by Heather Plett | Oct 9, 2009 | Uncategorized
1. If you live on the route where my daughters (and I) deliver flyers, PLEASE make sure your house number and mailbox are visible from the street. Come to think of it, do it anyway – even if you don’t live on our route. You’ll make some delivery person’s life a whole lot easier.
2. If you’re my dishwasher – smarten up already! We just fixed you in Spring – you don’t get to konk out twice in a year!
3. If you’re applying for a job and want to work for me, PLEASE don’t use fancy phrases on your cover letter to try to make yourself look smart. It almost always backfires and you look stupid. And because I can be a little mean sometimes (especially when I have to go through 100+ resumes for 3 jobs) I might just read your show-off sentence to somebody else in the office just for a chuckle. You don’t really want that, do you?
4. If you’re my friend – call, email, comment, whatever. I’ve been in a bit of a funk and feel a little lonely and dejected this week. Just sayin’.
5. If you’re one of the people who has been creating challenges for me lately – just stop it already! Trust me – kindness is WAY more fun than vindictiveness or passive aggression. I’ll try it if you’ll try it.
6. If you’re one of the people using a jack-hammer on the street – thank you for doing a necessary job so that those of us who are sensitive to excessive noise and vibration don’t have to do it.
7. If you’re the person who phoned me out of the blue just because I’ve been on your mind lately and you wanted to make sure I wasn’t too stressed out – you are awesome! You can’t possibly know how much that phone call (and similar ones you’ve made in the past, ‘cause you’re classy that way) meant to me.
8. If you’re the person on our flyer route that only sort-of knows me but has been to my house for a certain launch party – thank for that little exchange on the street! It was lovely and it made me think I should just happen to pass your house more often when you’re outside! Maybe my kids could babysit your kids and we can go paint the town red together!
9. If you’re the guys who replaced our furnace yesterday – thank you for being some of the easiest, most pleasant contractors I’ve had to deal with to date.
10. If you’re the person on our flyer route who has such amazing wood carvings on your lawn (including that incredible totem pole) and what looks like a magical studio in the back of your garage, can you just happen to be outside one day when I’m passing with my wagon full of flyers? I’m pretty sure you’re an interesting person and I’m curious to meet you.
11. If you’re my sister who is hosting BOTH families for Thanksgiving meals this weekend, you’re my hero. I wish I could be HALF the hostess you are.
12. If you’re my recently-hired assistant who bought me flowers out of the blue last week – you rock! You just set a new standard for “awesome ways to treat your boss”.
13. If you’re one of those gremlins in my head trying to tell me I’m failing, I’m not as interesting as other people, I shouldn’t bother trying – JUST SHUT UP ALREADY! You’re nasty and you don’t deserve such a comfy place in my head.
14. If you’re my oldest daughter – patience, my child. It will heal, I’m sure of it. And one day you’ll be running again.
15. If you’re my motivation – PLEASE show up already! I have work to do and you’re not helping.
16. If you’re reading this, go out and make somebody happy today even if it’s not me.
by Heather Plett | Oct 5, 2009 | Uncategorized
I am still here, though I seem to be mostly silent on this blog these days. There are only so many hours in a day, and it seems that most of those hours get eaten up pretty quickly with laundry, grocery shopping, going to (and worrying about) work, driving kids to soccer games and art classes and play dates, helping my oldest 2 daughters deliver flyers so that they can afford cell phones and funky shoes that their parents won’t buy, trying to catch up on sleep, and once in awhile managing to eek out an interesting post over here.
Mostly I’m okay with the hub-bub of life, but these days, I just feel so very, very weary. Today especially, after spending too many hours on my feet this past weekend delivering flyers, catching up on grocery shopping in the mega-grocery-store-that-has-everything-but-requires-hours-of-pushing-a-cart-through-crowded-aisles, and then a rousing game of soccer in which Julie’s team played (and were beat by) their parents, I am feeling every one of the 43 years of this body’s age. My gosh – we just don’t spring back like we used to, do we?
I’m not quite sure what to report today. I’ve started to write this post a few times, but instead of the upbeat list of fun things going on in my life, my writing very quickly seems to spiral into a vortex of fears, challenges, complaints, and stresses that I’m dealing with at my day job these days. I can’t go there, for obvious reasons, so maybe I’ll just say this… I am burnt out. I need a break. I need to not be anybody’s boss for awhile.
Part of me desperately wants to “leap and trust that the net will appear” – just hand in my notice (I have to give 3 months, since I’m a director and it’s in my contract) and hope and pray that within 3 months (or probably longer as there are things going on I feel somewhat obligated to wrap up) I’ll be able to build enough of a freelance/consulting business to sustain our family. But there’s that practical side of me that wants to cry every time I go grocery shopping or the girls come home with yet another soccer fee, band fee, lunch fee, worn out sneakers… you name it.
