nakedjen

Is this begging? I don't know? Could be. I want to call it creative marketing with a dash of glitter.

So you know those fabulous plans that I had to attend the Oregon Country Fair?  The same plans where I invited all of you along?  To join me in the pilgrimage to the celebration of all things fabulous that I never ever miss and that I have declared my religion if I were to practice any kind of organized religion at all?

Yes, those plans.

The thing about life is that it always happens while you're making other plans.  My life is no exception.  My head, actually, is the culprit here.  It's not happy or healthy right now.  I've been having an increased frequency of seizures and there's suspect scar tissue that seems to be growing in size and my blessed neurologist whom I really do love has decided that my life is total crap and needs a complete overhaul.

Instead of providing her with proof positive that she's wrong and long list of folks who might vouch that my life is not, in fact, utter crap, I decided that a life with as many seizures as I have been having is, well, actually not a life I care to live.  I actually do want to LIVE, all caps, the way Maude would choose to live and I suppose if Maude were told her life was crap and she was having all these seizures she'd at least find some oat straw tea and a new yoga pose to calm her brain the fuck right down.

I've been drinking the tea, that we know.  I've also been doing all kinds of salutations to the yogic deities, but there's some piece of the magical puzzle that actually keeps my brain on an even keel that is just missing.

My neurologist and I are starting from scratch.  Which means taking me off the medications I've been taking and starting a whole new regimen of new ones.  Let's remember, or perhaps I should share for the uninitiated, I am very sensitive to pharmaceuticals.  Crazy sensitive.  If there's an undiscovered side-effect, I'll be the one to discover it and exhibit it in ways that make the doctors almost clap with so much glee you'd think they were trying to keep fairies alive.

I never, honestly, want to even take medications.  Which makes me a difficult patient.  I know you're laughing because I also realize that is just one very small line on a very long list of the reasons I am a difficult patient.

This is a very long way of saying, truthfully, that I won't be sharing the merry with my fairies.  Not this year.  I am trying not to allow the reality of that to tip me over the edge and into the abyss.

Now, all is not possibly lost. 

There's a social media conference, EVO11, right here, right in my back yard, that very same weekend that I attended last year and LOVED with all caps in the way that Maude LOVED Harold.  I couldn't say enough good things about that conference and it is, hands down, one of the best offered. 

I was going to be merry with the fairies, so I did not, of course, volunteer to work the conference this year (like I did last year) thus missing out on a chance to attend the conference for *free*.  I was disappointed that they were both on the same weekends in July, but we both know my heart lies in the woods along the Long Tom River in Oregon if I'm forced to choose.

But now, as life will have it when it decides your plans for you despite your desire to be merry with fairies, I will actually be right here.  It turns out I have an opportunity to secure a pass, but the pass is $400.  That I don't exactly have at the moment.  I know, go ahead. Give me the lecture about how I should be far more careful with my MONEY.  I hear you.  I completely agree. What can I say, doctors and drugs are expensive.  There's a reason I avoid them only I can't exactly do that anymore if I want to LIVE. 

I would really love, LOVE, to go to EVO11.  Lots of the women and men who are going are being sponsored and I thought, well, surely there must be some vegan organic holistic company out there that might want to sponsor me?  I seriously think GT's Kombucha should be sending me.  Goodness knows I've been selling more bottles of their kombucha and this would be a whole new audience for them.  Of crazy mad twitter people.  Who are there to understand how to harness the power of all the tools of the Internet to sell their brands.  Or maybe Jamie Oliver should send me.  Because let's face it, I've been like his single glitter fairy leading the Food Revolution in Utah since before there was a food revolution.  Even Luna and Larry's.  Which, honestly, would have quite a lovely symmetry to it since I discovered them at the Fair and they even have NAKED flavors.  I just know there has to be someone out there that wants a girl who is not afraid to share a BOLD LOVING MESSAGE with the crowds to represent them at EVO11. Or maybe it is just one of you.  Some random stranger who reads my blog.  I'm happy to go and represent YOU.  T-shirts, tattoos on my arms and across my chest, hashtag tweets, sharing your unique product and message with some pretty fantastic members of the social media elite. You tell me what you want, I'll do it.  Let's face it, I'm not afraid to get naked.  So it would be hard to ask for something I won't do.

