show me someone who never stops caring for others, and i’ll show you someone who’s trying to defeat her belief in her own unlovability by milking others for gratitude.

show me someone who never stops caring for others, and i’ll show you someone who doesn’t feel safe when she can’t maintain the illusion that she controls external events.

show me someone who never stops caring for others, and i’ll show you someone who likes others to be weak and needy so she can feel strong.

show me someone who never stops caring for others, and i’ll show you someone who is so exhausted that she’s most likely to break just when she’s needed most.

show me someone who thinks of her own well-being first, and i’ll show you someone who has the capacity for focused, centered, whole-hearted attention.

show me someone who thinks of her own well-being first, and i’ll show you someone who can be flexible and spontaneous in the face of the unexpected.

show me someone who thinks of her own well-being first, and i’ll show you someone who can delight in others’ independence and respect them enough to let them learn from their mistakes.

show me someone who thinks of her own well-being first, and i’ll show you someone with a bright spirit and a healthy body.

show me someone who thinks of her own well-being first, and i’ll show you someone who’s genuinely capable of thinking of someone other than herself.

This was written by a friend who wished to be quoted anonymously.

When I read it, it reminds me of the importance of holding healthy boundaries.

What comes up for you when you read it?

a story told in Kyelitweets, photos, and a bit of narration for suspense and glue

Our story begins on the morn of Kyeli’s 33rd birthday. Pace hands Kyeli a battered manila envelope containing a sole piece of paper.

My first clue! Birthday treasure hunt!

Kyeli googles “kyeli33″, but Google fails her. She takes the hint of the stapled business card and constructs a clever URL:

Got it! http://freakrevolution.com/kyeli33/ Whee! On to the second clue!

There were two paths to solving the second clue: a nerdy path and a geeky path. The nerdy path was to look at the lengths of the letter groups. The geeky path was to View Source and examine the almost-but-not-quite-black HTML color codes of the clues. Kyeli chose the geeky path and filled in the answer: 2 2 2 2. Coffee and 2222 could mean only one thing…

Got it by cleverness! Starbucks on 2222! And we’re off! (:

At Starbucks, Kyeli was struck by pronoid fantasies. Who was out to make her happy on her birthday? It could be anyone, lurking behind any corner. It could be the barista, the customers… who knew? After scouring the rest of the coffee shop, she ventured over toward the bulletin board…

Wow, that was hard! Found the next clue on the memo board at Starbucks! WTF??!

Omigosh, I’m texting someone I don’t even know!

But what Kyeli didn’t know was that it wasn’t someone she didn’t know — it was Marissa!

Fast response! “Happy birthday, Kyeli! Your next clue is: “Nada Chicken @ A&B”! That’s a Thundercloud sub – Anderson & Burnet! Going!

…and on the bulletin board at Thundercloud Subs:

I don’t know who could have committed this misdemeanor, but it sure was a lucky coincidence that it contained the next clue for Kyeli’s quest, leading her to Conan’s Pizza…

Graffiti! Defacement of public property! Clue #5!

@martieu Hi! Have you a clue for me? (:

@martieu I found it, thank you!!

You see, @martieu had already tweeted the next clue ahead of time.

Woah, clue said: quilling croix samurai comment, led to @victoriashmoria‘s blog, clue there is: email another person I don’t know! Wow!

Kyeli googled “quilling croix samurai comment”. Click on the first link and scroll to the bottom to see the next clue.

Email sent. Now to lunch while we wait for a response! (:

But while Kyeli refreshes her email, her phone rings. It’s a mystery caller!

Clue received, mysterious call from an unknown person. “Broken Legolas, abbreviated Luke.” O_o

This was another googler.

That was a puzzler! Got it; @blondechicken’s blog, next clue with @annabarnett! Looking now!

Clue found: isbn 1932394699, within 100 meters of sushi. Huh! That’s a Ruby on Rails book… Sushi… Hmmmm…

Kyeli ponders. Where is there a bookstore near a sushi place?

Got it! Sushi at Whole Foods, and Book People is about a block from there! On to Book People!!

