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Related post:
Once Several Times Upon a Mattress

Rose is Rose at Comics.com

I had a good lunch today with a bunch of martial arts and marketing people, with whom I have remarkably little in common.  Our state has just legalized a certain activity, and these people are poised to get in on the ground floor and make some money out of it.    I have no idea why they invited me along, except that I know a couple of them and we like each other.  Nor did I really have anything to contribute to the animated conversation, except to cheer them on.  

You know that comic, “Rose is Rose,” in which the mother, Rose, has a punked-out alter-ego named Vicki who wears a leather mini and rides a motorbike?  Who craves rattle-snake chili and sports a tattoo?

That was me today. Vicki the Biker Chick.

Karen over at Working Girl had another good post about networking this week, and gives some really good advice, including this:  anyone can network, anywhere.   She also makes the very good point that job-hunting should be fun.  Well, she actually makes that point in today’s post,  but it’s true.  Job searching is damn hard work, and it’s very easy to become bitter, grim, and warlike about it. 

The problem is that most employers aren’t really looking for bitter, grim, and warlike people. 

Even more importantly, that isn’t any way to live, period.  After all, life is what happens when you’re waiting around for the next thing to happen.  Life is what happens while you’re still looking for a job.

Get out there and network.  Not because it’s good for your job prospects (though it is) but because it’s good for you.  So put down those sad old cupcakes , gas up that Harley, and go out and get yourself some fun!

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Related Posts:

Chapter Two-ing
We are Always Networking
Why Cupcakes?

One of my dear friends directs an organization that works with inner city youth. 

These young people are often battered with repeated failures, but Chris believes in them, even when no one else does.  He encourages them to believe in themselves, too.

“Always Begin Again,” he tells them. Over and over.
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I’m helping a woman finish her latest book.  She’s old enough to be my grandmother, but whizzes around the internet like a pro and still hikes in the Andes.  She sent me an email yesterday, along with the latest installment of her manuscript. 

“This is so HARD,” she wrote.

‘But I have a sign up,” she continued, “that says ‘Failure can not tolerate persistence.”  Got it from a wonderful book called The War of Art.’

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Andy is home.  He called me today, and he sounded much better.  People have taken good care of him, so he was calling around to check in,  thank everyone.  His client had paid his hotel bill last night, even though he hadn’t managed to finish their show.  He added that Phillip has had some good days while he was gone, but that he himself hit another rough patch,  coming home this afternoon to the empty house.  

But he already has lots of things set up, lots of meetings with lots of people, for his business and to go over the estate, legal and financial things.   A  lot of mail had piled up while he was gone, too.  I could hear him shuffling through it.  He listed some of it for me:  Paperwork about benefits.  Insurance information for COBRA. 

And the death certificate finally came.  

“And, maybe,” he paused, “a grief counselor or something.  That might be good.”
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There’s a quote on scrap of paper on my desk that I’ve been trying to decide what to do with. It keeps getting shuffled to the top of my piles. I heard it last fall from an arborist who was speaking to our group about how badly our area’s trees had suffered from a year of severe drought, last spring’s late freeze, and a summer of record-setting heat.

Then he smiled. “But,  enough gloom and bad news.  I recommend, as all of us do who have the perpetual gardener’s heart: replant next spring!”

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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Related Posts:

“Fixing the Women:” not enough to overcome pay inequity
The Tyranny of Petty Coercion

Don’t bail. The best of the gold’s at the bottom of barrels of crap. - Randy Pausch 

Randy Pausch is a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.  Last September, he was invited to take part in a CMU lecture series called “The Last Lecture,” in which top academics are asked to give a lecture as if it were hypothetically their last chance ever to share their best wisdom with the world.

For the amazing 47-yr old Dr. Pausch, who has terminal cancer, it wasn’t hypothetical.  

At left: Randy Pausch and family

• 10-minute video: reprise (on Oprah)
•  Video of original lecture (75  min) and more about Randy

While I do not love every word written (or philosophy espoused) by Marianne Williamson, I do love these words: 

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

-Marianne Williamson

10. Just keep trying.
9. Try to determine what is working.
8. Try to determine what is not working.
7. Try to find someone who’s done it.
6. Try to ask for help.
5. Try it again tomorrow.
4. Try it a little differently.
3. Try once more.
2. Try again.
1. Try.

