He said...

"People can hear their inner voices with great clarity and live by what they hear..."

What a blessing it is to live this way. Often the clamor of daily life, or internal dialogue, can drown out the truth of our inner voices. Coming back to such a place takes work.

Careers, ambition, relationships - there is an endless onslaught of potential distractions from one's internal desires. I often become withdrawn from the world and what it wants from me, ignoring the phone and the emails and the texts, in an effort to let myself out.

Life in Livingston, Montana was featured in tonight's episode of No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain. Ranchers and cowboys alongside the occasional poet and painter make up the fabric of this "end of the line" town.  As one stricken with a lifelong case of wanderlust, I soaked up the swelling sense of freedom and independence Livingston's residents appeared to enjoy. 

As a woman, I wondered if I could live the life of these loner poets and writers. The reclusive lifestyle of authors there and elsewhere, like Jim Harrison or Thoreau, who have spent years tucked away in remote cabins or deeply wooded forests, is almost too seductive to resist. Alone with one's thoughts, constrained only by the body's wants of sleep and food, timelessness replaces seconds and minutes and hours. Writing and expression are safe to unfurl at will.

But, then, fear of physical harm creeps into my mind. Would it be safe for me, a 5'2" woman? Terrifying visions of being alone and attacked, too weak or small to defend myself, shatter my fantasy of the reclusive lifestyle these male writers, and readers for that matter, glorify and take for granted. Could such an environment provide refuge, a safe-haven, for my body and for my thoughts?

Even in On the Road with Kerouac, the same questions linger for me. What kind of real freedom would I feel traveling alone, hitchhiking in the rain on a deserted road to my next location? Is the ever present concern of imminent danger freedom? 

In some senses, my heart hurts when I read these heralded stories of free men. I envy their sex. I envy that they are not the subject of desire and conquest in the same way my same-sex sisters and I are. Sometimes, I wish I was one of these men.

This whole Gates thing is bothering me.... does class + race = progress?

Apparently I'm not the only one with all the media talk that has been going around.

First, I was bothered that a racist incident like this could take place in an area of Cambridge with which I am so familiar. Then, I was bothered that a black man needs to worry when his front door gets stuck, that he will be arrested when his neighbors call the police. 

I remembered an incident in my neighborhood a year or two ago when I saw two guys, around 20 years old, opening the window of a first floor apartment and climbing in. My street is full of college/grad students throwing parties etc - they fit the profile of college students who had locked themselves out - wearing printed T's and fashionable jeans - it was broad daylight - so I just figured that's what it was. They were white.

When this whole Gates thing came up, I asked myself, if those two guys had been black, would I have acted differently? I have called the police before - though the circumstances were completely different (once a guy was trying to beat down the door of his girlfriend's apartment after sneaking into the building - oh and his face and hands were covered with blood - another time I heard gunshots, screams and then looked out my window to see a man running across the Christian Science Center reflecting pool area with a HUGE gun in his hand - the first case, the guy was Japanese, the second he was black).

After reflecting on these thoughts though, I got more bothered though because something didn't sit well with me and this professor. He reminds me of the famous "Don't tase me bro" kid who got himself in trouble with the police after pushing the limits when at an event where John Kerry was speaking. 

As far as I am concerned, the most important part of this video is the beginning where, upon the suggestion from the police that the shut the hell up and move on, he fights them. I believe that the student's desire to provoke combined with a juvenile sense of superiority over those around him is what led to these circumstances. Did the police need to taser him? Absolutely not, but that is a secondary issue. What did he set out to do when he went to the podium? To reveal dishonesty within the Kerry campaign I assume. Did he achieve his goal? Um, I'm going to go with NO here. In my mind he, and only he, failed his cause.

Here is an interview with him on the Today Show where he admits that he made a mistake. He concedes that he wasn't able to keep his composure and the police where just trying to do their job.

This whole post was provoked by a comment one reader made in response to an online news story regarding the Gates arrest. They said that Gates had set back Black/White race relations by 30 years.

Well, what if this is actually evidence of advanced race relations in United States? It seems there is sentiment upon sentiment that this case is not just about race. This Boston Globe reporter says it's more about "power and machismo on both sides".

Though I don't have the empirical evidence to prove it, I felt early on that the professor was operating under the influence of something other than injustice induced outrage. He was making public appearances so quickly. He is accused of making statements like, "You don't know who you are dealing with" - he apparently didn't want to show his ID. 