OH!! It’s IN the Ruby book! Wow, I nearly missed that one! It almost didn’t even occur to me! Next clue: @sarahbairstow!

Man, I hope this is at least almost as fun for you guys as it is for me! Next clue: “go to the exact spot where you and Pace got married.”

That’s a particular spot in our backyard. The intrepid adventurer returns to the place at which her quest began.

Is the suspense killing you??

Found it! More graffiti!! Hmmm…

OKC stands for OKCupid. On Kyeli’s OKCupid profile, there’s a picture of her sitting on top of a marble cow. She took a peek…

HOLY SHIT SHE HACKED MY OKCUPID ACCOUNT!!!!!!!!!!!!

…and found that some sneaky internet ninja had logged in as her and photoshopped her picture!

“The young wobbler” refers to Wobbly Thing Jr., a rolling file cabinet thingy that (as you might expect) wobbles.

Treasure found! Here’s the box, kindly mutilated by the cats…

(I have no idea why the cats were trying to get at Kyeli’s birthday treasure.)

Pleased and satisfied with the contents of the final cache, at last, Kyeli had completed her quest. Or so she thought…

HOLY SHIT I’M NOT DONE!!!

Google leads the way…

New clue too long to fit! Check out the comment at the bottom of this post: http://kimianak.posterous.com/unphotographable

After solving the riddle and texting yet another mystery number…

Fastest response yet! “Final clue is Plato’s theory of forms”! Eeeeeee!

Hey! Hey! We read about that in “Sophie’s World”, which is currently in the glovebox in the car!

Rushing to the garage, Kyeli opens to the chapter on Plato’s theory of forms.

OMG! OMG! I got a Sock Dreams gift card…

…with a twist! Pace is taking me to Portland!!!! Ooooooh happy happy! Squee!!

Well, that’s pretty fucking epic. A trip to Portland so I can shop in my favorite store in person. I am one happy girl. <3

Soon, we will get in touch with our Portland friends so we can be sure to see them when we visit. Soon, Niq will give us the Grand Tour of Sock Dreams HQ.

There will be photos. There will be blogging.

But for now, this concludes Kyeli’s 33rd Birthday Quest. Not To Say That She’s Had 33 Birthday Quests, But More Like That It’s About A Quest In Honor Of Her 33rd Birthday.

I listed many life lessons we’ve learned from tiny pretend people, but this one is so important, it earned its own post.

Doing what you love and accomplishing your goals is fun.

I actually anti-learned this lesson from the Sims. I had a gardener, Max, who’s life goal was to have a perfect garden. She was a hippie vegetarian granola girl with a green thumb, who loved the outdoors and enjoyed solitude, loved to read, and got her socialization from talking to her plants.

But when she worked in her garden, her fun meter went down.

When she read non-fiction books to learn skills, her fun meter went down.

When she read fiction, her fun meter went up. When she played on the computer, which wasn’t really in her nature, her fun meter went up.

This was extremely annoying to me. She’s a gardener. Reading books about gardening and working in her garden helped her achieve her life goal.

Why didn’t that make her happy?

Well, Sims 3 is a life simulator.

It’s simulating regular life. And (apparently) in regular life, you have to separate fun from work. You work and it sucks, then you go have fun and it’s fun.

Max works in her garden and it sucks – even though she’s outside, even though she’s enjoying solitude, even though she’s listening to her favorite music, even though she’s doing what she loves. Because it’s “work”. When she reads non-fiction, even though she loves to read, it’s “work”.

She finally took up guitar because that was more aligned with her heart than playing on the computer – but the first few levels weren’t fun, because she was learning.

And before Max, I had a writer who didn’t enjoy writing! What?!

So what did I learn from all this?

Learning and work aren’t fun. And if I learned that so vividly, I can only imagine what it’s teaching our children and teenagers – thousands of whom are playing this game.

But you know what?

That’s bullshit!

It’s Control Paradigm bullshit. It’s all lies. It’s not true. It’s what we grow up witnessing and what we might believe – but it’s wrong.

