rebel! Archives - Page 3 of 5 - ⚡️Kristen Kalp

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Don’t let the Adultopus win.

There are 15,000 reasons to worry about the profitability of your business first and everything else second. Yes, your kids need shoes and college keeps getting more expensive. Yes, you want life insurance and health insurance. Yes, you want a retirement account and…yes. Yes yes yes yes yes. I understand. I do.

That makes you think you should ignore your deepest and most creative work for the sake of doing urgent stuff like getting the oil changed, putting the laundry away, or paying the bills on time. Please, complete your urgent work. But this is not an either/or situation.

Your taking care of these gifts you’ve been given does not render you incapable of managing your obligations.

Don’t let the Adultopus take you under. YES, you are past the age where you get to be footloose and fancy-free like your 14-year-old self. Yes, you have responsibilities. You don’t have to do them like Eeyore, as if the world depends on your not enjoying them. Nor do you have to hoist them onto your shoulders and carry them for the next hundred miles or hundred years, whichever comes last.

You can choose to wear your responsibilities lightly.
Yes, you have to feed yourself and keep a roof over your head and somehow keep your life from imploding.

The Adultopus wants you to panic:

OF COURSE that’s impossible.
NO, you can’t do that.
STOP IT.
JUST. STOP IT.

The Adultopus wants you to put down the paintbrushes. Stop writing, stop teaching, stop being so silly and get back to work. The Adultopus wants your house to be spotless, your thigh gap to be larger, and your life to look like a magazine spread while your soul shrivels into a puddle in the corner.

In other words: the Adultopus wants you to freak out, take on a little water, and then resign yourself to going under.

This is hopeless, might as well give up. Might as well stop trying, might as well stop doing the work that calls to me, might as well try making more money doing this other thing because that seems safest.

The churning creature that is being an Adult-with-a-capital-A in modern society doesn’t want you to wake up and say, “Wait. I don’t have to drown. This is bullshit.”

Turns out, you can stand up in this water. You can put your feet on the bottom of the ocean and walk away from the Adultopus. Most people don’t.

They chase MORE like it’s oxygen, like the only way to escape the briny tentacles of the Adultopus is to buy it off in some sort of underwater deal involving a six-figure salary and a new car lease signed once every 12 months.

You can stand up. You can walk away from the ruckus.

You can be a grown-up instead of an adult. You can manage your obligations and then do whatever the fuck you’d like with the rest of your time each day. You can shop for groceries while pretending the cart is engaged in a Nascar race. You can splash around in paints while your dinner is in the oven. You can declare it swimsuit bathing time and throw the whole family into the tub at once like some sort of awkward underwater circus side show instead of spending 2 hours on the nightly taking-baths chore.

Grown-ups are capable of enjoying any task. Adults are not.

You have to be a grown-up, by virtue of being over the age of 18. You do not have to be an Adult. Not ever, not once, do you have to take on the heavy yoke of What Society Says Must Happen.

Please, please don’t let the Adultopus win.

More about the Adultopus and your constant creative companions in my favorite ever ever EVER episode of That’s What She Said — give it a listen below.

P.S. I dare you to do it all wrong.

Joy is a choice.

Every now and again, I’ll catch myself stacking work on top of TV shows on top of movies, with podcasts and Instagram to fill even my private in-the-bathroom moments. I’ll move from screen to book to device to TV to car radio and back to screen, circling through to keep entertained for every moment, faster and ever more frenetically, until I give in to whatever it is that wants to be heard in the quiet: the message of the patient, tender creatures who live just beneath the scurrying surface of everyday life.

Those patient and tender creatures of the quiet help us remember.

I’ve remembered about music. How, given half an hour, a little sheet music, and an instrument, you can make a whole world vanish and reappear, entirely new. How there’s no need to record it, save it, or capture it. How music is…and then isn’t…every day, in every part of the world, without any devices to make sure it lasts and lasts.

I’ve remembered about poetry. How I used to write, all the time and every day, because I could. Because poems were pouring out and I could either catch them on paper or try stuffing them back into my insides, awkwardly, like stilling a ferret who’s hellbent on escaping from the deep, warm pocket of my favorite sweater. (Mostly I chose to let them escape.)

