Writer, Freelancer, Communicator, Entrepreneur

Daily Writing Prompts, unedited. No judgement, please.

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allmalepanels:
“Congrats, you have an all male panel at Global Summit of Women! Classic!
”
Seriously? A summit on women with a lot of mansplaining going on.

allmalepanels:

Congrats, you have an all male panel at Global Summit of Women! Classic!

Seriously? A summit on women with a lot of mansplaining going on.

0 notes

Essential Oils

You know those moments when you realize you’ve lost your way, wandered out of your tribe? Or you feel completely old and uninformed and out-of-the-loop, sort of like my friend who came home after ten years sailing around the world, and while she was gone, Al Gore invented the internet. To this day, she’s still trying to catch up.

Well, today, that’s me. I’m part of a wonderfully vibrant, adventurous Facebook group of family travelers. Our common thread, that we travel for months (and for some, years) at a time with our children. As is often the case, today’s discussion focused on traveling light, only what you need in one small bag so tiny and light you can toss it on the moving train without tripping over your own awesomeness. 

I joined the chorus of only what you need, buy it there, three outfits and a toothbrush. Done. That’s how I do it, and yeah, I know I’m not exactly the stand-out beauty at the occasional fancy restaurant, but I get by. 

But in this discussion, another choir took center stage: the “essential oils” choir. Apparently there are essential oils I’ve not been packing with me around the world. How did I miss this? Is it like the internet and I will never catch up? I thought baby oil was essential when I was a teenager trying to get a tan, and today, olive oil is pretty essential in my life, but I don’t travel with either of them. 

According to these moms, essential oils like coconut, ACV (and I still don’t know what that one is) and activated charcoal are staples from which all matter of goodness can be derived. I had no idea!

Google explained to me that “essential oils” are concentrated hydrophopic liquids containing volatile aroma compounds from plants – It didn’t mention baby oil or even olive oil – and that they’ve been used in all variety of medicinal concoctions since the tenth century. Who knew?

These women talk about the shampoos and deodorants and other essentials they concoct from these essential oils, and from where I sit, they speak Latin. I’m completely out-of-the-loop, uninformed, a luddite who’s relied on the corner bodega for whatever concoction is on sale when I get there. Now I’m thinking I need oils – essential oils – for my next adventure.

Then I remember the time my toothpaste tube exploded all over my suitcase, oozing gooey fruit flavored fluoride on my every possession. Now I’m going to tempt fate with coconut oil, ACV and charcoal? 

Not happening. I’m going back to my cave, content in my luddite-induced ignorance. 

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Washing Dishes

My dishwasher broke again three weeks ago. For the 6th time in 11 months. It’s under a year old, and has been broken for at least half its life span in my house.  There’s a new one on its way – complements of the warranty that promised me it would live forever (or at least a year) – but for now, I’m hand-washing dishes.  So are my kids.

I remember once before – like 17 years ago – when my dishwasher broke on a Thursday and I busted my ass to get a new one installed on Friday. There was no way I could go an entire weekend without a working dishwasher. No Way! My friends and family stood with me in absolute solidarity. A weekend? No way!  

This time, when Sears told me it would take a month to replace it, I said no problem. It didn’t even cause a blip on my stress meter.  And in that very moment, I wondered what the hell has happened to me in those intervening 16 years.

With godlike intervention, Sears promises I will have a new one by Halloween. And I’m happy about that.  The piles of plates with crusted mac-and cheese, bowls with soured milk rings, and casserole dishes that cooked too long have inhabited my kitchen counters long enough.

