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.

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.

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.

I have a box in my house filled with those stories, those moments, those secrets. I have never been able to bring myself to read those moments.

To go back.

To re-live that time.

I have spent the past year and a half trying to figure out how to write a book on the project that I started so long ago. I felt like I needed to weave my stories into your stories and make some cohesive message. So I pushed myself to write about things I didn’t want to write about. To share parts of my life that you won’t find in the archives of this blog regardless of how deep you dig.

I hired a writing coach and I sent these pages over to her. She read the proposal and then she read my blog and she gave me some insight that changed everything.
When she read my blog she found this young single mom living in the middle of nowhere who had it “going on” working for a PR agency in New York When she read my proposal my voice didn’t match who I was online.

My voice seemed forced.

It seemed hesitant.

I have always felt guilty for not sharing my whole life on this blog. In a world where transparency is the key to life I am about as transparent as a brick wall. I would try and write the stories I felt I needed to share, the stories the world might need to hear, the stories that would prove once and for all that I wasn’t the girl you thought I was.

I have been walking around thinking that I wasn’t the girl you thought I was.
Waiting for the moment when you pulled the curtains open to reveal that I was simply an actor playing the part without a single notion that I actually knew what I was doing.
The thing is, I DO know what I am doing. And just because I haven’t always known and there are things that I don’t share in this online space, that doesn’t mean I am hiding.

In the past three years my life has changed dramatically. I have achieved things I never imagined achieving and I have been trying to figure out how to deal with it. How do I make sense of all of this good when things were so bad for so long?
I can make sense out of it now because the people we used to be don’t own the people we are.

The night after we pulled his tooth out I heard him crying in his bed. When I asked him what was wrong his tears turned into a full on sob.

“I just want my tooth back in my mouth. I just want everything to go back to normal.”

It took all the strength in the world not to say “me too” and curl up with him and cry.

Things move too fast.

I have been thinking about going back to school. Actually, I have never stopped thinking about going back to school but I think I found a program I might actually want to do. A program that would work with my current life schedule. I am not ready to tell you what the program is but I can tell that if you thought I was crazy for getting a Philosophy degree? You are going to totally lose your mind on this one.

Last weekend I started working on my entrance essay and found myself pouring on to the page words that I didn’t know I had in me. What came out of it was a twenty-page memoir type essay about a story that I have spent the past five years trying to figure out how to tell.

I want to tell more stories.

Wednesday I wore a dress and tights and was probably over-dressed but I really didn’t care. I took the day off and instead of sitting in my office, building beautiful things and talking to myself, I went to see people! People! I decided that  people seeing required tights and a dress. Because sometimes that is just the way it is.

I really want to re-invent this blog, or maybe delete and start a new blog from scratch. Sometimes I imagine that I could be a food blogger, or a craft blogger or maybe a humor blogger. But then I realize that I would have to learn to cook, or sew, or craft. These feelings aren’t just applicable to this blog, its how I think about my life sometimes too. Maybe I can erase and start anew as a baker, or a musician that travels the country, or maybe even a celebrity. Perhaps, I could be more Paris Hilton like?

It’s not that I don’t enjoy my life, I really do. I just wish there was more consistency in being me. I wish I had a specific talent or hobby or personality trait that perfectly described me. I try to imagine if I were a character in a book who I would be, but I am pretty sure that I wouldn’t fit into a book because my character would be too messy and all over the place. A good friend of mine describes me as “un-categorically strange,” because I can’t even fit into the traditional definitions of strange. I am my own kind of weird, my own kind character and sometimes that is completely annoying.

Today I am linking up with Just Write.

On a completely unrelated note you can find me over here this week talking about what trends we are going to see in the next year. I am also over here talking about How-To get press for your blog. 

The joys of Netflix Instant Streaming has enabled this problem and has allowed me to watch every single episode of The Hills, Weeds, Roseanne, The Secret Life of an American Teenager, Switched at Birth and now Gossip Girl. In the past few weeks I have watched over 82 episodes of Gossip Girl. My friends told me that I shouldn’t admit that to anyone and here I am documenting it for all to see.

