But it got me reflecting a bit on what I had been doing the past few months. I haven’t been writing, haven’t been leaving comments on blogs or doing much on Twitter in terms of interaction. I was still reading though. I follow over 100 different RSS feeds/blogs. That is a lot to get through, I know. I tended to break it down into chunks – focus on my must read blogs, focus on the news, focus on certain topics that are of interest, then read through the rest. I decided that I would share my must read blogs here, just in case there is that one person that has not discovered them yet.

Without further ado, here are my Top 5 (not in any particular order):

1. Boing Boing

Boing Boing is one of those love/hate sites. Either you hate it, or you really love it. It is a collection of authors, plus guest contributors, covering pretty much everything. Most of the authors have general themes they like to cover, which are quite different from the rest of the writers, making the blog fairly comprehensive of what is happening online and in the real world. For example, Xeni Jardin will write a lot about the social impact of global events, Cory Doctorow will focus on privacy and copyright issues, Mark Frauenfelder writes about DIY projects and ukuleles, and so forth. If you are ever bored, I can guarantee that you will find something of interest on their site.

2. kottke

Jason Kottke is a curator of the Internet, much like Boing Boing. Whereas Boing Boing acts as a hub during some global events (for example, Hurricane Katrina or the Japanese earthquakes), Kottke serves up some of the most interesting stuff to be found. The latest movie trailers (for the good movies), great articles to be read in New Yorker, NY Times, Atlantic Monthly, etc., fun or bizarre YouTube videos, and some generally quirky stuff (Neanderthal sex made modern humans fitter). His posts are short and you are bound to be amused.

3. Daring Fireball

John Gruber is another curator of the Internet, but the focus is more technology-focused and it includes a lot of smart commentary. If you want to keep up to date on how the latest Apple announcement is going to really change things, or find out the serious problems at Research in Motion then Daring Fireball is the place to go. He has been writing for a long time, too, so often includes flashbacks to his writings of several years ago that were either right or wrong in predicting the future. His podcast with Dan Benjamin is also a must listen if you can spare the time.

4. Grantland

Grantland is going to stand out on this list, because it is new. The person behind it is Bill Simmons, who has been one of my favourite authors for a long time. The focus of Grantland is a blend of sports and culture, and includes writers like Malcolm Gladwell, Chuck Klosterman, and the comedian Jimmy Kimmel. If you don’t recognize any of those four names, shame on you! Seriously, go start reading those authors.

5. I Will Teach You to Be Rich

Ramit Sethi writes some of the most thoughtful and most useful posts available on the internet. His primary interest is financial advice, but he is branching out into more business-personal development type posts. What I mean by that is he writes about how to hustle to get to where you need to be in your career, relationships, other areas of life. If you sign up for the blog, you must sign up for his newsletters, both at I Will Teach You to Be Rich and Earn1K.

Now, I know I left out some fairly popular blogs but I did so for a reason. Here is 6-10 in a list:

6. Lifehacker

7. Four Hour Work Week

8. Seth Godin

9. Signal vs Noise

10. Longform

The main difference between numbers 1-5, and 6-9 (10 is separated from this group) is that the first group of blogs are about gathering information (news, pop culture, sports, etc). The latter group is focused more on actionable items. I find them to be more sources of inspiration to do something more with myself. I would have included I Will Teach You to Be Rich in the latter group, but I feel his messages to be a bit more universal and easily applied without a lot of thought behind it. The Longform blog is really about in-depth reading material. Those items I generally add to Instapaper for reading on my Kindle in my Lazboy rather than my office chair.

I am sure there would be blogs to add to this list, but what do you consider to be your 5 blogs that you must read?

1. My girlfriend and I are separating, which means the custody of my daughter is going to be split into 3-4 day chunks. Going from nearly 24/7 to only 72/3 is going to be painful.
2. I received an email from one of my clients saying he will have to suspend my contract because his hotel isn’t ready to open yet. That was a big blow to me, because I had given up another client in anticipation of having to spend a lot more time with this new one. After weeks of getting non-answers, not receiving the images and information I required, the first email I receive in a long time is the one saying they want to suspend everything.
3. My domain and hosting accounts are up for renewal, and the combination of the two previous items means I am running short on being able to fund it. I have not been savvy enough to earn a lot of money through affiliate marketing to cover the expenses like I had originally planned last year.

