Great moments of 2010

2010 is coming to a close, and it's time to reflect on the great things that happened, the not so great things, and the journey that is coming to a close for another year.

While it has been another rollercoaster, I have felt more in control of my destiny than ever before. I have felt more stable and capable of driving rather than being a passenger of my life. While certain goals have not manifested, I can see that I have come closer than ever to achieving them.

It's been a year of closing doors to some things that have not been healthy patterns. It has been a year of great awakenings and self awareness. It has been blessed from start to finish with incredible growth. And, as much as I bellyache from day to day about not getting what I want, or feel that I deserve, I always come back to the great lesson that life is teaching me: patience.

My list of great moments of 2010.

1. I finished my second triathlon, and bought a tri-bike custom built for the task
2. I shed my inhibitions and stood naked with over 5,000 fellow Sydneysiders on the steps of the Opera House
3. I rediscovered my love of baking
4. I learnt the art of cupcake decorating
5. I did half of the Level Three improvisation course
6. I made new blogger friends AND new friends in my neighbourhood
7. I travelled to Hay for a Sex and the Country photoshoot
8. I did half of a Stand Up Comedy course
9. I dated three men during the year... the most recent one came closest to Mr Right, even though he wasn't "ready for a relationship"... this is at least a positive step
10. I started my kinesiology business and finished all the requirements for my Cert IV
11. I came up with a great idea for a TV series, which I am about to start collaborating on with a friend
12. I started seeing a Life Coach and have finally pinned down my real goals and values in life
13. I have participated in, and supported, multiple improvisation comedy shows
14. I co-wrote two songs for a friend's band
15. I wore more dresses, and didn't stress so much about how I looked in them
16. Very importantly.... whenever the Black Dog bit... I didn't push my friends away... I asked for help... and I kept smiling :)
17. I started slowing down
18. I visited my family much more than in recent years
19. I started meditating again
20. I felt more connected to and more loved than ever before in my life by my friends and family. This has been the ultimate achievement for me.

All I want for Christmas

I have been thinking a lot about my Christmas wishlist, as we do a sweep within my family. Try as I might this year, I could not think of a single compelling "thing" that I desperately needed or wanted.

There are things I wouldn't mind having, but they are not really what I'd suggest someone to give me for as a gift for Christmas.

I am a big believer that experiences and memories are more valuable than "things" when it comes to gifts. And the very very sad fact is that I don't have anyone special to create those memories with at the moment, and haven't had this for quite some time. I have dated, I have met people, I have given each opportunity the best chance I could at the time. I do my best, I put on my bravest face to meet every day with a smile and my positive attitude. But so often I am ground down by this single fact, that all I really want for Christmas (and the rest of the year) is someone who "gets" me, someone that I "get", someone to create memories with for the rest of our lives.

I am 37. I am gainfully employed. I own my own home. I am funny. I am intelligent. I am not so bad looking. I am kind. I cook. I bake! Whatever baggage I have accumulated, I have also created a very stable way of moving forward without it weighing me down too much. I am great company. I am fun to be around. I have hobbies. I am not a psycho-scary Sydney princess who just wants someone to take care of her while she pops out babies.

I seriously do not understand why I am have not met him, the one who is ready for me, who lights my fire, who responds to mine. I do not understand what more I need to do, what more growth I need to have. Surely if I am ready, he should appear, that's been the promise from all the New Age positive thinking and mantras I bought into over the years.

One hundred movies

I have crossed out the movies I have seen. The ones in bold I own.

I have come to the conclusion I'm a bit of a movie fanatic.


1. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
2. The Godfather (1972)
3. The Godfather: Part II (1974)
4. Inception (2010)
5. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
6. Pulp Fiction (1994)
7. Schindler’s List (1993)
8. 12 Angry Men (1957)
9. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
10. The Dark Knight (2008)
11. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
12. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
13. Seven Samurai (1954)
14. Star Wars (1977)
15. Goodfellas (1990)
16. Casablanca (1942)
17. Fight Club (1999)
18. City of God (2002)
19. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
20. Toy Story 3 (2010)
21. Rear Window (1954)
22. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
23. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
24. Psycho (1960)
25. The Usual Suspects (1995)
26. The Matrix (1999)
27. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
28. Se7en (1995)
29. Memento (2000)
30. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
31. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
32. Sunset Blvd. (1950)
33. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
34. Leon: The Professional (1994)
35. Forrest Gump (1994)
36. Citizen Kane (1941)
37. Apocalypse Now (1979)
38. North by Northwest (1959)
39. American Beauty (1999)
40. American History X (1998)
41. Taxi Driver (1976)
42. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
43. Vertigo (1958)
44. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
45. Amelie (2001)
46. Alien (1979)
47. WALL·E (2008)
48. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
49. The Shining (1980)
50. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
51. Spirited Away (2001)
52. Paths of Glory (1957)
53. The Pianist (2002)
54. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
55. Double Indemnity (1944)
56. The Departed (2006)
57. The Lives of Others (2006)
58. M (1931)
59. Aliens (1986)
60. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
61. City Lights (1931)
62. Requiem for a Dream (2000)
63. Das Boot (1981)
64. The Third Man (1949)
65. Chinatown (1974)
66. L.A. Confidential (1997)
67. Reservoir Dogs (1992)
68. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
69. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
70. Modern Times (1936)
71. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
72. Back to the Future (1985)
73. The Prestige (2006)
74. Life Is Beautiful (1997)
75. Raging Bull (1980)
76. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
77. Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
78. Cinema Paradiso (1988)
79. Some Like It Hot (1959)
80. Rashômon (1950)
81. Amadeus (1984)
82. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
83. All About Eve (1950)
84. 8.3 Inglourious Basterds (2009)
85. Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
86. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
87. The Green Mile (1999)
88. Braveheart (1995)
89. The Great Dictator (1940)
90. Downfall (2004)
91. Up (2009)
92. The Apartment (1960)
93. Gran Torino (2008)
94. Bicycle Thieves (1948)
95. Metropolis (1927)
96. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
97. The Elephant Man (1980)
98. Gladiator (2000)
99. The Sting (1973) 
100. Sin City (2005)

There is heat in freezing, be a testament

HOW TO BE ALONE by Tanya Davis

If you are at first lonely, be patient. If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.

We could start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library. Where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books. You’re not supposed to talk much anyway so it’s safe there.

There’s also the gym. If you’re shy you can hang out with yourself in mirrors, you could put headphones in.

And there’s public transportation, because we all gotta go places.

And there’s prayer and meditation. No one will think less if you’re hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.

Start simple. Things you may have previously avoided based on your avoid-being-alone principles.

The lunch counter. Where you will be surrounded by chow-downers. Employees that only have an hour and their spouses work across town and so they — like you — will be alone.

Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.

When you are comfortable with eat-lunch-and-run, take yourself out for dinner. A restaurant with linen and silverware. You’re no less intriguing a person when you’re eating solo dessert and cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.

Go to the movies. Where it is dark and soothing. Alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.

And then, take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you. Stand on the outside of the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one’s watching…because, they’re probably not. And, if they are, assume it is with best in human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats is, after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you’re sweating, and beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things, down your back like a brook of blessings.

Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you.

Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, there’re always statues to talk to and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence if only for a minute and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might’ve never happened had you not been there by yourself.

Society is afraid of alone though, like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them. But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.

You could stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company. But no-one’s in your head and by the time you translate your thoughts, some essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept. Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself.

Perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high school’s groaning were tokens for holding the lonely at bay. Cuz if you’re happy in your head than solitude is blessed and alone is okay.

It’s okay if no-one believes like you. All experience is unique, no-one has the same synapses, can’t think like you, for this be relieved, keeps things interesting, life's magic, things in reach.

