Almostgotit.com

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. ~Thomas Edison

Try again. Fail again. Fail better. ~Samuel Beckett

One fails forward toward success. ~Charles F. Kettering

With our eldest finishing his second week at college, we are all quickly getting our first college failures out of the way. This is good news. It’s good to fail as quickly as you can, to learn as quickly as you can, too.

For instance: we thought we could manage without his having a cell phone. I hate cell phones on a visceral level, and they are bloody expensive, besides. And didn’t *I* manage college without having a cell phone?

But it turns out that our son does need a cell phone. Moreover, his parents need him to have a cell phone. Our 18-year-old has not yet activated the phone in his room, nor does he regularly check his email, nor does he write letters, either. Too busy, too overwhelmed, too inexperienced, too new? Whatever the reasons, we’ve been largely out of contact with him for these very important first few weeks of his college experience, and guess what? There have been some problems. Together, the three of us have failed to manage that much separation, all at once, this soon in the “growing up and leaving home” process.

Furthermore, all of his friends arrange their meals and other social activities together by cell phone. (Or on Facebook, but you can only go into so much detail with so much efficiency on Facebook. )

Turns out, too, that cell phones are herding devices, serving the same function as the call of migrating geese, who honk constantly back and forth in order to organize themselves in proper V-formation.

Who knew? We only learned all this, about cell phones, by failure.

I also learned (again) that my own successful experience (going to college without a cell phone) does not necessarily make me an expert about someone else’s experience. The problem is that I was successful in college without a cell phone. All of us were, back then, of course. But things are different now, and consequently my husband and I had something new to learn, right along with our son.

But we had to fail, first, in order to learn it.

Here is a picture of my youngest, complete with snazzy blue fingernails and a cute new hair cut.  I love having a daughter, and she is teaching me many new things.

Both my daughter and I have been blessed with lots of hair, which gives us fits sometimes but which we generally take for granted.  Imagine how hard it would be, especially for a young girl or woman, not to have any hair?

Locks of Love is a non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to children under the age of 18 who have lost their hair, most of them because of a condition called alopecia areata, which has no known cause or cure.  My 12-year-old daughter has just donated her own hair, and you can, too.  Here’s how.

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?

The Wall Street Journal’s online Career Journal  has continued its series of articles called “90 days,” presumably based on Michael Watkins’ bestseller, The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels.  Each WSJ column addresses the most critical things to remember in the first days following a major career transition.

There’s lots of terrific cross-pollination here, so if you’re in transition, go ahead and read them all!

• 90 Days: Working Productively As a Telecommuter
• 90 Days: Relocating Overseas? Do Your Homework And Ease Your Way
• 90 Days: Acing Your First Post-College Job
• 90 Days: Working for Yourself Can Have Its Challenges
• 90 Days: Easing Back From Maternity Leave
• 90 Days: Dealing With a PR Crisis Takes Planning and Truth
• 90 Days: Joining a Nonprofit Board Is More Than a Labor of Love

~ For more WSJ “90 Days” articles ~

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Related Post:

The First 90 Days: Strategic Career Transitions

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.
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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

I’ve always enjoyed Steven Covey and similar gurus for their no-nonsense approach to leadership, productivity and personal effectiveness.

Sometimes though, a little home-spun kitsch and fun are in order as well! I discovered the Sidetracked Home Executives many years before there really was a “web,” and I must say the self-described “slob sisters” seem to be aging well. Sister Pam even has started her own inspirational website, and it is hilarious!

The amazing Fly Lady is not to be missed either. I’ve seen many of her best ideas espoused by the most sophisticated organization experts, and I strongly suspect she has mentored more than a few of them. Don’t miss her “Eleven Commandments”

If Steven Covey and co. are like the Serious Uncles disseminating jewels of advice over glasses of sherry in the drawing room, Pam, Peggy and FlyLady are like the big-boned, wildly-dressed Grandmas in the kitchen who are always good for a cookie and a funny story. We need both kinds of mentors, I think.

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)

 ”Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
- Søren Kierkegaard

We shamelessly put the kids to work last weekend and “put up” more than half a winter’s worth of heating wood in one day   (3+ cords)  The log splitter doesn’t make wood nearly so pretty as an axe does, nor even as fast, but you can run it all day long – a thing you can’t do with a set of axe-wielding arms. 

Summer rhythm never seems to set in around here until summer is half-way through.  To tell you the truth, I still don’t know how to do it all very well, with kids and work — what there is of it — and Everything Else never quite fitting into whatever time we’ve allotted for it. 

Here, surely, is part of the solution, though.  Living, green things.  This is part of our whiskey barrel garden (hic) which we fenced off and built on what used to be the end of our driveway.  

It is wonderfully peaceful to get up in the morning when it is still cool and stand over the cucumbers or beans with a hose.  Everything smells good in the morning, too.

Later in the day, when Everything Else gets to be too much, I can slip out the back door without telling anyone to dump some stuff into the compost bin, lean into the barrels to pluck a few weeds, see how the volunteer tomatoes are doing, or rifle through the foliage to see if it’s time to pick the beans again. 

It’s not highly-productive time, it’s Being Time.  And I’ve (almost) learned that I can’t live without it.

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Related posts:
Chapter two-ing 
In defense of thoughts