Archives for January 2011

Books Come to You at Least Twice

January 26, 2011 by Rosa Say

You may have noticed I am reading Under the Tuscan Sun, for quotes have shown up here, and on my tumblr. I can’t wait to take another picture of some good Italian food I’m having with way too much wine, so I can post it on Flickr with another quotation there. I resolve to finish reading it before the week is over, feeling certain that Under the Tuscan Sun has finally come to me for its second time.

You’ve experienced this too, I’m sure. Books can come to you a number of times. The good ones make it to three times or more. “Good ones” are those meant for you. The author was merely obliging, unknowingly and obediently listening to one of your guardian angels as they sat on the author’s shoulder, or whispered in their ear at night when dreams came.

A book’s first time

There’s a tug or calling of some kind first. Perhaps a recommendation, perhaps because an author’s name keeps coming up, a pleasing kind of literary nagging at you, or perhaps the tug was as simple, as right and as impulsive as having the jacket catch your eye when you’re killing time in a bookstore or airport newsstand and have nothing else to read.

Under the Tuscan Sun was already well known to me when I finally bought it at the “just buy it already” pricing of the Costco tables, and because there was no other book there to usurp its place in my shopping cart — I have this rule now that I’ll only buy one book at a time; it’s achievable enough. I used to promise myself I wouldn’t buy any more books until I’d read all the ones I already have, but that was completely unrealistic, and I broke that rule all the time. I now understand that answering a book’s calling and actually reading it are two separate things. Having stacks of books that you haven’t read yet is more than reasonable: It’s the natural way of the literate world, and who am I to buck the system?

Book movies

You have to buy it or borrow it for a book’s first coming to you to be complete. And if you’re wondering, no, I haven’t seen the movie starring Diane Lane, and yes, I’m reading the paperback where her picture is on the cover, looking thin, young, tanned, and “oh, I hate her so much right now.” My unrestrained jealousy keeps me from downloading the movie on iTunes, which I want to do, but won’t in that stubbornness I have about getting this book to come to me its second time first.

Movies about books are supposed to be seen sometime between the book coming to you its second and third time.

A book’s third time

The third time is when you reread that book with a different calling being answered. You have a question in your soul, and although you’ve already read the book, you suspect your answer was there, somewhere within its pages, and you missed it the first time through, because you were reading it for a different reason. Books have repeat delivery systems: that’s just one of the reasons books are such a bargain.

I don’t know if this rule, that you must read the book and then watch the movie, is also in the natural way of the literate world, but it should be. When you think of Under the Tuscan Sun, you should think of Frances Mayes first and Diane Lane second, or you screw up the second time the book comes to you. I’m quite sure that even Diane Lane would agree, for how could the movie possibly be made, and then be done well, if she didn’t read the book first?

I’m getting to the part about a book’s second coming to you, but these asides are important.

A book’s second time

I’ve started, and not finished this book a few times already. I’ve even taken it on plane trips across the Pacific Ocean (which take me at least 5 hours’ worth of perfect-for-reading time) more than once, only to leave it unopened each time in that pocket of my carry-on bag where my Kindle now reigns as Attention King. I’ve even taken it before I had a Kindle. Truth is, I’ve had this book, unread, an awfully long time. I’ve cheated with it, skipping the cooking chapters because I don’t cook unless I have to, and still not finished it.

And of course all of this has nothing to do with the quality of the writing. There was good reason Under the Tuscan Sun sat at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List for such a long time, and that a movie was made about it. It sits at #11,625 out of the ka-jillions of books Amazon.com sells, last time I checked.

A book’s second time coming to you, is when you’re finally reading it with the certainty that you’ll finish it this time. Absolute certainty.

This is the time you were supposed to be reading it, and your guardian angel (or whatever divine providence you believe in) knew it all along.

With Under the Tuscan Sun, that second time is now for me, because I want to move away from the house we live in, and into a new one. I love my house, always have, but it’s time. That’s all, it’s time, and so I’ve started looking. No new place in mind yet, just a resolve for more wayfinding, and a goal shaping up that we (me, and my family) will spend our next winter holidays somewhere else. Somewhere new.

In my case, Italy has nothing to do with it, though I can see why Frances Mayes and her Ed may eventually be sainted in Tuscany. I’m glad I’ve already been there, though many years ago, so I don’t mix signal with noise, as musically beautiful as that noise might be, for I loved Italy too. And Tuscany, while there. I also don’t feel up for a huge house restoration or the ambitious farming they tackled, having a more mobile and somewhat minimal lifestyle shift in mind. What I do feel, is that pull of shifting your sense of place, open to the possibility you will change, like in her chapter, Turning Italian.

That’s the magic of books, isn’t it. That so many different people can read the exact same words and come away with dozens of answers to scores of different tuggings.

