GreenEye Wire

When I fixed my mail, someone I had not talked to in a long time was able to contact me again. We met at Nokia when I worked there a thousand years ago. She’s an interesting person who I’d lost touch with. I asked what she had been doing and learned she had been married and divorced in the last 2 years since I’d seen her. She moved to the South of France and married a Saudi Prince and then divorced him a year later when he didn’t allow her to wear shorts for her morning run on the beach.

How the hell she meets these people is beyond me, but she has that touch of finding people who are in power and charming them and becoming close friends with them. Her list of contacts at fortune 50 companies would make many people envious. I need to take lessons.

What is more interesting is that one of her friends, a man with whom she worked with at Nokia was interested in the fact that I was also interested in Shamanic healing. He, too, has been studying non traditional methods of healing and was fascinated by my recent to Peru.

I wish I could go into more detail about these people, but I can’t. I do feel like I will have more dealings with them. I just *feel* it.

It feels like some things work in circles. You meet people who will influence you in your future, and you have no idea how, or have any idea of what is happening at the time. I think about the synchronicities that have been happening in my life lately, and feel a divine presence in my life. I do believe that everything happens for a reason, that everything, every experience, really is a gift.

I feel more open to things than I have in the past. I worry less, and I generally feel happier about things. And I’m glad for it.

I suppose this means I should technically write two posts, but at least I feel guilty about not writing yesterday.

I wish I could say I’ve had something exciting to do, but really I don’t. I bought a printer so I can more easily read my drafts of what I write (easier for rewrites as well) and I bought Randy Pausch’s book “The Last Lecture.” And phone interviews, and trying to figure out a way to get an address in Boulder Colorado.

I do like the idea of a cooler climate, especially with the heat of July in Texas. I’d be somewhat closer to my family, which is also a plus. But I do have friends and things I like here.

I like that I am near a group of professionals in the field I work in. DFWSEM is one of the leading local organizations of geeks in the United States who do what I do. I’d miss Christine Churchill terribly as she is an absolute scream, and extremely wise. She is a friend and mentor, and I owe her a lot.

And Jeff Martin, the creator of Vericlix. An amazing SEO and friend to whom I also owe a lot. He stood by me when everyone else ran for the hills. One of the most genuine people I’ve ever met, and probably the most honest guy in Internet Marketing. I cannot say enough about him. I shall miss him as well if I move away.

I’d also miss my friend Kristine, with whom I have dinner every Wednesday night just as a girls night out. She is wise beyond her years, and I often ask her advice in any situation involving people. And I know that Sebastian would miss Izzy.

And then there is my friend Vivian who is my neighbor who is so good she’ll help me hunt down Sebastian at night in the rain. You just don’t find many people like that. (OK, not only does she have an entry in the IMDB, but she’s also cool because she did production on Bon Jovi videos back in the late 80’s…)

And yet, I feel a need to change. I love the Dallas area, and Texas, but I feel that maybe I need to make a drastic change in my life. A new start with new people and friends.

But I still go back and forth. Move or not move?

I’ve been swamped working on another site, and my elbows hurt.

But, some Entertainment. This is one of the funniest things I’ve seen. Very creative.

Best line: Two parts Vodka, One part Lime”

Ok, and one more. This second one is something that is absolutely one of the most genius social marketing things I’ve seen yet. It looks funny when you see a bunch of guys in bee suits. And then you see them dance. And they’re *good*. And teh whole thing turns into a serious message.

Brilliant.

I was so excited to get my bicycle all fixed up. What started out as a $10 repair turned into a $70 repair. New crankshafts, new chainring, new spindle because the chainring was too big for the old spindle, and new chain because the old chain was too small for the new chainring. Add golf balls, velcro and an airhorn and the whole thing turned out more expensive than I thought it would be. But it also includes enhancements to help me out later.

I installed the airhorn and gave one satisfying blast, then put more air into it to record the sound for the blog entry and … nothing.

I fiddled with the lines, put more air into it, and nothing. And Nashbar’s customer service isn’t taking calls until tomorrow.

