The Place:  Starbucks

The Cup: Coffee

The Background: My buddy, and Cup 17, Thom Singer Tweeted a note about an Austin poet, Blythe who was doing a Kickstarter and who’d just been written about in the Austin Statesman. I missed the Tweet, but another buddy Lance caught it and sent me a note adding that he knew Blythe (he and her hubby are BFFs, I later learned) and would I like an introduction? Maybe, I thought. She does have a pretty cool name. Then, I watched her video. YES! I MUST meet her….NOW!!! Lance came through and a coffee date was soon on the calendar!

Blythe is fan-freakin’-tastic! She’s warm, open, hilarious and damn, the girl can draw! But before we get into her story, let’s cover some:

Common Grounds:

1. What’s a food you can’t live without? Skinny Cow Divine Caramels – which I can eat without guilt.
2. What’s your guilty pleasure? Cheesy romance novels. Pure escapism. Sometimes, I go through my Kindle and click on all the respectable books just to push the trashy ones down the list, because I don’t want to open it up and have someone see all the crap I read.
3. How did you make your first buck? At The Limited. There was a leather jacket at the mall, I think it was at Merry-Go-Round, that I really wanted. My mom said if I wanted it, I was going to have to get a job and buy it myself. So I did – and I got that leather jacket. Which I had for many, many years – until the cat peed on it. I worked at that job all through high school.
4. What is the last thing you fixed? My hair. I have a hair issue. I’m never happy with my hair. {Blythe has amazing hair – watch her video and tell me I’m wrong!}
5. What’s your favorite place to eat in Austin? That’s tough! In no particular order, current favorites are Jack Allen’s, North and Clay Pit.
6. What’s the best compliment you ever got? I’ve had some really nice compliments from my blog. Every now and then I’d get an email from someone who really liked what I had to say. The blog wasn’t touchy feely. I wasn’t connecting on a deep level. But I would get these emails from people saying I brightened their day, or cheered them up. It was nice. Blogging is different now. People don’t even leave comments anymore.
7. What’s your best feature? That’s a tough question. I’ve always liked my eyes. Oh, and I’ve always liked my wrists. And my ankles. {She has very tiny wrists! Dainty, I dare say.}
8. If you could swap lives with someone for a day, who would you pick? The woman who’s married to Paul Rudd. {YES!} I love him. He’s so funny! It just must be amazing to be married to him. I’m married to a funny, funny man. Very funny! And that’s awesome. It’s got to be an adventure to be married to Paul Rudd. The lip syncing thing he did on Jimmy Fallon…as if I needed another reason to love this man. He’s just so funny and smart. I dig his vibe.

Blythe and I spend an inordinate amount of time, by some people’s standards, singing Paul Rudd’s praises. We even swap “the time we saw him in person” stories. Blythe has me beat, on many levels. Not the least of which is the fact that Paul was in swim trunks when we saw him.

We Heart Paul Rudd

A few years back, Blythe ran into him while staying at the Lost Pines Resort near Austin. Once she determined it was, in fact, Mr. Slappin’ Da Bass, she made her family wait on the shore before putting their tubes in the water for a float down the lazy river until the precise moment Mr. Rudd was floating by. Nice! My story is lame, by caparison. But it’s Paul Rudd, so any sighting is worth a mention. My husband, brother and I were in NYC and as we walked back to our hotel one evening we found a small crowd gathered around outside a side entrance of a building.  Figuring something good must be about to happen, we waited. A few people exited the building and the crowd got excited, snapping pics and shouting names. Then I saw him. Paul Rudd, in all his adorable nerdiness, was three feet from me. I swooned, but did manage to snap a pic.

Apart from seeing Paul Rudd naked, (come on, almost!), Blythe has another impressive claim to fame. She’s a native Austinite. Seriously rare! It’s true that few people ever leave this incredible city (and those who do spend their days with tear-streaked cheeks, biding their time until the day they can return). But the fact is, 110 people move here every day – according to Austin Business Journal editor and Cup 41, Colin Pope. Like most people who remember Austin when…, Blythe has mixed emotions. She’s obviously stoked that cool people, like yours truly, have taken up residence in Austin. But the people who are raising the “cool” quotient, are also raising the “traffic is making my blood pressure rise” quotient as well. Might explain the number of stores selling the t-shirt on the left.

