Of paperclips, notebooks, and mentors

I sat at my desk organizing my paperclips. Colorful, coated clips on one side of the dispenser, plain metal clips on the other.

Halfway through the task I realized I was going about it all wrong. It was the size of the paper clip that mattered, not the composition. So I dumped them out and started over.

I didn’t really need a paper clip, I had fished out a tiny binder clip that was the answer to my problem — how to organize all my notes. (Yes, I just used an em dash, but this is written 100% by a human, not AI.)

But organizing my notes was not the problem. They were collected in several spiral notebooks. College-ruled, 5-subject notebooks emblazoned with people’s names: “Mari Smith,” “Matt Gray,” “Gina DeVee,” “Caitlin Bacher,” “Margaret White,” “Neil Patel,” “Parris Lampropoulus” (IYKYK). I have been scribbling in them for the better part of the past year. Just today I came across another name I would add, as her catalog of posts and podcasts grows — “Jeri Yoshida.”

Despite the fact that myriad platforms and programs exist for keeping notes online, in the cloud, in an app, and even on my backed-up-every-day hard drive, I still write notes by hand. I add my own penciled-in version of icons and emojis. Sometimes I print and sometimes I write my notes in that elusive format called cursive.

But that’s not what you’re wondering about is it? You’re wondering who all these people are and why do I think that what they have to say is so important that I spend hours painstakingly transcribing their messages, courses, emails, and the like.

They are my mentors. Some of them know it, some of them don’t even know I exist. Some I have met IRL, some only online. Some I have paid thousands of dollars to learn from, one I even traveled halfway around the world to meet. Only one would recognize me if we passed in the street. Does all that make me a fangirl?

A couple of them I follow because they are specialists in their field: Mari for anything Facebook and Human Design; Neil for anything to do with digital marketing; Parris for anything copywriting. Matt and Gina are the antithesis of each other: Matt is strong on systems and actions taken in the masculine; Gina wraps her teaching in prayer and the flow of the feminine. Caitlin is the queen of courses. Jeri is a fellow former PR pro turned coach for consultants. Margaret is a beautifully aligned soul who oozes panache. She also is the only person with the guts enough to call me out on being a “procrasti-learner” — her word, not mine. Which is why I was sorting my paper clips in the first place…

How about you? Who do you turn to, IRL or virtually, for advice, counseling, or coaching and why? Tell me in the comments. Maybe we’ll meet on somebody’s Zoom call…