How Surfing Can Make You A Better Mom

me, at the beach in Rockaway

Some people will do anything to stay young.

I am not satisfied with staying young at heart.  I want to be young.

Let me be clear.  It is not my youth that I am chasing.  It is the childlike wonder and simple fearlessness that I want.  That is why I surf.

And of course, in order to be good at it, I run every morning and I take hot yoga classes for strength, balance and focus.   Somehow, the stars and the surf are in alignment here in the Rockaways and it is now reinventing itself as the coolest beach with the skyline of Manhattan just over the bay.  There are yoga classes on the beach during the week, beach tennis, a skateboard park and the big deal of the day is the food vendors along the boardwalk now have a liquor license!

How to Rock the Rockaways

You want to know how to do this?

1. Listen, get up early, get out here around 7:30 am on a Saturday.  At this time you can probably find a parking spot off 96th street in the big lot across from the library.  The A train stop is 96th Street.
2. Walk over to 108 street and set up your yoga mat by the water.  The class is free, usually taught by my friend Helen who is fabulous, and begins at 8:00 am for one hour.  There is no better way to start off your weekend.
3. Afterwards, you can rent a bicycle for the day and cruise up and down the boardwalk.  Check out the surfers at 91 street,  I’ll be there.  You can grab a bite at Rippers – great veggie burgers and juice bar.  My fave is the Dreamcatcher.
4. Find yourself a piece of sandy heaven and relax.
5. Rinse and repeat.

Hey, this is a lot of work but it is so worth it.

Sky and his new surfboard

I am lucky to have a friend to go running with every morning.

I am blessed to have a son I can go surfing with every summer.   He is the reason I paddle out to catch waves and try to hang ten.

Today, I saw him surfing with his friends up around 143 street in Neponsit.  It was a whole scene – lean, tan boys laughing in the tumbling waves out past the first set of breakers, giggling girls in bikinis waving at them.  Getting called in by reluctant lifeguards under the stern gaze of their supervisor and whispering conspiratorially,

“Hey guys, I know you guys can swim out there.  My boss is here so I have to call you guys in.  You know I won’t bother you when he’s not around.  We’re surfers too.”

Sky grabbed his board and his eyes barely flickered a hello as he dashed by me with his crew.  Does that bother me?  I suppose it could but, I surf too.

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Hoong Yee

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Why Thirteen Year Olds Are A Ghostmistress’s Best Friend

my Boo Crew

I had to pinch myself.

I guess not many people think being in enclosed spaces with thirteen year olds is something to go out of your way for but for me, this was the chance of a lifetime to write and be read by the most valuable focus group ever – the kids who haunt the Ghostmistress.  A Boo Crew that keeps growing.

Each week, I posted a part of a ghost story I am writing.  They read it, critiqued it, wrote their own stuff and posted it on the site.  I learned what made them tick, they learned how to be good reviewers in an online community.  We wrote stories, poems and screenplays.  I brought cookies.  Ghost cookies made by my friend and Seth’s carpool buddy, Joanne.

Ghostmistress cookies

Here’s what the Boo Crew looked for:

Dialogue that drives action

Descriptive writing that created a character or a place

Characters that revealed their thoughts

Cliffhangers that provoked curiousity

Characters with complex personalities and unexpected actions

Fast paced stories

Challenges they could relate to such as bullying, being the youngest child, liking someone

I looked forward to seeing the comments the day after I posted each scene.  No matter what I thought of what I wrote, I was always surprised and often startled by their opinions.  Always, always grateful for the chance to have my stuff read by my target audience.

As I work on finishing Ghostmistress this summer, I will imagine a group of blue clad young critics ready to devour the 1000 words I write with a critical appetite.  They have already sharpened my sense of what rings true and what makes a good story they would read.  They have pre reviewed and pre critiqued my young adult story and I am so grateful to them for helping me write a better story.

This makes sense to me.

Need to know what your readers, your audience, your market likes?  Give them a way to tell you.  Let them in on your creative process – a little unnerving, yes, but vulnerability is really appealing.  I created the Ghostmistress site which they took creative ownership of and where they could discuss my story.

How are you connecting with your readers?

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Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

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Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

How To Transform From A Soccer Mom To Surfer Mom

hanging out at Beach 91st Street in Rockaway Beach

I am in love.

This weekend, I took my first surfing lesson and I am in love with surfing.  On Saturday morning,  Seth and I met Fernando, my surfing teacher, at the edge of the jetty just off Beach 91st Street.  We walked back to his house which kind of looks like a tiki hut or a typical surfer’s shack tucked behind a tall beach house just a few blocks off the beach.  I could feel time slip into another pace, the day became one big sunny moment.  Seth settled into his beach chair next to a group of very nice people who decided to be my cheering squad.  They clapped every time I tried to stand up.

“It’s all about finding your balance and controlling your board with your body.  When you feel the wave take your board, jump up and ride.”

That simple directive, so beautiful to watch, is not as easy as it sounds.

“It’s about your arms, your shoulders, your center of gravity.”