Gossip Girl has been on for a few years now so when you sit down and watch every season from start to finish you notice things you might otherwise miss.

Like what, you ask?

1. Technology has changed. A LOT. 

We all know that there is a new phone, tablet, must have tech device rolling out every other month. Everyone always wants the hot new thing but I never realized HOW fast it changed. At the beginning of the show all of the characters had LG phones (hear that? NOT smart phones) and they had to text their submissions to Gossip Girl. Keep watching and you will see that soon the characters have new phones and are able to submit pictures to Gossip Girl and by the end they have iphones and are sending Videos! Videos! For real, Chuck Bass was carrying an LG Dare?

2. Product placements on shows have gotten weird.

Because I work in the world of PR I always seem to notice the product placements in shows. In the beginning seasons of Gossip Girl there weren’t any product placements other than mentions of designers and hotels. By season four they have piles of Vitamin Water on their coffee table and Lily Humphrey/Bass/Vanderwoodsen is shopping at Gilt Groupe in an un-comfortably obvious way.

Is it just me or is that WEIRD?

3. People are so predictable

My favorite part of this show is how they scheme everyone. They can map out step-by-step how a person will react in any situation. I have a couple of friends who can TOTALLY do this and I suddenly realized how valuable this skill really is. I mean, would Blaire be marrying a prince if she didn’t know how to scheme? Would Charlie be living in a penthouse? Would Serena have a booming career? No, they wouldn’t. I want to marry a prince and live in a penthouse. My new years resolution is to learn how to scheme better. Wish me luck.

4. I want to be Chuck Bass.

No explanation needed.

5. I want to be Blaire Waldorf.

No explanation needed.

 Do you have any good Gossip Girl stories? Who is your faveorite character? Which vitamin water would you drink if you could drink any vitamin water? (See how awkward that is?)

Oh 2011, you were so bi-polar.

I considered creating a 2011 recap post with a bunch of pictures from the year. I started thumbing through Facebook to find pictures I could use and most of them looked something like this:

(last New Years Eve. Yes, those are potato chips in my hand)

And this:

(This was taken in March. I was pretending to be Marilyn Monroe–see the resemblance?)

I am really good at photo opps. Clearly.

This year Aiden and I  moved into our first house and took my first full-time job. I traveled to New York, Chicago, Nashville, Palm Springs, New Orleans and San Diego. I wrote a ton, created more powerpoints than I ever imagined possible and watched over 70 episodes of Gossip Girl. (not an easy task) I grew my own food,  got over my fear of public speaking, ate sea urchin, rode in a petty cab and survived Aiden’s first day of kindergarten. I met Drew Brees, Giuliana Rancic, Bob Harper and sat on Melissa Peterman’s lap. I welcomed old friends who came back home, I threw fits, quit speaking to people, made new friends, made up with old friends and became more demanding than I have ever been in my life.

A couple of months ago I went to Camp Mighty and attended a session that talked about intention and how we fit intention into our lives. It occurred to me that this past year I was not at all intentional with the things that I did and the way that I spent my time. I had absolutely no goals or direction other than survival. I was simply existing, wading through the days and hoping good stuff would happen. (and good stuff did happen)

When I was in college my entire  experience was centered around this larger purpose of graduating college. I had this big lofty goal and all I had to do to achieve it was meet with my guidance counselor twice a year and check courses off of a list. At the end of that list was diploma and with that diploma all of my dreams would come true. Right?

 After college there wasn’t any big lofty goal. I wasn’t the only person who spent their first year after college wading in the un-known—none of my friend’s seemed to have a center purpose for their lives either. Ok, there were a few of them who had long ago made it their goal to become President and were now sitting in the background of episodes of c-span but those are a rare breed.

I haven’t set one single goal and because of that I haven’t had any steps in place that were leading in any kind of direction.

2012 is going to be my year of intention.

My goal for 2012 is to set some goals.

I want to ask for lofty things that probably won’t happen but I can at least start building my life to move in the direction I need it to go.

