“Tension can change patterns,” says Seth Godin in his almost released new book, This Is Marketing. “If you’re going to market a pattern interrupt, it will require you to provide the kind of tension that can only be released by being willing to change an ingrained pattern” (115). That’s what this #DisruptTheGap is all about—willingness to change patterns.
The pressure cooker is up to temperature and attempting to regulate itself at 10# with one to four jiggles every minute. I’m canning jars of salmon so now I’ve got a project and must stay up another 35 minutes until the pressure cooker is done. It’s doing its jiggle steam thing now. And I’ve finished sterilizing the counters and the dishwasher is running.
Two packages arrived in the mail today, feel like books. It’s not surprising to receive books—I order them, but publishers also regularly send me books for potential review in Presence Journal—I’m the media review editor, and select 40 books every year to review.
These two books are surprises. The first package is a book with a note and it’s signed to me from longtime friend Wendi Romero.* She and other amazing women in the south created “Reflections of the Heart, Writings from Sacred Center.” I’m excited to see this for them and the people it will reach, me *insert smiley emoji* and deeply touched by Wendi’s note to me about friendship!
The brown cardboarish package from Penguin is a pain to open—I wonder what’s in it, and need scissors to get inside. When I pry it open, I gasp, not recalling if I’d pre-ordered this new book yet, and here it is! What’s even more cool, is there is a two-page typed note from Seth Godin that reads, “Work that matters, for people who care. Thank you for caring. It means the world to me that you signed up to get a preview copy of “This Is Marketing” … I read his generous offer and invitation to write a review, open the book, begin fanning through, totally delighted. The paper is silky smooth against fingertips. It’s lightweight, and I know already, full of depth. I think of the difference too.
I look at the book jacket, and double gasp, 396 photos in a mosaic, with one line: “People like us do things like this.” And there I am on the right, along with a few other faces I recognize. How fun is this?! Seth Godin is brilliant—I see how he stands with people who are learning to see, and invites us each to do our art and go make a ruckus.
The pressure regulator for the salmon is almost dropped to zero, so I’ve got minutes to wrap this project up, unseal the pressure cooker, remove the jars of canned wild salmon from Cook Inlet that will offer nourishment in months to come, and head to dream land, reflecting more deeply upon, as Godin says, “you can’t be seen until you learn to see.” And Day 75 post from “Reflections of the Heart”:
*Fertile Ground
Every once in awhile
I withdraw from my familiar.
I lie on my back and watch
clouds go by, or head out
for a long quiet drive.
Not all things are able
to grow in one spot,
so sometimes I set my sight
on somewhere else.
It often takes bravery
and the risk of my utter
aloneness to seek out
that unknown patch of
fertile ground where only
I was meant to blossom.
–Wendi Romero, Reflections of the Heart, p. 111