Here’s the first episode of a new series on the Freak Revolution blog: Pace Explains.

Today, Pace explains the difference between gender identity, gender expression, biological sex, and sexuality, and what all that has to do with the whole transgender thing.

Click here if you don’t see the video. (It’s 4 and a half minutes long.)

Featuring:

• Pace
• Chuck Norris
• Angelina Jolie
• Drag queens
• Biker chicks
• Charts and graphs!

What would you like me to explain next?

Before Kyeli’s surgery, we had our first professional photo shoot with the lovely and talented Trisha Renae, who does family photography in Austin. It was a lot of fun, and I think the photos came out great! See for yourself, then scroll down to the bottom, because I have an important question for you. I’m having a lot of trouble making up my mind, and I could really use your help.

Pace

Here are three professional-looking ones of me and one of my cleavage. Don’t say I never did anything for ya. (;

P1	P2
P3
P4

Kyeli

Kyeli is so beautiful. I am totally bookmarking this post.

K1

K2

K3

K4

Pace & Kyeli

And here’s the two of us together. A mix of professional and sweet (just like us).

PK1

PK2

PK3

PK4

Pace’s icon conundrum (and how you can help)

I love our illustrated icons. Kyeli, however, wants her icon to always reflect how she actually looks in real life, so whenever her hair, piercings, or glasses change, she wants her icon to reflect that, and it’s too hard to keep updating the illustration. That’s why she changed her icon on most sites from the illustrated one to a recent photo of herself.

One of the reasons I loved our illustrated icons is because they matched. Now that they don’t match anymore, I’m considering changing my icon all over the internet.

On the one hand, I want to keep the illustrated one because it’s cool, memorable, it stands out, and people are used to it.

On the other hand, I want to have a photo of myself because I think I’m cuter in a photo than in the illustration, and also, the Freak Revolution is all about being authentic — maybe that will come through more clearly with a photo?

Pace’s illustrated icon
PH1	PH2	PH3	PH4

I’d love to hear what you think about my pros and cons, and which of those icons you like best.

Thanks so much for your help!

Kyeli and I just finished our second song! (This is our first song, in case you missed it.)

It’s called Soup Lazers, and it’s in a completely different genre from The Second Sunrise. The Second Sunrise is, what, electronica/acoustic guitar pop? Soup Lazers is straight-up techno. I don’t know what subflavor of techno it is because I’ve never been able to figure out those genre conventions. (If anyone else knows, please leave a comment.)

Listen to Soup Lazers (DDR Mix) by Sweeter Than Lazers (MP3, 1:48)

Pace: composition, arrangement
Kyeli: vocals

Software used: Renoise, Audacity, The Levelator

Lyrics:

soup
lazers
we can shoot ‘em out over the crowd

The name and the lyrics come from a very silly conversation Kyeli, Dru and I had while driving around Galveston talking about our new band.

This is the DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) mix. We’ll probably create an extended mix later, but my first priority was to make a very short and danceable mix so I could create DDR steps for it. It is ridiculously fun and fulfilling to dance a song that I wrote both the music and the arrows for.

If you have Stepmania (it’s like open-source DDR that you can play on your computer) then you can dance to Soup Lazers too!

Download the Soup Lazers StepMania file (SM) 4/6/8 singles
Download the Soup Lazers song select image
Download the Soup Lazers background image

We can shoot ‘em out over the crowd!

Today, May 11th, the Freak Revolution turns 1.

One year ago, we made our big announcement: we’re dropping everything to follow our hearts.

Since that day, we’ve written 174 blog posts, created a freaky community, written a revolutionary manifesto, authored an awesome e-course, and put together a world-changing writing workshop.

How many people have we inspired to change their lives? How many people have we helped become more awesome in some way? How have we made the world a better place? That’s harder to measure, but I think we’re doing a pretty good job, and we intend to do even better in the coming year.

For our 1st birthday present from us to you, we’re having a sale on registration for the World-Changing Writing Workshop. This week only, you can get a $100 discount when you sign up.

Happy birthday!

Love,
Pace & Kyeli

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.

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.

In keeping with my annual tradition, this Samhain Eve I’m reflecting on everything that’s happened this year. (I wrote this on the 31st but scheduled it to delay posting until the following Monday.)

Samhain is the end of the old year and the beginning of the new; a perfect time for reflection and introspection. This post is different from all the other posts in our blog; it’s a glimpse into the whole of our year, not just the bloggy or businessy bits. I don’t give a lot of context here, so feel free to ask if you wish.

