Almostgotit.com

I’ve been tagged by Career Encourager.  Assignment: write a six word memoir.  Other rules: post your own memoir. Tag at least five more blogs. Link to them and leave comments. Acknowledge the blog that tagged YOU. Link to that blog as well. (Rules rewritten to fit my theme. You can also use original rules. Peggy’s better at rules than I!)

A terrific book inspired it all.  Not Quite What I Was Planning… Compilation from submissions to a contest.  My dad sent me a copy.  I have not thanked him yet.  You can buy one from here.   Good review in the New Yorker.   Entirely written in six word sentences.  Cleverly, they didn’t point this out. I’m not so clever, just slow.  

I liked their idea, so borrowed. 

The book is clever, funny, poignant.   Here’s a few of my favorites:

I’m my mother, and I’m fine.  
I was born. Some assembly required.
It was embarrassing, so don’t ask.
I think, therefore I am bald.

My, this is a daunting task. Tried to sum things up: failed.  Advisors say don’t think too much.  I wrote a few, can’t choose.

• How did all of this happen?
• More I live, less I know.
• Clearly I am not an earthling.
• Figured a few things out, eventually.

I choose to tag these blogs:

• Karen at Working Girl
• Paul at Original Faith
• TrueVyne at The True Vyne 
• Emily at The Rocky Road of Love and Other Great Recipes
• Ursula at Working Mother Blog

Come on now – YOU try one!

At right:  Almostgotit, in the flesh and a little jet-lagged, with her new-born nephew.  My husband doesn’t really like this particular photo, but *I* think it’s funny.  And I’m also the boss, so there.

* The “Invisible Woman* essay was, indeed, written by Nicole Johnson, is fully subject to copyright, and her publicist tells me they were “deeply sad” when it “went global” without Nicole’s name on it.

* The Mommy Monk is one of several blogs which posted Nicole’s “Invisible Woman” piece without her name on it. That blog’s tagline is “MommyMonk: A woman attempting to find inner solitude in the daily self-denial of motherhood.” However, the blog’s author also claims to be a speaker/writer/teacher in addition to being a wife/mother. Not really the MOST solitary or anonymous person, then..

* Julie, who was very kind to comment here a couple of days ago, also posted Nicole’s piece without attribution. She claims this is not plagiarism as she doesn’t claim to have written it herself. Nevertheless, she also cites it as the central premise of her “Building Cathedrals” series of telecourses , for which she charges $20 per hour ($80 for the series). Which she markets under her own name. Nor does Julie seem quite so sanguine about folks resyndicating her own material: at the bottom of each page of her website it says © 2008 Julie L. Ford, All rights reserved

* It took me about 20 minutes to find the author of “Invisible Woman,” and 24 hours to contact and hear back from the author’s publicist. And I was just writing a post, not setting up a business. I’m just saying.

* My history-professor-husband tells me that we do, in fact, know many of the names of the artists, architects and builders who worked on medieval cathedrals. I am not done with this topic yet!

But I can talk about other things, too…

* I went out to lunch today. Why do waiters ask if you want “lettuce and tomato” but never if you want “tomato and lettuce?”

* It’s very funny to accidentally fall in step behind a man heading towards an adult bookstore. I did that today on my way home, and he kept turning around to look at me, nervously, almost as if *he* were the woman and *I* was a large, threatening man. When I realized where he was going, though, it all made sense. I should have followed him right into the store to see what he would do. Some day I’m going to do that, have been wanting to ever since that place opened a few blocks from my house. I think I’ll get all dressed up like a nice church lady, with a cardigan and hand bag, wander in as if by mistake, and start poking around, asking all sorts of questions, like “what is THIS is for?”

Standford Business School’s Bob Sutton and I had an interesting conversation about assholes today.

He (literally) wrote the book that is changing the world’s bad idea that it’s okay to be a jerk in the workplace, so long as you get things done. But Sutton seems equally interested, at times, in his ongoing crusade on behalf of the word “asshole” itself.

He’s very fond of it, and doesn’t seem to have any use for a thesaurus.

I love the guy. But he didn’t get my point that the concept is more important than the word — and that sometimes words themselves are assaultive (he, of all people, should know this.) This particular word not only further offends those who may deserve it, but might also offend people who want to talk about healthy workplaces without always using words like “asshole” when they do.

Which might make the person who keeps insisting on the word, himself, an asshole — right?

You may already have read “Invisible Mother,” (text below). As best as I can tell it’s been circulating online since at least 2005, via email, message boards, and dozens and dozens of blogs — but it is always credited to a nameless author.

Because she’s invisible. Get it?

I do not like to post things without an artist’s permission, much less without attribution. That’s called “plagiarism,” and is a form of theft.

Nevertheless, the hundreds of postings by hundreds of women all happily conspiring with the invisible author to keep her that way is wonderfully ironic, quite aside from the funny loveliness of the piece itself.
(more…)

Blogging may have to take a back seat again this week.

A friend of ours (I’ll call her “Joy”) died very suddenly yesterday morning. The married mother of 9-year-old “Phillip,” she was the parent with the steady income and the health insurance plan.

The family had many plans for the future, but this scenario wasn’t one of them. There was no will, few financial reserves, and though Joy’s husband “Andy” is a shrewd businessman in his own right, this hit him as an absolute broadside.

All he can do right now is weep or look stunned. And whatever he has left, his son needs it all.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are stunned too, and trying to put together the beginnings of what to do next for someone whose spouse suddenly dies.

Yesterday, amidst the busiest weekend of the church year, finding an available priest for the family was my first emergency. Today, between holiday celebrations, we’ve been arranging a funeral.

Everybody dies. And there are basic “death checklists” that virtually everyone will deal with at some point, given our universal mortality.