Learning is vital. It keeps us changing, growing, and in motion. And work! Working is what brings us closer to our goals, helps us achieve our dreams!

I’m not saying it’s all fun and games. I know it can suck – I’ve been there. I’ve had jobs that required me to go home and veg out for hours just to recover. I’ve had jobs that sucked my soul and made me cry on my commute every day.

But what I’m saying is, it doesn’t have to suck.

Pace pointed out that I’m probably in the 1% of people who even noticed that my Sims don’t love their work – most people are so entrenched in “work sucks” that they just assume work sucks, and of course you need a computer to have fun! And of course, our kids particularly feel that way.

And all that breaks my heart.

We live in a paradigm where work is occasionally fulfilling but often not – and certainly not fun regardless. We live in a paradigm where recreation is fun but not fulfilling. And we live in a paradigm where most people don’t even know that it can get better.

Time for a paradigm shift, don’t you think?

Hello, dear readers! This is a sneak peek of our next big thing.  We call it the World-Changing Writing Workshop.

In the process of blogging, growing our business, publishing a book, writing our manifesto, and authoring an e-course, we’ve learned a lot about how to change the world by writing. Also, our lives have been changed by the things we’ve read: books, e-books, and blogs, fiction and non-fiction. Now we’ll help you take your love of writing and use it to change the world!

The World-Changing Writing Workshop will be a 6-week telecourse where we (Pace and Kyeli) and other world-changing writers share our advice and experience with you. Regardless of whether you’re a novelist, blogger, author, or marketer, we’ll teach you how to change the world with your writing!

We think this will be awesome and fun, but we want to hear from you. Is this something you’d be interested in? What would you want to learn?  Who would you want as guest speakers?

If you could please help us out and take this quick 3-question survey, we’d appreciate it greatly!

Thanks!

Friday, we started an impromptu March Birthday Sale, to celebrate all the awesome birthdays in March (of which, there are many!).

Tonight, the sale is over!

So, get in while the getting is cheaper – 52 Weeks to Awesome is only $33 until midnight tonight, if you use the discount code kyelibday !

$33 because I’m 33! And a sale on awesome to celebrate all the awesome in March. Ah, it makes my little Piscean heart so happy. Also, all proceeds from the sale go toward my awesome birthday extravaganza, which I’ll post all about later this week. Til then, you have to wait in eager anticipation, as I had to wait for nearly a month!

And hey, while you wait, you can get started on awesomifying your life. More cheaply. Til midnight.

Today is my 33rd birthday.

I have always looked forward to my birthday with bright anticipation. I’ve held on to the childlike delight throughout my life.

When I was little, I believed my birthday was a national holiday, because it always fell during Spring Break – I never once had to go to school on my birthday. My family was divided, so I always had a Dad’s Family Birthday Party and a Mom’s Family Birthday Party, and when I was old enough, I got a third party – the Kyeli’s Friends Birthday Party. This made my birthday a week-long celebration, wherein I was treated like a rock star and showered with extra love, affection, presents, and the ability to choose where we ate and what we did.

And my 33rd birthday – wow! 33 is this amazingly awesome number, so curvy and pretty and full of 3′s. It’s my favorite double-digit number. I’ve been looking forward to this birthday since I was old enough to count that high.

I’ve used my birthday as a milestone, as an event marker, as the announcement date for important things, time and again.

And there have only been two times in my life I regretted that.

The first time was the year I lost my little baby girl. My first ultrasound was scheduled on my birthday, so I could see her for the first time. After I miscarried, I dreaded my birthday with feelings so heavy they could sink ships.

And now, this year, on the dawn of my most-ever anticipated birthday, my heart is again heavy.

Today, I was going to launch Womb for Rent. My surrogacy business.

Twice in my life, my womb has been instrumental in my sorrow. Twice, when I felt I would be celebrating the life I would bring into the world on the day I came into the world, I am instead mourning the lives I will not create – and the life I will not have.

Today, I will celebrate the day of my birth. I will be with my wife. I will talk to my family. I will see friends. I will surround myself with joy – and I will take some quiet time to honor my grief.