Make New Friends, But Keep The Old

I’ve already decided, as an Austin newbie, I’ve got my work cut out for me as I attempt to win Blythe’s affection. She’s so witty. She has excellent taste in celebrity crushes. And she’s an F-bomb dropping poet. I love her. And I want her to like me back. Just as I’m plotting my very best “make her my friend” strategy, she deals this blow: “I don’t have a need for more friends. I mean, I’m not out there shopping for new friends.” Nooooo! It’s like she read my mind and decided to stop me in my friend-making tracks. We were talking about Lance, who introduced us, and she said Lance and her husband had been great friends for 20 years. This lead me to remark on how hard it is to make those deep friendships, as an adult. She agreed with me, said how lucky she felt to have such an incredible circle of pals and that’s when she added, she wasn’t shopping for new pals. We dig into this further a little later, and I must admit, the woman is a genius!

Moments Matter

Blythe tells me she isn’t really a bucket list kind of gal. She says she’s much more moment-to-moment, adding, “I’m not really a looking ahead kind of person – which my 401(k) will prove.” She credits parenthood for that zen like, present minded focus.  She tells me once she had her son – six, almost seven year old Sam, she became determined to enjoy every second.

Something she is looking forward to, though, is a return trip to Disney later this year.  They went once when Sam was just three and Blythe tells me she was hesitant to take him, saying of Disney, she felt like she was “feeding the corporate beast”.  An hour or so into their visit, it was time for the parade. Sam loved Mickey Mouse and Blythe said when Mickey came by, the look on her son’s face changed everything for her. She said, “Sam’s face just lit up – it was beyond joy. Suddenly I thought, ‘This is the best place ever! Just take my wallet, whatever’s in it, it’s yours! I’m 100% sold!'”

Pee Is For Poetry

Blythe is a busy woman. In addition to her most important gig – being a mom, she is a full time technical writer for a biotech company, she is also a freelance writer and editor and she just wrote, illustrated and self-published a book of hilarious poems, called, Something Smells Like Pee. I didn’t get a chance to ask, so I’ll have to wait for my copy of the book to arrive to find out, was the cat pee- laden leather jacket the inspiration of the title poem? Maybe, maybe not.

Me Too!

I wonder what’s something she thinks people might be surprised to learn about her. She tells me, “I am plagued by self-doubt. I put up a good front. The truth is, I question everything I do, all the time. I am constantly having this internal conversation and I have to reassure myself a lot and try to not get bogged down by it.”

I tell her I find it interesting that several people have given that answer, and she jokes, “I guess I should have given a more original answer. See, there I go, now I’m doubting myself.” Which is funny, because her reaction makes me immediately second-guess sharing the observation, and then we’re in the downward spiral of self-doubt.

I don’t want anyone to experience self-doubt. But if I’m being perfectly honest, when someone tells me they struggle with it, my immediate reaction is, “Oh good, it’s not just me.” Having now heard it from countless people, I’d say it’s universal. We all experience it, on some level. It’s been my observation that the people who are open about it, and share that vulnerable truth, are the most authentic. And they are the happiest. Those who keep their armor up, carrying on with the charade of having it all together, those folks are the ones I worry about most. When a smile looks forced and a story feels rehearsed, I know I’m sitting with an unhappy person.

Do Work That Makes You Happy

If happiness were the national currency, Blythe tells me she’d spend her days doing creative work, for herself. She says she loves her job and her clients, but the idea of not being tied down, or beholden to someone else – to be able to write, create art, make music, all for herself – that’s what would make her the most happy.