Kind of beautiful, isn’t it?  I saw this on a giant poster in an educational supply store.  It’s also featured in November 2006 issue of The Lorraine Hansberry Library News, and that’s about it.  I gather then that these words are meant for children.  Perhaps adults are too cynical to hear them, or have discovered already that trying isn’t always enough.  Or is it?  At what point in our lives do we lose our limitless potential?  When is it that we can no longer grow up to be the president of the United States? 

Just keep trying.  Find mentors.  Ask for help.  Focus on the positive (what’s already working) while carefully defining any remaining barriers (what’s not working.)  Take a break when you need to and try it again tomorrow.  Instead of giving up entirely, try it just once or twice more, or try it with a slightly different approach. 

The Economist, among others, has been busily debunking the enduring American dream of endless economic opportunity and upward mobility.  That dream is dead, they tell us, and we need a new one.  The realists, these adults among us, are insisting that we read their reports and statistics that show us how limited we truly are by our educations and our socio-economic status.

The reports are true.  The inequities are real, and they are growing.  

But.

No population study can ever define an individual.   This is why, in addition to The Economist, we also have stories.  This is why we have The Lord of the Rings and The Little Engine that Could.  We buy these books for our children but, if we’re honest, we know we need them, too. 

And if we are not only honest but decent, we will not be content with lying to our children about things we don’t believe any more ourselves.  And what we are telling our children is this:  no set of aggregate numbers can ever describe a single person.  No statistical level of improbability ever stopped a hobbit.

So just keep trying. 

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Related posts:
Chapter Two-ing
Success!! 
Hanging in (and blonder, too)

What would you do if you had no fear? 
Living your dreams
while quakin’ in your boots

By Diane Conway,
with foreword by Anne Lamott

One of the things I’d do is be the first to comment on Powell Books’ website on a book I hadn’t even actually read yet. (they give random prizes for first-persons-to-comment, and ever since I won Door Prize #3 that one time, I’ve grown a bit cocky.)

I keep googling this book. I’ve been wanting to buy it for about a year now but keep running out of book money (I’m a little bad).  But look: it’s got about the world’s best title. And it has a foreword by Anne Lamott, how cool and irresistible is that? Because that’s enough reason to buy the book right there. And another reason is because I wish I had written it. Do you think I could use the same title, and get Anne Lamott to write my foreword, too?

I did submit a review for Powell’s, and even rated the book. I give it a “4,” not because it’s not worth a full “5″ but because giving it a 5 at this point may have been getting a little ahead of myself.  I would have edged up to a 4.5 had Powell Books given that option, but it didn’t.  

Maybe you could read this book yourself and then you can give it a five on Powell Books, and that would pull the average up to where it belongs.   Or have you read it already?  If you have, please let us know what you thought of it!

Here is what the publisher says about the book (which appears on the product page on both Powell Books and Amazon)

For this book, author Diane Conway approached a police officer, a waitress, a politician, a lawyer, a cab driver, and many others, and asked them each the same question: “What would you do if you had no fear?” The results, chronicled in this book, were both surprising and enlightening. Her respondents told her their secrets, their long-hidden dreams, and their fears. Their dreams included quitting mind-numbing jobs, applying to medical school, buying tickets to South America, finding true love, quitting drinking, or having an affair. The distance between dreaming and doing, according to Conway, is surprisingly short. In What Would You Do If You Had No Fear? her fresh voice and “Studs Terkel in drag persona” challenge readers to stop, open their hearts, and truly live. Included are self-tests, quizzes, growth exercises, and inspiring quotes for realizing one’s fear-free potential.

The author, calling herself our “slightly neurotic, frequently shaky guide” (channelling Lamott for sure) adds on Amazon that

When I saw the profound effect [asking this question] had on people, I started asking people everywhere I went. I had to overcome the fear that people would think that I’m: a) delusional or b) trying to pick them up for kinky sex.

Now doesn’t that sound like a fun read? 

And do you know what?  It fits much better when you do.  Everything settles into place, some lovely draping (which I never knew was part of the design) happens, and there is NO gaping. 

I’m sure there’s a profound metaphor in here someplace…

I’m nobody! Who are you?

I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?

Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

Photos by Almostgotit

Poem by Emily Dickinson