Rather than writing a blog post, I decided to use my bi-weekly appearance here on Faith Squared to write a love letter/thank you note, of sorts…to toot the horn of someone who doesn’t, very often, toot her own, but in my opinion deserves an entire orchestra of praise.
Alizabeth Rasmussen, besides being my friend and partner in creative crime, is a technical and visionary force behind the majority of what you see on this blog site.
We do indeed have a professional “tech” who has worked some decided miracles for us over the last few months (thanks, Rob! :-D ) but before that, whatever needed building or formatting or widgeting, Liz took upon herself to figure out…to pretty incredible ends, in my book.
Now, the very thought of widgets and formats and such makes my brain immediately curl up inside my skull like a petulant snail. For me, a computer is simply a glorified typewriter, thank you very much. Ain’t no way, no how I’m figuring out any of that technical nonsense. Thank God (literally!) for Liz’s patience, persistence, and world-class smarts.
She joked a bit in a previous post about our "conversations" that sometimes result from her seemingly endless stream of new ideas for our site; me, devil's advocate, coaxing her lovingly yet firmly down off the ceiling, with questions of motive and logistics and design. But let me tell you, this girl has vision...and most of the time it doesn't take much persuading to get me swinging on the chandelier with her.
I particularly want to acknowledge Liz for the beauty and brilliance of the F2 Advent Calendar. The first one, in 2011, was one of Liz’s many SBI’s (Scathingly Brilliant Ideas, as they are known here at F2) and she had this extraordinary vision roughly one week before Advent began…and we didn’t even have a website at the time.
I, of course, immediately did the brain-as-snail thing. BIG time. But Liz figured out how to make a calendar template on a temporary page and route it to the right web address…and it worked perfectly. Of course it did. A few lively creative collaborations later, the days were filled and the calendar launched right on time. It was only afterward that we both stood back, a little bit stunned, a whole lot amazed.
2012’s calendar was even more amazing. It was Liz’s idea to approach the multitude of talented writers who participated; as a result of connections she had cultivated over the last year, we were overwhelmed by the response and enthusiasm of the participants, and thrilled to gift our readers with such inspirational treasure. Liz did the gathering, the organizing, and the formatting of all the posts; I more or less got to kick back and ride delightfully along for that one.
Liz also does all the formatting of the Project You posts, as well as all the Facebooking and Tweeting for Faith Squared...sparing me even more potential gastropod-like brain contortions. (When it comes to social networking, I unfortunately lean towards social wallflowering.)
And thankfully, Liz is always there to coax me down off the ledge when it comes time for formatting and posting my own F2 contributions. I am getting better at that, however...it seems that some of her genius is perhaps rubbing off.
As if all this weren't enough, as described in her post last week, Liz spent December submitting her writing for publication…a terrifying and defining experience in the life of any writer. Over the last couple of years I’ve watched Liz wrestle with her own psyche regarding her identity as a writer. Seeing her succeed in owning that truth in such a huge and definitive way is no more surprising to me than watching her master a technical conundrum, and no less amazing.
Add to everything the fact that she also manages to brilliantly wrangle what seems, at least to my snail-brain, like complete and utter chaos at her “day job”…along with the wonders and perils of teenage-boy parenting.
And she totally rocks as a friend. I’m proud as hell of her, on all fronts...and I just wanted to say so.
So, my rockstar sistah/accomplice/fellow purveyor of SBI’s and goddess of spontaneous technical ciphering,
THANK YOU.
And no less hugely, I love you.
Toot, toot. ;-)