(If you’re worried that I’m taking a risk by putting this on my blog, let me allay your fears by telling you that I’ve already warned my boss that I don’t intend to be in this position a year from now. It’s not really a secret that I have other ambitions and that I’m burnt out.)
If you are given to prayer, feel free to join those who have already wrapped their prayers around me and my family. I need some clarity, I need some focus, and I need a way out of this place I’m in. Mostly, I need to know whether I am wise or foolish to follow my passion into the land of the self-employed. (And if you’re in the position to offer me contracts for writing/public speaking/workshop facilitation/communications planning, or offer my husband a teaching job, we could sure use that too!)
It seems to me that handing in my notice and making the leap would be the perfect way to wrap up this year of living more fearlessly. What do you think?
by Heather Plett | Sep 29, 2009 | Uncategorized
I’m in Toronto at my favourite Bed and Breakfast. I have one more lunch meeting today, and then I fly home this afternoon. It’s been a long and full (and so many other adjectives – all of them good) journey, and I’m looking forward to being home with my dear family.
I’ll be loading more pictures on Flickr eventually, but for now, here’s a little taste of the many places I’ve wandered this week. (In no particular order.) These are just the “places” pics, the “people” pics will come later when I have more time to share the stories that go with them.
For a little more on the transformative impact of the trip, go here.
by Heather Plett | Sep 25, 2009 | Uncategorized
I’m in Cleveland! If this trip were to end right now, it would already be worth the trip. (And the best part hasn’t even begun yet!) It has been truly wonderful. The train ride was sublime (you meet the most amazing people on a train), wandering around Chicago was delightful, meeting Connie and Sandy and Christine was everything I dreamed of and more, meandering along the shoreline of Cleveland was magical, and relaxing in the hotel room has been rejuvenating.
It’s been perfect timing, because Jamie Ridler’s book club “The Next Chapter” is studying “The Joy Diet” and the first chapter is about adding a little more of “nothing” into our lives. I’ve added it in big doses in the last few days. Sitting and staring out the train window, wandering aimlessly down the streets of 2 new cities… it’s all been a lot of joyful “nothing”, but EVERYTHING at the same time.
I know it will be whole lot harder to find 15 minute snippets in my day-to-day life to continue the practice of doing nothing, but for now, I’m certainly enjoying what I’ve got. One day at a time.
There are a whole lot more photos to come (Millennium Park is amazing at dusk), but this seemed like a suitable “nothing” shot.
by Heather Plett | Sep 22, 2009 | Uncategorized
I got tagged by my dear friend Sandy (with whom I get to hang out in Cleveland in just a few days! Yay!) with this photo tag meme.
1. Open your first photo folder.
2. Scroll to the 10th photo.
3. Post the photo on your blog and tell the story behind it.
4. Tag some CREATIVE JUICY people to do the same!
Luckily, the first photo folder on this particular computer holds my Ethiopia photos. It’s not a terribly inspiring photo, but at least it’s from an interesting place. I’d just arrived at the Ghion Hotel in Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia. I was suffering from major jet lag, but I was SO EXCITED I just had to start snapping pictures. My hotel room had a small patio out the back which I took full advantage of – sitting for hours reading, writing postcards, and processing all that I’d witnessed.
I arrived in Ethiopia 3 days before any of my companions did. I was bringing a film crew into the country to film some of our agriculture programs, but before they could enter, I needed to obtain the necessary film permits and government blessing (which required a whole lot of leaping through hoops, sweet-talking, and… well, it’s too complicated to tell you the whole story). In between multiple visits to the appropriate government offices, I wandered the streets of Addis Ababa (and that’s an adventure, I tell you!), and did a lot of de-compressing on the very spot on my patio that this photo was taken.
One thing you should know about Ethiopia that you probably never heard from anyone else – it is a STUNNINGLY beautiful country! Set aside all the images that come to mind when you think of Ethiopia (you know the ones – people dying of famine) and imagine a place where you begin your day of driving with vistas that rival the Rocky Mountains, in the afternoon you drive through the desert, and in the evening you pass through the Grand Canyon. In between, you reach the top of a plateau that is so surreal in it’s odd apocalyptic beauty that there are no words to describe it. Your jaw gets tired by the end of the day because it has dropped so many times. A few of my other photos are here.
And now it’s time to tag someone else. Hmmm… let’s see…I’ll go with
1. Michele
2. Anvilcloud
On an unrelated note, those of you who were present at my launch party for my new website (and maybe even those of you who weren’t) might enjoy the guest post I wrote about it over at this blog.
