Kiss my Bliss Goodbye

Yes! It’s another Bliss post. In true Aimee Jones fashion, I am one of the stragglers just getting around to putting my fabulous weekend into words.

I could go on and on about the great new friendships, celebrity performances, and the incredible swag, but I will try to focus on the one thing that actually drove me to take action. Okay, two things.

The first was in the video interview with Jim Collins. He said, “Having enough creativity will never be your problem. The difficulty lies in having the discipline to focus the creativity.” This is so true for me. My current works in progress include a weekly question/answer newspaper column, an online serial romantic comedy, a speculative fiction novel, a romantic suspense novel, blog, Facebook posts, tweets, and I am dying to redecorate my home. These are all fabulous ideas, and respectable pursuits. I have much passion and enthusiasm for them all. The problem is that currently there is only one of me, and my creative right brain is stretched to its max. Jim proposed the cannonball vs. bullets metaphor. I am a sucker for a great word picture. He said that you wait for your small ideas, the bullets, to “hit” before throwing your big ammunition, the cannonballs, into battle. Meaning, look for where your creative projects are having the desired effect and focus your attention there, while tabling a few of the shot in the dark ideas for a rainy day. Seems like a very common sense kind of thing, but his speech was the nudge towards a more focused writing career that I needed.

The other revelation was the closing address by Catherine Connors. I have never been one to banner the phrase “Girl Power” or “Viva Womanhood”. I am very fond of being a woman, but I am also a fan of femininity. In the sense of allowing men to get the doors, kill spiders, and open pickle jars. As a stay at home mother, I haven’t had to fight for position in a corporation or struggle for equal opportunities in the work place. So when Catherine began speaking about the rising role of women in the blogging industry, I thought her speech might be going in a direction that I couldn’t exactly relate to. Oh how wrong I was. My realization was that I am part of an industry, and I am struggling for my voice to be heard. The amazing thing is that people are listening, and we are living in such an exciting time as women. We are putting ourselves out there, not in a tailored version of a man’s suit, stifling our emotion, and hiding behind a tough facade, but we are getting noticed by simply living out loud just as we are. The feelings, thoughts, and emotions attached to the very core of our feminine being, is the one thing drawing people to our words day in and day out. That and really great coupon deals apparently. We as women have found a way to personalize the incredible technology of today and turn it into a community. As with most things, it was simply lacking a woman’s touch.

So for the first time in my life, and with thanks to Catherine Connors…Viva Womanhood!

And with that, I will finally click publish and kiss this year’s Bliss goodbye…see ya next year!