That said, we’re all ears! If you’ve been reading along and longing for something, or had any thoughts, light bulbs, or feedback at all- well we’d be just totally delighted to hear it. Just leave any tidbits you wish in the comments section or email us at editor [at] 11project [dot] com.

We’ll keep you posted on our pause button. Enormous gratitude to all of you for reading along on the adventure so far!

Photo by Conor Lawless

As I was in the process of writing this letter I came across a TED talk that Helen Fisher gave in which she talked about emerging trends in women in the workforce, “Everywhere in the world woman are moving into the job market and closing the gap in economic power… Yet for millions of years on the grasslands of Africa women commuted to work to gather their vegetables. They came home with 60% to 80% of the evening meal. The double income family was the standard, and women were regarded as just as economically, socially, and sexually powerful as men. In short, we’re really moving forward to the past.”

When I kicked off The 11 Project I knew I wanted to look at the wide variety of things that are shifting for us right now. In particular, I’m interested in how that is affecting our definition of “the good life”. What’s fascinating is that in many ways our “evolution forward” looks very much like, as in Helen Fisher’s example, a reaching back.

Connection, community, and sharing seem to be in our DNA. All of these things are an enormous part of what it means to be human. We used to live in very tightly knit communities where everyone’s connection to, and responsibility for, the other was assumed. We can skip the history lesson, but suffice it to say, somewhere along the way we decided that the single family home with the two car garage was the way to go, and our communities changed drastically.

And yet today we seem to be on a lightening fast track toward re-connecting. We are currently witnessing an explosion of new tools that are allowing community and sharing to happen in a way that they just didn’t 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago. There are plenty of trends to notice in the conversation about what makes us happy these days, but none is as all encompassing and as rapidly evolving as how sharing now touches all of our lives on a daily basis. Think about the last time you used a communal tool like, say, Google, Wikipedia, Craigslist or Facebook, and you get what I mean by “daily”.

There is more opportunity for connection, community, and sharing (of experience, information, and physical goods) than ever before in history. This point is made abundantly clear in Lisa Gansky’s brilliant book, The Mesh. Her inspiring and laser sharp look at how sharing, or “the mesh”, is now affecting literally every sector was the inspiration for this issue, so it seemed appropriate that she grace our cover!

The means are clearly different. I don’t see us literally moving into the past by attempting to recreate a hunter gatherer society anytime soon (though Jeanne Goodman of the Jamaica Plain Cohousing community, interviewed in this issue, certainly shows a compelling and very contemporary option for living within a more closely knit community). As you’ll see in the interviews in the following pages, in many cases it is rapid advances in technology and all the delicious gifts of Web 2.0 that allow us to reconnect to a sense of community and sharing.

Whatever the means, and whatever the sphere of influence- be it local food, car sharing, housing, or empowering citizens- the effect is that we are reconnecting to a fundamental piece of our humanness. We are coming home to ourselves and that makes for a very good life indeed.

I chose that theme as our second issue because I truly feel that one of our main drives right now is to share. The 11 Project is dedicated to redefining the good life, and I would feel like an enormous piece of that conversation were missing if our current drive to reconnect and to share more easily were left out. We are at the very, very beginning of a shift that, I believe, will change how we relate fundamentally. Or, rather, reconnect us to a more human way of relating; If you look back through history, the nuclear family living in one big house, with a two car garage, and giant lawn separating you form your neighbors is a fairly recent development in human history.

Eveyone that I had the priviledge of interviewing for this issue inspired and wowed me. It was an honor to talk with so many different people with different contributions to and thoughts on the shared space that we are steadily inhabiting more of.

However, no one is better poised to clarify and articulate just what it going on than the woman who, literally, wrote the book on it, Lisa Gansky. Her book The Mesh talks specifically about how the future of business is sharing, which of course takes on the reality that these businesses are serving a strong human drive for that right now. Her Mesh directory currently has over 3000 entries and is growing strong. So if you want to enter the candy store of businesses built on a sharing (or mesh) model, head on over here. And I highly recommend giving the book a read.

