Gratitude From My Sick Bed

What started as a 3-day cold has given way to bronchitis, and perhaps a mocking hint of conjunctivitis yet to be... Each day, I test myself to see if I can taste more, or better, than the day before. A wave of symptoms seems to subside and a new one takes its place. And yet, I can't help but feel immensely grateful...

• It could be worse! But it isn't. I am grateful.
• This illness hit me during a 10-day stretch between work travel. The number of people affected is minimized. I am grateful.
• I haven't exercised in over a week, and I can tell my overall muscle tone is softer. But my deep inner abs? Strong as ever, and sore, thanks to two nights of coughing through the night! Who knew? I am grateful.
• I have successfully worked from bed for 3 days now, which means short trips to the kitchen, a few times a day, to stock up on snacks and water and throat lozenges. I work in short spurts, and read or surf FB and IG too much in between. Every day, I've been able to take a short nap when I feel tired. I am grateful.
• I am able to work from home. So many aren't. I am grateful.
• My family is picking up the slack. Laundry and dishes are getting done without me. Even the dog took a few shifts snuggling, catching up on last weekend's episodes of Girls and The Walking Dead with me. I am grateful.
• If I talk for more than a few minutes at a time, I devolve into a coughing fit. It has made me a better editor of my speech -- only saying what is absolutely necessary, nothing more. I am grateful.

Hope you've successfully avoided the cooties! I thought when March began that I didn't need to be as diligent about my Vitamin C AND I WAS WRONG! How humbling to be wrong. Lessons in humility are good. I am grateful.

The Art Of Explanation by Lee LeFever

As a public speaker / facilitator / instructor, I help people make positive change for their businesses and lives, and at the foundation of each presentation should always be an explanation (why, how, etc.). Marketers and public relations people persuade the public to buy their product or candidate, and underneath that message is hopefully a clear explanation. Anytime we walk into a meeting to share an idea, we can focus on the exciting application of the idea without giving an adequate explanation of the idea itself. In other words, most of us need help doing a better job of explaining. And that's where The Art Of Explanation by Lee LeFever steps in.

LeFever understands that there is a gap, which we can easily underestimate, between our specialized (and often highly technical) knowledge of our subject, and our audience's grasp. This "curse of knowledge" causes us to spend hours on a presentation, only to deliver it to a disconnected audience. He shares a few models and templates for constructing better explanations, which I found so helpful in articulating my own "elevator pitch" and "video script."

Want to see what I came up with after applying the template? Here are three versions of "what I do for a living":

• Twitter description (140 characters or less):
  I help busy professionals present like professional speakers.
   
• Elevator pitch (30-60 seconds long):
  The typical professional gives presentations often enough to develop crippling anxiety, but not often enough to present well every time. I help these professionals learn and practice a handful of fundamental skills to nail every presentation with clarity and confidence. Because we present casually through everyday interaction, these same presentation skills improve all verbal communication.
   
• Video script (3 minutes max):
  Meet Jane. She is a respected engineer who is asked, about twice a year, to accompany her firm's sales team to client presentations as a technical expert.
  
  Jane, who is friendly and approachable but shy, spends most days with her small team of engineers. She feels anxious about these client presentations because she is working with clients she’s never met before, and because so much time elapses between presentations that each one feels unfamiliar and risky.
  
  Jane tells a friend about her upcoming presentation, and her friend recommends a public speaking coach. Jane thinks coaches are just for athletes, or high-powered executives, but she calls anyway. The public speaking coach shows Jane that just a handful of skills underpin every successful presentation. Over several sessions, Jane learns the models and practices these skills until she feels prepared, confident, and even excited for her next client presentation!
  
  As an unexpected bonus, Jane starts to see her everyday interactions with her small engineering team differently. She applies the public speaking models and skills to informal interactions and finds that she communicates more clearly, and gets better results.
  
  Hooray for Jane!