But still, I realize through this hand-washing phase, I’ve learned a few things:

  1. My mother was right when she taught me to wash the glassware first. Wine glasses washed after the casserole dish start to look like the casserole dish. Not a good thing.
  2. I never taught my kids crap about washing dishes. At best, I taught them to load dishes in a dishwasher. Trust me when I say that is not the same thing.
  3. My kids don’t get the glassware thing. And they don’t use wine glasses so they don’t care.
  4. My mother taught me to clean as I cooked. Wash a few dishes while things finish in the oven. Rinse other stuff. Get it ready for quick turn-around after dinner.
  5. Cleaning as they cook is an idiotic idea, according to my children. What’s the fun of cooking and cleaning at the same time? It’s like swimming in the pool and cleaning gutters simultaneously. Surely its dangerous. And totally no fun. They say I’m a kill-joy.
  6. Dishes are multi-dimensional, meaning they have a front and back, and sometimes they have sides.
  7. My children don’t have multi-dimensional vision. They see the front. Most of it anyway. Most of the time.
  8. Cutting boards, knives, and mixing bowls can be rinsed and re-used during the prepping of a meal, provided basic precautions are taken.
  9. Certain death will occur, according to my kids, if anything is used multiple times in prepping a meal. Always better safe than sorry. Get a clean bowl/knife/cutting board.  Unless it’s their night for dishes. Then we order pizza.
  10.  Standing in the kitchen window, brewing the morning coffee, listening to the birds singing outside the window, lost in my own thoughts of glassware first / don’t grab a soapy knife blade / wash, rinse, repeat, might just be the most peaceful and zen like part of my day.

Now I know why my mother sang while she washed dishes. And I miss her just a little bit more every morning gazing out that window.

I will make damn sure to be home all day for as long as it takes for Sears to get here, yank out this piece of junk and give me a machine that works. 

But maybe I’ll hold out the wine glasses this time. Wash them by hand every morning, and sing with my mother.

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Enough is Enough

US military families can’t shop at the Commissary on base now. They’re closed due to the shutdown. Students at the University of DC aren’t going to classes since it’s closed too.  DC is federally funded, so the closure of UDC is just the beginning of that city’s woes. Teachers around the country can’t build their lesson plans with the Library of Congress data base – a treasure of information and knowledge – because it’s closed too. 

On Capitol Hill, a Capitol Hill police officer is reported wounded because of a shoot out around the Capitol, where he was working without pay because apparently his service was essential enough to be continued but not essential enough for his paychecks to be continued.

Inside the Congressional office buildings, life is tough too. Their restrooms aren’t being cleaned daily and their gym (with sauna rooms and state-of-the-art equipment) is closed, and only one cafeteria is slinging hash. I hope to god those poor souls working in that sweat-shop are being paid while they cater to the self-indulgent, cranky legislators and their staffs who still have to eat.  (Because, of course, they have to have their designer sandwiches, even if military spouses who depend on the Commissary to feed their families have to fend for themselves.)

Enough is enough. This isn’t a story of gridlock and politics. It’s a story of hijacking and insatiable egos and a complete disconnect with the lives of the people this country calls its own. 

We believe in a more perfect union, and there’s nothing perfect or unified about any of this.  Obamacare is the law of the land. Love it. Hate it. It doesn’t matter. It traveled through every channel of our democratic process – including the US Supreme Court – and became law under the very rules of the government we share. 

Our children are watching. Our neighbors are watching. If we can only live by our constitution and our rules when it serves our purpose, what message are we sending? 

Congress, get back to work. Pay that cop that just got shot, and give teachers the resources they need to teach our students.  Pay your fair share to the District of Columbia, who has hosted you and tolerated you through all your battles and all your disfunction.  Fight in your sandbox all you want – that’s what you got elected to do – but have the decency to compensate the people who put their lives on the line for you and give our kids what they need to figure out how to navigate their lives in a country that you seem incapable of leading.

Mr. President, stand your ground. 

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On Social Media

I dig social media. I’m proof that a 50 year old women can keep up, at least in some realms.

I’ve got Facebook and Tumblr and Twitter and keep current. I’ve got Instagram but I’m still getting the hang of it. Pinterest is confounding to me, but I hold out hope. I do hang-outs on Google+ and have circles and all that.  I’m LinkedIn, but never quite figured out why.  I’m a newbie but loving Vine videos and the crazy potential for great, quick story telling. When there’s a new entrant to the “social” market, I check it out. I’m just like that.

