Moab and the illogic of friends

Made it to Moab, spent a couple of hours working on a commercial project at a coffee shop and proceeded to the Amasa Back Trail for some true slick-rock riding. I can't explain why I feel this way, but I will never, never again ride Moab by myself. I mean, it's not like my bailing off a cliff is going to hurt less — or be any less fatal - if there's someone friendly there to watch it happen. But there you are.

Stayed the night in Moab and woke up with the burning desire to get some miles behind me. And so, after a couple of days in Utah, I rolled into Denver where I've been working on commercial projects in my friend Bill's sensory deprivation tank/apartment ever since.

I think that after several months of romance crazy, moving crazy, and what-the-hell-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-life crazy, I just needed a quiet place to crash and be isolated.

But tomorrow I head back into my life and into the great wide open. I'll keep you posted.

Mountain biking is a laboratory for life process

In June, I told everyone that I was going on a roadtrip. Then I house-sat for three weeks and forgot I told everyone I was leaving. Fast forward through a bunch of surprised reactions at Prescott's coffee shops, stores and pubs and I've finally hit the road.

The framework: An open-ended (anywhere from a week until I draw my last breath) driving trip aimed at places I can ride my mountain bike.

I rode the Rocky Ridge trail in Flagstaff on Wednesday. Unlike the lonely trails of Prescott, this trail swarmed with people. I saw an 8-year-old kid going over technical terrain on a bmx. Impressive.

In any case, for a while now, I've pondered the similarities between mountain biking and navigating my way through life. Or at least the lessons mountain biking offers.

Disclaimer: Mountain biking, while fun, is a singularly selfish, self-serving sport, so don't imagine that I'm trying to elevate it in any way shape or form.

That being said, it comes down to this. When you mountain bike, you MUST look where you want to go. Choose to look where you don't want to go and you go there, typically with painful results. Even if you want to go elsewhere, you'll always go to the exact spot where you put your attention. I'm pretty sure this holds true in life as well, but it's less noticeable because you don't break a collar bone every time you focus on what you don't want.

Also, sometimes when you get into a hairy spot, the only way to avoid disaster is to not only keep pedaling, but pedal HARDER. Do that, and you often surprise yourself by getting over something you would earlier have told yourself was impossible.

I'm in Moab today, so I'll keep you posted on the life lessons of slickrock.

Creativity and Love: Taking it one day at a time.

I was driving around today, wondering aloud if I'm one of those crazy girls. You know the type. The kind that want to use whatever God gave them to get male attention.

No way, I thought. If I'm self-aware enough to wonder, then I can't be all that nutty. But then again, I was saying this aloud, hoping the people in the other cars assumed that I was wearing an invisible blue tooth device.

In the end, I decided - again aloud - that I might have a few isolated pockets of nutty.

Here's the biggest one: When creativity starts to scare the sh!t out of me, I start wanting to date. Or be admired. Or have someone check out my gams. Like I'm gonna have to keep my gams covered so I don't lapse into the gam-checking-out wanting.

Dating is a time-consuming, soul-rending process that has been absolutely deleterious to my creative endeavours ever since I started pursuing them professionally. Being with Art was good because he was a brilliant writer and a supportive mate, but even starting things up with him was a distinct pain in the ass. Super distracting.

So...for the time being, I'm taking it one day at a time. Whenever I want a little hit of male attention, I'll try writing a song (I could use the practice anyway - my songs are awful). And whenever I fall into one of those involuntary crushes that have been plaguing me since I was 6 freaking years old, I'll ignore him and send a query to Marie Claire. Or go for a walk. Or rearrange my geraniums.

So wish me luck. One day at a time.

St. Exupery in the flesh

The closest I've come to getting a tattoo in recent memory was after seeing this web site:
Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos. Most of the tats are very pretty, and some are downright inspiring. If I ever secure a very favorite quote of five words or less, I'm so going to go there. Just watch!

My biggest birthday wish

Last night, I was schlepping around on the couch, watching this HBO show called Generation Kill with a character who was an embedded Rolling Stone reporter in Iraq. I want to go to crazy places as a reporter when I grow up!

Oh damn. I already grew up.

The thing is, I wish I could think bigger and be bolder. So that's my 34th birthday wish this year, to begin to ask unreasonable things of people who have the power to make them happen.

Maybe this year I'll go to the Middle East to find out what sorts of party businesses the 30-something burqa'd matrons are into. That could be cool. Or why American teenage girls are joining the Israeli army. There's definitely a story there. I'll keep you posted.

Chunks for Every Temporal Budget

I talked about hour-long chunks before, but I wanted to point out that I also use chunks of time between 5 minutes and 8 hours effectively. Today, I'm using half-hour chunks because after moving, I'm behind in EVERY area of my life, and need more chunks than there are hours in my work day. The biggest drain on my productivity (besides wanting to do ANYTHING besides write) is an anxiety that I won't have time for whatever it is that I need to make time for. But if I can convince myself that I'll only be doing it (it being folding clothes, cleaning out my dad's truck, blogging, whatever) for half an hour, then I don't have to feel guilty that I'm not billing (and therefore eating).

And here's the other, more important part of the equation. Those of you out there who are into productivity writing (generally the same people who, like me, are procrastinating by reading all the really good stuff at lifehack.org) have heard of Pareto's principle, or commonly, the 80/20 rule. F'rinstance, I got 80 percent of my writing done today in 20 percent of the time I spent doing it. Twenty percent of the people control eighty percent of the world's wealth. Only 20 percent of all you all out there have well-thought-out goals, and of that 20 percent, only 20 percent (or 4 percent total) write them puppies down.

That sort of thing.

So if I know that I only have one hour (or even a half an hour) to write that press release for my client, my time's going to be spent more productively than if I give myself four hours. It'll take an hour either way, but in the second scenario, the hour will come after three hours of inwardly howling about my crap luck to be writing a press release.

So there you are. Hour chunks. Or half-hour chunks. Or even five-minute chunks (as when I had a house and would spend five minutes straightening each room first thing every morning). Or, if you must, eight hour sleepy chunks so you awaken dewy fresh each morning.

I keep hitting this same wall, over and over...

Ok. Confession time. Sometimes it feels like I just ain't gettin' nowhere in this journalism business, and it isn't only because sometimes I lapse into a double negative vernacular.

No, indeed.

It's that Woody Allen's admonishment, "Ninety percent of success in life is just showing up," often fails to take purchase in this battered little soul of mine. When I get to sitting down to write queries, conceive of stories and tell editors about them, it feels a lot like I'm wading through molasses.

The year-old Oprah magazine that's been sitting in the guest bathroom opines that when I'm not sure what to do, I should "just do something, anything!." So I signed up for a wu-wu class in energy healing. Figured maybe I could use it on myself to heal what ails me.

In the meantime, I've got a couple of bicycle-based queries I'm gonna write and shoot off.

And any advice you, my gentle reader (and I do assume you might be singular, so don't hang back) can offer could mean the difference between molasses and greased lightnin'.