11-03-10

Finding Voice

Dear Shell,

You need to embrace your inner douchebag and write like one. You do it on me all the time. If it’s not fun to write, it’s not fun to read.

Luv, Madness.

11-02-10

Not All Those Who Wander…

Sitting here, the idea of traveling around with very little possessions seems appealing. Seeing places, meeting people, trying new food. Excitedly, I began planning for next year, when it warms up to start moving around and seeing what I could see. But as I really started thinking about it, I realized that it didn’t matter: the planning for the future. I was already there.

I’ve been wandering around aimlessly for the last year. It started when my life cord to my garden was severed. The plants died as life crashed down around me and a chapter closed as I was pressure washing mud off of the patio. Game Over.

Since then I’ve been around: Orlando, Philadelphia, Gettysburg, Pittsburgh, Danville, Bloomsburg, Volant, Cranberry, Beaver, Sebastian, Vero Beach, Miami, Cassadaga, Sandy Springs, Atlanta, L5P, Panama City, Columbus, St Augustine, Daytona, Savannah, New Brighton, Greenfeld. And by the end of the year: Delaware, San Diego and Houston.

I didn’t think Tolkien’s “Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost” referred to me. I was holding my breath waiting for it to, waiting for the day I didn’t feel lost yet still wandered. In retrospect, however, I was and am very un-lost. I think this is as close as I get to home, to my black rock. This is home: this living life to the fullest thing.

Dear Madness,

Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

Luv, Shell

11-02-10

So Much for Silence

Dear Madness,

So much for the silence. I’ve been writing in you for just a few weeks and I am already getting ready to exceed the readership I had to begin with. Why are you all here? Is it really that interesting? Who are you? Why do you stalk me? Fine. C’est la vive. I’m not sure I want to be silent anymore. Fine, fuck it, I’ll tell you what you are all here to hear.

So here it goes:

I remember working at the subsidy publisher out of college and looking at my boss like he was insane when he said his goal one day was to write a book. Why the hell would anyone want to write a book after rolling around in the trenches of subsidy day after day?

The girl who has helped published 700 of the worst books on the planet hangs her head in shame. Here I am, 7 years later: Hello, my name is Shell and I’m writing a book.

I’m writing a relationship self help book since that is what most of you come to me with questions on in the first place, not marketing, not branding: dating. But the irony is, most of the answers to your questions come from what I’ve learned in marketing anyway. So I’m writing it all down: every last delectable secret except for how many “friends” I am actually up to at this point. (I’ll never tell). I’m just tired of you guys telling me I should.

All I can envision in my head is my query letter winding up on SlushPile Hell. What if I end up inducing the kind of nightmares I had while working at the publishing house on someone else? I shudder remembering the mental day I took where I spent the whole day hallucinating in a fever on my sofa to visions of potential “best sellers” that might have hit my desk in the near future. I think one of them was How to Touch a Dead Body. I can still see the cover in my mind. <*cringe*>

To fend off the spins of “what if” induced nausea, I keep repeating “Best Seller. Best Seller. Best Seller” to myself in some sort of neurotic OCD Tao exercise. I can do this, if only because I never have.

Luv, Shell

10-30-10

Dear San Diego,

The madness loves our only viewer. You are, however, insane.

Luv, Shell

10-30-10

10:40

10 minutes late. Intuition takes over, the warning signs boil over and I begin to type. My thumb on the “send” button, the phone rings. I stand up and move away from the computer resigned, making it to the phone in time to miss the call for the interview.

“No,” I say out loud “Initial response goes, play it where it lands.” I run back to the computer and hit send as the phone starts ringing again. My email notifying my potential marketing employer I am no longer interested in the position hits the intertubes and is lost in space.

I made a decision, something I haven’t done since I left Atlanta. That decision is the first decision of the rest of my life. I am no longer a Marketer. I am a writer, first and foremost. Let’s see where the rest of this journey takes us, shall we?

Dear Madness,

Play it where it lands and enjoy the ride…in faith.

Luv, Shell

10-29-10

Emails to People Who Scare Me

I’m bored. The words of this book are blurring together into page after page of jumbled bullshit. It’s not a bullshit book, it’s just 6 hours in front of the keyboard and the caffeine is wearing off, I’m getting edgy and unfocused. It will be bullshit if I continue at this rate. I’m bored. Boredom is evil and must be destroyed.