These items are all rather embarrassing for me to admit, especially in such a public forum. There is a lot more I could write about the first item but I am real hesitant to do so. I worry that it will become more of a vent than anything of value. The second item is something I will write about. It has been the biggest hurdle with all of my clients – communication and the lack of it. The third item, well, I am stuck. That is why I am turning to the readership of this blog, to my Triberr members, and Twitter friends for help. I have seen the donation button on a lot of other websites, and the long product reviews telling people to purchase the product to help them out, but I have resisted doing such things on this site. I do not know whether this is a quality of being an introvert or not, but I have a real difficult time owning up to my mistakes and failures. Asking for donations is not something I want to do, but at this point, I have no other choice. I need $120.00 to pay for hosting (it’s for multiple sites for when I am ready to launch the business web site). At minimum, I need half of that in order to keep it afloat. Otherwise, the ship goes down for a while in hopes of re-surfacing at a later date. Worst comes to worst, I will open up a WordPress.com blog and keep going. Anything above and beyond the $120.00 I am asking for will either get divvied up between the donators or I will send it to Kiva. One final thing I will mention. With my daughter being away from me now for 3-4 days, I will have a lot more time to write on this blog, write comments on yours, and be more active in the community. Writing has always been and always be an outlet for me when coping with stress and depression. I am sure I will find renewed strength in writing again and rediscover my voice – hopefully, less snarky. I have made my case, and now it goes over to you to help me out. Thank you in advance to anyone that takes the time to donate.

On Monday, Kylie was at her grandma’s most of the day which allowed me to get a large chunk of time to myself to sit down and get some work done. Before, when i was sitting at the kitchen counter, I was almost always distracted by things going on around me. The fridge making noises, the television behind me, even noise in the hallway. In the office space, I have nothing to distract me other than my own thoughts. I can’t quite hear the television if I have the door closed, can’t hear the fridge or hallway, and since I am on the top floor, there isn’t much to look at when looking out a window.

Today I was only able to get into the office for a few hours while Kylie was sleeping, but I feel like I did more work in those two hours than I would have done in five sitting at the counter. I sit down in my chair here and all I want to do is, well, do.

I want to work on marketing materials for the hotel.

I want to enter in receipts to keep track of spending.

I want to pick up my Kindle and read.

And so forth.

It’s a change from before because then I knew I had to do something, but not entirely want to. Now I do. This may be a reflection from the new client I am working with and I really want to help him out. My first client were not responding to a lot of my suggestions or reports that I created for them, which made it difficult for me to want to help them out more.

This office space is turning into a bit of a sanctuary for me. I am not retreating from my obligations to Kylie or my cooking duties, but I do look forward to sitting down in here to unwind and relax. I managed to get a small lamp for the desk to make it more relaxing in the night time, and moved a small bookshelf in here so I can unpack some of my books. I was looking in my boxes today, and there are some great books that have been read or need to be read soon (starting with Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus).

The rest of the room is a bit of a hybrid right now. The remnants of it being Kylie’s room are still quite prominent: fairies on the walls, Mickey Mouse, animals holding balloons, and, of course, her dresser full of clothes. Oh, and there’s a poster of Justin Bieber that truly must go at some point soon.

But it is coming together.

It has only been a few days since I finished it, and I am sure it will transform with time. Eventually, I would like to create a space like my grandfather did in his house: large work desk, bookshelves lining the room, a large window sill and bay window, and my recliner with or without a small television. He even had a magazine rack like you see in libraries (raise it up to reveal even more magazines).

Of course, the den would not be complete without a small jar to hold Werther’s Originals like he had. I think I will find a better hiding spot for it to keep away from the grandchildren. Granted, Kylie is not even 18 months yet, so I am getting really far ahead of myself.

