Day 1:
Today, with tears streaming down my cheeks, I looked into the tear-filled eyes of the stranger standing to my left and told her that I was going to “…and follow my passion.” This came after @SuperAmit, aka Amit Gupta, prompted 750 people to close our eyes and think of the 3 things that we’d really been wanting but had been putting off or neglecting. “What if you got the call that I did,” he posed, “the call that said you had leukemia and could die within weeks?”
The stranger standing next to me told me that she was going to start back at her steps again, for AA. After we had hugged and awkwardly paused, and then exchanged names, and shook hands, and sat back down, I thought about how silly my struggle felt in comparison to hers. How lucky I was not to be addicted to something. *just* vulnerable to the random firings of neurotransmitters in my brain (or serious lack there of of said firings. Sometimes I feel like such shit I’m just like, am I even alive right now?).
So after I had wiped away my tears from my cheeks and my chin with the heal of my hand, and shared in the standing ovation the crowd gave Amit, and after I snapped a photo of the slide in his keynote with his contact info below which listed “Portland, Or” as his new home, and after I had my own fantasies that maybe we would meet and how lucky I would be, after all that I stumbled back to my car feeling inspired and tired.
I had a lot of thoughts this weekend at xoxo about talent and career and the Internet and art and code and money and passion. I’m not quite sure where I fit in all of that yet. But it was good to hear even the talented ones doubt themselves sometimes, or even a lot of the times.
When I got home I tweeted Amit and said, among other things within 140 characters of effusiveness, “I think you just changed my life.” So I will make it so. I will be true to my word.
So here’s me writing. And if not writing, here’s me keeping a log of what I write, or what I don’t, every day. Sometimes with thumbs (like now), sometimes using all ten fingers.
That’s a snap from another speaker. Someone really truly very talented, lucky enough to have become successful from her talents, to have been noticed and rewarded.
Just do it. That’s one I learned from Nike too. And for which I will be forever grateful.
It was nice to know that even Lisa Hanawalt feels like crap about herself sometimes. “Part of my process is feeling like shit,” she said. And then she also said: “Stop crying and move your hands.” Which is like, so true.
As Nicky Case said and showed, “There’s no way to go back, but there’s every way to go forward.” — Nicky Case
P.S. Through the magic of the Internet, Amit tweeted me back
#winning.