I’ve remembered about talking to people. How the baristas at bookstores are inevitably kind-hearted word nerds, always hiding and yet dying to be seen. How they’ll make witty banter if you smile mischievously. How talking to strangers, without agenda and without trying to be efficient about it, is one of humanity’s loveliest gifts.

I’ve remembered about loving people. How sometimes the best way to love your partner is to buy all the manly bath products he will not allow himself to purchase, then do the (dreaded) grocery shopping so that home feels lovely, delightful, and warm when he walks in the door after too many hours away.

I’ve remembered how the best and worst thing about life is that it’s…daily.

You have to eat again today, no matter how much or how little, how well or how poorly you ate yesterday. You have to move your body again today, no matter how hard you worked yesterday, and you have to love people today, even if you gave entirely too much energy to everyone you know yesterday and last week and the week before.

Yes, it’s daily.

But in each of the daily bits, you get another chance. You get to make music and sing along to the radio and consume sweet-sweet-lovely caffeine and do your work and remember about silence, too. You get to write and have brilliant conversations with people who open your heart and mostly, you get to smile softly to yourself when no one is looking.

You get to remember that at the end of life, there will be a vast horizon of days to look back upon, and this day will be only a warm, kind blip.

Here’s to another warm, kind blip, my friend.

…THE NEXT DAY. (Because the best/worst thing about life is how it’s daily, remember?  And perfection porn says I should show you only the happy and dammit, I won’t do that to you.)

I started off crying and vulnerable and scared, because in addition to all those lovely things I wrote about yesterday, I’m remembering about the heart-wrenching consequences of loving so much you can hardly breathe: you’re afraid that the love you’re feeling and creating and experiencing together will go away.

You’re afraid he’ll die while texting on his commute.
You’re afraid he’ll stop breathing, or the apocalypse will happen while you’re not together, or your plane will crash on your business trip.
You’re afraid the cancer or the disease or the life-altering symptoms will come back.

Even with friends, with those people who fill in the gaps of your everyday life with humor and good graces, you’re afraid they’ll move away.
You’re afraid the two of you will grow apart.
You’re afraid your best days are behind you.
You’re afraid you’ll never be who you believed you could be way back when, and the pain of that disappointment will dampen you both.

There are 1,000 reasons to fear losing the people you love most, and the white-hot blinding and searing fears overtake you, sometimes.

That’s when it’s good to remember about the people who help you remember.

Morgan helps me remember about breathing and about staying connected to my body when my mind wants to run monkey-on-crack-cocaine-frantic laps around my life screaming, “MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY” at everything within a 22-mile radius.

Anne helps me remember about writing every day, even when I don’t want to and frankly, don’t give a shit, and am entirely convinced that this thing I’m writing will be terrible. (It’s terrible, isn’t it. Ah well. I’m writing.)

Meg helps me remember about my body and the physical world — the things I avoid when I go deep into Depression Land or Stressed-Out Land or all the other Very Not Fun Lands. (I’m surviving the holiday season with her this year.)

Brene helps me remember about fearing the loss of everyone you love — we all have it — and that we can’t selectively numb emotion. It’s the work of a lifetime to remain vulnerable and to trust joy. Watch this with fresh eyes and it can change absolutely everything about the way you live.

Facebook, ever so ironically, helps me remember that a few years ago today, I was giving a speech called Joy is a Choice. Which details my struggles with depression and not wanting to live anymore and how my experiments in having more fun in my life panned out and how, over and over again, I chose joy. And choose it still.

(That speech and the confetti battle afterward remain one of the best moments of my whole life. Because when you pack sixteenish pounds of confetti in carry-on, play with it among 250ish people, and pass the hat to handle the $500 clean-up fee aboard the historic Queen Mary, well…it’s all joy.)

People still remind me of that day, and how they got a glimpse of all the light on the other side of suffering, and how those moments of flinging confetti into the air helped them remember about love, and being a kid, and being happy for no reason. Also they remember about finding confetti on your pillow and in your bra and down your pants, which is the most lovely side effect of attending a speech that I can imagine.

Finally, Jenny helps me remember about being Furiously Happy, which is about choosing joy whenever possible, on every single day that the depression or the [insert mental illness here] doesn’t drag you under.

