Well, I am still working on the exact positioning of my new blog, I am re-launching it today!

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So, for years, I had this vision that would come to me, whenever I would really imagine what I wanted in a work life. I would see this lively, collaborative work environment, with plants, and beauty, and light streaming in from many directions.

For years and years and years after graduating from college, I had wanted to do something meaningful, useful with my life, and really feel in service. Instead, I just tended to do computer programming work—because it was safe, high-paying, and relatively interesting. Meanwhile, I tried to get involved in numerous ecological and “activist” projects, in an attempt to help make change in the world. But I was still so frustrated.

Finally, in the spring of 2004, out of a desperate need to do something to create definite change, I decided to move to a swing state for several months before the November election, in an attempt to help get John Kerry elected, and not have George W Bush elected again for another term. It’s not that I considered the political approach to life necessarily my passion, but according to the way I was seeing things going at the time, that seemed like a good idea, and better than—once again—doing nothing concrete.

So in early September, I drove to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and started volunteering for America Coming Together.

I tried really, really hard to like it, but it was very boring, honestly. There were a bunch of people in the two-house little community I was staying in that were into something called Avatar. I didn’t really know what it was, but I trusted them. So, I decided, “okay, I’ll do the first part of this nine-day course (2 days)”. As I started to read more about it, I started to think, wow—this is the same kind of thing I have been reading about for years; but in this case, it is the clearest, most lucid and well-thought-out explanation of how this whole “what you believe creates your reality thing” I had ever seen. So I started to get inspired about doing the whole course. And, that is what I did. Doing the Avatar Course totally changed my life.

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About three years ago, I was struggling to create some kind of work—still lagging on at the end of the dot-com crash, and hadn’t really had any work to speak of for over a year. Finally, I got a coach (Jaquie). She is an amazing person, and turned me on the work of Robert Middleton, who specializes in helping service professionals get clients. Honestly, it had never even occured to me that one should “market” their services. Don’t ask me how I thought you were supposed to get clients! Like a whole lot of people, what marketing really is was a black box, and the only connection I had to it was an image of sleazy rich men in fancy suits lying to me and trying to convince me that I should buy their soap.

So, Robert Middleton is a really cool, high-integrity guy. And I found out that marketing can be about sincerely spreading the word about your services, so the right people can find you. The phrase you might use is:

If only the right people could find me, the people I am meant to serve, I could help make their lives better by doing something I absolutely love doing!

This was definitely not the sleazy-guy-selling-soap thing I had thought about. And I was quite ready to wipe that image from my mind (or at least, push it to the side, and allow this much more interesting one to take up the space).

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Today, Seth Godin talks about being brave with names – if you have something that is really new and unique… If you have something where you really want people to see the uniqueness in it and develop it, don’t be shy about giving a new name to the new thing.

Zaida and I came up with the name Enlivend Design, because it’s so obvious that what she does is more than just “feng shui”. And of course, if you want people to notice you, don’t demonstrate to everyone how you’re like everyone else. It’s nice to have Seth backing me up—that if you have a really new idea, and you’re prepared to back it up, then go for it, and give it a new name.

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“From the time I was in college, I made a conscious promise to myself that I was not going to spend my life doing things that I didn’t love doing even if I had to be broke.”

—Garrison Keillor, quoted in Worthwhile Magazine

This quote epitomizes how I feel, but have not always done. I do not know what the new career I am going into is going to look like. But, the more I connect with my passion, the more I just deciding to go for it and do it anyway. Maybe I am becoming a “marketing consultant for small businesses”. Maybe I am becoming a “producer”. Maybe it will look like something else, around empowering people to feed their spark and honor their purpose in life.

We often want to hide behind a patina of professionalism. But I realilzed that I am not pretending to anyone that I already know how to do what I am doing; I am just doing it.

I can feel the tremor in my body as I write this—the fear of being really stupid; or really boring; or really selfish. Oh! Those are all the things that have kept me from moving forward into what I loved and really wanted to do all my life. —Interesting!

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