That said, I figured I’d give you a little sneak peek of Lisa’s thoughts on how The Mesh and what we’re doing over here at The 11 Project matches up. Her full interview is much longer and gets into all kinds of good nooks and crannies, but for now, here are some choice outtakes from her interview:

I feel that we are creating a world in which we can think differently about what makes us happy, about who is in our community, and about hopefully aligning things like the value that we get, or the cost that we have- really the true cost- so that we don’t continue to live in this fantasy that we are making progress when actually we may not be.

I have a lot of hope for the ingenuity of people and the good intentions of people. I think that The Mesh is a living, breathing thing- it’s not about consumption. It’s actually about our ability to live, think, and work together. It’s not something that is basically in the US, it’s an international phenomenon. And it’s biological. I think people want to be connected to each other. We want to run into each other, we want to share. There is a lot about it that is very rooted in the way that we are as human beings…I do think that we are at the very beginning of a different era.

It’s a lot of what The 11 Project is attempting to address- which is essentially what’s the goal here? What are we aspiring towards if we are not aspiring to own stuff? And what’s the relationship between the goal and what makes us happy? How do we know it makes us happy?

At the core of The Mesh, a lot of people shared with me that they worked really hard to get to a certain place only to realize that they actually didn’t want to be there. People often say they want to spend more time with their kids and their families. There was a whole group of people here and in Europe who told me that when they lost their job in the recession, and they had to create a new career or a new way of working, and at first they were freaked out but then they realized that they actually only needed to make around a third of what they were making in their old job. Between the commute, dressing up, the kids being watched, and paying for all of that- they actually needed a lot less money. I thought that was pretty interesting…

I think that, in many ways, our trust has been let down- or we let ourselves down and we’ve allowed others to let us down. There are different ways that people articulate it, but I think we are in the process of rebuilding trust and communities. I think we are learning who’s there. We are learning who people are, who these individuals are, who these companies are or what they are really offering, what we want really, and what makes us happy. A lot of what you [The 11 Project] are doing is uncovering false assumptions, or these little blankets we usually carry around as pacifiers to make us feel that we are on the right track. And I think that those glasses have been taken off– in many cases abruptly…

So I feel like reestablishing trust in the world that we live in with an understanding of what that means in our day-to-day life is so important right now… I hope that things like The Mesh and this orientation towards sharing and learning together will help to build a way for us to be more connected in a more sensible way.

I think humanity needs people like us who are trying to make sense out of things, but also there’s a level of engagement, and invitations to engage, and learning how to create engagement, that is upon us. Truthfully, I don’t know how to measure it… The question for me is, how do we know if we are succeeding? Because we thought we were succeeding before. So there is the need for trust in that as well. But I think the trust has to be based on something, not just the fantasy.

So what are your thoughts? How do you know if you are succeeding in your own life?

“Art school” is one of those phrases that usually get thrown around to describe ridiculous hipsters and their pretentious, and pointless, experimentation. However I have always found my years in art school at RISD (which for the record involved tons of hard work and were potentially the most fruitful years my brain has ever seen) as the greatest gift I could ever get- an education built around creative thinking, risk taking, and, yes, experimentation (maybe while surrounded by hipsters…) and that has served me every day of my life, whether I’m making artwork or not. In the current climate of education- including higher education- it seems all resources are dedicated to keeping the automaton factory running, so I thought I’d shake it up a bit and revisit the top 3 things I learned from art school. Art school: it’s not just for hipsters anymore!

My very first semester at RISD I saw on my schedule that I had a teacher who everyone referred to as “Sergeant Stryker”. She was rumored to kick students who were making lame drawings, in order to motivate them to suck less (for real, to literally walk over to them and kick them). To say I was terrified walking into her classroom on the first day doesn’t quite do it justice.

I wasn’t the only one. We all had fear saucer eyes on the first day of class, as we sat diligently with our drawing supplies all shiny and new in their wrappings. You could feel our collective desire to please her just oozing from our pores. This desire to please took on the form of doggedly going after perfection of every line drawn. If you listened closely you could hear our internal monologues in chanting in unison, “MUST. GET. IT. RIGHT! DON’T. SCREW. UP!”

So, of course, we all churned out numerous obsessive compulsive, anal retentive pieces of crap that first day. Turns out tunnel vision and art making are not a happy marriage. It also turns out that the thing that most displeased Sergeant Stryker was an obsession with perfection.

