From Here to Autonomy

Femalities: A breakdown of SXSW and a lot of other stuff from a woman's point of view

Don't know what it is--the fact that I've just emerged from a weekend at SXSW, it was International Women's Day on Friday, I got snubbed by a "prominent" male investor/entrepreneur that in the virtual world I respected, though in person not so much--but I am feeling my womanness of late. And no, guys, it's not because it's that time of the month. If anything, it's the world who's experiencing a hormonal shift.

A digital analyst that I bumped into at SX in the lobby of the Hilton asked me what struck me as the big story at SX. I gave him a safe answer that belied the unbelievable growth the BlogHer Network has experienced on mobile platforms </shill for my company> and realized there's a better, more encompassing answer: WOMEN.

You know, those people at SX who like to hug, code, and grab coffee. They've been at SX before (we partnered with SX in '06, developing programming for them around women and have been involved as attendees or board members </shill my business partner> since). They're not really that new in the space. Like content marketing they were around in the Web 1.0 days too, but there are new distinctions that folks seem to be making, in part because, like Facebook, some broke out and went public.

Yes, we don't need to say Sheryl SANDBERG or Marissa MAYER out here. Everyone knows who you are talking about when asked, "What'd you think about Marissa's decision?" or "Lean In, you agree with Sheryl?" It may have been International Women's Day on Friday, but it seems the celebrating here in Austin was delayed for the official launch of "Lean In" instead.

Even my ungeeky friends have reached out and asked me, "So do you think this Lean In stuff is valid?" For the record (and since I was supposed to represent BlogHer on a CNN panel to discuss this Friday, but the topic was bumped to today and we talked about DOMA and Justin Bieber instead) I want to put what I thought was a damn well-conceived opinion out there, to the two of you reading my blog:

I love what Sheryl has done with her platform as resident SV untouchable badass to highlight the issue of women and work. It seems that when women who haven't taken companies public try to do so, the media responds with a tad less enthusiasm. And while I understand the criticism of some of the fembloggers who feel that Sandberg's privileged background makes her an unreliable advocate for those of us who actually have to work, I think someone had to get this conversation started. My hope and intention is to invite others to the conversation who have lived in fear of being fired and feel they have to fake leaning in, or who don't have the resources to lean in without keeling over from the exhaustion of having a full-time career and being a caregiver.

I don't believe that women have an ambition problem. When it comes to having a family and high-powered career they have a power problem.

I attended Jessica Coen's Interview of Anne-Marie Slaughter and felt for the first time in a long time like a pig in shit at a SX session. My people! And I saw plenty of men in attendance at her panel. One even approached me after I asked Anne-Marie my question (Do you think men are equally at risk of having difficulty on-ramping back into the workforce after being at home raising the kids?) and told me how he managed the transition. Finally I can come back from SX with some takeaway for my amazing Stay-at-Home Husband.

And I attended a panel led by John Gerzema that walked us through the research done for his book The Athena Doctrine--which provides powerful examples of men and women who have manifested massive change in the world by adopting feminine qualities such as flexibility, intuition, generosity, and empathy. Gerzema argues that it is the embracing of feminine traits (defined as feminine via a global survey of thousands) that is required to be effective in today's political, economic, and societal realms (and to the "professor" who took issue with Gerzema's omission of his female research partner--who did not co-author the book--on the cover: Consider the maleness of your body language and accusatory tone and Gerzema's open, accepting, perhaps FEMININE response to your attack. Personally, I prefer that he have my back).

And I capped off a long day having dinner with some crazily inspirational women who got where they are (at the top echelons of their companies and running their own) via a killer cocktail of chutzpah, yes, but also of being tireless connectors and interpreters of what the rest of us are going to care about in the future. None of them had the asshole personal interface that I experienced on Saturday, as mentioned earlier that I experienced from an investor entrepreneur who speaks a whole lot about the need to empower women entrepreneurs, just so long as he doesn't actually have to SPEAK or LOOK at any of them at SX. I must say, I've attended countless investor meetings with all-male VCs, tech conventions with mostly male attendees, board meetings with mostly male members, and never have I felt disrespected like I did when I encountered this person and said hello. (To place in Evernote in a file I've reserved for notes on a book I one day intend to write that explores the correlation of assholeness with effectiveness as a visionary. Sadly there often is one, but I'd like to make a case that there doesn't have to be).

I hung out in pubs with men and women who talked about their kids as much as their work projects and who had thoughtful commentary on Marissa Mayer's decision to reverse Yahoo's remote work policy (for the record I'm in the "she's a CEO first" camp. In the future I hope she will address the MANAGEMENT problem that led to the degradation of morale among the remote workers and re-institute flexible work policy.)

Last night, I didn't sleep, and for the first time in a long time, something other than an infant kept me up all night. I had a realization, borne of this combination of aforementioned events, that women are on the cusp of big reckonings. I can feel it pulling me out of my 5-year blogging slump.

