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  • A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Office

    Last week, I ended up in the hospital. Well, ended up is maybe the wrong choice of words. It makes it sound like I set out for Dunkin’ Donuts and somehow took a detour to the ER on my way to get a large black with one sugar. No, I drove myself there at 7:00 AM, after spending four days unable to keep down food or liquid. I assumed that they’d do a quick check of my throat, figure out what was blocking it and maybe tell me to drink some Pedialyte to fix my dehydration and then I’d be at my desk by 8:30 AM. Eight hours and two IV bags later and I realized I wasn’t going anywhere.

    The doctor who came to break the bad news looked like a smaller version of Cee Lo Green, clad in a bronze velour tracksuit, dark shades and a solid gold necklace in the shape of a set of ram’s horns. My liver enzymes were out of whack, my gallbladder and spleen were enlarged and I was turning yellow (no, really). He wanted to keep me overnight and run more tests, because if any organs had to be yanked, they’d have to come out the old-fashioned incision way. I tried not to think about that part.

    Overnight turned into five days. And more tests turned into a CAT scan, a HIDA scan, a GI scope and two rounds of bloodwork every day. The hospital didn’t have any free rooms, so I ended up on a stretcher in a former ER operating room that had been repurposed to house patients. The only privacy to be had from my revolving cast of roommates was a curtain that could be pulled halfway around my stretcher. No tv, no internet, no phone, no energy to read. Just me, my thoughts and the insistent drip-drip-drip of my IV, an IV that I had to drag to the bathroom (which felt like a mile away down the hall) with me and required me sleep with my hand just so not to make it ache.

    Oh, the aching. I’m young. I’m in good shape. And spending 23 hours a day on a stretcher killed my body. Hips don’t lie and mine were not impressed with what I put them through. And neither was my mind. I simply stopped caring. For a person whose brain is always churning, it was shocking how quickly I succumbed to the torpor of hospitalization. The isolation didn’t drive me crazy. I didn’t find myself pining for Twitter or fretting about work emails piling up. I simply curled up on my cot and dozed under a tangle of thin hospital sheets. When I had to get out of bed, I found myself clinging to the IV stand like a subway pole and swaying my way down the hall like an octogenarian zombie. Trying to wash my hair in the bathroom sink left me out of breath and exhausted. I forgot about the outside world – the weather, the news, anything beyond my own pounding headache and burning desire for ice water (two full days were spent without fluids because of testing). Once a nurse brought me a three-flavored popsicle and I almost wept in gratitude. How the mighty had fallen.

    The middle of the night in the hospital is the loneliest time. When you look at your watch to see that it’s 1:47 AM and you wish for nothing more than someone to squeeze your hand and rub the achingest part of your back and tell you that you will feel better and soon. But that doesn’t happen, so you simply readjust your blankets and go back to staring at the flicker of red and blue lights from the ambulance bay play across your wall and then, eventually, it’s 6:00 AM and someone is coming to draw your blood and check your pulse.

    I was released on Friday. Not because I was cured, but because I was no longer throwing up and the nursing staff felt sorry for my obvious discomfort at being confined to a makeshift bed in a makeshift room with no end in sight. An internal medicine specialist reviewed my test results, ran through a brief questionnaire (no, I’m not an alcoholic and no I haven’t been foraging for wild mushrooms) and told me he wanted to see me in a week to re-evaluate things. There are several possible diagnoses being floated, with some more serious than others. Now, we play a waiting game. No discharge paperwork to sign (“That’s just on tv, honey,” the nurse tells me), only the numerous pairs of pajamas dropped off by my mother and the vase of flowers hand-delivered by my boss to pack up.

    This wasn’t like the movies. I didn’t come to any grand epiphanies, not about the state of the healthcare system or the state of my own life, except maybe a dry chuckle at the fact that it didn’t take long for me to have to put my money where my mouth is when it comes to my resolution to be more accepting of help and support. I didn’t use the time to do some internal stock-taking or to ponder whether landing in the hospital was the penalty I had to pay for pushing myself and my body too hard for too long. And even now, as I’m curled up on the couch in my pajamas eating chocolate pudding and waiting for the all-clear to return to work (the one thing the docs were sure of was that, in addition to my other issues, I have mono), I’m still figuring out how to shave precious time off my recovery period, not basking in a renewed appreciation for the fragility of good health.