That people were so offended a Harvard professor had been arrested made me feel something was amiss. Have we not established that one's profession does not necessarily preclude them from doing something illegal? Isn't that like, really, really obvious? 

Methinks that in a case where race and class are so entangled, the only way to fairly evaluate the situation is to look at the behavior of the individuals involved. Again, I think this is fairly obvious and is the manner by which all individuals should be evaluated but it seems we have strayed in this case.

Well, I'll be damned - ladies get your hormones tested now

Alright, I have recently unearthed some women's health advice that really surprised me. 

As you may have deduced by now, I'm a rather big fan of anything that can make a women's life better. Naturally, the pursuit of knowledge and Oprah fall at the top of my list of things that ameliorate the female journey.

I was watching this sex webinar of sorts on Oprah.com. Dr. Laura Berman, a sex therapist, and Oprah were discussing all sorts of things surrounding sex. The topic of hormones and menopause came up. When addressing the issue of one's hormones being all out of whack during menopause, Dr. Berman recommended women get their hormone levels checked BEFORE menopause. WAY BEFORE. Go to about the 9 minute mark to listen to her explanation.

VIDEO

Her point is that if you get your hormones levels tested when they are normal, say around your 20s and early 30s, then later, when they aren't normal and your doctor is messing around with them to get you where they need to be, it will be a heck of a lot easier. It seems every women's hormones are as "unique as her fingerprint." If you test them when you are at a happy and normal place, you are making things easier down the road.

Well now, doesn't that make sense! I'm in my thirties (Decade Four - get it? Remember this: Decade Three vs. Decade Four ?) so I have not yet been blessed with the wonder and mystery of menopause, or even childbirth for that matter. Naturally, there are women in my life that have been. And, I'm not sure they would use the word "blessed." I'm not looking forward to menopause so naturally, anything I can do now to ease the transition is welcome.

So what do you say ladies? Has anyone out there heard of having your hormones tested earlier in life? Has anyone gone to their doctor and asked about it? What did the doctor say? Did they think you were crazy? Did they think it was a great idea? Was the doc old, young? Male? Female? Are you planning on bringing this up with your doctor?

I'll be poking around the web for some more info on this topic and if all goes well, I will probably ask my doctor about this. In the meantime, please send along your comments about any experience or knowledge you might have!

Innovative way to support citizen journalism in Iran

From a friend on Facebook:

If you are on Twitter, set your location to Tehran and your time zone to GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location/timezone searches. The more people at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut Iranians' access to the internet down. Cut & paste & pass it on.

I don't have a Twitter account and can't verify if this works or not but why not give it a try?

Hm - Cambridge Who's Who

Given all my chatter about quitting jobs and failing out of law school, imagine my surprise when I received a letter today from "Cambridge Who's Who."

At first I thought, how lovely, it said:
"You were recently appointed as a biographical candidate to represent Boston, MA in the 2009/2010 online Cambridge Who's Who Registry among Executive and Professional Women.

Having worked in marketing I've seen a zillion of these different listing companies. Many firms are very interested in having their professionals recognized - Martindale Hubbell, Interlaw and Chambers are just a few. I thought maybe because I've worked for some high profile people, that someone found my name from the website of one of my former companies.

But, then I skipped to the very fine print at the bottom of the letter:
"Cambridge Who's Who is proudly not associated or affiliated with any other Who's Who Publication or Organization."

Since when are people proudly not affiliated? That was a pretty major red flag.

I also noted that the letter was signed "M. Foster." Generally, I find that if someone sends you a letter it's because they want a response. If you send a letter to me stating you are "M" then you don't want me to find you and I'm more likely to think you are a Lord of the Rings character. Nice try.

Finally, a good old Google search once again proved itself to be every gals best friend. After reading this post, I knew I had to put my delusions of grandeur aside and call a scam a scam.

Sad.

Ah well. Next time!

Survival

So, I resigned - or quit. Or was fired. Depends on your perspective. The deciding moment for me was when I stated to the European partner, I would like to stay, but only if there is support for me to continue to stay. Her response, "Well, I never had any faith in you from the beginning..."

Alright. That was all I needed to hear. Thank you. We picked my last day (Wednesday) and I've been alternating between excitement, disappointment, frustration and sadness since.

So, now "Survival".

