Two weeks ago I was in Chicago for work. It was a sweet gig. About three hours of visually mapping the Keith Ferrazzi’s keynote (he of Never Eat Alone fame) and a small bit of a digital storytelling workshop.
There was the set-up part: super easy because the folks who hired me were big-time-do-this-kind-of-thing-all-the-time and they had everything covered. I just had to ask them to raise the easels up by about six inches so I wouldn’t have to do squats all day.
If these walls could talk.
The setting for the gig was gorgeous—the old Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, now the Grand Geneva. And I was back in Chicago on a perfect Indian summer day.
I did my thing for three hours. They loved it. And I was done. I spent the rest of the afternoon taking a little hike and sitting by the pool in the sun catching up on some reading. Nice huh?
Believe me, not all my jobs are this cushy. There was the time in DC at the Accenture conference when I did seven murals in one day—more than eight hours solid of listening to every word that was said, visualizing the ideas and organizing them into something that will make sense when people see it later.
My work might not look like its physically intense but it is. Tons of brainpower. Standing up all day. Writing arm over my head a lot of the time. It is athletic in its own way.
That evening I went to my hotel room, put on my swimsuit with the intention of doing a few laps in the pool, propped myself up in bed to check a few emails and didn’t move for the next two hours. I was catatonic at the Ritz.
I finally wandered down to the restaurant in a daze to have a bowl of soup and force some nourishment into my body so my brain might have a chance of working again.
Gigs that are sweet and easy? I’ll take them gratefully.
The cherry on top.
Because there weren’t any shuttles that went from the airport to the Grand Geneva, my client arranged for a car service to drive me. I rode up in the late afternoon, in the back of a town car, reading the Trib which was waiting for me on the seat along with bottles of water. Enjoying the scenery as we got further away from the city and into the farmland of Wisconsin.
The ride home was even better.
Waiting for my town car to show up at the hotel, the bell hops were on alert.
“Your car is here. It’s the white limo.”
I don’t think that’s my car, I said. But sure enough it was. A gorgeous white stretch limo with black leather seats and a groovy bar. I slid into that baby, and wow.
The driver and I started chatting. He wished he had known earlier in the day this was his job because he would have come up early to play a few rounds of golf. I mentioned that I hadn’t had time to see the lake.
“Are you in a hurry? I won’t charge you for it.”
He spun me through town and along the lake while the sun was going down. We toured the town. I felt like a visiting dignitary from behind my sunglasses.
Then he steered toward home (I was staying with family in the suburbs of Chicago where I grew up), rolled up the glass that separated us saying he’d give me some peace and took the scenic route home.
We rode through the rolling countryside of southern Wisconsin. Through little lake towns. Past barns that have stood for generations and farmers markets with their fall harvest. It was unspeakably beautiful.
I put my feet up on the opposite seat. Stretched out in that stretch limo. Soaked in the pride I felt from delivering another fine job. Played all my favorite songs. And most of all let my mind run away with thoughts of special stuff—wonderful, magical things that have already happened in my life and other stuff that I want to make happen or have come to me. It was like a two-hour dreamscape.
The luxury of having that kind of time not to do…..anything…..but daydream? A gift. A totally unexpected gift.
And being driven after a gig? I posted to Facebook that after this I’m going to want to be driven everywhere. I could seriously get used to that.
I was imagining putting that clause into my contract as a rider. No more scary, nasty cabs for me. Only limos and town cars.
The backseat is a wildly creative place.
I realized this is one of the ways that I create. It is almost always true that when I have a large expanse of mindscape in front of me, great ideas rush in. And that happened in the limo. All kinds of new ideas visited me.
Some of the conditions that made this possible:
- I had just completed some successful work. (feeling pride of accomplishment and a sense of relaxation)
- I had just done some profitable networking. (new possibilities percolating, excitement)
- I had nothing to do for two hours. (my to-do list wasn’t nagging at me)
- I wasn’t in front of my computer. (no distractions by other people’s stuff)
- I was in motion. (this is interesting because I often get great ideas when I’m traveling, like literally flying in an airplane or driving down the road)
- I felt like I was on vacation. (being in the countryside put me in a different frame of mind)
A new metaphor: the white limo.
The feeling I got from this limo ride—the specialness of it, the utter peace and relaxation, the novelty, the comfort, the privacy, the space and time to create, the letting someone else do the driving for a change—all these things I want to cultivate more of in my business.
So I’m thinking of ways to give Making Ideas Visible more of the white limo treatment because I need to spend more time in the backseat of a limo. How about you? What’s your white limo?