What are your 2012 goals?

It usually plays out like a scene from Sweet Home Alabama. Imagine all of those small town folks heading to the city and finding themselves wandering around lost and distracted by all of the fancy things. Except instead of “small town folks” I mean just me and instead of “wandering around lost” I mean ducking into the Gap and hiding from the rain because I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE I AM AND I THOUGHT THERE WERE CABS IN THIS CITY?!

This Past week was no different.

Thursday afternoon I had the chance to meet an amazing writer from the New York Times Magazine and her daughter who happens to be an editor there as well. They are currently working on a book based on this article that I became obsessed with about a year ago.

Because of my lack of direction I quizzed my colleagues to find the best method of travel to the coffee shop and took off to find a cab.

After many failed attempts to hail a cab that was either full of people, off duty or just blatantly ignoring me I was finally able to flag one down. (In case you have a similar problem here is a helpful post)

I got in the cab and was on my way.

Except that I wasn’t really on my way at all because  traffic was stopped and by the time I got to the Deena and Deluca connected to the New York Times building I was twenty minutes late. If you know me at all you know that I am NEVER late. Ever. As you can imagine I was quite flustered and this is where the fun begins.

I quickly walked up to the glass double doors to find a sign: “Please use other door.”  So I ran around the building to another set of doors to find yet another sign: “Please use other door.”

I frantically looked around and didn’t spot any other entrance to the coffee shop.

I noticed two very fancy looking men standing outside in their business suits smoking a cigarette and decided to run up to them and frantically ask where the entrance to the coffee shop was. They looked at me quite confused and pointed to the very door I was JUST at.

“It says ‘please use other door?’” I said sounding completely annoyed.

The men look at me while simultaneously holding back their laughter: “It means the door next to it.”

Most notably I am scared of big crowds of people staring at me. Actually, if we are going to be honest here, they don’t even really have to be staring at me. If I walk into a big room full of people I will just assume they are staring at me and they must be talking about me and they must hate me and the next thing you know I am ordering a glass of wine and taking deep breaths while simultaneously hiding in the corner.

A while back I self-diagnosed myself with anxiety. I had to self-diagnose myself because once I went to the doctor to tell him how I was feeling and it went like this: “Things are going great! Life is wonderful, the sun is shining, the world is so fantastic. I love life!”

Well, not exactly that but you get the point. My doctor made me nervous so I basically made an appointment to tell him how wonderful my life is.

Why am I bringing all of this up?

A couple of weeks ago I spoke in front of a group of fifty or so people. I was PETRIFIED. Last summer I spoke at the 140 Conference in Des Moines and as soon as I walked in front of the crowd I felt panicked. I never posted about the experience because it was so terrible. I was THE worst public speaker ever. Just to show you I am going to link to the video I have never watched.

Where was I…

Oh yes, a few weeks ago I spoke in front of a crowd of fifty or so people. I was PETRIFIED. In fact, I spent the two weeks before my presentation telling everyone I know how there was no way I could get in front of these people. They were going to hate me and possibly throw tomatoes at me. Because I have good encouraging friends they kept telling me how great I was going to be and giving me tips. (except for one of them who had bets going that I was going to be in fetal position under a table)

I spent about a month practicing and imagining myself standing in front of everyone. I arrived early and spent the hour drive to the event repeating to myself everything I was great at and recalling all of the moments in my life that I felt like a total rock-star. I talked to people as they came in and learned that the crowd of people I was speaking to was SO. NICE. I did my thing and got through my presentation in the perfect amount of time. Everyone was so kind and I didn’t for a second feel panicked or consider crawling under a table and hiding. (Ok, maybe for a second but then that moment was over)

After my presentation I received three more speaking opportunities from people who were at the event. Three! Which can only mean one thing…they really liked me!

The point of this post is to face your fears.

Whatever you want to do that you are to scared to do? I am giving you permission to do it. Go. What is the worst that could happen?

Also? my dear friend and mentor Alli posted about mentoring me over at Babble.