Making a Career, 3 (Maybe)

Okay.  Let’s get back on track with a quick update.  Then, who knows?  Maybe I’ll start writing more. You never know!

My site went live at the end of March.  I think the first download was the night of Sunday, March 24.

After the first 2-3 days, I had about $600 given for the special.  By the end of March, I had about $650 total.

In the month of April, I had a total of about $200 donated.  So as of this writing on May 1, the special is worth $852.

I like saying it that way.  Because however much money is paid for it...that’s what it’s worth.  There’s no arguing that point.  Maybe later, it will be worth more.  But I love that you can’t argue with the facts.  And in this case, the facts are very public.

$852.  83 people have chosen to pay for it.  And it’s been viewed 221 times.  As of May 1, 2013.  After 5 weeks.

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This month will be interesting.  Because as of this week, I consider my site to be ready.

The special has been available for the past month.  But for the past 5 weeks, you haven’t been able to watch the special for free.  You weren’t allowed to watch any of the special unless you paid for it first.

That model may work for an artist who already has a huge body of work, like Louis CK.  Anybody paying $5 for a new special of his can feel fairly confident, knowing roughly what to expect.  They have a pretty good idea of whether or not they’re going to enjoy it.  For most of them, that’s why they ended up there in the first place.

In my case, I’m going to be asking people to watch my special largely on faith.  For friends and peers, they have seen my body of work over the past ten years.  And so some of them felt comfortable supporting me, and paying for my product before seeing any of it.

But a huge part of this experiment is spreading my comedy to people who have never seen or heard of me before.  Unlike Louis or other more-famous comedians, I can’t succeed and survive, unless I build up my audience and my fan base.

And that’s what the first month is for.  To figure out the core problems and flaws that my idea had.  Within a week or two, I knew something was amiss.  I remember having the conversation in my kitchen with someone (I forget their face but remember their insight).  They pointed out the obvious:  strangers aren’t going to pay me money before they know who I am.  It’s a silly idea.

I had a few other minor issues with the site, but that was the biggie.  People have to be able to watch before they decide to pay.

Pictures make it easier to keep reading

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It took longer than I would have liked, but my web guy made the changes, and now that’s the case:  “Undone” is available to view, for free, on brysonturner.com .  And people can decide - before, during, or after - how much they want to pay for it.

I thought my plan would be to get everyone to watch my special at once.  But now, I realize there is a Phase 1 and a Phase 2 to the process.

Phase 1 was releasing the special, and letting friends, family, and peers know about it.  I feel like that phase has been a great success, even if at times, I’ve let fear get in the way of telling people about it.

Phase 2 begins now:  actively putting bits and pieces of the special into the world, and trying to get strangers to discover it.

Phase 1 was like playing Golden Eye and trying to shoot people with a gun you found.  Phase 2 is going to be like setting as many proximity mines as I can, and just waiting for people to run past them and get blown up by them.  And don’t feel bad - you either get that reference 100 percent or not at all.

Greatest multi-player game ever?  Yeah.  FUCK YOU, HALO

Phase 2 is cutting individual bits from the special into YouTube clips, and posting them online.  It’s sending those clips to blogs and websites that deal directly with those topics.  So if I have a bit about the Red Sox, that means sending a clip of that specific bit to every sports website, every Boston website, and every Red Sox blog I can find a link to.  It means doing the same thing for my bit about NASA, and space, and Neil Armstrong.  It means doing the same thing for my bits about New York City.

It means creating memes on Reddit.  It means posting the videos on there, and explaining what I’m doing, and why I think this could be a really important thing.

It means thinking outside the box, in terms of how to get the word out about this special.  It means cutting together a preview for the movie, showing every clip of me referencing American Literature, and then sending it to every nerdy pro-grammar and pro-English Lit blog I can find.

Most of whom probably aren’t huge fans of “stand-up comedy,” as they know it.  So if they find me and enjoy what I do, then I won’t have to split the money they pay for stand-up with the rest of the comedy industry.  Instead, I’ll get 100 percent of that new money.  Money that never would have been spent in our industry, if it weren’t for me.
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That’s the money that’s going to let me make a living at this.  That’s the money that I’m going after.  I don’t want to take any money away from another comic.  I want to bring money, and attention, and respect, to this art form that wasn’t there before.

