When big ideas come before big money

Emily and I have been talking about where we can take Lane Change. We started Lane Change to kick off our “Winter B-icicle Challenge” but were careful to chose a name that was only vaguely linked to bicycles, thereby giving us the capacity to expand. After all, the two of us are not bike nerds. We’re environmentalists. We’re activists. We believe in change, in a better world. And the bike thing is just one battle in a bigger war to “win hearts and minds.”

Now we’d love to make a living out of Lane Change so we can dedicate more than just a few hours a week on it. But when we got talking suddenly the “how to make money” question began to dominate the brainstorm.

At some point I stopped and said, “Emily, if money was no option, what would you like to do?”

It’s kind of the same with this writing group I belong to, in which every week someone from the group submits a short story for the rest to critique. And the thing I’ve learned recently is that it’s important to first ask yourself, before you’ve written a single word, what is this story really about? What is the big picture theme? Because if you want to really create something meaningful, something great, there needs to be BIG IDEA behind it. Otherwise it’s just shadows and glitter.

In the bio-pic about gay-rights activist Harvey Milk, it’s clear that for Harvey he was not driven by a thirst for power or the prestige of a political career. “Politics is theater,” he says, and he used it only to further a greater cause: the acceptance of gay people in a then incredibly hostile environment. For Harvey it was the gay movement first, and politics second. And without the former, the latter had no meaning.

And that’s how Emily and I need to think. We need to ask ourselves, what do we want to achieve, how do we want to change the world? And then work out how to fund it.

Which is the opposite to how a businessman might think. They search for business opportunities. They first think, what can make me money? And the impact that it has on the environment and society is a secondary issue, or in some cases, not an issue at all.

The woman from HR with the sparkly face

Evan from work and I are slightly obsessed with the woman from HR. She is the most beautiful woman in the office, and yesterday I was telling Evan about I how bumped into her in the kitchen.

“She turned around in one swoop and all these sparkles and rainbows and flying unicorns were shooting out from her face. It was marvelous.”

Evan tells me that when she speaks Chinese to him it’s like hearing music and he can barely concentrate on what she’s saying. He just melts under her gaze. Once he organised a meeting with her to “talk about a few things in his contract he didn’t understand” but it was entirely a farce. He just wanted an excuse to see her.

The woman from HR is pretty mysterious. She doesn’t really mix with everyone else, just lists away in the HR ivory tower, keeping all that gorgeousness to herself.

I bet she smells like flowers and her skin tastes like candy canes.

It’s funny the way Evan and I can both be overwhelmed by her beauty but for me there’s no sexual attraction. And in that I can only assume that he and I feel different things when we see her. Namely, the amount of excitement happening between our legs differs between him and me.