Office Space 2.0

My experience and that of the readers who’ve written to me confirms that for most of us, very few things really matter to any individual. I think there is a problem with the modern age and the consumer society because we have been conditioned to think that if we make a lot of money or become famous or buy expensive products, then life will have meaning. But you can’t take meaning from external artifacts or even from the admiration of millions of fans. Meaning is intrinsic and personal. I know many talented and well-meaning people who are wasting their lives working away at objectives and causes they don’t truly believe in. I make it a personal rule never to do anything that I don’t really care about. It is surprising how much this cuts out. It sounds trite and obvious, but try it. Write down the three to five things in the world that you care most about – they could be people or causes or abstract qualities such as truth and beauty. I doubt that your car will figure on the list. Another test – if you’re not enjoying something, or feeling that it is really important and useful, stop doing it. You have to stop doing things to discover what is truly important.

Richard Koch, author of 80/20 Principle

Full interview posted on Boing Boing.

Some may have noticed how absent I have become here, and the lack of commenting on other blogs (if you haven’t, that’s okay, too).

Where have I been?

Well, taking a bit of a sabbatical. I can’t say it was a digital sabbatical, because I have been using my computer extensively for work. I did take a break from reading a lot of blogs and news sites and focused more on the ones I really had to read to know what was going on (Boing Boing, kottke, Daring Fireball, 37 Signals, and, um, Bluejay Banter (baseball related)).

Every now and then I’ll go through my list on Google Reader to see what I am missing out on. The most common reaction I have when I read a title is I let out a sigh. Reading about how to gain new readers, get better comments, discovering what I am doing wrong with my blog, etc. is getting to be way over-done. Reading about some of the new companies and products coming out on sites like TechCrunch is interesting, but there is a lot of stuff to filter out. Tech news in general has been replaced almost completely by listing to This Week in Tech or This Week in Google. I still read local news once a week or so in my RSS reader, but I have been trying to watch The National on CBC for more Canadian/International news. I know, I know, TV is bad for my brain, but there are some journalists and panelists on the show that I enjoy listening to.

I also haven’t been writing. This bothers me to a degree, but I use writing as a way of expressing myself and archiving thoughts for me to reflect on in the future.

Blogging is not a medium that I want to excel at, I have discovered. Reading about affiliate marketing, creating a list, tips on engaging users on Twitter or Facebook does not interest me as much as I thought, and I am not interested in devoting that much time in connecting with people that I most likely will never meet.

I have been putting more of a focus on real relationships and experiences that will benefit me immediately and in the near future. Reaching out to companies to help my current clients out, while creating a deck of cards with these contacts for use with future clients. Building deeper relationships with the clients to take them beyond pure business talk has been great, as well. Of course, I have also been spending a lot of time with my daughter helping her grow and learn.

There has also been some fun. The Tiesto concert I went to at the end of April was incredible. I apologize for the numerous tweets about it, but I really connect with electronic music. Something about the beats make it very tribal in nature.

Speaking about tribes, I have gone back to the paleo/primal diet after a relapse into a more normal diet. Even a week of eating more clean has made me feel much better. That and the weather is warming up more to allow for more regular walks (a welcome change from being stuck indoors).

Can I talk about the future of this blog? Not really. I am going to stay away from promises of doing series or covering certain topics. I find I create expectations for myself that I can’t match, so why bother? I have larger expectations in my life with my work and my daughter, that is enough for now. When I have more time to devote to writing, I will write more frequently here.

For now, I have nothing more to say. Read the interview with Richard Koch, read his book, and as an experiment, stop doing the unnecessary tasks and see what happens.

A bit too quiet for my liking. I have also been real quiet with commenting on other people’s blogs or paying more attention to Twitter.

I wish I could make the announcement that this is all going to change with this post, but I can’t make that guarantee. Finding time to get online to write, to find time to think for myself, as been extremely limited. Partly due to me being busier with the consulting work, and partly because of my daughter being sick, but more because I have been suffering through a bout of depression.

No, this isn’t a post asking for support and sympathy. More like a post to explain what has been happening, for anyone interested.