If you have an important message to craft, and you'd like to explore ways to do it better, pick up this book and give it a try. I've already shared one of the templates with a small group of cohorts who are using it to improve how they communicate about their small businesses.

Here's my review of The Art Of Explanation by Lee LeFever, on GoodReads.

Conference Kit

My primary client is Keller Williams Realty, and their annual convention, called the Keller Williams Family Reunion, happens every February. This year I'll attend my 16th, and I've got my "conference essentials kit" down pat:

• It's always a good idea to bring lots of business cards, but hopefully yours, if they have a picture of you at all, have a more recent photo than one taken 11 years ago. (I just got new photos done a couple weeks ago, but I'll share more on that later.)
• I don't understand why, but folks find all kinds of reasons to justify not investing $10-25 on a good portable phone battery charger. It's a great tool to have, especially if you're also taking notes and photos of presentation slides on your phone.
• The outlet splitter could make you the most popular person in a breakout session room -- I know from first-hand experience.
• Most convention centers have big community water bottles, and flimsy plastic cups. Don't bother with them. Bring your own empty water bottle and fill up as you need to. Just test beforehand to make sure the bottle you bring has a tight seal. (Ask me how I know...)

I don't leave for another couple of days, so tell me -- am I missing anything? ;)

Mojo, Interrupted

Hey, guess how long it took me to sew this simple tote bag? THREE WEEKS!

Right after the new year, I bought an acrylic hexagon template from Stitch Lab. Using some random scraps from past quilting projects, I managed to eke out eight hexagons via English paper piecing, and sewed them in a honeycomb pattern. I pulled out all the leftover natural canvas in my sewing room and found a big square I could use as a pocket; a long, narrow rectangle I could use for straps; and about a yard of uncut canvas for the body. I love it when I don't have a plan and everything comes together anyway!

But about that plan... later that day, I got called for a last-minute work trip. It took me about 48 hours to work out the logistics and get packed.

The day I was to leave on the work trip, I decided to stitch the hexagons to the pocket. With project mojo flowing at an all-time high, I had to STOP this sewing project to get on the road. It was likely to be at least a week before I'd be home and get the sewing mojo flowing again.

I sewed the hexagons to the pocket on January 10. I finished the bag today, February 1. Three weeks!!! Three weeks to get my mojo flowing again for about an hour of solid sewing. I don't like these statistics. I was tempted to start a new sewing project before I'd finished the hexagon tote! Insane. One thing that seems to help me pick up a project where I left off is if I make all the little decisions ahead of time. In this case, I knew I'd make the straps instead of using cotton webbing, which seems silly but could have really held me up. Another thing that got me to the finish line was deciding I didn't want ONE MORE unfinished project laying around my sewing room.

It feels great to have completed this. I know I'll use a versatile, lightweight, big tote like this a lot. But I have so many other things I want to sew this year, and I can't get them all done with a 3-weeks-of-downtime-to-one-hour-of-sewing ratio!

How will I ever get my sewing mojo in line with the reality of my life???

Sometimes our dog is very cat-like, walking into the frames of photos when his help isn't needed, and other times unwilling to get in a photo when you want him.

Modern Love Podcast

My "learning style," if you believe in those, is primarily visual. Which makes podcasts, heaven for auditory learners, really tough for me. I fall asleep! I tune out! It can be a mess. 

I've been trying out different types of podcasts, at different times of the day, to see what sticks. At the moment, listening to a short podcast during my morning writing time has worked well, and when I saw that The New York Times' Modern Love column was getting its own podcast, I was elated. Modern Love has been proof of the power of a well-crafted essay, for all the naysayers who criticize essays for gratuitous navel-gazing. I've been challenged to think differently after reading some of these essays.

The essay featured during this week's podcast, called "Open Adoption: Not So Simple Math," written by Amy Seek, is poignant, and even more powerful as read by the actor Sarah Paulson.

Your Weekly Funny: Life Hack Overload

I read this a few weeks ago, when I felt bombarded by all the NEW YEAR LIFE HACK posts being shared on the social media circuits, and I felt understood and vindicated:

Sara Kloek's "95 Things I Should Do Every Day According To The Internet."