Most of these checklists assume a person is older, however, and without quite so many entanglements.

Where are all the other answers? (oh, help!)

And where’s the universal genius who’s supposed to be in charge of all of this, anyway?

Someone needs to reassure and manage Andy’s clients until he can do so again himself. Since Andy taught me much of what I know about webpage management, some of this may fall on me.

Andy and Phillip also need financial advice, legal advice, and health insurance. They need money and childcare and household management plans and community support. They need everything.

Nor are these homeless people, or hermits. They have friends, relatives and co-workers. They are “plugged in.” And we, the family’s network, are doing what we can.

What strikes me is how stupid, and helpless, we all still are.

Most of all, though, I vacillate between wanting to weep and wanting to yell, because God Damn it, Easter or no, this is all wrong, and Phillip needs his mother!

Photo by Kris de Curtis

I’ve had a house full of children, visiting relatives, and one vacationing husband. Consequently, we keep running out of food, clean towels, and unoccupied computers.

Among other things: in the midst of everyone taking showers one morning, our ancient plumbing stopped working (first in one bathroom, and then in the other – a total shut-out!)

Sigh. I really did mean to be more organized this week. But honestly? At this point I don’t even know where my day planner is. I did find my cell phone (in the bathroom) and my car keys (hanging from the car’s passenger-side door.)

Happy Easter, folks!

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Hear, Hear!

I like good quotes as much as the next person. Really.

So when my sister sent around this “great quotes from great leaders” video from Simpletruths.com, I watched it happily enough. It’s only three minutes long, and it does have some really good quotes. It also has some really sweet piano music.

All that’s missing are the smiling receptionists, the strong scent of chemicals, and the dentist drills whining in the background.

“The Beautiful Gift Book” from SimpleTruths.com, which contains all these quotes and many MORE, costs $19.95. Plus you get a free DVD.

Motivational quotes and sayings — particularly the ones made into the glossy, black-framed motivational posters that line the walls of our schools and work places, are a multi-million dollar industry. Or so I’m told by Despair, Inc., whose mission is to Fight Back.

Deeply concerned that “while promising to stimulate “Hope”, “Success” and “Teamwork”, instead these tools of coercion and intimidation have inspired only grief, anger and nausea,” Despair, Inc. seeks to redress these irrationally exuberant products with some profiteering, er, amelioration of their own.

At Despair.com, one can purchase high-quality DEmotivational posters, despairwear, pessimist mugs, and other thoughtful corporate gifts. Featured prominently is bestselling book,The Art of Demotivation, praised by Financial Times Management Columnist Lucy Kellaway as “the most daring, funny and subversive management book ever written”. There are also several downloadable management training podcasts on the site too which shouldn’t be missed.

Hint: if you like/understand “The Office,” either in its American or British versions, you will like these, too.

In fact, the webmaster recommends that if your life is desperately without purpose or hope, you ought to make Despair.com into your homepage.

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Women still have an uneasy relationship with power and the traits necessary to be a leader. There is this internalized fear that if we are really powerful, we are going to be considered ruthless or pushy or strident—all those epithets that strike right at our femininity.

So begins an article on Women in Leadership, in which eleven women from different backgrounds tell their own stories about how they arrived at the place we call “success.”   Read it!  
Creative Commons  photo by Meretsoleil2

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A few years back, former Harvard Business School Professor Michael Watkins published an international best-seller entitled The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels.

More recently, the Wall Street Journal’s online Career Journal  has been running an excellent series of articles called “90 days.”

In each of these periodic columns, WSJ authors address the most critical things to remember, and steps to take, in the first days and months after making a major career transition.  While I assume WSJ is using Watkins’ book as a model,  “9o day” topics range from “Make the Most of a New Promotion” to “Mobilizing an Unplanned Job Search.”

I’m intrigued, too, by the choice of a “ninety-day” interval.

Ninety days was, in fact, almost exactly the period it took me to establish definitively that my most recent employers were not prepared to make an executive transition.  It really did take about three months for me to run through all my own “critical success strategies” first, to see if there was any way at all to save the dying patient.  There wasn’t. 

Michael Watkins describes getting acquainted with a new organization as being similar to “drinking from a fire hose.”  Yes, that’s exactly what it was like, but I fully expected to move on to the point eventually where the torrent would slow a bit.  It’s very strange to have it come to a complete stop, instead.   

So according to the 90-day model, I’m currently in  a subsequent transitional period which happens to follow immediately upon the prior one, without the traditional break in between.  So what should I do?

‘The trick to a successful transition is not to panic,’ says Doug Matthews, President and CEO of Right Management.’ 

‘The biggest mistake is not a financial one, but a psychological mistake,’ says Andrew Tignanelli, president of Maryland-based financial advisory firm Financial Consualate. ‘People panic. They feel and act devastated.’

Before even thinking about boxing up plants and swiping staplers, find a way to get your personal files out of the office. Fire off a few emails to your personal email account with files attached and export all your contacts.’ (Yes, and thank goodness I learned that trick a couple of jobs ago!)

And maybe most importantly:

Meet your new boss. It’s you. You’re working for yourself for the time being, and the job is all about marketing a promising candidate. Just as you would with any other job, establish a home office space and regular hours of operation.

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Creative Commons Photos by AudreyJm529
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Here are the WSJ “90 day” articles to date:

• 90 Days: You’re the New Boss, Now What?
• 90 Days: Make the most of a new promotion
• 90 Days: Managing your former peers takes effort
• 90 Days: Mobilizing an Unplanned Job Search
• 90 Days: Planning a Move to Your Second Job
• 90 Days: What to do after a Layoff.
• 90 Days: Finesse a Flexible Work Schedule