I remain true to my belief that being a woman doesn't keep you from getting VC funding--a shitty business plan and weak management team do--and entrepreneurism is accessible to all (Steve Blank, whom I finally got to meet in person at SX, I continue to bow to you). But there continues to be a lack of respect for things female. Note again, I didn't say WOMEN, I said for things/traits female. I think that is going to change. And pretty soon.

BlogHer'12: It isn't about ME?

As the chatter about the BlogHer'12 Conference intensifies this week, I find myself in both an enviable and jealous place. Enviable, because I have the first-time luxury of viewing the excitement as others in the community do--in blog posts, on Twitter and across social media--something that Lisa, Elisa, and I try to do but never really get to do while we're onsite at BlogHer.

Jealous, because I am watching from the sidelines this year--36 weeks pregnant. And while confident in my decision to not fly to NYC and run around on my feet all week (like I did at BH'10, 33 weeks pregnant), the kid in me that always wants to be included will be reading about all of your experiences wistfully.

The event team has embarked on their trip to NYC. Our sales team have all flown in and gathered to prepare and experience the event. My co-founders will already have been onsite for a week when the conference begins. I know how it goes--the nonstop rush of speaking, interviews, meetings with sponsors and partners, spontaneous sightings and hugs in the hotel lobby and on the exhibitor floor. Stressful and exhilarating all at the same time.

And yet I sit here quietly, reading only a trickle of conference-related emails (the week of the conference everyone is using email for emergencies only, and there's very little I can do about onsite issues). I've told everyone I am on-call for anything that comes up, trying to be involved and stay out of the way at the same time. As much as I would like to have a stream of updates on Yammer and an always-on live video feed, I will instead have to wonder how the opening is going, how sessions with some of my favorite bloggers were received, how the parties are going--at least until I can read about them on blogs and Twitter.

It's weird.

Last week I was talking to Elisa about the incredible line-up of speakers and events she and her team managed to amass this year.

"Yeah," she joked. "This year really wasn't the one to miss."

I reminded her that we think that every year. But then she had to go and confirm a live video welcome from President Obama himself.

Rub it in, Elisa. Rub. It. In.

I was at a dinner in San Francisco last week--enjoying some local events and trying to compensate for what I won't be doing in NYC. And I was speaking to another entrepreneur who has successfully built a media/tech conference brand.

"How are you doing?" he asked.

"I'm holding up. It's just so hard, with the conference next week and all. It will be hard not being there, but everyone's managing, and we'll be ready…"

"Actually," he said. "I was talking about the baby."

Made sense, given I was standing in front of him--in person--and quite obviously on the brink of welcoming a child into the world. I was a little bit embarrassed, actually, that I'd been so in my head, and so obsessed with where I WASN'T, that I could not acknowledge the gift of what has been with me all this time: another daughter.

Early in my pregnancy I had an awkward conversation with my doctor, sharing that while I knew my due date was in August, with her permission I would consider going to "this conference my company puts on in New York," despite knowing the stress I would be putting myself and my family (and possibly a planeful of innocent bystanders) under.

My doctor knows I'm an entrepreneur and co-founded a company. "Couldn't you just move your event?" she asked. "It's your company, right?"

Inside I guffawed, knowing how far in advance we plan BlogHer; knowing we'd have somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 people coming this year. Seeing how this "event" has transcended beyond anything that one, three, or fifty people could plan alone. We work hard on it, but it is a foundation, not the whole experience. It is, as Elisa loves to say, the event the community built.

"You have to understand," I replied, needing to remind myself, "This event is SO not about me."

On working and having babies

Bless you Marissa Mayer for taking the helm of Yahoo while being six months pregnant. I'm not joking!

While you are hardly the first CEO/Mama to exist, you took the job at the height of your career, which just happened to coincide with those years when mothers/gynecologists/childbearing friends start to needle with good intentions about the approach of the "cliff"--you know the one; when good ovarian eggs suddenly become less easy to come by. You were in a position of power, and already pregnant, when a board concluded that they needed your talents. You didn't need to be apologetic or cryptic about your intentions to have a baby when things were less hectic, or when the time was "right." You know the cosmic joke: The time is never right.

Like you, I had my first baby in my later 30s and will be expecting my second daughter in just a few weeks, at age 40. I must confess, while I was in the "thinking about" stages of building a family (something I hadn't even contemplated until age 36, as I was quite busy starting a company and not thinking about making babies), I wondered if others might think I wasn't serious about my career, now that I was having kids. I was also uncomfortable--having done many things professionally at a relatively young age--being in the position of the newbie and asking 25-year-old moms how to get a kid to latch properly.

Even now, when I go to executive functions while very pregnant, I am aware that some people have judgements. Recently one male exec said to me, "Aren't you a bit old to have kids now?" I wasn't sure if he meant biologically old, or too far in my career to have to now manage babies at the height of their neediness. Women who were sitting near me insisted that the question was nonsense--women are having babies later now, after they've established their careers. But when I asked them when they had their children they said that their kids were older or even grown up. They got the baby-making phase of their lives "out of the way" early in their careers.