Enjoy!

On Goal Setting: Results vs. Process

I had a daily writing goal in 2015, and I hit it! I wrote 365 days last year. But this is my first post in three months, so clearly I had no blogging goal, haha. Maybe I need one! (Note to self…)

Late last year, I had a couple of epiphanies about goals. The first is that I’d become a one-year goal setting and goal achieving ninja. I’d successfully set and hit one-year goals for several years. BUT I was achieving a succession of one-year goals without any long-term plan. My friend Colette suggested a book called Five: Where Will You Be Five Years From Today? I completed all the exercises over three morning writing sessions and walked away with a concrete vision of what I want to see in five years. Big wake up call: my son will be in his final year of secondary school in five years. Better be sure I’m raising the man I want to see in 2021!

The second epiphany is that I’m in a good place overall, both personally and professionally, and it didn’t happen overnight. This has become a bit of an obsession. I traced back healthy eating, for instance. I am not claiming to be the cleanest eater in the world, but I bet I’m doing pretty good compared to the average American. It began in 2002, when I got pregnant. It was the first time in my life I remember questioning what I ate, considering that my personal nutritional choices would also affect the baby growing inside me. I cut out all caffeine during my pregnancy, and began eating organic produce. After my son was born and began eating solid foods, I bought organic for him and conventional for my husband and me, and asked myself one day, “Why would you want only the best for him, but not for yourself?” I am sure we spend far more than most 3-person households on food, and it’s about quality, not quantity. We forgo other luxuries because food quality is a high priority for us.

I’m happy we have healthy eating habits, and each year since 2002, we’ve made some adjustments that at the time didn’t seem major, but as an accumulation of habits, lead to really positive outcomes.

One memorable story I've heard about goal setting was from a teacher who insisted that a 25-pound weight loss goal he’d set in January, and had not happened yet by December 1 of that year, would not have happened had he not written it down. After Thanksgiving, he buckled down, disciplined himself for the following month, worked out like a fiend, and by December 31 he’d hit his goal.

Yay for him, but what I remember most is that the next year that weight came back! To my knowledge, the number on his scale has continued to go up and down over the years, because he has always focused solely on the result goal, and not on a process goal.

So I’ve been looking at goal setting very differently. Instead of focusing on an just an achievement, I’m mostly focusing on behaviors, habits, and rituals that can lead to an outcome I want.

Now that I’ve written that, it seems silly and self-explanatory. But business people can get carried away with end results ("Just bullet point it for me!"), totally ignoring the means. And the means are what lifestyle, and quality of life, are all about.

How are your 2016 goals coming along? Are you more of an end result goal setter, or a process goal setter, or both? 

Weekly Notes #4

• After last week's shooting at Umpqua Community College, this teacher wrote about the unbearable weight we put on too many people's shoulders when we refuse to engage in productive conversations about a really tough, emotional topic like gun control.
• The thought of spending hundreds of dollars on custom jeans is outrageous to me. But maybe it isn't just the jeans you're paying for -- it's the total experience.
• The New Yorker describes Sue Rahr's strategy called LEED, "listening and explaining with equity and dignity." sounds like an amazing policing strategy, and a really effective life strategy.
• Living wage? CNN Money profiles a month of earning and spending for a single working mom, earning minimum wage. It's reality and it's no good.
• After all this heavy stuff, I've got to share this excerpt from an interview of Karl Lagerfeld in British Vogue. Always reliable for a meme-ready quote, he says, "I am all fake but not remade."

The 10% Rule

I instituted "The 10% Rule" this year as a personal guideline for my reading: If I'm 10% into a book, and I don't like it, let it go.