I also did something today that I generally don’t like doing: I marked all my blogs in Google Reader as read. That wiped out over 1400 unread items, a good portion from blogs that I enjoy reading and commenting on regularly. I feel guilty for doing it because I am sure I missed a lot of great posts in there, but quite honestly, I can’t handle all that reading and commenting right now.

I really would like to take a digital sabbatical. I need to take one, as well as a vacation to get away. Since my consulting business is so deeply tied to the Internet, it isn’t possible, but I think I am going to cut back on the number of blogs I follow regularly. I also need to do a better job of cutting down the number of Twitter users I follow (I made the mistake of auto-following people who added me, which leads to a lot of spammy accounts on my following list – I switched this off a few weeks ago).

A bit of a downer post, but there is one thing to be taken away from all this:

Don’t be afraid to hit “Mark All as Read” and to escape the responsibility of reading every post from every blog you follow. The stress caused by having a large Unread number in any of the inboxes you deal with is simply not worth it.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming or to read the next post in your reading list.

You can be scared and still do it anyway. Regardless of whatever it is.

-Merlin Mann

Merlin Mann gave a talk at Webstock in Wellington, New Zealand in February that has been sweeping around the blogosphere in various ways. It was titled “Scared Shitless.” I first heard about it during his excellent podcast with Dan Benjamin, Back to Work, but couldn’t find the time to listen to it. I did today, and it’s a wonderful message that everyone should take in if they can afford the time (only 30 minutes long).

Merlin’s talk is about fear, which has been coming up more and more for me. A part of it is that I have a feeling that I am attracting these ideas to help encourage me with my own ventures. It is scary not having a regular job and not knowing where your next cheque may come from or whether it will be enough. There have been plenty of times when I have been scared myself that I have highlighted a bit in previous posts. Here were my biggest fears that happened at the end of 2009, moving into 2010:

• I quit a well-paying, well-liked job where I had been for 3.5 years.
• I moved away from a community that I liked a lot and went to a place where I knew nothing.
• I was about to become a father.

Having one of those things happen is scary enough. Having all three happen within a month of each other?

That’s really fucking scary.

I don’t want to focus on myself too much, mainly because I’m not in the mood to do so at this point. What I do want to write about is how fear and overcoming fear is turning into a big thing. Let’s call it what it is:

Fear is to the 2010′s what Passion was to the 2000′s.

Makes sense. Once you discover your passion, the next step is overcoming you fear of taking the next step. Boat loads of people are overcoming those fears recently and doing amazing work. If you don’t believe me, read through the archives of Ashley‘s series Fear, Exposed (the latest features Tricia Karp). Those stories will help you realize that your fears are really nothing to be scared of. Everything can be solved and made better.

As Merlin Mann said so brilliantly in his presentation, quoting Bob Parsons of GoDaddy, “They can’t eat you.“

Of course, there are different kinds of fear. The one kind I see most often, and I do myself, is fear of the Publish button. Everyone tends to write something, hit Save Draft, and then never come back to it again. Or they will read something and trash it completely. Everyone wants to write epic shit.

But that puts an extreme amount of pressure on you as a writer. Words flow better if they are written out right away. Lots of editing does not improve the quality of the piece (sometimes it does), but it does take away a lot of the human aspect of writing. It is one of the reasons why I despise people who re-write their blog posts to improve the SEO quality of them.

People should be writing for people, not machines and search engines.

Justin Williams wrote about publishing right away in his piece, Let the Fear Out. On a similar vein, Corbett Barr wrote about Do It Now, Do It Live.

Corbett asks a great question, “Isn’t blogging supposed to be a flexible, creative, experimental way to connect with other people?”

I have always tried to be a bit more experimental in the subjects I cover here, how I write about it, and even try to push boundaries at times to see what happens (ie Gaming the System, which got my account suspended from Triberr – my Twitter feed is now free).

Everytime I log onto my WordPress Dashboard, I look up at the top-right and see a little form to QuickPress. How many of us actually use it, though?