Will that happen?  I have no idea.  The answer has to be probably not.  Because it hasn’t happened yet. But nothing happens until it’s happening.  So...screw it.  I think it can happen.  I think I have something of value.  My friends seem to agree.  But what about the objective people?  The people who aren’t rooting for me to succeed?

I have no idea.  But Phase 2 is when we start finding out.

I just have to try my best.  That’s all I have to do.  If I do that, I can live with any result.  I’m scared.  But I’m also curious.  So far, the curiosity has won out.  I hope it keeps fighting.

Wish it luck.  It’s May 1, 2013.

If you didn’t know I have a lazy eye, congrats on being the last one to the party.

What it Feels Like to Bomb a Montreal Showcase

It sucks.  A lot.

If you want more detail, here’s my story from last Thursday.
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Everything was lining up.

I’ve been doing stand-up for ten years now.  The past four, I’ve showcased for the Montreal Just for Laughs Festival, which is the most prestigious comedy festival in North America, and probably the world.

I was nervous for most of the week, but going into the showcase, I felt really good.  I loved the jokes I had, and I loved telling them.  They’d been consistently doing great at shows.  I prefer a conversational style, but I had my setlist and knew what I wanted to say.  I felt armed and ready.  Whether I wanted to be saying it or not, the message in my head was obvious:  “This is your year, Bryson.  This is your year.”
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Showcases and competitions are always something of a crapshoot.  There’s always a chance of getting screwed over by things outside your control.  You go up first, before the crowd is really warmed up.  Or you go up last, after they’re all “laughed out.”  Or the person before you will ruin the vibe, after they close with their “blacks shouldn’t ride bikes” bit, and everyone spends half your set trying to figure out if they were serious.

I’ve had those things happen.  But not Thursday.  I was scheduled to go up 6th, right in the sweet spot of the show.  The host was good, the energy was high.  The other performers were doing well, and the crowd was into it.  As they say:  Everything was coming up (insert name here)!

And then the set started.

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Sometimes, when you walk onto a stage, it’s like passing through a portal.  It’s bizarre.  Everything made sense ten seconds ago:  your jokes crushed, you were hilarious, you knew you were funny.

And then you get up there, and something’s off.  Something’s different.  It’s almost like a horror movie, when you first walk down to the basement.  You just sense something is wrong.  Before you even have a reason to.

That was my Montreal set.  It felt off from the first moment.  I teleported to a parallel universe - a place where my jokes were flat, and I delivered them with no passion whatsoever.  I was standing onstage, telling my jokes, while in my head I was frantically looking for energy.  “I gave a shit about these jokes TWO MINUTES AGO!!  WHERE THE FUCK DID IT GO???”  It felt like being late for work, and not being able to find my keys.  Except if you had 100 bosses, and they were all watching you look.  

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The response to my set wasn’t negative, per se.  It was worse.  The crowd was just...patient.  They didn’t hate me.  They just didn’t care.  I wasn’t a person to them.  Just a series of jokes.  The set wasn’t a cohesive, 6-minute introduction to who I was.  It was a series of observations they chose to take or leave, like a buffet.  “New York is tough? Sure, I’ll have some.  You feel old at 29?  No thanks, I’ll pass.”  

The momentum never came.  The whole set felt like driving with the emergency brake on.  As soon as I let off the gas, the set didn’t coast at all.  It was right back to zero.  And I had to start again.  It felt herky-jerky, and I can’t imagine it was a fun set to watch.

Your brain does funny things when you’re failing onstage.  You want to focus on your set - logically, that gives you the best chance to get back on track.  But at some point, against your will, your brain splits off into two parts.  You set your performance on “auto-pilot,” and you start thinking about why things are going so poorly.  Like your brain goes into the locker room for a half-time pep talk, even though your body is still on the field, getting its ass kicked.

(inside head)  “--What the hell is happening out there?  We’ve been doing this ten years now.  We can’t even crush a simple Montreal showcase??  Are we ever going to make it, if we can’t even figure this out?  Hold on, gimme a second--

(out loud) “And then she says, ‘We won’t know for GENERATIONS!!’”  (crowd is silent)

(back inside head)  “--Jesus Christ. Even the A stuff is getting nothing.  Have I been terrible this whole time?  Have I been doing mics with just my friends at them?  How long has it been since I did a black room?  How many foreigners are here?  Is that the problem?  Why couldn’t I have gotten a spot on that showcase a week ago?  That one went great.  Can I really be this bad?  Hold on, be right back--

(out loud)  “--and some Tutsi says, ‘Come on man, that’s pretty racist.’”  (polite chuckles)

And back and forth it goes.  Until all you want to do is stop your set and say, “Listen.  I just want you all to know, that I know, that this isn’t going well.  And I’m not usually this bad.  Seriously.  I swear.”

