Pause

Paralyzed: The Life of the Mid-Career Woman, The Final Chapter--At Least for Now

While in a career exploration phase, I was referred to a woman with an unusual first name (privacy issues prevent me from sharing her name, so I’ll make one up—“Rourke.”) “Rourke” also had a very strange last name, “Annette”. When a friend had given me her contact information I thought, “what an unusual name.” I was eager to speak with her; she had risen in the ranks of the field I was exploring, organizational psychology, and was now an established practitioner and professor.

I called her, not sure what to ask. I didn’t know if I could accomplish what I wanted—to be a leadership consultant—with a Masters in OD. I had been told that many people with an OD degree go into human resources—something I didn’t want to do; only a sliver of them consult. I was almost certain that this woman would try to talk me into working in a corporate HR department. Her advice wasn’t what I expected.

We set up a time to talk on the phone. Immediately after our hello’s I commented on her name.

“Rourke Annette is so unusual; I like it,” I said.

“That’s not my real name,” she said. “It’s really Annette Rourke.”

I figured she just wanted to be different, but I asked her anyway, “So why did you change it?”

“Back when I was in school, twenty-some-odd years ago, there were no women in my field. I wanted the good jobs, but I wasn’t going to get in the door being a woman, so I changed my name.”

It chilled me to think that, even now, when women are getting key positions in what was considered a man’s field, she still went by her pseudonym.

I was wondering whether I should get my credentials on the East Coast, where I had been accepted into a program at a “name” school, or do a commuter program in the Bay Area, where I was and still am living.

“Don’t do the commuter program,” Rouke said, “You need the name behind you.”

“But if I get the education, why does it matter?”

“It will always matter for you, for us. We need all the degrees and prestige we can get because we are women, and we’ll always have to do better, be better, to be on par with men in the corporate world.”

This advice sounds so generalized when it’s offered up like that. But honestly, isn’t that the philosophy by which so many of us women subconsciously abide when making our choices? We won’t always have the luxury of picking the best schools, or the best companies to work for, but we always have that lingering feeling that, perhaps, if we just stick it out a little bit more than men we might get an equal reward.

Balance is Dead...

...or so says Fast Company. In yet another article/proclamation that will reverse itself in five years (FC has been around long enough to contradict itself), Keith Hammonds describes a new take on balance. What is balance? It isn't an eight-hour work day followed by a yoga session and dinner with the kids. It's cumulative, like your 401(k), complete focus on one aspect of your life for a period of time, and then focus on another.

Wife getting on your back and telling you you're not pulling your weight at home? Screw her! Tell her you're in a career phase now and to just relax until your family phase kicks in.

Seriously, this isn't too far off the mark; but FC does mitigate the message by saying that for all of the areas that you are screwing to focus on, say, your career, you should at least pay genuine attention to them when you have those two extra seconds to spare.

The article brings up the "Happy Workaholics", those who put in 15-hour workdays but do it passionately. Unfortunately I suspect that makes up for a small percentage of the workforce. I had a boss who once said this is what he wanted for the world, "for everyone to love what they do." (Hey, it was the heady Dot Com era, so long as we were making money we loved it enough). Me, being the wet blanket that I can sometimes be, asked him, "Then who would pick up the garbage?"

Not an Act of Nepotism, I Swear...

You've heard it before--we've been taught history through the eyes of white, educated men. But that's not totally true. Women, though much more limited in resources, had some contribution to make to our collective "memory," as historian mucky mucks like to call the version that gets told. We owe a great debt to women who added some flavor to the story.

How do I know this? My twin sister told me. She also wrote a book about it called Women and the Historical Enterprise in America: Gender, Race and the Politics of Memory, 1880-1945.

At 400 pages, this ain't no blog. She's always been much more patient a writer than I.

Tom Peters is Mad, Just the Way We Like Him

The book arrived from Amazon in a bigger box than usual. When I extricated Tom Peters' new work, "Re-Imagine!" (don't forget the exclamation point, this is Tom Peters, after all), my first thought was, "Jossey Bass meets Rizzoli. By God it's the first coffee-table business book!

Fortunately, there's a lot more to this tome than meets the eye (though there's a helluva lot to look at). In a departure from his previous books, Peters partnered with the publishing house Dorling Kindersley (DK) for this project. To help you understand who DK is, think of those travel guides that are printed on such high-quality stock that they actually weigh you down while trekking through Europe. Think of those cookbooks with pictures of not only the finished product, but fashion-magazine-quality images of each individual ingredient. Think of that version of the Kama Sutra featurning real-life, body-hairless models in tasteful rapture demonstrating Congress of the Cow. DK specializes in making the world visual, containable, and much less complicated than it needs to be.

I was averse to buying this book. A colleague who has taken somewhat of a mentor role to me sent me another DK "Business" book featuring pictures of a lot of people sitting around a boardroom table (DK's way of demonstrating business strategy). DK doesn't do business well. But Peters doesn't do words well. At least not the usual, properly punctuated, unitalicized, restrained words you normally read in business books. The man defies punctuation. When you look at it this way, this is the most brilliant coupling since french fries and chipotle mayonnaise.

