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I was pissed.

It was 1998.  I was 14.  I had just put the finishing touches on my 90′s style bangs, sculpting and spraying them into the perfect 360 degree fan – you remember the kind where the top half curls backward, and the bottom half forward, right?  (If you say no, that means you’re younger than me. First of all, fuck you, and second of all, stop driving behind me while looking at your crotch while texting the guy that’s just not that into you on your rhinestone pink “bling bling” iphone.  He totally slept with your roommate, so you should probably gather some self-respect and take the wheel, princess, before you rear end me and see what chicks from Scranton are really made of.)

I’m a nice girl. Really. (Says she with the blog titled, The Middle Finger Project.)

Anyway.  My bangs.  And the work of art that they were.

Enter: My mother.

I see her out of the corner of my eye, as she props her elbow up in the door frame of my bedroom, and hits me with the news–the same bad news she had delivered two other mornings earlier that month.

“Ash,” she would start, hesitantly and with a softness to her voice, as if she were whispering, almost scared to say it.

“Mmmmhmmm?”

“The pipes.  They’re frozen again.”

I drop my brush.  Shit.

Like, really mother nature?  Are you purposely trying to fuck up my life?  You must be, because if you weren’t, you’d keep the temps in a semi-normal range suitable for those silly little creatures called HUMAN BEINGS, and while we’re on the topic, you wouldn’t have been so kind as to “bless” me with these “big bones” of mine, either.  Yeah, thanks for that.

So there I am.  All dressed up and with someplace to go–school–but alas, the pipes are frozen again.  And when the pipes froze, it could only mean one deep, dark fate: The blow dryer.

I take a deep breath, sigh, and immediately take off all the clothes I had just put on – the new purple jeans I bought over the weekend at JC Penney (shut up), and my creme-colored tee shirt, replacing them with yellow-gold sweatpants and a sweatshirt that bore the record of my middle school track team in red.  I know the drill.  I march into the bathroom to retrieve the blow dryer, grab the flashlight, and proceed outside, sinking into a foot and a half of snow with each carefully calculated step I take.

I loop around to the hydrangea tree out front, and drop to my hands and knees in front of it.  I know the path well, and slowly but surely, me and my big ass bones manage to crawl through the snow, underneath the hydrangea tree, using my elbows to propel me forward.

I reach the underskirting of our 1977 mobile home – the white piece of vinyl that lines the bottom of most trailers you see.  (If you’ve never seen a trailer, fuck you, too.)

I find the seam in the vinyl, and pry it open enough to wedge my body through the gap, and hoist myself underneath the trailer onto the cold, hard dirt floor.  I turn the flashlight on, and freak out a little bit about all of the spider webs I see, and the fact that there could be a daddy long leg weaseling its way onto my perfectly primped 360 degree hair pouf without me even knowing it. *shudders* But hey, the pipes are frozen, and someone’s got to handle it.

I drag my body a little further with my elbows, trying not to drop the flashlight or the blow dryer, which I had managed to plug in outside.  Finally, I spot the pipes I’m looking for – the ones directly underneath our bathroom.  I painstakingly make my way over to them, still deathly afraid that a spider will find its way up my pant leg, and then crank the blow dryer on full blast.

And I wait.

And I wait.

And I wait some more.

I suddenly hear a group of classmates giggling to themselves as they walk past my front yard, on their way to the bus stop. On their way to my bus stop–the same one I normally would have been at by now.

I tell myself that they aren’t giggling at me; that they can’t possibly know that I’m wedged underneath our trailer, lying on my stomach, blowing hot air onto our frozen pipes so my mom could cook and flush the toilet that day. But I equally have to wonder if maybe they did see me–a flush of embarrassment and anger rushes to my face at the mere thought of it.

I suppose their pipes were insulated; they lived in two-story houses with basements and attics and staircases.  For years, I marveled at the staircases in my friends’ homes–some wood, some carpeted, some with a little bit of both. Most 14 year old girls wanted CD players, or their first tube of lipstick, or a subscription to Teen Magazine.  I secretly longed for a staircase.

After about 20 minutes had passed, my mom would yell back at me that the water was flowing again, meaning that my job there was done.  I’d sigh with relief, trudge my way back out to daylight, make my way through the snow, get inside and hurriedly change back into my school clothes.  My bangs were no longer perfect, but I didn’t have time to fix them, so I’d throw my hot pink and teal pick into my schoolbag, and hope I’d have time before first period.

Ah, those were the days.

At the time, I cursed my mother for making me be the adult; for making me handle such responsibilities, for making me do things that my dad would have done, if he hadn’t gotten cancer and passed away the month prior.  Yet, fast forward thirteen years later, and here I sit, snuggled warmly in my bed in my fancy apartment here in Santiago, Chile, nearly 27 years old and having accomplished so much, likely to never have to crawl underneath a trailer ever again.

But I assure you, if I could bring either one of them back, for just one hour, to be able to sit and talk with them, and tell them how much I loved them, and have the chance to hug them one last time, you bet your ass I’d crawl underneath every goddamn trailer in all of The United States of America, heating every single goddamn pipe that there is to be heated, with so much as a lighter if I had to.

Tomorrow, Friday, April 29th, my mom would have turned 67 years old.  Happy birthday, Momla.  I’ll be buying a gift card for Lowe’s in your honor, since I know how much you loved it there.  (Even though I’d always curse you for putting 10 bags of mulch in the car, and then making me clean it afterward. Ha.)

In addition, for all of you that may have forgotten, Mother’s Day is fast approaching.

