Boldness Highlights of the Week

Bold this week:

...our new Justice Sotomayor. It takes courage to be the first of any group to climb into a highly visible position.

...the rescue of the two reporters from North Korea, not with force but with strategy and charm.

...Paul McCartney riding city buses (from "Paul McCartney Keeps It Real", The Week magazine)

My own boldest move this week was pretty small: I rewrote my intro copy for my blog in a more revealing and pointed way. (soon to come)

What was your own boldest move in the last seven days? What's it going to be for the coming week?

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Weakness or Strength?

Peeling a car isn't everyone's idea of fun. But my car needed it. It's an artcar, as I've mentioned here before. And my most recent attempt at a white background for the morning glories used housepaint. Bad idea.

It started to blister. Then ragged tatters of paint flapped in the breeze as I drove. Something had to be done.

So in late morning I started ripping off bits and strips of paint. It was so much fun. I kept thinking I would quit and go move the laundry from washer to dryer. But then I'd pull one more dirty bit of paint off and another.

And then I discovered that four hours had passed. Unbelievable! I would have believed maybe an hour and a quarter.

Which brings me to my point. I'm good at focusing, losing track of time, and staying with a project literally for decades. My point: our weaknesses are our strengths inappropriately applied. I could have quit earlier and borrowed a sander. Or settled for a less-peeled car. (It's no prize as it is, I'll tell you.) Or at least made a conscious choice. That's the key thing: to pause for a second to make a choice.

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Cheeky Advertising

My hip, imaginative dentist (take that, stereotype!) has interesting ways of getting the word out. Note this give-away toothbrush. In case the writing on my portrait of it is hard to read, the inscription says:

Rebecca Schmorr, DOS, 834-4450
Directions: Use the Fuzzy End

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Boldly Grateful

A wise friend recently told me he feels gratitude is the key to success in life.

I already knew that genuinely feeling grateful does a lot for one's health and happiness. But as I thought about it, I realized how effective a focus on gratitude could be for making alliances, working with people, recognizing opportunities, and so on.

And it does feel better than griping about what's not right.

Probably it cuts down on self-consciousness, fear, and irritability as well. Anyone who is in the midst of reveling in the wonders of what she has been given probably isn't simultaneously in a swivet about the oppressive to-do list, money pressure, how the meeting this morning should have gone, and so forth. Anyone feeling that kind of ease is likely nice to be around.

Even my computer is more cooperative when I don't swear at it for taking 8 seconds to do something.

It's pretty easy to feel genuine gratitude (nothing's more annoying than the fake pious lying kind) Feeling grateful happens simply by remembering what's good: an 8-second delay in getting into a website is miraculously easy research compared to the old days of driving somewhere to pore over microfiche archives. And so forth.

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Grab a Green Kleenex

It's hard to do the right thing when someone is pressing you to do it. At least I, immaturely, find that so.

So congratulations are due today to two organizations:
1. The world's largest tissue-maker Kimberly-Clark
2. Environmental organization Greenpeace (as well as other eco-activists)

Kimberly-Clark, after almost five years of urging from Greenpeace, will no longer use wood pulp from Endangered Forests, such as Canada's Kenogami. And KC is a company that requires a lot of raw materials; they make Depends, Kleenex, Scott paper towels, Huggies, Kotex, and Poise, among other items. Now they're a giant not only in paper products, but in green paper practices.

So-- Yay, Kimberly-Clark! Yay, Greenpeace! Yay, ancient forests!

If it brings tears to your eyes, go buy yourself a case of Kleenex. The right move deserves a reward.

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On Time or Way Behind?

The feeling of running behind is one that I find hard to shake. Here, from The Daily Om, is a good way to think of it. Important, because nothing is actually gained from going around feeling pressed. The hurried state of mind makes me clumsy and leads me to try too hard and actually slows me down.


"...The delays that disappoint you may be laying the foundation for future accomplishments that you have not yet conceived....What you deem a postponement of progress may actually represent an auspicious opportunity to prepare for what is yet to come."

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Daily Uncertainty, Daily Strength

"Creativeness is correlated with the ability to withstand the lack of structure, the lack of future, the lack of predictability, of control, the tolerance for ambiguity, for planlessness." Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow


In about my second year of freelancing (1973), I would walk from my parking place to my office in the mornings, often amazed that the buildings were already there and weren't something I had to fling up one either side of me as I walked. That's how unstructured self-employment felt a lot of the time then.

I often still feel that writing a novel is sketching the first step of a flight of stairs, stepping up onto it, then drawing another step that's supposed to hold my weight. And so on.

I'm not a great fan of ambiguity, though I do find an uncertain future (professionally) to be exciting. Most of us like some wobble room, and get nervous about other aspects of facing the great void. But getting used to that is part of the job; it goes with the turf.

The work is both conscious and unconscious. In addition to the discipline of writing, it requires some trust that the path you're on, with all its detours, is worth taking. Practically, that means staying willing to proceed even when you don't know what's up ahead.

