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An Entrepreneur's Holiday Weekend: The good, the bad, the unproductive

This week I took some extended time off around the Thanksgiving holiday--two whole days! The first day of my vacation I spent catching up on email, thinking of blog post ideas, and, OK, just checking in on our company team meeting. Hey it was a goodie, not one to be missed. My husband also had the day off and couldn't really make sense of my choice of activities.

"Babe, what's the point of taking vacation if ..."

"I know, I know."

The remainder of the day I played with widget options for my soon to launch new blog, went to the dentist for a follow-up, and then baked pumpkin pie. In my true style of underestimating how long it takes to properly create things In Real Life, I forgot that one must let dough chill before rolling it out. This not so minor detail, and some general wonkiness I encountered with my dough, put me back about 2 hours. I went to bed well past midnight.

Wednesday we drove from the Bay Area to Anaheim to spend Thanksgiving with Jesse's family. We encountered pockets of heavy traffic, which irritated my husband to no end, but which I found rather convenient--it afforded me more time to catch up on trade newsletters and articles I had sent to myself to read when I'd get an extra moment. At one point, I noticed an email request from my business partner and figured, "Hey, I'm in the car, so why not just crank it out."

I worked on the laptop until my power died, then enjoyed the throngs of people stuck in gridlock for the next few hours.

Thursday I really did take the day off. We took a long bike ride on the tandem of Jesse's aunt and uncle. After lunch, I sat on the couch next to Jesse to watch the football game with his grandfather. Next thing I know, I'm waking up.

"What just happened?"

"Enjoy your nap?" Jesse said.

"That was weird. I wasn't even tired."

Both Jesse and I knew what had happened--what happens every time I have enough time off to absorb the fact that I'm on vacation--my body shut down. For the remainder of the day I felt bone tired and disoriented, like I was just waking up. Every few minutes I checked my Blackberry for email, out of a nervous habit. With the exception of a few Facebook and Twitter alerts there was nothing. Not having anything new pop into my inbox made me a tad agitated. It felt like there was something wrong. I had to remind myself that it was Thanksgiving. When we arrived at Jesse's aunt's for dinner I put my Blackberry in the glove compartment.

Friday Jesse was up with the sun. I found it much harder to wake up. I sauntered into my in-laws' kitchen and started to pick through the New York Times. I helped set up a wireless router, and then around 1 pm felt this sudden panic that I was letting the day pass me by. Jesse had mentioned that his parents wanted to see an exhibit at the contemporary art museum in La Jolla.

"When are we going to motivate?" I asked Jesse.

"I dunno. I thought I might study for my (licensure) exam for a while."

"We need a plan, Jesse! When are we going?"

"Later today."

"When later today? The sun sets at 5!" My voice became more and more urgent.

"Fine. We'll leave at 2."

At 2:15 we left for the museum. None of us were that impressed with the exhibit, but I was glad to be out and a tourist, taking in the sites on the waterfront. I was already thinking to myself, "Where are we going for dinner? Do we need reservations? When should I squeak out a blog post?" I told myself to shut up. We watched the sun set. I'd done nothing productive, and it was OK.

Saturday I squeezed in some exercise before friends arrived for brunch. I felt more energized than I had been, despite the fact that I had had a work dream that woke me up in the middle of the night and I couldn't fall back asleep for hours. It wasn't a scary or traumatic dream, just one that required a degree of thinking. I found it strange to wake up at 3 in the morning in a state I find myself in during, say, a team meeting: Fully alert and ready to report information.

We did some shopping that afternoon, or browsing, anyway; I found that I wasn't inspired by anything at the stores. Later, I tried to blog and realized I was a blank slate, no words were appearing that I considered compelling enough to write down. I thought to myself that it was a shame, really; I finally had some time to blog, and I couldn't think of a damn thing to say.

Sunday we drove back up from SoCal, and I caught up on more trade newsletters. It occured to me that there were only so many to catch up on before it made sense to let some information go. I listened to hours of CNN on satellite radio and wondered, "Did any of these people take the weekend off?" It seemed that there were many people whose jobs required them to be even more available than mine did on holiday weekends, and I felt grateful and guilty.

We got back home earlier than planned and even a bit unsure of what to do with ourselves. I had planned to start working as soon as I got home, but as a personal dare I decided to think about my long weekend--what I did, not what I didn't do. And write it down, even the seemingly mundane stuff, so that I would be more aware of how I spent my "free" time. I asked myself, how much of it did I actually spend on being free? 