    Mostly, I just want taking a shower to stop being the most exhausting activity in the world and to be able to leave the house without getting hot and dizzy. That would be enough right now.

  • 12 More Months Of Me

    2011 was a big improvement over 2010. Given my thoughts on that year, almost anything would be, though. In 2011, I landed my current job. I started writing for Forbes. I was published by Salon, Jezebel and The Atlantic, among others. I drove across America with a stranger. I became an aunt again. I spent New Year’s Eve in New York City with someone who’s certainly not a stranger now. I came very, very close to going back to school. I saved a lot of money. I had my first panic attack.

    I end 2011 and begin 2012 believing more strongly than ever in this post and the idea that we open ourselves up to the situations we are capable of handling and the people we need to meet only when we’re finally ready for these experiences and encounters. It’s not magic, it’s simply being able to see and perceive and pursue in a way we weren’t equipped to before. I’m not a patient girl, so this understanding hasn’t always come easy to me, but 2011 has proven its truth in spades.

    Over at Forbes, I talk a little bit about career resolutions for the year to come. But really, it’s stuff you and I already know – understand yourself, understand your goals, be curious, be specific, be forgiving. I think the personal stuff is much more interesting anyway. Here’s what I’m committing to in 2012:

    Accept more

    I am not good at this. Not good at all. Help, compliments, support, whatever. A very dear friend refers to to this as my “fierce independence” and while such a quality would be admirable in frontier times and while I’ll always be one of the first people tagged into the ring during a crisis (it’s because I have bobby pins and post-its in my purse, isn’t it?), I’m no longer interested in being so dogmatic about always doing it all. I can take care of myself. I’ve proven that for decades. To keep feeling as if I have to assert that to the world at the expense of hurting really great people who want to be there for me and would like nothing more than for me to let them in? That’s selfish. Much more selfish than I’ve stupidly convinced myself that accepting an outstretched hand could ever be. I would like this to be the year I stop confusing imperiousness for autonomy and acknowledge my humanity a little more fully.

    Write more

    I’ve had a not small amount of freelance success this year and I’m grateful for every new connection or email that comes my way as a result of others reading my words. And it has made me greedy for more. More stories. More ideas. More venues. But mostly, a more central role for writing in my life and a way to move it from a side gig to the main one. I’ve somehow gotten it into my head that because I am capable of earning a living in other ways, I should probably do so. I’m good at other things and those other things are more profitable than word vomit, so I should be pragmatic and just do one of those other things (project management, business strategy, policy development), right? And so I do. But nothing makes me happier than what I deem to be the perfect turn of phrase, when I arrange all the words just so and then mouth them aloud to myself to get the rhythm right. No amount of pragmatism replaces that feeling.

    Move

    Somewhere. Anywhere. A little bit kd lang and a little bit Neko Case. Here is not where I need to be. I know that. Anyone who knows me knows that. I’m not exactly sure where is, but I want to test the options in 2012. And I want to do more traveling. After years of solo adventures, adjusting to someone else’s travel proclivities has been strange. We’ve worked out most of the hitches and I have no doubt that 2012 will also include more #RoadWorriers dispatches. Although, probably no more videos of me in my pajamas.

     

  • Nothing To See Here

    “What are you thinking?”

     

    This was a game my travel partner and I played a hundred times last week. Late at night, over dinner, during long stretches of flat road, on the last few miles to our next destination. A close cousin to “Why are you looking at me like that?” The object is to make the other one crack, to admit that they were thinking something terrible or scandalous or just plain silly. I’m very stubborn, which makes me very good at the game. And while there may have been rare moments when I just didn’t want to share what was on my mind, for the most part, it really was a blank. Eat, sleep (or try to unsuccessfully), drive. I didn’t think about work. I didn’t think about coming home. I didn’t fixate on the fact that I couldn’t doze for more than an hour or so a night. I stared out the window at the alien flatness of Nebraska. I braced myself to merge into interstate traffic. I petted dogs and peeled apples. I laughed. I ate (vegan) ice cream. And I hardly spared a minute to analyze any of it.