E.L. Doctorow said that writing is like driving at night, you can only see as far as the headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

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Who Is the Bold and Savvy Blue Hair Lady?

Those unnerving little ads that show up at the top of email somehow always seem to know what I'm interested in. I don't know the technology by which they read over my shoulder, but yesterday I was actually enticed into clicking on one.

The phrase that caught my eye was: Radical Writing. How could anyone resist that?

It took me to The Blue Hair Lady. And what a find! Not only does Laura Cerwinske put "Blue Envy" on her hair every couple of weeks, she's a highly accomplished writer on design and visual art, publishing with such outfits as Rizzoli International, Thames and Hudson, Bantam, Dell, Doubleday, Simon and Schuster.

And she's an artist.

And a small publisher (Blue Hair Lady Publishing..."The company’s publications are excursions through the secrets of transformation, weaving quantum thought and healing, metaphysics and art, memoir and mythology.".

And a student of Santeria and similar body/mind/spirit subjects.

Also she teaches a 12-week on-line Radical Writing course aimed at wild disinhibition-- for $25.

I do admire the combination of free-wheeling and commercially-and-artistically-successful.

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A Good Sign

A long-time biker bar (Hogs not ten-speeds) is on my route between home and office. I've never stopped there, though it has often crossed my mind.

Recently a sign went up outside the place that I thought pretty bold, and delightful as well. The sign: "It's A Boy." And the little marquee was festooned with appropriate decorations.

It takes a bold biker to make a tender announcement.

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Obsessive-Compulsive Haircuts

My hairdresser, like me, has a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder. So we tend to compare notes on meds and how we're doing.

Once she noted that we'd gone a whole haircut without touching the subject, and didn't that speak well of how we were both doing.

Today: haircut at 11:15. Forty-five minutes from now.

I'm doing fine with this OC stuff. And one small part of the reason is getting to talk about it as she and I do. Having a comrade-in-arms helps build all kinds of courage. And gets my bangs out of my eyes.

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The Courage to Face Death

Yesterday I was finishing an edit on a nonfiction book proposal from my three months in Varanasi, India. (I was there doing research for my novel, Sister India.)

In the proposal is a scene from the first time I visited "the burning place," the riverbank pyres where corpses are burned and ashes placed in the Ganges. Watching a human body catch fire is disturbing, even if it's a stranger, and seen briefly and from a little distance.

Hours after that experience, I felt as if the ballast in my interior was rolling around. I felt all atilt. I've read that material a number of times since. But yesterday it got to me again, as if I were seeing it for the first time.

The fact that we die and are physically destroyed is shocking. I find it incomprehensible.

We are all very brave to put up with it.

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The Encouraging Largeness of the World

Foreign accents filter through the door from the office next to mine. My friend and colleague Carrie is taking part in a conference call/meeting. I think she's talking with Australians about some joint arts project.

I like hearing this murmur from the other side of the world. It reminds me that the world is large and the possibilities nearly infinite.

For a while when I was in my twenties, pre-Internet, whenever I felt low I went to a newsstand and bought a New York Times. It reminded me that the world was larger than whatever--

No, wait! The voices in the next room are from South Africa, I just heard a reference to Johannesburg.

Anyway, having a look at The Times reminded me that my options were larger than whatever limited set I was focused on that day. It inevitably worked, if only a little.

Yesterday I was posting about the power of following our particular passions where they lead, into deeper knowledge and engagement. Today, I remember that a wide view can also be greatly inspiring and exciting and en-couraging.

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Follow Your Bliss

Follow an interest with passion and energy and it becomes very particular. Not just interest in dogs, but deepening interest in particular breeds or particular aspects of dog training or some such. Husband Bob is fascinated by big exotic breeds. Here's a Boerboel (a South African mastiff type) that we drove several hours to meet, never mind that we already have one at home.

I consider following an interest where it leads to be a bold and enriching exploration.

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A Ten-Adventure Weekend

Just back from a 3-day weekend to the NC mountains and then to the Charlotte area with husband Bob. The itinerary was determined by two things he had in mind to do: go to a black-belt testing in Blowing Rock and then see some dogs at the home of a breeder who raises the same kind of exotic mastiffs he now has. (8 month old Aura is a Boerboel, which is a South African breed.)

My agenda was to hike in the mountains (that was Saturday) and to paddle my kayak in Lake Norman, the largest lake in the state, near Charlotte (that was Sunday). Today we had a spontaneous retail adventure in an Ikea, the bold Swedish business innovator that sells home and office stuff like nobody else in the world. I'd been to one once, Bob never had.

That worked out to three adventures for me, and four for Bob, and one more for each of us, if you count the rather intense conversation we had for an hour while waiting for check-in time at the Lake Norman Motel, Restaurant, and Marina to be ready. And possibly one more, if you count skidding in with minutes to spare in time for Bob to run his 5:30 psychotherapy group.

The number of adventures is my test of an excellent vacation. And it occurred to me this weekend that I could start looking at regular days that way as well.