WordPress also has a bookmarklet to QuickPress a link. But I bet most of us don’t utilize it very often.

I think I will try a bit of a 30 Day experiment for myself, and focus on writing short pieces using either one of those tools without any heavy editing and see what happens.

No images, no videos, no linking.

Just words.

Does that scare me? Of course, but I’ll do it.

Does working as a freelancer scare me? It does, but I’m doing it.

Does being a father scare me? Absolutely. But I’m still doing it.

There are a lot of fears to be conquered. Be like Ev Bogue and create your own Scared Shitless Manifesto and start living again.

“Only someone who knows how to remain essentially silent can really talk—and act essentially. Silence is the essence of inwardness, of the inner life. Mere gossip anticipates real talk and to express what is still in thought weakens action by forestalling it. But someone who can really talk because he knows how to remain silent, will not talk about a variety of things but about one thing only.”

Soren Kierkegaard, The Present Age

I came across that quote from Ryan Holiday’s post titled, “Talkativeness.”

From there, he linked to three of his own posts which I thought were brilliant and each deserved mentioning.

From A False Sense:

There is a bunch of data that shows that the more we talk about things, the less we tend to actually accomplish them. This is because—and I’m sure you can think of a person in your life who does this a lot—the act of articulating the goal entails visualizing the achievement of it, and thus partially gives us credit for it in our own minds and reduces the motivation to actually do it. So doing this diminishes the payoff. There are many people smarter than I who have written about this, but there is a word for such a process that I think its very important. It’s called reification.

Practical Knowledge:

This process, this intuitive understanding of what something is and why, was known phronesis. It is the method of real analysis and the mark of wisdom.

This is what we miss from blogs. We have plenty of discussion and speculation, but rarely any understanding of the issues at their most basic level.

Catharsis:

There is the impulse when we’re angry or frustrated to take that out on other people. To be short or cruel just to slacken the tension we’ve built up. Sometimes it is harsh words, sometimes it is violence but it’s the same release. I think about that scene in Fight Club where Jack funnels all his rage and pain into destroying Angel Face.

All three discuss inwardness, how we fool ourselves into achieving goals by merely thinking of them, and, as he puts it so clearly:

one illusion becomes the foundation for another illusion which in turn has its own illusions.

I have been guilty of acting upon these illusions and creating my own delusions. After reading the Kierkegaard quote and these three posts, I realize that I need to do more than what I am doing. The achievements I think I am making are not real yet. I am stopping myself short of attaining the true goal.

The only way to get there is to turn off the outside influences and begin to focus more on myself. I speak a lot about what I am planning on doing with myself, this blog, and with my clients – but never build enough momentum to finish the task.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: time to get busy.

For me, this is one of those if-everyone-jumped-off-a-bridge-would-you moments. As far as I’m concerned, yes, everyone is jumping off the bridge, so I might as well, too.

Tristan Higbee

You may have been noticing something different popping up in your Twitter streams in the past month or so. I noticed that a lot of my contacts were including links with a new URL shortner, tribr.it. The thing was that it wasn’t just one or two, it was almost an entire list full of tribr.it links with the exact same message attached (here is my list of great bloggers for example). It turns out that they were coming through a service called Triberr.

It’s a service where you sign up for a Tribe, and then your members automatically retweet your links out to people without them actually knowing what’s happening.

This is a great idea in order to build traffic, but it also tends to spam your Twitter lists.

Over at the Blogging Bookshelf, I made the comment to Tristan’s post about using Fiverr to create backlinks to a site, that the links weren’t authentic. The value of the link has diminished, because they are being used to boost his traffic rankings, not direct people to valuable content. The content may be valuable but would someone click through if it was surrounded by garbage? Worst yet is that the Fiverr gig in question had complaints from someone saying that they were using their own content from the web page they were supposed to be directing to.

In the case of Triberr, the links mentioned in the statuses are not authentic, because they are not being properly curated by that user. I have no idea how many of these links are getting posted on my own Twitter feed, nor have I even read a good 90% of them (just a rough guess).