Encounters: The Aviator, or what I want to be when I learn to play

(Caption: Our view of Big Sur)

I met Kareem because we needed a contract script writer--badly. Copywriting was not Kareem's only career strength, and not exactly a career passion, but the project was temporary, and he had just come from a digital agency with too much experience on his resume to get picked up immediately in a downsizing economy.

Prior to meeting Kareem I'd spoken on the phone to another writer with an agency background. She was ready and eager to jump into our project. Shortly, after being briefed about the aggressive deadlines and requirements of the client, she reconsidered and backed away, mid-script. We were supposed to shoot the following week.

In ideal circumstances, we strive for a sane approach to project management, where we plan such things as scriptwriting and shooting schedules way in advance, but being in this Webby world we're in, projects are often inked close to launch. Some people thrive in this kind of environment, some fight it and give in begrudgingly, some reject it outright. I needed to see how Kareem would react early, before hiring him.

I was brutally frank in our interview. Our "co-created" project with Brand X was exciting stuff, but it was not without client oversight and last-minute changes. I said something that I wish I hadn't,

"I need someone who's comfortable with user-generated content that's not all user-generated...I mean, it is, but with an eye toward the brand... not that they want to influence the script, of course...it must be authentic, but brand-friendly..."

I decided to look up from staring down at Kareem's extensive resume; he remained smiling and calm.

"Yes, I think I understand," he said. He told me of several on-set projects he'd done as a creative director. The personalities he'd encountered, the seemingly contradictory directives. It was clear to me that, from a production standpoint, he'd seen it all, and he understood the dichotomous nature of client work--something that often relied on a paradoxical act of creating authentic connection. He didn't bristle when I told him we were shooting next week and still needed scripts to submit for approval. And these scripts depended on the availability of his script subjects, whom had yet to be selected, let alone contacted.

"No problem," he said.

The following week, he arrived for a briefing meeting with snacks for the team. Shortly thereafter, scripts written and approved, he arrived at the set early with props that our producer had trouble procuring. Everyone who had arrived on-set had been briefed by him and was ready to go. He got along famously with the camera crew and director. Later, when the rough cuts were complete he adeptly knew where to cut and even how to retroactively make guests look more comfortable than they actually were. Client requests that may have overwhelmed another writer/producer were creatively integrated with no complaints.

After our final shoot he suggested we go grab some coffee. Already I was trying to think of how else we could work with Kareem until a more suitable position opened up for him.

It was a hot day; I sipped ice-coffee in an air-conditioned Starbucks. He asked me, "Do you fly much?"

Option 1: Work more; Option 2: Work less; Option 3 ...

Kris at The HR Capitalist caught my attention with his post, "Being a Star - Either Put In More Hours Than Others, or Start Eliminating Stuff (But Stop Whining)...." He says:

Work/life balance is a choice.  You won't be able to be your version of Bono with work/life balance as your goal.  More and more, I run into super sharp people who are amazed at the entitlement culture of talented folks who say they want to be stars, but won't put in the time to outwork others and are outraged when told that's what it takes.

If you are not inclined to put in more hours, Kris says, "you need to start eliminating things that you don't think matter, the things you can get away with not doing, not being involved with at work."

This is the choice of anyone seeking success, but notably of the entrepreneur. As my company has grown, my time management strategy as evolved--or devolved as the case may be:

• Phase 1--The first date that won't end: You have a crush on all the excitement that your business is providing for you in life and unwittingly give it all the time that it needs. Other things need to happen, like sleep, so you just add more work hours to your day and keep plugging after dinner, or after your spouse knocks off for bed. When opportunities present themselves, you drop everything.  For instance, someone you've wanted to meet with for some time wants to connect for breakfast at 7:30 a.m. the next day in New York City, and you are in San Francisco. No problem! Sure you don't feel great after taking a red-eye, but you make it there. And you've set up other back-to-back meetings to get the most out of your time. By the time you are back at the airport you realize you might not have mentioned your whereabouts to your spouse but know he'll understand. And you know that this phase can't last forever, but you must take full advantage of every opportunity now, while you have it.