When I learned I was pregnant with my first child I agonized about whom to tell and when. I reasoned that bearing children was my right, a right that plenty of male executives exercised. At the same time I made plans to work at full speed--including travel--up to the very last possible moment. I pushed myself harder than usual in order to prove I wasn't less committed to my career now that I was going to be a parent. I took mental note of all the powerful women execs who were parents and wondered when they managed to fit the kids in. You see, there isn't a lot of how-to out there about having babies and high-powered careers. You can read a lot about preparing for little sleep and negotiating a maternity leave, but so many of the women I talked to confided that they winged it, often kept their Mommy status on the down-low, or even traveled for business abroad with baby and nanny in tow to make the transition unnoticeable to colleagues and bosses.

But even with an air-tight system of nannies, assistants and various professionals there to help, there remains the inevitable identity shift that occurs when you become someone's Mama. I recall being on a flight back from New York to San Francisco (one of many I took the first year of my daughter's life) and realizing that, you know what? I'd rather be home tucking her in. You'll be able to rationalize these bouts of momminess and get back to the email at hand, but you can't turn it off indefinitely.

I just read a piece about the various camps of judgement over your move to Yahoo. Some praise your decision of taking a high-profile position while pregnant, and some condemn it. Some argue that with your considerable compensation package you can hire all the help you need to nurture your baby while you handle business. I suppose that's true. But even in these scenarios that many working moms could only dream about, there's the biological tug that you will feel being a mom that makes a demanding job even more demanding. It will sometimes feel like a sacrifice, even when you are lucky enough to afford help. Even knowing that you don't want to be a part- or full-time stay-at-home Mom, you will still wonder what it's like to spend more time with your child.

I don't mean to say you should feel guilty about your choice. Frankly, I would have made the same choice to step up up the career if I'd been offered. I'm only saying that as a Mom and CEO, life won't be pangless. You'll get pangs in the weirdest places--in boardrooms, in TV interviews. You will feel a little lessened when you perceive that your kid laughs a bit more with his caregiver than he does with you. You might sense that you are not as bonded to him as you were when he was just born. And you won't take yourself so seriously when you remember that earlier that day, you were wiping someone's butt.

But I congratulate you on your choice to step it up. And I hope that, while you don't owe anyone details on how you are managing this choice, that you will be open to talking about it and sharing your experiences with other working moms.

Don't Hate me Because I Leave the Office at 4pm

It was such a provocative headline on Inc.com I just had to check it out: "Sheryl Sandberg Leaves Work at 5:30. Why Can't You?"  Provocative, I suppose, to women who work full time, on their own or on someone else's business, and who at some point in their careers wanted more in their work day than just work. Women like me, who clicked on the headline in her news aggregator, wondering, "and just how does she do that?"

The Inc. Magazine piece cites a video for Makers.com, a video project on AOL, in which Sandberg says:

"I walk out of this office every day at 5:30 so I'm home for dinner with my kids at 6:00, and interestingly, I've been doing that since I had kids..."

The messages in the Inc. article were: "Hey if Sheryl can do it, so can you!" and, don't kill yourself working the long hours you think you need to to be successful--studies show there's a diminishing return after 40 hours per week. The piece was actually very thought-provoking, though I must confess I was hung up on the part about Sheryl Sandberg leaving the office at 5:30. Here's why.

The time of day we let ourselves put our work down, while important, does not confirm whether we have work-life balance. While I have burned the midnight oil with the best of them in my earlier startup days, I leave the office at 4pm now. I do this because I have a three-highway commute that takes over an hour each way and I want to make it home for dinner with my husband and 19-month old daughter, at 5:30. (Before we had her I never ate dinner before 8 or 8:30.) But I wouldn't exactly accuse myself of being a "balanced" female entrepreneur.

Sure I get a dose of family time. As the full-time working parent it's my job--and my desire--to take on the caregiving at night and give my daughter a bath, get her in jammies (yes, jammies), read her a book or ten, brush her teeth, and rub her back while she talks to the stuffed animals in her crib. By 7:30 p.m. she's usually asleep. At this time I break out the laptop and work for another two or three hours. And while I don't live in her home and can't confirm, I suspect Sheryl Sandberg does too.

This schedule, adds considerably more time to that 40-hour work week, though I don't point this out to complain. These additional hours at the end of my day are not strenuous or difficult. But the hours I spend traveling are. These are weeks when having dinner with my family is out of the questions, and I suspect this is the case for Sheryl Sandberg too. I suspect that, like me, she travels a good amount of the time, judging by the YouTube videos I see of her at TEDWomen, or the World Economic Forum and considering the global nature of Facebook's business. I applaud Sandberg's insistence on being home with her children during a "typical" work day. But I must check the press who don't qualify her statement with the reality of female entrepreneurs: most days ain't typical.

There's also an unspoken dynamic that should be addressed before we paint a picture of balance and success being SO accessible: power equals freedom; and power usually takes a lot of hours to earn.

Sandberg is the second ranking executive at a powerful company, with the power to address company culture. Women entrepreneurs who are just starting out are often at the mercy of their customers, their advertisers, their VCs. In order to grow their power and the power of their companies they must be in front of the right people, in the right places, often at highly inconvenient times. Before I had my daughter I made it a point to not let geography or time zone be an issue; I simply showed up. You can question whether or not I had to, but I'll argue that many women starting businesses would say there is no choice.