Similar to how people have been gaming the Google search rankings, you could conceivably do the same with Triberr. Since it pulls out the Title from the blog post, adds the short link, and your Twitter handle, it is a quick way to attach your name to some #hashtags and popular searches.

But why would I want it to only benefit myself?

I was joking with @ElisesReview that we could make her a Twitter/Internet meme through the use of Triberr – so, why not try it?

This post is mainly an experiment in how gaming systems may bring you the results you intended, but end up creating more junk and spam that have little value in the end. If it gets me banned from Triberr, fine with me. If I lose readership from this experiment, that’s alright, I will keep trucking along.

So, here goes.

Time to make @EliseReview an Internet meme.

The assignment, like many of my theatre classes at higher levels, was to develop a concept for a theatre company. The companies are built to do more than, say, Romeo and Juilet, Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf, and A Streetcar Named Desire. In this case, it was developing a company that focused on displaying gender on stage.

This manifesto was written with the 9-11 attacks fresh in my mind, and after a semester of being bombarded by insults from the women of the class. I believe that the Female-to-Male ratio was something like 14:1. I guess they got to me.

Regardless, a lot of what I wrote nearly ten years ago is how I still feel when it comes to gender relations.]

Fall of 2001

Consider the following document a call out to the male sex of this world to engage in a battle, a war of sorts, to redefine masculinity,. In fact, the goal should be to eradicate masculinity completely and settle on the biological man as a human, a part of the homo sapiens race, and equal to that of the opposite sex.

I . facade

From the beginning of time, men have been given certain roles and have been expected to live up to them. The worst thing a man could do is to not reach those expectations. To be ridiculed and put down to a level where women reside is considered the norm of punishment.

But what men do not realize is that they are punishing themselves by trying to be above women. The pressures put on men to keep up are unbearable and on par with women’s troubles to maintain the perfect feminine figure.

This facade needs no introduction: strong, lean, tall, well endowed, can be in bed for hours with a woman without falling asleep, good with the hands, mechanics, carpentry, drive a standard transmission car, get the beautiful girl, have a son, be wealthy, support the family, and so on.

We know what needs to be done to achieve this facade, and an idea of how to achieve it (if not, put up the local issue of Men’s Health, Exercise for Men, GQ, and all the other printed crap directed at men).

Why? Why is it so important to be macho? Why must we be above women?

A hierarchal society does not work. People having power over another group leads to problems, namely the group without power wanting power. Conflict does not solve the problem. Conflict is the problem. Putting men above women leads to them wanting to be above us and struggling to reach that level while men don’t allow it to happen.

The feminist movement started the solution- equality of the sexes by putting women in positions of power (whether in the family, society, business or government). But this is not the way to go. Power needs to be abolished before pure equality can happen.

II . sauniq

There’s a word I am learning to say

sauniq (Inukititut)

(n.) 1. Bone; 2. Namesake

we share the same name: we are built of the same bone.

I hold this word sauniq

in my mouth, patiently

waiting for it to melt

like snow upon my tongue

like spring time.

- Lisa Goenther

“Sauniq” – Urban Coyote, p 30

It will be a long time before the human race recognizes everyone for what they really are:

human

We are of the same bone structure, suffer the same physical problems and limitations. A man from New Guinea cannot produce a baby in a womb. Likewise, a woman in Canada will never be able to spread her seed to another wman to form a child. There are

positives

and

negatives

for being a man or a woman.

They balance eachother out- for every negative there is a positive.

It is an endless argument to find out which is better, man or woman

and it will never be solved completely.

I envy both the man who decided that he was above the rest and the woman who gave in to this man. Risky and brave of them both. It was er through this act. Before it, they recognized sauniq the way the Inuit do.

The impossible task of reversing this is through recognition and the best way to do that is through didactic tools other than formal education. School, college, parents- any form that has a being in control over the other. A child does nnot have power over a parent; they are told what to do or not to do, and tell them the consequence if they don’t follow their suggestion.