So that's my wish.  A sponsor for EVO11.  I honestly have no idea if this will work or who even reads this blog these days, but you know, you will never get it if you just don't ask.  So, this is me, Nakedjen, saying please (and thank you!).

Soul Shine

There is innate goodness, and true love, in all of our souls. It's my hope to let it shine brightly.

A thank you arrived today from one of my readers.  I feel Henry's own words to me so well explain, succinctly, the very reasons that I keep sharing my love and myself with all of you and have not closed up shop, even though lately I've been tempted to do exactly that for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with anything buy my own inner demons.  Inner demons can get really noisy if you allow them to do so.  Sometimes, it is really difficult to quiet their noisy cacophony of voices.  A genuine thank you, a kindness from so far away, a reminder of the good, really does help.  

Jen, I have learned from your blog about issues such as the environment, human rights, food, and body acceptance.I was always shy. By your writings and photos,I have learned to accept my body.

 

Thank you!

 

xox Henry from Illinois

Henry is just one of so very many of you who has touched my own life and helped to transform my heart and my life, as well.  This truly is a conversation that happens here.  I want to just say thank you for listening and to let all of you know that I am also really listening to you.  Thank you for being the twinkling points of light in my darkest days. 

Shine on!

The Valedictorian

I've written about my relationship with my father here before, I believe.  I feel like I must have, at some point, only because my relationship with my father can only really be described as bombastic at the best of times and it has taken me, well, my entire life to sort out that I will never be the daughter that he wishes I would be.  The truth is, I can be the Valedictorian of WORLD PEACE and show up and stand up for human rights and teach children to love and respect the planet and fight for truly affordable medical care for our citizens and cook and share organic meals with the hungry, all in the very same day, even, and Albert, my father, will just sigh, look up at me over the edge of his Wall Street Journal and say, "All those privileges you've been given and this is all you've got to show for it?"

I am the son that my father never had.  I also, sadly, have just never been good enough for him.  At anything.  No amount of A's, no amount of blue ribbons, no amount of awards to put on shelves was ever quite good enough.  It is crazy the amount I tormented myself in an effort to be the very best me I could be to win his approval only to ever hear from him the ways that I could have been better.  Much better.

On my birthday this past January, my father shared with me that he'd been reading this blog.  All of this blog.  The archives, the recent entries.  Every.single.word.

He surprised me with his compliment. "You're a damn good writer, Jennifer."

I waited for him to follow that with, "But here's how it can be much better...."

Before he could, though, I interrupted him and thanked him for saying that I was a good writer and then reminded him that I had "all those privileges..."

"That's right!  I spent a lot of money so you could write a complete sentence.  With all that money I spent, you should be writing for the New York Times...not on some blog."

And there it was.  Once again.  Damn good writer, but not quite good enough.  Even on my birthday.

For the past month or so, I've been having trouble finding my words.  I've been effectively silenced.  I keep writing words, lots of words and not sharing a single one of them here because they don't feel quite right, suitable, good enough.  I know that my father, Albert, is reading for comprehension and the seven year old Nakedjen who so very much wants him to just love her and be proud of her is worried that he'll look over his Wall Street Journal and decide whatever I have to say, whatever it is that I've just shared, whatever part of my own soul that I've just bared, just is not good enough.

The truth of the matter is, though, this blog and the words that I write here are far more important to my own health and my own sanity than anything, any words, any criticism, that my father, Albert, believes or could possibly say to me.  I've got 47 long years of life lessons, of knowing, that even if I'm the Valedictorian, that it will just never, ever, be quite good enough for him.  So, fuck it.  Yes, fuck it.

What I do know and truly believe, though, is that it is absolutely good enough, no make that great enough, for me. 

It's not easy being Albert's daughter and the son that he never had. 

There is a beautiful silver lining, though.

I give the world and its humans and dogs my very, very best every moment of every day. 

Anything else just might not be quite good enough. 