This was how I learned that the kicking part was true (albeit wildly exaggerated). She started prowling around the terrified classroom giving playful love-shoves on the shoulder, and, yes, playful foot shoves as well. As she did, she kept repeating, “What is wrong with all of you!? Why are you so terrified of an eraser? For God’s sake, make some mistakes already!” (Hi Joanne Stryker! Thank you!)

The semester progressed and we all loosened our attachment to perfection as we listened to Sergeant Stryker extol the virtues of mistakes. She’s the person who taught me that the beauty of a thing- anything- is built of its mistakes.

In the case of a drawing, all the beauty and nuance comes from layers and layers of finding your way into what you are making, rather than lunging at it like you’re trying to cage an animal. If you let your hair down a little bit and let yourself stumble, and even let your stumbles (gasp!) peek through a bit, you’ve created work that is so much richer for it.

(I know you’re way ahead of me here, but it is worth writing it down anyway) It’s the same when you’re crafting a life. If you’re trying so hard to color inside the lines and to just “get it right” then life constricts. The only prize on the other side of that is to be done with it (whatever it is) and to have the satisfaction of knowing you didn’t blow it. Everything becomes just one more cautious step on the path as you tiptoe your way to death.

Ultimately, we all have to face the choice to tiptoe or to actually engage and move forward- to stumble- and to do it knowing that erasers are beautiful things. Sure, you can’t ever fully remove that mark you made; It will show through a bit. But no matter, it only adds to the beauty.

Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography

“Art school” is usually presumed to describe ridiculous hipsters and their pretentious, and pointless, experimentation. In my case, I’ve always found my years in art school at RISD (which for the record involved tons of hard work and were potentially the most fruitful years my brain has ever seen) as the greatest gift I could ever get- an education built around creative thinking, risk taking, and, yes, experimentation (maybe while surrounded by hipsters…). And that has served me every day of my life, whether I’m making artwork or not. In the current climate of education- including higher education- it seems all resources are dedicated to keeping the automaton factory running, so I thought I’d shake it up a bit and revisit the top 3 things I learned from art school. Art school: it’s not just for hipsters anymore!

RISD is pretty famous for a grueling freshman year. It’s one of those things that’s designed to weed out the weak with insane demands and round the clock work habits. I hate to sound all superior (not really, my inner workaholic is delighting in this) but when other college freshman were honing their binge drinking skills, we were working our asses off. And also occasionally building enormous primordial ooze pools to swim in, or bubble wrap mazes that stretched as far as the eye could see. We were workaholics, but not boring.

So after a solid year spent leaning into every challenge my professors could find, and trying to fine tune exactly where my skills were lacking, I had gotten into a habit of only tackling the tough stuff. No fun for me! There were too many weak points for me to sharpen up!

At the end of my freshman year I was finally given the assignment that every art student dreams is their birthright: “Make a series of drawings of whatever you want.” Wha?! No more, “Build a functional chair that supports your body weight out of only these three pieces of cardboard.” Or “Draw the human form using no lines and no shading.” I was used to restriction fueling creative growth, and now we were being set free!

Being my studious, “tackle your weaknesses” self, I decided to make my series of drawings about the thing I both hated the most and found the most challenging: several large scale architectural drawings with tons of crazy ass complex perspective. In other words, I decided to take this freedom and cage it.

After a weekend spent suffering and groaning through making drawings that I hated to make, I brought them in for critique (side note for those of you who haven’t attended art school: critique is this thing we do constantly where we hang up our work in front of everyone and let them have at it. Functionally it was the most amazing way to learn possible. Emotionally it felt like throwing myself to the lions over and over again for 4 years. Which I’m a fan of.)

In self-righteous martyr style I lovingly hung them all up on the wall and explained that I had chosen to do these drawings because I wanted to fine tune this weak point in my skills. I expected cheers! I expected gasps of, “Oh how brave!” I expected, at least, some glorifying praise for always trying to capital I Improve.

Instead, I was greeted with an incredulous look from my professor as he turned his back to my over-labored upon drawings and said, “But you hate this stuff? Why are you taking this opportunity to explore something you’re truly passionate about and instead turning it into a chore? Let’s not bother critiquing these. Next week bring in something you care about and we can talk about that.” (Hi Tom Mills! Thank you!)

