Novel Treatments / Sally, It's Time For Business

“Sally, It’s Time For Business!”
(Oooooh…look! Glitter!):
A Modern-Day Guide To
Right-Brained Corporate.

Today—marks a fine fine day in the history of a young girl:
The day she decides to pull it all together and make her way towards the top.
She is motivated! She is unstoppable! She has a thousand ideas that, if properly instigated, could make her millions!

The problem? She’s had a thousand other ideas like this.
So have all of her friends. Worse, she doesn’t have any examples that are in her life right now to choose from to see how business is really done. So she’s clueless. Why?

Cuz she’s a right-brainer. That’s right—I mean, correct. The author herself is left-handed. In addition to being raised to be creative, she is plagued to be even more right-brained (read: disorganized and confused) than her analytical, left-brained counterparts.
So she came up with the term Right-Brained Corporate. She uses this term to describe her business minded, left-handed friends, or the ones who are artistic and have lots of ideas but seem so inundated with creativity that they have trouble getting just one thing done.

What do you do as an under-30 young person who knows they’ve got a lot of ideas, wants to carry them all out at some point, but has no idea where to begin, no mentors, no examples? Especially when all of those other self-help books don’t tell you how to do it step by-step in the fashion that makes the most sense?
Most self-help books out there are motivational fluff, on top of more motivational fluff. But they don’t really tell you what you actually need to do. They just say, “you can do anything!”
As a creative or intelligent person, you may be saying to yourself “Thanks. I already knew that.”

For example, one of the author’s favorite mentors is Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson invented the swiveling chair, the coat hanger, and other things that have absolutely no relation to each other yet ended up making him a lot of money! Cool huh? To quote the mindset of Thomas Jefferson: “what am I interested in? Everything!”

But don’t worry, young Right-Brained Corporate Readers! I, Sally Daniels, am here for you! I’m gonna show you how it’s all done. A step-by-step plan so you can breathe easy knowing that you will be leaving no stone unturned.

Now, my advice to you to get you excited about the possibilities, is to do like a proper right-brainer would, and flip to the back of the book and read the last chapter. I don’t know what’s there yet, because, unlike MOST motivational book writers, I am writing this book in chronological order, as it happens. Amazing. This means you can avoid making the same mistakes I do. I’m even going to tell you about the mistakes I’m making as I go along. Why?

They say that “a genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and voluntary portals of his own discovery.”

Allow me to tell you what’s going on: It’s 2am. The new Kelly Clarkson CD I bought with the money I didn’t have from Wal-Mart is playing in the background, as “motivation” (ooh! The audience just cheered on the cd…how I would love to have an audience cheer for me like that…)

I just got finished hanging out with my best friend, Lane. My computer is so darned cool that I have made sure that every time I type my best friend’s actual name, it changes automatically. This is because I have planned for a long time to write a novel about all of the crazy things we have done—since we could probably get arrested for all of the stuff that’s happened in the time I have known her.

Yes. I am young. Yes. I admit to making mistakes and keeping nothing resembling a normal person’s schedule. I have a job that I keep because I don’t have to get there at the same damn time every day. They function like Europeans at my work (I hear that time is not an issue over there???) and I like that. Once, I told Lane that I felt like a co-worker of mine was trying to screw me out of some cash, and she said “no, that’s just because he’s a druggie and a space-cadet. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

She was right.

Lane is a bartender. I used to be a bartender but quit that because I wanted to get away from the “hard life”, in addition to the complete night-owl dilemma that happens when you become a bartender. This makes it very difficult to get anything done. In spite of the fact that I now wake up before the sun goes down, I haven’t gotten a lot done these past few months. I’ll tell you why:
1. I drink more than I should
2. I like brownies with my milk (you might know what that means)
3. Like a small relatively lucky and/or damned percentage of the population, I have been severely spoiled which allows me more freedom to indulge in options 1 & 2.
4. I wish I was in romantic love and had somebody in my life that believed in me and was reliable, but most of my MTV generation is again, indulging in options 1 & 2, which makes reliability and planning increasingly difficult.
5. My parents like to reinforce the fact that it sounds like I don’t know what I want to do with my life. They say that “when you finally figure out what to do, you’ll have to do it with your own money. We’ve helped you enough.”

Then I ponder how much money I actually have, meaning…me, Sally, in my own bank account, and suddenly everything seems impossible—because when they say I have to use my own money, I believe them.
6. Did I mention love would be nice? Or how about the fact that my job leaves me bored since it’s not very creative?

You might think this doesn’t sound very bad at all though. Well. Let me tell you what happened in the months leading up to the state described above:

1. I did a lot of speed in an effort to get things done. This did not work. It did make me a very thirsty person with bad skin though.
2. I did some cocaine here and there to “bond” with people I really didn’t like, in an attempt to make me more social with people I did not really want to talk to anyway. This did not work, but it did resort in….
3. Me coming down with a nasty nasty case of the flu, having a so-called “religious epiphany”, seeing Jesus, talking to dead relatives, thinking it was the 2nd coming, thinking I was in hell, and suffering from multiple cases of convulsions where my body would thrash about for 2 hours at a time and I really couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

I read some magazine article a while ago stating that people get delusional because of the flu. Apparently some pro football player was found walking around in his underwear claiming that he was the new messiah. I thought, “oh great I CAN blame it on the flu now!” But I really don’t think that’s what it was from.