Listen, Fernando, its about that and a bunch of other muscles I didn’t know I had. I was on a vintage 60′s long board and wondering how the hell I was going to maneuver it in the water.  I know, lots of arm and shoulder and that pesky center of gravity.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I can see my mom, the evolved Buddhist from Bayside, nodding approvingly.  She likes to remind me about being centered and balanced.  ”In all things in life.  Even on a surfboard.”

Fernando and me

I love sitting on the board waiting for a wave.

Fernando pushed me out and shouted, “Now!”  I waited until I felt the wave move the board.  I actually stood up for a few shaky seconds before tumbling happily into the surf.

Seth brought me a veggie burger from the food stand on the boardwalk when I stumbled on to the sand after my lesson.  You have to dodge skateboarders carrying surfboards and zig zag your way through surfboards and boogy boards to get something to eat but, boy oh boy, is it worth it!  This is the summer of great boardwalk food in the Rockaways.

And the summer I learn how to hang ten.

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Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

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Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

The Art Of Attracting The Customer Investor

I have been thinking about how to build business markets around art.  Around artful products.

Many artists work on pieces and struggle to find an audience or customers.  Their art embodies talent, skill, passion, and time devoted to creating the work.

This is what artists do.  This is why artists starve.

Why?

If finding a market for your work is part of your plan, it should not be the afterthought at the end of the creative process.  Rather, seeking out your market should be part of the early stages of making art.  Art is, after all, an expression of life or vice versa depending on your point of view.  And being creative in the marketing of your art is another outlet for expression.

I think the most successful people in any industry are the risk taking creatives, the ones who break away from the average perception and make their own.  My father was a civil engineer.  Glasses, faraway look in his eyes, lots of mechanical pencils in his shirt pocket.  He dreamed in code, spoke in equations and often left the house wearing two different shoes.  He was not comfortable with the nonengineering world and when he succeeded in patenting one of his inventions, a calculating triangle with multiple functions, he could not sell it.

If I were bold enough back then, and being a good little Asian girl who happened to be bad at math, I might have suggested something like, “Maybe you could show people how it can solve some of their math problems.”  I know I would have jumped at the chance to buy a boxful of them if it could help me pass high school math.  He didn’t understand the need to involve other people at any stage of this – design, ease of use, practical applications, need, etc.

This is why I love this Kickstarter project for the Capture Camera Clip System that I read about on Fred Wilson’s blog.  It neatly illustrates my theory of the customer investor.  Peter Dering, in his engaging three minute video, does the following:

1. engages your interest
2. describes the problem with carrying around a camera
3. tells you what he is doing about it
4. shows you the process
5. gives you a peek into future products
6. appeals to you to help him bring his dream product to reality for $50 and a chance to pre order one

Peter has given the world a chance to look over his shoulder and watch this product become a reality as an investor and to own one as a customer.  I feel like I am more than a credit card transaction.  I am part of a greater success unfolding before my eyes.

And I will never drop my camera again.

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If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

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Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

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Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

Bridges And Castles: A Gift From My Brilliant Father

photo by rqerita

I spent this morning talking to my mom about my dad.

“Remember that car he drove when he was in Texas?  It used to get so hot that he tried to fry an egg on it,”  both of us laughing because that was so like him.   He would open cans of ravioli and vegetables and heat them on the stove for my sister and me when we were little.  Then we would stand by the stove and eat out of the cans.  No pots, no dishes to wash.

Very efficient.

Yes, he was an engineer.  Capable of figuring out amazingly complex things and yet, clueless in the everyday world we lived in.

Now, on Father’s Day, Seth and I were on a trolley crossing a bridge from San Diego to Coronado and the guide said,  “You’ll notice that the bridge has a few odd twists  to it.  That is because it had to be high enough for navy ships to pass under it but that made it too steep for trucks and buses so the bridge so they added a few extra turns and loops.”  I was fascinated.  Then I realized this was exactly how my father felt every time we crossed a bridge that had a unique structure or detail to it.  I remember him pulling the car off the road, not to admire the view, what a silly thought, but to examine the beams of a bridge.  He said there was great beauty in the solution the engineers came to in answering the simple yet difficult problem of how to cross from one side to another.  Form and function fused in a steely poem.  Of course, I thought he was nuts and what on earth could be so interesting about a bridge?

When I think sit down to play through my well worn book of piano sonatas, I feel the same thrill he did.  I often stop and scrutinize the beginning theme, the key changes, the codas and the variations  and come away in awe of how brilliantly Beethoven created his musical answer to the classical sonata form.

And this is something I do whenever I see a structure in life that is beautiful in form and function.  The bridge in San Diego, the well thought out presentation by Jean Bonilla about the potential of entrepreneurship in global economies at the Americans for the Arts Convention this past weekend in San Diego, an etude by Chopin.  I look for the structural thinking and the details that make it soar.   I think like my father, the engineer.

He would smile knowing that I love bridges and how that has helped me see the inner logic of an engineer’s mind as well as the inner castles of a composer’s inspiration.

What a gift.

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If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

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Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?