Instead of feeling dejected, I felt like I had been set free. I was like the circus elephant who is so convinced it can’t move that tiny little stake in the ground that’s holding him in place, simply because he has been trained never to try. And here my professor was giving me full permission to take off the damn chain already!

After that, I dove into making work that still sticks in my mind as one of my most deliriously joyful art making experiences. This time it was days and days worth of forgetting to eat because the drawing was too fun to walk away from, rather than numbing labor.

It’s a funny thing self-improvement. It sounds so good, so pious, so very much like the right thing to do, and yet it’s often just a seductive trap that keeps you from getting to know your own self. Why would you bother to really, deeply know yourself if you’re convinced you’re so in need of improving? If you’re just endlessly moving along to the next goal post, there’s no time to ever ask what you actually want or (gasp!) delight in. And with this, a whole range of knowing and of pleasure gets missed. Life becomes more like labor and the options for delirious joy narrow.

Sometimes you just have to make (or do, or be) what you love already, and leave the stuff you hate, or that you suck at, to someone who feels differently about it. We don’t all have to be so damn well-rounded all the time. And we don’t need to endlessly chip away at “weaknesses” when we could be genuinely enjoying something else instead.

So go enjoy!

Photo by D’Arcy Norman

People can miss the point on creative thinking pretty easily, and when they do it looks like this: working to find your catchy “hook”- you know, the one that earns you the most adulation- and then finding tricky ways to regurgitate that for as long as the praise continues. Blech. A pretty common sighting. One of my professors (Hi Bill Drew! Thank you!) had a great solution to this problem: as soon as you get really good at something, make the choice to be intentionally awful at everything. Whenever any one of us would be churning out the adulation worthy nice and safe paintings, he would call us out and tell us to take on a period of “making shitty paintings”.

Turns out people can miss the point on making shitty paintings pretty easily too. It’s not about checking out, getting lazy, and crapping all over your work for a while. It’s about the opposite. It’s about reaching. You have to take the big risk that you’ve been too terrified to take, and then show the world just how awful all your work is as you go through the painful learning curve.

It’s about leaning into the sharp points and not shying away from those challenging spots for the sake of getting the easy A. It’s a commitment to integrity, and to never-ending growth. This is both a satisfying and frustrating acknowledgement of a life of never quite getting there. Or more precisely, to knowing that there is no there there. Finish lines, it turns out, are temporary man made constructions.

So why put up with the frustrating bits of this path? The parts where everything you make or feel is, well, shitty? At the end of the day you can either choose to lean into the sharp points and grow, or go into a slumber and sleepwalk your way to death (which by the way, is an exceptionally frustrating way to live life, so you don’t get to skip the frustrating bits either way). I hate to be a “there are two kinds of people in the world” person, but there you go; I think the world is full of either those who are leaning in, or those who are sleepwalking.

The best possible illustration of “leaning in” that I’ve ever come across comes from a favorite story that Pema Chodron tells about her teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche in her book When Things Fall Apart:

He told a story about traveling with his attendants to a monastery he’d never seen before. As they neared the gates, he saw a large guard dog with huge teeth and red eyes. It was growling ferociously and struggling to get free from the chain that held it. The dog seemed desperate to attack them. As Rinpoche got closer, he could see its bluish tongue and spittle spraying from its mouth. They walked past the dog, keeping their distance, and entered the gate. Suddenly the chain broke and the dog rushed at them. The attendants screamed and froze in terror. Rinpoche turned and ran as fast as he could—straight at the dog. The dog was so surprised that he put his tail between his legs and ran away.

The scary stuff that we’re dodging has a tendency to put its tail between its legs and run away when we’re hurling ourselves directly at it. So, what easy track are you taking that you can mix up by throwing some shitty paintings into the mix? To kick it up a few notches, what snarling dogs can you run at?

To leave you with one last thought from Pema Chodron (because I adore that woman)

“Comfort orientation murders the spirit… Opting for coziness, having that as your prime reason for existing, becomes a continual obstacle to taking a leap and doing something new, doing something unusual.”

So go shake it up people.

*and if you want to hear my interview with Vanessa Scotto where I get into some of this stuff, it’s here.