Kids! I fucked up my brain. KIDS! Don’t try that at home. While I do admit that seeing Jesus was pretty cool and all, and I believe in a lot of things that I didn’t believe in before, well…my brain has been a bit scattered since then. I think I will be ok, but for a while, I had people think I was bi-polar. I felt I was floating about the earth and was not going to ever come back down to reality. I wanted things to seem real again.

What do you do when you’ve thoroughly stressed your family out and some people think you’re nuts, and you wonder if you’re ever gonna get back on top of it? Maybe you feel confused because your brain is genuinely confused. Perhaps the poor little dendrites and synapses are screaming, “Help us! Help us!” while you keep drowning them in a swimming pool of vodka and margaritas, so you look ok, but your brain never recovered from the really big blow, so you’re never fully recovered. Like peeling a scab off a wound instead of letting it fall off.

I think recovery is possible, so long as you do not attach yourself to:
A. Your “old world”—if your old friends are alcoholics or druggies, they will act like it and have the motivation levels of one, which means you will too.
B. The old nonchalance of the days of yore. Nonchalance is merely a synonym for indifference. While it may look all rock and roll and cool to be nonchalant…you won’t fall in love with anybody charismatic, you won’t attract any charismatic friends, and your lack of charisma will keep you from going anywhere.

This brings me to step ONE of the plan:

Get back to your roots.

When I was feeling like a drifter in the vast sea of American economics, not knowing what I wanted to do to make money, or even feeling quite good about how to spend it…I started thinking about things I used to do that made me happy. Things I did not feel indifferent about.

I wish I could tell you that I came up with these things in my waking hours. But…I kept getting the nagging feeling from my subconscious. God….he’s an annoying little prick. Little ID (as Freud would call him) really wanted me to get the memo that I needed to revisit my youth. At least three times in a month, I dreamed about ice skating. I ice skated all the time as a teen. It was one of the few things that I wanted to do without outside influence. It was a world away from my parents, away from any boyfriends I had. Friends from the world of ice skating didn’t cross over too much into my other worlds—that was how I liked to keep it. Ice skating was one thing in my life I could truly say was mine.

After dreaming about ice skating on so many nights, I thought that I would have to resort to actually going ice skating. Instead, I put my ice skates in the back of my car. Now that an escape lies no further than the trunk of my car, I have since stopped dreaming about ice skating.

Which just goes to show you that connection can lie more in the emotional realm than in actually doing something.

The next thing in the plan of getting back to my roots consisted of conversations with my father. My father is, as I write this, 81 years old. My mom is 58. I’m 22. My dad was married twice. For a really long time, we thought my dad was in his mid 60s, til the day I looked at my ½ brothers ID and said “dad had you when he was only 15 years old?! Wait a minute…”

Side note: You can continue to get a lot of work done if you lie to enough people that you should be young enough to still be productive.

Back to the story: My dad has lost the balance and quickness of his youth. I told him that he needed to resort to doing things he did when he was little: Jacks. Cup and ball. Hopscotch. Things to increase his dexterity. This brought back memories of something I used to use a lot when I was little: The skip it.

I have included a diagram here so I don’t have to explain myself.
I went home that night and looked for a cheapy version of a skip it I knew we had, which wasn’t the same. But alas, my mom told me “they have the skip-its back in the stores now! I saw them the other day.”
Two days later, I got home with my new generation skip-it (which comes complete with a ribbon streamer!) and skipped it, right there in my own bedroom, in front of my full-length mirror.
Exercise no longer feels like exercise. I forget that I am exercising because I am simultaneously reminiscing of my care-bear youth while I try to keep from tripping myself up, in addition to concentrating on my “core” (that’s what they call it in Pilates) and pretending I’m doing ballet.

I have added artistry to the fumbling skill of skipping it. For the past couple of weeks, my lower half has been sore, and I swear my ass is getting more toned, but…the secret frivolous joy I get from skipping it…anchors me to my youth.

Feeling properly anchored to my youth reminds me that…in my adulthood, I can go at things with the zestfulness that I did before I was old enough to know I should be afraid.
A lot of self-help books talk about fear and how fear is programmed into you.
Ok. Maybe I agree. But instead of thinking about doing away with the programming, I am proposing that you try to remember what your life was like when you did things and fear did not exist. Failure was not an option because it was not a consequence. Do you remember? I know you do.

I remember fear. There was the time in kindergarten, that I tried to walk on one of those waist-level monkey bars in the playground like it was a balance beam.

Bad idea.

This ended very painfully. Thou shalt not walk on the monkey bars like a balance beam. I ended up getting in a fight with the playground supervisors about how I was not supposed to reveal what was underneath my party dress, because a good girl was not supposed to do that with people she did not know.