So every day over morning coffee – then again throughout the day, as I’m killing time or, uh, procrastinating (see earlier rant) – I hop on over to “catch up.”

I use a lot of the tools out there – the lists and the groups and the multiple accounts – so I know how to slice and dice and absorb my feeds pretty well, at least for a 50 year old woman. Every now and I then, i run across someone who makes me look like a luddite, but then, they’re usually 19 and grew up on this stuff, so I cut myself some slack. I grew up on southern cornbread. No amount of social media finesse can top the goodness of southern cornbread.

I follow editors and publications and those dreamy places I hope to one day see my byline. I figure out what the editorial calendars are of my dream pubs and my best bet pubs and I check my writing files for what might be dusted off and re-written for a submission.  I see what the literary magazines are up to, and find my favorite stories to read. Then I dutifully share them with my tribes and wait to see who else loves them as much as I do. (I check back often to see if you have my same tastes, and I secretly judge you accordingly. But that’s another post.)

I follow my clients to see what they’re up to, and try to stay engaged in their worlds.  Then I stalk, er follow, my prospective clients to figure out my best “in,” where they might need me most. 

I’m the editor of an online travel magazine, Travelati, so I trek across the travel media to see who’s going where, doing what, and who’s writing for who. I compare it to our editorial calendar, and walk away feeling either smug or panicked, depending on the day.

Then somewhere, sometime – and I’m almost never aware it’s even happening – I slide to the dark side.  No longer am I keeping up professionally, networking, staying current.  I’m stalking, comparing, judging. And of course, freaking friggin out.

I find that writer friend I know from some workshop, and see she’s got more choice bylines than I have. Like, a lot more. I pop over and look at her website. Mine’s way better. I’m certain of it. 

Then there’s the status updates reporting on all my writerly friends going to some workshop or conference or event, and I careen off the digital freeway to find those sites too.  How’d I not know about that?  And the deadline’s when? Tomorrow? Oh jesus.  

Then, on the brink of utter desperation, that little twittering noise blurts out of my phone, and someone I’ve never even heard of favorited one of my tweets.  (Tumblr doesn’t believed “favorited” is a word, but Tumblr is wrong.)  It’s a bump of caffeine, ecstasy! Someone read it and liked it and I have to know who. Right now. Like seriously right now. So I careen off the byways I’d recently just careened onto and check this guy out. Because obviously he’s brilliant, because not only did he read what I wrote, he favorited it. (Take that, Tumblr; I used it for a third time.)

So now I’ve gone from professional networking to vagrancy, to voyeuring. If I had a pair of binoculars and was hiding behind bushes, I’d be arrested.

Has a 50 year old woman every been arrested as a peeping tom? I doubt they keep stats on these things, but I’m guessing not. I’m guessing the cop would shake his head with that “poor thing” look and suggest I pack it in for the night and go home and have a cup of tea. 

But I don’t drink tea, damnit.

Just recently a writer buddy – who has to be one of the most frugal humans on the planet – told me about some app he paid $20 for just to block out all internet content for two hours at a time so he would write.  I was aghast. He spent $20 for something he already has? For free?  It’s called discipline I told him, in my snarky you’ve-got-to-be-a-moron voice. 

Now I want that app, and want it bad. Tea isn’t going to do me any damn good, but that app is a must-have. Now. 

I’ll check his Facebook page. Surely he’s got a status update about it.

Wait, what’s that?

Time’s up.

Want to know more?  Slide on over to www.powellberger.com

Filed under socialmedia writing

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Telling Stories & Getting Clients

I tell stories.

I know everybody, every business, every organization, every passion, every start-up, and every everything has a story that needs to be told.

Stories connect us, inspire us, call us to action, and bring us to reflection. They bring order to our crazy, chaotic world. 