• Phase 2--The Trade-offs: You realize that other things--hobbies, friends, wellness--are being impacted, but hopefully now you are experiencing some growth and cannot imagine losing momentum in order to stop and smell the roses. Also, expectations have been set. Clients on the East Coast expect that you will be available during the wee hours of the morning on the West Coast; you've told them to call you if they wanted to talk--anytime; they're just taking you up on your offer. All those opportunities that you have been pushing for are now happening; and you must be there to implement them. You can't imagine having others do it during such a delicate, relationship-building phase. You plan to eventually build replicable, delegatable processes, but you must trail-blaze for how.

You try to fit it all in, but even with extended hours you can't. So you compromise on everything except your business. You skip those biannual physical exams, you whittle that full workout into a few sit-ups before bed, you spam an eGreeting card to your address book this year instead of sending individually written cards. That quality time you book nightly with your spouse or the kids is spent responding to email while sitting next to him on the couch. You don't have to meet with people in-person today, so you forgo showering and getting dressed--time is money, people! The first time you skip these things it feels bad; the second time you can justify it as something you're sacrificing "for now", the third time you've re-identified yourself: "I guess I'm just going to be 10 pounds heavier." "I've never been much of a home cook." "I'm just not a neat person." "I'm the kind of person who always has to be doing something." ...

You start to fear that your tradeoffs are becoming more and more visible. You look older. You have creaky knees and your neck hurts. You indiscriminately hand people not associated with your business, like your drycleaner, your business card. You develop this glassy look that signals to your domestic partner that you are assessing what else you need to get done today, not listening to his suggestions for what to have for dinner. You meet up with friends you haven't seen in ages, and when they ask how you are doing, you update them on your calendar and on your competition.

• Phase 3--Signs of wear and tear: You have much to show for your hard work--both good and bad. You are still pushing hard; forget about cruise-control. But you can speak confidently about the future of your business.

Through accidental situations, like delayed flights and malfunctioning electronics, you find yourself with small pockets of unscheduled time and have no idea what to do with it: Pick up a newspaper and at least familiarize yourself with the happenings in the world, pet your cat, or call people? You realize you don't know where to start and defer to doodling in your notebook. You go to the dentist and they declare you're in for a year of orthodontics due to stress-induced jaw alignment issues. You understand the urgency but just don't know how you can fit that sort of thing into your schedule at this time. Pain is also very time consuming--feeling it, preventing it, containing it. You plan another appointment in several months--hopefully enough lead time to plan around it. You later realize that you do have a conflict but you do nothing. Maybe the other party will cancel. You meet up with friends you haven't seen in ages, and when they ask how you are doing, you have nothing to say. You say, "Hanging in, and you?

People call you successful and you wonder, "How so?" Even if you are, you are so used to the act of building momentum that you don't know what success feels like. Perhaps you've overcome it and it's now trailing behind, and you just feel something dragging. You assume it's another problem to attack. You remove your anniversary dinner from your calendar and enter "figure out dragging issue" in its place.

But back to HR Capitalist's two options: Accept that you are going to have to put in the time, or start taking things off your plate. The frustration of a later-stage entrepreneur who's had a few years to cycle through both options is "what else?"

One could say Option 3 is aspire to less. Let's just say for the sake of argument that this was even possible for the entrepreneur, that we could temporarily suppress this unquenchable ambition and could actually make a logical decision to dial it back a bit. I argue that our natures would kick back in, and we would become crazy about something else.

My friend and former coach Kimberly threw something out to me that was similar to Kris's advice, but offered in a way that I could actually consider.

"I'll bet you could back off about 10 percent and no one would even notice," she said.

"But I would notice," I said.

And I thought about that. There are types of effort: level one being "9-5" effort, level two being extraordinary effort, and level three being "Why are you afraid that level two won't suffice?" effort.

I am willing to consider level 2 may be effective.

Encounters: The Chatty Hygienist

I imagine in her line of work you get used to hearing yourself speak. I could hardly muster an "uh uh" with the suction thingie she had hanging out of the right corner of my mouth.

"Sorry, Hun," she said, when she accidentally pulled on the suction tube and yanked my head like I was a fish on a hook. Generally I was pleased with her work. She didn't believe in a patient feeling any pain.

"You feel anything you let me know," OK?

"Uh huh."

This line made me nervous; it opened the possibility of feeling pain, even if only for a second. She said every few minutes, "You are being so good. Really you are." I didn't think I needed that kind of validation anymore, at my age, but it made me feel good. I guess I still like to earn lollipops.