“Sally! We have to check to see if there is any blood. We have to check to see if you are hurt.”

See? If we tackled every crazy idea with the same zest that I turned that monkey bar into the crotch-rocket of death when I was in kindergarten, we would be onto many great things!

But that brings me to my next point:

Step TWO:

Be logical.

As a kindergartener, doing what I did was painfully lacking in logic, and I knew that. But unlike being children, we have an incredible gift now that we are “grown up.”

Please note that I think being grown up is INCREDIBLY BORING—my ideal goal is to grow up only for a short time, so I can come to the self-actualization of having completed Maslow’s Heirarchy of needs, so I can go onto being the best thing: a big little kid.

That gift we have in our adulthood is logic! Why yes! Through the public school system, we learned the things that make the most sense. Now. As a right-brainer, I sit here writing this saying “Sally, why are you DOING this? You hate being logical. You know for a personal fact that it’s always the most stupid, idiotic, illogical ideas that seem to work out the best for you. You should tell them to be logically illogical!”
But. That is exactly the fight that the right-brainer has to deal with.

Your biggest fight you will ever have with yourself is the choice of being logical, vs. being artistic.

To go with the defined, consistent corporate job vs. the job that is not.

To follow your gut beyond all normal reason and end up doing things that seem quite random….perhaps not even having any idea why…or, to follow things in a secure, expected, planned order.

You get the idea.

However, I am not proposing your typical logical. I am proposing right-brained logical.
Every creative person I know has some smidgeon of an idea that leads to some larger plan. Some sort of little crazy business idea that they have. Some sort of thing that they always thought it would be “neat” to do. It could be anything.

Right. It could be anything. But I’m going to tell you not to pick just anything. To be a little more god-damned smart about it.

I have this idea that success often happens through the teeniest, most unsuspecting door possible. This came to me in a dream once. A dream that consisted of going through a large door. Behind the large door were all sorts of pretty things—baubles that looked like what you drool at on the Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland. But just like on the ride, I realized after a few seconds that all those trinkets and pretty things that looked so wonderful were really just glorified Mardi Gras beads and weren’t really good for anything at all. Behind that big door was a bunch of stuff that looked pretty from far away but was worth nothing.
Then I opened the other door. The other door, where I wished I could shrink like they did in Alice & Wonderland because it must have been an inch by an inch. Behind that door? Ah! There was all the magic! There was all the stuff I needed to see.

Make mental note to self: Success happens through the smallest door possible.

Meaning that starting any little thing you can officially, for real, without fear, is better than sitting there paralyzed saying, “What do I do?!!”

Therefore, my challenge for you is to think of something logical for you, Mr./Ms. Right Brainer: Think of some teeny little side project you can do. Some little thing, some construct. Something that’s free or inexpensive, that doesn’t take a lot of time, that will put out the idea that “yes I am going into business!” out into the cosmos.

Don’t get too big now. Do one thing, one little thing, and do it well. I know that as a right-brainer, you like to take on the big thing full force even if you have no idea what you are doing, and go about it in all your haphazardness with the idea that you will fix your past mistakes later. Bad idea. Just stick to the one teeny thing. This will make you whet your appetite for what comes next.

So here is my little logical thing that I am doing!

I am filing a Business Name at the county recorders office tomorrow! That’s right. Because, as a person who changed her real name about two years ago, I feel that I have enough authority to say that things don’t really happen until you make it official and have a name.

No business is really professional til you have a business name.
All you other fools that try to start businesses without doing it the old-skool professional way, are just artists scrambling for attention.

I don’t care if it is available as a dot com. Buying the dot com does not count. You have to go to the county recorder’s office and file the name. Do check to see that the name is available as a dot com FIRST, however…buy it if you like, because you are impulsive and think that someone else “might steal your idea” in 48 hours. But do not do anything until you have the business name. Cuz the business name means no bullshit. Business name means you’re doing it like grownups. Business name means that you plan to be a business that’s bigger than your bedroom/garage/trunk of your car. Ok? DO IT. Follow my advice. When you’ve filed that business name, we can move on to step three!

____________________________________________
Chapter 2:
A day in the life of Sally

Here I am, sitting in my plush office job.

I just lied. But you can’t tell because it’s in writing. I walked through the back door and through the downstairs area, which smells like cigarette smoke. No matter how many times I have told the restaurant owners, the other employees…that I’m allergic. That I have allergies, that I sing and can’t be around cigarette smoke. They don’t listen. They never listen. Cigarette smoking is against the law in California, and this pisses me off.
My own Granfather smoked.
I’ve been in love with men who smoke
My own uncle still smokes.

This does not take away from the fact that I get a nasty headache and my throat and eyes end up burning from the smoke.

The fact that people are still continuing to smoke here tells me that because they can’t follow California law, or be considerate of the needs of an asthma-afflicted employee, that it’s not a quality place to work. That I should leave. I should leave to work somewhere that pays more, with bosses who are actually here to open the door for me instead of me waiting in the parking lot at 2pm because they are at home, hung-over, sleeping in. I should work somewhere slightly corporate. It might involve dressing up. It might involve getting up earlier than I’d like.
But I looked at some notes that I made of things I wanted to do here at my job, some improvements I wanted to make. I looked at the list and laughed cuz I thought, “not only am I not going to get around to doing these things, but these people don’t care. If I’m going to invest such time & energy, I should be doing so with a business that will actually take note of, and appreciate any improvements I make.”

