there aren't any mistakes

“Just ask yourself, what is the NEXT right move? Because there aren’t any mistakes.”

— Oprah

February 24, 2016, Daily Notes, From the Editor

Sample copies of Issue Two of Lucia arrived last week. I was so overwhelmed with my day job and the accompanying client communications (emails, deadlines, deliverables) that for a couple of hours I just let the FedEx box sit on my kitchen table. Unopened.

Our design advisor Karly's package must have arrived at the same time mine did because I got a text message with a photograph of her holding the new issue, "Congrats, lady, she is gorgeous!"

That's when it hit me. I am not too busy to open that FedEx package. I am too scared.

Why? Because my ducks are not all in a perfect row yet. I thought they would be by now. I haven't lined up the draft emails and blog posts and order buttons and social media messages and website photographs and new sales plans and...these things are all quacking around in my brain like a flock of nervous chaos with feathers. 

I want them all in perfect order before opening that box. I want to be breathing calmly and have everything prepared so it will fall effortlessly into place.

Perfectionism is an insidious and debilitating state of mind. Just when I think I've conquered my addiction to being seen as perfect, I catch myself putting joy on hold and refusing to open the most treasured creation I've made in months until I can write a perfect email about it and have a bulletproof plan for exactly how everything will unfold from here.

Karly's text snapped me back to reality. Ready or not, Issue Two is here. It's all about perfection. Which is, well, perfect.

Today I'm working to herd those fluttering plans into line because on March 1 we'll be unveiling the new cover and shipping Issue Two : Perfection.

There is a little piece of paper pinned to the bulletin board above my iMac as I work. It has some words I heard Oprah Winfrey say recently: Just ask yourself, what is the NEXT right move? Because there aren't any mistakes.

My next move is to upload the pre-orders we've received. One step at a time, I keep going. Whatever you are creating, I hope you will too.

xo
laura

big rocks first

February 21, 2016 - Daily Notes, From the Editor

Today is Sunday. I went to visit my niece, Faye.

She is two years old and has been a budding photographer since the tender age of eleven weeks. You think I'm exaggerating, but the way she gripped my Nikon with her tiny hands in exactly the right place and pulled her nearly-newborn face closer to the eyehole that day gave me shivers. The good kind.

There is list of all of the things I "should" be doing today for Lucia.

There is also a story about a teacher who has a jar filled to the brim with rocks, sand, and water. One day he pours it all into a bucket and asks his students to fill the jar back up using all of the original contents. The students put the water and sand back in first, then start adding the small rocks. They discover soon the jar has already become so full that the big rocks no longer fit.

The teacher says, "Remember this. It is not a lesson about rocks, but about your life. If you fill your life with the small rocks first (things like work) you will soon discover there is not enough room for the big rocks (things like meaningful relationships, love, and nieces).

Today was Sunday. My heart feels happy. I chose a big rock first.

xo
laura

a heart waits for her flight

Last autumn while learning to dance salsa, I met Leo. He founded a startup called flightSpeak because he believes airports should not be about steel and scanners, but about people--their sights, stories, and connections. He invited me for coffee and asked if I'd write an essay about flight. I loved the idea. Where will you fly next? Why will you go there? No, why will you REALLY go? This post originally appeared on Valentine's Day, at blog.flightSpeak.net. xo -Laura

“No matter who we are or where we are going, I think we have the same reason for our flight. It is connection.”

— Laura Lowery

Bump-bump, bump-bump. This exquisite organ pumps life force through our bodies and connects us to one another in unseen ways. 

Your heart can detect the pulse of other hearts around you and it begins to mimic them. Waves form with every beat, carrying information from one heart to another. Most of the time, without even realizing it, we are talking and listening with our hearts.

While lovers buy roses, I am preparing for a different kind of heart connection. It started when I met my high school crush at our reunion in Oregon. He had followed the pulse of his ancestors and gone to live among the Sioux on the Great Plains.

I asked if I could come for a visit and capture photographs for a story in Lucia (following my own heart led me to return to my Pacific Northwest origins and create this magazine). He offered to introduce me to his community’s leaders. “They are all Grandmothers,” he said. He wrote the word with a capital G.

Now I am dreaming of a flight to the heart of the continent, leaving Seattle’s steel buildings and city sounds for Painted Hills and the vast, rich silence of Dakota prairie—something deep in my psyche yearns to meet these Lakota Grandmothers.

Native American blood flows through my veins too, sloshing with genes of Icelanders and Europeans. My father’s great-grandmother was Cherokee, orphaned on the Trail of Tears. She gave birth to sixteen children. My great-grandfather was her youngest. I want to know, better, who she was.

I do not have a photograph of her, or any other direct connection to draw from. Perhaps this sentimental desire to fly halfway across the country and meet Native women to whom I have no direct connection is really my heart’s way of seeking to unravel one more knot in the mystery. We all have mysteries, don’t we? How deep do your roots go?

No matter who we are or where we are going, I think we have the same reason for our flight. It is connection. We make sense of our world, and the people in it, through our bodies. We must see them with our own eyes, hear their songs with our own ears, sit beside them to eat. We must sense the cadence of their pulse with our own hearts. This is how we come to know one another. This is how we come to know ourselves. This is why we fly.

The heart is the great connector. Perhaps we will be next to each other at the airport while I wait for a flight to Denver, or on the way to a Rapid City connection. You will know me by my pulse beat (bump-bump, bump-bump) and because I will want to hear your heart’s story, too.

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{Visit flightSpeak for more airport inspiration...}