In November, in fact through all of November, December, and January, I was vegan. We began our Communication for the Holidays telecourse, which ran all the way up to Yule. It went well! We chose the subtitle for The Usual Error: “Why We Don’t Understand Each Other and 34 Ways to Make It Better”. I dealt with my depression by making a habit of happiness. Kyeli and I celebrated our 4th anniversary of being together, Marty finished the cover art for The Usual Error, and Megan finished the design.

In December, at long last, after three years of work, we published The Usual Error. This was when we published the limited edition: the one with the orange cover. We sold all 100 of the limited edition copies within 4 days! I helped organize the Triiibes Blog Project. Kyeli’s grandfather died. I went to Dallas to be there for her during the funeral, and there was some Conservatives vs. Lesbians drama. We came home and put together a fun Yule quest for Dru, and I arranged an elaborate multi-step Yule quest for Kyeli. This is also when Dru started going to counseling.

In January, I joined the Kitchen Table, Havi stayed with us for a few days, we celebrated Dru’s 11th birthday, Dru started his first semester of co-op (school for unschoolers), and we published the unlimited edition of The Usual Error (the one with the blue cover) on Amazon. We started sharing chapters from The Usual Error on our blog, one per week. I wrote down everything I learned about self-publishing. The heartspace side of me and the headspace side of me had a beautiful conversation. Kyeli and I took Iron Pentacle class with Kira and Helix, learned and grew a lot, and shared a lot of what we learned.

In February, we tried a 30-day trial of eating only raw food. It failed spectacularly for many reasons, one of which was that our 30-day trial overlapped our move from our apartment to The Chalk. Other than Heather and Stuart’s wedding (at which we gave a blessing of communication), that pretty much consumed our February. Oi.

In March, we shifted the focus of our business (which was, at the time, PaceAndKyeli.com) from communication coaching to alternative relationship coaching. Not long thereafter, we had our first paid relationship coaching call! We first heard about the tapestry thing, the you-never-make-a-mistake thing, and I took a couple of slices out of my stress pie. We went to SXSW, saw a Jonathan Coulton concert, and hung out with Naomi and oodles upon oodles of other lovely and amazing people. We went to Sea World where Dru fell in love with the orcas and decided he wanted to be an orca trainer, we went to Houston to see Kyeli’s grandmother’s house before they tore it down, and there was a fist-sized hailstorm that totalled our car. (Kyeli stopped me from rushing outside to bring the car into the garage. Thanks, hon, I could have been brained!) And we celebrated Kyeli’s birthday! Yay! I got her a very slow shoe.

In April, we started posting Freaky Thursday and Revolutionary Tuesday video entries on the blog, as lead-up to a big announcement. This and the preparation for the big thing took up most of our time.

In May, Kyeli and I celebrated Beltane by playing Chuzzle on the moon! We were afraid our website had been hacked into sending spam, but it turned out to be just SMTP header spoofing. We had lunch with my friend Nick right before he moved to Portland (like everyone else we know). On May 11th, we dropped everything to follow our hearts. We completely redesigned our business and our website so we could lead the Freak Revolution. In less earth-shattering news, I got to Inbox Zero for the first time in 14 years. Oh, and we went to A-kon!

In June, we launched the Freak Revolution Coffee House (our forum), we were mentioned on ishmael.org, we switched to a cash-based system for managing our personal finances, and there was the big hullaballoo about politics.

In July, I finished the Heart of Money course. Since then, our financial situation has been about eighty billion times less stressful for me, and that’s not even mentioning the life-changing spiritual epiphany. Other than that, our life consisted mainly of working like crazy behind the scenes on the Freak Revolution Manifesto. This was also the month that Kyeli got overwhelmed and had a retreat, I got overwhelmed and had an emergency retreat, and Dru quit Aikido.

In August, we continued to work like crazy behind the scenes on the Freak Revolution Manifesto. My team at my day job came in first at the scavenger hunt, a long-term loan was finally repaid in full, and Kyeli and I had the “Pace, don’t smush yourself” conversation. I wrote a guest post for Copyblogger, defended closed-mindedness, and Kyeli broke her foot.

In September, we finally finished posting all 34 chapters of The Usual Error and released the entire e-book for free. I finally passed Paranoia Survivor, a very fast DDR song that I’ve been trying to pass for what, 4 years now? I ranted about how one person could have saved $450,000 from scammers, and hurt a good friend’s feelings. I finally got my updated passport that actually says I’m female, we went to the hot air balloon festival in Dallas, and our pseudo-nephew Eli was born. We saw Wicked, and pronounced it The Official Musical of the Freak Revolution! We started getting excited leading up to the manifesto release, and the Freak Revolution Manifesto launched on September 28th! Amanda won the Change the World in One Minute contest.