Dear Madness,

I’ve decided to try my hand at something: a game. I want to send emails to people who scare me. Yawn, no? Type, click and send. Instead, I’m wondering what it takes to get a response. It’s a game in strategy… what buttons, what words will break the filters? What lessons lay in breaking the filters?

I am also extremely bored sitting at this computer. I hate Pittsburgh, I need to socialize. I want to pick up the phone and have random conversations with amazing people. I’m getting itchy. Where is the passion and drive and motivation, the brilliant creativity I had in Atlanta: it’s found lacking in the people here. Even the ones I use to have faith in have turned to talking about themselves. I hate this.

Luv, boredom and such,

Shell

10-28-10

Wait, what? Where?

Dear Madness,

I am dressed as a cat and prancing around the house panic stricken. Moments from heading to my aunt’s for Halloween, I check my email to find I have a phone interview (tomorrow) with a company who came across my resume online. Most people would be ecstatic to find a job offer in their in box for something other than “I has financial representative with opening in company Asia (i.e. Nigeria) processing checks. Do send credentials now.” I have been thrown into a tail spin.

I am not sure I want to continue down this marketing road. I don’t think I can. I think if I am going to make the leap into a new career, it is now or never. It has to be. I have to do this.

And so here I pace: between the computer here in the bedroom with my email full of marketing things that must be accomplished and the living room where my 44 pg manuscript lays on the table next to my knitting. I can’t find solace or peace in any of these three items and so I am lost, hopelessly.

The only thing standing between me and the sea is my fear. I need to just turn to the stars for my navigations and trust fate. Back to the drawing board…9 years later.

Luv,

Shell

10-28-10

California

San Diego and I had an interesting conversation last night (hi, San Diego!). I woke up today feeling terrible, more terrible than one normally is upon waking up with only 4 hours of sleep– the perils of cross country communication. It was a very emotionally draining conversation full of personal history and things I normally don’t divulge unless asked directly about it. San Diego, being San Diego, uncovered their existence and asked directly. Thanks for the emo hangover, SD.

This, in turn, has made me ponder the existence of the Madness. Why do I write it? When I started in 04′ it was more of a personal journal… spinning tales in the silence of the fledgling blogosphere. No one knew it existed, no one thought to look. Now it’s the first thing people find. I didn’t mind it when I was doing more mommy blogging than I would like to admit. But now I don’t really know what shape you are. Most of my thought processing takes place in my brown leather notebooks. But what role do you, dear Madness, play in my life? I hesitated to document my journeys and travels the last few months here out of respect for those involved. Do I start using you the way I once did and just say “fuck it”, do I write and schedule them to post 6 months down the road when most of the parties no longer have a vested interest? Do I just write and stay true to myself? Do I just continue to fill brown notebooks with the things I once shared with you? I have no idea, Madness.

I have a feeling I know the answer. You are an old and dear friend and should be treated as such. So here it goes:

Dear Madness,

I have missed you so. I will be more faithful in the future.

Luv, Shell

10-27-10

Curiosity Killed The …

I am completely in transition. The fates are throwing me the answers I need but I’m not entirely sure they are the ones I want. I guess I am just thrown off right now: the answers aren’t new opportunites and movements in directions forward as much as finding new momentum in the inertia from the past.

And kitsch. The only thing I have to guide me is a quote from a cliche pop-culture magazine my grandma handed me, which I opened out of curiosity:

“Take a break. Don’t worry about following your passion for a while. Just follow your curiosity instead.”

I hate the fact that the most valuable life lesson I may ever come across might come from Oprah.

10-14-10

Paper Rose

Digging through a box of old papers I found a poem written for me by a random boy on a train one day on my way back to college in 2001/2002. I was bringing a flower back to college with me. I think he handed it to me as I was getting off the train and I don’t remember ever thanking him. Of course he signed it with the most common name in the world (Michael Rogers) and a hotmail address, so tracking him down would be almost impossible. So Mr. Rogers, thanks for the smile.

Paper Rose

A page from a book, mine
Is like a page from my life
Fitting between the others
Each line worth the time it took

My day of pale expression
There was a bookmark placed
When a flower, a rose
Returned to me my breath

An exchange worth more
Than this paper can afford
But you already have a rose

On a day of blind direction
I was offered a sign, so discreet
From a traveling soul, an Angel
On this journey, I was to meet.

-Michael Rogers (michal2121_at_hotmail)

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