As one female CEO once said to me when I told her that I brought my husband and daughter to a conference, hoping that by bringing them I would get to spend time with them in the mornings and before my daughter's bedtime (which I didn't): "After a few years I just realized I wasn't going to get to make it all work out. The kids would have to stay at home; and I would have to be apart from them. I couldn't make both worlds work together."

Leaving the office at 5:30 is not having the best of both worlds; it's making the most of the world we're in.

You could argue that Sandberg's success makes establishing balance easier than it is for other women. I recall an interview I did for BlogHer with Lisa Belkin back in 2008. We talked a bit about the B word--balance--and why it was such a bugaboo. And not just because, as current professional wisdom holds, balance and excellence are rarely inclusive. I mentioned an article I read in The New York Times early in my professional career that showed how little successful media executives slept. The article depressed me because it made me think that in order for these folks to stay on top they had to maintain an almost superhuman schedule, working until 1 or 2 a.m. and then waking up at 5 a.m. to work out, read the papers, and drink something probiotic before promptly starting work. In the case of the women profiled, there was little to no mention of their family lives.

Belkin argued the contrary, that very senior women had the resources to help them achieve balance. They had housekeepers, assistants, perhaps even personal chefs and drivers, to help clear away the domestic friction between their personal and professional lives. I have to believe this is true.

I love that Sheryl Sandberg leaves work by 5:30 to have dinner with her family by 6 p.m. But I doubt she's heating up the leftovers or cracking open cans of Chef Boyardee to fit it all in. She's got help; just like I do.

Separation Anxiety

I came back from a business trip and got the report from H-band. He'd gone to one of the local Montessori preschools in our neighborhood to see if it would be a fit for Liv. His take: It wasn't.

"The kids seem so, I don't know, depressed."

"Depressed? Gosh what do they do over there?"

"Well it's not that overt. I just think that they must be … there's not a lot of space for running around outside."

"It's a Montessori, hun. I would think that they engage the kids..."

"I'm sure they do. But not like we engage Olive here. She's better off here."

Of course by the word "we" H-band actually meant "I". "But not like I engage Olive here." He's taken an immense amount of pride in her development. I come home from work or a business trip and am always amazed by the new words, the new skills, she's taken on.

It's been tough approaching alternative means of childcare with H-band. He knows it needs to happen. Hell, most days when I come home he threatens that it NEEDS to happen soon. There's so much that he wants to do that being the primary caregiver makes impossible--from working on freelance projects to training for a bike race. I've never disagreed with him. I've always wondered when he would take steps to get his career back on track, more because that's what I would do than because I think he needs to. While I think he worries about his professional future from time to time; I don't think it's as much of a driver for him to obtain child care than having more time for himself.

Perhaps more to avoid my disapproval H-band went on another preschool tour last week, while I was on another business trip. I suggested that he go, and if he liked the place enough I would be happy to accompany him on a follow-up trip.

That night we spoke on the phone.

"So what did you think?" I said.

"It was fine," he said.

"Enough room for the kids to run around?" I said, wondering if there were perhaps criteria other than square footage of the play yard we should be applying to our search .

"I guess," H-band said. "It was alright. Sort of precious."

"Precious in a snobby way?"

"Precious in a Berkeley way."

I could live with that way.

"Alright enough to apply?"

"I don't know about that."

"Are there openings?"

"In the fall. She might not make the cutoff, though. She's two weeks too young."

"Well can you find out if we can still apply?" My voice was becoming increasingly desperate. Friends of ours with kids a similar age had applied for preschool months, even years, ago, knowing full-well that there were often waitlists, and you could not always get your first choice. H-band had agreed to take on this "project" of ours of securing child care for our daughter, and though as the full-time caregiver he had gone through many of the motions of researching, the suggestion of even looking at all--and the nudging--had been made entirely by me.

After much cajoling, H-band agreed he would write the preschool director and ask if we could apply. Several days later I saw that this hadn't been done. I did what I knew was most effective--threatened to do it myself--and H-band wrote the email. We found out that we could still apply. H-band said he had the application and would work on it. Last night I asked him about it. It hadn't been done.

I cringed at the thought of what it would be like when it came time to look at colleges; preschools were hard enough.

"I'll fill out the application," I said, curtly. "It needs to get done."

"But what if we decide that's not the preschool for her?" H-band said.

"Then it's not, but we need to at least get her on some waitlists, right?"

"Yeah, I guess."

H-band gets this way sometimes, and it annoys me, but after several years of marriage I know this: There are things that H-band is passionate about, and those are things that get done. And then there are things that he is passionate about, and because of that passion things don't get done.  I realized that, perhaps, the latter dynamic was in play. He was passionate to the point of true apathy. He didn't want our daughter to get into a preschool.

"You know," I said. "She needs to be around other kids. She can't be around you forever."

H-band nodded; of course he knew that.

"She was so sick today," he said. "I'm not dropping her off someplace when she's that sick."

