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  • Pies and Fingers

    Photo by ginnerobot

    New post tomorrow. In the interim, I thought I’d update you on a couple of new projects. Firstly, I’m joining RAW as their personal finance and career management expert-ish type. The site hasn’t officially launched yet, but feel free to poke around.  And no, I will not start using the word tribe.  Anywhere. Ever. Not how I roll.

    Also, the Autumnal Absolution post got a ton of great feedback. So much so that I’ve decided to give it its own site. Look for daily reminders that it is indeed okay and submit your own okay affirmations.

    Finally, a piece I wrote for Primer Magazine (look for more of my content appearing over there) was picked up by Jezebel. I have my own issues with Jez and am no longer even a sporadic reader, but I appreciate their reach and am not gonna argue with approximately 25 000 additional sets of eyes on a feature that I put a lot of effort into crafting. I did skip the comments, though.

  • Your Dose of Autumnal Absolution

    The other night, I found myself standing in the condiment aisle of the supermarket debating about whether to buy the regular peanut butter or the natural, organic stuff. I wanted the former, but knew I should stick with the latter. It’s 10:00 PM, they’re playing The %^$#@& Fray over the PA system and I’m standing there clutching two jars of peanut butter in my hands, feeling as if I’m facing my own nutritional Waterloo. Are you serious? Has it really come to this*?

    Photo by addicted Eyes

    And I’m not alone. Maybe it’s a product of fall and the ghost of unfinished homework assignments past, but I’ve been hearing reports of scattered guilt outbreaks across the country. People feeling as if they’re falling down on the job of being upstanding citizens, as if they’re lacking or slacking, stressed out over doing the right thing and convinced that  the right thing couldn’t possible involve scuffling through a pile of leaves while sipping a pumpkin spice latte (Those leaves need raking and you could make that latte at home for 48 cents!). That simply will not do. In the interests of giving everyone a breather and ratcheting down the angst, I hereby offer up a little autumnal absolution. It’s okay and it will continue to be so on all of these counts (most culled from real-life examples I’ve heard recently) and so many more.

    • It’s okay to wish perfectly swell people would STFU about their perfectly swell lives.
    • It’s okay to feel sad/angry/out of sorts/tired and not really know or have the energy to find out why.
    • It’s okay to turn your phone off.
    • It’s okay not to be passionate.
    • It’s okay to leave dishes in the sink overnight.
    • It’s okay to take a nap or sleep late.
    • It’s okay to eat kettle corn and a Kit Kat for dinner. For three nights in a row, even.
    • It’s okay to take whatever job pays the bills and not care about what this says about your “career”.
    • It’s okay to hate poetry.
    • It’s okay to feel jealous about others’ lives and not have a rational reason.
    • It’s okay to gossip as if you were back in high school.
    • It’s okay to worry about dying alone, but still not do anything about it.
    • It’s okay to get all your news from The Daily Show.
    • It’s okay not to vacuum or sweep for weeks on end.
    • It’s okay to hate Betty White.

    You get the idea. Now, go start a bonfire or something.

    *I ended up with the Jif. Life’s too short, kiddos.

  • Reticence, Revelation And The Fact That The Internet Owns You

    So, I was discussing a piece I glanced over for a friend last night and I realized that the point she was making in her analysis was exactly what I was grappling with in terms of my own writing/social media presence/artfully constructed persona – where does performance end and unintended self revelation begin and just how much control do we have over that intersection? Paging James Franco, Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix! The point further hit home when a Twitter friend assumed that a tweet about my applesauce-making woes was actually an emo metaphor for my life’s larger woes. If you read it in succession from the day’s earlier mini-missives, it was a logical enough conclusion. But really, it was just about apples. And I was a little surprised anyone was keeping tabs.

    Photo by Youssef Hana

    I try to walk the line (here and in other writing venues) between baring it all and being one of those insufferably coy types who only deal in passive-aggressive cliches. Too much disclosure is gauche and too much reticence is just tiresome cloak and dagger posturing that doesn’t exactly encourage trust. And this whole thing doesn’t work unless you believe that you can fall backward and that I’m gonna make damn sure you don’t hit the ground.