    You can only fret for so long before you simply wear yourself out. Until you can’t muster one more ounce of angst. Like pulling an all-nighter to write a college term paper and then suddenly, at 2:00PM the next day, all of the adrenaline wears off at once and you’ve never felt grubbier and queasier and more tired in your life.

    That was my week. A whole seven days spent at the point where the reserve tank of energy you use to police your own mind and assemble and reassemble your plans is completely dry. We all end up there at one time or another. And it’s really not such a bad place. In fact, it’s liberating –  that quiet when the record ends and no one gets up to flip it to the other side, that juncture at which you don’t worry about having the right words, because there’s really no need for words at all, those moments when you can hardly muster a first guess, let alone a second one. There’s a comfort in this, in the feeling that you haven’t snapped the band of your mind so far and so hard that it can’t bounce back if you just leave it alone for a few days, if you loosen a few buttons, open the gate and let it wander, stop trying to wrap your arms around all of its moving parts as if it were a squirming toddler. Just let it sit.

    Sometimes, when someone asks you what you’re thinking,  not only is “Nothing” true, it’s the best answer of all.

  • The Secret To Secrets

    I am good at hearing secrets. I am good at accepting them thoughtfully, like a present someone took a long time to choose. Holding them in my lap with both hands to make sure they don’t fall and break.

    It’s not very hard. I can teach you. In fact, it might be even easier than being bad at it. Because it mostly requires you to do nothing.  Don’t interject. Don’t try to fix. Don’t judge. Just nod. Tilt your head a little. Say, “Well, that’s not very good at all” or “Hmm.” That’s it. And wait. Wait for more.  Don’t ask for it, just wait. Wait for the person to feel out how the story goes. Sometimes, it’s very efficient because they’ve told it (or thought about telling it) many times before. Beginning, middle, end in one big breath. And sometimes, they are stringing it together right then and there and editing as they go and they don’t really even know how they feel about it until they run out of words. Then they cut themselves off or just shrug, shrug, stop. Sometimes, they are peaceful at the end and sometimes angry, as if they too are hearing this for the very first time. And sometimes, they want to twist the lid back on the bottle as quickly as possible, pretend they don’t see all the bits spilled on the floor, just step over and around them and leave you to clean up. It’s not them,  it’s not you. It’s the secret. You should remember that. Because they will come back.

    They will always come back.  If you’re good at this.

    


  • Whimsy, Wendys and What I’ve Been Up To

    I knew Annie Passanisi and I were kindred spirits when she unveiled her plan for world domination and it involved trademarked t-shirts and kissing booths.

    I was delighted when she asked me to be a contributor to Whimsy for Wendys, her brand new e-book baby. As much as I alternately reject and grudgingly tolerate the Manic Pixie Dream Girl thing (but mostly reject), I was tickled pink to join with 11 other awesome internet ladies to write about how to keep your sense of wonder,  joy and delusions of existential grandeur alive in a world that has little time for such seeming nonsense. My particular piece addresses how to hold onto whimsy in the workplace and includes road-tested tips from my white-collar life.

    Working with Annie and co. was a fabulous experience (so fab that she and I have another killer collaboration in the works) and I couldn’t have chosen a better project with which to finally dip my toes in the e-book pool.

    If you want to learn more about Whimsy for Wendys or grab your own copy (early birds also snag a host of freebies and discounts, including a deal on copywriting services from yours truly), hop on over to the main site.

    And if you ask really nicely, I might just tell you about the business trip where I stayed in a hotel room next door to a dead body. That little anecdote narrowly missed making the cut in my contribution.