I’ve done the corporate thing and know how to write business plans, strategic plans and communications plans.  I’ve whipped out talking points and one pagers and bullet points on everything from ugly fish to mixed-waste recycling to corporate governance to luxury (and not so luxury) accommodations, and even anal leakage. 

And, yes. I’ve tried to delete permanently that last one from my memory bank of projects.

I know social media and how it’s just perfect for some things and sucks for others.  I know that one size doesn’t fit all and every situation deserves the best message, the best story, and the best delivery.

I write 7500+ word essays and white papers and issue briefs, then turn around and write 250 word editorial letters so good that moms cut them out and send to their kids. 

Just be warned; 250 words takes way longer. (But with a deadline, I’m still freaky fast.)

Writing a good rant is like a bowl of Java chocolate chip ice cream for me. Writing a story of good works well done that leaves my readers crying and wanting to help, that’s what gets me up in the morning.  

I’m an entrepreneur who’s founded a small business and hung out my own shingle.  I’ve been – and am again –  the chief cook and bottle washer. I’ve been the business owner who tried to do it all, and who eventually learned to get out of her own way, to out-source occasionally, so she could do what she was supposed to do:  build and run the business. 

I’m a freelance writer/communicator.

I’ve spent a lifetime putting together the pieces and parts to tell the story that makes a difference.

I help big companies, start-ups, not-for-profits, publications, websites, and friends with big ideas and dreams find and tell their story. (Sometimes the friends are charged less; that’s one of the perks.)

I tell stories.

I’m pretty sure I could help tell yours, too. 

(Disclosure:  I wrote this as today’s writing prompt, then decided to include it on the website too.  So if you think you’ve read it in two places now, you’re not crazy.

I’m just telling my story and targeting the audience.)

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Rainy Fridays

I tap tap tap away on my keyboard and find I keep beat with the rain tapping into my pool, just beyond my office door.  The breeze picks up, the rain pounds a bit harder, and I keep pace accordingly. The ideas flow, the words materialize from the randomness of the letters I’m tapping, and it begins to make sense. Not a lot of sense yet, but some sense and I’m good with that.

The ideas that were before ruminating are taking a unique shape, one that speaks to the jumbled mess inside my head. Piecing a life together, the brilliance and debilitating fear that is renaissance. Believing it will come together and make sense and work exactly as it should, then simultaneously knowing belief, faith and reality aren’t always in lock step. Sometimes there’s tripping and falling and failing and lagging behind. What’s the Plan B, when Plan A doesn’t quite go the way it’s supposed to? 

Then the rain stops. The breeze stops. The humidity lays in the air like a blanket on a feather bed, creeping its wet, sticky fingers across my back yard, through my office door and over my desk. I can almost write my name in the wet, icky film that collects just around the keyboard.

And as though on cue from the invisible conductor bringing this symphony together, my keyboard quits tapping. My fingers sit limp, waiting for the conductor to raise her arm and direct us to go on. But she is still, her wand on the stand before her. And the words don’t come.

And so I ponder the thoughts that were clamoring to get out. I know that some are over-powering the others. But which ones? The dark fear and dread and gloom have their own footholds, and routinely flex to keep their anchor. But those of faith and commitment and new beginnings spring forth too. Right now, they seem to have the upper hand. I want them to have the upper hand and I want the conductor to pick up her wand and tap her stand and raise her arms and bring back the music of tapping and writing and raining.

In the distance, I hear the birds chirp. And beyond that, the waves crashing against the sand. There’s a sliver of sun beyond the dark clouds, past the palm trees towards the mountains that ridge the horizon. The rain goddess has packed away her wand, and with it our concerto has gone silent.

I return my fingers to the keyboard, and slowly begin to tap again, without the rhythm of the rain to set the pace. It’s awkward and halting and not as certain as it was with the rain pounding and setting pace. But I keep typing, and the words come, and the thoughts materialize.

The birds are louder now, and I see them in the wet branches outside the window. They remind me to keep typing, to keep going. The rain’s moments of reflection and uncertainty and determination have left their mark, and now it is time to regroup. Find the next beat, and keep going.