I’ll bet you I sound really bitchy right now.
Ok. Fine. I admit it. I just took the last regular birth control and now we are moving on to the placebo week, and what I could really go for right now is a big fat steak. Cuz I’m going to need some extra iron soon.
Chocolate, being a derivative of cocaine, seems to make me go insane, so I’ve learned to keep away from that. But, steak satisfies! I really want a damn steak.
To top it off, it’s hot in here. They need a new air conditioner badly. In spite of the fact that I researched air conditioners and printed out reasonable options and scotched taped them to the old air conditioner (hint hint you bastards!) NOBODY has purchased a new air conditioner.
I grew up in a fucking ice rink. I like the cold.

I need a new job.

Advice for part two: Learn to accept the fact that putting effort into certain jobs, while it may go noticed, may not actually get you anywhere. Take note of the aspects in your life…the things that you keep putting effort into that somehow, don’t seem to be paying off. Ponder how much your own business, or a company where you would be appreciated and put to good use, would take note of your skills and instead of saying “good job!” they would say, “good job, now let’s give you a promotion!”

Here boys & girls though, is the clencher. Here is my next set of advice.

As much as you want to, DO NOT LEAVE THE JOB THAT YOU DISLIKE. See, you don’t really dislike your job as much as you thought you disliked your job. In fact, I’ll bet you were quite excited initially. I’ll bet your co-workers were happy to have somebody as charismatic as you working for them!

I repeat: DO NOT LEAVE YOUR CURRENT JOB.

Keep it for as long as you can. I’m going to propose something different, something that will help you break the cycle, because…if you are anything like me, you have trouble keeping jobs for more than a few months.

This is how it goes: You get a job. You keep a job. You realize you aren’t getting anywhere. So you begin the process of unwinding yourself from where you worked up to, you start convincing yourself that you hate it. This results in a process of negative attraction, which means you attract even more reasons to go about hating your job even more.

Now think about all the times that you have tried to catch up from your dwindling hours. Think about the times that you have start over at that lower position.
In addition, think about how flippant you seem to your friends, to people who could possibly connect you to somebody who would hire you.
There just went all of your opportunities because my friends probably think “Sally is smart…Sally seems like she would make an ok employee, but I don’t feel comfortable telling my friend to hire her because I don’t think she would stick around that long.”

See what I mean?

Instead of quitting, here is my advice:
Get two part time jobs. Get another job that might entertain you to tie you over.
In addition, do as well as you can to start making changes at work. Start documenting the changes you make, so at the end of your 1 to three year stay at your current job, you will be able to have a portfolio of positive things you have done within your workplace so somebody who wants to hire you in the future can see “yes, Sally doesn’t stick around very long, but look at all of the positive and permanent changes she makes in the time she works somewhere.”

Make a note: The day you start making changes in your life is when you stop escaping the things that bother you. Instead of running from them, you call it to people’s attention. You open their eyes to the possibility of everyone winning, and everyone making more money. First, you start confronting “problems” at a job that isn’t your be all, end all job. This is your first step towards making you care about all the little things in life. First you care about teeny inconsequential things, then you start caring about the little things that truly matter.
In order to confront the things you do care about, you first have to confront those little negativities that leave you with a bitter taste in your mouth. Got it?

Unlike other self help books, I’m not telling you to take care of all of those inconsequential things at once. I’m telling you to face the issues that you normally run from, the ones that seemingly do not matter.
So many self help books make it seem like you can rebuild your life in a day. That you can say “today is the day I am going to start that project that will take a long time, and it will be finished in a flash because I am motivated!”
But I know you creative types. I know you function a bit differently.

You are not going to lose the last ten pounds when you want to lose the last ten pounds. You are going to lose the 10 pounds when you want to have a lifestyle that would keep you ten pounds thinner.

You are not going to keep your car and house clean by telling yourself such things. You will keep your car and house clean by having a situation that says you would be embarrassed otherwise if your car or home was not somewhat clean.

When your life gets busy enough that you do not want to be fretting about whether you will have the right thing to wear, you will start doing your laundry more often.

In my lifetime, I’ve heard a lot of talk. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about dreams they want to tackle. Projects they want to do. Things that sit unfinished in the distance.
My theory is this: if you had really wanted to do it, it would have been done by now.