May you remember about the people who help you remember.

May you love fully and deeply without fear of loss or zombies or cancer or accidents or all the horrific tumbleweeds your mind has been playing on loop to keep you from being fully alive.

…and may you, my friend, find confetti on your pillow or down your pants for no particular reason.

P.S.  Please join the Fuck Yah club if you want me to help you remember about confetti and joy and being you in the world, despite everything fighting to keep you from it.

The loneliest person on Earth (and other reasons I cried in Hawaii)

Right so. I’m in Hawaii.

Everybody is all jealous, and I got a shit-ton of unfollows on Instagram because I’m good at cropping life to make it look perfect here, because um…it’s not very hard. Have you seen Hawaii? Aim camera in direction of ocean + years of professional photography experience = click, done, perfect.

But today, I’ve cried a lot. And it’s probably not for the reasons you’d think, like I heard a great version of “Over the Rainbow” or I was so moved to gratitude that I had to pull over and weep by a pineapple field. (Though both have happened, and recently.)

Today, I went to Turtle Beach. Where the wild Hawaiian Sea Turtles often rest after a long day. They come to feed on the seaweed-laden rocks, then pull themselves up into the sand and plop down for the day.

I’m swimming in the ocean, floating along and waiting until one of the famed turtles makes its appearance. The excited squeals of a snorkeler who has spotted a turtle alert me to its presence. (He, she, even the professionals needs tools to tell. Turtles are intensely private about gender.)

I swim out to it, staring in awe at how it looks just like a very flexible, slightly-more-mobile-than-the-rest rock. How it’s wild and huge and lovely. I’m rapturously staring at this creature I’ve been waiting for, when I snap out of my awe-induced stupor to glance at my fellow humans.

It’s a wall of GoPros and selfie sticks. Screens aimed at the creature from every angle. There are a few snorkelers who are catching glimpses in the water — one of whom is my companion — but every single person on land is in possession of a GoPro, a phone, or a dSLR designated for capturing every movement. Sometimes all three.

Not a single person who’s traveled thousands of miles to be with the sea turtles is actually present with said turtles.

I get the desire to take pictures. I totally understand being so overwhelmed by an experience that you just put a screen up to it and hope to process it later.

But. Not a single human to make contact with? Not a single human to catch the eye of and wink, as if to say, “Isn’t this magical!?!??”or “AREN’T YOU SO EXCITED TO BE ALIVE!????’ or “HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS IN YOUR WHOLE LIFE!???”

Standing in the water, surrounded by a crushing crowd of humans, but being the only one without any technological means of ‘capturing’ the moment was one of the most intensely lonely experiences of my life.

I stood there and wept behind my sunglasses. (No one noticed. Because GoPros.)

At the periphery, there was one bedraggled volunteer enforcing the ‘keep 6 feet back or more’ policy.

“Yes, your GoPro sticks count toward the six feet.”
“Please, you’re crowding the turtle.”
“Please give it space.”
“PLEASE back up.”
“Sir…please.”
“Ma’am…PLEASE…”

The volunteer was so sweet and yet so fiercely protective that I started crying AGAIN because these creatures have a gorgeous, Australian-accented ally to wade into the water over an 8-hour shift and say, again and again, to those tourists who appear to have no boundaries, that it’s not okay to intimidate this creature.

Your GoPro footage is no excuse for encumbering this wild animal.

Your screens are allowed, but the wild is more important.

And to you, dear reader, wherever you might be. When you’re tempted to pull out a screen and camp out behind it. When you can’t process a feeling so you break out your phone instead. When you are tempted to be present, but instead a tiny device burns a hole in your pocket.

Your screens are allowed, but the wild is more important.

Please, let the wild win.

You are not made for the intensely lonely experience of being alone — with or without your screen — in a sea of humans.

You are made for the quick eye dart, the excited gesture, the OH DEAR GOD CAN YOU BELIEVE HOW AWESOME THIS IS hand flail capable of crossing even the steepest of language barriers and jet-lag-induced pseudo-comas.

You are made to connect.