  • Stop Starving

    I’m not a recipe slave. Even beyond the vegan thing and the celiac thing, I don’t feel obligated to hew to Betty Crocker if I have a better idea. If a dish requires onions or garlic, I leave them out. Ditto raisins. Double up the vanilla extract. Skip the coconut.  Mostly, this works or at least it tastes like it to someone who hasn’t eaten a bagel since 2005.

    My firm belief is that you can always work with the emotional and intellectual and circumstantial ingredients you have on hand. You can always pull out all the cans and bottles and bowls and cobble something together. It’s matter of improvising and recognizing the useful application of what you’re surrounded with. Maybe you can’t find the cookie sheet, so you have to bake snickerdoodles in a pie plate, or you decide to bread the scallops with crushed potato chips, or swap the blueberries in those muffins for chocolate chunks. Or you start taking distance ed classes in order to finish your BA while working your day job. Or you get a roommate and put the money you’re saving on rent toward paying off your student loans. Or you start volunteering at an animal shelter to get your puppy fix until you’re in a position to be a responsible pet owner yourself. There’s always an option right now. There is always something new and interesting and rewarding that you can create with what you already have. Maybe it’s not exactly what you’ve been craving, but it meets an immediate need for sustenance and tides you over until you can truly get your fill.

    Stop throwing in the towel because you only have walnuts and the recipe calls for almonds, or giving up before you start because whatever you concoct isn’t worth a spot on the menu at The French Laundry. Realize that being out of cocoa isn’t the end of the world. You can make something that doesn’t call for cocoa. And then the next time you’re at the supermarket, maybe you can remind yourself to pick some up. Or maybe you get distracted by looking for the briniest olives possible.

    There’s a whole world out there between famine and filet mignon.  Eat up.

  • Cracking The Whip

    I’ve done the coaching thing before. I’ve written about how I tried to become a coach and just ended up feeling like a robot no one would ever love. So, when Erika Lyremark offered me a spot* in her Morning Whip business coaching program, I waffled a bit. On one hand, Erika is awesome (you guys, she used to be a STRIPPER). On the other, taking the time out to devote to rummaging around in my own head when I have 49 concrete things on my to-do list that need tackling seemed like a time suck that I could ill afford.  But awesome and free and curiosity won out, so I said yes.

    It was a good choice. The Morning Whip is not for the commitment-phobic. The month-long program for (aspiring) entrepreneurs consists of three lessons/week, three corresponding teleconference discussions and lots of homework.  Participants (or Whipsters, as Erika calls them) are encouraged to share their progress by posting to a private Facebook group and participating in the thrice-weekly call-ins. Given that I work a 9 – 5, 8 – 5, 7:30 – 6, I couldn’t make the teleconferences, which is my big regret about my participation. I think it would have been even more energizing if I’d been able to interact with the rest of the class on the regular. I had to make do with listening to the lessons on my iPod at the gym.

    Erika’s style is not at all touchy-feely. I would have never agreed to go along for the ride if it was. She swears (shoulds are sh*tty might be my favorite line in the whole program), she talks about getting naked for money and her audio lessons feature  sound clips of whips and stilettos. Despite being a fan of flats and many layers of clothing, I can relate. The Morning Whip is centered on tough girl empowerment – identify what you want, set concrete goals, give yourself an accountability structure (Erika refers to the Whip List, which calls for participants to list daily and monthly to-dos and expected results). Given that a lack of self-confidence has never been an issue around these parts, I appreciated that Erika emphasized practical steps to get from A to B, with a minimum of New Age hand-holding. I love me some hand-holding, but context is everything. She also provides examples from her own life and business, so you know these prescriptions are road-tested and not just lofty pronouncements.

    I was a little concerned that because I only do the entrepreneur thing as a side hustle right now, I wouldn’t benefit as much as someone who is self-employed, but getting your butt kicked is getting your butt kicked, ya know? In a month in which I’ve been absolutely buried under projects, I found that having someone sternly telling me every day that I needed to keep my eye on the prize, ditch distractions and focus on monetizing my pie-in-the-sky ambitions was exactly what was called for.

