TGIM #2

This week's Thank-Gord-It's-Monday poster hottie is my new friend Shea. Once again, I didn't take the photo. But she lives in SF, so sue me. We met on the internet when she found my blog and I found out that she loves Pilot Fineliners as much as I do. Best. Pens. Ever.

Name: Shea McGuier
Age: 37 (38 in two weeks)
Location: San Francisco Bay Area

Occupation: She makes her dollars in marketing and corporate communications but just started a business where she helps people get their creative work done. She's the person that won't let your creative projects fall to the bottom of the priority pile. And she has a blog called The Daily Freak Out. Me likey.

Things you can't tell by looking at her: Formerly the title-holder for Biggest Tight-Ass On The Planet, she got divorced and bought a Subaru (just like me). Then she took some very good advice from a chain-smoking, sailor-mouthed shaman in an alpaca sweater vest (so NOT like me) and now she's all better.

What are you grateful for?
Cash flow, warm sweaters, scrambled eggs, toast with butter, and time to sit around with my friends, talking about all the cool projects they're working on.

What is the most awesomest thing in your life right now?
You know those great moments when everything in your life and your mind starts to gel? When everything you are learning, reading, and doing starts to feel, instead, like ONE thing that is all mysteriously and perfectly related? That's how my life feels right now.

Did you know that one of the most fundamental forces in nature is the move toward order and synchronization? According to Steven Strogatz, mathematician at Harvard, it's right up there with entropy... or nature's natural tendency to move from order to DISorder. The urge to swarm/synchronize exists all the way down at a cellular and sub-atomic level. Basically, it's way deep down in there. In birds and fish, we see them doing this crazy synchronized flight & swimming patterns. And we think, how do they do that? Who is calling the shots? How do they know what do to? Why they hell are they doing it?

It turns out that swarming is a great way to avoid predators (stick with the crowd, follow the leader, don't stick out to far or you'll get eaten by a baracuda). Likewise, in the creative process, you have to be willing to override the fear associated with breaking from the pack, because way deep down, there's a little bit of self protect/fear of certain death mixed in there. We're wired to protect ourselves, and yet, there's the other urge, the urge for disorder, which calls, and calls, and calls. This is awesome.