Please, PLEASE don’t leave the people without screens so lonely. We, too, possess these magical screens, but we put them down on purpose in order to remember with our eyes. With our brains, our upturned mouths, all of our senses that will recall those rocks and that wave and one particularly indifferent turtle, flapping about on the current. We are the guardians of Being, of Wonder, of experiencing the present in real time without the aid of any technological device.

You deserve to see life with the whole of your senses, to experience the absolute indifference of a sea turtle who makes eye contact without caring about your feeble human presence, and to laugh at the dismissive gesture of that precocious creature with everyone else who is standing nearby, surrounding it.

You deserve to be present.

And in the end, you deserve a vacation memory better than, “Remember that time you got all those Facebook likes for that photo.”  (Related: how to quit Facebook in 8 easy steps. 😉

May you find a new human to wink, nod, or crinkle your nose at every single day.

May you catch the eyes of small children and smirk with an all-encompassing sort of gentle conspiracy.

May you know the raucous wonder of life without a single layer of technology buffering the feels between joy and the soul itself.

May your most intense moments of connection live only in your belly, deep down, untouchable and wild.

And may you, my friend, be richly rewarded for turning your phone off, especially when the always-on siren call means you’d rather not.

P.S.  Choose love.  And show your work.

Sharing a Shamrock Shake with Bill Murray

The other night, I dreamed that my Dad and I were in Punxsutawney to hear John Candy’s stand-up routine when Bill Murray showed up and asked for a sip of my shamrock shake. (Obviously.)

When we makers and business owners doubt our creativity or think we’ve got nothing new to say, isn’t it neat that our brains can conjure this shit up?

John Candy is dead, shamrock shakes are out of season, my Dad and I aren’t planning a roadtrip, and Bill Murray…yah yah yah yah yah, my brain gestures impatiently. JUST WATCH.

The creative act — whether you’re making dinner or a new product or a different service or a movie or painting or a day that feels better than yesterday — comes with plenty of roadblocks that make logical sense.

You’re tired.
You’re out of cash.
You’ve got no supplies.
You’re not as good as ______________.

But that doesn’t stop Bill Murray from showing up and sharing your shamrock shake. You’ve only got to get out of your own way and watch the dream, already in progress…

A great indicator of your dreams’ zaniness and general Bill Murray factor, as well as your ability to make stuff, is indicated by your input.  Your willingness to take time out to read books, listen to podcasts, go fishing, look at art, take walks, and/or otherwise do enjoyable activities that you deem life-giving and fulfilling.

Listen to the input versus output podcast episode to get caught up, and maybe Bill will show up in your dreams, too.

P.S.  How to find a way in to your creative process.

Too much cauliflower (and other reasons your coaches are failing you)

“Therapy doesn’t work. It just…doesn’t.”
“Well,” I ask, “did you ever tell your therapist the truth?”
::eye dart:: “Yah…”
“The whole truth?”
“No, of course not. Those parts of me are too messy to be seen.”
“Ah, you gave them cauliflower. The real problem was that you don’t know how to be in the world after [insert traumatic event], and you told them your cauliflower wasn’t seasoned correctly, metaphorically speaking. So you talked about how to cook cauliflower, and which spices to use, and you looked up cauliflower tricks and you now make the best cauliflower on Earth, but…cauliflower was never really the problem.”
“Exactly.”

Whether you’re working with a coach, a therapist, a trainer, a teacher, a mentor, a facilitator, a spiritual advisor, or a mastermind group, telling the deep truth is the only way to get meaningful help.

Yes, you want more clients.
But really? You’re afraid of being seen.
And really? You only want 3 more clients.
And really? You want to leave your husband soon, so you want to store the income from those 3 clients away before you move out.

Okay, then.

The deep truth is the place where big shifts begin to happen.

The company restarts, triples, shuts down, moves on, or rises from the ashes.
The marriage ends, restarts, doubles down, or lets go.
The clients flock to you or run from you.
The family members mock you or embrace you.

Deep truth is the way of living fully in the world, and I’m begging you to tell it. If only to yourself, if only for a moment.

Tell yourself the deep truth, and act accordingly.

It’s not nearly as painful as shutting yourself down, closing yourself off, or looking up one more cauliflower recipe for tonight’s meal.

P.S. Opening is an act.