A new year, a new chapter. New beginnings and potential swirl around me, and I wonder where they will take me from here.

Wow, wow, wow. There are a megaton of awesome birthdays in March! Look at this!

Havi, Naomi, Johnny, Marissa, Ealasaid, Cath, Sarah, Helen, Shannon, Carolyn, Kyle, Joy, Jen, Chelsea, Kate, Tanya, Kelan, and several of my cousins. And probably lots of people we don’t know, and maybe some people we know and terribly forgot (we’re sorry!).

And, of course, me! My birthday is tomorrow, I’ll be 33, and I am super excited. I’ve been looking forward to being 33 since I was little! It’s such a cool number.

What can we do to celebrate all the birthdays and all the awesome people? How about a sale on being awesome? Yay!

From March 19th (that’s today!) to March 22nd (that’s Monday), 52 Weeks to Awesome will be $33 (because I’ll be 33!) when you use the discount code kyelibday. All the money we make from the sale will go toward whatever amazing birthday extravaganza my lovely wife has been cooking up for some months (so I have no idea what it is, but apparently it’s awesome), so if you’ve been hunting for just the right present for me (and I know you have, you’re so thoughtful!), you can get yourself a present at a discount and contribute to my Big Birthday Extravaganza at the same time!

Sale for you, birthday yum for me. It’s perfect.

So, happy birthday, my darling fellow Marchians! There are quite a lot of us, which is why March is so very wonderful indeed.

If you follow me on Twitter or FaceBook, firstly I apologize. I’m totally uncensored, so you get random things like me talking to my uterus and current obsessions in addition to rambling about my day and suchlike. (At least it’s short rambling.)

Secondly, you’ve heard that I’ve been jonesing for a scooter. In fact, I declared 2010 to be the year I get one. I did research and checked into motorcycle laws – and found and fell in love with a particular scooter. I priced it new, found a place in town that sells it. I started figuring out how much I could put down and how much I could afford to pay monthly, and talking about other financial options.

I was all set to buy the scooter. I even had a name picked out for her!

And then, I decided not to do it at all. After weeks of thinking about very little other than my soon-to-be scooter, I kind of surprised myself there.

After weeks of research and noodling and excitement, I had a major shift. I learned to respect money.

I feel like I leveled up! Suddenly, I understand money far better. I grok that, when we spend money, we no longer have it – whether it’s cash or not. I know where it comes from and I get that I need to know where it’s going, all the time. It’s not my enemy; we’re friends. It’s not some amorphous thing that just happens to me; it’s real and I can pay attention to it and have understanding of it.

What does this have to do with the scooter?

Well, I started thinking of all the other things I could do with the money I’d put into a scooter. I could go to Portland and meet all the cool people there and buy a huge ton of socks in person. I could go to cons and meet people and have an awesome experience. I could visit friends across the country. I could get 10 new tattoos (I don’t actually want that many; don’t worry, Daddy). I could have 750 grande chai lattes. (Seriously? Only 750?! I need to figure out how to make them at home, omg.) Or the money spent on a scooter could go into savings. It’d buy us 2.5 months of security.

I also started thinking of the practicality of a scooter: I live in Texas. It’s hot here 10 months out of the year – and I hate the heat. Scooters don’t have air conditioning. I have tattoos. The sun is terrible for skin, but worse for tattooed skin. Scooters don’t have roofs. And there’s the additional costs of gas and maintenance, taking classes and getting a motorcycle license, etc.

Once I started weighing all the other possibilities and thinking of the actualities of it, getting a scooter seemed like a dumb idea.

This was revolutionary for me.

I never used to think things through like that. I’d be out and on a scooter, willy nilly and never you mind things like practicality and actualities and other possibilities!

To slow down, breathe, and realize what I want is not what I thought I wanted, well, that was really something. Even further, to stop before I spent a ton of money and wound up with something sitting around gathering dust and regret… that was damn near the end of times.

