blog: the priorities of successful creative people

I’ve lived for decades with a sense of shame and guilt, fearing that I’m at best self-centered, with possible anti-social tendencies and (God forbid) a full-blown misanthrope: I'm constantly saying 'no' to people.

Thanks to my dear friend and coach Mudd Lavoie and to the golden resource Mudd discovered in Stephanie Palmer, I’m looking at the fact that work is my priority with new eyes. I'm also seeing my relationship to people and to the national obsession with ‘hanging out’ from a totally different angle.

This article (which Stephanie Palmer tweeted last week) threw a knock-out bucket of ice water at the nasty judgy voice which has dogged me for decades. I am redeemed!

For more great stuff, check out Stephanie Palmer and Mudd Lavoie.

Rewriting. GUILT-FREE.

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 89 (How do you spell crisis?)

We all have our definitions of crisis.  Mine?  Not even a to-do list for two days in a row.  I'm wracked with guilt that I didn't spend the entire day on facebook and twitter being a good social media citizen. 

Instead, I went grocery shopping.  Twice.  And I cooked dinner for my personal Phineas.  But before that, I cleaned.  For hours.  Listening to the birds.  The mourning doves are back.  And my favorite most-depressed-bird-of-2015 with his/her three-descending-notes song sung with all its heart.

I'm banking on the fact that I'll be so relaxed and rested tomorrow that I'll be on fire to get back to my desk.  Cause otherwise the guilt might just rise up and finish me off.  It's nice that there's a place in Greenwich Village with a name to make even the most desperate situation feel routine. 

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 65 (Instagram guilt)

Sorry to drag you through issues I should be paying a therapist to help me with, but obviously not sorry enough.  The problem of the day is "Instagram".   Don't know what I'm talking about?  Neither do I.  Really, just click away. 

Years ago, Natalie Grillon told me in no uncertain terms that I had to bite the bullet and get on Instagram.  She even helped set up my account.  I'm visual.  It'll be fun! 

And then some time in the distant past, Jennifer Sklias-Gahan mentioned ever so gently, that Instagram might be a great easy way to expand our audience (the way I'm always saying I want to). 

In the dead of this past winter, Clare, a beautiful young designer from LA, went to the trouble to explain how it works in detail and to text me a bunch of great Instagram accounts to follow.  Beth Tallman and I met to talk strategies and she dropped the 'I' word as a marketing must. 

In February, my fellow web series producer Mhairi Morrison hinted that Instagram could be a fun and easy way to get the virality factor working for the louise log.  But I'm one tough nut to crack. 

It wasn't until last night when my old pal Anita Goa emailed from London "I can't find the louise log on instagram?" that the straw broke the camel's back. 

The fact is, it just seems too EASY.  You snap a picture?  I'll be a one-woman inundation.  I'll Break Instagram.  Something in me (my Puritannical work ethic?) wants it to be harder.  

Brace yourself.  Here goes.