I ask Blythe if there is a book she’s read that was impactful, or even life-changing. She tells me there is, but it’s not the content that had the impact. The book is Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, by Jenny Lawson. (Which, if you’ve never read it, is hilarious!) Jenny is another Texas author and blogger who Blythe met years ago. In 2011 they were both a part of a show called “Listen To Your Mother” where they, and others, shared stories and poetry about motherhood. Blythe says Jenny’s success with her book made it clear that you could be yourself and be funny and people would buy it, and that inspired her to put her own words out there, too.

Stop! And Listen

The biggest issue facing society today, according to Blythe, is the level of intolerance in this country. She says, “I am constantly baffled, in this day and age, that’s there’s so much hatred and intolerance. Just the other day on Facebook two guys were arguing about an issue and it was obvious that neither was listening to the other. That’s the biggest issue. If everyone would just stop and listen – really listen. There’s just no common ground anymore and that’s totally destroying this country.”

Great advice – I love to hear what advice people have received in life that had an impact. For Blythe, she says it’s “Pretty much anything my mom has ever said. My mom was a single parent and everyday after school and work we’d sit out on the deck and talk about our day. The biggest thing she did, and what I try every day to do with Sam, is that she didn’t just love me, she liked me. She listened to me, cared about me and she thought I was funny. I remember always knowing that my mom enjoyed her time with me. People forget that. It’s important to make a conscious effort.”

Who Really Matters?

What is something Blythe believed to be true for a long time, but now knows differently? “For a really long time it mattered to me, and it still does somewhat, how other people saw me. As I‘ve gotten older though, it matters less. I’m more focused inward and on the immediate people who matter most. For a long time, I thought the more people I brought into my life, the better. But now I know it’s better to have fewer, higher quality relationships instead. It used to be the more people in your social circle, the more popular you were. Now, not so much. I can count on one hand the people who really, really matter. There’s a lot of people I love and care about, but that’s something you learn as you get older – maybe after getting burned. You learn to trust the right people and you are forced to figure out who and what matters most.”

This reminds me of something Brené Brown talks about. She says she carries a one inch square piece of paper. On that paper are the names of the people who matter most to her. There’s only room for five or six names. She keeps it with her to serve as a reminder that what other people think really doesn’t matter. All that matters are the people on the square.

If given 30 seconds to make a speech to the world, Blythe’s message would be: “It’s just all about love and connecting with other people and being open-minded. Being shut off from the ideas and the lives and the experiences of other people is never going to get anyone anywhere. You learn a lot more by listening and learning and being open to what other people have to say, than you do judging and shutting yourself off.”

Wise words. And remarkably, no F-bombs from either one of us. Feel free to insert your own, wherever you see fit.

Although I desperately want Blythe to call me someday to go purse shopping or for a Saturday afternoon Paul Rudd movie marathon, I can completely agree with her assertion that we don’t need more friends – we need to make time and space for friends we have. Who are the five or six people on your one inch square? Write their names in big, bold letters, and next time you find yourself doing something to make someone else happy, check the list. If their name isn’t there, move on. The truth is, you can’t make everyone happy. And the longer your try to disprove that truth, the unhappier you become. Which brings me to one last thought.

Self-doubt is inevitable. It’s happens to all of us and it’s generally not a lot of fun. But it’s what makes us better. We question if what we’re doing is good enough, and by questioning it, we push ourselves to try harder. To do better work. To push out of comfort zones and to experiment with new ideas. Our self-doubt fuels our growth and ultimately builds our confidence. But here’s an important detail. On that one inch scrap of paper, the first name you must write down is your own. Self-doubt is the tool inside each of us that reminds us we are capable of more. Do your best. Every time. Do work that makes you proud. That’s all that matters to the people on the square, and the people on the square are all that matter.

Whether you are on her square or not, Blythe could use your support! Check out her Kickstarter and let’s work together to fund Blythe’s dream! If you don’t have ten bucks to spare, it’s cool. Maybe you can share her video with your friends on Facebook. I know your support would make her smile! 

UPDATE: The Kickstarter is now over. But fear not. You can pop over to Amazon and pick up your very own copy of Something Smells Like Pee.

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