I go back and forth between strategies for managing life, work, money etc. I used to believe you should set a goal then impose a structure on that which you are responsible for managing. I pretty much used this approach up until the last couple of years. I think it was moderately successful. Then, I met my husband. He did not have this approach. He was more of the revolving responsibility type. Like, the bill arrives, you pay it. An email comes, you answer it. People want something, you give it to them. And, frankly, we could make the argument he has been more successful:

Grad school - he finished, I didn't
Money - he makes more
Enemies - he has none
Jobs - he keeps them
Career - works for a respectable company that respects him

So, as you might imagine, I thought I was doing something wrong and decided to adopt his "take it as it comes" approach. To clarify, for awhile before adopting his philosophy, I thought he was wrong. Over the years though, his approach has seemed to consistently bring him success (see above). As a disclaimer, I do feel the need to point out it's not clear that I have all the relevant information needed to draw conclusions as to which approach is better. I might be oversimplifying.

But to summarize the results of me using his "take it as it comes" approach:

That shit didn't pan out for me either. (see above where I say that I resigned)

Interestingly, lately he seems to be shifting to the disciplined method and, in fact, since last week, has been telling me I need to be more structured. Hardly seems fair!

More interestingly though, I was watching one of these wilderness survival shows "Man vs Wild" this weekend. The host, a crazy, but quite handsome, Brit named Bear Grylls (I kid you not) found himself in a bit of a predicament. He had been dropped into the Great Plains with little more than a rucksack and a mess kit and was challenged to survive among the rapidly shifting elements and uncertain terrain.

As he stood there skinning a snake he just caught for dinner or assembling a torch from green sapling and birch bark, I can't remember which, he looked into the camera and plainly stated something like, "The key to survival is taking control of your environment."

Call it what you will - an Oprah-like "aha" moment; Eureka; BGO (blinding glimpse of the obvious), etc etc - but at that moment, any doubt I had about how to move forward was removed. In doubt's place was the realization that to get on with things, I'd first have to put things into order.

No doubt, millions have realized this before me. Gandhi sought sanitary reform by Indians in South Africa for similar reasons. Voltaire's Candide famously states, "Il faut cultiver notre jardin." For me, I knew it, then doubted it, and now know it again.

Dazed and Confused

But not high... unfortunately.


Sometimes in life you stand, looking out at the future and asking yourself, what the hell am I going to do now?

They say blogging about work is wrong. Blah (insert photo of my middle finger).

My job. Started in September 2008. I took a risk to do new sales for a start-up. Hadn't worked in the industry before. Only one other person in the office. 3 months in she quit. I start running everything - HR, client service, operations, marketing, sales, etc etc etc - with a mind to the potential for financial and personal upside. Simultaneously, the economy doesn't just stop growing, but actually starts shrinking. We make a rash hiring decision I don't agree with. 3 weeks later I have to fire that rash hiring decision - based on my stubbornness not to make the same decision twice, we get a great person the second-time around. I train him - it is now mid-April - I've been busting my ass non-stop alone in an office and grown a little potbelly as evidence of such - our 3 biggest clients start pulling in the reins and stop sending us business - our sales shrink by more than 50% - not because of our performance but due to lack of demand from their clients.

I am blamed and find out through an email that was accidentally forwarded to me that someone from our overseas HQ is coming over on a recon mission and also to find a replacement for me. I go to the US based partner to confirm that this is happening - basically he doesn't agree with the European partner that this should take place. Great. No one knows what the hell is going on. No one is making any hard and fast decisions. He says - I dunno - maybe in a month I will be gone?

What do I do? The end of my tenure doesn't seem to be a forgone conclusion. There is still potential for growth and I think sales from our clients will grow soon. But, when one of the partners doesn't want you there anymore, they can make your life hell. There is the other small issue of my own morale at this point.

Do I:
a. stay, coast and let them fire me.
b. dig in and fight to grow the business and keep this job.
c. take control and quit immediately or decide an end date?

a. Easy, but demoralizing.
b. Hard. Uncertain. Potentially really good, really bad or in the middle both emotionally and professionally.
c. Healthy. The only problem is that I have to decide what to do next.

thinking...

Blog Therapy

Usually, when I write a post, I feel better afterward. This last post only led me to do something we'll fondly refer to as, well ... gee, the only word that comes to mind is defecate. Don't ask me why I am publishing this. I have a strong feeling I will regret it from the moment I hit "publish post".

But, more women should write about that doncha think? - I'm pretty and I poo!

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. I think I have to admit why I'm upset, for real, in order to work through it. The problem is, I am afraid I won't be able to muster up the damn energy needed to deal with the situation - by not admitting it, I don't have to do anything about it.

