Personal Thoughts

Nov 2011

Yesterday we talked about the go-getter nature of dreams. And this morning, before we dive headfirst into weddings again, I wanted to talk a little bit about the dream I've had since I started this site—the dream that's coming true next month: writing a book. But more than that, I wanted to talk about how (contrary to what we all wish was true) nothing about dreams is easy.

I wanted to write my book from month one of wedding planning. Because the truth is, with a few exceptions listed over here, the wedding book market is pretty bereft of sanity. When I was getting hitched, I really wanted a sane and funny how-to manual that walked me through the craziness of wedding planning, gave me logistical and emotional tips for managing through it, and made me laugh. I wanted a wedding planning book for normal people, so since what I wanted didn't exist, I wrote one. And it's coming out next month. Oh my god.

Almost three years ago, I wrote this about the need for better books on the wedding shelf:

This weekend, David and I went to a bookstore and somehow ended up sitting on the floor in the wedding section going through piles and piles of wedding books... Laughing at the wedding industry has it's own punishment. Namely, it's really really funny until suddenly it's horrifying.

So there we were, sitting in the bookstore, reading wedding advice back and forth, and suddenly I started feeling really ill. Not, "Oh, this is making me nauseous, ha, ha, ha!" but more, "Oh dear God I'm going to lose it." I think it was right after I had read a tip to David about how "It is critical to think of your wedding as an enormous theatrical event," and while he was reading me a tip about how "Many brides waste literally thousands of their gift dollars by failing to register for the most lucrative items, forcing them to buy these items after the fact."

Cue: nausea.

This bridal book hilarity (or lack there of) haunted me all weekend. Over and over what kept running through my head was "Garbage in, garbage out." We went through almost every bridal book on the shelf, and almost every single one was explicit instructions on how to be a needy, self absorbed, demanding, obsessive bride.

So I wrote the book that I wished was on that shelf. And I believe in it. And now my job is to get it into the hands of people who need it. And, frankly, into your hands, because I owe the book to you. I mean, it was a good idea for a book, sure. But the way the publishing industry works, I had to be able to point to the whole APW community and say, "They believe in this. They will make this go," before anyone else would believe in the book. Which brings me back to what I was pondering yesterday: dreams are important. Figuring out what we want and vowing to change our lives is important. But we can't do any of it unless we're ready to lift each other up. And that is something that the APW community is so profoundly good at that it blows my mind every single day. So I'm pretty convinced we can do this.

Last year, when I was still working full time and trying to make a million changes in my life at once, never ever getting down time, I wrote a post called Pulling On The Boots. I said:

I’d forgotten what it was like to knock on door after door after door and get told no, over and over again. I’d forgotten how depressing it was. I’d forgotten how determined it can make you. I’d forgotten that confusing, partially excited, mostly terrified feeling that you get in the pit of your stomach when someone finally says yes. I’d almost forgotten that art is my hustle.

But over these last few weeks, I’ve remembered. I’ve felt the instantaneous swoop of despair you feel at "no." I’d felt the confusing terror of "yes."

And while I couldn't be clear about it at the time, what I was talking about was the process of trying to sell a book. Because let me finally come right out and say this: even with a proposal I was proud of and an awesome agent who I trusted, there was a period of time where I thought the book wasn't going to sell. Why? Well. In short, it's easier for people to say no to you than to say yes. You have to give them a really good reason to say yes, and there are times that can feel completely impossible.

When we were pitching the book, we heard a mixture of, "Oh, all the wedding books have already been written," (which, had that been true, would have been a sad state of affairs) and, "Everyone just wants a traditional wedding, so this is the kind of book no one wants" (which sites like APW, East Side Bride, Offbeat Bride, and The Broke Ass Bride disprove every damn day). So it was such an awesome gift to find my editor Katie at a major house, who had never bought a wedding book in her whole career, and who got the book right away.

But the funny thing is, now that the book is written, I've realized it's time to convince people to say yes all over again. As we're starting to market the book, we're hearing the same message, "Our people are not wedding people." (As my friend Robin said, most people are not wedding people till they suddenly are wedding people, and that's when they need a sane wedding book.) Or, "People getting married just want traditional wedding books." Which. Obviously no.