Many people confuse the notion of actually going at their dreams, vs. simply living in the fantasy of “always reaching” towards their dreams, but never actually attaining them.
Lets face it: Really going for your dreams involves going through a lot of details and side work that you have no interest in! Paperwork, practice, perhaps taking classes, training. Once you attain your goals, the view from the top is superb, yet what about the climb up the mountain when you are stuck looking at some donkey’s hairy ass the whole way up? Hmmm? You have to train yourself to tackle the details of your life you do not like. This is precisely why I am proposing you to tackle details that are within a sector of your life you don’t care about. Because
1. You will be surprised at how much more you care about things, once you pay attention to those details
2. Your attitude may change about things that you previously wanted to walk away from
3. You may find that you have a lot more control over your life than you once thought possible, and that malleability of your life grants you an amazing amount of satisfaction and freedom
4. Once you are trained to look at all the details of your life, and once you understand what it feels like to tackle details you do not like, this means that once you are really busy, you will be able to pick and choose your battles carefully.

P.S. I talked to Lane today. I had a dream a couple of weeks ago about her working at this new restaurant downtown. I told her that she should apply to work there. She had a dream that she should work there too. She also said she dreamed about ghosts & spirits living in the building, but that’s beside the point. She had a mild falling out where she currently works, and finally “told it to them like it is” and now they are “kissing her ass.” She was returning my call because I put up a couple pictures of us on this website all us young kids are addicted to. (space…mine…my space…) holding up these books about going into business. and in one day, three people wrote to me, “You and Lane are going into business? What kind of business?” Further proof that just a little bit of effort in your own damn kiddie pool does more than all the effort into a kiddie pool with a big hole in the bottom.

Well—it is two days after I have told you all that I was going to go down to the recorder’s office and file a business name. I still have not done this. However, I will tell you about one wise business choice I have made:
I play music in a new band. We are just getting started. It has taken over a year of searching to find this band. I thought that…if we were a “real” band, we would practice in a “real studio” because that is more professional. Turns out some “real music studios” just went up, within walking distance of my home, where the band is currently practicing. I talked to a friend of mine who already practices there. “I pay $56.00 a month” he says. “such a deal!” I think. “tell me the next time your space has an opening if that other band really ends up leaving, ok?” “you’ll be the first to know.” He says. Next day I get a call from my friend:
“It will cost you guys $275.00 a month.”
$275.00 a month? The choice was easy: I decided immediately to go to the hardware store and finally buy some soundproofing material for my garage, so I will no longer be uneasy about the possibility of neighbors complaining and getting slapped with a noise fine.
I don’t really know why I’m telling you this. The material I bought is still at the hardware store, since I got there, purchased it, and figured out later that I had no way to transport it. But that’s how the right-brainer works!

Most often, I have found that instead of trying to coerce people or explain to people what you ought to get done, need to get help with, or whatever, it’s easier to simply do the thing you wanted to do, and now that the need is genuine and apparent, helpers will follow.

I know that’s really horrible advice, but since the material is on some sort of “deadline” and genuinely needs to be picked up, people are so much more willing to assist.

This tells me if you find more people who are willing to function on the spur of the moment just like you, then you’ll have some luck getting things done when the time comes. Why? Because I’ll bet you have tons of friends or acquaintances who are bored, just waiting for their lives to be filled. Just waiting for their skills to get used.
Here’s the fine difference though between being “used” and feeling “helpful”:
1. If you plan ahead to “use” someone’s skills, time and again…you’re…using them. Especially if you aren’t paying them.
2. If you are stuck in a jam because you’re creative and lack the forethought and need somebody who can help you due to your own aloof lack of planning..then men enjoy helping the damsel in distress. Sometimes, it’s ok to be the damsel in distress. Sometimes, the only way you get things done is by being the damsel in distress, because you genuinely do need the help, which makes men genuinely feel needed.

If you’re sitting on a pile of options saying “hmm hmm…what do I choose, who do I choose to help me?” Then it seems like have lots of options and you don’t really need the help. To those guys, they end up feeling like just another feather in the pile.

I’m not recommending you take anything I say seriously, it’s just some fun stuff to think about.

Back to the update of not leaving my current job:

Day two of deciding not to leave my current job. Last night, after work, I decided to send my manager a little email (lengthy) that consisted of me kvetching (a.k.a. venting) about situations at my work that are unsatisfactory to me:
1. I leave messages with people. They call back. I have no way of checking the messages to know that they call. Nobody has shown me how.
2. I have a specific method that I use for my phone marketing and trying to lure people into the nightclub where I work. One that employs only the highest levels of snobbery. It works for me. It is quick and painless. But if somebody else takes the call from somebody else that I called before…and flirts with my customer over the phone, one I worked so hard to be snobby and elitist with—there goes my marketing tactics.

I said a lot of things. 1st thing when I got into work I got the “come here” hand motion from the manager I emailed. He forwarded the email to one of my coworkers. He probably likes me less now. Great. He said that the coworker would show me how to check the voice mail. He did not show me how. Probably because he was too stoned to remember. He did however, leave a sheet of paper with about 20 names and numbers from messages that people had left in the past week that I had not been getting. It wasn’t even clear why these people were calling. The guy couldn’t even spell the words right.

I realized this:

It may make you feel a lot better to tattle and vent and get things off of your mind when it comes to changes being made at your workplace. But the only real changes you can count on actually happening, are the ones you make yourself. And unless you make them yourself, you may wonder months later why you still feel so dissatisfied with your job: It’s because you say things, and you say things, but still nothing happens.

