The Director of the Sundance Film Festival , John Cooper , told a true story as he introduced the documentary “Cane Toads: The Conquest.” 

Every year, the Sundance Institute  conducts filmed interviews with over a dozen directors whose films are featured in that year’s festival. In 2000, Mark Lewis  was one of the chosen. His documentary that year was The Natural History of the Chicken.  At the end of these interviews, the directors are usually asked, “What do you think you’ll be doing in ten years?”  Mark replied, “I’d like to do something on the cane toads of Australia.” 

It’s exactly ten years later, and Mark’s 3-D documentary on cane toads is here at Sundance.

Isn’t that a wonderful example of intention in action?  Name it and claim it? What you can conceive and believe you can achieve? What you think about you bring about? (Add your own cliche here) 

Intention is a powerful thing.  What intentions are setting up root systems and taking hold right now?  What will blossom ten years from now?

Kids had chores, and were expected to exercise some creativity, ingenuity, and enterprise to earn their own money.  I can’t remember when I wasn’t busy.  I usually had more than one job – even in high school, I was working at a radio station and a newspaper.  I have always worked, seldom taken vacation or days off, and there were many years when I worked seven days a week, as many as 20 hours a day.

I just quit.

I’m on sabbatical as of this day, and for the first time in my life, I have delegated almost all of my professional obligations to trusted colleagues.  There’s some business I wasn’t able to wrap up before 2009 ended, and I’ll make sure that’s done.  I’ll go to conferences and other special events – Sundance Film Festival and TED2010 are next, followed by a Women Moving Millions event that features a Dinner Party with Judy Chicago. (If you are a woman of a certain age, this news probably triggered a hot flash.)

Last year, our priest, the Reverend Bernadette Sullivan, took a sabbatical from her duties.  When I told her I had thought of taking a sabbatical, but something always came up to prevent it, she said, “And something always will unless you put it in the calendar and begin planning for it.”  So I did.  And now it’s here.

Which is my first coaching tip for you in the New Year:  Something will always get in the way of what you want, unless you make a commitment and take action. 

I made a commitment to myself to take some time – for the first time in my life – to consciously do nothing.  I am going to try not to try.  My first yoga teacher used to try to impress upon me the importance of not “efforting” in the poses.  “It’s very difficult for overachievers to simply let the yoga happen, to not work hard,” she said. “They want to do it really well, and so they try hard, and a person who is trying hard is not doing yoga well.”  Hey, I resemble that remark.

So, I’m consciously ceasing effort.  One way I prepared for this was to start cancelling subscriptions, RSS feeds, and other time-sucking materials.  My electronic inbox isn’t as full, Mount To-Be-Read looks conquerable, and I don’t miss the information overload. 

If you’re wishing you, too, could go on sabbatical, why not enjoy a mini-respite along with me?  Stop doing something, or several things.  Look around your life and see what you can just plain quit, or delegate, or postpone, or share.  Choose one and get started on your own journey of renewal.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and do nothing.

Of course, you should see the movie. It’s hysterical, and it’s probably closer to a documentary than anyone at State would care to acknowledge.

It’s a foul-mouthed farce about the USA and the UK ginning up intelligence to make a case for war in the Middle East.

Anyway, you know all about THAT.

What you don’t know is that the writer-director, Armando Iannucci, got into your new digs with a fake ID and a line of BS.

That’s right, some random Brit printed up a phony press credential with his picture on it, waved it at the security entrance saying, “BBC. I’m here for the 12:30,” and the guard not only let him in, but pointed the way.

He roamed freely, taking pictures for reference to create sets.

When someone challenged him in the corridor, he said, “I’m here for the 12:30,” and the reply came, “Oh, it’s down there,” with a helpful wave in the right direction.

We all want you to get down to business with the important diplomacy and development matters that are your responsibilities.

But first, could you tell the folks at the door to be more careful about checking the IDs?

Iannucci asked the 1000+ people in the audience not to tell how easy it is to get into the State Department.
But I’m tellin’.

(He should have known better – the next screening in that theater is “The Informers” and a lot of us are sticking around for that one.)

