have a dream’ speech, not the ‘I have a plan’ speech.”

That’s the passion. The poetry. That’s the thing that gets you up out of bed every day, and it ought to be crystal clear in everything, everything, you put your name on.

Really, I want to believe in what you do. I am looking for people who are itching to make the world better. So why are you showing me another boring PowerPoint deck? Why do I stop watching your very expensive video before it’s halfway done?

Tell me your story with authenticity and I will care. Shoot it on an iPhone if you need to. It’s not about spending money.

David Whyte wrote a poem called “Loaves and Fishes.” In it, he says this: People are hungry. One good word is bread for a thousand.

That one good word is all about passion — and you can feed them.

I live in the bad part of town. I try to be charitable by calling it the “not great” part of town, instead, because what the hell do I know about the bad part of town or how bad it needs to be in order to get that label?

Maybe it’s bad. Maybe it’s “not great”. Maybe it’s whatever it is. The people with a little bit of money push out the people with less money in order to feel better about themselves — maybe because the people with a little more money pushed them out a long time ago.

When I go for my morning run, I see people who look poor and tired. Their clothes aren’t fashionable. Their faces look blank, turned off. There have definitely been a few junkies. Sometimes there’s a man and a woman, and the woman looks tired and half-dressed, and the man is counting cash. They’re always really skinny — sometimes scary skinny. Sometimes I see other people out running or walking for exercise, but not many.

At first I avoided eye contact with anyone, thinking about my neighborhood’s danger potential and wondering if I should carry a taser or something. Then I decided that was exactly the attitude that created the “bad parts of town” in the first place — and a bit retarded, to boot. I started keeping my head up while I was running. I treated my neighborhood like any neighborhood. I opened up my attitude, and started to nod or wave and say good morning to the people I passed. (Well, except for the ones counting money. If I were counting money, I wouldn’t want some random person to run by and make me lose count. Maybe that’s my reason… maybe it’s not.)

Most of the people I smile at smile back. Many of them say hello or ask how I am out of habit, and then I’ve run past and that brief interaction is over. But it’s on my mind all the time. The elderly Mexican man who hauls branches from yard to yard a few streets over from me is a real person, even if he’s poor and badly dressed with a grim face and missing teeth. I’m starting to be ashamed when I don’t look people in the eye, no matter who they are. Where did this habit come from? It puts up walls we don’t need.

You’ve probably guessed; no, I don’t know where I’m going with this. But I don’t think it matters. It is going somewhere.

Okay, we’ve been having WAY too much fun around here… can you tell?

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been fiddling with some bona fide Creative Team in a Box propaganda. It’s a PDF, it’s HI-larious, and it’s mostly Marty’s fault. He wrote the initial draft. If anything totally offends you, talk to him. (Emails like that make his day…)

If you’d like to download the PDF, click here and you can save it to your computer or take a look at the file on Slideshare here. Discuss, exclaim, upload & share as the whim seizes you — we hope you’re getting as much of a kick out of this as we are!