"Of course you won't. Why would you?"

"I won't do that."

"She won't be sick like that very often."

H-band went back to loading the dish washer. The conversation ceased.

Later that night he asked me, "Have the two of you ever napped together?"

"Who? Me and Olive?"

"Hmm mmm."

I thought of the times on the weekend when all I wanted to do was curl up on the floor and fall asleep while she played with her toys, "Nope."

"It's nice," he said. "You can feel her little breath on you. And sometimes when she's not sleeping yet she'll feel around and touch your face. She just wants to know what it feels like. But then she falls asleep." He was overcome with the memory.

I had filled out the preschool application a few hours earlier, put it in an addressed envelope, and left the envelope in our foyer, to go out with the mail the next day. I said to H-band, "You know, you'll get to see her every day. We don't have to send her full time. Let's see how it goes."

H-band nodded OK. 

The Disappearance of Downtime

Before becoming an entrepreneur, I set out to write for a living. This sounds like a fantastical existence, but it was actually hard, even if joyous, work. I woke up early in the morning, walked to a coffee shop, and started reading--anything. It didn't matter what I read; the process of focusing on something unrelated to my writing task and caffeine constituted the formula required to tap my creative well. After 45 minutes or so thoughts would bubble up, and my only job was to collect them. Editing would come later in the afternoon, when my mind was tired out and drained of inspiration for the day. I knew to give myself the entire morning for the creative process, even if it yielded only 100 words. Looking back, this process was a pure luxury.

Later, when my company was new--no employees yet, just us founders--I used to plan my day around optimizing productivity, and gone were the mornings that I dedicated to creating. Since much of my work involved communication with sponsors and partners on the East Coast, I reserved the mornings for "busy work"--calls and email primarily. And creative tasks that required more uninterrupted focus time, such as writing proposals or blog posts, I reserved for the afternoon. We didn't have an office, so if I wasn't meeting with my partners in person at a cafe or one of our houses, I did my busy work primarily at home and my uninterrupted work at nearby coffee shops.

Of course, as the business grew, this separation between busy and focus time became much more difficult to maintain. People--God forbid--would occasionally call me back in the afternoon, in the middle of my focus time. Increasingly I found I always needed to speak with people when they called, and I de-prioritized my focus time to the free crevices in my afternoon, which didn't really exist. I tried to schedule in time for creativity like I did appointments--in a short and specific timeframe. I could no longer wait around for ideas to percolate in my mind. I had to force them to come during the period I'd designated to briefly focus. Creative ideas were stifled, deprived of the air they needed to be really great. This bothered me for a long time, but, I reasoned, most professionals have to deal with the pressures of meetings and deadlines. If I was going to grow my business effectively I had to be more productive. I had to back away from things like writing blog posts and reading to stimulate creative thought.

When we received venture funding and hired employees we moved into an office, taking away the change of scenery that normally signaled my uninterrupted focus time, and new activities--meetings, and normal face to face interactions with people--began to fill in. I found pockets of time to sit and think, usually during my hour-long commute to and from the office, but as our East Coast staff grew that time was increasingly used to touch base with clients and colleagues. I would get to our office parking lot not even remembering the drive to work.

As I traveled more I realized that there were built-in periods of disconnectedness when no one could reach me, and I could not reach them even if I wanted to. During these times I finished presentations, sketched out strategies, caught up on business trades, perhaps even wrote a blog post or two. Having this time was what made traveling constantly for the past five years bearable. I knew that once I got off the plane there would be no time to focus anymore; my life would consist of a brief and intense series of trains, taxis, meetings, working lunches, and periods of "downtime", in between used to catch up on email and make calls.

Every year at this time I look at my schedule while it is only marginally complicated compared to how it looked at the end of the previous year, and I ask myself the same question--how do I build in more uninterrupted focus time? And why, during the holidays when I make time to relax and reflect, do I find it so difficult to focus? The blog posts that I expected to ooze out of me have more like sputtered out incoherently. When I have periods of crucial time, like now, I think of all the small quickie tasks that I could be knocking out instead. I check email, my Facebook page, my Twitter feed, my calendar. I realize that I am out of practice.

And I realize that there is an ongoing argument occurring in my mind--the more eloquent side sharing that the multitude means of communication that exist today are not only personally convenient and enriching, but justify my work in social media. I've succeeded because of this shift in the balance of downtime and our obsession with being always on. And I've been plagued by it--the time that I used to take to allow creativity to manifest has evaporated into busyness. Will we, as a society, have a decreasing capability to create because we've erased unplugged reflection from our lives?

Pico Iyer wrote in the New York Times this week:

In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them — often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. Like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much all but overnight.

He shares how a premium has been placed on opportunities that allow us to unplug--fancy spas, even moves to rural areas. But ultimately we have an inability to sit still.

In the early days of my company we had the challenge of proving to sponsors and advertisers the value of social media. While we suspected that recommendations by digital influencers were valuable, there was no tangible proof for years that social media could move the needle for marketers. Now they are convinced. How, similarly, can I make the case for unplugged reflection time? How can we show that it ultimately makes us more productive?