    It’s the part of personal branding they don’t tell you about. There’s only so far your micro managing impulses can get you. As carefully as you structure your communications, choose your words and your images and your associates, you still can’t spoonfeed people your intended meaning. They get it, they don’t get it, they draw their own conclusions and their own picture of you. As soon as you gain an audience, you start to lose ownership. And anyone on the internet who tells you that this doesn’t frustrate them is a filthy liar.

    There’s only so much you can write and reveal (be it a Facebook status or a link to your piece in the New Yorker), before you’re faced with this truth and the necessity of figuring out how you’re going to negotiate it – push past it to embrace words like “rawness” or “authenticity” or retreat to arms-length safety. I won’t presume to suggest what will work best for your individual circumstances, but  conventional wisdom (and Regis Philbin) would suggest that this might be a fine time to ask the audience.

    After all, who knows “you” better?

  • Passion Is Dead. Stop Talking About It Already

    I’m sick of passion and exhortations to discover it, embrace it, follow it, stay true to it, etc. Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching a lot of Top Chef lately (pairs well with rebounding from food poisoning) and have heard contestant after contestant blather about being passionate about food, or maybe it’s because the internet is downright lousy with folks throwing around passion-related platitudes (their own or ones they’ve cribbed from Bartlett’s Quotations), but enough is enough.

    Photo by Sebastian-Dario

    Passion and all the talk about it is overrated. It breeds self doubt. It’s okay not to be passionate with a neon capital P. That doesn’t mean you’re dead inside. Some folks just aren’t born with the potential for obsessive devotion gene and making them feel like slackers or outliers for not having an all-consuming passion (Cooking! Teaching! Collecting vintage Pez dispensers!) is not cool in my books. If that’s not how your brain and heart work, there’s no amount of pep-talking, cheerleading or example-setting that is going to convert you. You can’t get there from here. And worrying that you’re broken for not being able to name the one thing that defines you is unnecessary and stressing about the absolute imperative of discovering your passion (because it must exist, yes?) keeps you from living in the here and now and blinds you to what would satisfy you/content you/meet your needs, which is some pretty useful intel to have.

    And even if you are one of those fiery types, what if you haven’t found your passion? Or you’ve found what you thought was your passion, but you’ve reached the exhaustion point with trying to master the perfect crepe or you realize that paying the rent has to come before indulging your love for micro-brewing or photography? Does that mean you’ve been doing it wrong? No, it just means you’re human. And like the rest of us, you don’t have an unlimited attention span and boundless energy and you realize that caring 110% 24/7 about X (or Y or Z) is exhausting and untenable, even for the most single-minded. It’s normal to feel burned out and feed up sometimes. Think about when you’re battling a nasty cold and even the idea of your favorite food in the world (prepared by someone other than germy ol’ you, obviously) is of little interest. Same deal. Doesn’t mean you fail at Authentic Living 101.

    So, let’s ditch passion (and god, please let authenticity die with it). Forget about zeroing in on it, pursuing it, measuring it, rhapsodizing about it. Focus on persistence instead. Rather than trying to identify the one pursuit or calling that is supposed to transform your existence into a unicorn-filled, adrenaline-fueled zen paradise, identify the values and activities that keep cropping up in your life. What endures? What persists? What do you keep returning to? Maybe it’s writing in one form or another. Maybe it’s activities that involve being around children, or solving problems, or building things. Maybe it’s boys who make you laugh or girls who remind you of your third grade crush. Start identifying the (positive) patterns in your life. Boil them down to their essence (helping, creating, fixing, seeing the humor in life) and then think about all the contexts and circumstances in which you could find or recreate these ideas. Suddenly, it’s no longer about trying to find one all-encompassing ardor to last all the days of your life, but making a list of 38 careers and 29 volunteer possibilities that could satisfy your desire to work with people or a page of potential sport-related activities that could fulfill your need for outdoor adventure.