So. Today is the beginning of us turning a no into a yes. It's the beginning of us proving that people do, in fact, want sane wedding books, and that we're reclaiming this whole wedding nonsense. This is the plan:

The Great APW Book Buy

Inspired by David Malki (click that link, the story is hilarious) who writes the web comic Wondermark (we grew up together, funny enough), we're launching the Great APW Book Buy for December 7th, which is the first day the APW book ships from my publisher's warehouses. (Side note: book publication is a little weird. My book's official publication date is January 1, 2012, but those of you who pre-order on Dec 7th will have it in your hands the next week.) The idea is this: it's actually pretty manageable to push a book up the Amazon bestseller list for a day or so (though we're going to have to work extra hard to make this happen in the Christmas season) because you only need to sell hundreds of books a day, not thousands, to make this happen.

So! If everyone buys the APW book on the same day (whether you're buying it for yourself... since it's dedicated partially to you, or for your mother to calm her down, or for your best friend who's getting married, or for your wedding clients next year, or for any combination of these reasons), we can push the APW book up the charts, and get some attention for a book by a first time author. We can make the publishing industry take notice and prove that yes, we want more sane weddings and fewer crazy ones. By all working together, you guys can help make this dream happen.

So! The Great APW Book Buy will take place on Wednesday December 7th. We have a countdown clock on the top of the blog as of today (pretty), and you'll hear more about the book in the next few weeks. Come December 7th, you can order the book through:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Indie Bound (which helps you support brick and mortar bookstores near you.)

(BUT DON'T ORDER IT YET!)

I have faith that we can make the APW book a bestseller... if only for a day. And by doing so, we can point out that this is a conversation that needs to be had, and we can help get the book into the hands of people who need it.

Which can only mean one thing, of course. That I'll finally get to write a non-wedding book, too. One of these days.

Team, can we do this thing? You have my deepest gratitude in advance.

Doin' it,

Meg

Picture of me & the galley copy of my book by One Love Photo. I love those guys.

Posted in: Entrepreneurship, Meg's Thoughts, Personal Thoughts | 101 Comments »

Nov 2011

Camp Mighty: Dusting Off Our Power

I spent this weekend at Camp Mighty at The Ace Hotel in Palm Springs. It was a small public event (seriously, the Mighty Events sell out in two seconds with very good reason, but if you find yourself able to go to one, grab that opportunity) that was built around the idea of life lists and building the life you want. Or really, about building the life you need.

The weekend started with a private show by The Tontons. (Holy crap. You heard about them here first.) After which I had a twenty minute chat with the lead singer about going to art school in New York, figuring out what you want to do as an artist, and working your ass off to make that happen.

Then the next morning, Brian Piotrowicz, one of the co-producers of Oprah and a producer at OWN, spoke about the way Oprah built her business around the idea of intention. And man, did he sort some things out for me. Because yes, "intention" sounds very woo-woo and hippy-dippy, but he talked about the concept in a very literal sense. When you produce content for a big audience, it's very important that you think about what you're putting out there in the world. What are you using your platform for? Are you making people think and reflect and grow, or are you getting off message, and letting ego and ratings get in the way? And while he did a lot of talking about the idea of intention in the work environment (no one is allowed to yell or treat other employees with disrespect at HARPO), he also talked about the idea in a personal sense. He talked about the power of waking up and checking in with yourself, asking what you want to bring to your day. He talked about how twenty minutes of meditation is built into the (sixteen hour plus) day at HARPO, so that everyone has a chance to come back to themselves. For me, his talk was centered on the idea that we can't control the world, but we can control what we greet the world with, and that makes a whole ton of difference.

The final morning, Grammy winning artist Kenna came to talk about his project Summit on the Summit, where celebrities climbed Kilimanjaro, filmed by MTV, to raise money and awareness for the crisis of clean water in Africa. By this point in the weekend I was exhausted. I was a little emotionally raw. I sat down for the talk, not terrifically excited. "Mmmm... another charity project," I thought to myself. And then what happened totally blew my world wide open. First up, Kenna, explained to us that good activism comes from a personal place. He's Ethiopian-born and as an adult discovered that his father had spent most of his childhood ill from a water born illness and had lost a sibling to it. He had a realization that most of us wait to do good till we've built our careers, or till we're in a place where we can do more good, and that's not good enough. And that made me do some serious thinking. What we bring to the world matters, and the world only has our hands. Not having time is not a good enough excuse. Oh, and he called his mom and had us sing her "Happy Birthday." She asked if he'd "been to church, taken his vitamins, and met a nice girl to get married to because [she] wasn't getting any younger." Moms, man. Talk about doing good in the world.