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Adapt or Revolt?

"What shall we think of a well-adjusted slave?"

--Abraham Maslow

The answer to that question is not simple. In some situations, coping and making-the-best-of is all that can be done. And what's important is to avoid lingering shame at having done no more.

Other times, adapting is copping out.

How to tell the difference? I think we know in our guts which is which.

One exception: things that kids do to cope get a pass. As kids we simply don't have the resources to do everything we think we should have done back then.

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Starting the Day Stupid

Overslept. By two hours! Then forgot I'd had a morning appointment at Autologic about a car problem. Then stumbled around trying to make sense of things. Finally, rolled out toward car shop and the rest of the day.

Now it's just past noon. People at AutoLogic quickly did the necessary check, and I was out of there and on to the next thing, as if I'd started the day in a smart and organized and capable way.

It's tempting (for me at least) in the case of a screwup, to say: the hell with it, today's shot, or at least the car repair venture is. I try to rememember at such moments, large or small, that order may be reclaimable: do what I can as fast as I can.

Sometimes when I've dropped something valuable and fragile, I have a quarter-second thought: that's lost; and I'm already starting to grieve before it hits the floor. And then the next quarter-second thought kicks in and I grab it and sometimes "save the day".

Important to remember: first do what can be done, on matters large and small.

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Degrees of Anxiety

"Most people believe only in degrees of jeopardy and live in degrees of greater and lesser anxiety, but never in true relaxation."

quoted on Gaiam
from Paul Richards, co-author with Patricia Richards of Wild Attraction, a Ruthlessly Practical Guide to Extraordinary Relationship- a book about the effects of subtle energy on relationships.


Note from Peggy: It never occurred to me that what I think of as relaxation might be merely a reduction in tension. Maybe this relaxation is a place I've never visited. Will explore further.

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Risk Analysis

Going to the moon probably requires some boldness.

The 40th anniversary of the first moon landing was yesterday. I was twenty when it happened and it still seems unbelievable to me that anyone has done that. I like the idea that something can be permanently amazing. And that anyone has the nerve to visit another celestial body. Or to put up with a loved one making the trip.

I doubt if I'm going to the moon. Not my brand of gumption. Not what I'd risk everything for.

It's not that we have a finite quantity of courage and if we use it up it's gone. Quite the reverse. Bravery, even in small daily things, engenders more of the same.

But risk is another matter altogether. Lots of things that require some nerve--making a difficult phone call, perhaps--don't have any real risk. I once knew a fellow travel writer who waited as late as possible to head out to the airport for a flight; so there was always a mad rush on the road. She did it on purpose, saying she was "a risk-taker." I thought that was pretty stupid.

She was risking missing the flight. The gain was a few more minutes at home. Not a good trade-off.

When faced with something that scares me, the real risk involved is one thing I think about. That, and the potential gain.

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Media Trend: Tough Women Who Triumph

"Getting By With Brassiness" was the headline of the story in my local News and Observer yesterday.

It pointed out a change that I'm surprised I haven't noticed: the string of new female lead characters who are gutsy and tough, yet still star. They're not fallen women, or drugged-out, or whores with hearts of whatever. They're clear-eyed and outspoken, see the emperor's new clothes, and yet they don't get punished for it. They're attractive women.

Edie Falco as Jackie is one. I always thought she was sturdy and attractive as Carmella Soprano; I even named my 1992 flower-painted gotta-keep-on-ticking automobile Car-mella Camry.

But as Nurse Jackie, Mon Dieu! What a force! And yet still feminine and a healer.

This is delightful progress, both on TV and in books: "The new breed of brash, audacious woman has pushed into literature as well. Lisbeth Salander, heroine of the best-selling mystery novel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, is 'prickly and irksome' but somehow still alluring: 'She was like a nagging itch, repellent and at the same time tempting,' the narrator notes in the book by the late Stieg Larsson, published last month in paperback by Vintage."

Not that I wish to be a nettlesome person myself. Or brusque or brassy or even no-nonsense.

But I like the fact that I have that choice, and that the freedom doesn't have to come at such a devastating cost as one's femininity or a happy ending.

Here's to Julia Keller of The Chicago Tribune who noticed and wrote the syndicated article.

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Sports and Lipstick...at Any Age

My elderly husband (67) and I (60) had dinner in a sports bar Friday night, the Salem Street Pub. I never did that before--though I once edited a story that importantly took place in one--and didn't do it this time on purpose. It looked like a cafe sort of place, and the patty melt had been reviewed as the best in my local three-city area.

It was very, very loud. There were many large TV screens showing different kinds of games.

And it was kinda cool, though I've never been much for spectator sports. Women's fastpitch softball was an inspiration. I was pleased to see that one excellent batter was wearing make-up. I love the idea that you have don't have to give up lipstick to play ball. That we can combine whatever elements suit us individually, which makes the terrain more interesting for everyone.

The patty melt was excellent, too.

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