    Bottom line? Persistence trumps passion. And opportunity opens more doors than obsession. It might not be as quotable, but it’s much less exhausting.

  • More Me

    Eons ago (okay, more like a couple of months), I enlisted the very talented Jennette Fulda at Make My Blog Pretty to whip me up a cute little vanity site. And then life happened and I didn’t get around to filling the site with content and officially launching it. UNTIL RIGHT NOW. It’s live, it’s pithy and it’s going to net me tons of amazing freelance opportunities, right?

    Photography is courtesy of my fab friend, Katherine.  Hair is courtesy of genetics.

  • Please Hold

    I am not very good at waiting. Never have been. And lately, I’ve been doing a lot of waiting. A lot. Boomerangs that I’ve tossed out and now it’s up to the universe to return them.

    Photo by Bondseye

    I wasn’t one of those kids who kicked the back of the seat and kept asking, “Are we there yet?” Instead, I sit with my hands knitted together in my lap. I bite my lip. Stare at the wall. At my watch. At the horizon. I told you; I’m no good at this. And that annoys me. This is valuable time that’s being frittered away on impatient sighing and half-drunk cups of tea and unread books I’ve been stacking on the coffee table. Time and energy that could be channeled toward something other than the wait. I tell myself this  as I’m half drinking and not reading.

    But that’s the rub. It actually can’t be. Waiting, speculating, conjecturing is a full-time preoccupation. Waiting for college acceptance letters, for job offers, for test results, for decisions and permissions and responses and approvals. Your time isn’t your own. It belongs to the eventual answer, to the future when everything will be resolved. One way or another.

    Are we there yet?

  • Hey, Big Spender: Why Talk Is Cheap

    Hate To Break It To You is a recurring feature wherein we dispense succinct home truths that everyone could benefit from facing up to, unpleasant as they may be.

    The more you are actually engaged in the highs and lows of life, the less time or inclination you have to dissect them in public detail. You’re too busy living through them to bother issuing press releases as to which way the emotional wind is blowing today and then eagerly monitoring the responses to your sharing. You realize that you can’t capture the poignancy of what it feels like to experience this, right here, right now in 140-characters or less and you place a greater importance on actually being present in this moment than on gauging how best to distill its poignancy into a soundbyte. Believe it or not, there are folks out there like that. And you’re never gonna hear a peep out of them.

    Photo by Tayrawr Fortune

    The people who are truly struggling with getting out of bed in the morning, keeping themselves together, shattered by grief or illness or simply overwhelmed, aren’t trawling for cyber hugs and cute animal pics. They’re trying to make it through the day. When push comes to shove, playing for public pathos isn’t even on the radar. Surviving trumps surveying the internet peanut gallery for moral support.

    And the same goes for happiness, for accomplishment. Is your joy incomplete if you don’t get it externally validated? Do you really have to update your Facebook status from the top of the Ferris wheel at the Montana State Fair in order to preserve the wonder of that moment for posterity? Couldn’t you just, you know, STFU and enjoy said moment as it happens?

    I’m so over this compulsion toward narration and color commentary and pithy little battles of wit that our 24/7 internet world fosters. It’s a thousand supermarket checkout conversations, a million first date getting-to-know-you chats, an uncountable number of holiday newsletters, every New Year’s resolution you ever made, rolled into one big ball of noise. And I leave every exchange hungrier than the last for something, anything of genuine, unedited substance that cuts through the static.

    Your life isn’t performance art (unless you’re Lady Gaga or James Franco).  It’s for living, not mining for anecdote potential. And eventually, talking (about what you have, what you want, the abstract, the quotidian, the flavor of the week) gets tiring, both for you and your listeners. It rings hollow, a disingenuous and unfulfilling proxy for action and emotion and yes, participation. Talk is cheap. Talk is ephemeral. Talk makes you feel a part of something even as the more you talk, the further you distance yourself from the real something of life and connections with other human beings that aren’t based on commenting on each others’ blogs or giving the thumbs up to someone’s spring break photo album.