But I didn’t.  I just plowed through.  Bombing my showcase felt like being paralyzed - trying to communicate a message with my mind, even though I wasn’t allowed to use my body.   It was a combination of helpless and worthless.  And I kept my smile plastered on throughout it.  It was one of the worst feelings I’ve had in ten years of doing comedy.

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I took a lot of advice from Patrice O’Neal, in the time I got to spend with him.  He once said no one is really a comic, until the morning after they think their career is over.

Yep. Another visit from the Ghost of Patrice.

I didn’t understand him at the time, but it makes perfect sense now.  We’re all consumed with becoming something -- successful, famous, envied.  We all have grand plans for how it’s going to play out.  We all have our movie script in hand.

And then the world doesn’t read its lines right.  And we freeze.  Offended that the world betrayed us.  We were owed the storyline we wrote for ourselves.  What the fuck, world!?  DID YOU EVEN READ THE SCRIPT I GAVE YOU??

It’s not that I was “betrayed” by Montreal, or “the industry,” or whatever other scapegoat I could try to find.  I screwed up by presuming I knew the script.

Truth be told, I’ve gotten something out of all four of my Montreal showcases.  I’ve grown from each of them, and I’m a better comic four times over.  I look forward to many more auditions, and showcases, and competitions, before I hang up my mic stand once and for all.  Some will go great.  Some will go terribly.  They will all be part of the fabric that makes up my career.  And ten years in now, that career is part of what makes up my life.  My Montreal bomb is part of who I am.  

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I woke up Friday morning, script ruined.  Exposed as a fraud.  I was not the hero I thought I was.

Without realizing it, I gave myself a week to mourn.  I’m sure some people take longer.  I’m sure some people never bounce back.  I don’t blame them.  I get it.  It feels nice to succeed in life.  When you don’t, it really knocks the wind out of you.  Especially when you fail at one of the core things you take pride in.  It’s getting punched from the direction you’re leaning into.  It’s a crushing blow.

But being a comic isn’t so much about going to Montreal.  It’s about not going to Montreal.  It’s about all the things you fail at.  And then you get up the next morning, and you feel like shit.  And then you keep going to mics.  And you keep doing shows.  And you keep trying to figure out why you can’t settle into a 6-minute showcase set.

You just keep going.  That’s what makes you a comic.  You keep going.

I don’t know if I’ll ever do the Montreal Just for Laughs Festival.  But if I do, I’ll take their advice, and treat it like a festival.

festival (noun):  

1.  A day or period of celebration.  

2.  An annual celebration or anniversary.

If I ever do Montreal, I will enjoy it.  Because it is not guaranteed.  There is no script.

Losing Someone That You Kind of Knew

I just found out that a friend of mine, Emily Singleton, just died tragically from falling into the train tracks at Canal Street. She was a person that I hung out with at Tea Lounge, and she would watch me host/perform and she’d be a great audience member. She was someone I connected with.

News Article: http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20130408/tribeca/body-on-canal-st-tracks-identified-as-22-year-old-from-park-slope

This news jarred me. Whenever you find out that someone you know has died, it’s jarring. But this hit me for a couple of different reasons.

For starters, Emily was a beautiful person, in every sense of the word. She was magnetic and positive. She was like me in a beautiful woman’s body. She was just a delight to be around.

But also, I didn’t really know her at all.

I didn’t know she was an actress. I honestly didn’t even know her last name. The news told me that. We even had a running gag together that she would remember my name and I would always forget hers. Mostly due to the fact that when you perform, you’re always introduced with your name. So she heard my name a lot. Emily never performed so I didn’t hear her referred to by name that often. 

I mostly ever saw her at Tea Lounge. We would have conversations that told us that we were people that got each other, but never went too deep into the levels in which we did. Most of that is on me. I think I was intimidated by her beauty and therefore didn’t try to go deeper. Which sucks, because she made it abundantly clear that she was a big fan of mine. For me personally, female validation is a thing. It’s probably one of my weaknesses, in a sense. I care about what women think. And Emily thought I was cool.  