False starts are false for good reason

So in other words, all those false starts you may have had with a book, starting to read it in between its first and second time coming to you, and not finishing it, were perfectly fine in the grand scheme of things.

Isn’t that comforting to know?

Here are snippets from the part I just finished. Marked up with a highlighter, confidently knowing that finding these words are even more testament to this being the right time for my second time” after years in my house, will I really be brave enough to leave it behind?

I’m packing for my flight home from Rome when a stranger calls me from the United States. “What’s the downside?” a voice asks on the telephone. She’s read an article I wrote in a magazine about buying and restoring the house. “I’m sorry to bother you but I don’t have anyone to discuss this with. I want to do something but I don’t know exactly what. I’m a lawyer in Baltimore. My mother died and””

I recognize the impulse. I recognize the desire to surprise your own life. “You must change your life,” as the poet Rilke said. I stack like ingots all I’ve learned in my first years as a part-time resident of another country””

The woman on the other end of the line has somehow, through the university, obtained my number in Italy. “What are you thinking of doing?” I ask this total stranger.

The islands off the coast of Washington, I’ve always loved them. There’s this place for sale, my friends think I’m crazy because it’s all the way across the country. But you go by ferry””

“There’s no downside,” I say firmly.

~ Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun

What about you? What book is now coming to you its second time?

Do you know why, or do you simply know that this will be when you finish it, and that you’ll figure out why you did later?

Accomplishments when Lifestyle is Sweet

January 25, 2011 by Rosa Say

A short follow-up post. Within this conversation about useful skills, Shannon asked me another question:

What do you consider your greatest accomplishment up to now?

Unlike her other questions, this one was easy to respond to quickly, for I’ve often marveled at it with immense pleasure and gratitude. I answered her without hesitation:

“That my two children grew up to be such good people, and optimistic adults. They’re not perfect, but neither am I or their dad, and neither was ‘the village’ it took to raise them, but it still happened, and wow, they’re amazing.”

It’s an answer that is easily duplicated into what I consider my second greatest accomplishment: Choosing to be a manager, and treating it as a calling, so that I could be honored with serving employees too, and not just my children.

I like holding onto the thought of management as a profound responsibility, and I like feeling that managers raise employees within their OIB [‘Ohana in Business] for they do: Whether they realize it or not, bosses take over where parents and teachers have released their children into the world. Released them with great expectations, entrusting them with the rest of us, and with as much faith as they can muster.

And then the magic: Your profound responsibility turns into an extraordinary gift, because employees become your teachers.

This has long been a favorite quote, for I agree with him completely. Emerson is talking about ALL of us, kākou:
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’d count Managing with Aloha as my third amazingly sweet accomplishment (for all accomplishments worth listing should be crazy amazing), and I’m still working on the accomplishments I’ll one day say are my fourth, and fifth… I consider myself still learning within the ebooks I’ve begun to publish.

Thankfully, none of us need stop at just one accomplishment or two. We can satisfy our Ho‘ohana urges and callings comprehensively: I don’t think we ever reach ‘completely.’

And then there’s that concept of ‘it takes a village.’ So true, and a good thing it is, because villages encourage both sustenance and synergy. Accomplishments needn’t be solitary ones, and you can share the credit in your admiration and gratitude for the others who are involved, whether deeply, or in fleeting yet important distinctions.

Life is pretty sweet that way. I think it’s a very good way to describe one’s lifestyle, to be able to say, I’m a maker of accomplishments in concert because that is what you intend.

Villagers with their children at Cooper Center’s
Sunday Farmers Market, Volcano Village

Where these thoughts have possible roots in the archives:

What’s been your Maker’s learning sweet spot?

January 24, 2011 by Rosa Say

Shannon asked me, “What’s the most useful thing you’ve learned since starting your own business?”

That’s a hard question. It’s easy to make a list, but to narrow it down to just one thing as the most useful on the list? That’s difficult, and I’m still thinking about it.

But then she got impatient, waiting for me to answer, and added, “And you can’t say blogging.”

Immensely useful as it has been to me, I don’t think I would’ve said blogging anyway, but the suggestive power of her mentioning it took my thoughts elsewhere instantly. Yes, I enjoy it, and LOVE what blogging platforms have done for our human expression, but blogging is too big and inclusive an answer for me — it’s not specific enough. So because she pressed me, “Come on, give me an answer without over-thinking it: What’s come to mind? I can see the wheels turning”” my answer for her was, “HTML.”

Learning HTML (HyperText Markup Language) was getting to see some of the inner works of blogging and website design, and it allowed me to venture out of ‘template’ land. Best of all, I could now fix simple code when WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) and so-called ‘rich text formatting’ looked screwed up and stayed wrong no matter what else I tried to do in those modes. Today, knowing HTML is essential in the ebook publishing I do on Kindle and Smashwords, and I look for the HTML tab in every software program I consider using.