 

Rituals

When I was a kid, we had a post-Thanksgiving ritual of setting up the Christmas decorations. This had to occur the Friday and weekend after Thanksgiving. My Mom is a pack rat so this was no small chore. The kids had to cart huge boxes in from the garage and storage room; boxes full of tcotchkes--Christmas tree ashtrays, red and green felt wall-hangings, macrame santas, and ornaments. Hundreds of ornaments. Ornaments were Christmas currency in my extended family. No adult walked into a family gathering without ornaments for the kids. My aunts were very craftsy and often made our ornaments. Each one we received had our name and the year inscribed on it.

Since Olive turned one, I've been thinking about how even the most seemingly mundane traditions are developed, and how they create meaning later in life. This weekend, I pulled out a box that my mother sent me of all of the ornaments I had received as a child. Had she not sent this box I would have nothing to put on our Christmas tree--the one we have yet to purchase.

"This is your deal," Jesse said to me. Meaning, because I'm the one who celebrates Christmas in our household, I am in charge of the tree. But this really wasn't true. Even though Jesse is Jewish he does have a say, because anything impacting the house immediately falls into his bucket. If I weren't a Gentile I would have recused myself from holiday decorating altogether. All these years I've lived on my own I've never had a Christmas tree. It made no sense to buy one, as I always traveled to my mother's or my sister's house during the holidays. But this year is different. We've decided to stay home for Christmas, and I want Olive to be as excited as I was as a child by the ritual and spectacle of holiday decorating. Sure, she may be only a year old, but we started early in my childhood home. Very early.

A part of the decorating ritual that I did not like growing up was setting up the Christmas Tree, or more accurately, "building" the tree. The trunk was a series of camouflaged tubes that connected to each other and was slipped vertically into a small stand, followed by the branches labeled A through F. Dad did the high branches. Next came the tinsel, which Mom did, then the lights, which Dad did. Then came the ornaments, which all of the kids did, with coaching from my mother:

"Sweetie, don't put the heavy ones on the looser branches ..."

"Put the broken ones toward the back."

"Put the ones Aunt Mary made for you there..."

"Let your brother put his on!"

This part took an hour or more.

As a kid I didn't realize that people actually BOUGHT real trees. For years now I've fantasized about getting a real tree, but Jesse feared that wasn't sustainable. I had to agree.

This weekend I researched artificial trees and was shocked to find that they now come pre-lit--a feature that has probably been around for years. There were so many options. Jesse did more research on PVC, a common chemical in artificial trees and decided that the off-gassing involved with an artificial tree was worse than the sustainability issues he had with buying a live tree.

"We'll buy locally," he said, "and we'll compost it." On the one hand I was relieved--we'd live out my fantasy of having a real tree in the living room. On the other, more practical, hand, I was worried. We'd now need to buy lights and a proper tree stand. I'd have to keep the tree hydrated every day. Would Olive pick off pine needles and leave them in random corners of the house?

Jesse and I debated the timing of purchasing the tree. My take: I leave on a business trip tomorrow--no time like the present. Jesse's more thoughtful take: Let's buy the accessories now and wait until you get back before buying the tree. It made sense, but it poked a hole in my ritual of having the house set up the weekend after Thanksgiving. Granted it was a long-neglected ritual, but I still kept it close.

Jesse didn't understand that without a tree we couldn't have a family picture--another piece of my holiday fantasy once Olive was old enough of having a yearly family photograph embedded in a lovely holiday card. I'm not religious, but in the past I've been religious about sending holiday cards, until about five years ago when the business took over every crevice of my free time. I gave them up begrudgingly and temporarily forgot them. Last year Jesse reasoned with me that our birth announcements added up to enough snail mail correspondence with family and friends to hold us over until the next year. I told Jesse of my plan this year to get a picture done in time to send out cards before the holidays.

"No way," Jesse said. "You are cramming in way too much! You are traveling up to the holidays. And I won't have the time to do it."

"I'll make the time," I said.

I totally understood where Jesse was coming from, but I felt like I'd run out of excuses for not doing the things I loved to do around the holidays. I feel ready to embrace them again. Not because I have the time, but because I want Liv to be surrounded by what I had as a kid--the feeling that for a few weeks time stood still. No one had to be anywhere else. Family and friends meant everything.

Life of a Secondary Caregiver

"KYE!" My daughter was yelling at me yesterday, pointing upwards. I looked at my husband, not understanding.

"Yes, My Love, SKY!" he said. It was another word in her repertoire, one that I hadn't inspired.

Last weekend, when I put on her shoes I thought she was babbling. And then I realized what she was saying,

"BUT … BUT …"

She wanted me to put on her boots.

"Don't let her wear those socks," Jesse said, as I was putting a lavender pair on her little feet. "She can't walk around in those."

"It's not a biggie," I said, putting them on and then watching Liv slip and slide on the wooden floors.

Months into coming back to work I started to notice the difference, the disconnect. I could no longer correctly guess my daughter's every need as she needed it. I could not figure out why she patted her stomach, or screeched in delight. Daddy knew how to make her laugh, while with my attempts she looked at me, not unamused but perhaps a bit confused. I watched her like a student, waiting for a teacher to explain to me what I was witnessing.

