What’s it like to wear a bespoke suit, a suit custom-made to fit me and only me? I want a life like that. I want a plan, a pattern, a path that takes into consideration all the weird, unruly, shocking, steadfast little and big things that combine to shape me. But how?
“The word bespoke itself is derived from the verb to bespeak, to ‘speak for something,’ in the specialized meaning ‘to give order for it to be made.’”
~ Wikipedia entry for Bespoke
What plan speaks for me? Cookie-cutter solutions need not apply. If I can’t make it fit me, if I can’t make it mine, all mine, then forget it. I’ve scoured office supply stores, art supply stores, read books and websites by goal gurus and earnest cheerleaders of every stripe and found only an elite few who make the cut, including these two…
For the past two weeks I’ve been pulling together a strategic planner for 2010, guided by what artist and business school graduate (a combination that thrills me) Lisa Sonora Beam does for herself every year. Although I’m still creating my plan, the power inherent in the thoroughly self-customized system has already taken me so far further along my way than I’d imagined possible that I’m almost scared to continue. The zoom is palpable. For more about this intensely customizable system, see Lisa Sonora Beam’s “Goal Setting for Creatives: My 2010 Strategic Planner.”
One of the zoomy surprises to burst forth from my 2010 Strategic Planner process is that a friend offered to sponsor my fees for an e-course that seems perfectly designed to help me further custom-make my life: Susannah Conway’s Unravelling: Ways of Seeing My Self, which combines photography, journaling, comrades, Susannah’s strong heart, and the promise of deep self-connection.
The primary goal of both systems is to put me in touch with myself in a way that encourages invention, supports forgiveness and acceptance, and fills the silence with my voice, even if I choose to be quiet. What could be more fittingly comfortable than that?
Related reading: Book | The Creative Entrepreneur, by Lisa Sonora Beam
Flickr photo: (untitled), by bird_flew
4 Comments
Love the word and adore the idea (and putting it into practice)! Off to explore those links … Thank you for sharing!
Oh Grace! What joy I feel for you in this zooooooommmmming!
And of course, you are absolutely positively IMHO RIGHT — who wants an off-the-rack life or one that was made for someone else – or even — eek! — one you find at the thrift store (used, discarded and now on sale cheap!)?! (Nothing against thrift shops, I get a lot of good stuff there, but my life?! I don’t think so!)
Walking along the beach at age 19, deciding if moving out was the correct decision, I had my first epiphany: If I did what my parents wanted and lived at home until I finished college, I would be just like them, the mold would have set. I saw them as “people” not parents, and realized No Way Jose! They are *not* nice people and I do not want to be *anything* like them. I moved out! And am perhaps selfishly proud that I bear no resemblance at my age now to them at the same age. This is *my* life, good and bad but never indifferent.
Am off to check out the links. Thank you so much dear Grace!
Brilliant and just what I needed to read today.
I’ve always steered away from the word strategy as if it was some sort of dirty word. It has such a corporate, masculine, warrior sound to it, at least for me.
I have a different perspective, a new respect for the word.
Really,it is what has been missing all along.
Thanks, Grace
I’m glad this idea connects with you. I would love to know what you discover about creating your own bespoke life-in-planning. I’m willing to believe that there are more bespoke ways and adaptable systems out there that could be added to the mix.