And it doesn’t mean you aren't connected, that community’s not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it. Take silence and respect it. If you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it. If your family doesn’t get you, or a religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.

You could be in an instant surrounded if you need it.

If your heart is bleeding make the best of it.

There is heat in freezing, be a testament.

Viral hoaxes and what we can learn from them as marketers

Last week a social viral networking message swept Facebook.

Change your profile picture to one of your favorite (sic) childhood cartoon characters and ask your friends to do the same. The point of the game? To have no human faces on Facebook only childhood memories by Monday to fight child abuse. Copy and paste to spread the word!

It was effective in its simplicity, and hour by hour whole networks changed their Facebook profile picture to a cartoon character, along with hotly debated favourite characters, as well as blistering comments from non-cartoonified social networkers that the campaign was not an effective means to raise awareness for its stated cause.

A follow up warning the next day that the whole campaign was a scam started by paedophiles only added fuel to the fire, and this blogger was involved with some fairly passionate discussions over whether promoting a donation to a children’s advocacy group might be a more worthwhile use of one’s time and efforts.

Regardless of whether any of these statements were true or not, the whole issue got me thinking as a marketer. Over several days, a single statement spread like wildfire and harnessed people into action, whether it was a simple image and Facebook status update change, a deeper debate over whether these are merely a nuisance, or the most coveted marketer’s dream of actually inspiring a small percentage to donate to worthy causes.

So I looked into what makes the most popular viral campaigns so effective. Were there commonalities? A quick poll of my network on their primary motivating force behind joining in, provided the following principles:

1. we like to have fun
2. we like to be good “Net”izens (ie: warning our friends and family about something dangerous)
3. we are led to act by emotionally charged messages
4. the action can’t be too demanding
5. we need to feel this action is voluntary, whether we want to feel good, clever, or belong to a group
6. we don’t like being told what to do

So my next question is whether these principles can be applied to actual marketing campaigns that deliver outcomes. Let’s take a look at each principle and see whether it is possible.

We like to have fun
This seems an easy one to accomplish, but in practice it’s a little more difficult. Watching The Gruen Transfer demonstrates that much of the PR, advertising and marketing world struggles with this. However, it’s a proven fact that the more fun, or funny a message is, the more likely it will resonate with its audience.

Thinking tangentially is the key here. Try an improvisation workshop to understand how to create interesting storylines, ask a comedian to deliver your message, or put yourself into the shoes of a child.

Example: The recent Facebook campaign for child abuse

Being a good Netizen

Feeling useful, or clever or “in the know” is a key element to many of these campaigns. It appeals to our basic human need for acceptance and recognition.

Example: Every version of “be careful in XYZ car park, police have warned of several attacks on women”, or the classic “waking up in a bath full of ice with your kidneys gone” messages.

Emotionally charged messages

Facts don’t sell, emotionally engaging your audience will. It doesn’t have to be dramatic, as in the case of child abuse or linking it to a dearly held childhood memory of cartoons, but there does need to be some kind of emotional engagement with the audience.

Example: Old Spice YouTube ads, asking ladies whether they want their man to be like the Alpha male presenting the message!

Undemanding actions

Social media campaigns that make the barriers to participate too high are doomed to stall. Making too much of a demand on your audience will lose their interest quickly. Keep it simple by providing as few links as possible, pre-filled forms and giving them canned messages that can be shared on other social media forums with a simple mouseclick.

Example: The recent GetUp campaign to raise money for an advertisement in the New York Times to campaign on behalf of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange. The donations page provided the donor with a pre-written Facebook and Twitter message, which got the message out in hours, and achieved its aim of $250,000 for the full-page advertisement.

I did it voluntarily

Research has shown that 80% of business purchasers felt they found the supplier. It works in a similar vein for social networking, as a group we need to feel like we belong to a herd, but that we are all “individuals”.

The solution is to cultivate relationships with influencers within the demographic you are aiming for. This could be a celebrity, or simply a highly networked individual within your existing circles.