In October, we celebrated the ongoing success of the Freak Revolution Manifesto! We asked for feedback about the contest, and responded to it. Kyeli’s foot got better, her cousin Nicole died, we met Destry, I had a great 30-second birthday, and our good friends Bre and Amit got married, at which Kyeli gave a speech comprised of 80% Beatles lyrics. Kyeli and I spent a superb weekend with our dear friend Lynnivere in the boonies of East Texas, and we released the Usual Error audiobook.

In 2009 we enjoyed Full Moon, Star Trek: The Next Generation (seasons 1-3), and Poirot. We played Aquaria, Dokapon Kingdom, Persona 4, Trilby, Tales of Symphonia, Machinarium, and we were judges for IFComp 2009. I re-read all the Miles Vorkosigan books. We played a full year of our Mage game, Kyeli and I roleplayed two Risus murder mystery mini-campaigns with each other, and we played our first family Risus game, the Catoblepas campaign. (That was Dru’s first time participating in a roleplaying game.)

2009 was a year of growth. Growth in our business (which went through quite a few twists and turns, learning at each step), growth in our relationship (continuing to heal from our codependent past to create a more and more healthy interdependent future), and growth in spirituality (I began to practice Remembrance, and learned the value of humility and service).

As the old year closes and the new year opens, I open myself to the growth the new year has to offer.

I open myself to change.

I open myself to new challenges.

I open myself to joy.

I open myself to peace.

I open myself to comfort.

I open myself to love.

I open myself.

Hey, everyone. Kyeli is feeling a bit shaky and introspective lately, so I’m handling the business and technical side of things to give her space to process. Writing is a big part of her process, so I’m sure she’ll be sharing some of her thoughts and feelings with the rest of us, too.

But today, I want to correct a misunderstanding about our newsletter — it’s not just email versions of the blog posts. (If you want to get the blog posts emailed to you, here’s the link for that.)

In the newsletter, you’ll read inspiring thoughts, ideas that motivate, and awesome treats on how to make personal, life, and world-changing improvements! You know, kind of like our blog, except shorter (usually 1-3 paragraphs), more focused, and less frequent.

The newsletter also contains, well… news! We talk about all the neat things we’re planning and what’s going on within our community. Like, for instance, upcoming product releases. Newsletter subscribers get the news first and we also offer newsletter-only discounts.

We’re releasing 52 Weeks to Awesome later this year and a surprise for you next week, so I wanted to make sure that everyone who wanted the newsletter-only discount gets the newsletter-only discount. (:

So if you want to, you can join by clicking here, and if you don’t like it, it’s easy to unsubscribe.

That’s it from me; now back to your regularly scheduled Kyeli. (:

My cousin Nicole passed away last Friday morning.

She went into the hospital three weeks ago to have a baby. She was sick. That plus complications in birth lead to her death. This means she left behind a newborn baby boy. She also left behind a nine-year-old daughter.

I saw Nicole last Christmas at our family party. She looked wonderful; she was in love and happy, and seemed better off than she ever had before. It’d been ten years since we’d last seen each other, and we spent a little time reconnecting. It was nice. Not epic, not like long-lost-friends or anything, but good.

And now she’s gone.

And I just can’t believe it.

And now, the memorial service is over, and we’re all going back to our regular lives, whatever that means.

I’m so sensitive. I barely knew her as an adult, and I’m crushed. I keep seeing the faces of her children when I close my eyes. I keep thinking about all my other cousins and family and people I love but rarely see. People who might not know how much I love them. People who I don’t even know how much I love them.

We’re funny fragile creatures.

And now I’m supposed to return to my life, but I’m scarred, scared, trembling.

Being an entrepreneur is one of the most important things in my life. This blog and my readers (that’s you) are on my top priority list. But I still haven’t learned how to work through a tragedy, how to keep going when my heart hurts so much, how to push through when I’m moving in a fog of sleep deprivation and sorrow.

This post is posting late. I haven’t queued anything up because I’ve been in shock for over a week now, since she went into ICU.

Lessons all over the place. I hope I can find them.

You gave us your feedback about this blog, and we’re listening.

You asked for more open and vulnerable posts. We’ll do our best.

You asked for more audio and video posts. We’ll continue posting those occasionally.

You said that the community updates were the posts you most often skimmed or skipped. So we’re cutting down on those. From here on out, we won’t post community updates weekly; we’ll only post them if we have interesting and/or important news to share.

On the Fridays when we don’t post a community update, we’ll post something about communication, how to be awesome, or revolutionizing the world instead. So our blog schedule, starting next week, is:

Monday: something awesome and unscheduled
Wednesday: Book Bonanza Wednesday
Friday: Community Update or something awesome and unscheduled

How does that sound? Leave us a comment if you have something to say.

Thanks for experimenting with us and finding out what works best!