Photo by blhphotography

• Sometimes it’s something as simple as a hello. While I’ve admired Jennifer Louden’s work from afar for a long while, she and I had never actually spoken, and had only briefly emailed to set up our phone interview. Yet when she answered the phone for our talk, I thought for sure we were having one of those “I thought you were someone else” moments. Specifically, the enthusiasm with which Jennifer’s “Hellooooo!” bowled me over led me to believe that she thought I was her dearest friend on planet Earth calling her back after a dropped call.

  Jen: “Well hellooooooo! How are you?!”
  Me” “Oh, um, hi! It’s Brooke Thomas, I’m calling to interview you?”
  Jen: “Yeah I know! I’m so excited! How are you!?”

  Now I think we’ve all come across the bullshit cheery types- who force this kind of happy, happy intimacy on you as a way to assure that you will like them. And it’s uncomfortable and lame. This is not Jennifer. It was such sincere warmth that I felt instantly met by her. From there we dove into about an hour of conversation that let me know that this is someone who is living with gratitude and joy as honestly as she possibly can. And to contact that for a brief while was a beautiful thing.

• Sometimes it’s something as complex as finding a way to listen when all you want to do is act. After I had interviewed Desirea Rodgers via email it occurred to me that this stunning human being actually did live in my town, and I should really take her out for coffee. Knowing that she is the co-founder of Love 146, which is working to end child sex trafficking, one would naturally assume that this person is good to the core. Yet even walking in with this assumption, I was totally delighted by the glow of goodness that surrounds her. Again, this woman is the real deal.

  What really struck me was hearing her talk about the main issue she wrestled with when she started Love 146. She happens to have created a non-profit that really no one can argue with- after all, who would balk at eradicating child sex slavery? So with that most people are off and running with their whole American cowboy justice thing, i.e.: “Well yes it’s awful, so let’s just ride in on our white horses and rescue everyone!” But instead of giving in to that easy temptation, Desirea acknowledged that “rescuing” people can leave them with their victim identity solidly intact, and the goal at Love 146 is to rehabilitate these children, not just pluck them out of horrible circumstances and leave. So instead she dedicated the first 2 years of the non-profit solely to listening to what their needs and experiences actually were, so that they could really rescue themselves. And that kind of insight and courage is rare, rare, rare. What a gift she and Love 146 are.

• Sometimes seemingly disparate things connect in amazing ways. I’ve found many times in my life that I think I’m looking at an either/or situation only to discover that the Either and the Or can come together to create a new, unexpected, and wonderful thing. Jill Miller perfectly articulated this phenomenon for me when she talked about her challenge of deciding between biology or acting as her college major. She said in the interview that it was clear that given the choice between a life in front of people and a life in front of a microscope that she had to choose people. In a surprising way as a yoga teacher/goddess, her two loves did finally combine and she now teaches all over the world about people understanding their bodies. You never know when the things you love might have a big mesh moment and give birth to new potential.
• Sometimes the label doesn’t matter. I included Lissa Boles in this issue because I’ve known her as a friend for a few years now, and she is consistently one of the wisest people I get to talk to on a regular basis. That said, her “label” as an “astrologer” did concern me that maybe I was bringing a little too much woo-woo to the table in issue 1. I mean, when Lissa initially added her astrological gifts to her work as a life coach, even she felt uncomfortable about the wacky factor. But knowing her wisdom -and not for nothing but her astrological readings are off the charts fantastic- I knew I wanted her voice in the Outside-the-Box issue. The result: her interview is the one I’ve gotten the single most positive feedback on. I guess we’re all down with some woo-woo!

  Oftentimes, balance is overrated. Chris Guillebeau said it best when he said he just “wasn’t that interested in living the most balanced life.” I’m not suggesting we have to dive headlong into mania (and I know Chris hasn’t), but sometimes we get so focused on the careful process of staying on the ball that we forget to dive headlong into stuff we love. So go ahead and dive already.

And if you want to hear me talking more about the hidden surprises in issue one, I’ll be interviewed by Vanessa Scotto on Wednesday 1/19 at noon EST on her blog talk radio show, Map2Self.