The other tools available? Advertising, terrosim, and the arts.

iia . advertising

Advertising is not a formal education. A message is displayed, but does not have a conclusion. Put it into mathematical terms.

An ad shows “2+2.” It is up to us to determine if that means “2+2=4″ or randomness or anything imagineable. Formal education would say, “2+2=4, nothing else is possible and if you say anything but 4, you’re wrong.”

Advertising makes you think which is why it is so powerful.

iib . terrorism

Terrorism is a reversal.

Whereas advertising says, “2+2,” terrorism says, “4.” You decide how that conclusion was drawn, When the World Trade Centre Towers were destroyed, the terrorists did not give any warning. They never said, “2+2=4. You gave us the 2+2, we supplied the 4.” They said nothing and allowed us to create our hypothesis on how/why an act occurred. The Americans immediately blamed Osama bin Laden because he was a likely target with no proof. The same happened with the Oklahoma bombing, but it turned out to be an American.

Terrorism is just as powerful as advertising.

iic . performance

The ultimate tool is performance.

Performance may show “2+2″ and allude to 4 (or the reverse), but it has to give a definite answer. It may strongly suggest 4 and hint that 3 is wrong, but outside of theatre there is no test to discover whether what they thought was the equation is right or not. It is up to the audience to discover the path that leads to a complete equation or equations within a performance piece.

With this in mind, I have set out these guidelines in regards to the display of gender in performance:

III . Performance

A MANifesto performance shall strive for the following things:

i) Equality of the characters/roles within the performance and the involvement of the production crew. There will be no hierarchy- the director is the group or is willing to compromise with the rest. No one will be made more significant than another person, even if their role is not as large. Ensemble work will be a majority and not a minority form of performance.

ii) Equality of the audience. Poor will sit beside rich, men beside women, kids beside those who do not have kids. The audience will be on the same playing level as the performance whenever possible. The actors are not on a pedestal for pure enjoyment, and the audience doesn’t belong above the actors. All are human beings and all forms of structure should be destroyed. New theatres will have to be constructed in a circular or rectangular fashion for the audience to sit at.

iii) Phallic symbols shall be used in an absurd way. The will be laughed at, ridiculed, ignored. Recreating them to give them a meaning which is worthless rather than powerful. The same shall be done with female imagery (breassts, the womb) to reak the ideologies that control our lives.

iv) Costumes shall be nongendered. Single colours shall grace the costumes, with colour not being specific to gender (males can wear pink, womnen can wear blue, etc). Period costumes will be allowed, but only with major compromises so that the garb is recognizeable without creatiing specific gender roles for those people (ie men will wear suits, minus the tail coats- or shall wear suits with tails that act like a train of a wedding dress.

iv) The exploration of manipulation and the power of it. Outlets include: messages through text, media, music and gesture, space relationships between audience and actors, design of space, costumes, ambience, and brutal/subtle displays of gender relationships.

Five guidelines. Why five? The answer lies in this text, or is five the answer the question to be found?

If you want to start a business, you’ve got no excuse as to why you can’t make it work.

If you want to start a business, you’ve got to be scrappy, hustle, and charge forward regardless.

If you want to start a business, you’ve got to make the best of what you’ve got, and have faith that the best of what you’ve got will get better.

If you want to start a business, you’ve got to find opportunity in the gloomiest of situations, and leverage it with every ounce of energy you can muster, until you’re absolutely exhausted-and then wake up and do it all over again.

If you want to start a business, you’ve got to forget your pride, be humble, and DO WHAT IT TAKES.

But most of all, if you want to start a business, you’ve got to start thinking like someone in business.

Ashley Ambirge is one of those rare people who have the ability to capture your attention regardless of what subject she is talking about.

She is sassy.

She has attitude.

She tells it like it is.

She makes you want to do more.

Her newsletter is also one of the better ones out there, and I always look forward to receiving it. Her book, You Don’t Need a Job, You Need Guts, looks incredible, but I lack the funds to purchase it right now. In time, in time.

While you look at her blog or follow her on Twitter, I’m going to start thinking more like a business man and start doing some hustling – and yes, even on a Friday night.