How do I look?

Perception

Something I learned very young is perception is super important in our lives. It's a powerful motivator with influential and invasive minions which can be detrimental or powerful.

Depending on who you speak to or what the application, the minions of perception are the tools that any self-help guru, marketing professional or sales coach teach. They are the basis of "fake-it til you make-it." These minions are also the key to "professionalism", which includes dress codes -written or not, phone etiquette, vocabulary expectations and diplomacy in the office. We want and need clients to view us a certain way. Public Perception can make or break a company. Much more so now than 10, 20, 30 years ago since we are now required to have a digital world-wide presence.

Again, the way people view us will either propel us forward or leave us hanging.

Family is also a game of perception. It is important to the heads of family how outsiders view the family as a whole because of course that is how they view the head of the household. It is even more important how the extended family views the nuclear family. Weird right? However, this plays out over and over again. There's an underlying competition within families which is won by the parents/guardians who have the most successful and exemplary children. Once again the minions - dress code, circumstantial etiquette, vocabulary expectations and diplomacy within the family are important. The need to maintain the perception of a well-adjusted family sometimes becomes toxic.

Yes, I said sometimes.

The reason behind the "fake-it til you make-it" mantra in business is that it creates productive habits. Keeping a calendar with penciled-in fake appointments creates a habit of maintaining your calendar. Once those appointments are actualized you are already in the habit of consulting your calendar and keeping it up to date. Faking a receptionist until you can hire one, creates an expectation for your clients of going through appropriate channels. Keeping an eye on appropriate fashion and replicating it, (within your means), creates a habit of presenting yourself the best way possible. All of these are equivalent to the productive habits for a healthy family model.

The perception game becomes destructive when its minions are suppressed or when they are let to run rampant. The minions body image, hygiene, self-worth, self-care, competition, etc., when used too often or not often enough create the monsters of Anxiety, Depression, Eating Disorders, Sleep Disorders and Addiction. These monsters can take years to tame, however, they are never truly conquered.

How are you using the minions of Perception? How have they been used on you?

Are you fighting the monsters they create? Did you tame these monsters?

It would seem that this is just the opening of this particular rabbit hole.

So much STEAM!

... and dust and cowboy hats too!

The big show that our troupe worked so hard on premiered at the Wild Wild West Steampunk Convention.

Well to be honest in its beginning it was to be a show specifically for this Con, but it grew to be so much more. But this is what happens with you get a writer like Erin Lausten involved. In short this show is now the beginning of so many more with Short Stories to match!

Walking around on the first day we fell in love with all the creative costuming! Watching different acts and listening to some awesome bands, we drooled with excitement at the possibilities that lay before us. In finding locations for pictures we were awed to be standing in the same places that so many Westerns were filmed. (We giggled when someone behind us noted that one section looked like Tatooine.) In short we were overwhelmed with the ideas swirling around us and we needed to FOCUS!

The Slumber Party Returned

The first night found the three of us that had bunked together at Estrella War bunking together again! Let the giggling ensue...
Oh you bet we were giggling when we were trying to fall asleep. We were so tired from the preparation, packing, traveling and doing some last minute costuming that we were a bit Punchy. We were outright laughing when we thought of Estrella and Ms. DT!

The Giddyness continued

The next day because we stayed up late and got up early. (Early enough that three females could get a shower, get mostly ready for the day and get to breakfast by 9am. Amazing right?) That as we were finishing the last minute grommeting in the hotel room we couldn't help but giggle. AND when we were walking around the the Convention we were not as shy as we normally are when handing out promotional materials. I think we scared a couple of folks at Old Tucson Studios.


Of course the giddyness disappeared when OTS and the directors of WWWCon got their wires crossed with our performance times. We did take it in stride and got the consolation prize of attending The League of S.T.E.A.M. dinner theater. What a hoot! Especially after attempting to eat a 2 foot pizza. (I wish someone had gotten a picture.)

Not a total bust for the first day of our first Steampunk Convention.

There was, of course, two more days left!

Drowning Smurfs...

Giggle Three
(you all are probably getting tired of the dye job stories.. hehehe)

This of course is the continuing discussion of silly things that came up when creating costumes. If you are a friend of mine on a social network you have seen a picture of the whole troupe in these beautiful "peacock" color costumes and every bit of them were made by us! We are so Talented. But I digress.

Trying to come up with something simple, girly and bellydance'ish we zeroed in on wrap pants. There is only one seam right in the middle and the rest is hemming. Fairly simple and we had fabric we could dye in any color already. After deciding on the purple velvet for the ghwazee coats the pants had to be bright to contrast and still be one of the "peacock" colors. The name of the dye we used was Sapphire, but my friend insisted it was Smurf Blue. I didn't care. It was bright, pretty and would get pants on us. (Dancing w/out pants would have made some of the men happy but Not the other dancers.) Thus the bright blue dye on the raw silk pants that gave such an amazing contrast.

One of the fun things that happens when you dye anything, be it fabric or hair, is that you Always end up with some on yourself. I have learned to wear clothing that I don't mind being multi-colored. We try to remember to put on gloves but sometimes they tear. Of course, most of the time the problem is that you are in a rush to get things done and at some point forget to don the gloves. When it comes to me, I just don't care enough to worry about what my hands will look like. (My husband will attest to this as it was true when working on my Mazda years ago as well.) On this round of dyeing I actually didn't get my hands on much so I just had blue nails and some spotting. My friend managed to turn her fingers blue almost to the second knuckle. I was a little jealous, I kind of like getting "dirty" when doing art. Next time I was going to do more.

My friend, who had commissioned work to finish for her business, had more blue things to dye the next day. I noticed on her status update that her fingers looked like she had been drowning smurfs! The image that came to my mind of course is that big cauldron that Gargamel had with smurfs in it trying to get out. The whole time my friend is laughing and pushing them down into the pot. Because THAT is how they all became BLUE!! So really she wasn't drowning smurfs but dyeing them to match our outfits!

(It gets much stranger.)

The following week, we were dyeing the small pieces of our costuming. This included the Peacock Camo armpit covers and the Grilled Peacock veil I wore as a butt cover. (Covering is important to us.) And yes this time I get color on me. I really did put a glove on, but it split right at the bottom. Did I notice? Yes. Did I care. Not one bit. I started out being careful about where I put my hand. As we started having fun really mashing in the color I stopped paying attention. Later on I looked at the "peacock" coloring on the heel of my hand and began to think. If having blue tipped fingers meant you were drowning smurfs then what did peacock coloring on the heel of your hand mean?

Smooshed Peacock!

"I am very sorry sir, but your pet peacock was buzzing in my ear while I was talking. Before I could think about it I just swatted it down and smooshed it."

Wait. Peacocks are too big to just swat down. Hmmm. What if it was a peacock mosquito? No. Female mosquitos are the ones that bite and only Male peacocks are colorful. (Told ya it would get really strange.) Would a hummingbird sized peacock be small enough? YES!

"I was chatting with a friend when a peacock hummingbird came a little too close and mistaking it for a pesky bug I swatted it. I felt really badly when I realized my mistake and am now marked with the colors of my crime."

This lunacy I have only shared now, with you. Don't you all feel special?

This was the point when I realized... I needed sleep.