With both of those things in mind, today’s post has nothing to do with your business, but rather, is dedicated to helping you remember when it’s time to be without it.

There are people in your life–your friends, your family, your significant other–who YOU ARE PAINFULLY, PAINFULLY TAKING FOR GRANTED.

You assume they’ll always be there, and you can make it up to them once you’re done writing yet another blog post, or done working another 16 hour day at the office.

But motherfuckinggoddammit….one day that’s not going to be the case. And that’s not an assumption–that’s a guarantee.

So the next time they ask you to get out the blow dryer and crawl underneath the trailer, or help them with something, or answer a question, or listen to a story they want to tell, or ask to hear one of yours…I suggest you shut your fucking Macbook, turn around, look them in the eyes, and tell them you’d be absolutely delighted to.

Because you should be.

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I have many beliefs.

Like black lace, for one.

Or a perfectly timed comeback.

Or that no matter where I am in the world, coffee will always taste better through a straw. (I’m even inclined to call this more fact than belief.)

You know, the important stuff in life.

But there’s one belief in particular, one belief that has served to inform every aspect of my life, from dawn until dusk, til death do us PART. (Likely the only time I’ll be uttering those words, mind you.)

While dogmatism isn’t usually very becoming, standing for something is.

For me, that something is this:

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“There is no agony like bearing
an untold story inside of you.”
-Maya Angelou

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This is one of my deepest beliefs–no pun intended, of course–and I know that you, fellow entrepreneurs, small business owners, independents and creatives, I know that you believe this, too.

It’s why you do what you do.

Each and every one of us has got our own untold story, and it is through our work that we slowly but surely begin to tell that story.  It is through our sweat, through our tears, through our uncertainty, and through our determinedness despite it all…that we tell that story.

Our work is a manifestation of our soul.

And we become entrepreneurs not only because we want to, but because we must. We have no choice in the matter.  We must tell our stories.

Unfortunately, most traditional careers don’t allow us to tell our stories; rather, we’re too busy trying to tell the greater story of our company.  And there’s something deeply unsatisfying about that on many different levels.

While most choose to ignore that dissatisfaction in favor of perceived stability, there’s something different about s/he who elects to strike it out on his/her own, and I believe that difference is this:

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We all have an untold story begging to be told.  But it’s the entrepreneur who figures out how to tell it.

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They often say that entrepreneurs have many personality traits in common–nonconformity, curiosity, willingness to take risks, and persistence, to name a few.

But I think it’s more than that–I think it’s about what those traits lend themselves to, for example, the concept of divergent thinking.  Essentially, divergent thinking is the ability to see multiple answers to a question.  In the case of an entrepreneur, the question to be answered is what constitutes the meaning of work?

But rather than define work by standard norms, the entrepreneur has a higher than normal propensity for divergent thinking, and recognizes that there are many more definitions beyond the standard, and that it is up to him or her to define those ways.

And this is a very real key to success.

Sir Ken Robinson gives an EXCELLENT talk on the concept of divergent thinking and how it relates to education; specifically, he mentions a study that shows that 98% of kindergarteners are considered to be at a genius level for divergent thinking.  However, as those same children progress through the education system, spending 10 years in school being told there’s one answer, and it’s in the back, they progressively score less and less for divergent thinking.  Not a big surprise.

Last year I discussed a similar concept in a post titled, “Education & Wage Slavery:  Hand in Hand?” which likened our current education system to an oversized factory, with humans acting as factors of production, designed solely to serve our capitalistic interests.  Robinson makes a similar argument, and you really should watch the video (below), because the illustration of the school-as-factory really serves to drive the point home.

While Robinson makes the case for divergent thinking in education, I’d like to extend his argument and make the case for divergent thinking as a path to greater fulfillment for all, and mostly, for those seeking entrepreneurial success.

As we focus on uncovering + seeking out new ways of doing things, specifically as it applies to work + lifestyle, we are continually giving ourselves new ways to tell our stories.

Not only our story as we know it, but the opportunity to define our story in the future.  It’s about writing the story that you wish to be told, rather than having someone else tell it for you.

And that’s truly what it means to be an entrepreneur.

That’s truly what it means to be free.

And that’s also what it means to talk about black lace in public and get paid for it.

Not like I would ever do anything like that.

*****

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{Note: You might have noticed there was not a Fear, Exposed segment today.  Please check back next week, and if you’d like to contribute, please email me:  ash [at] themiddlefingerproject [dot] org.}

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To have a home, a family, a property or a public function…

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To be a useful cog in the social machine.

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All these things seem necessary, even indispensable, to the vast majority of men, including intellectuals, and including even those who think of themselves as wholly liberated.

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And yet such things are only a different form of the slavery that comes of contact with others.

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Especially regulated and continued contact.

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--Isabelle Eberhardt

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By the end of the night, it was as if I had just had the best sex of my life, without so much as having shared a kiss.

I knew nothing about him, except that I needed more.

And more I got.

Candlelit dinners, walks through parks, sensual kisses on street corners, and giggly phone calls lasting well into the night came, and came some more.

I was falling for him, and hard.

And I kept falling for him, even after I found out the truth.

Seven whole months later.

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Click here to keep on reading my entry on love for the Pas de Deux series hosted by the one and only Elisa Doucette of Ophelias Webb!

What the hell – it’s not every day I write on the topic of love, sex and immigrants.

Oh wait.

I do write about immigrants.  Which I published, coincidentally, before I fell in love with one.

Funny how that works.

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He looks me right in the eyes. Then, he blindsides me with the question.

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