I’ve put my blog posts (from here and from the Design Studio Blog) at my new (old) domain: caffeinatedelf.com.

You can re-subscribe to my RSS feed by clicking here, or by going to the new website and oohing and aahing and then subscribing from there. ;)

Thanks for following me. *MWAH*

This is a wallpaper that I MYSELF wanted to have on my desktop today, so I made it for you too. :)

Enjoy, my lovelies! And remember: this is not safe for work. That is, if you’re the conventional type. (Haha, I’m making a joke.)

Fuck Convention

Download the whole set here: Fuck Convention Wallpaper Set.

Includes a fullscreen size, widescreen size, and iPhone size. Whee!

I’ve been wanting to do wallpapers for a while now, and FINALLY, today, a terrific epiphany fell right into my lap over at Marissa’s latest blog post about Little Right Lies. (Go on, read it, IT ROCKS.)

This wallpaper set comes with a fullscreen size, a widescreen size, and an iPhone size.

Tell me what you think, and if you like them, please! I’d hate to make something that nobody loved but me, although I will still enjoy them all by myself, heh.

You can download the .zip file by right clicking the image, or by using this link:

More Money More Time wallpaper set [March 2010]

My head’s been stuffed absolutely full of wonderful productivity and strategizing ideas lately.

During Lift Off, Pam and Charlie spent a lot of time working with us (and helping us to work with ourselves and each other) on our plans for our lives and for our businesses. They wanted to know: what were our superpowers? What did we bring to the world that mattered deeply to us? What was the work we loved?

More difficult to answer were these questions: how will you actually bring your magic and your medicine into the world? How will you show people what you do, and get paid for doing it? How will you create your workspace, your website, your environment, and your marketing so that it resonates with YOU-ness (and, of course, pays the bills)?

Making a plan has always been hard for me, in spite of how I see the world.

I’m a big-picture person. Ali Hale talks about this on Charlie’s blog today – specifically, the differences between a more masculine, detail-oriented, get-that-shit-done mentality and a more feminine, big picture, do-the-things-that-matter-in-the-end way of seeing the world.

(I totally just summarized a post that deserves your undivided attention, so please don’t forget to go there and read it!)

I’ve always been better and zooming out and seeing things from a Google Earth kind of view. I can see the patterns between things, and intuitively know how those patterns are working together now, and how they will probably work together in the future.

However, it’s hard for me to do anything but dream big dreams, write down semi-vague intentions, and then be sad later when I realize that while I WANTED to make something happen, I never really figured out how to do it.

Dreams without plans can never come true, and plans without dreams are a waste of time.

On the last day of Lift Off, we paired off in sets like this: people who were big-picture dreamers with people who were focus-down detailers. Kyle (a very awesome and totally non-scary tax attorney) and I sat together and hammered out some specific plans for the next four to six weeks.

What I realized then, and understood again when I came home and did more strategic planning with Sarah, is this: my dreams and my plans complement each other, and I can do both. Not only that, but I can’t have one without the other.

Dreams without plans can never come true, and plans without dreams are a waste of time.

Making my plan freed me from needing the plan

My next epiphany came after I realized that planning was in line with dreaming, after I spent several hours writing down my dreams for the year, and daring myself to dream even bigger.

When I combined the ephemeral, in-my-head fluidity of my deepest wishes and hopes for my business and my life with the concrete black-and-white-ness of pen on paper, something shifted in me.

I had finally internalized my dreaming in such a way that I knew HOW to make the dream a reality. I realize now that I must have been subconsciously assuming that my dreams would never come true, because I had always held them inside and away from any real path to completion. And now that I had my plan, following it was as easy as breathing.

I don’t need a plan to tell me what to do any more. I don’t need someone (or something) to give me directions, because I wrote my own down and now I know where I’m going.

In short: plans are good, because they’re a tool that makes your dream real.

My to-do list doesn’t rule me now, because I know why it’s there. I know the WHY behind the WHAT, and that’s because I decided which WHY actually matters.

I’d love to hear your personal philosophy on planning and dreaming and productivity. Go crazy!

It’s a beautiful old hymn that I used to sing in church when I was a girl. I can still hear the tinny piano music and the voices of the sweet older ladies, earnestly harmonizing together to make a beautiful haunting sound on a Sunday morning.

Love lifted me… love lifted me… when nothing else could help, love lifted me.