After my boss telling me he would do what he could to keep such a “valued employee” where he works, he then tells me that he’s quite frustrated with the company as well and might be leaving in a few months. Well la-ti-da! I like my manager. My manager is one of the few fun people at my work. He makes work fun. And he has confessed that I make work fun. If he leaves, work will not be nearly as fun! I do not like this one bit.
Later that evening, I got to listen to my manager talk to his four year old daughter over the phone. She wanted him to come over for dinner. He couldn’t come home for dinner.

“Tomorrow?”

“I don’t know honey, I’m very busy at work.”

“Well what about the day after that?”

“We’ll have to see.”

My manager makes enough money to pay his bills. Unfortunately he doesn’t have the time to see his kids grow up. He’s at a job that doesn’t even mean much. He could be replaced. He’s not making gobs of money. What’s he doing? When he lived in Canada, he used to teach English. Now? What now? Why? Why is he stuck? I feel stuck.
The only thing I could think is that my manager needs to make friends with my friend Dave. Dave has two kids too. Dave & Garrett would get along. I thought to myself,

“if I knew Garrett better, and I knew Dave better…if I had the money, I would open up my own restaurant, or start my own business, and we would all work there, and everybody would be able to go home and have dinner with their kids, whenever they wanted.”

Here is the thing: I care about some of the people I work with. I care about some of the people I used to work with, and even though we are no longer working together, I wish we could figure out some reason to be friends. It’s really hard to figure out a reason to be friends though, outside working together.

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Chapter 3:
Some notes on financial independence

I’d like to tell you a little more about my family. My mom has a dad who was a mechanic. My mother emphasized that while my grandfather was not educated because he was an orphan growing up—he had bad grammar and he couldn’t tell you things that would make him seem well-read, but he was still emotionally smart and had a good heart. He was a gifted craftsman and mechanic and those were the kinds of things that could shine clear through the things you might learn in school.
My mother’s mom, on the other hand, went to school, and in the 1950s represented one of the few households at that time with two parents who worked full time. This meant that from a young age, it was up to my mom to do the laundry, iron things and make sure her mom got to work on time…I guess my mom didn’t feel like she had much of a mother.
I didn’t feel like I had a grandmother either, until I was old enough that she could correct my college papers, and tell me the proper past tenses of certain words, making sure I got everything right. In music, I enjoy breaking all of those rules, but in college it served me well. My grandma died before we got the chance to be big little kids together.
Well, no, I take that back. I did manage to push her around really fast in a wheelchair at Sea World. I bought one of those visors with the lights in it, not because I needed it, but because it had been the only outing I had with just me and my grandma.

Ok. I drifted there. The point was, that my mom understood the value of having enough money to have financial independence—having enough money to do what you wanted – artistic freedom, freedom to travel, etc. This means that any project, no matter how useless it was, I got to do it. I was completely fucking spoiled. I should be a bitch at this point, like one of those girls in that Beverly Hills Girl Scouts movie. Or that girl in Willy Wonka who sang, “Don’t care how, I want it now!” The only saving grace was that the money I spent to make those seemingly useless things—I would give them away to other people, and it brought them joy. Eventually I would give them useful things I would make, that they could put to practical use, which meant more bang for my….my mom’s…buck.

Now let me tell you about my special friend Tom. I like Tom a lot. We play music together. Tom moved here from out of state not too long ago to share in opening up a business with a couple of friends. I couldn’t understand at first why Tom moved out here so quickly to be with his two friends. Why he would give up his friends back home, and things he had going. At first I thought there might have been something he was running from but I really don’t think that’s the case now. I’ll tell you why I don’t think that’s the case:
I asked him if he had a million dollars, what he would do with it.
He said that he would invest it into opening a business. A new store. A chain of stores if he could, or maybe just one store. He would start his own record label. Then he would maybe go on a vacation.
Most people would list the European vacation first. Tom saved the European vacation for last. Clearly, Tom just thrives on business. He will tell you music is his first love but I really think it’s more the business of music, and he doesn’t quite know this yet.
At first I thought Tom had it made with his own business. Now I’m really confused, because it seems like any spare time he could have, he spends driving his business partners around. They work two full time jobs to pay rent on their apartment and to keep the store open. Then Tom lives with them, to help deflect rent costs. They only have one car, to keep the cost of living down, and Tom spends a lot of time driving them around. For example, we were playing music, then Tom looks at the clock and says, “ok it’s time to go! I have to pick up my friends and we’re going to go out to dinner.”

Originally, I thought that it must be a kind of hellish existence for Tom, not having any free time to himself. But then I thought…knowing Tom enough to know that…emotionally he is a slow mover…slow to make people part of his life and part of his world because he always likes to make sure he is doing the right thing. I thought, this is the perfect existence for Tom. Or for anybody in their mid 20’s who isn’t quite sure what they want, because Tom is blessed with the fine mental vacation of not having to think.

If you are somebody who doesn’t know what you want, how blissful must it be to move from one thing to the next, and do what other people ask of you? Until you know what you want, it’s the perfect situation! His bills are paid. He doesn’t have to worry, he feels somewhat fulfilled because at least he’s helping out his friends.