As she worked she talked. About everything. Her thirty seven years in dentistry, a career choice she'd made around the time I was born. Her trailer home and love of NASCAR. Her husband. How much more she made when she was working with patients than when she was doing admin work. Her husband's disability status and how she feared it made him depressed. 

There was a picture on the counter behind her on which I fixated while she drilled: a beautiful woman smiling at the camera while her patient looked askance. Her middle part and fluffy hair made me think it was an older photo, circa 1981. She noticed me looking.

"There we are," she said."Me and him."

There was a moment when I jerked reflexively from a hit nerve; not anything tear-inducing. She stopped to give me another shot. During the first shot of novocaine that she had administered about an hour before I had tensed up, even though I didn't feel any pain. I could still feel the needle going in, and just the thought of it made me nervous.

I never used to get nervous when I went to the dentist as a kid. Despite the cavities, the braces, the pulled teeth. There was an implicit trust of professionals. They couldn't hurt me. I went through procedures a little bored. But too much has happened since then. Root canals, filling replacements, more extractions, a bridge. I now know what's going on--even if I can't feel it. I expect pain, if not now then later.

She had asked me early on, "You nervous?"

"Uh huh."

"Yeah, I can tell from your saliva. It's ropy."

"Wiwee?" I filed this fact under random thing to share with my husband, as we liked to wow each other with this kind of trivia: ropy saliva = nervousness.

"Yeah. But you've got nothing to be nervous about. I've been doing this longer than these other guys have been alive." These other guys were the dentists that hired her.

I realized that my entire body was tense. I tried to release it in parts, thinking if I let my whole body relax at once while she was lasering my gums I might throw her off and she'd cut my lip or lacerate my face.

She talked as she cauterized the intentional wounds she'd created. I was amazed at how comfortable she was having relatively intense conversations with people who couldn't provide any verbal cues of concern or interest. I learned more about her husband; he did things for her, like heated the car every morning before she left for work and made her lunch. He wasn't working any more, but even when he did he was doing stuff like that.

A thought came to my mind while she spoke of her husband, whom she clearly still adored after 30 years of marriage: I consider myself a good wife, but was I someone that could commit to these sorts of gestures? I've committed myself to many things: email, my morning Starbucks, paying bills. But I haven't committed to much outside my own benefit. What would it be like to wake up and have your first task of the day be for someone else?

"You feeling that?"

"Mmmmmm ... naw wiwee."

This was enough to stop her immediately. She continued to chat me up while I wondered, has she stuck the needle in yet? I realized she had by the taste of bitter Novocaine that trickled toward the back of my tongue, bitter I couldn't feel. I looked at the table to her right and saw empty single-use vials of Novocaine, at least five. She'd been administering it before I needed it. Now I understood--I was bored and amused by design. By the time she had made it through NASCAR I was relaxed--and numb. The part of her conversation that captured me, about her husband, distracted me during the most surgical part--the part I had dreaded most.

Another strange thought came to my mind, as this woman worked with such precision on my teeth and my mind, for which she was paid $20 an hour more than when she handled the front desk: how oddly we compensate people. I did the math and wondered if it was enough.   

Learning to surf at work

When I was in Mexico earlier this year, I loved getting up in the morning, walking along the shore, and then body surfing the waves of the ocean--all before breakfast. H-band taught me a few tricks to riding waves that I never had an opportunity to practice in the relatively tame waters where I grew up. He could spot a wave coming from several hundred yards out.

"Here we go," he'd say, and I'd assume the position: Back toward the endless expanse of water, eyes focused on the shore, one arm out in front of me and one behind. When the wave approached, at just the right time H-band would yell, "Start swimming!" and I'd frantically freestyle-stroke like I was trying to escape a great white. About 70 percent of the time the wave would wash over me, and I'd emerge from the water with my hair in my face, disoriented. "Nope," H-band would say, "you didn't catch that one." The other 30 percent of the time I would feel this sensation of being lifted up and forward, and I would emerge yards ahead in the shallow water. That was catching a wave.

I never quite understood what made a wave surfable--they all looked pretty big to me, but H-band could tell if one would crash too soon to ride, or if it would grow. I look at what I navigate on a daily basis--namely, a business--and wonder, "How good am I at riding waves?"

No wave is the same. While there is a general direction they take, some swell disappointingly early; some bring a surprising sensation of warm or cold. Every day is fraught with some variation, even if it is moving in the same general direction of growth. Some days the meeting is cancelled--a small swell that dies too soon; or some breaking news in the blogosphere cancels out the regular business of the day--a deceptively large swell that pulls everything in the vicinity to the shore, exhausted.