It wasn’t the answer Shannon expected — or wanted, for the key part of her question was entrepreneurial, and she wanted to quiz me on my start-up lessons learned after I left the corporate world to do my own thing. We eventually had that conversation, but I keep thinking about, and appreciating, that I learned HTML, for it’s been a very significant learning for me. I’d certainly list it as one of the core competencies I needed when I was managing editor of our community group blog, Joyful Jubilant Learning.

There is so much more I could learn about web design, but I hire others to help me with whatever the “much more” entails. Up to now, HTML as been my sweet spot, that learning which was enough to cure my frustrations, and make me feel that I was “in the know” enough for what I needed — and so that I could create, and invent online, for so much of my coaching is now virtual and digital.

A couple of posts back, I shared some thoughts about “making” with you:

“What if we tweaked the [worker contribution] conversation slightly, to “What do you make?”

And what if we said that Alaka‘i Managers grow the makers?

I wonder what would change.

At the very least, I think the conversation as we work could change.

More here: To buy Local, buy from the Maker — if you can

This notion, about finding the learning sweet spot, is a big part of how Alaka‘i Managers grow their makers. Try giving it some thought within your own context: Mine was web design in this example, but I’m thinking about it too, with the other work my team does. Here’s the practical application:

We have a virtual huddle scheduled this week, and I’ll ask them to read this post first, and then bring their own example of at least one learning sweet spot connected to one of our team’s core competencies. It will be a different kind of brainstorm, where we can share learning, and offer to coach each other.
Then I’ll ask them for more one-on-one conversation about what they came up with in the next Daily Five Minutes together. I want to milk their thinking about it, beyond what time can be allotted in our virtual huddle, and just in case they have more to say to my audience of one for them.

Mahalo nui loa Shannon! Your question has been so helpful.

What about you? What’s been your learning sweet spot in recent years? Can you share an answer with us specifically connected to the making you do?

**Related reading in the Talking Story archives:**

On my Best Habit List: Play Tourist

January 22, 2011 by Rosa Say

In keeping with my theme for 2011 as The Year of Better Habits, I am definitely continuing with something I started in earnest during 2010: I’m reaping the joy of playing tourist.

In my dream of all dreams, I’d shed all my earthly possessions but for the essentials I could backpack, convince my family and friends to come with me, and set off to travel the world, living for never-rushed months at a time in as many places as I could. Yep, I really would — and I’m working on being able to do it one day, sooner versus later! I want one of those cool walking sticks which travelers stud with emblems of the trails they have hiked, and I want to take pictures with people who speak a different language, and yet we still understand each other… in our photos we’re always smiling or laughing, and we’re usually hugging.

Meanwhile, I’ve started to do so the practical way close to home, both to appreciate where I am now, and to keep my dream vibrantly alive and within reach: I play tourist.

I don’t have the walking stick yet, but I do have some photos.

At least once every two weeks, I get out to see what visitors to Hawai‘i come to see, for there’s so much here, and I want to get my wonder back about it all, and not take it for granted. When I take a trip somewhere new, usually to speak or teach, thanks to Managing with Aloha, I tweak my schedule so I can stay an extra day or two, and play tourist there.

I bet there’s a wealth of attractions nearby to where you live too: Get out and see it. Feel what your visitors feel, when they snap their pictures, and sigh, “Wow, can you imagine what it would be like to actually live here?”

You do. And Nānā i ke kumu: Your sense of place is something to be savored.

Here are some photos I took while at Volcanoes National Park last Sunday, just a bit more than a two-hour drive from my home. I’m still uploading more” you can scroll through the full set on Flickr. A bit of introduction:

When completely opened, Crater Rim Drive is an 11-mile drive which circles the KÄ«lauea summit caldera and craters of Volcanoes National Park, and it leads through both rainforest and desert, with marked scenic stops and short walks on the way. Highlights are the Steam Vents, Jaggar Museum, Halema‘uma‘u Crater, Devastation Trail, KÄ«lauea Iki Crater, and Nāhuku (Thurston Lava Tube).

On this particular day less than a fourth of the drive was open because of the toxic air quality being created by the current eruption, yet I was able to see all of those attractions. You can discover the full character of Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park by adding another 25 miles roundtrip descending 3,700 feet to the coast, dead-ending at a lava flow crossing the road on its land-creating journey to the sea. There are also 150 miles of trails, still including the 4-mile/400 foot descent of the KÄ«lauea Iki Crater trail, where under-the-surface flows still steam through, but are deep below, and considered safe enough to tread.

Volcanoes is a very special place, and it’s such a shame that so many residents of Hawai‘i have never visited. Those who have, know that once is not enough. You might see it all in that one trip, but you leave knowing you’ll want to return.

Devastation Trail