This one went much smoother than the last video of me speaking.

BIG thanks to Claire and Pete for inviting me to present.  And special thanks to Dietz Media for making a video of me speaking that I finally love.

If you are looking for a speaker for your event, talk to me.

But it was Mother’s Day.

So, instead you get a picture of Aiden and I from Easter.

I hope everyone had as good a Mother’s Day as I did.

Now, go watch this. (client)

I started watching her after my friend Mariah went to her b-school and came back with all of these stories about how awesome and amazing and great she was.

As with everything that everyone loves I have been skeptical.

I am always skeptical.

You found the best product in the world? The cure for world peace? Pshaw. Yeah. Sure.

In fact, most of the time I don’t even TRY whatever they are telling me is amazing and wonderful. I just assume it will be terrible and don’t even need to try it because everyone loves terrible things and it can’t possibly work how they say it will work.

The other night I got an email about a new program that Marie Forleo was launching and a link to some videos she had created about her business. I then stayed up until mid-night watching all of the videos because we all have hobbies and watching videos about business is mine.

In true entrepreneur fashion, I spent this morning trying to use Facebook to crowdsource creative ideas on how I could raise $2,000 to take the online program she just launched. I am a big believer in investing in education. I am such a big believer in this that I very recently invested $55,000 in a Philosophy degree. Do you know how useful my in-depth knowledge of The Cave is? Very.

My Facebook friends had  awesome  terrible strange plenty of ideas.

The winning one was selling stuff on e-bay which made me think about the fact that I could totally SELL STUFF online. Except, noone wants my stuff because  few things in this house have both survived Aiden’s sticky hands AND his curiosity.

So I decided to turn my blog into my own personal ebay and sell my mind which has somehow survived Aiden’s sticky hands.

What can you buy?

An Hour-long Private Brainstorm-$250

I am offering five people the chance to pick my brain for a one hour phone or skype session.

We can talk about how to take your offline business online, we can talk about how to start a blog, we talk about how you can make money blogging ,we can talk about how to create a media kit, or how to pitch national media, or land a book agent. Or whatever your heart desires. My brain is yours for one hour.

But Cassie, why would I spend $250 for an hour of your brain power? Because I know that if you spend an hour on the phone with me you will leave with at least one idea that can generate $500 in profit. See? It’s like I am giving you $250 to talk to me.

As an added bonus,  you will receive a copy of the e-book “Tall Order! Seven Master Strategies to Organize Your Life and Double Your Success In Half the Time.” a book from my brilliant and successful coach Honoree. 

Pay-What-You-Can-Hour-long Live Q&A:

I am hosting an hour-long live Q&A next Thursday, May 17th from 6:00-7:00 central time. You can ask me questions about blogging, business, social media and anything else that you would like my insight on. You can donate any amount from $20 to $20,000  to join. I will send you information to access the live session once you register.

On top of that, I will be sharing my whole b-school journey in my brand spankin new newsletter. 

What happens if I raise more than $2,000?

I will donate anything I raise over $2,000 to Hope Runs, a non-profit NGO working in Kenya and Tanzania, using athletics, education, and social entrepreneurship to empower AIDS orphans.

Questions?

So much stuff that this blog post is going to be a list of things I want you to know right now.

There will be no lengthy prose.

There will be no dramatically crafted words.

There might not even be beautiful pictures.

Just a list.

Here is goes.

If you are in the Chicago area, I will be speaking here.  I will be talking about Facebook and how it changes your identity. I will be gettin all Philosophical up in this joint. Come see me?

If you are in the Quad City area, I will be speaking here. I am talking about Social Media for Small Business…well kind of. I love speaking at local events and I am especially excited to be part of this one.

Many of you aren’t in the Chicago or Quad City area and I thought you might be a little sad you can’t hear me speak as well. SO, Jessica and I are hosting a live e-course on the business of blogging. The first half will teach you everything you need to know about working with brands. The second half will be a hands on workshop in which you will create a full sponsorship deck. You can sign up here and learn more about it here.

I wrote a whole bunch of stuff over at She Posts last week.

I talked about an amazing project that one of my favorite friends just launched. If you are looking for a Mother’s Day idea, here is is.   I also wrote about the Digital Family Summit, the first blogging conference for teens and tweens. Fun, right?

I am going to LA this weekend to hang out with Jessica and attend the Lucky Fabb conference.

I am also renting a car for the first time ever.