 

Because we all must write. Celebrations at Blogher.

I'm on my way to NYC later today. For BLOGHER. You know, that conference full of women (and some men) who happen to blog in some fashion or another and who gather to squeal and compare their shoes and pedicures and their outfits from the Gap and to make sure that they look somewhat like their avatar on Twitter?  Yes, that conference.

I'm grateful that I get to go despite that bit of snark.  The chatter and anxiety and stress leading up to the actual conference are enough to make me complain loudly, many times, in the weeks leading up to my departure that I really would rather not go, but, oh yes, I will go, I have to go, I absolutely must go.

And it isn't just to get naked in the lobby even though I'm pretty sure that's what a whole bunch of folks want to believe.  I want to share right now, before I even leave Salt Lake City, that I do not go to Blogher just to get naked.  That actually is about the last reason I go to Blogher.  That's not to say I will not get naked, I'm just saying, it is NOT the reason I go.  I'm not there to shock and awe (or make you puke on your cute shoes).

I go because of you.

You inspire me.  You are special. You write words and share your stories and bravely bare your own souls.  You make me laugh.  You make me cry.  You find ways to write a sentence that make me sigh with gratitude.  You find the beauty in the smallest things.  You remind me to not take life so seriously.  You also shake me to my core and wake me up.

You feed me. You clothe me. You take me on journeys to the end of the earth and back.

I really go to meet the hearts and the souls behind those words on a screen and to thank you for sharing so very much of you with me. 

To thank you. For sharing. And to discover even more of you who I never before knew.

Because there are so many of you. So very many. It's a huge wide crazy wonderful web of loveliness out there.  You are weaving it. Every single day. 

I go to celebrate you. Each and every one. You are all, truly, a gift.

Let the celebration begin.

The ABC's of EVO '10 (or The Best Tech Conference I've Ever Attended!)

I got really lucky last weekend. No, seriously. I'm not sure which magical fairy I made happy in the recent past, but someone up there likes me and made it possible for me to attend the EVO '10 conference at The Canyons Resort in Park City.  (The magical wings were worn by the conference founders, the incredibly beautiful Jyl of Mom It Forward and the oh so sassy Rachael of Today's Mama, but as neither one of them really KNEW me before last weekend, I just have to kind of believe that some of my other magical fairies must have been sprinkling that famous naked glitter around somewhere to make it all happen!).

I have gone to a lot of tech conferences, as we all know.  I've hosted them, I've been the booth babe, I've stood in hotel ballrooms in foreign cities and blah, blah, blah, Mr. CEO of course you want this fabulous new software product that will give you a ROI you just can not possibly believe.  I'm also the girl who burned out in the BOOM that was Silicon Valley in the late 90's and early 00's and said enough is enough.  It takes a lot these days to even get me to a conference much less make me happy about it.  

EVO '10 blissed me out! Because I'm a natural born blogger and can't seem to shut up and because I use a lot of words and I seem to always find that I have a lot to say, I'm going to give you some of the kernels I gleaned that led me down that blissful path.  Perhaps they'll make you want to join us on the mountain top next year.

a. I am living the first draft of my authentic life. There is no second draft. This is it. And I will make no apologies for it or for the muddy paw prints that sometimes make it a bit messy.  Life is messy.  Especially when it is yours and when it is truly authentic. 

b. It is especially lovely to be ordinary.  I'm beautiful when I'm ordinary. Ordinary is absolutely okay.

c. No slagging. Remember that you are always just one Google click away from the last words you published on the Internet. Everything is archived.  Just be nice. It's not that difficult.

d.  If you don't ask, you will not get. I've been saying this for years, but it is still true. You need to truly ask for what you want. Be clear and be direct and ask nicely.

e.  You know how to be gracious. As Emily Gilmore has said since your monogrammed birth on this planet, REMEMBER YOUR MANNERS.

f. Sweet Tooth Fairy cupcakes will make you very high.  Like crazy high. It's best not to eat them if you're sensitive to sugar. Also, they're not vegan. Why are you eating the non-vegan cupcake ANYWAY?!