    There’s more out there. If and when you find it or if and when you decide to put your money and forward momentum where your mouth is, let me know.

  • Success and Self-Denial: Why It’s Okay To Eat The Damn Ice Cream

    New York Magazine runs a regular feature on the food diary of a celebrity/public figure/whoever they can round up. Last week’s happened to be Mika Brzezinski, co-host of Morning Joe.  I can’t remember where I stumbled upon a link to the rundown of her recent eating habits, but after reading it, I felt compelled to share it on Twitter, where it provoked quite a discussion about the implications of her diet and the terms in which she chose to discuss it.

    Photo by anitasarkeesian

    Laying aside the disturbing physical and psychological implications of subsisting on granola bars and Starbucks coffee while working 18-hour days and taking frequent five-mile runs, it was the language that she used to frame her consumption of a scoop of gelato that really struck me. She claimed that she was now at a weight where she could “afford” to have this indulgence, but had to be mindful that it was a one-shot deal.

    Her mindset is all too common and it extends beyond eating habits to the idea  that until we’ve satisfied X prerequisite, we should avoid Y. Dating can wait until we get the career stuff sorted out. Why bother with a new sofa if you’re still stuck in this lousy apartment? And forget sprucing up your wardrobe for at least another 20 lbs. I call it motivation by deprivation and it doesn’t work. Oh, if I just keep holding my breath, think about how much more I’ll appreciate that oxygen when I finally allow myself to inhale. See how silly that sounds? How are you going to appreciate it if you’re lying on the ground blue-faced and unconscious?

    There is a moralistic undertone to this line of thinking, of course. Only successful people have earned enjoyment.  Happiness or “indulgence” (please don’t get me started on this word or we’ll never stop) is the prize for exhibiting self-control, will power, or superhuman hustle. To enjoy in the here and now would be unseemly. We’ve haven’t done enough, been enough, sacrificed enough to warrant it. There will be time for that when we’ve finally gotten everything else squared away (hint: that will happen at just about half-past never).  We pride ourselves on our ability to multi-task, but can’t wrap our brains around the idea we can balance contentment in some facets of our lives with striving or yearning in other aspects.  But it’s not an all or nothing game and blanket self-denial and austerity isn’t the character-building path to future success (especially if you’d actually like to retain the capacity to appreciate said success).

    Framing the present as a trial to be endured and holding out happiness or self-care as a reward instead of an integral element of your current existence and something you have the absolute right to experience doesn’t push you to work harder, it simply makes you miserable and robs you of the capacity to unreservedly savor something as basic as a bowl of ice cream.

  • Connecting The Dots With Nailah Blades

    When I put out a Twitter call for career and life coaches interested in chatting it up on GenMeh, Nailah Blades was one of the first to volunteer. Nailah is an LA-based life coach (and the brains behind Polka Dot Coaching) who specializes in quarter-life experiences. Our interview was supposed to be video-based, but technology had other ideas (and I even wore make-up just for you guys!), so we regrouped and jury-rigged a transcript for your edification.

    Photo by rachel_titiriga

    What got you into coaching?
    I’ve always been passionate about helping people. And I thrive on connecting people with the people or things they need most – helping them get from point A to point B. After going through my own quarter-life crisis I realized that coaching would help fulfill these passions for me. I also liked that there were so many different avenues I could take with coaching – I was guaranteed to never get bored.

    Why did you decide to focus on the quarter-life?
    I went through my own quarter-life crisis when I was 24. At the time, I didn’t see a lot of resources out there to help me get through what I was feeling. The programs I did find were geared towards older women. To make matters worse, everyone else was telling me how happy I should be and how my twenties should be the best years of my life. I felt completely alone. I decided to focus on the quarter-life experience because I didn’t want other women to have to recreate the wheel. I want to be a resource for young women who are looking to find themselves.  Plus, since I’m still in my twenties, I can fully understand the quarter-life perspective.