Big steps my friends, big steps.

Go check out the most adorable pregnant friend of mine you’ve ever seen and her new site.

And then read this.

What have you been up to?

I have since decided that was one of the best decisions that I ever made.

Every morning I open my Google reader and take a peek into the lives of some of my favorite writers, many of them fellow mothers living across the country with their own very different family lives. They share their struggles and questions and troubles and there is a sense of community in this mom blogging space that I haven’t witnessed in other online spaces.

This morning one of my dear blogging friends published an e-book of curated letters from mothers across the country. The story of how this e-book came about is inspiring and amazing and I wrote about it over on She Posts today, go check it out. 

One day at a time, I suppose.

And then I am at the bar surrounded by people who have surrounded me my whole life and they are rambling about politics and work/life balance and if I had the energy I would tell them how much I disagreed with everything they were saying.

I would tell them that they were wrong.

But it is almost midnight and my mind is running on empty. Or maybe it is because I have had enough beers to not care about how wrong they are.

You can’t change everyone, I suppose.

I catch myself in the mirror and I am surprised at the ghostly color of my skin. I notice a few small lines running down my chest that will one day turn into wrinkles that I will think about getting botoxed. Lines from the years I laid in tanning beds avoiding the color reflecting back at me. But, friends get cancer and shit gets real and tanning beds begin to seem like a wacky science experiment and you start to wonder in what universe they seemed like a good idea.

And I wonder what other things I will cast aside and look back and laugh about. The childish things I will do now, when I can still get away with childish things and where that line is when you have to cast away your glitter tops and drunken dancing for business suits and cars that aren’t lime green.

And I wonder if I will miss that line entirely and be the crazy aunt in the corner with her sequins top and over processed blonde hair, and I think I might be ok with that.

Ok with never growing up.

Ok with staying childish and keeping sparkly gold glitter glue and Dr. Seuss greeting cards in the drawers of my desk.

We shouldn’t take care of the earth JUST because we think the world might end. We should just take care of the earth because we should just take care of the earth.  You know the old saying..love your neighbor as yourself even if they aren’t going to murder if you if you don’t love them as yourself…and all that jazz…

Within this argument I explained that I also don’t care about Global Warming because humanity is going to destroy itself long before anything else destroys us. It was in this part of the conversation that they asked me if I read nothing but conspiracy theories.

So? I digress.

I just had to google what “I digress” means because I had no idea and then I realized that it doesn’t really make sense in the way that I just used it.

I digress.

Over the last few weeks I have noticed people using it in meetings at increasingly high speeds. Someone will get off topics and at some point will say “I digress” and we go back to our original topic. I made note that this was a great way to change the subject because I am constantly getting off track and then doing this awkward stuttering thing to move us back on schedule.

So my new thing? I digress.

Now…back to the topic of Global Warming and summer and WHY DIDN’T WINTER EXSIST THIS YEAR….

I live in a part of the world that is defined by its seasons. You can measure the time of year by the chill in the air and the height of the corn. You can watch summer slowly sprout up and grow until it is towering over you.

You can see summer be torn away by the blades of a combine and turn brown with the fall and one day you look over and summer is covered in a foot of snow and you can’t feel your toes.

But this year that didn’t happen and as much as I hate snow my soul was screaming “THIS AIN’T RIGHT.”

I was told that this probably wasn’t global warming and we haven’t been measuring the weather for enough years to understand our earth.

As if that isn’t mind blowingly scary.

It is my life minus all of the real stuff.

The moment you talk to me in real life you can probably feel the lack of real this blog brings, or maybe you can’t and I am being neurotic.

Writing here is hard. Because I don’t know who is reading this. Because I can’t control who is reading this and that lack of control scares me.

I went to a session at Blissdom and the writer told us we should call ourselves writers. So, I started doing that. And he handed out a worksheet and told us to make a list of the things we would write about if we could write about anything. I didn’t write a single thing on that list because I had been making that list in my mind for the past three years and still standing there with a pen and a private piece of paper I couldn’t write the words.

I came home from Blissdom and Aiden turned six. I tried to write a blog post about it a million times but each time the blog post mostly just said “WHERE DID MY BABY GO” and that isn’t interesting so I didn’t publish them.

You’re welcome.

I still remember being six years old. My mom took me to my neighbors house for a sleepover and she told me that her and my dad were getting divorced. I was relieved but pretended to cry because that is what six year olds are supposed to do when their parents tell them they are getting a divorce. I buried my head into the pillow and squeezed my eyes until it looked like I had been crying.

