Link.

Robert is my unequivocal pick for massage and yoga instruction (and how to roast a killer chicken). It’s been hugely helpful having his input on these parts of my life. I sincerely hope the design and marketing we do for him helps him as much as he has helped me!

PS. Why yes, that is Marty illustration fu you’re seeing. Isn’t that grass gorgeous?

Many months ago Marty and I came up with a cunning plan to help struggling artists into the digital universe. It’s incredibly important for a new artist to have a presence on the web. If it’s done right, the artist’s visibility can skyrocket — and when your work is about visual media, you need it to be seen. Especially with my eye on Youngstown this year, I know that there are brilliant artists out there who just need the right break, who can do amazing things. (Well hell — I’m living with one!)

Our plan was solid, and we took it forward. We’re calling it the Thriving Artist Project and you can consider it officially launched. We’re starting things off with the inimitable Karen Wennberg. If you’d like more information (who wouldn’t?) you can check out the Thriving Artist Project page at Virtual Magpie Design. If you want to help out, you can find her contact information there, or you can feel free to Digg, del.icio.us or otherwise bookmark that page. You can definitely help us by spreading the word, if you are so inclined; and I daresay I’d be grateful if you did!

If you’re not as excited as I am, you obviously haven’t read the project page yet.

Go! Get excited!

Last night I tried to order the Classic PhotoReading course from Learning Strategies. I tried to order it three or four times and every time it gave me an AVS error — on two different cards, when I’d been using my cards successfully all over the place this week. The 24-hour sales line couldn’t help me and suggested that I call customer service in the morning, so I left customer service an email (just in case) and planned to call them when they opened at 8.

This morning I called in and they explained that because their security system was so hardcore, even a small inaccuracy in the billing address would cause an AVS problem. I talked to Ryan, who was very helpful and friendly, and ultimately it looked like I needed to call my bank to make sure they didn’t have a slight difference in my billing address — something that might not cause problems with many processing systems, but was probably the issue here. Ryan gave me his direct number, and I set off to call my bank.

I kid you not: For twenty minutes I sat here and pressed buttons and begged the automated system to transfer me to a real person. Most of the options that sounded like what I needed either sent me to a dead-end automation or a very persistent gatekeeper function that wanted a particular telephone-specific number or code from me that I have never had. I looked through all my banking materials and could not discover a way to locate, or obtain, this number that it wanted. I was becoming extremely frustrated and a little bit angry. Why does this have to be so difficult?

I say twenty minutes because about twenty minutes into this horrible process, I got an incoming call. The number looked a bit like the direct line number Ryan had given me, so I took a chance and picked up, ditching the endless, futile phone call with Chase. It was Ryan! He said that they had reset their security system and he thought the card would go through now with no problem. We gave it a shot and it worked brilliantly! I was so relieved that he had called me back, because who knows how long I might have stayed in Chase’s system, cursing the gods of commerce?

You might think that Ryan sounds like an awesome and amiable guy, but you don’t even know the half of it. I was ordering the Classic PhotoReading course for $245, plus 2-day shipping for a total of $266. That was my plan. I had a customer code that entitled me to a little bit of bonus information, but it turned out that the code was long since expired and it wasn’t possible to put it through. But Ryan — I can only assume because of the lengthy back-and-forth, but maybe just because he is a nice guy, or because this is a nice company — offered to give me the “sale price”. He asked if I had considered getting the Deluxe course instead, and I explained that I was buying it in two pieces instead of all at once to be careful with money. He said he had a code, however, that would give me the entire Deluxe course with additional materials, plus overnight shipping, for $253.85 — less than I had been planning to pay, for half as many materials, to arrive tomorrow before noon, instead of Wednesday.

Yeah, whoa, that’s what I said! I thanked him and told him to please have a particularly wonderful day. And now I am telling you, because despite my difficult experience with my bank and what could arguably be called a difficult experience with the Learning Strategies payment processing system, I am walking away from this whole situation filled with gratitude and glee, and wanting to tell people about my awesome morning with this company and the dude who picked up the customer service line.

That’s what good business is, folks.

Yes. You heard that purposefully italicized note of anxiety. The girl who started a design company out of high school just because she wanted to make something new and awesome — no, the girl who happily stood on stage in a foreign country and sang for an audience God-knows-how-big, waded through television and radio media, and would do it again in a heartbeat — is nervous about speaking.

I always have been, and that’s one of the reasons this business has been built up around email interaction instead of eye-to-eye meetings. I do lunches, I do coffee, and I do meet people in person (fairly often, considering!) but I will tell you, it is not something that comes easily to me. I will sing whatever you want in front of ten or ten thousand people, but you say you want me to talk to them? Jiminy Christmas.

I visited a meeting last week at National Instruments (because a friend was kind enough to let me tag along) and I found the group incredibly friendly, very engaging and interesting. My long list of worries and irrational concerns (yes, I made a list) was chopped off at the knees (as I mostly expected), and I was confronted with the undeniable next step: Join Toastmasters.