Or I may be romanticizing our level of connection now that she’s gone.

But I don’t think I am because I recognize the reality, which is that we didn’t knoweach other. She knew certain things about me from watching me perform, but I never really got to know her. Where was she from? I don’t remember. Family situation? No idea. In my world, she was a background character that was maybe going to be a breakout character for me a couple of seasons down the road. Now I’ll never know. 

If one of my best friends died, I’d be really sad. But I’d also know that I had established a very real and complete connection with that person. With someone like Emily, I have no idea. How high did the ceiling of our connection go?

And maybe it wouldn’t have even been romantic. Maybe I would’ve gotten to know her better, confessed love to her that wasn’t reciprocated and felt weird about it for a week. Maybe she’d just be another one of my hot female friends a la the great Kaytlin Bailey. Or maybe we’d have had an awesome relationship somewhere down the road when I had more of my shit together. 

But no, that’s not what happened. What happened is exactly what was supposed to. And I don’t mean that in a cruel way, there are people who actually knew Emily and loved her very personally (I love her unconditionally as I do everyone). But in the sense that any scenario of a possible future I put in my head will now clearly be incorrect. We were friendly acquaintances.

That word “acquaintance” sounds so shitty, doesn’t it? Just so hollow and devoid of human connection. But in this case, it wasn’t that. Emily and I’s relationship was hinged on 3 decent conversations, and a half dozen mild interactions. But I enjoyed all of them. I hope she did too. 

R.I.P. Emily Singleton, a great person that I kind of knew

Making a Career, 2 (Maybe)

In two days, my special “Undone” has made $428.

What?  That’s incredible.  That’s $428 of real money.

And that’s after just 40 streams, and a total of about 80 plays.  The people who have watched thus far have been incredibly kind with their support.  Which is encouraging.

Ballin!!

When Louis CK dropped “Live at the Beacon Theater” last year, the hype surrounding the release had largely built up before he made it available on his website.  That allowed him to make over a million dollars in the first two days.

I didn’t go into this expecting to have a CK-level of success.  Obviously.  But I didn’t know what to expect.  Would I make $5 back?  A hundred dollars?  A thousand?  I just had no idea what to expect.  I still don’t, really.

Basically, I went into this with a 3-special plan:  one special in 2012, one in 2013, and one in 2014.  Then we’ll see where we’re at.

I’ll take a loss on this first special.  Turn a small profit on the second one.  And be able to support myself full-time with my specials, by the third one.  Which would basically be from 2015 on.
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Well...that’s the plan, anyway.  Plans are mostly meaningless, of course.  Things change.  Situations evolve.  But that’s the plan I have.

Having a plan is helping me not to worry.  This first special isn’t about making money, as much as it’s about letting people know I exist.  I’m a no-name comic.  As in, I’ve never been on television, I’ve never been in a film.  I’ve never even done radio.  I’ve never headlined a club.  I’m just an open-mic comic.

But I think I’m becoming a pretty good one.  And I think if people saw what I do onstage, a lot of people would enjoy it.  And they’d be willing to pay a few bucks to hear what I have to say about the world.

But that’s pretty tough, when you don’t have anything for people to look at.  If people don’t know I exist, it’s hard for them to support me and and products I’m offering.

So for this special, I figured most of the money I make back will be from people who know me personally.  At least part of the money I make for this first special will be more a showing of support for me, as opposed to the special itself.  Which I’m okay with.

But it’s not a good long-term strategy, if I want to make my living doing this.  Even if my friends genuinely love what I’m doing, they can’t be the only ones supporting it.

Thanks for the support - SUCKERS!!!

I need to build my fan-base.  It doesn’t mean much to make 100 grand, if my parents donate 98 of it.  In the long-term, I can’t be the one that makes money.  My stand-up needs to.  I think it could, if people knew about it.  This first special is all about laying the groundwork.  It’s about starting to find “my people.”  It’s about finding the people who will watch “Undone” and say “wait a second...why isn’t there more of this out there?”
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So for me, the two-day total of $428 is awesome.  But it really just represents how great my friends are, and how much they support me.  It’s them complimenting me, in a way.  It’s them saying “You’re working very hard, Bryson, and we’re proud of you.”