This past weekend, while the snow fell and covered the roads here in my town, I got on a plane and went to Arizona.

Arizona, the land of warm red rocks and clear bright air. Arizona, where my heart often dwells in homesick nostalgia. Where mountains hold the land in peaceful saftey, and the sun shines down hard and hot.

I was excited – jumping-out-of-my-skin excited – when I found out I’d be able to go. The Lift Off retreat was a huge deal to consider, let alone ATTEND AT ALL. When I realized that I’d be MEETING PAM SLIM, and MEETING CHARLIE GILKEY, and probably HUGGING THEM BOTH, I could hardly contain my giddy anticipatory joy.

When I finally arrived, I immediately reverted to my shy, outsider, I’m-not-that-cool self. The self that doesn’t think she’s awesome at all, that believes she’s ridiculously awkward, and feels like an uneducated hick who doesn’t know how to use silverware. (Yes, I’m aware that none of that is true – but it doesn’t change feeling like it is.)

But then – I don’t know exactly when it happened, but it was probably partway through some shared laughter, or in the middle of one of the many hugs we all shared during the weekend – I suddenly felt loved.

I felt understood. I felt cared about, surrounded, and supported. I felt lifted up.

All my life, I’ve been the weird one. I read books and climbed trees as a child, and grew up on a farm while being homeschooled. We didn’t have a TV, and I played the piano for fun. My friends were few and far between, and most of them couldn’t relate to my way of being.

As an adult, I put aside wanting to do what my heart wanted, and did the things that were expected of me: I married early, started having kids, tried to learn housekeeping and billpaying and other wife-y stuff. When my first husband took off like the bastard he turned out to be, my world shifted in a huge way.

I learned how to be strong (like I already was). I learned how to find ways to make things happen (like I already knew how to do).

Years have passed since that first shift, and I’ve experienced many more. The most recent shift in my world was my entrance into that special club of entrepreneurs, those people who have their own businesses, who spend more time loving their work than they used to spend hating their jobs.

And then, I met a whole bunch of other people just like me. Fourteen others, in fact, not including Pam and Charlie. And I was home.

What I learned from the weekend cannot be summed up here, it cannot be bullet-pointed, and it sure as hell cannot be expressed in any coherent way except by my life and my actions and the way my world makes sense again. I met people who, by their love and their creativity and their innate them-ness, reminded me and retaught me that we were meant to live in community.

We need each other, and not just because we get lonely. We need each other because you can’t always see how amazing you are, but I can see it. We need each other because I can help you, but I can’t help myself – I need you for that.

Love lifted me this past weekend, and I won’t ever forget it. It’s part of me now, and it will always be woven into the fabric of my life.

P.S. I love you too.

I’m sitting here in bed, where I’ve been most of the day, feeling sick and yucky and overall out-of-energy.

I used up ALLLL my creativity last week, and all my energy, and gosh if I don’t feel like a dry well right about now.

Last week, I posted the very first Stuff That Doesn’t Suck, and I think this would be an awesome way to make peace with my Monday, vacation or not. (Oh, did I mention? I’m taking a vacation. A staycation, I think they’re called, haha.)

Stuff That Doesn’t Suck: Vacation Edition

1) Number one thing that does not suck – STAYING IN BED ALL DAY. Yes, I feel like crud mostly, and I sincerely wish I didn’t, but being able to just rest when I feel like this? It’s divine. I’m so thankful.

2) This also does not suck: new books! My best friend Sarah and I went to a bookstore on Saturday, and I came home with a small but satisfying pile of new stuff to read. What’s the first one on my reading list, you ask? The History of the Ancient World, by Susan Wise Bauer. I’m already into the tenth chapter and don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. (Not an affiliate link.)

(Well, except to write blog posts now and then.)

3) Entertaining the highly ridiculous, highly awesome idea that William Shatner might read the tweets I’ve been sending him, let alone hire me to redesign his website. Pure unadulterated nerdy fun. :)

4) This one’s probably bleedingly obvious, but: vacation. Vacation does not suck. Especially when, despite the fact that I do have work I COULD do, and I could have fully justified not taking a vacation at all, I DID ANYWAY. I’m so glad I did.

Your turn!

Go ahead, try real hard and think of what doesn’t suck. There should be at least something, even if it’s just ‘this blog doesn’t suck’. If it does, don’t tell me, because I just can’t bear to know.

(No, really, I can handle it. I CAN!)