The next few days were a bit of a blur; I filled out my take-home application, set aside my checkbook, and put on my Patient Megan hat to wait out the rest of the week. But then I started seeing references to Toastmasters in my usual newsfeeds. My original interest in Toastmasters, long ago, had been founded on a Boing Boing article — which I can’t find anywhere now, of course, and even Google has failed me. But after filling out that application I noticed that Steve Pavlina has several posts on Toastmastering. He has a fantastic article on progressive training where he discusses his Toastmasters path, another about making mistakes (and taking risks), and another about humorous speechmaking. I hope I find more as I go — Pavlina writes awesome material.

Additionally, even though Google failed me in searching for the original Toastmasters reference I had seen, it did reveal a fantastic speech by Neil Gaiman at the Nebula Awards (via). Suddenly I’m interested in speeches. Brains are so tricksy!

You can sort of see where I’m going with this. The next meeting is Wednesday, and I admit I’m excited to find out what happens next. We all change very quickly into new people; I am a different person today than I was yesterday, or last week, or last year. Who will I be in a month, I wonder?

I am designing this website to mimic the standard short story manuscript format which professional writers use to submit their work. I still have some tweaks to make, but so far I am pleased with its appearance.

Link.

I love the idea and it’s very appealing. I think it will work well for him. Though he’s not quite finished yet, this is probably one to keep your eye on — Kit’s always had great writing (and great thoughts on writing) up his sleeve. But I just had to mention the design fu. ;}

The Creative Whack Pack is a true relic of my childhood. It was always floating around in my parents’ offices when I was little. Em and I would stay there after school until one or both parents were finished with appointments for the day. Amidst all the things we had to occupy ourselves, the Whack Pack was one of the things that fascinated me. I didn’t understand it or really know what it was, but it had pretty pictures and I felt like it had to be something good, something interesting, something I would like… if I had any idea exactly what superior magic it was supposed to work.

And now, more than a decade and a half later, I know exactly what magic it works — and I know exactly how to use it.

Isn’t that just the way of relics, huh?

Although their site is will most likely be renovated for the tour, you can check them out at the official Cherryfix site or take a gander at Emii’s blog here — and I believe a few of the album tracks are on MySpace.

Have a listen — it sounds awesome!

Update: Em posted a free mp3 from the album for Christmas, and I posted it here — it’s one of the best tracks they have, so snatch it up and share it with your friends. ;}

Something she said at our meeting really struck me as a process I’d been going through. It’s been a long, weird eight years, man. I think I took three art classes in college; the rest were all related to my performance degree. I started my work here by reading books, doing commission sketches and building free websites. (Can you say Hot Dog Professional? Wow, have they changed… but me too!) When I look back I am sometimes surprised, sometimes horrified by the understanding I had of what I was doing then. The old versions of PsycHumor.com, for instance, seem to possess a lot of awareness of what I wanted, what I was shooting for… but plenty of other projects ended up looking pretty spare. I’ve come a long way since then — we all have — but what Ragen told me yesterday cut right to the heart of the thing:

When you begin an endeavor, you enter a state of unconscious incompetence. You don’t know that you don’t know shit.

Once you’ve been doing that for a little while, you enter a state of conscious incompetence. You become keenly and sometimes painfully aware… that you don’t know shit. Oh, how I have suffered this one.

After time and work, you will enter a state of conscious competence. You now know what you are doing, but you really have to concentrate and pay attention, in order not to mess it up. This has been the case for me over the last several years — if I stay on the ball (balancing act though it is), I’m fine.

After more time and experience, you enter a state of unconscious competence. You are so proficient at what you do that it becomes second nature to you and only the most complex of problems will require strict concentration and assistance. This… is the state I’ve entered, just in the last handful of months. It’s been especially noticeable since I began working with Cloud Nine — and it’s unnerving because even having gotten to this headspace, it’s so obvious how much more there is to learn. And I’m already discovering new ideas and areas I don’t know anything about, things I want to develop and explore. And some things that are so young, so green for me, that I will have to start from scratch entirely!

The reason this hit me so hard is that I feel like I’m at the edge of unconscious competence, after so long… and at the same time, I’m clearly starting over. It’s an incredible cycle that I suspect will continue for the rest of my life. But what an exciting way to live a life! It blows my mind, a bit.

I noticed this fantastic phenomenon about a year ago, on a different antibiotic with the same attention to design. I don’t know who designed this packaging, but they’re brilliant; no packaging or printed material I’ve seen in the medical industry (yet, to my recollection) matches this perfect layout, clear communication and ease of use. Matt even included a pretty picture. ;}

Would that everything to do with doctors was so simple to understand…

Appropriate thoughts for the Monday after Thanksgiving, yes? ;}