Want to Do Something Beautiful Together?
Thank you so much for the supportive and generous response to my last post. When I started this blog a year and a half ago, I never dreamed I’d meet so many cool people. So again, thank you. Here we go: I hereby officially announce the Jump4Haiti campaign! It’s really happening! I asked a friend, Peter Johnson of Leather and Wood Motion Pictures, if he’d be willing to shoot a short video for this campaign, and he said yes! (Thanks, Peter!!) Following is the video we put together: Here are three ways you can help: Donate! When you do please be generous. Generosity always comes back around. Always. To donate, visit www.purecharity.com/Jump4Haiti. Share this via Facebook, Twitter, email, word of mouth–whatever you can do. Remember, $40,000 may sound like a lot, but we just need 2,000 people to give $20 or 4,000 people to give $10 or, well, you get the idea. It’s about reaching thousands and thousands of people, and that’s where you come in! I’m not a celebrity, so I definitely need your help. (On Twitter, please use the hashtag #Jump4Haiti. That will help us track the Twittersphere and retweet. In fact, if you click here you’ll be escorted to a tweet that’s ready to go.) If you have a blog, I’d love you to use the widget that you see in my own sidebar. You can pick it up the embed code in the sidebar at www.purecharity.com/Jump4Haiti. Stay tuned! I’ll be posting stories from Haiti and other relevant stuff. This year I’m going further with generosity than I ever have, so keep your radar up. This is going to be fun! Thanks again, and please remember to donate.
40,000 Ways to Be Beautiful
My 40th birthday is April 9, 2014. Thresholds like this have a way of putting life into perspective because we want our lives to matter. We want to make a difference. So what is it? What can I do? These questions have haunted me as I’ve thought about a worthwhile way to celebrate my 40th. I think I finally have an answer, but honestly it feels big and scary. And I certainly won’t be able to do it without a lot of help. The Trip That Changed Me When I boarded a flight from Miami to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in August 2011, I knew I was in for an intense experience, but I didn’t count on being changed forever. I remember hitting the tar of the runway, looking out the window, and seeing corrugated roofs over sad shacks and rusted-out cars forgotten in the distance. Think about this for a second. That flight from Miami to Port-au-Prince takes 90 minutes. The average annual income in Miami is $50,000. The average annual income in Haiti? Less than $650. Ninety minutes is the distance between extravagant wealth by any meaningful standard and desperate, utter poverty. I’ve asked over and over, how hard can it be to change things 90 minutes away? The drive to our hotel shook me to the core. We bounced violently in the van because the road, the main road leaving the country’s main airport, was literally a rut. People everywhere walked barefoot or crammed themselves in makeshift taxis, all of them in a hurry. No one smiled. I remember seeing a gaunt man walking naked down the road. Everything was dusty. Rubble from the January 2010 earthquake was like so much forgotten litter in the streets. The presidential palace lay collapsed on itself, a symbol of national resignation. It was like this wherever we went for days—dust and mud and grime and debris and desperation. Then There Was Beauty Then we visited Heartline Ministries. I’ll never forget walking into the little shop they have there. It is filled with color and craftsmanship. Purses and bags and jewelry that Haitian women made hang neatly around the room. I teared up because for the first time in days, there was life. I saw smiles, and I remember thinking this is an outpost of hope. It was like spiritual relief, that place. I could finally take a breath. I met Troy and Tara Livesay, who showed us around. One of my favorite places was the maternity center, where the Livesays and others help pregnant women from the first trimester through the first six months of their babies’ lives. The women learn how to care for themselves and their babies in a country where the infant mortality rate is many times higher than in the U.S. It’s dangerous to have a baby in Haiti. But these women at Heartline receive love in the form of kind touch and prenatal vitamins and hot meals and education. Jumping for Haiti So here it is. I want to celebrate my 40th by raising $40,000 for my friends at Heartline. And here’s the other thing. I’ve always wanted to jump out of an airplane, but my understanding is that I’m too heavy. I need to lose 20 pounds. I struggle with my weight, but this dream of jumping for Haiti would be strong motivation. Especially with some support, I think I can do it. So the pitch I’m thinking about making to the world is this: Help me “Jump for Haiti.” Help me raise $40,000 for my friends at Heartline, and I’ll lose weight and do a jump for Haiti. I’ll film the whole thing so in a way you can do the jump with me! I do love Haiti. I just do. I love this country that has been so ravaged by poverty and violence and natural disasters. Honestly it’s hard to believe Haiti could ever pull itself out of the mire it’s in. And yet there’s hope. There’s Heartline, this small band of Jesus-following pilgrims who are beating back the darkness the best they can. Darkness be damned, I want to help them. The idea that I could raise $40,000 for Haiti is, well, it’s crazy, honestly, because who am I? But I cannot think of a better way to turn 40 than to try. Forty thousand dollars may sound like a lot, but think of it this way: we just need 4,000 people to give $10 or 8,000 people to give $5 or 40,000 people to give $1. It’s about reaching thousands of people. It’s about finding 40,000 ways to be beautiful. That’s where you come in. You can donate, and then you can tell as many people as possible about this crazy guy who wants to lose weight and jump for Haiti. Hey, you can start by tweeting this. What do you think? Should I try? Will you help me?
