money follows love

blogshares

I am noticing some wild stuff with blogshares, that fantasy stock market as if blogs were worth money.

1. The most valuable shares I own are my own blog.
2. Exchanging -- buying & selling a blog -- makes its value rise.
3. If I ask people to gift me shares, and my purpose is pure, they do.
4. It pays to bet on people.
5. I invest where I love.

I bought Kipley's SmallFish & ActorsLife at 25 cents a share. They doubled. I bought more. Now SmallFish is up to $5.91, ActorsLife to $6.34. That's an order of magnitude.

The tough part comes when I must choose whether to buy Kipley's stock or mine. (Although, actually, my unconscious just typed, buy Kipley's stock or his.)

================
it's people I bet on

My company matches our charitable donations up to a certain limit. I donate to theatres. But it's not theatres, really. It's people I bet on. I invest in Bart Sher, Leonid Anisimov, Eugenio Barba, Joseph Lavy. People who create astounding work, and grow. Who have touched my heart. I am investing hugely in myself right now.

These spiritual window-shoppers,
who idly ask, 'How much is that?' Oh, I'm just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.

What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.
But two lovers walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.

Where did you go? "Nowhere."
What did you have to eat? "Nothing much."

Even if you don't know what you want,
buy *something*, to be part of the exchanging flow.

Start a huge, foolish project,
like Noah.

It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you.

-- Rumi

================
honey, take the cash

I once offered a theatre a donation. I set aside the money. I waited 3 weeks. They never said yes, so I spent the money on other things. To be fair, I was not very direct; "Let me know if you need money," I had said. But it was a sizable amount, which matching would have doubled. A test of sorts: Do you believe in your work enough to ask on its behalf? More deeply -- Are you willing to let money come to you?

A good question to ask myself.

Michele McCarthy, when selling McCarthy Bootcamps, used to hold out for big payments from the companies. "They only want to pay in dribs and drabs," she complained. "Honey, take the cash," said Jim's mom, immortalizing herself.

If Microsoft matched all donations, not just those to 501(c)3 charities, you'd see a much denser map. People supporting parents, children, sisters, brothers, friends, people from their church, relatives back home, grandparents, grandchildren, step-families, people-who-used-to-be-step-families, dogs, ponies, cats, fish, unexpected strangers -- dear and uninvited Guests.

"I built a whole school in Vietnam for less money than this kitchen counter cost," said an actor I was rehearsing with once, rubbing his countertop with his thumb.

Money follows love.

What if I am the only barrier between overwhelming wealth flowing my way? What if I, like that theatre, am the one not saying Yes?

I had two phenomenal life-coaching sessions this morning. Breakthroughs with my coach. Breakthroughs of my client with me. Joy-money, this work should be called. Love-money. Like rehearsal.

================
what problem?

I am reading about the Transtheoretical Model of habit change. In catchy terms (thanks to habitshift.com) the stages are:

What problem?
Oh, that problem
Ready... set...
Go
Keep the fire alive

Today I felt myself shift from "What problem?" to "Oh, that problem" with: I am not doing what I love for a living.

================
when my heart and purpose are clear

Twice I have been talking to someone about theatre, when suddenly they have pulled out a checkbook and said, "I want to give you money. How much do you need?" "Ten thousand dollars," I said. Both times they wrote the check.

I have repaid one of them. I am saving up to repay the other. I look at that money as student loans. They were investing in my education.

When I have a theatre -- or whatever turns out to be my Way -- that money I won't pay back. It goes, like soil and water, into the art.

This is the second set of the Dead work Bart Sher talks about. The reliving of Leonid Anisimov. The Disorder, the breaking of preconceptions which leaves one's heart bewildered & tender, of Eugenio Barba.

In This House of Brede, a book about a Benedictine order of contemplative nuns, talks about how the Abbey got its grounds. The wealthy woman who was giving the land wanted to keep a small part with a pond for herself. But it would have lain inside the enclosure, breaking cloister. "We cannot accept," said the abbess, even though they had no place of their own. In the end, the woman gave it all.