At the end of last year, I saw that I'd finished and reviewed quite a few books that I didn't like! And most of the time, I had an inkling I wouldn't like these books early on. I just rationalized I should give each book more time to develop... so I'd keep reading... and before I knew it, I'd be halfway into the book. And then I'd feel I'd invested too much time to abandon it. Some friends and family members pointed out, after reading those reviews I'd written on Goodreads, that they don't typically finish ANY books they don't like.

What a novel idea!

So I tested my theory late last year. Could I tell by 10% completion whether I'd like a book or not? And the answer was YES. Thus, The 10% Rule.

I invoked it last week, for The Rosie Effect. Sorry to say that 38 pages in, this sequel had none of the magic of The Rosie Project. And I got to jump on Modern Romance, by Aziz Ansari, a book club pick from September that came from the library after that meeting was long over. LOL More on that one later...

Careers Are Wonderful, BUT...

[I don't even know if you can see that sweet little pooch's snout under the fence. He's our buddy -- we've never met him except as he cries a little, sticking his cute nose at us, hoping we can all fit under the fence to play with him.]

Weekly Notes #3

• I liked True Detective, Season One, and wasn't so sure about Season Two. Wired thinks that the movie Sicario is what True Detective, Season Two, should have been.
• I really like the new iOS9 font, San Francisco. This is what makes it an improvement over the Helvetica we all got so used to.
• Kellogg's spent $32 million last year just advertising Pop Tarts. The Atlantic says food companies shill sugar like it's nobody's business. (Except theirs, obvz.)
• I've mused for years about the art of conversation in the age of digital (non face-to-face) communication. Here's a reasonable, non-hysterical perspective, a few years in, from The NYT.

Weekly Notes #2

Blah blah blah:

• Crisis Text Line puts technology to undeniably good use, helping teens in crisis.
• Thought you could empathize with a refugee if you haven't been one? Think again (adjust volume).
• I've made solid friendships over the years with people I met through my first sewing blog, and eventually met in real life. That IRL time counts for a lot.
• I never thought twice about sending email in the evenings and on weekends, but a good friend told me once that it can really stress people out. So I started using SendLater for Mac, and now I never worry about ruining anyone's personal time (although they shouldn't be checking work email on their personal time anyway, but I'll save that for another post).
• Seven types of vegan.

Expectations

Yesterday, I finished reading the novel, Sand Omnibus, by Hugh Howey. One of his previous novels, Wool Omnibus, was my favorite book last year. But then I read the other two books in that trilogy, which didn't measure up at all IMO, and felt I'd appropriately lowered my expectations around Sand. 

I was still disappointed.

Which got me thinking about expectations. I don't usually read reviews before watching a movie. If the trailer or even the premise look promising, I'll gladly watch without finding out more. I definitely don't read reviews of books before I read the books themselves, although if my reading queue is full, I might scan star ratings at Goodreads and Amazon to prioritize. 

It's probably common practice to read a book you love, and then get your hands on everything else the author has written. But I'm finding that, for me, this can create expectations and invite comparisons to the author's other work that are difficult for me to leave at the front door.

Do you ever experience this? Any advice for me on how to let go of my (perhaps) unreasonable expectations?

[In case you're interested, here is my review of Wool Omnibus, and my review of Sand Omnibus.]

Simplicity 1870 + 1871

It's been a while since I posted a sewing project, and with a backlog of projects to share, I'll combine these outfits into one post. Each of them uses the top from Simplicity 1870 and the skirt from Simplicity 1871.

The first outfit is made from the fabric left over from a dress I made for my sweet friend, Ashley. (I'm just realizing I never blogged Ashley's dress, which I made in July! Lots to catch up on.) It's a pink variegated stripe, a poly-lycra blend that is soooo soft and drapey. I didn't do a petite adjustment on the top or bottom, but I will probably crop it more on top so it looks less like I can't measure, and more like you're supposed to see a slice of skin.