Example: any kind of subculture that crops up, sparking an instant “fad”.

Don’t tell me what to do

This is perhaps the trickiest part of creating a viral sensation for a corporate marketing campaign. In this way, you will need an individual to deliver your message, not appearing to derive from a corporate “brand” itself. However, the other side of this coin is that punters also don’t like feeling like they have been duped, so transparency is important. Furthermore, we have grown very marketing-conscious, so this part is a very delicate balancing act.

Having a message or a “cause” that appeals to the audience’s sense of justice is a way of overcoming this barrier. However, if you are simply flogging products or services in the absence of a “cause” it’s probably best to stick to traditional marketing channels!

Examples: GetUp, fundraising efforts by individuals, Pet Rescue Campaign

Self Confidence. You can't beat it.

So, I only recently blogged about having met the perfect guy for me. And you know what, he was. But you also know what? He started saying things that raised red flags. Quite a few of them. Like "we are not involved", and "I am not ready for a relationship" (every single time we spoke), and kept asking my advice about his ex girlfriend and another friend (female who clearly wants to pursue him as a romantic partner). And yet, I wasn't told about some pretty big life changing things that happened to him, until I probed.

Now, I was not in any way pushing for a full-blown relationship, as at this stage in my life that's just not where I am at. However, I did explain at the start that I am looking for "something real". Like love.

And in the last few weeks I have been dealing with a lot of big life stuff (like my grandfather dying, my sister having her fourth baby (yes, you heard correctly - four), getting three assignments done within the space of two weeks to meet a qualification deadline, not to mention the incredibly demanding full-time job I hold down).

This gave me reason to hold off on raising these red flags with him. But I did so, yesterday. I told him how I have been feeling. He said he understood, but that he was not in the same place as me. I said, "fair enough, no hard feelings". He said "but we can still be friends." I said "....". He said "so let me know if you would still like to catch up". I said "I think I'll leave it for a while, thanks."

He said that I do amazing things and that I am wonderful. Which, I kinda agree with.

He said he felt sad. He didn't sound very sad. But, who knows... different people deal with these things in different ways, and he is a very reasonable and understanding person who probably didn't want to make a hard decision harder for me.

I think he understands. And if he doesn't... then he doesn't. I know I have that sad feeling and wonder whether I will meet someone like him, but who actually wants to confide in me when things go pear-shaped, who wants to offer me love and receive my love, and who wants to spend time with me. Someone who actually knows that I tick all of his boxes and grabs the opportunity with both hands.

It's interesting, though, this time this one was pretty near perfect for me. And yet I don't feel like I am the one who messed this up. In fact, I am pretty damn confident that I just made the best decision for myself, one that will (hopefully) mean that I WILL find the right guy out there who makes me feel fabulous. This tells me that, unlike every other time that a relationship hasn't worked out, my self-confidence remains high. That I have not allowed that little negative saboteur voice inside my head tell me it was my fault, and that if only I was someone different they would have stayed.

This time, it's me saying "I am not getting what I need, and no matter how amazing you are, my needs are also important."

Loving the new me.

To be or not to be

I love the movie What Dreams May Come... and I never realised its title came from the famous, beautiful and self-examining soliloquy from Shakespeare's Hamlet. The soliloquy examines the very nature of choosing a continued existence and how, in our darkest moments, we often question either consciously or unconsciously why we continue to battle the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."

For my 37th birthday this year I purchased for myself a gift. It was a black and white line painting of the death of Ophelia. It is both beautiful and disturbing, and each time I look at it I am reminded of how precious life is and how that decision to continue is such an important one.

William Shakespeare - To be, or not to be (from Hamlet 3/1)

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

I.R.L.

I have a wonderful concept for a sitcom. I won't divulge all the details here, cos, frankly, I want to monetise it (isn't that both a beautiful and horrible word at the same time... it incorporates the best and worst of creativity and word-hijacking I've seen to date, but I can't seem to avoid using it... or if I used my least favourite word EVER, "utilising" it.... GAH.... I appear to have digressed...)