But, then my fear of regret is telling me that I need to admit it, deal with it and move on, because if I don't, I risk looking back sometime in the future and wondering why I was such an ass. Then, I run the even bigger risk of giving myself yet another reason to criticize myself - something I definitely don't need. So essentially, it seems to be coming down to, criticize myself now, or, criticize myself later. Hm . .. .. nope, not going down that rabbit hole.

Alright, on to the thing I have to admit today. I'm a procrastinator.
haha, nope, that's not it!

Bwah haaa - that little bit of funny gave me a good chuckle - who needs friends when you can make yourself laugh! Haa!

Alright ... I'm afraid of doing sales! Yes! I am not down with picking up the phone and being on the shitty end of the vulnerability stick (ps my job is sales). I enjoy marketing more! I do not like feeling desperate and cheap and trying so hard to plan out my words and listen carefully to what the other end of the phone is saying so as to perfectly bleat out every breath and tone and ooh and ahh and unhuh in response.

And, I think that fear is making me take a bad situation (no strong leadership/no agreement on strategy/bad economy) and make it worse.

There are so many ugly things down the road this week - I think I'll be the subject of a lot of criticism - it's hard not to care - which is where I wish I was right now - and I would just quit but I've got this great new co-worker and he (don't worry - his orientation doesn't swing my way) is seriously the best ally/unexpected fresh face to come along in awhile and reminds me of old parts of myself I can't seem to find anymore. If I leave, I lose a buddy and leave them behind with a mess I don't think they are equipped to handle. At least someone values me.

Hi there

So, it's been awhile......

Didja miss me?

I come to you this evening with a question - what is the point of growth?

I took a business development job in start-up company in September. And we all know what happened then. The economy hit the pooper. And the company where I am the only business development person is no exception. I may be feeling particularly low today because we delivered the sales report to the partners and they were not happy.

There are a whole host of other things that have gone on since January. The thing I find most depressing, not the fact that the only other employee left to start her own company taking company secrets with her, not the fact that projects seem to be smaller and less frequent, not the fact that my retard CEO made me physically interview 25 people in one week only to have to fire that bad hire 3 weeks later, not the fact that I had to trick the partners into letting me use a recruiter to get the next person in.... nope, none of that - the thing that I find most depressing is that I've gained 8 pounds since January. The skin on my arms feels like Dumbo's ears.

If I can grow, why can't the company?

December. An odd month.

Here is a calendar of my month.

Dec 12
DSF's company has layoffs. We survive.

Dec 23
The only other person in my company quits. I am now the only employee.

Dec 24
I go on vacation for 3 weeks. During that time I...

Dec 31
...get married

Top Ten Ways To Know You're Dating/Married To A Consultant

• Referred to the first month of your relationship as a "diagnostic period". 
  
• Talks to the waiter about process flow when dinner arrives late. 
  
• Takes a half day at the office because, "Sunday is your day." 
  
• Congratulates your parents for successful value creation. 
  
• Tries to call room service from the bedroom. 
  
• Ends any argument by saying, "let's talk about this off-line." 
  
• Celebrates anniversary by conducting a performance review. 
  
• Can't be trusted with the car-too accustomed to beating up rentals. 
  
• Valentine's Day card has bullet points. 
  
• Refers to lovemaking as a "win-win".
  

Obsédée

Obsédée. Je suis tellement obsédée de Emily Loizeau.

A realization

All the time I spent waiting to exhale, it turns out he was too.

This whole shit storm is unbelievable.

Mood today: Incredulous.

Let's see - Hillary preaches sex education and evolution and her daughter went to two top universities then worked at one of the world's top consulting firms ... bad girl!

Palin preaches abstinence education and creationism and her daughter is oh... what? Seventeen and pregnant? What a great example for women and girls everywhere!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No "all caps" today.

You know, when I look back at that post from the other day, I think to myself, "Am I bi-polar?"

I wonder if you gentle reader my have asked yourself the same thing?

I'm pretty sure I'm not but hey, I'm no doctor so one can't really be sure. I'm in the middle of thinking about the wording for my invitation and I'm not feeling nearly as frustrated as the other day I'm glad to report. I almost feel like there was some strange initiation that I had to go through in my head to reach the point of calm afterward.

Here's to hoping that I don't sweat the small stuff in the coming months.

By the way, here is my inspiration for my New Year's wedding...