The second outfit was my birthday dress! This time, I used a more structured, B&W striped, poly-lycra knit from Michael Levine Loft, and I attached the top and bottom. But I cut away a triangle of fabric on the skirt, from the side seams to the waist, before attaching them. I've been loving the cutouts on clothes all over the dang place, and the curviest part of my torso is the lower waist, so that's how I decided to make the cutouts there. When I wear the dress, it feels like I'm showing lots of skin. But when I see the photos, it looks very demure. Maybe I will end up wearing it again, after all.

The whole process of taking photos for the blog / pattern review cracks me up. My husband is my primary photographer, and we really have been trying to create more of a "vibe" so that we get better shots. Usually, he is frustrated and I am frowning. This particular day, we photographed three outfits, when we were both searing under a hot sun. He had me in the oddest-feeling poses, arms one way, hands another, body facing yet another direction, instructing me to look directly into the sun and smile. We had some fun this time around, laughing at the whole process, but I know there must be an easier way. Don't be surprised if you see props, and masks, and hats, and other hijinks and swag and silliness in future sewing project photos.

For you sewing peeps, here is my review of the S1070 top. And here's my review of the S1071 skirt.

Craft vs. Art

In 2010, I participated in an Austin Fashion week runway show, showcasing recycled clothing. About 25 designers shared one to four pieces each, every garment made from recycled materials. I’d been sewing not quite four years, but had spent much of that time exploring the limits and themes of discarded clothing -- turning something unwanted into something desirable.

By runway day, I'd completed two garments: one followed a familiar dress silhouette and construction, made of black denim, and incorporated about seven zippers; the other, sewn from khaki trousers, was completely improvised, from beginning to end, covered in cargo pockets.

The black denim dress was simple to put together, as I'd made similar dresses from patterns for years. This gave me a chance to spend time figuring out where and how I would attach the zippers for most visual appeal.

The khaki dress was a discovery all along the way. When I cut the legs off the first pair of khakis, I realized that if I turned it upside down, what was originally the waistband would make a perfect hem to the skirt for a dress. And those pleats on the front, hideous as they might look as khakis, created a perfect fullness as a skirt. Cut, pin, sew. Eyeball. Cut, pin, sew. After a very different process, my second dress dress was done.

After fittings and styling, it was runway day. (BTW I finally understood a tiny bit of how contestants on Project Runway must feel — a simple and potent combination of pride, exhaustion, and terror!)

The moment the black denim dress came down the runway, I felt a surge of pride I could sum in one sentiment: "I made that!” The model walked with her left hand on her hip, as we’d agreed, to highlight those perfect, parallel rows of recycled zippers. I remember thinking how lucky I'd been to be so familiar with that dress shape, so that I could focus on this set of details. The polite applause validated my sense of handcraft and attention to finishing.

Next, the khaki dress came down the runway. All I heard was silence. In a moment of panic, I looked to make sure my model didn’t have a wardrobe malfunction. Nope. Blood rushed to my face. Why wasn’t anyone making noise? I noticed several people pointing to my dress, and appearing to hold their breath. They had just figured out that the bottom of the skirt was the waistband, and the rounded tulip shape was made from the pleated front of the original khakis. Finally, murmurs of recognition, followed by vigorous applause. 

It wasn’t until I saw this quote that I thought of my runway experience, and the lesson I learned about craft vs. art. Craft is good and respectable. It requires a sense of patience and discipline, and the proverbial devil really is in the details. People relate to the care and love that goes into craft.

But art. Art is visceral, in my experience, both as a creator and as a receiver. It is more forgiving of technique, more tolerant of experimentation. It celebrates intuition and passion. It can bring insight, challenge what you think you see, and take your breath away.

Can one piece encompass both art and craft? Yes. But it was good for me to experience that there is a difference.

Here's a link to a few casual shots we took before the show, but I relied on the pro photog to take shots on the runway... and he did... and now I have no idea where that album is.

"Leap" by Brian Doyle

Today marks the 14th anniversary of 9/11. I read a beautiful essay this week, written by Brian Doyle, who was not at the twin towers, who also watched from afar, feeling powerless, struggling to make sense. Here he is, reading his short essay, "Leap."