And be ready, when the rains return.

TIme’s up.

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Remembering

We’re 9/11 refugees.

9/11 was awful, terrible, unimaginable.  But it was the days and weeks and months afterwards that did me in.  We were in McLean, home base for the CIA, so the roar of circling fighter planes drowned out the birds. The SUV motorcades charging through the stoplights on Chain Bridge Road left an ache in my stomach every time I pulled over to let them pass. And the house where Farid, the little kid in my son’s class, had lived sat vacant with the scooter in the front yard for too long. No one knew what happened to that family. He was in class that day, and the next day, the house sat vacant, toys abandoned in the yard.

Like all my friends, I got the plastic gloves to be worn when getting the mail, though I don’t remember ever wearing them.  Our home’s “safe room” was really my daughter’s closet where I stashed duct tape and blue tarps and a stockpile of Cipro, as though I’d know dosages and side effects and when to use it.  When the last gas mask on display at McLean Hardware became the object of dispute between two country club mamas one afternoon, I called time. I couldn’t live there anymore.

My brother lived in Hawaii, so it somehow made sense. “Moving to be near family,” I’d say when someone asked.  When I retrieved the kids’ medical records from our pediatrician, my favorite doctor confided they’d lost almost a third of their patients that year. “No one says it’s a 9/11 thing,” he told me. “They just don’t want to be here anymore." 

We sold the house, sold almost everything in it, and shipped out to Hawaii. We left 3500 square feet of suburban split level brick and siding and a back yard with a swing set and a deck and moved into 1200 square feet of 1950s single wall plywood, a leaky roof and a big avocado tree that hadn’t fruited in years. And a big, glorious beach where I could look out over the water and see forever and feel peaceful and calm and safe. 

Eventually we tore down the "shack” and built a house without a leaky roof. We nurtured the tree back to life and now fish avocados out of the pool we put in.  I battled breast cancer and won that round. I founded a business, changed careers, built the business and almost ten years later, changed careers again. The kids grew and the marriage collapsed.

Every year on this day I walk down that beach and I still look out over the water and see forever and feel peaceful and calm and safe.  

And I remember.

Filed under 9/11

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Hara Hachi Bu

A friend explained it to me once. Hara hachi bu is an Okinawan thing, translating roughly to 80%. It’s typically used to express eating habits, eating until you’re 80% full, then stopping.  According to the goddess of online research, Wikipedia, I see this morning that those same people live longer and have a better BMI than most the rest of us. 

My goddess friend who introduced me to the phrase also thought it was a good life motto.  Hara Hachi Bu. 80%. If you can hit 80%, then life’s good, you’ve done pretty well, you should be happy. That to-do list; get 80% of it done and hara hachi bu. Make a promise to forgo ice cream and manage to live up to your commitment 80% of the time, then hara hachi bu. Promise yourself you’ll get to the gym every day, and you make it 80% of the time, hara hachi bu. (Between the gym and the ice cream, maybe you’re even on your way to losing 80% of the weight you’ve committed to lose, and that’s a double whammy hara hachi bu.)

I’ve been thinking about it lately and wondering if I agree. When it comes to my to-do list, the ice cream and the gym, I think I do. If I manage to hit 80% in most things throughout my day, I’m pretty darned happy.

But there’s those few things, the ones that come to the top of the most important things in my life list, where 80% just isn’t good enough.  

Being there for my kids when they need me.

Loving and being loved.

Treasuring my friends and dropping everything when they call because that’s what a friend does.

Writing my best work and rewriting it and rewriting it and rewriting it til I think it’s the very, very, very best it can be.

Some things deserve 100%, maybe even 110%, because these are the things in life that don’t get a do-over. These are the things I get up for every morning, and go to bed treasuring every night. These are the things that make me who I am. 

100% of who I am. 

I think I took fifty years to finally figure that out, but I’m betting 100% at 50 is better than a lifetime at 80%. And I’m good with that. 

Time’s up.