g. If you do eat the cupcake, it might be best to refrain from calling the concierge at the very lovely resort "DUDE".  Not everyone is from California.  Especially in Utah. 

h.  However, you may also end up the evening MARRIED to the concierge.  Collecting husbands can be quite confusing to those who really love you.  Make certain that everyone understands this is NOT A REAL MARRIAGE.

i.  When in doubt about the location of the SEX TOYS, it is best to just trust your spidey sense.  It has never let you down, it is never going to let you down. Especially when it comes to free stuff.

j.  Life is too short not to be beautiful. Take the time and the effort to make it beautiful for others, too. The joy and the smiles are worth it.

k. Write thank you notes. Always.

l. Ziplines down the sides of mountains in Utah are excellent for teaching you that you really are fearless. Seizures?  What seizures??

m.  Not everyone understands "naked".  That's totally okay. 

n. Share your passion generously.

o. Your laugh is really loud. It sometimes wakes up half-naked men half way down the hall wearing towels.

p. Never apologize for being blissful.

q. Stop, shut up and really listen.

r. Your numbers are never a measure of your value or your impact.

s. Bacon, muffintops and farts.

t. It's just a house and it doesn't matter. LIFE MATTERS.

u. Storytelling is a political act. 

v. Odd Molly really is your best designer girlfriend.

w. There is always a kindness to be celebrated every day.

x. Sharing a suite with seven strangers can sometimes result in more blessings of kindness, love and friendship than you could have possibly ever imagined. You are one very lucky naked girl.

y. Joy, grace and gratitude.

z. Lead with your heart. Your mind can always follow.

Oh The Jensanity!

There's this tug, this pull certainly, this tip toe act actually, that I seem to be dancing lately between my online life and my life that I am living.  I've gone quite quiet here, as many of you have actually noticed and I am grateful for the noticing as we all know I even was filled with angst on more than one occasion with the wonder if I just up and disappeared all together, closed up shop, hung up a shingle that said CLOSED FOREVER if anyone would even truly notice.

Some of you are at least writing to ask if I'm still breathing.  I am breathing. Yes.

What I am also doing is living. A life. It isn't a life well-lived, perhaps, by so many standards that are out there in magazines and on websites with tick boxes requiring you to do this and that and so many other things in order to be, well, balanced and well-rounded and all of that. I'm not the woman who shall ever have that life, I'm afraid.

I am living, though.  Every day.  With a smile on my face. 

I know I am a bit whacked in the head, surely, but it feels good to be living my life on my terms and to be truly happy about it.

On Friday evening, I was out and about attending the monthly Gallery Stroll here in Salt Lake City (art is good for the soul, you know?) and friend asked me why I was staying.  Meaning, exactly, that in the past week I actually had the opportunity presented to leave Salt Lake with no strings attached and I, instead, chose to stay.  Here.  In the land of Zion. 

Yes, you read that correctly.  I chose to stay. 

If I'm going to be truly honest, the reasons to stay are far more compelling than the reasons to pack up and leave.  Right now.  So I'm wrapping my arms around Utah and all the things about it that truly make me crazy (and let me share that there is some serious JENSANITY that results in my living here) and embracing it all and saying, "Let's, please, have lots more of all of it.  Because it really is making my life worth living.  Thank you!"

We had a contest. Did we not?  I haven't forgotten.  Someone needs to actually win.  Guess what?  The kind and beautiful and generous folks at Filter for Good who supplied Sundance with those water bottles found out about my contest and everyone who entered now gets at least a water bottle.

Random.org chose the #2 from our entries so Ian Bibby, if you're reading, please contact me with your mailing details as you're getting the T-shirt and bottle (and film catalog if you wish).  The rest of you who entered, if you're reading, please also send me your mailing details and make sure to put SUNDANCE WATER BOTTLE in the subject line.  I'll send you your water bottles just as soon as I'm back from TRIBECA.

Okay, ticking that one small box.  There feels like miles of more boxes to still be ticked.  I've got life pressing me to go live right now, though, so the much more of the writing bits and the ticking will just have to come later. 

Please Stand By. 

