the pebble has landed
I likely should have said the “the pebble” has launched as Monday was the launch of my new project, but having lived a good deal of my life in NASA-city, I couldn’t resist. Are you really surprised?
And here she is.
the pebble Show on YouTube
Many of you know me as a writer and that won’t change, so I’m sharing the story of “the pebble” here. And for those of you who are new here, please allow me to welcome you and introduce myself.
Welcome to “the pebble”
Hi, my name is Traci Shannon, some of you may know me as Star Traci. I've been around the internet for a while now. But I'm here to introduce an exciting new project that I have been working on for a while called “the pebble”. And it may be the project of my lifetime. I definitely feel like every success and every failure has brought me here.
And you might say failures? And I say yes, because all of those things shape how I got here, and how I see things. Most of my life, up until a very specific age of 38, was all about being an actress and pursuing it, and going full force from it from a very young age, and doing it in high school, and college and getting into a master's level Acting Program and going to New York, and then 911 happened. And then we had a big life change after 911.
And so that was the stopping of it. And then for a very long time, it was the mourning of the stopping of it.
And 38, I started blogging, and that introduced me to an entire different way of looking at things.
And I started seeing that maybe failure wasn't the end all be all. And I started looking at that little things could be beautiful, and finding the joy in the little things. And I didn't know it at the time, but I was building the beginnings of what I'm now going to be introducing to you as “the pebble”.
My very first blog was called “38 and Growing”, which is why I made the big point of 38. And clearly at the time, I did not know that I would keep blogging and later on, in another episode, I'll tell you how the blogging first started, but moving on, I then became A Star in My Own Universe, thus Star Traci. And if you've known me at all on-line, that's probably how you’ve seen me.
Why “the pebble”?
So some people have said, well, why aren't you doing the Star show or Star Traci? Or I do a lot of things around Shining Brightly. That's because this is for everyone. I'll still be Star Traci. And I'm still going to be doing a lot of projects around those. So I'm not leaving any of that. But this project is very specifically about what I believe is a cumulative project.
This is not just about me, it's about something that's bigger than me. And I called it “the pebble” for multitude of reasons. But it really comes down to a couple of specific things that come to mind.
One is pebbles, get that way, because they've been through a lot, right? Pebbles don't start out smooth and they don't start out little as they're beginning. They usually are washed through water. And that's how they get smooth and they've been through hardening effects. They may have gone through heat, you know, trial by fire, or they may have been run through the wringer if you will. And so there's there's a lot of great metaphors and analogies, if you will, to people who have had maybe not the easiest of lives, maybe all of us go through some trials. And so I think all of us can relate to how a pebble got there.
Also. pebbles are things you can carry in your pocket, right? You can take a pebble with you everywhere. are. So, you know, if this resonates with you, which is certainly hope it will, you can carry it with you, it's something that can stick with you. And it's not some overly bright Pollyanna type thing that you know, on those rough days, and maybe you don't want to shine brightly, maybe you don't feel like a star. But you know, a pebble is enduring. Once once they've gotten down to that, they're pretty hard stuff, they're not gonna break easily. And you can carry it with you and know that it's, it's, it's sticking around, right.
And finally, my pebble is is about building up together as a group. And I have a philosophy and for those of you who don't know me, then here is your caveat. And here's your warning. I am a dork. And I am corny. And for many, many years, I tried to hide these things and kept thinking I was going to grow into some Hitchcockian smooth, cool, sleek blonde. And instead, I have stayed the kind of dorky, cheery you know, cute, blonde, whatever, but not not not smooth, not sleek, it's just it's not I cry over everything fact. Just recently watched Wakanda Forever and cried before the credits were finished. So there you go. And I love anything that has makes me feel all gooey inside. So if you are put off by corn, you know, you can take it at the level that it matters, it means anything to you and just hold me off, where it's too much.
But this is what I'm thinking when I say the pebble. I feel like we all think in general, most people are good. When we meet people face to face, when we are with our family and our friends and our neighbors, we don't think they're awful. We hear stories all the time in in colloquial talk about somebody doing something good for someone. But then, in the general, whether on social media or on the larger media were made to feel like everything is so wrong. Well, they can't both be right. At least I don't think so. And I don't think that it's mostly wrong.
I think that most people are good.
I think most people want the world to be better, but they feel outnumbered still. And they think that they're just that little pebble and a little pebble can't do anything. But together, they can.
So here's my corny message for you.
If we all threw a pebble of positivity into the sea, we could turn the tide of negativity.
the pebble philosophy
Now, I know. Corny, yes. And please don't tell me anything about mixed metaphors and or the logic of tides or anything else. Just take it for what it is. I grew up loving the MDA Telethons on Labor Day weekend, because I love to see when they would do the turn of the money coming in. And because they were dependent mostly on people sending five and 10 and $15 Yes, they would bring people in and so and so's $15,000 You know, but the biggest thing was, is Jerry Lewis would stay up 24 hours and say, “ I need to the send in your $5. I need you to send in your $10. We can't do it without you!” And we weren't a wealthy family, but we would send in our 25 dollars. And I would wait, after my dad called for our name to run across the local ticker. Oh, it just meant so much to me! And then I would be so excited for the next flip, because I would feel personally responsible for that flip.
That's what I want you to feel as a part of “the pebble” is that we can start to do things to make the world better. But, it starts with making you feel better. Because you are here on earth to be something.
You don't just have a right to be here you're supposed to be here. And the more you feel empowered, as the best person you can be, the closer you are to that. So I want to help you feel better. And in doing that, you are going to be better in your home with your family, and you're gonna be better in the world, when you're putting out positivity that's making the world better.
100% believe that.
So we're gonna talk about lots of things. It's not all gonna be this big, I promise. I love thrifting we're gonna talk about that. I love fashion, I love books. But I do also want to talk about faith and about coping with death and getting beyond that. It's going to be everything. It's going to be eating better foods, fitness you name it, If it makes your lives and therefore the world a little bit better. I want to talk about it.
I want to hear from you what you want to talk about. There's big topics to discuss, and there's little topics. But if it makes your world and you feel a little bit better, then I think it's worth it because you are the pebble and you are part of doing a better pebble out there into the world. It's a double metaphor. I don’t know, I don't pretend to be a philosopher. And this is not a fancy space. I'm not Instagram perfect by any means. I am not always going to be made up to perfection. I'm not always going to be perfectly spoken.
I'm going to make mistakes.
But I'm going to do my best to do my part to be the person I'm supposed to be. And I hope you'll join me on my journey in that and together we can really turn the tide on negativity. So thank you, and
welcome to the pebble
join the movement - pin me ;-)