I catch myself saying things to my husband:

"Can I give her this?" I ask, holding a cup of juice. I know he has a system and doesn't want her to drink too much juice at bedtime. And then I ask myself, "Why am I asking for permission?"

"Think we can take off her sweater when she eats?"

"I think YOU can," Jesse says.

I know that when I come in the door it's my turn to be the parent. But sometimes I'm rusty, especially when I'm coming from a business trip. I put my stuff down (forgetting to zip up my purse--big mistake as its contents will inevitably be strewn across the floor once she gets to it). I want to talk about my day. Jesse wants to finish the game he'd started on his iPhone two hours before, when he last had a minute to kill.

I didn't finish an email before getting off the plane, so I open up the laptop. I just need 90 seconds to get it done.

"Are you going to be with her, or are you going to do email?" Jesse asks. He's making dinner.

"This is going to take just a minute." She comes for me with her arms out. The email is going to have to wait.

With a few moments of exception, I've learned to stop trying to fit in emails before dinner. My goal has become to put everything down and have my hands washed before she comes around the corner with her arms up. I love that she's made it difficult for me; before her no one had succeeded.

Today I'm squeezing in a blog post, a few emails, and some online shopping into her nap time. Jesse's just come back from his Saturday bike ride--one of two or three times he gets to himself during the week. He comes in the front door, avoiding the garage door, which can sometimes wake her when opened.

"What time did she go down?"

I tell him what time. And I know it's 30 minutes later than he suggested to avoid her becoming overtired.

"Bummer," he says, walking his bike through the kitchen.

I don't worry about it. She'll get used to these days with Mom. When naptimes are off, when a bottle is forgotten. She knows that I live for this time with her, however imperfect it may be.

Something

The other day I was in NYC for a new conference BlogHer launched for writers named, well, BlogHer Writers. I had learned to disassociate myself with the content of our conferences long ago, back when I sensed frustration at having to run, versus attend, my company's events. While I very much wanted to sit in and enjoy sessions, I knew that more realistically I would be running over to a sponsor to make sure they were pleased with their investment, or run back to the press room for an interview. After a few years, it just became understood, or rather, assumed, that I would be doing things other than attend the conference.

BlogHer Writers was built for bloggers seeking to publish. Yes, these people exist. We haven't sucked every vestige of traditional media into our vortex just yet. But publishers like Penguin have become smart to the ways of the new, new writer, who oftentimes now came to print via blog success first. There were many familiar faces in the room--women I'd come to know over the years who had slowly built a platform and who, over time, came to call themselves writers. There were other faces in the room as well, faces of people I'd known even longer, who hardly recognized me. After all, I hadn't stayed for very long. I was 21 years old and had moved from the Midwest to work at a book publishing house--Penguin, actually. My goal had not been to be an editor, or even to work in New York. It was to become a writer.

"Nice company you have here," one of them told me.

"Amazing to see things come around full circle," I said back to her. And I meant it. So many times we see life as a series of lost opportunities, or failed attempts. And yet my attempts, while being short of the goal I had set for myself of supporting myself by writing, had sparked a fire elsewhere, causing that original trajectory I used to look up at, wanting to realize, to melt and warp in my direction. The worlds I had wanted to become a part of had somehow come to me.

In the morning we hosted panels of experts in the publishing world--agents and editors--who could speak to how to get a book published, what they looked for, how to have your book stand out. Agents attended to meet writers. One told me, "I have to be here to meet writers. You all have PLATFORMS! That's half the battle." I recall a much bigger battle being waged five years ago, when I tried to sell my book and getting a contract if I could accept changing my target audience. I recall another publisher saying that they wish I'd gone more Cosmo and made my stories more how-to. I recall a publisher sharing with my agent that I didn't need to write a book so much as see a therapist. After founding BlogHer I recall an agent who came to speak who left a stack of business cards on a table before leaving--she didn't want to be mobbed by a bunch of bloggers wanting to get published.

I recall waking up in the morning and going to a coffee shop with no wireless by design so that I would not check email as I hammered out pages and pages of copy. I had no job, I simply wanted to write and get a book published.

Things have changed.

"You are at an advantage," one of the speakers from the publishing side said at the conference, "you all are in the habit of writing every day."

I look at the date on my last blog post and wonder how that happened. The sad reality is that it wasn't hard not writing. I knew how encompassing writing could be. I knew how when I got into writing everything else tended to fall away. Where would I start? What if  had nothing to say?

One friend offered up a nice metaphor: Creativity is a muscle. When you go running for the first time, you feel like shit. But keep going every day, and slowly it starts to feel good. You start to run faster and more efficiently. You know how to inspire your creativity. You re-learn how to call it up.

"Just write short," friends have told me, "just get something up there." That's what I tell other people. But I'm really not very satisfied to do that.

I saw a friend this weekend when I was out in the neighborhood with my one year old.

"You inspired me to blog," she said. She's been actively blogging and consulting in the social media space now for five or six years. "It makes me sad to go over to your blog and see nothing there."