From Vanessa’s write up about the show:

“Nearly all humankind is more or less unhappy, because nearly all do not know the true Self. Real happiness abides in Self-knowledge alone. All else is fleeting. To know one’s Self is to be blissful always.” ~Sri Ramana Maharshi, the sage of Arunachala

Our guest Brooke Thomas doesn’t live what you would call the “conventional life.” On today’s show she will share her theory on our need to “Live an Experimental Life.” Her equation: The world needs more light. Fulfillment, light and joy come through living authentically. Authenticity comes from Self-awareness. And sometimes to Know Yourself, and your path, you have to try on a few hats. Join us to be inspired with tales and insights that liberate you from the “cookie-cutter” life and open you up to the beauty of carving your own way.

photo by JLS Media

To kick off this wild adventure, it seemed only appropriate to make the theme of our first issue all about people who are rejecting the status quo and living life on their own terms. As I got the issue together I spent a lot of time wondering why to even do this in the first place, and I think the best answer I came up with is in my editor’s letter, so here you go:

Editor’s letter:
I’m a chronic over-doer. I have one of those schedules that look like an elaborate game of Tetris. It’s by choice, of course, and I do agree with Chris Guillebeau when he said in his interview that he’s “not interested in trying to create the most balanced life. I’m really having a lot of fun being relatively unbalanced.” However, when I recently added this new project to the number of plates I already have spinning, I asked myself many times, “Why do this?”

Life is full. I love my other work (as a Rolfing practitioner and helper-outer of other holistic professionals), and I cherish my time with my young son. Adding a whole new adventure to that can sometimes feel like I must have been under the spell of some powerful wizard who just wants to see more inspiring magazines in the world.

I know no such wizard exists of course (though that would be pretty awesome), which leaves me with the question: “Why do this?” I could answer it with grandstanding sentences that include phrases like “…change the world” or “…transforming lives” but I’ve never been much of a blowhard and I’d rather be honest than puff up my chest about the whole thing. In reality, I’ve spent a whole lot of years- likely all 36 of them that I have under my belt- feeling alternately amazed and horrified by humanity.

“Evil” is a loaded word, especially these days, but I see the horrific things that people can do to one another and I have a very hard time coping with it. I spent this fall walking to my office every day past the blocks long stretch of news trucks surrounding the New Haven courthouse. A man, whose name I can’t bear to print in my own magazine, was being tried for brutalizing and murdering a mother and her two daughters in their own home.

Every day the same dark circus was there as I walked to work. Every day the newspapers leaked some new hideous piece of evidence. And then he was sentenced to death. Which did nothing to help me answer all the questions I had- questions I have always had- about what makes a person capable of something like that. I suspect, and hope, that I’ll never know.

What I do know, and what I try to spend my mental and emotional energy diving into, is that people can be thrillingly amazing too. With technology making our world smaller, I feel like now more than ever we’re able to hear about the wonderful contributions that people are adding to life here on Earth.

The diversity of those contributions is stunning. Not everyone has to renounce everything and pitch in Mother Theresa style. We don’t just need heroes here on Earth (though Desirea Rodgers rocks my world and gets my very enthusiastic hero vote for this issue); we need light in all of its lovely forms.

To usher in that light we need more and more people who are willing to break out of the numbing molds that we’ve been sold on, and to start finding their own particular gift that they can bring to both their and others’ lives. So what better way to kick off The 11 Project than with the Outside-the-Box issue.

As I mentally skim through some of the 11 people interviewed in the following pages, I get giddy just thinking about the forms that freedom from the box(es) can take: Michael DiMartino is bringing light to the world through storytelling and animation, Jill Miller through re-acquainting people with their bodies, Kristin Glenn and Shannon Whitehead through (true) eco-friendly apparel, and Lissa Boles through handing people their own purpose GPS. There is so much more, and it is all oh so delicious to me.

And to answer my own “Why do this?” question: We can focus on whatever we want in this life- the darkness, the light, and everything in between. Lord knows I’ve spent my fair share of time in all of those shades of grey. But what I want to do now, and what I’m capable of doing with The 11 Project, is to shine a light on the best of what humanity is up to these days. Let’s turn up the volume on the good stuff together, shall we?

Letters to the editor are always welcomed, as are submissions if you think you or someone you know should be featured in the magazine. Both can be sent to brooke@11project.com, or very handily just added to the comments:

Part One was about how resolutions blind us to delicious opportunities and surprises, part two is about how much self-loathing they require.

Dig in for tips on how to have a less flagellation-filled and happy New Year! Bring on 2011!