My parents fought a lot, I think I knew the divorce was coming before they did.

That year my dad drove his Harley more and moved into the garage of a woman he met somewhere. I missed most of the details. But he would take me to drive go-carts and my mom would take me to Chuckee Cheeses every. single. weekend.

They would offer me happy meals at McDonalds if I told them I was happy which of course I was happy because I was six and go-carts and Chuckee Cheeses are the keys to happiness when  you are six.

But now I have a six-year-old and I can’t wrap my head around the idea that I have a child that is the age I still feel inside.

He brought home a harmonica he got for his birthday and told me that he would play it if I promised not to clap at the end because clapping made him embarrassed. I promised not to clap and then realized how much me and this little boy have in common.

This past month has been really hard for me which sucks because so many good things have been happening. I am going to see Oprah, I  got a new car, I have a house and a healthy child and a job I love and have become a person I never imagined becoming (in a good way).

So the fact that things have been hard is really dumb.

I kept trying to write about my feelings in elegant blog posts with vague references to things in metaphorical ways but each time they were diluted and then deleted, because I have an image and a brand and a life where people judge you based on how you think and dress and write and talk.

So, when the going gets tough I hide out.

That is where I have been for the past month. Crossing off my to-do list, wading through car pool, playing more connect four than one should play and distracting myself from writing, from thinking, from dealing with all of this STUFF.

Alas, I am back and trying to figure out what to do with this here blog.

I found this on Raising Cool Kids. A site I have become completely obsessed with.

After Claire published a list of the books she read in 2011 I started thinking about how much I would like to read more.

Everyday I read a minimum of twenty blogs not including the countless articles that are emailed to me or found on Twitter or Facebook.

Still, I really would like to read more books. I want to prove that Facebook has not killed my attention span for good.

I went on Amazon and ordered a bunch of new books to dive into and then I stole about ten books from a good friend and I was on my way to becoming the best book reader ever.

Actually, I was just on my way to collecting 100 books I might read…someday..

One night I sat down and tried to estimate how many pages I would need to read everyday to finish a book in two-weeks. Finishing an entire book in two-weeks seemed like a do-able challenge. I then realized that if I read one book every two-weeks I would only read twenty-four books in the next year.

It then occurred to me how much Claire must REALLY love books.

It also made me wonder if I was friends with super woman.

So my new goal is to read twenty-four books this year. (baby steps)

Here are the two books I read in end of January/early February-ish:

Minor Characters

Last year I read “On the Road” and was disappointed at how un-impressed I was with the book. I couldn’t figure out why Jack kept running across the country and why he liked sandwiches so much and why any of these girls would speak to someone like that. Minor Characters was written by Joyce Johnson who was with/kind of dating Jack when he became famous. I had so much in common with Joyce Johnson and I started to understand the madness of Jack and why everyone was so crazy about him.

A couple of my favorite parts: 

“I’ve had a lifelong reluctance to reenter places I’ve left, a resistance to anniversaries, family holidays, visits to graves or to offices I used to work in. My adult life has been one of discontinuities. To pass a house where I once lived is to feel a magnet pull upon my innards–I feel I could open the door, climb up the steps, take the key out of my pocket, walk into rooms just as they looked before moving day.”

“My real life was something they would never know, as I would never quite know theirs, yet they continued to love the child I’d been. For that child, they’d always be there. It seemed we were bound to each other for good–incompletely, imperfectly, our painful love as unspoken as all of the other truths we’d never bring into the light.”

Overall review: I give this book 3 thumbs up. It was a great story but some parts were a little drawn out. I am pretty sure I just stuck with it because I had convinced myself that I was Joyce Johnson.

Out of the Girls’ Room and into the Night

I never really understood the art of short story. I really like memoirs and novels and long drawn out stories and always felt like short stories would be a rendition of Chicken Soup for the Soul. This book was AMAZING. It was this collection of short stories all based around universally simple experiences that are really emotional. I promise you will love it, whether you have a heart made of stone or are known to tear up at the Hallmark commercials.

“I think there are two different kinds of people: those whose natural state is alone, and those for whom solitude is like swimming underwater: you can only do it for so long before you simply  have to come up for air. I fall into the latter group, not by choice but by the same virtue that I am a human being and not a fish.”

Overall Review: Why are you still reading this? Go buy the book now.