The same thrill of predicting waves and riding them to my advantage compells me to get a handle on these random events that over time do not seem so random. Chaos becomes the norm, becomes cyclical, like waves. So why can't I spot them, estimate how powerful they will become, and then let them propel me forward, or wait them out while pursuing bigger, more meaningful, ones?

All I can do at the moment is wake up each day and assume the position: back to the ocean, eyes ahead, arms ready to paddle, paddle, paddle.

Blogging 3.0: Now, with more feeling

We sat in the cafe, a seemingly informal Sunday coffee date with a friend, but not as casual as I expected. We'd gone to a yoga class before and were now sipping lattes and picking on pastry (I had a bagel).

My friend has become very established in the social media consulting space over the past three years. Her life had changed significantly since we met at the bus stop located between our two homes. She had left her job to pursue career and nonprofit consulting opportunities. I had just left my job to consult in the social media space. I told her about blogging and she must have been ready to learn about it, because she took it on, to the point where she now speaks and trains people in it.

I had told her, for the umpteenth time, that things were changing for me. I was going to take my blogging seriously again. As seriously as I could anyway, considering I no longer had the stretches of time I used to to blog, and as seriously as I should, considering my role as a thought leader in the social media marketing space. The feeling of discomfort I've had about my blogging was like a sock that I put on early in the day that had something in it. I could feel something small in between my toes, but I just didn't have time to take off my shoes and deal with it. I've just kept walking with this thingie in my shoe. And over time I got used to the thingie, used to the annoyance, and yet I could feel it with every step.

I told my friend that I was going to revitalize my writing by redesigning my blog; she was only too happy to help. She'd started coaching independent proprietors, typically creatives, who were building social media strategies for their businesses. I had helped to build strategies for my business, and our clients' businesses, but had not built a strategy for myself.

My friend's questions were deceptively difficult.

"Who do you want to reach with your blog ... and don't say everybody."

"But men and women read Pause."

"I'm sure they did, but if you had to identify THE person that would be interested in your blog it would be ..."

"People interested in, you know, what I write. There isn't an age, per se ..."

Very difficult stuff.

"I noticed you've taken down your blogroll. You should get it back up."

I scoffed at this initially, guiltily. The truth of the matter was that I had taken down my blogroll because I hadn't added anything to it since 2005, back when I worked for myself and took the time to methodically check my feed readers. I used to make it the first thing that I did in the morning, but then the company started to really take off, and I woke up to emails and early morning meetings with people on the East Coast. I rescheduled my reading to afternoons, but gradually found that by 10 pm I was still finishing proposals, catching up on email, or checking into a hotel and desperately wanting to sleep.

"Do people still care about blogrolls?" I was embarrassed hearing myself, as I thought about the myriad times I shared with people who asked me, a few years ago, how to get started blogging. And my standard answer, "Read. You must read."

My friend started to ask me about what bells and whistles I would place on my new, revitalized blog. Save for my Twitter feed, all of my blog bling and traffic-generating features were circa 2006. I have a Facebook and Twitter account, which have grown through no effort other than accepting the invitations that have come my way. I don't have any philosophical issue with pursuing friends, fans, or followers, but more a fear of commitment. I recall days when I would spend hours trying to hack at a line of code in an old version of TypePad that screwed up my Typelists. I recall reading my posts many times before posting, just to make sure the punctuation was correct, and responding privately to every comment I received. I remember being vigilant about tagging and tracking back, working well into the night to make my beloved piece of internet real estate as inviting as possible.

Now, I kick aside cobwebs on the front porch. I feel embarrassed about the old furniture. I want desperately to be social, but don't want to invite anyone over, lest they see the tattered curtains.

"Where have I been all this time?" I said to my friend.

"You've been on the other side of things."

"The out of touch side?" I thought to myself.

I realized that I've let the blog go by choice. And I haven't added much to it because I haven't determined who I want to be as a blogger. I used to love being fairly naked, though I don't feel quite as liberal as I once was. Old age, maybe? Or maybe a few too many run-ins with people who later questioned me, or were even hurt. And running a business that involves others adds a layer of responsibility I haven't figured out how to navigate. So I've stayed away, sometimes angrily, like a victim who complains that her hands are tied. Sometimes with fear that I couldn't write powerfully like I used to. Sometimes I just don't know what I want to say.