Honestly, what’s more exciting are the compliments they’ve been giving the special itself.  Here are a few, from the couple dozen people who have watched it so far:

“Amazing.  I literally felt like I was there.  An intimate feeling you would Never get from a (TV) special.” -- Tyler Fischer  (fellow NY comic)

“You should feel immensely proud of this special.  I don’t know if this makes sense, but this special is you on film.”  -- Kevin Froleiks  (fellow NY comic)

“honest, patient, hilarious.. an example of the truth that lies within the world of stand-up comedy.”  -- Stephanie Simbari (LA comic)
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Wow.  Right?  That’s incredible.  Put that shit on my tombstone.

I may top out at $428.  Maybe that’s all this first one will make.  And maybe my second one will make even less, because my friends already showed their support once, and so they pass on the second one.  And maybe the third special will make a grand total of six dollars.

I don’t know.  I don’t know what the future holds.  But I know in two days, my special has gotten some of the highest praise I could ever hope for.  From some of the people I respect the most.  It’s made people happy.  It made one friend - after watching it at the end of rough day - send a text saying “thanks for keeping me company.”

Tell me what else I’m supposed to do before I die.  I’m fresh out of ideas.

Oh - and it’s made a little money, too.  I have no idea what the next few years look like, for this whole experiment.  But these past few days have been pretty cool.

Ballin’ (quietly)

Making a Career, 1 (maybe)

(Note:  I started working here a month ago.  This is what I looked like then)

And here I am now:

A little less hair.  But the same basic reality:  working as a receptionist.

Volunteering as a receptionist, to be exact.  At an office building in Manhattan.  Corner of 37th and 7th Avenue.

Why am I volunteering?  Well, first of all, this way I avoid the dreaded “job interview.”  I can just come in, do my job, and leave.  I never have to explain what my 3 best qualities are.

But mostly, I’m here because it’s a coworking space that’s shared by tech start-up companies (i.e. smart, young, rich internet people).  I first got involved here because of the non-profit I help with, Resolve Network.  But as I’ve hung out here, I’ve learned about the internet, how to make money on it, and a bunch of other nerdy things I never thought I’d find out about.

I wouldn’t have my new website without this place.  This was a big step in learning how to sell a special online.  I feel comfortable talking business now, and it feels reasonable that within a year or two, I’ll be making my living online.  Which is - as far as I can tell - where most of the comedy money is headed.  

So I’m following the money.  Because I want to make my living as a performer.  As a comic.  And so I’m volunteering at a tech start-up coworking space (I’m still not 100% sure I’m saying that right).  To help make that a reality.

I might be crazy.  I might be throwing away a chance at a real career in comedy, by investing in connections with all the “wrong people,” and trying to “go it alone.”  

I’m not trying to “go it alone,” for the record.  Just not presuming someone else will do things for me.  So I’m here, at this office, which looks like the last place a comic should be.  The people I know here, the people I spend time with here - they can’t help my comedy career.  They can’t get me into any clubs.  They can’t do anything for me - comedically.  Half of them have never heard of Louis C.K.

So maybe I’m screwing up bigtime by having spent so much time here.  I took two months off from performing in November and December.  I called it my “off-season.”  I spent a lot of that time hanging out with the tech people here.  Plotting out the next 5 years of my career.  The next 25 years.  Setting up a system of sustainable financial success, pouring in directly from my comedy.  Which should be the only source of income I need, within the next two years.

Or so I claim.

I bet I looked awfully lazy to anyone living by the traditional model of what a “comedian” is.  And maybe they were right.  Time will tell if my investment was a good one.  Personally, I’m kind of excited to see if I’m crazy or not.  

And that’s exactly it:  I’m fascinated by my own life.  The choices I’ve been making the past few years - I find my life absolutely riveting right now.  And I don’t know a better scent to follow, on the path of life.

Even if it means waking up at 6 in the morning.  Or potentially being seen as the comic who threw away their golden ticket.  Go ahead and call me crazy.  It’s a compliment to me, at this point.  I mean, if it turns out I’m “crazy” this whole time?  What a show to have a front-row seat for, right?

Once more, with feeling

Small Progress is Never Bad

Things are going very well.  In life.  Stand-up is a part of that.  But things are just going really, really well right now.