Our culture is addicted to instant-gratification. We’re not taught to slow down and think; we’re taught to RUN RIGHT OUT AND SPEND SPEND SPEND RIGHT NOW HURRY! SALE ENDS SOON! And it makes me sick, but I get all swept up in it and need to run right out and hurry hurry hurry. I’ve spent most of my life running right out and spending spending spending, and then wondering why I never have enough for travel or books or emergencies.

And it’s not just about money, either. We spend our lives running, rarely taking time to slow down and figure out what we want in any capacity, and we run til we realize how unhappy we are even though we’re surrounded by all the things we thought we wanted.

Slowing down to breathe, to figure out what we want before we wind up with what we don’t really want – that’s revolutionary for all of us.

Dru and I have been playing the Sims 3 like we’re some kind of insane addicts who will curl up in little balls if you take our tiny pretend people away.

But! We’re learning all kinds of lessons!

Lesson #1: Don’t fire off a rocket in the house.

Dru learned this one the hard way. His Kid Sim was playing with an outdoor rocket in the house, and when it went off, it utterly exploded, creating a fire that killed the kid and his dad – who’d come up to save the kid, to no avail. Cue really sad Mom Sim and a weeping Real Life Kid, and we’ve got one serious lesson.

How many things do we parents let our kids do or play with without really understanding what it is? Parents are quick to blame TV for our children’s bad behavior, but if you don’t know what they’re watching, it’s not the TV to blame. If you don’t know your kid’s habits, how can you know if they change drastically? If you don’t pay attention to your child, your child might just fire off some kind of rocket and devastate all of your lives.

Knowing the rocket was an outside toy and making sure he supervised the Kid Sim would have prevented this tragedy. Dru learned a lot about being a god parent that night.

Lesson #2: WooHoo makes babies.

WooHoo is, you may can guess, Sim Sex. It’s very vanilla – this is a kid-friendly game, after all – the sims cuddle up on the bed, giggle a lot, then dive under the covers and heart-shaped confetti sprinkles down from the ceiling, and they emerge from the covers all grinning and happy and clothed.

Dru made a couple, and eventually, the couple wanted to make it. Don’t we all? So, he sent them to bed and WooHoo happened.

And Sim Lady got preggers.

Dru was baffled. (Especially when I couldn’t stop laughing.) He said, “But I didn’t tell them to try for a baby!” (“Try for a baby” is another option.) Somehow, between snickers, we managed to have a very good and informative discussion about how sex makes babies – often whether or not you want one.

And in Real Life™, you can’t restart your game and not be pregnant anymore.

Our culture rarely talks about sex. Sure, you see it everywhere, but rarely do we educate our children – or ourselves. Even partners often have trouble talking about sex, even if it would make sex better, hotter, more fun.

Starting out with our kids, talking about sex honestly and openly, advocating birth control, and being there for any questions without pressure will help lead our kids to a better understanding of how our bodies work, why, and how babies come from WooHoo.

Note: the Midwest Teen Sex Show is an awesome resource to share with your budding teens. Watch them yourself, first.

Lesson #3: Money won’t fill your happy meter.

There’s a cheat code for money. You can get hundreds of thousands of Simoleans, instantly, with no effort whatsoever. This is handy if you’re building a house, but… well… we tend to abuse it and buy the best of everything ever. The best bed, the best stuff, the best stove. You get the idea.

The other day, though, Dru noticed that his sims were miserable. They’d been working long sim hours and not getting enough sim fun. He was frustrated, and said, “But I bought them the best everything! Why aren’t they happy?”

Heh. We talked about how working all the time and never having fun makes people unhappy, even if they live in a huge gorgeous house on a lake, surrounded by material luxury. We all need fun. We need to go to the bathroom in time to not wet our pants. We need food before we’re too hungry to walk. We need comfort, sure, but we need companionship and fun even more.

Lesson #4: Sometimes, your prayers will be answered. Other times, you’re on your own.

Occasionally, a Sim will get stuck or have a specific need (like going to the bathroom in time to not wet their pants). When this happens, it’s up to the player (with our god-like powers) to help out. Sim standing in the kitchen, waving his arms around? Check the Mood Meter and send him to get what he most needs.