But what really blew me away about the weekend was being around people who were serious about changing their lives. It's easy to think that writing a Life List is a silly exercise, or wishful thinking, or just greed. It's easy to write off people who have a life you want as being lucky or privileged and not make the effort for yourself. But what I was reminded of this weekend is the sheer force of will that's involved in changing your life. Last year, at Mighty Summit, I committed to changing things for myself. It wasn't magic that I was in a place to do that. I'd spent the previous year busting my ass, never sleeping, never having time off, while I built my business and wrote a book proposal. But I needed to be pushed into really taking the leap, and being with a bunch of women who forcefully believe in you, will do that to a person. So I quit my job. I started working for myself full time. I wrote a book. I hired a staff. You know, just a few little things.

But this year, I was in a slightly different position. I'd spent a year changing everything about my life, and I knew that my goals for the year were A) Keep the momentum going, B) Rest, and C) Give back. So this year, I got to spend some time playing cheerleader instead of playing bird-waiting-to-be-pushed-out-of-the-nest. Which apparently I'm overly good at.

I made the trip down to the Summit with Dana of The Broke Ass Bride, Amber of The Amber Show (who took all these pictures), and Becca of Stumble and Leap (formerly of A Los Angeles Love). On the way down we stopped in my hometown for In-N-Out. The following conversation unfolded over our fries and shakes: Continue reading Camp Mighty: Dusting Off Our Power

Posted in: Life, Meg's Thoughts, Personal Thoughts, Reclaiming Wife | 99 Comments »

Nov 2011

Working For Yourself: Month Ten (The Work)

{Me in a new vintage dress on work retreat. Not posed! By Emily Takes Photos}

I'm writing this post from a train, on a thirteen hour trip to LA, which pretty much sums up the month. Constant motion. Working while in constant motion. Needing a break from plane travel. Last month I talked about how in this break between writing and launching the APW book, I needed to find balance. And in a rookie self-employed-person mistake, I let my little bit of downtime be sucked into the vortex of travel (some work, some personal, but it hardly seems to matter when you're counting the number of days at home before you need to leave again).

So this month was a muddle. It was getting away from the computer and actually making things with my hands and spending time with my co-workers (more on that mystery project in a bit). It was planning for my book release (which takes way more energy to do right than you'd like to imagine). It was bringing on and training a new staff member. It was finally doing the work to Incorporate. (Practical Media, Inc.! BAM!) It was traveling and traveling and traveling.

But during an often exhausting month, I kept coming back to why I do this, how we keep ourselves grounded, and how we externally and internally perceive success.

The other night, we went to see Hot 8 Brass Band. Which. Was. Awesome. (Obviously). Somewhere in the middle of second-lining my face off (if there is an opportunity to dance, I will do it. David finally just shoved me toward the New Orleans natives in the aisles, and I left him behind to shake my ass.) I looked up, and thought about how much those musicians had to love what they were doing. Actually, I specifically thought about how hard it must be for them to be on the road all the damn time, breaking in audiences that are reserved and don't want to dance, and then playing their hearts out. And I thought about how all that getting on and off the plane, or train, or tour bus boils down to those two hours on stage.

And for a moment, I was really grateful to my art school education (which is a 180 from my 20s spent being profoundly bitter about my art school education). Because between growing up around a community of artists, and going to crazy naked performance art art school, my professional life revolves around the concept of "The Work" (a concept that totally made me stabby in college). The idea is that, The Work is hard, The Work sometimes makes you batshit, The Work is something you have to show up and do every goddamn day even if you don't feel even slightly like it... and in the end The Work is also your joy and your salvation.

And for me, right now The Work is writing. And secondly, it's about composing and publishing weeks of content around a theme, and cultivating community. And if I didn't have The Work to come back to, if it wasn't the center of my professional life, then all this traveling and scrabbling and running a business would quite possibly have driven me out of my head by now. But if I don't write for a few days, or a week, I get this crazy hungry look in my eye and start composing essays in my head, or on napkin scraps. And that's a hunger I can build a professional life around.

But more than that, I've been thinking about perceived success. Continue reading Working For Yourself: Month Ten (The Work)

Posted in: Entrepreneurship, Meg's Thoughts, Personal Thoughts | 55 Comments »

Nov 2011

Reclaiming Wife: On Goals & Growing Up

This week, I'm heading down to Palm Springs, to go to Camp Mighty and think about life goals. Camp Mighty is the bigger, public, offshoot of Mighty Summit, the conference for women leaders in media that I attended last September. It's been a crazy, exhausting, enormous year, and I'm really ready to go on a retreat to do some thinking about my life and about where I've been, where I am, and where I'm going. I'm planning on having some drinks by the pool and taking some naps, if we're being honest. I'm really looking forward to some quality time with other smart women (and ok, men, too) discussing how we want to change and take control of our lives. But I'm not just wanting to think about taking control of my life (arguably, I've done enough of that). I also want to talk about the way surrendering to the bigger picture is powerful, powerful stuff.