Anyway, Madam Secretary, I know you’re busy – isn’t it almost time for your 12:30?

Ruth Ann Harnisch
Via BlackBerry

Posted via email from Ruth Ann Harnisch

At least once, you will probably be rewarded for your trouble with abaaaaaad movie,and everyone will have a different definition of that.

Yesterday, a woman sitting in my row said she couldn’t give “The September Issue” a favorable vote for the Audience Award because its ostensible subject, “fashion,” was so lightweight. She doesn’t want it to win. A prize might give it attention that more serious fare deserves and needs.

I was shocked, as if we’d seen two different movies. I had just seen the story of a long professional marriage between Anna Wintour and Grace Coddington, illustrative for anyone who works with other people (especially difficult people). I saw a filmabout personal transformation – how people transcend their early years, shaped by their choices. I saw the real life version of “The Devil Wears Prada” and”The Office.” It was about art and commerce, taste anddecisionmaking.It was beautifully photographed and skillfully edited.

I gave it highest marks, but that woman might be right.

Would I rather you see “The September Issue” or “Reporter”? No contest. See “Reporter.” Would I rather you buy “Vogue” or “The New York Times”? Are you bleeping kidding me?

“Reporter” reminded me what a wuss I was when I took money to be a journalist and how I was and am in awe of the people who are willing to go, and go again, even after terrifying chases through the jungle and bouts with the deadliest form of malaria and nonstop encounters with the worst that humanity can produce and experience. Nicholas Kristof has the kind of courage and skill I didn’t have the guts to aspire to, much less emulate.

That documentary introduced me to the term “psychic numbing,” and comforts me with the facts: human beings are designed, biologically, to tune out widespread suffering. Our brains, our hormones, our chemistry is programmed to care about ONE, and as soon as one more is added, we begin to care less immediately. When confronted with the suffering of millions, we shut off our compassion as a matter of self-preservation.

Kristof might appear cold and uncaring in this documentary, but he likens his clinicalattitude in the face ofgenocide and atrocity to that of a doctor. A certain emotional distance is required for physicians, soldiers, law enforcement officers, others whose jobs require cool heads and steady hands.

I confess. I am in possession of that ability to distance myself. Did I have it before I became a reporter or did the job force me to learn how NOT to care about everyone and everything all the time? I remember being in the newsroom during the Jim Jones tragedy in Guyana, back in the days of wire service machines that type-type-type-typed and signalled bulletins with ding-ding-ding. All day, ding-ding-ding as more bodies were discovered.

Some time after that, I got a bout of what I called “news sickness.” The magnitude of the tragedy, the pictures you didn’t see of the heaps of rotting bodies (we wouldn’t have put them on television, but the raw feeds came to our newsroom), the insanity of the entire situation somehow penetrated my usual defenses.

I spent a couple of days crying and throwing up, and then I got my act together and went back to feeling very little about the tragedies that were my daily bread.

As frustrating and unrewarding as the Sundance experience can be, there’s a reason I keep coming back. Inspiration. I’m refreshed and challenged by the parade of creativity, the persistence of artists, the new ideas and fresh ways of looking at old subjects.

And I always fall in love with talent and good hearts here. Ben Affleck was largely inarticulate at the Q&A after “Reporter,” of which he was the Executive Producer. But, bless him forever, he managed to say that if celebrity was good for anything, it’s the ability to direct attention tothe people ofDarfur, Congo, Rwanda, and reporters like Kristof. Jack White? I’m still in stunnage after “It Might Get Loud.” Maybe you know all about him, but this was my first introduction to his history and his oeuvre. Next time I’m in Franklin, Tennessee, I might stalk his house like a groupie. And I will never look at a guitar the same way again. I used to be married to a guitar player and I know now that I only half “got it”- I never understood the way I do today. (Hint: see this if you are thinking of marrying a person who picks.)

I gotta go. There are buses to wait for,lines to stand in, people waiting to shove me and step on my feet and whack me with their backpacks. And maybe a movie, and if I’m lucky, new eyes through which to see a part of the world.