    And from a feminist perspective, I love the fact that Erika talks money (something we also covered when I interviewed her for Forbes a couple of months ago) with no hesitation. This is so refreshing. She assumes her (largely female) audience isn’t in business for self-actualization or for an altruistic high. Entrepreneurs want to earn cold hard cash and she makes no bones about the fact that the Morning Whip is ultimately aimed at getting participants to up their profitability vs. rolling around in a field of puppies that smell like fabric softener.

    If you’re interested in checking out what Erika has to offer, she’s starting a new Morning Whip on Oct 23. If you have specific questions related to the program, drop her a line. She might be a business dominatrix, but she’s very gracious and approachable. Also, tell her that I said to ask her about her thoughts on hustling  vs. drug addiction. She’ll get the joke.

    *Our agreement was that I would take the course for free in exchange for writing about my experience with the program. Erika had no idea what I was going to write and all opinions expressed are my own. No money changed hands and I don’t get a cut of the action if any of my readers end up enrolling. My credibility is as unimpeachable as my lady-like virtue.

  • Maybe You’re Ready And Maybe You’re Not

    I don’t believe in the laws of attraction thing, but I do believe that the energy you put out to the world and to others influences what you get back in return and in what manner. But not in the whole you are a magnet and good fortune is a box of paperclips kinda way.

    It’s like how dogs can apparently now sniff out cancer; people can sniff out fear and self-doubt and lack of commitment. Maybe you’re saying all the right words, have the right ideas and genuinely believe that you’re ready to take this step or start this project, but your gut hasn’t signed on the dotted line. Your soul would rather catch a few ZZZs. Maybe you can’t see it yourself, but this lack of bone-deep drive shows in your presentation, shows in how you go after opportunities, in how you meet and overcome challenges. If you’re only 71% invested, it’s reflected in the quality of results you get for your efforts. You’re doing and saying everything you believe you should, you just aren’t  giving off the self-belief that underpins it all. Your pheromones don’t smell like commitment.

    I’ve been talking about collaboration and adventure and whimsy for a long time, but that sort of stuff has only started to take root in my life within the last two months. Why? Because I’m now ready for it. My gut is good to go and my soul is psyched. People can pick up on that energy and focus when they deal with me (also, I smell really nice). I’m pitching work. I’m plotting a nerd revolution (no nerd left behind!). I’m tackling a super-secret project that makes me want to roll around on the floor like a little dachshund puppy.

    It’s not about getting a personality transplant or winning the lottery or falling in love; it’s about being in a place where your intentions and actions are holding hands instead of trying to punch each other in the face. It’s about realizing that you have to clean your (figurative) house before you host the party of the century. No one will want to come over to play naked Twister if the living room floor is covered in cat hair and beer cans, ya dig?

    If it feels like you’re not moving forward on your hopes and dreams and goals, it might be because some part of you isn’t 100% ready to tackle those hopes, dreams and goals. It might be bad timing, or a dearth of energy, or maybe your BIG ideal is only half-baked  and still in need of tweaking. It’s not the universe telling you to go back to bed; it’s you telling the universe (and everyone in it) that you need a deadline extension in order to turn in your very best work.

    You keep asking your gut and heart if you’re there yet, so maybe you should start listening to the answer and accept that you might still have a few miles left to cover.

  • What You Believe About Yourself Is A Lie

    “I’m here to talk about ___,” I say with a big smile.

    “And I see you’ve brought alcohol,” one of the men at the booth remarked, noting the glass of wine in my hand.

    “Well, you didn’t think I’d just leave it on the counter at my booth, did you? You know who I work with. There’s no way it would be there when I got back!”

    A round of hearty chuckles and I’m in.

    I spent last week at a trade show/conference/big giant thing. I spent four straight days smiling, answering questions, brokering introductions, laughing at lame jokes, reciting specs and trying to avoid getting food stuck in my teeth. And networking, so much networking.

    Somewhere along the way, we learn and internalize truths about ourselves. You got teased for being the tallest girl in fifth grade, so even though you topped out at 5’7” (fifth grade was the beginning and end of your growth spurt), you still think of yourself as a giant and can’t help slouching. Or your brother was a varsity basketball player, so you’ve always considered yourself the non-athletic sibling. You give up on the idea of training for a marathon, because how would a couch potato like you even go about something like that?