Every spring I go out there anyway, around the bend, unconditionally. ... Come the end of the dark days, I am more than joyful. I'm nuts.

SHE SPRUNG LIKE SPRING BRIGHTLY

As we were standing on the steps of the temple last Saturday afternoon, surveying the throng of very happy and smiling and swaying colorful people below us, I turned to Ruth and said, "I need to go down there.  I need to be right in the middle.  I have to be part of all of it when everything starts!"

"I'm staying right here!" she shouted at me as I negotiated my way, with lots of "Excuse mes" down, down, down the hill to the middle of the crowd.

I'm not exactly tall.  In fact, well, I'm about the size of most fourth graders.  Actually, most fourth graders these days are taller than me.  I'm a little person. Who got SQUASHED.  All was going quite well, the bright colors were flying, the air was speckled a rainbow hue, we were stomping and chanting Hari Krishna when someone from behind, someone quite large, someone my small body was not quite able to support no matter how much my heart wanted to lift him to the heavens, landed with an OOF right on top of me. 

Down I went, down he went, down many people went.  A pile of arms, legs, body parts all akimbo in a sculpture painted in electric kool-aid hues.  

It was absolutely fantastic and I can't wait to celebrate it all again.

SHE LIKES TO USE A LOT OF WORDS

Emily Gilmore has retired to Utah, as you may or may not actually know.  The idea of all of this was far more disconcerting than the reality actually has turned out to be.  So far.  I have seen and chatted with my mother more in the last three months, since her arrival, than I have in the last ten years combined. 

I have grown up.  So has she. 

Not long ago, she insisted that she wanted to also have a blog of her own. 

"I want my own URL. Nothing like NakedMom.  Something better.  Where I can write about what I'm doing here." 

Emily now has a blog of her own.  I have to admit that I'm quite impressed with how quickly she's learned the software.  I only had to give her one lesson.  Perhaps this nut did not fall too far from that tree.

A MARCH FOR BABIES

It's no secret that I love babies.  I've been a doula for nearly 20 years.  Every birth, for me, is just a beautiful miracle.

Two miracles that I personally know and love were born ten weeks early and not because of any of the reasons usually associated with premature births.  They survived and are healthy, beautiful children today because of the medical research provided by the March of Dimes.

Their mother, Melinda, my very good friend, is walking in the March for Babies and is raising funds for this critical research and programs.  The March of Dimes has helped not only Adri and Devin, but members of my own family, too, and their programs and funding help mothers to have full-term pregnancies and babies to live very healthy lives.  When newborns begin their lives in intensive care, the comfort and care provided by the March of Dimes goes a very long way to help the babies and their families.

Will you please join me in supporting Melinda in this very important mission.  Every single dollar will help the March of Dimes provide these very valuable services to all babies.  Thank you!

Blog This!

December 27 Social web moment. Did you meet someone you used to only know from her blog? Did you discover Twitter?

In a word:  Blogher.  Enough said.

What's With The Penguins?

December 7 Blog find of the year. That gem of a blog you can't believe you didn't know about until this year. 

Without a doubt, (and I can’t believe I’m admitting this because this blog and writer has probably been on EVERYONE ELSE’s blog roll since the inception of the medium and probably even before that!) it has to be Mimi Smartypants.  A pox on the rest of you for never sharing the secret.  Pfft.

Just A Woman Who Blogs

December 6 Workshop or conference. Was there a conference or workshop you attended that was especially beneficial? Where was it? What did you learn?

I went, I blogged, I twitted, I hugged, I laughed, I cried, I got naked, and I found 100 new blogs.  That was my goal.  100 new blogs by writers I found interesting because they were just as passionate about their own subjects as I am about mine. I wanted to up the ante on my Google Blog Reader (I actually now follow over 1,000) and truly start to show up and participate beyond my cozy corner of the blogosphere.  

Blogher was like no other conference I’ve ever attended before (and as a refugee from the Silicon Valley start-up madness, I've attended lots of tech conferences) and I’m grateful that I managed to actually show up this year.  I learned I really am a woman who blogs. I think that, for me, that was the most important lesson of all.