On Being a Writer

Two days, three rejections. This is somewhat of a personal record for me. You can always spot the rejections; like when you applied to colleges, the ones that didn't want you sent the flimsy one-sheeters in the small envelopes. In the case of magazines a "yes" means a phone call, a "no" is an envelope that freaks you out for a split second because it's addressed to you in your own writing. You do a doubletake and then remember, "Right, it's an SASE." The one I got today was the best form rejection yet, it was at least on letterhead.

Back when I was magazine writing for a living the rejections used to be much more spread apart. Of course, I'm told not to take this personally, but I can't help but think that the more mainstream media ain't exactly enchanted with my message.

I just saw The Station Agent last night; what a slow, warm, chocolately movie, like hot cocoa that doesn't get cold. For those of you who haven't seen it, I won't spoil the premise too much by saying that the movie features a dwarf (the first real dramatic role I've seen played by a little person, and quite brilliantly I might add) who is learning to live in a world where he isn't seen as such a pariah. He comes to a point where all he needs is to get over is himself. Up until then he stopped participating in the world; now events force him to take an active role in life.

I sometimes wonder if I'm like a dwarf, so used to the negativity that even if I got a phone call saying, "We love your work" I wouldn't know what the hell to do. The biggest lesson for all of us is learning to take it all in.

People on Crackberries

Apparently being out of the office excuses you from epistolary manners. A co-worker of mine shoots me messages from his Blackberry that are unintelligible and sometimes unfinished. I appreciate the desire to connect with me in real time, but I would prefer to wait for a composed--hell, how about just punctuated--message typed from his office.

Am I the only one that's sick of getting messages in that crusty courier font?

Another issue: follow-up messages to the ones I sent earlier asking for a re-send. Apparently being on the road with a blackberry absolves people from KEEPING their messages.

I'm all for mobile technology, but if it means having to sift through electronic hieroglyphics, I'll stick to my laptop.

Paralyzed: The Life of the Mid-Level Career Woman (Part IV)

Nope, I'm not done yet...

For women who decide that they want to leave the corporate world there are two options: one that I mentioned earlier, full-time motherhood (or in the cases of those who can afford to leave but who don’t want kids, full-time philanthropy) or entrepreneurship.

A woman I know started her own IT consulting company in the wake of the imploding tech boom. What balls. Here most of us were sending 200-300 resumes to companies for underpaying contract positions in the Bay Area, and she just up and decides to start a company.

I asked her how she did it. She looked at me, as if to say, “What did I do?”

“I just started the business,” she said. I’m sure that hard work and brains helped move things along, but what was key is what she didn't have, what so many women (and men, too, I suppose) feel they must have—total security and a guarantee of a payoff—before taking the leap.

More on Curves

Apparently I'm not the only one who has had a values crisis over the whole Should-I/Should-I-Not sign up at a Curves gym debate. Wendy McClure did a little digging as well and learned that Curves founder Gary Heavin is a born-again Christian and anti-abortion activist. Far be it from me to tell you which way to go on this one, but I believe consumers should at least be informed. Thanks much to the reader who sent me some key links on Heavin and a resource for pro-choice customers who aren't ready to discontinue their Curves memberships but who are taking a stand for their beliefs.

Buying Real Estate in the Bay Area

It's not like I haven't been warned. For some reason I thought once I was ready to buy a house the market would somehow open and lead me, like a yellow-brick road, to tax-advantaged status. Or that I'd reap a windfall winning on Jeopardy, perhaps, and suddenly paying $900,000 for my dream retreat would be the logical next step.

But there's nothing logical about real estate here.

Currently I live in what may be the smallest house in an affluent neighborhood. The rent seemed reasonable, and when we found out we had an option to BUY the house in a lease option agreement we thought, SCORE!

Thinking through this a bit more, I'm trying to understand how anyone will want to pay the price we'd need to sell it for in five years, let alone the rent we'd need to come close to our mortgage payments. Currently our 900 square-foot "bungalow" (aka: standalone condo) will cost about as much as my sister paid for her brand new, 5,000-square-foot ranch (with adjoining acre of land and pond) on the East Coast.

My partner, Jesse, suggested that we invest in the hood. With the way things are gentrifying out here I know it makes sense, but it seems so odd putting money into a place surrounded by syringes, even if it promises to be the next big thing. Time was, you bought a starter house in your 20s and kept inching upward until you had more space than was worth cleaning, eventually ending up in a condo in Boca Raton.

I think I want to move to Oregon.

A Woman with No Curves

I had my weekly walk with one of my favorite people yesterday. We've both been trying to make exercise more fun and exploring our options. Unfortunately we need to find other ways of burning calories, as we can only synch up schedules so many times in a week. I have no gyms near my house and have been looking into yoga. My friend is exploring a membership with the new gym centers for women, Curves. She's the third friend of mine to mention Curves this week.

Although new to me, Curves is not so new--the first center opened in 1992--but the brushfire is just beginning. Currently 8,000 gyms are open in the U.S., and, according to its Web site, Curves was cited in the Guiness Book of World Records as the largest fitness franchise (now that's a new marketing plug!) The premise behind Curves is the gym provides women with a quick, effective workout within a safe, maleless environment. The 30-minute circuit features state-of-the-art hydraulic equipment built for women.

I've boycotted my old gym (Gorilla, a brand of Bally's) when they tried to handcuff me to a three-year contract I wanted to terminate after I moved out of town. And I'm always a proponent of saving time. But I have some big questions about this Gym-Lite before I even step inside for my courtesy walk-through.