    Maybe someone teased us or reprimanded us or we once got food poisoning at a Mexican restaurant and are now convinced we hate garlic with every fiber of our being, but somehow we came to define ourselves in certain ways and we rarely stop to question whether these truths are still accurate or were ever really true to begin with.

    I’m not terrible at networking. I’m actually quite good at it. I can be charming and engaging and ask pertinent questions and speak knowledgeably about my industry. But it’s more convenient to tell myself that I’m a terrible networker because that lets me off the hook. I’m so terrible at it that I shouldn’t even bother wasting all that energy on trying. I should probably just head back to the hotel and watch episodes of Alan Partridge on my laptop, right?

    The wrong-headed things we believe about ourselves provide us with an easy out – I am this. I have always been this. I will always be this. Being that is impossible and out of the question.

    Give yourself a little homework assignment today right now. Write down five or ten characteristics or traits that you don’t like about yourself or that have a negative connotation to you. Then list the first time you became aware of each trait. I guarantee that you’ll be surprised at how far back some of the explanations go and how trivial the supporting evidence seems when compared to the influence you’ve let it have in defining your self-image ever since.

    Are you really going to keep letting one failed HS calculus test have the power to define your relationship with math and prop up your “inability” to balance a checkbook?

    It’s time to tell the truth.

  • Is It Quitting Time?

    “If I don’t become a spy, I’m probably just going to stop.”

    There are not many people who could utter a line like that and have it make perfect sense in the moment. My friend K is one of those people.

    What K was getting at was the idea that eventually you have to stop raging (okay, unless you’re Dylan Thomas) and just dig in and make your stand where you are. You get tired and discouraged or you get shaken to the core and have to put your priorities back in order or you just realize that the time you’ve been spending on round pegs and square holes is time you won’t get back, is time you could have spent cultivating an unencumbered, at peace you. And being okay with the fact that that person isn’t exactly who you’ve been fighting for all this time. That’s the kicker, of course.

    Needless to say I’m not at that point. K has always been the more zen half of our friendship, able to refer to people as “lovely” and “genuine” without an ounce of patronization to it. By contrast, I have a crippling weakness for the word “douchebag.” I’m 10 lbs of rage in a 5-lb sack. But so are most of the people I like the best and relate to most closely – creative, driven, second-guessing, meticulous, hyperbolic, ambitious, egotistical, pedantic, talented, verbose, know-it-all, sleepless, idealistic variations on a theme. These are people whose wants almost swallow them whole, who always feel as if they’re trying to beat the clock, who tear it up and start again and again and again, who are viciously hard on themselves because they don’t know any other way to get things done. These are my people. And they’re not happy, not contented, not at peace. And maybe they’re we’re suffering for it?

    It’s like when you’re first learning to write and you grip the pencil as hard as possible in order to eke out the letters, but if you never learn to loosen your grip, you get that weird bump on your middle finger* and then it’s 20 years later and your hand cramps while writing the rent check because you’re still forming the letters the only way you know how. It’s more effort than is needed and pretty inefficient, but it’s what works for you. And so is pushing and fighting and struggling. It feels natural and necessary and an acknowledgement that there are great stakes at risk here, even if we can’t precisely articulate what those stakes might be. It’s terrifying to contemplate that this effort might be for naught, that it may never pay off, that maybe you aren’t making progress, you’re just making your life so much harder than it needs to be.

    But it’s not so easy to quit gripping, to stop raging, to be okay with who and how you are in the here and now, either. It’s pretty overwhelming to imagine stopping, just dropping what you’re doing right now and not picking up some new cause or quest. In fact, it might be even harder than all the pushing we’ve been doing in the first place. Maybe that’s why there’s always one last thing on the agenda ( becoming a spy, finishing that novel, losing 10 lbs, ) that keeps us from finally finding out what it would feel like.

     

    *I still have mine; I rub my index finger against it when I need to tell my left hand from my right.