So my sitcom idea is based on the concept that none of us have "real" lives anymore. We all seem to exist in cyber-space, and sometimes those identities merge with real life, other times they don't.

And the ensusing complications and hijinx that entails.

Ahhh.... what the world needs now... is another sitcom.

THERE IS A POINT TO THIS BLOG, WAIT FOR IT!

So, last night I met yet another friend "in real life" that I met via my online world, namely Twitter. My worlds had collided yet again. I love it when that happens. It is like a little mini-proof that I am not JUST a Netizen, but a real live human being that can still relate F2F (that's Face To Face for non-Netizens).

I recently did an audit of my Facebook friends, to see how many I met via online channels as opposed to real life meetings. Twenty. That's 20 friends I would not have met otherwise, as we live such distances from each other that we could ONLY have met online.

However, last night was different. Last night a met someone that appears to be the spitting image of me, metaphorically speaking. We both live in Surry Hills. We seem to share a brain, according to the comments we will simultaneously dish out at a rate of knots (we both LURVE talking). We share a similar vintage. We are both, as a mutual friend and cafe-owner insisted when he suggested we would get along "like a house on fire", faghags. We move in similar circles, in fact it was suggested last night that it's surprising we didn't have any friends in common on Facebook... a theory which proved only a degree of separation exists from that when she mentioned a friend who I have mutual friends with (am I losing you now, dear readers?)

Never mind. It all makes sense to me. The upshot is that our virtual worlds and real worlds are now colliding in ways that both surprise and terrify me. For someone who is both so willing to be 100% myself with anyone, and share to the point of over-sharing, I am also fiercely protective of my "real" information. The so-called "real" me. But... you have to wonder... has that already been taken from me with my long history of social networking use, which dates back to H2G2 days before it was owned by the BBC?

The perfect "non" relationship

I made a sly comment on my previous brief blog about having met someone special. I thought I should elaborate on that, as I realise that was the equivalent of a blog "hit and run"!

As you all know I have been waiting a very very long time to meet a special person. Someone who is, not necessarily perfect, but perfect for me.

So... he has finally come along. And to my complete surprise and delight, he is not at all interested in a traditional relationship, much in the same way that I am not, but compeletely understands intimacy (emotional as well as...), mutual respect and support.

I once wrote about this on a former blog, which detailed my search for something real and meaningful, which didn't necessarily mean living in someone else's pockets 24/7. It spoke of my longing to meet someone who understood that we could both maintain separate, independent lives, but also have a close emotional bond built through mutual respect and interdependence.

And so it seems that this friendship has developed into something resembling my fantasy! Here is my Renaissance man (if he took it into his head to built a rocket and fly to the moon I have no doubts that he would), and he completely secure in himself to allow me to be myself, to be fabulous without worrying it will take something from him, to allow me to continue my scarily busy lifestyle I have become accustomed to without guilt, and come together when we both have chances in our schedules which we both agree feels like magic in every way.

And yet, neither of us feels the need to obsess, dominate or grasp at each other like there is no such thing as tomorrow. We text and call when we get the chance during our busy days. We catch up when we can. We sometimes take turns "staying over", but return to our very comfortable and happily separate residences when we have filled up with the happiness cup in each others' company.

I am looking forward to doing all the things we have talked about together. I am looking forward to the future again, which is amazing.

I thank the universe for delivering a wonderful partnership, or "match of equals", to me after such a long wait and after so many prayers.

Thank you.

Cobwebs? This blog haz dem

Long time, no blog. Lately things have been off-the-hook busy.

I was in Hong Kong last week, for one thing. It was great, but this week I face the piles of neglected work and clients.

I also am in a very good place right now. I have recently made a very special new friend which is lovely and unexpected.

I am happy.

Thanks for all your support of late, you know who you all are :)