To get ready for the retreat, I spent last week going over my Life List. To understand my massive list obsession, you need to go back a little bit. The first blog I ever read was Superhero Journal, starting in very very early 2002. I read it every single day, and Andrea's five-years-plus ahead of me point of view helped me muddle through the tangle that was my early 20s. (I'm pretty sure everyone's early 20s is a tangle of figuring out what you want, who you are, and what you're good at... and that particular state of confusion was not limited just to me.) So in 2004, when Andrea first suggested the idea of Mondo Beyondo lists, I was in. I took a piece of paper and wrote down every dream that I could think of, that I really, really wanted. Now, as a 24-year-old flat broke, New York City artist type, these goals seemed huge and impossible to me. Go to Europe? With $800 in the bank? Not likely. Move to San Francisco? Not in reach. Have a career working for myself and running a creative business? I knew it was the perfect blend of my skills, and my heart's desire, but I had no clear way to get there from where I was.

But I wrote down the goals. And now, in 2011, it's not just that all but two of those impossible goals have been crossed off, it's that the goals now look like an outline for my life: live in San Francisco, get married, start a blog, run a creative business. So, long ago, I discovered the power of lists. And then in March 2008, just one week before I got engaged, Maggie Mason of Mighty Girl posted her list of "100 Things To Do Before I Go," and I was hooked. So I played around. I expanded my list. I worked with David as part of our pre-martial counseling exercises to come up with a joint list, our ambition squared list. And right after we checked "get married" off our lists, we checked off "drink whiskey in Scotland" for our honeymoon.

Which brings me back to last week when I was curled up, updating my list.

Different people work different ways. But as someone who is a hyper do-er and always has approximately one jillian things on her plate, I'm not fantastically interested in letting my Mondo Beyondo-Life List become yet another string of things I have to do. So every year, I take a crack at updating it, and then I tuck it in a drawer, where I basically don't look at it for a year.

So last week, I was going through my list. My plan was to add new goals, but as I went through it, I realized I needed to check off things I'd done. So I started crossing things out. And crossing things out. And crossing things out. First, I realized that out of 100 items on my list, I'd done 46. FORTY SIX. Then, I realized that I had done 26 of those things in the last year. TWENTY FREAKING SIX THINGS. And these were not small things, mind you. They were huge things. Quitting my job to work for myself, writing a book, taking a last minute trip, going to Mexico, watching my husband argue a major criminal case, swinging on the trapeze, going to the Greek Islands, drinking tea in Turkey.

(Which felt like flying, by the way. The big goals always feel like flying, once you push through the terror and get it done.)

So I started thinking about how on earth I could get that many things done in a year. And I started really trying to figure out why these lists work for me in the first damn place and what about the transition to married life has put me in hyper drive. Continue reading Reclaiming Wife: On Goals & Growing Up

Posted in: Life, Meg's Thoughts, Personal Thoughts | 94 Comments »

Oct 2011

Second Time Bridesmaid: The Fiercest Kind of Love

I was a bridesmaid this weekend. I always joke that our friends are not the (traditional, bridesmaid having) marrying type, and by and large they are not. That comes from a deeply bizarre mix of growing up around poverty and having slightly bohemian friends. But I've been a bridesmaid twice, both times for my friend Lacey. The first time was ten years ago when we were 20, and the second was this weekend when we were 31. The fact that the wedding party was a group of girls that have known each other for twenty years tells you much of what you need to know about our hometown and the kind of intense loyalty growing up in a very difficult place engenders. For me, the wedding was about the story of the last ten years, the growing up we've all done, loss, and the profound hope of love.

I get a lot of emails about second weddings. I hear a lot about ladies who are terrified how their community might judge them—ladies who are worried whether they deserve a party the second time around. Here is what I learned this weekend: chances are, this fear could not be farther from reality.

As bridesmaids, this was not our first time at the rodeo. We knew a thing or two about getting the bride dressed, making sure the groomsman behaved (at least till after the ceremony—shots!), and setting up centerpieces. Ten years ago, we'd done what on paper looked like the same tasks, and we'd worked hard trying to get it right. But none of that compared to the ferocity of love present at a second wedding with a crowd of women who have walked through the fire together and who know what love and loss look like. Ten years ago, I worked hard to make Lacey happy on her wedding day. This weekend, I would have walked on water to make her happy, and all the other girls felt the same way. When someone you love has walked a hard path with grace and found someone who really makes them happy and adores them just the way they are? That is the kind of love you fight for, curl hair for, set up centerpieces for, wrangle tuxes for, line up groomsmen for, wipe tears for, and throw confetti for.