Yeah! Ponder that one for a minute!

If you don’t know what you want, I’m not proposing you try to figure it out. I’m proposing you work your ass off until time shows you what it is that you want.

Think about how many mid 20 something’s don’t know what they want. I think this precisely has to do with the fact that we’re too idle, and we haven’t figured out ourselves enough to know. It’s perfectly respectable, and expected, to not know what you want until time has allowed you the pleasure to hone your skills enough that you figure out what you enjoy most and what you are best at.

Here’s what most of you artist types want. Or what you think you want: Most of you artist types want to “make a living” with your art. You know what I think? I think most of you are dead wrong, because most humans in their lifetime don’t make enough art to make gobs of cash with it. Lets be HONEST with ourselves here!
For example. I’m a musician. I can write 60 songs in a year if I want. But at the end of the year, I’m only truly happy with about 12 songs. That’s enough to go on a CD. Additionally, I like to practice with other musicians. I like to play shows. But if I was doing music “full time”, meaning, 40 hours a week…it might cease to be fun! Worse than that, my ears would hurt. It would be a lot like work. And if I’m going to be spending 40 hours a week doing something, my priority is not running the creative side of my brain ragged until I have enough “stuff” made to make a living. I don’t like the way my brain gets all “right side dominant” as I like to call it, when I am in artist mode. I have so many different song ideas whirling around that every one begins to sound and feel like the last. I can’t remember how they all go because my brain is always processing a new idea. I can’t remember shit because everything jostling in my jello-head is new. I have to write things down. I stop making plans with friends because I’m feeling “possessed” and “moved” or “motivated” by my new silly little idea. It’s very impractical. And once you start letting your brain be the “creative” brain full time, it’s difficult to function on a normal schedule, you feel flippant and chaotic.
All you normal people don’t try to argue with me. I know that you know that this is how artists get. Don’t even lie. Think of your most flippant friends who are so cheerful that they might fart and it smells like daisies and roses. They may not be artists, but they are definitely right-brainers, ok?
People who are right brained but not artists may be defined as:
• Suzy sunshine
• A little flakey around the edges
• Afflicted with ADD
• Bi-polar
• Manic
• Peter-Pan Syndrome
• Did too many drugs as a teen

Trust me! There’s a WHOLE HOST of syndromes to describe what happens when you just “let your brain go” with chaotic creativity. I’m not founding this upon any medical research. All you doctors could laugh at me because I’m using terms that I shouldn’t be using. But lets not forget that we are the MTV, AIM, text message, “The space”, NOW generation. We all want it now, us ladies are supposed to be feminists and self-assured and furthermore American so we’re supposed to now what we want now, and we’re all capitalists so we’re used to having the money to buy it now.
Therefore, what the heck are you supposed to do when society tells all us 20 something’s we’re supposed to know what we want now, but the only time we’ll really know is when we’ve had enough experience to try everything, which means we’ll all be about 30 years old? Can you see why 20-somethings are pulling their hair out over this? Or maybe I’m the only one. But, hell, that’s why I’m writing this book.
With all of that said…I’m going to give you some homework:
1. As Americans, what us creative folks really want more than anything is the financial independence to do what we’ve always wanted.
a. That means, that for some of us, we need to bust our asses making a lot of money to invest in our creative projects. Because, until something you are doing is making enough money to pay for itself, and is making enough money to turn over a profit, it is just a project. That’s right, you heard it. Until it’s paying for itself, turning over a profit, and paying all of your bills, it’s just a glorified art project. You can have your own store, you can make your own handbags, or have your own rock band. The day you can afford to have your business, and only your business, and it’s paying all of your bills, that’s when you can call it a business. Most people don’t keep their side projects going long enough or invest enough money in them to start them off properly in order for them to get turned into a business. Ok? Keep that in mind.
2. As a 20 something, my guess is, you really don’t know what you want. But you may have some ideas about some “side projects” you want to do, or some “businesses” you want to start. With that said:
a. Unless you are willing to go through all of the proper schooling, and take all of the proper classes, to learn how to do the thing properly, and officially, in accordance to industry standards…unless you are willing to invest the kind of cash/time to learn how to do all that stuff….again, it’s not a business…it’s not corporate, it’s still just a project, ok? For example, I’ve heard a thousand people say they want to be music producers, sew, or do film. But for all of those thousands of people, I’ve only seen one or two who have actually been to film school, been to fashion school, gone to school to be a music producer, etc. And until you learn to play like the big boys, and learn to go to school to do it the way the big boys do, you’re just small time! You’ll never be making loads of cash at your art unless you learn to do it like the big boys do, alright?

