Why start a Bureau of Awesome?

Do you ever imagine you won a lot of money in a lottery and plan how you’d spend it? I do. A few weeks ago, I decided I’d use a portion of my winnings to create a Bureau of Awesome. Instead of a day job, we’d just work at being awesome!

In my fantasy, the Bureau would promote awesome things, get some awesome people together, and create a creative space (literally and figuratively) for people to do awesome stuff. Since awesomeness is subjective, I planned to  invite other purveyors and creators of awesome to join me; we’d set the tone and mission for the Bureau. We’d have awesome events, give grants to artists and writers to work on awesome projects, and have an awesome office, with tons of technical equipment that would help us create awesome.

I didn’t win the lottery [I didn't even buy a ticket.]

Instead, I had an epiphany: You don’t need money to be awesome.

Then it came, my Evil Plan! I’d start a Bureau of Awesome anyway.

Evil Plans are Best by Hugh MacLeod

Hugh MacLeod puts it best:

Everybody needs an EVIL PLAN. Everybody needs that crazy, out-there idea that allows them to ACTUALLY start doing something they love, doing something that matters. Everybody needs an EVIL PLAN that gets them the hell out of the Rat Race, away from lousy bosses, away from boring, dead-end jobs that they hate. Life is short.

Every person who ever managed to do this, every person who manged to escape the cubical farm and start doing something interesting and meaningful, started off with their own EVIL PLAN. And yeah, pretty much everyone around them- friends, family, colleagues- thought they were nuts.

from Hugh MacLeod’s blog post my next book “evil plans”

(Note: Hugh MacLeod is awesome.)

The Bureau of Awesome is in its nascent form. We will start small but will have big goals. The Alliance of Awesome is forming and it will be…

Awesome!