Going into the weekend, I had a sense of just how hard everyone was loving Lacey and Ric. But I thought, on some level, that we'd pretend the last ten years didn't exist. That to make room for love, we'd let everything else go. What I hadn't realized was the way that weddings allow you to hold many conflicting things in your heart at once. They allow your heart to enlarge; they let you access the rooms whose doors you'd locked.

On Saturday, all of the last ten years were in the room at once. I watched Lacey read her vows (off her phone!) thought about how wonderful it was that she finally had found someone who deserved her. I watched her dance with her eleven-year-old son, and teared up thinking about how I used to spoon baby food into his mouth while gossiping with Lacey about my over-wrought collegiate dating life. I watched Lacey's tiny niece, a flower girl, spin around the dance floor, thought of her as a baby, and hoped for the future.

And then there was the loss. Continue reading Second Time Bridesmaid: The Fiercest Kind of Love

Posted in: Bridal Brigade, Life, Meg's Thoughts, Personal Thoughts, The Day Itself, The Hard Stuff, Weddings | 46 Comments »

Oct 2011

Wedding Graduates Return: Meg, Herself

We got our wedding album made this summer, finally. Heather of One Love Photo and I slaved over the album for, well, a year if I'm being honest (cobbler's children have no shoes, and all that), and then I surprised David with it for our second anniversary in August. The album is beautiful (Couture Book, flat printed on textured paper, one picture per page, unbelievably simple, looks like an art book) and looking it over with David on a foggy boozy evening this summer was wonderful. But it's been a busy few months, and I hadn't gotten a chance to show it to friends and loved ones until recently.

Then this weekend, one of my theatre-conservatory-friends from college was staying with us, and we ended up staying up late going through the album. As we flipped through, I got to answer questions about the day, and our loved ones, "Oh! You don't know we got ready together?" "Yes, that's Caron's son," and be jointly overwhelmed by the beauty of the photographs (again). But what I hadn't expected to realize, is the way our wedding created a shared experience. Our wedding was a communal foundation for our marriage, in a day and age where our lives and relationships tend to be very isolated and private. When my friend asked me, "Where is that picture you gave me of the two of us dancing together?" And I said, "Here it is! It's one of the most beautiful shots from the wedding, I think," I saw a look of happiness steal over him. And when he asked me if there were pictures of the communal blessing, "his favorite part," and I showed him the pictures of him tearing up during our last dance, I realized that we had done what we'd set out to do, all those years ago when we started planning. Our wedding had created a moment of celebration, and a communal foundation for the ongoing enterprise that is marriage.

As we've started working on the Wedding Graduates Return posts at APW, and as I've looked at our album, I've done a lot of thinking about what I have to say about our wedding, and our marriage, two years later. Was it worth it? Yes. Did it somehow shape our marriage? Somehow, it did. And has our marriage been a different entity than our five years partnership before marriage? Perhaps most surprisingly, yes.

While I wrote a lot about what our wedding day felt like, shortly after the fact, revisiting it now it feels like this picture looks. Our wedding was this shining, raw, emotional moment, where we had the people we love most around us, and we made huge promises. It's strange how the little details really fade away over time, and what I'm left with is the feeling of the sweat dripping down my legs at the ceremony (a shocking rarity in Bay Area summers), how my dress felt, sharing food and floating on a bubble of joy in our Yichud, the rich chocolate cake covered with dahlias, and the sheer love of all those people in the same room having a marvelous time. What I'm still, more than two years later, trying to wrap my head around is how that day subtly shaped and altered our day to day reality, and our relationship.

When I got married, and launched the Reclaiming Wife section of APW, my very first post on the subject talked about what I hoped that our marriage could be. I said:

On our honeymoon I started realizing all the really great things about it—we're on a team now, a literal team. We support each others' endeavors, we encourage each other, we support each other financially. Ah ha! I realized. Now we are two! This is awesome. As two we should be able to be much braver, much more adventurous, right? We'll be able to hold each other accountable. Imagine all the stuff we'll be able to get done! Fabulous. So I started making a list in my head of "Now-We-Are-Two exciting projects to consider in the next three-ish years." I was excited.

And I was right. That, right there, was how our married life would be different than the previous five years of our relationship. We've always been an overly-ambitious duo, since way before we were a duo. Continue reading Wedding Graduates Return: Meg, Herself

Posted in: Life, Marriage, Meg's Thoughts, Personal Thoughts, Reclaiming Wife, Wedding Graduates Return | 108 Comments »

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