Hot Gossip, Hiatus and Slow Living

I told you last week I was trying to figure out something tough, and had to think about how to write about it before I spoke about it publicly.

I meditated on it…and…the Universe spoke.

“Simple.” it said. “Radically Simple”

I agreed, and so, there will be a lot of changes going on around here.

A *lot*.

One really quickie one that’s superficial but important, is that this website will be undergoing a sideways revamp. After a mostly-cool four year experiment, I’ve finally decided to go back to WordPress from Joomla.

I love Joomla as a content management system and website platform. It’s sexy, it rocks in ways nothing else does and it’s super powerful.

But not a lot of techs support it, and Joomla just hasn’t been the enhancement to our community I thought it would be and it needed it to be to justify the premium-priced expense, downtime or months of major project undertaking to constantly upgrade the site.

My Joomla team has really rocked it though, and I highly recommend them. If you need anyone on your Joomla I can’t recommend any two people more highly than James and Jenn.They’re cool and collaborate as a power-hitter team. Love and immense respect for their work.

However…I am personally needing a simpler life, and simpler solutions all the way around. In a lot of ways.

SECOND AND MOST IMPORTANT FOR NOW:

I was at Andrea J. Lee’s Wealthy Thought Leader event recently and re-connected with a gorgeous gaggle of fantabulous women coaches from the old days back in 2001-2003 when we were all working at CoachVille and teaching at Thomas Leonard’s Graduate School of Coaching.

All I can say is…girlfriends ROCK!

(am I right, ladies?)

With their sage wisdom, I figured out that I truly need to retool and get back to roots that I left for good reasons back when, but roots that deeply nurtured me nonetheless.

Roots I need to return to.

I’ll be doing that through a set of amazing projects I’m dedicating the next six months to, and will be taking a creative hiatus to do so.

So, communication might be a bit sparse, but will be absolutely juice-packed during this time, that I promise you.

And… I have also shed several relationships, situations and joint venture partners that had ceased being helpful or nurturing to me.

Big “yes!” on this inside – you’ll feel this too when you ditch what doesn’t feed you.

I’m feeling so much lighter and freer now.

Total Wow.

In the next six months, I’ll be slimming down in many more ways, including but not limited to my ongoing weightloss. I’ve lost 116 lb so far and am keeping on…but more later on that.

Are You A Slowpoke…Like me, daVinci and Einstein?

One of the most important relationships I’ve shed is a “hyper-connectedness” we’re all infected with to some extent now. In my case, it had begun to get slightly out of control and I was feeling stressed around everything to do with online life: email, marketing, blog posting, social media updating and so on.

I’m aiming for a new paradigm at my own speed, which like scientists and artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein, is a great deal slower and more highly focused than the breakneck pace of society and internet allow.

I research, read and synthesize a lot more than today’s current hustle-bustle lifestyle allows. This means that I am slower, more deliberate and take a great deal more time and care making sure things go right before releasing products or classes and so on.

Which produces exceptionally high quality, if not mass quantity.

But which would you rather have – a genuine Stickley chair, or a mass-market flimsy seat that looks the same but falls apart inside the first year? Right.

Slow Living Gets Its Own Summit…

The Slow Living Summit taking place this May in Brattleboro, Vermont features a workshop on our “Gross National Happiness” index. Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is famously quoted: “What you measure is what you get.” So these enterprising people are talking about measuring our nation’s happiness. This is exactly what I’m talking about. Live slower, get happier.

I say, go for it. Read more about this “Strolling of the Heifers” event featuring cross-sector intelligence, ideas and actions for sustainable living, right here.

So on my personal end of things, I realized that if I expected to keep my health and be happy, I couldn’t adhere to the go-go-go-until-you-drop thing one more second.I have to go at a pace that honors me and my energy flow first and foremost.

And right now, I’m getting back to my native speed. (what about you?)

The Next Half-A-Year…

So the next six months is dedicated to finding out how to Live in Bliss, following the Joseph Campbell model of letting go of the life I had planned, so as to have the Bliss that is waiting for me. And to do it at my own speed.

A speed that nurtures and revives me from the coma of hyper-connectedness.

I call it ‘the Speed of Slow’.

And I’m totally serious: Slow IS the New Black.

In case you haven’t heard about it yet, there’s a huge backlash against the unhealthy effects of hyper-connectedness. People are unplugging at record rates.

One of my best friends no longer checks his email at all. I have to text him if I want to connect. Ditto another friend who only checks her Facebook mail. And another who won’t communicate except by Twitter direct messages.

People have had it with multiple attention hogs.

Research is also coming out about social websites fostering the very loneliness they were formulated to relieve. We stay on them all day (yes, I’m a major offender) and are more disconnected from each other than ever before.

Here are some interesting conclusions on that if you’re interested:

http://huff.to/JAPvgl

And, MIT professor Sherry Turkle argues that all the texting and social-media we’re engaging in is bad for us as a society because it prevents us from having “real” conversations and connecting with other human beings.

So I’m unplugging to a great extent for the summer. (If you’re wondering how on earth to do this, the National Day of Unplugging may well be for you) As for me, I’m getting out and connecting with my peeps, with you, with the world. I invite you to do the same. 

Happy Spring!