    How could your target audience – people in their twenties and thirties who are experiencing the issues you spoke about – benefit from the coaching process?
    I work with women in their twenties and thirties who are ready to live bold and vibrant lives but are unsure how to get there. They may be stuck in a job they dislike or they may be feeling unmotivated about life. They can benefit from having someone guide them through the process of unlocking their true passions and figuring out how to design a life they crave. Coaching is all about forward movement. It’s about setting and reaching your goals. Anyone who is feeling stuck or unmotivated can definitely benefit from the coaching process.

    Can you tell us about what your process is for working with a client?
    I like to break it down into three big steps: 1) Who am I? 2) What do I want? 3) How do I get there? It’s incredibly important to be crystal clear on who you are. What your values are, what makes you tick, what makes you happy and what makes you unhappy. Laying that foundation is the most important step. Second, I move on to what you really want. It’s important to outline what you truly want in life so that you can clearly align your goals with your core values. The last step is outlining how you’ll actually reach these goals. This is where a lot of support, motivation and gentle pushing comes in. Along the way, I also help identify and break down any blocks, fears or barriers to success.

    What gives you the biggest feeling of success in your coaching?
    I love knowing that what I do has impacted someone in some way. Whether it’s in response to a blog post, one-on-one coaching, or even a tweet or Facebook message, I get the biggest high when I get positive feedback from clients or readers. Knowing that I’ve touched someone brings me absolute joy and makes everything I do totally worth it.

    What’s currently in the works for Polka Dot Coaching?
    I’ve just launched a new online workshop called the Authentic Happiness Guide. AHG is a unique four-week online workshop focused on helping you uncover your true passions so you can begin living your life authentically, on your terms. Each day, participants will be given a worksheet, exercise or journal prompt that will guide them through the process. The four weeks are broken into: Who Am I, What Do I Want, How Do I Get There, and Dedication & Celebration. Everyone will gain access to a private online forum where they will be able to share, discuss and support one another.  It will be a great resource for anyone who is looking to get unstuck and will serve as a good way to get a taste of what coaching is all about.

  • List Served #10 Away From The Keyboard

    List Served is a semi-regular feature wherein I present you with an ordered grouping of (at least tangentially) related points. I love lists and the internet loves ephemeral minutiae. It’s all good.

    These are the things that I do when I’m trying to avoid writing a piece/am stalled at a particular point/have dramatically decided Scarlett O’Hara style that I shall never write again. In case you were, you know, wondering or something.

    Photo by soartsyithurts

    • Go to the gym. Fume about people who put their mats too close to mine. Prop myself up on my elbows and surreptitiously check out what everyone is doing during the end of class meditation (lying there with their eyes closed like I should be). Work on my right hook.  A lot.
    • Listen to the Vitamin String Quartet YouTube channel. Shut up. No, really. Shut up. I will not apologize for loving Livin’ On a Prayer arranged for the violin and cello and you can’t make me.
    • Bookmark dresses on etsy and ModCloth.
    • Fantasize about living a life in which I would wear cute dresses every day instead of the reality in which my legs would be cold and I would whine about that and be paranoid that my hemline was too high.
    • Subtly rearrange info on the site and wonder if anyone notices. Launch a Facebook page, but then wonder if I should have waited for Diaspora to be extra cool.
    • Write stuff for other folks. Recently, it was this. In the near future, there will be more. James Franco and feminism may or may not be involved.
    • Bake gluten-free vegan cupcakes. Marvel at how well they turn out. Temporarily forget that I don’t like cupcakes.
    • Have insomnia. Yes, still. Have strange matrimony-themed dreams when I do sleep. Did you know I can officiate weddings? Because SleepMe so can! Also, in case of apocalypse, you should totally marry the dashing scientist who lives next door to your antebellum mansion because you both anticipate that wedded status will guarantee you more civil rights under whatever post-apocalyptic junta seizes political power. Just a little tip from me to you.
    • Read articles about social media and web metrics. Take diligent notes. Tell myself that weirdness in my chest is probably a heart murmur and not a rising tide of bile.