Some more advice:
1. Don’t confuse “I want to be a film maker” with, “I want to work with a team of people who can turn my idea into a film.
2. Don’t confuse “I want to be a fashion designer” with “I want to point and pick everything out and have somebody who is trained do the work and make custom fashions for me or my close friends based on my ideas.
3. When you say “I want to own my own business” don’t confuse owning and running it. Unless you can pay other people to run it, it means you will be running it. Which means for the first few years at least, you would be running around like a chicken with your head cut off, trying to keep costs down and making your family/boyfriend/girlfriend do cheap labor just so you could get a night off. Therefore, do not confuse “I want to run and own my own business” with “I want to be the cool person who stands around and says, “bitch, I own this place.”
4. Especially, Do not confuse “I want to be in a band” or “I want to be a musician” with “I want to be cooler than all the other 20-somethings who don’t know what they want to do with their lives.” Do not confuse “I want to be a drummer in a band” with “I want to be the cool guy who says "yea baby I’m a drummer!" so he can get laid a lot. And don’t be the girl who says “I want to be a singer!” when really what she means is, “I want to go around getting attention from all the boys because of my singing, until I find one of them that I can marry!”
5. Do not ever, EVER EVER confuse, “I want to be an actor” with “I always want to get more attention than necessary just for being myself.”

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Chapter 4:
Whittling Away the options

It’s a Saturday night. I am sitting at my parent’s house right now as I type this. Normally I type with a laptop in my bed at home. (She sleeps with me, in my new “Celestial themed” sheets, which are quite an eyesore if I do say so myself). I came over here to print out the first seventeen pages of this baby and see how it sounds.
On my drive over here, I called up my film-maker friend, Trent. Trent is one of those friends who makes you very proud because you recognize that if he keeps up the good work, you will to exclaim “Yes, I know Trent Williams! I have known him since the beginning of his career and did those silly commercials where I had to stand on a scooter while a fan blew my hair and made my eyes water for a community college course. But look at him now! I’m very proud of him.”
I try to keep the friends that I am certain I will be proud of in ten years. I called Trent to invite him to this party I am having tomorrow, up in La Jolla. La Jolla, to any San Diegan, is much like “no man’s land.” Yes, I know they call the entirety of San Diego “the whale’s Vagina” (eww), but if you’re an artist living in the downtown area, you don’t tend to go to La Jolla because it’s too expensive to really do anything there. My simple test is this: If people are really my friends, and are serious about going into business or being my friend, they should be willing to go on a “field trip” to hang out for a couple of hours, and meet all the other friends that I have that I think they should know. This party is a sort of “meeting of the minds.” It’s basically a collection of people that I would like to have in my life for a long time, so I’m inviting all of them and hoping they will show up, and hoping we will all get along. So eventually, my friends would know me well enough to say “any friend of Sally’s is a friend of mine.”
I’m not confusing “friend” with “acquaintance” or “business connection.” Mind you. These are people I want to call my friends.
You see young readers, Sally is at a point in her life where she wants to find some consistency among her friends. Sally is of the opinion that when you can make a plan and your friends will stick with it, you are onto secure friendships. When you are on to secure friendships, you are secure enough in being supported for being cool just for being you, that you can actually achieve your dreams.
Ack! I hate talking in the 3rd person. Back to normal. The 3rd person keeps me from feeling so cheesy over those “Kodak moment” type phrasings.

Today, another friend named Daryl called me up. It’s been a while since I have spoken with Daryl. Daryl plays the drums. Lane urged me for months to meet Daryl, and she said I should play music with Daryl because he had been a drummer for over 20 years, jazz, rock, blues, you name it. Toured with Lenny Kravitz (and don’t try to research that cuz I changed the names, silly, but he really did tour with Lenny Kravitz when he was 16.)…you get the idea. I thought that Daryl would be some old dude. He’s not so old. He’s pretty cool. Seeing him play for the 1st time counts the first time I have ever seen a musician “show off” for his unofficial audition, the first time I was ever floored by a musician…I mean really wowed. Unfortunately, for some reason…we’ve tried to play music together and…Daryl plays like I should be a girlie musician, whereas I want him to play as if I were a guy musician, and this I think is the sole reason it doesn’t work. Which is unfortunate cuz he’s really good, but I still like being friends with him anyway.
He asked me how the band thing was going, how music was going. “Slow but going.” I said. I have to record some songs for a bassplayer to listen to so he can memorize them enough to make sure everything is right for the recording. I knew as I was telling Daryl this he was probably thinking “a musician shouldn’t have to do that, they should be able to go in and just do it.” But…that was never what I wanted. Any time I’ve recorded something and just “did it”, I never felt too good about it since we always felt so rushed, even if it did sound ok. The musicians I am trying to play music with now (Tom and everybody) is more rock & roll stuff. I told Daryl that I wouldn’t mind doing the blues at some point, but right now I’m really poor.
“Well…I’d play for free” said Daryl.
Which is just great to hear, since in my fantasy of fantasies, we’d make everything “work for free.” I told Daryl I needed another job, because I was really bored at my job. I was pondering going corporate.
“Nooo! Don’t do it!” Daryl said, like I would be submitting or biting to some higher power.
“That” I thought to myself, “is the exact reason that people like Daryl haven’t gotten further than they have.”
Here is the BIG ARTIST DILEMMA (the B.A.D.! I will call it the b.a.d! Mwahahaha! Gold stars for Sally and her artistic geni