So, the whole thing won’t be finished until tomorrow, or possibly later if I need to send the airhorn back. At least the bike is back in working order, and I do have the golf balls mounted, so I’ve got *something* other than just my voice.

Feh.

No photo today, that’ll come tomorrow. But, I finally got my new crank in from Nashbar. Low and behold, it was too big and I needed a new spindle and new chain to use the thing. Either I send it back and wait another week to get the part, or I find a bike shop in town and get a new spindle. (The spindle is the thing that the crank arms attach to.)

I guess one was supposed to have mind reading powers as there was nothing in the description about what kind of spindle this new crank needed. In fact, the description didn’t even have the tooth count of the chainring. But Hey, maybe this was the reason the thing was on sale. “No biggie,” I thought,”This is good because I’ll have to learn how to fix my bike.”

Problem: I didn’t have the tool to get the old spindle out, and it appeared like I might have to hammer the thing out. *sigh*

So I found a place in town called the Bicycle Exchange, and they were SO NICE! I told them that I really wanted to learn how to do this, and didn’t want them to do all the work for me. “No problem,” they said and allowed me into the shop to see what they were doing and to work on part of it myself. They removed the old spindle (involving only a tool that looked like a special socket) and showed me how to fix the rest. They empowered me, and I will take my bicycle business to them FOREVER for that.

Tomorrow: I will show pictures of my bicycle with its new airhorn, golf balls, chain and chainring.

Now, for the second part of my post today. Billman. Bill is an old friend of mine from back at K-State. We met when I was doing an internship little travel newspaper in Manhattan, KS. We were both struggling students, but he had a wife and family to support, and I just had to make enough to eat. A bit later down the line, I tutored him in algebra to get some extra money on the side.

Bill was the first one to re-introduce me to writing. He was a part of a writers group mailing list and he invited me to be a part of it. It was one of the few things in college I really looked forward to. Some of the writing was good, some of it was bad, some of it really sucked, but we all helped each other out. I can honestly say, this was the first time that I really understood the power of the web.

Other times, Bill and I would meet in the little hippy dippy coffee shop down in Aggieville on Tuesday nights to listen to people read poetry. Mind you, this was before drinking coffee was really hip and before Starbucks was on every corner.

Now, to frame this, you need to know a little about Bill. He was in the military as a policeman from the 70’s to 2002 and has the size that most people are intimidated just by looking at him. He looks so Italian that he’d fit right in on the cast of the Sopranos and, he often wears a Colt 45 belt buckle with matching ball cap. (Or, he did at the time.) To see this hulking, Italian, mobster-esque looking man stand up and read poetry about ‘Flowers on a Spring Day’ or “An Ode to the Lump of Something I found in my Fridge” in a hippy dippy coffee shop was just hysterical. He loved to write about things and make them funny and then read them to us in a deadpan voice. Some of the things he wrote were so funny, we’d all have tears running down our faces at the end of it.

My college years were very difficult for me, but one of the shining moments I do remember was hanging out with Bill. And, I’m so glad he and I have gotten back into contact.

Bill has told me that he, too, misses writing and wants to get back into it, and he’s trying to do it by writing comments on my blog. (For which I’m grateful.) But I think he can do better than that.

So, today, I make a challenge to you, Bill. I challenge you to put up your own blog and start writing. One post a day for 30 days. You long to write. You know you do. And the thing is, it doesn’t have to be especially good. Just do it to bring back that little bit of joy in your life.

You can get a free blog on wordpress.com, and there are a few templates you can use to personalize it. Then, all you need to do is login and write. (Hey, it even has spell check…CTRL-Click will get you a menu of the right spelling.)

I think about how the synchronicity in my life has been working to bring me back to writing, and I almost wonder why I didn’t come back to it sooner. Right as I’ve decided to really work to get back into writing, I find my old friend who used to encourage me to do it. It is sort of like a part of the universe is telling me ‘YES…this is the path…’ so I will continue to write, for this blog and others, as well as some fun fiction stories that I’ve had in my mind for a while.

And, while I think it’d be cool to be a best selling author one day, I’ll be happy even if I’m not, simply because I love to do it.

And maybe that’s what really matters. In the words of Randy Pausch,”If it’s not fun, why do it?”