She challenged me to write a blog post while on the plane flying home from business trips.

"I've tried that," I said. "I have a lot of stuff I need to finish. I don't know if I can commit to that."

"Just write something she said."

Today I saw an email she left in my inbox. The subject line: It's Blogging Day!

Making it Work: Traveling while lactating

I have no expectations of earning any bloggys for this series of posts, in which I share the practicalities of being a working mom of a baby girl. I realize that this solidifies my status as "one of those people" who think that every mundane aspect of parenting deserves to be chronicled.

But I feel strongly about writing about my experience, even if that experience is not that exciting, or doesn't lend itself to engaging prose. I find that as a relatively new mom I slurp up others' anecdotes, as I'm hungry for hearing about how other women manage in what seems to be at times two self-canceling realities: working and parenting. Indulge me, or tune in another time when I am back in working mode...

I had worried about how difficult it might be to return to work. Not the work part, the being away from the babe part. And the pumping part. Actually the transition has been--dare I say--good. Better than expected.

I enjoyed every second I had spent with my daughter on mat leave, but I was jonesing for a schedule. I like having to adhere to a schedule and having dedicated thinking time. Having this space in the day only makes seeing my daughter at the end of it that much more enjoyable.

The pumping is a pain, but everyone at the office is supportive. We've made our supply room the "Pump Room" for the time-being. I duck in and put a sign on the door, requesting 30 minutes of privacy, three times a day. I crank out email and even take calls in there if they are internal. If it's a client call, I take it in my office. 

Travel has been interesting. I started off slow--a day trip down to LA--fly in, fly out. How hard could it be? Still, it was my first, and a new milestone in my time away from child.

"It will be like I'm at the office," I told H-band, only it really wouldn't be. I had a place to pump at the office, and I hardly knew where I would pump in LA. Surprisingly I'd yet to have the dignity-dissolving experience of pumping while perched on the john, the slurping sound of my hands-free Medela echoing off the tiled walls of a public bathroom.

I was grateful that my first business trip since returning from mat leave was a relatively simple one. I carried a purse and my pumping equipment in a second canvas bag. It's been beautiful on the West Coast; I didn't even need to fuss with a coat. I figured, what could befall me other than a flight delay?

The first obstacle was in security. I hadn't even pumped yet, but my equipment bag had to go through a second inspection. Still I got through to my flight. Easy peasy.

I didn't fly into LAX but rather Orange County, a smaller airport, but fortunately it had a Red Carpet Club. All of the enclosed offices had glass walls overlooking the airport--a nice touch, but not for someone looking for a private place to pump. I headed to the women's restroom.

It was a onesie. With no stall. Shit.

I did the math: Meeting in little over an hour; four hours since I'd pumped. I needed to do this--now. I held the restroom hostage, grateful that only one poor soul knocked.

I flew out of LAX, which was much more amenable, meaning I used a stall in the club on the far end of the rest room that had a changing table--just enough space to lay out my gear, strap up, and read email on my Blackberry while pumping.

Amazing how grateful you become for the little things.

But security was a bear.

"What's in your bag, ma'am?"

"A pump. And some milk."

"Security check! We have some milk here."

I walk past the conveyor belt toward another station with different equipment.

"Ma'am, do I have your permission to take the contents out of this bag, or would you like me to do this in private?"

It wasn't like he was asking me to nurse in public."

"Here is fine."

I felt a bit sheepish, as he held up half of one bottle--all that I had managed to squeeze out in Orange County. All this freaking work for three ounces.

"I'm going to put this through a radiation test," the TSA official said.

It failed.

"What does this mean?" I asked, that my milk is radioactive?

"No ma'am. We just need to do another test." He opened the bottle of milk and put what looked like a litmus strip over the top to "test the fumes."  I was free to go.

This week I traveled cross-country for several days. I'd mapped out my meetings and marked in my calendar good times to pump, but I didn't know for certain where--or if--there would be places to take my get up. Even if I could duck into a bathroom at any one of the places I was headed, I wasn't sure I wanted to pump at a client engagement. I looked at my schedule and noted that I was cutting it close between my last meeting and my flight home. I wondered if it would be gauche to pump in the cab on my way to the airport. Are there rules about that?

UPDATE: I opted not to pump in the cab--too messy, and the trip went fine, though I'm quite positive my boobs are confused. I pumped at our NY offices whenever I had a chance, then went for long stretches of nada. Watching what I consider liquid gold go down the drain (I had resolved myself to pumping and dumping, rather than try and figure out how I'd keep my milk fresh for three days) was more painful than I thought. In the early days I fought hard to establish a supply, and for three days my goal was to just get rid of it.

On the way back to CA I managed to pump before my flight, in the club restroom. I appreciated all the free tampons, pads, feminine aids that were available in the rest room, but I would have traded this bounty for a stall large enough to place all of my luggage and pumping equipment, and a surface in the stall to place my stuff.

I had just enough time afterward to grab a snack in the club and make it to my boarding gate. By the time I landed in SF I looked like Dolly Parton from the neck down.