This move to New York was perhaps, all things considered, the best decision I’ve made in my life.  It has led to everything.  The people I’m around are incredible.  I’m surrounded by the greatest minds and greatest bodies in the world.  Both of which are more important than I realized, before I moved here.

I love everyone.  I hope I get a chance to explain why, before I lose this collective form and become a part of everyone and everything else.

Anyway - have a good Monday.

How I Learned To Love Everyone Unconditionally

It's occurred to me that this whole "Loving Everyone Unconditionally" business is important enough to warrant a full blog about. Because people seem to have questions. Understandably. So I'll share what my journey has been thus far.

After smoking weed with Bryson back in September, a calming sense of peace and understanding washed over me. It was a spiritual awakening that changed my life. It filled me with so many thoughts and so much perspective I was overwhelmed in documenting it all.

A month later, I started introspecting about how I had acquired this new sense of peace. I realized that my sense of self worth was not driven by ego, but by an acceptance of my flaws. I saw my flaws as the thing that made my fragile existence beautiful. It's the struggle of trying to live a good life while being flawed that is true beauty. Some think the goal is to be flawless, but if one is flawless, one does not need to struggle. But the human struggle to live well with this heavy load of flaws that we have no choice but to burden...that's beautiful.

I started looking at myself objectively. "Look at me wanting to connect to people without hurting them or myself. Look at me wanting to be honest but being afraid of what people think. Look at me knowing that I have to make mistakes, painful mistakes, in order to grow. But being willing to."
"Look at me with my food addiction and my fear of women and resentment of my father...but trying to overcome. Look at me trying."

That's when I realized that I didn't love myself in spite of my flaws, I loved myself because of my flaws. And I realized that made my love for myself unconditional.

But of course, we're all flawed. So why would my unconditional love stop with one flawed being? Any being that's flawed is in the same boat I am. Why would I judge someone for having different flaws than mine? Why would I not love their flaws as my own? Since after all, we're all one.

Which, by the way, is as cliche as is necessary because people don't understand that until they're ready to. That goes for anything. Anything you don't understand, it just means you're not ready to yet. Which is fine. It's beautiful. Reading/hearing "we're all one" won't mean anything to you until it does. I heard "We're all one", a lot growing up. I understood it 5 months ago.

I'm tempted to get very metaphysical and eastern philosophical here but I won't. What I'll say is I understood that there were no "levels" of flaws. Because I didn't choose to be me. No one chose to be themselves. You don't choose your race, gender, nationality, culture, age, who your parents are or even your own genetic makeup. I realized we all live circumstantial lives. So why would I judge a person born into circumstance? My circumstances are fortunate. I could've been a pedophile, or a murderer, or an ethnic cleanser. I still could be, technically. If I just started doing those things. But my circumstances haven't led me there.

Lucky me, I've got food addiction. You won't get put in a cage for that.

So at this point the unconditional love I had for myself permeated outwards towards everyone I met. I saw their flaws as beautiful. And I loved them because of their flaws. And since I understood that we're all flawed, and we all struggle through this fragile existence that life is, I loved everyone unconditionally.

I don't take anybody's flaws personally. If you hurt me, I'll get it. It was probably unintentional. Most people don't want to hurt others. People in my life don't. If you're surrounded by people that do, you need to ask yourself why that is. Because everything in your life that shows up shows up because of the energy you put out. If you're attracting negativity that's what shows up.

But even an amazing person can lose their way and hurt intentionally. If you hurt me intentionally, I still get it. You're flawed. You're probably hurting, yourself. Or maybe I hurt you in some way. We're fragile creatures interacting, these things happen. I'll still love you. There's nothing to me that's "unforgivable."

Including myself. Whenever I overeat, I step back, forgive myself and try to stay present. That's the other thing I can't stress enough: Loving unconditionally starts with loving yourself unconditionally. It's a hard process. Start with forgiveness and acceptance of self. Treat yourself gently. The golden rule is "treat others the way you want to be treated", but a lot of people are harder on themselves than they are on others. Many people's compassion extends to others more than themselves. You wouldn't call your fiend a piece of shit for being on the internet all day instead of writing (or whatever). But you will get down on yourself, in your own head. This inward negativity permeates out eventually. So if you have to, reverse the golden rule: "Treat yourself as gently as you treat others."

So, that's basically it. I love my flaws. I love everyone's flaws. I love everyone unconditionally. 

My sister taught me this symbol. I like it a lot. Unconditionally.