Creative Christmas Card

Y’all … I have no idea where the past 6 weeks have gone. It was Halloween, and now it’s Christmas Eve?! CHAOS. Anyway, I have been writing this article on and off for the past six months, and it finally felt like it was time to hit publish. It’s as close as I get to inspirational - check it out on my Medium blog. And also have the bestest holidays, New Year, and solstice EVER. It’s time to celebrate and rest!!

The Shawn Mendes Curse

I’ve been a Shawn Mendes fan for a long time. I--with only slight embarrassment--am happy to admit to it. See, way back in 2015 his first album came on my Spotify, and I was JAMMING to “Life of the Party”, “Aftertaste”, and “Stitches.” This was before he blew up and became a teen heartthrob and things got weird for me personally, because like being a thirty-year-old man listening to a 17-year-old hearthrob’s JAMS made me feel weird. Also, being at a party and saying “Put on Shawn Mendes!” In 2015 was quite the opposite of cool.

Anyway, because of this early introduction, I’ve been a fan a long time and have supported Shawny through a lot. (The Wonder era, anyone? Anyone?) But my love of Shawn has also been cursed. Legitimately. As you’ll see, I put something into the universe that means anytime I do something remotely Shawn associated, it ends very poorly.

Curse Moment #1: The Tour

This story is important, because it’s also when I pulled two of my other friends into being Shawn fans. One because she liked the music, and the other because he didn’t mind a hot man playing a guitar (Shawn was in his 20s at this point, so the problematicity was much less).

Anyway, in like 2018 tickets went on sale for Shawn’s world tour. I got an email in April for a June show, and I was like “Yes! Let’s go to Shawn Mendes! I hope he plays ‘Life of the Party’!”

I bought tickets thinking the show was 2 months away, only to get the confirmation email and discover THE SHOW WAS IN 2019. LIKE IT WAS 14 MONTHS AWAY.

I knew this was a bad omen, because…who knows what they are going to be doing in 14 months? But I committed. I recruited my two friends to go, and we waited the 13 months to attend.

To absolutely no one’s surprise, I had a work trip scheduled the exact week of the concert. I couldn’t tell my boss, “So, I can’t do this important training because I have Shawn Mendes tickets”, so I had to give my ticket to another friend.

I really think this was the genesis of the curse because I forsook Shawn for a new hire orientation training in San Francisco which was definitely not “Life of the Party” behavior. The music gods must have seen this as blasphemous and cursed all future Shawn events.

Curse Moment #2: The Netflix Livestream

Flashforward two years and Shawn is preparing for an album release. At this point my two friends’ and my love for Shawn had taken an ironic turn. We did like him, but it was also now kind of funny that we planned major events around Shawn Mendes. My fandom had also fallen off when his self-titled 3rd album came out. Not that it was bad or anything, but it just didn’t have the angsty gusto of “Life of the Party”. [Guys, I really love “Life of the Party”.]

But it was a big Shawn moment, so my friends and I (during the pandemic), gathered together, made some food, drank some drinks, and prepared for the Shawn livestream.

And we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

About forty minutes into the livestream, Shawn came onscreen and is like “Oh! I had to shower! Let’s get this going.”

Which…okay…like I know Shawn was the Life of the Party, but if you have a scheduled livestream…be on time? It was the pandemic, what else were you doing, Shawn?

But also, deep inside, I was like “Is this my fault? I’m watching, maybe something happened because I forsook Shawn in 2019. Was there a mysterious, dubious plumbing issue?”

My friends and I watched the livestream, which, top to bottom, was twenty-five minutes long. We then sat back and questioned our fandom. We literally were feeling like girlfriends of the guy who texts at 1 am “U up?” – I mean, if Shawn schedules a livestream, shows up for 40 minutes late, then plays for 15 minutes… you don’t feel that fan value, you know? Kind of felt like he gave us stitches.

Curse Moment #3: Tour 2

When I bought tickets to his next world tour, I was pretty sure things weren’t going to work out. I didn’t blame myself for the anxiety that caused Shawn to cancel 50 shows, but part of me did Wonder (Shawn pawn intended) if I had something to do with it. THE CURSE!

Curse Moment #4: The Concert Movie Film

Which brings us to today. In October, my friend messaged me and our other Shawn friend and asked if we wanted to see his concert movie before his new album release. At this point, I fully knew something was going to happen. The Shawn Curse had been on me for years, and I expected there to be some problem.

First, a side, Shawn tangent:  We got together before the movie for dinner, and never have I ever had so many people engage me about what movie I’m going to see.

Our waiter: “Going to a movie! What are you going to see?”

And, I’ll be honest, not much has changed since 2015, and, if anything, being a Shawn Mendes fan is worse as a 40-year-old man than a 30-year-old man, but we still had to tell the waiter that we were going to see the Shawn Mendes movie.

He literally had no response. He was just like “Oh, okay!” And looked at us (maybe a little pityingly?) and then took away our cheese curd basket.

THEN, we get to the movie theater and the guy taking tickets said, out loud, as if projecting for the whole theater to hear: “THREE FOR SHAWN MENDES!”

I have never had a ticket taker say the name of the movie. Never. We immediately all turned red and were like, “HAHA! Yes, going to Shawn Mendes!”

Anyway, the reason all two of you are reading this: THE CURSE!

Well, you will not be surprised to hear that the movie screening was a disaster. It was supposed to start at 7 and at 7:25 a riot was burbling in the audience. It was largely a collection of millennial women and middle-aged gay men (Did not expect there to be a “type” of us gays that love Shawn).

