Please Happy

From her and about her.

Hollywood Farmers Market.

Heard a guest speaker at Annenberg yesterday: Mark S. Luckie of 10,000 Words. At 27-years-old, he’s the new National Innovations Editor for the Washington Post.

He spoke to a roomful of new Master’s students. He told them about how they can use text, photography, video and audio to tell stories in new ways. The most compelling part of the presentation for me was when he ran around the room, stopping at random in front of students demanding: “What is Your Passion?” “What are you doing to promote it online?”

Everyone he asked had a passion. But, hardly anyone was doing anything about it.

From Mark:
“I have found out what my passion is and I had to put it out there for the world to see.”

Then, last night, I picked up the Best American Short Stories 1989 from Carey’s bookshelf.
Editor: Margaret Atwood (my fave!).

In the introduction, Atwood talked about storytelling at its most basic:

This is the story I must tell; this is the story you must hear.

I have been doing that personally on PleaseHappy for family and friends. And, in a few weeks, I hope to be doing it more professionally as an official Multimedia Journalist.

Thank you, Mark S. Luckie, for being an example of a dream follower who has melded professional and personal.

And thank you, Margaret Atwood, for being in my life.

A friend wrote yesterday to ask about blogging. Should she do it? Who would read it? Why blog…?

My abridged response to her:

Blogging is so awesome. It’s way more time-consuming than I originally thought it would be. I think if you decide to start a blog, you have to realize that it’s going to be a daily commitment, like getting a dog. You have to feed it, take it on walks, cuddle it, think about what food to buy, where to find the most environmentally-sound toys, etc. It’s another full time job.

So go for it!

But, think about your audience. Who are you writing/shooting for and what is the point?

At first, I thought I was writing for potential employers. They’ll see my witty posts and captivating pics, and they’ll want to hire me (still waiting on that one). At times, I was writing to impress the man in my life (if I write a great post, he’ll love me more). Then, I thought I was writing for teachers (you guys did such a good job that I’m now A Blogger!). Now, I try to write for my family, my fiancé, my faraway friends, my future kids and myself. As my mentor Judy Muller said, it’s about noticing things. Then, noticing that you’re noticing.

When I forget that it’s about noticing, not not only do I get depressed that I’m not wildly famous, but my stuff gets self-conscious and boring.

I had to take a break when I got to grad school because I started trying to write about the “future of journalism.” I wanted to be Jay Rosen or Henry Jenkins. But, then I remembered that the stuff I love to write about is the stuff I notice. Like, the reindeer and snowflake ornaments hanging from the banister at my new favorite coffee shop or the light in my cats’ eyes or the little shoots of green growing out of a Los Angeles sidewalk. Beauty in the chaos.

And it became fun again.

I LOVE writing postcards. It’s a challenge to write snippets of life from afar, or from the next room. It’s fun to cram in tiny handwriting into an allotted space (same reason I love haiku — for their structured brevity). It’s fun to pick out photographs that friends will enjoy, giggle at, swoon over. I love finding time in between trains, in cramped seats, on stony beaches, in between dinner and dessert. Postcards are for the in between moments. For capturing the taste of the salty air, the sound of the guy selling beer, the wind through the cars on the busy street.

Mmm. I love them!

So, here are some postcards that I shot. I may even make prints and scrawl love notes on them to my friends. For now, they’re digicards. Imagine the moment that I’ll write about, the ink, the stamp. And then the recipient discovering it, as if brought on the wind by magic to the box somewhere in Idaho, Wyoming, Baltimore, Brussels, Boulder, Portland… the address a bit smudged after days of travel.

Illustrator Alex Noriega lives in the most luscious city in the world (Barcelona). Check out his website Stuff No One Told Me (but I learned anyway).

BP Global PR.