But sometimes, if you let him do his own thing, he’ll fill his own most urgent need. Want him to sit and read and improve his logic? Fine, til he has to pee, then he’ll ditch the book and jog to the toilet.

Sometimes, we need help fulfilling our needs. We can pray or ask for help from the Divine or our more earthy companions. We can listen to our hearts and ask for guidance – and heed what we receive. And other times, we’re on our own. We can set up our environment to better serve us when we’re stuck. We can learn more about ourselves so we can anticipate our needs and take the best possible care of us.

Lesson #5: Fulfilling your dreams makes you happy.

A new game mechanic in Sims 3 is wish fulfillment. You get to choose traits (good, evil, lucky, genius, neurotic, friendly, etc), and then a lifetime goal (there are dozens), and then your sim will have little mini-goals appear throughout their life. Each mini-goal is related to their overall life goal and helps them on their path. (Usually.)

When you accomplish one of the goals, the sim gets a burst of happy that lasts anywhere from hours to weeks.

I find this one to be the most telling.

When we follow our hearts, when we’re on the right path, when we’re accomplishing goals and moving forward – we’re happy. It’s when we stray from this that we get depressed, unfulfilled, unhappy, and demotivated.

Just like the tiny little pretend people, we get a burst of joy from fulfilling our goals when they’re aligned with our hearts – so follow your heart, be it tiny and pretend or big and real.

Lesson #6: We’re all the same underneath.

This is, perhaps, the most important lesson of all.

I’ve made a wide range of little pretend people. When you’re really enjoying a game (read: obsessed), it’s fun to try out all the options. I’ve made evil Sims, good Sims, family-oriented Sims, downright nasty, mean Sims, and even an insane Sim.

But the thing I noticed was, every single one of them needed the same things.

They all needed food. They all needed to go to the bathroom, to shower, to have a clean and pleasant environment. They each had different versions of “clean and pleasant”, they each had different levels of social needs, and they each had differing desires – but that’s true for us, too.

My insane Sim, with her hard heart and mean spirit? She got lonely. She sat at her computer desk and cried once, when she’d gone too long without real Sim interaction. She was afraid of the dark, and got scared when she got lost in the graveyard in the middle of the night.

Deep down, she was the same as the sweetest Sim around.

It doesn’t matter if we’re fat, sweet, hard-hearted, or even green.

We’re all human. We all hurt, we all dream, we all long for things, we all love.

We all need to go to the bathroom from time to time.

In Real Life™, we get caught up in our differences and forget our sameness. Indeed, those differences make us all the more human. But it’s our sameness that brings us together, our sameness that helps breed connection.

In our differences, we enrich the world. And in our samenesses, we shall connect.

This week, we’ve come across a lot of people talking about talking. So what are we going to do? That’s right, we’re going to talk about talking about talking.

Talent is a myth

Litemind has a good article about why talent is a myth. We mentioned this in The Usual Error when we were talking about rephrasing limiting words like “can’t”.

How to recover from a communication landmine

Liz Strauss (the Successful and Outstanding Blog chick) wrote a great post about how to recover from a communication landmine. She gives a different approach to coming to terms and what did you intend?

The problem of context in communication

Iris of Pegasus Librarian writes about the problem of context in communication. How do you know how much context is relevant when trying to communicate an idea? In the absence of shared context, what will the other person assume? Will it even make sense, or will communication be completely flummoxed by the usual error?

Only say things that can be heard

A communication gem nestled in a wiki of software design patterns: only say things that can be heard. If the listener isn’t able or willing to hear what you’re saying, there’s no point in saying it. Either forget it, try again later, or try to say it in a way that the other person can really hear.

The tale of the slow elevators

The lovely folks at 37 Signals recount the tale of the slow elevators. It’s a cute example of the importance of asking “What problem are you trying to solve?”

Have you got any?

If you have any interesting communication-related stories that you’ve experienced or read, let us know in the comments, and maybe we’ll use them in a future Community Update!