But, we were talking about what to do, and we decided that we really couldn’t go ask for help. Can you imagine?

Ticket man on his walkie talkie: “Hi! Yes, we have an angry middle-aged gay man complaining because the Shawn Mendes movie isn’t starting.”

It wasn’t worth the risk.

A 19-year-old projectionist did come in (poor girl) and try to explain what was going on after a 30-minute delay. She hadn’t had much coaching in public speaking, because her explanation was something like: “Hi, yeah. My coworker can’t figure it out. But we’re trying. And we may have it going. Or not. I’ll like see if we can get it working. I may come back in. Or not. It may start though. But it may not start.”

She left and my buddy goes, “What in the word salad was that? Does anyone know anything more now?”

This really brought the audience together, because at this point, we were all wondering what we were doing with our lives, waiting 40 minutes in a theater for a Shawn Mendes movie to start.

The movie did flicker on in the next 2 minutes. Not at the beginning, of course, but somewhere in the middle. Eventually, the lights dimmed and we got to watch about 40 minutes of the 90-minute movie.

The movie itself was kind of odd. Editing wasn’t really a thing, so we literally just watched a small show (guitar changes and set reshuffles included). There was an awkward toast for Shawn’s birthday, and then it ended with him humming along with this weird box instrument (a harmonium). It was supposed to be a poignant moment about him finding his voice again, but it was a quarter of the 40-minute edit we saw, so you can imagine how thrilled we were that a concert movie had so few songs and heavily featured a honking box. (I figured out why the goose box was so pivotal the next morning. I listened to the full, new album and discovered that it was 12 songs and 35 minutes long. Honking music box is a great filler if you only have 30 minutes of content.)

When we left the theater, I took the blame.

“It’s the curse! I can’t do anything Shawn related without it ending in disaster!”

My friends were forgiving, but for the greater good, I may have to abandon my Shawn fandom. Honestly, his recent chart failures have probably been my fault. I’ll also take the L for his break up with Camila.

The only thing I’ll keep is “Life of the Party” – man, that song’s good. The curse will have to pry that song out of my cold, dead hands. Or just make me listen to it on the goose box.

Curioser and Curioser

This month in my creative blog, I take a look at how creativity experts are COMPLETELY WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING. Lol, jk! But a lot of times creative tips jump right into “discovery” without considering people’s natural interests. Which makes the creative process harder! Check the post out here.

Return to Office

It finally happened. After 4 years of work from home, the boss man finally told us to return to the office.

I'd like to defend the decision as strategic or part of our development as pawns--er, sorry: business resource units--but sadly we didn't get much guidance throughout the process. In an Ask Me Anything, someone asked a leader, "When all research points to a loss of productivity when return to office initiatives are launched, why do we think this will be beneficial?" They responded with, "That won't happen here!"

I hope there is as little reliance on data when the decreased productivity metrics do come in.

But this isn't a post to complain about my job. If that does interest you, please join me around the water cooler in the office.

But IT'S WEIRD TO BE BACK, Y'ALL.

After years of being home all day, every day, it's bizarre to shower, get dressed, and then sit in a room with 200 people typing on computers.

The uncanny valley only deepens when you realize that most people come in to take video calls with people 3 time zones over while sitting next to other people taking video calls with people 2 time zones over.

One day, I didn't even see any coworkers as I took video calls and trekked from conference room to conference room. I got back upstairs in time to wave good-bye to everyone and tell them, "See ya tomorrow!" I could have done that all...not in an office.

There's also the weirdness of constantly being around other humans again. It's like we've all been put back in a zoo after years on the savannah.

The most horrible incarnation of this is the bathroom which, for an office with 200 people (100 men), is VERY small. It's also somehow in a vacuum and completely void of sound, except when you happen to sit down on the toilet and make ANY sound, which then explodes with a compression ring of violent sonic waves that shakes the entire office building.

This odd office sound disturbance carries over to the chewing that happens at desks. Somehow, with headphones on and Taylor Swift blaring, I can still hear someone eating a bagel three desks over.

That's not even to mention the personal weirdness that I never realized staying at home all the time.

See, the last time I was in an office, I was a sprightly youth in my mid-30s. I still had collagen in my skin and balanced pH levels.

Now, a mere week after returning to the office, I looked in the mirror after making a cacophony in the bathroom and noticed that my skin was covered in dry flakes. I literally looked like I was the man at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Was the water cup in the shared kitchen a false grail? Because it appeared that I was rotting.

And then, to just make it brief, I also am way more stinky than in my youth. I now have to buy Gold Bond and spray down with cologne before leaving the house.

Like what happened? I knew wrinkles happened as you aged, but I didn't realize that your body just kind of became a husk of sadness.

But here we are!

But honestly, my body decaying and office sound paradoxes aside, going back to the office hasn't been that bad. I missed the free cheese sticks, and I am way less of a slug than at home. Instead of taking a meeting and rewarding myself with 35 minutes of doom scrolling, I now grab a coffee or chat with humans. Which is probably actually great for a stinky corpse who makes a lot of noise in the toilet.

And everyone seems to have a much better relationship with work. When I was more supple and less stanky, I would grind for nine hours a day, five days a week all while my boss was still like, "But why aren't you working, though?"

So here we are! And it could be worse! Which, really is the rallying cry of the Millennial. Everything's fine, at least until the next recession or pandemic or unprecedented time or election. In which case I hope that the world will continue to still produce Gold Bond and cheese sticks, because, if not, it could start to get really ugly.