A handful of days before Christmas, I decided to make this thing called the Idea Catalyst Kit. It brought together a lot of impulses I’d been having for a long time in a way I thought would help people who were struggling with finding the right idea, and people who needed to make their ideas into something they could take action on. I had been obsessed with all of this, and suddenly I had a creative outlet. I was going to spend the next three weeks working on it, and I was going to launch it on the 12th — because that’s the day I was leaving for New York. And if I was going to spend three weeks working on the kit, it was going to have to help me pay my bills while I was traveling. There was simply no other option.
So I did. And it did. (Thank god!) I had to go nearly off the grid to make it happen. And wow, the launch was good. If you emailed or tweeted to give me feedback or just to say nice things, man, you’re so goddamned cool. Thank you.
But that is only the teeny tiny beginning of this story.
On Thursday January 14th, I attended the first day of a Triiibes conference. I met a lot of people who felt like family, near-instantaneously. I normally feel some kind of social anxiety, at least something little, sometimes something not-so-little — and on the 14th, I felt precisely none.
On Friday January 15th, I attended Seth Godin’s book launch event for Linchpin, which will be released on January 26th (my birthday, no joke). I took 19 pages of notes on every piece of paper in my handbag. I wrote on things I shouldn’t have written on. In hot pink marker. And then I ran out of paper, and kind souls sitting nearby gave me sheets from their notebooks. Why on earth didn’t I bring a notebook?
Let me back up a little bit.
I have been working so hard.
I have been constantly at grips with a series of issues that feel very important to me, that I must do something about — but need to understand much more clearly. The act of sharing, the generosity associated with licensing a work with Creative Commons, for instance, is one of those. The feeling that money can be made but is not the first concern (and shouldn’t be) is another. The certainty that we must build, we must create, we must think for ourselves and we must use our individual drives to act in the interests of the world around us by finding our strengths and striking forward with them, oh god, how hard I’ve worked on that. It’s so important to me, it makes me tear up. It makes me gush inappropriately in blog entries. (Well, you know that.)
All of these have been developing over the last several years. I had to do work that thrilled me. I was sure that others could do the same thing, and then I proceeded to become more and more insistent with myself that we all had to do whatever we could to get people off their couches, away from the time suck, and into a situation where they could understand their options. Understand their capability for happiness and contribution and change. Understand their need to connect as social animals and the effect they could have on their family, their community, and potentially every other human being in the world. The internet is this tool… you’ve heard this story. I tell it over and over. I get worked up. I spout off. I make videos. I don’t usually cry, but I sure feel like it. It’s a Big Damn Thing. I feel it a lot these days.
The ever-present need to push.
Where can I push?
Who can I help?
What can I change for the better?
And how can I explain most clearly?
I haven’t really been sure what it all means until very recently, and the Kit is the first incarnation of this new understanding. But I’ve still been working hard, knowing the answers are close. Knowing that with Ideaschema I’ve started something that will show me the answers if I keep working hard and building up.
On Friday, Seth told us about Linchpin. I had a copy already, but I hadn’t read it — my launch was very intense, and the flight I was planning to use as reading time turned into a turbulence rodeo. Instead of reading Linchpin, I was sitting with my head between my knees trying not to barf up my lunch. And so I didn’t know until Friday exactly what Linchpin was about.
It was about this.
On Friday, many of those answers I had been working on were just handed to me. Just like that. Maybe not in their final form… but I was suddenly in possession of the clarity I had been seeking actively, intensely, for months.
It was absolutely amazing. I knew that I was on this track, in part, because of my exposure to Seth’s published works. But I had no idea he was heading in this direction. I had no idea — not consciously, at least — that he was working on the things I was working on, too. It’s so delicious to discover you’re not alone. Of course other people are working on these things, but I didn’t know them until this week. Seth Godin. Angela Lussier. Chris Landry. Scores of others.
And this is what happens: In a flash of light, I know I’m not alone in this thing. I know that other people care, and now, instantaneously, everyone is talking about it. There’s terminology — linchpin, lizard brain, ship. And “make something happen”, which he wrote when he signed my copy of Linchpin, and I can’t even describe the double-take that gives me, though I suspect I use those words to describe my stuff because I picked them up in an earlier book — Tribes, most likely.
Still, it’s like an alternate universe. In the natural progression of his work, Seth has taken my private struggle mainstream, or as mainstream as it can get. As a result, I feel this incredible gratitude, because it means we can all keep working even better than before. I’ve got it. In my hands. It’s right here. So now we can build on top of it — we can reach further. That’s what all of this is for. That’s why every one of us who can must create, must communicate, must make something good and then make something happen. Then all of us can move faster, we can build more amazing things in our lifetimes, we can help more people. Do you see?
All of that combined with the fact that I was the determined kid in school who wanted to do her own damn problem-solving — not have the teacher share the answer too soon! — and you’ve got an emotionally worked-up Megan on your hands. An incredibly happy, incredibly grateful, emotionally worked-up Megan.
So where does that leave me now?
Well, with 19 pages of notes scribbled in hot pink marker, for one.
And I’m going to share every single bit.
But while I’m typing furiously… you should check out Linchpin.
Megan Elizabeth Morris (aka MEM, Megan the M.) is a bonafide professional catalyst and adventurer. She's the Ideaschema instigator, orchestrator and autodidact, and you can find out more about her by clicking here.Got an idea? Something we haven't thought of? Whatever you're thinking, we want to hear it. Please feel free to leave comments or email us by clicking here.
