If I had a nipple ring for every idea I had...wait, people don’t generally measure things in nipple rings... Hmm… Well thank goodness I don’t have a nipple ring for every idea I have, because frankly, “Ouch” and also, “holy crap.” 

I do have a lot of ideas though.
I have all kinds of ideas. They aren’t all great.
In fact, some of the best ones are terrible.

Maybe I should explain. I’ve noticed that some of the ideas that I think are silly or stupid or I’m just saying out loud as a joke happen to accidently be really good ideas. Ideas, inspiration, jokes and what not, frequently come from the same part of our brain. As a person that values creativity I do my best to keep very few filters on my creative source. Which means that sometimes the only way for me to know when something is a good idea or a terrible idea is to just wait. Or, to just do it and see what happens.

Lately I’ve been having tons of video ideas. These days it seems that video is the thing. Every artist and every business needs to be doing video, they say. I’m charismatic enough, but I’m not really skilled at this being in front of the camera stuff yet. I didn’t grow up in a time where everyone had photo and video cameras at the ready. My family wasn’t really into documenting events with cameras. Well, … no...my mother liked us to take photos of the food she’d prepared, what she calls a “spread.” My dad was fond of taking pictures of things that are rusted, breaking down, or in some state of decay. I remember taking a lot of pictures of my feet or inadvertently taking pictures of my fingers while trying to take shots of something scenic. So if we remembered to have a camera with us for events we’d end up developing an expensive roll of rusted things, food, feet and a giant pink monster next to a blurry….mountain…?? We didn’t have a video camera, most people didn’t back then. Maybe if we had, I would have taken videos of my feet. They would have either been terrible or brilliant. It’s hard to say.

I don’t know if you have a bunch of ideas, but there are a lot of ideas that I haven’t done. Yet. Even the good ones. It’s not an entirely comfortable thing to have a bunch of potentially really great things just swirling around in my head taunting me waiting to be done. It’s best to let them swirl their way onto a Post-it or into a file on Google Drive. There’s less taunting that way and more space in my head for, god forbid, more ideas.

So with this video thing, I finally did something about it. I’d told a few people my ideas and they at least thought the ideas were good. I reached out to a friend that actually knows how to do video and she was interested in helping me. But there were no dates set on the calendar, just a “Yeah, that’s great, let’s do it.”

So one day I was sitting at my laptop and I realized that a bunch of videos I’ve watched were created just by people turning on the camera on their laptops. And wouldn’t you know it, my laptop has a camera on it.  So I typed “how to record a video with my laptop” into Google, I followed the instructions, I pressed record, 

And this is what happened. 

There are plenty of possible first steps to making your ideas a reality. 
With video, sometimes the first step is deciding to press record.

Sex is like cake. Except when it’s like cobbler.

The other day, a friend asked me via text, Do you think it’s possible to still find someone you really like when you are sleeping with someone else?

I considered a number of snarky potential responses, but I decided to assume that my friend was being earnest and really wanted my opinion on this. It’s actually kind of an honor to have someone ask for my opinion rather than assuming everybody wants to hear my opinion and sending it out into the social ether. E’hem...

So, this was my response:

Me: “It’s funny the way you’re asking, because beliefs are important. You would have to believe that you can in order for it to be true.”

She: mmm. that is very true. thank you. and that is my missing element.

I went on as I’m inclined to do.

Me: “If you are able to expand your beliefs about what is possible you would intuitively know how and who to be.” (This is the part where I’m being all wise and crap as I’m wont to do cuz I’m way totally a personal development professional and such, mmm hmm.)

And then out of nowhere or, you know, out of the place inspiration and metaphor always comes from, this popped out of me.

Me: “You could allow yourself to fully enjoy cake on any particular day and never once decide that you are a cake eater.”

She: hmm

Me: “You can eat cake all you want and still be a cobbler person. Because cobbler is fucking amazing.”

She: OMG. That is an amazing analogy!!!

Me: “But if you are eating cake and choosing not to enjoy it because you’d rather have cobbler, then the cake will probably not sit well in your stomach. And you may find that you’re too ill for cobbler if someone were to offer it to you.”

She: Shit that’s awesome. Yes.

Me: :)

See. You want to text me now. Or maybe you want cake. You’re a cake eater, I can tell. That’s cool. I prefer cobbler.