Phyllis Tickle Turns 80!
I’ve been honored and blessed to work with Phyllis Tickle on a few books. For those of you who don’t know her, Phyllis was the founding editor of the religion department at Publishers Weekly and is the author of numerous books. She is perhaps best known for popularizing the Divine Office with her Divine Hours books and for being a sage chronicler of Emergence Christianity, which is also the title of one of her books. I’m doubly blessed to call Phyllis a dear friend. In honor of her eightieth, I’d like to share one of my favorite publishing-related quotes from Phyllis: A hot market requires a golden heart and black hands. If the heart gets black because the hands want gold, and book publishers publish only for money without a sense of deep responsibility to the things of God, it is a sin before God and a danger to the rest of us. Those who do religious publishing must do so with introspection, respect and humility.” –Phyllis Tickle, in an interview with Christian Century, 18 May 2004 You can check out some of Phyllis’s books here.
What Successful People Know
“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.” — Seneca What are you thinking about doing that seems really difficult right now?
22 Clever Ways to Find Time to Write
When writing is your dream job but not your day job, fitting it in the margins of life can be tough. Following are 22 ways to find more writing time: 1. When driving, speak into a voice recorder app. Transcribe it later when you have time. Or you could try a speech-to-text app.
The Best Way to Find Time to Do Your Art
The survey’s gone out, the results are in, and here’s one finding you can take to the bank: The number 1 reason by far that creatives give for not doing their art is “lack of time.” What’s the solution to that? Do we really need 22 clever ways to find time? Maybe, but I think what we really need is to raise the stakes for not doing our art. It’s one thing to choose diversions when you have nothing to lose, but if you stand to lose everything, it’s a different story. So which is true? Do we have nothing or everything to lose?
4 Simple Steps to Your Best Valentine’s Day Ever
If you’re like most people, you’re getting nervous. The Valentine’s Day displays have reminded you that Cupid is coming, and you’ve got nothing. It’s not that you don’t love your spouse or significant other. In fact, it’s how much you do love her/him coupled with the anxiety of anticipating this holiday that can be so paralyzing. What if 4 simple steps could change all that?
A Lament for Philip Seymour Hoffman
Man you could act. I was absolutely transfixed by your Truman Capote, and terrified by your villain in Mission Impossible. You made me weep in The Savages, and I hated you with everything in me in Doubt. And now you’re gone. Mr. Hoffman, what happened? What was the darkness that you couldn’t push back?
What I Learned about You, and How You Knocked Me Off My Feet
I have been poring over the survey results, and I can’t tell you how energized I am as I read these. I’m eager to share some of what I’ve learned. Who You Are Your vocations vary! Among those who responded were writers, visual artists, musicians, career coaches, podcasters, bloggers, graphic artists, poets, teachers, photographers, speakers, producers, counselors, filmmakers, managers, students, and at least one draughtsman! You’re educated! The vast majority of the survey respondents has either a bachelor’s degree or a bachelor’s degree plus a graduate degree. Smarties, that’s who you are! You’re multinational. While most of you are from the U. S., I received responses from folks in Canada, England, China, India, New Zealand, and Australia!
I Would Love to Hear from You (and Give You a Free Book!)
I want to know more about you. Why? (1) I want to make this blog more useful to you, and (2) I would love your input on some product ideas. Would you please take a few minutes to fill out this reader survey? If you do, you could win your choice between The War of Art by Steven Pressfield or The Art of Nonconformity by Chris Guillebeau. Both books have been vital to my own creative pursuits. To enter, do two things: Fill out the survey. Comment below with the title of a book that’s helped you on your creative journey. I’ll randomly select two winners sometime on January 17, 2014. If you’re seeing this after January 17 or if you want to help me but don’t want to bother with the drawing, no problem, you can still fill out the survey. Thanks for participating and letting me know what you think. I’m listening.