A funny thing happened on my entrepreneurial journey: I became OK with just getting it done. Not talking about what else needed to be done, or about what I would do when I got there. I just did it. I still think about things I'd like to do, like spend a day watching TV, or going to Brazil. But I don't wonder what am I meant to do. I haven't answered the question, but my life is working on it. It's a paradigm shift that renders the many book proposals and soul-searching blog posts useless now.

Still, there are reasons why I want to continue blogging. Back to the thingie in my shoe: I spend an awful lot of time pondering where this industry as a whole is going, but I haven't really spent time getting re-addicted to using social media. I don't update my profile, or follow people. I read what others aggregate and send my way, but not what I discover. I've stopped thinking this was bad; I just would like to re-engage. I don't have more time for this and will have to be realistic about my output, but I don't need to be uber-consistent. It's not about the traffic. This will keep me thinking.

Stay tuned.

Encounters: People who don't live in "phases"

A very close friend insisted that I meet a woman she'd just met. She just had a feeling we'd get along. After many fits and starts--business trips, cancelled opportunites and challenges getting into the city at the same time--we finally managed to be in the same place at the same time. I'm all for serendipitous encounters, but I've made far less time for these encounters than I used to.

I recall the salad days of the Dot Com bomb, when we had plenty of time and nothing to lose from meeting people who may or may not be helpful to us. I met people on searches, some similar to my own, and could listen to them talk about their endeavors for the sake of listening. Years later, with a small business to help run, time was at a premium. I've learned a new skill lately of folding in these occasional encounters with official business meetings.

This friend of my friend's was traveling far out of her way to meet me. She'd moved to the Bay Area not long ago and had some challenges navigating suitable places to park in the city. I could have gone to her, I thought, feeling a tad guilty.

Over coffee (or an iced latte; it was a hot day) we talked about what we were up to. Clearly our mutual friend thought to put us together for a reason. I knew that my coffee date was working on her third book. I guessed that my friend hoped I would be a potential reviewer of it when it was ready, or could help her with a blog promotion strategy. As she spoke, I realized she hardly needed my help. She'd practiced medicine as an OB/Gyn for years, then decided to follow her passion for art. After creating a national following (she shows in galleries across the country), she thought to expand on her passion for writing. She is now working on her third book, which had received competing bids from multiple publishing houses. She didn't need my help with online promotion; her growing online community was thriving. She had a staff to help her maintain it. Three years ago she had  a daughter, and her husband, a Harvard MBA, had stopped working to explore his own possibilities and now spent his days at their home near the ocean.

I thought to myself, she has everything she wants. What can I possibly do for her? Perhaps, it became increasingly apparent to me, it was SHE who would help me.

What this "traditional media" expat has to say about the way the wind has blown

I am an ex-pat of traditional media. I came to my first job hoping that I would see my name in magazine bylines and book covers. Maybe I would get to share my work on TV, God willing. I left "print" by accident, not by any prescience on my part of its eventual declining significance, but more from an inability to fit in.

I'm sure if I had stuck it out a bit more and not taken a new media job five years in I might have made more of a go of it. But things discouraged me about traditional media. It had an established power structure that made it nearly impossible to get noticed. I wrote things I was proud of on the side, while editing more established writers in the waking hours and writing uninspired copy as a freelancer. But I hadn't really established a voice that was worthy of cashing in favors from editor friends of mine.

I didn't crackle with potential; I tended to get sleepy at work while copyediting and often had my edits edited. My favorite part of my job was reading magazines--a nice perk of working at a print media company--and going to parties, where a lot of people asked me for my card. Being employed by a large media company, I didn't have to go after editors looking for print work. But I had no ability to get published within my own company. When I was told I couldn't write good headlines it felt more like a sentence than a criticism. It was an indication of my inability to do well in this world. I wouldn't get to do what I really wanted--to write--because clearly it wasn't in my blood.

I read with fascination Lesley M.M. Blume's piece in Slate, "The Media's Lost Generation" about the travails of traditional media refugees who are being forced to have to re-invent themselves in mid-career. Her piece opens,

Last month, a media executive met with a headhunter to plan his next career move. With years of experience at a major media organization, the executive figured that he had some good ammo to jump to the next level, even in the current economic climate.

The meeting did not go well.

"The headhunter essentially told me not to even bother trying," says the executive. "He told me, ‘The old media model is broken.' The message was that there really isn't a next step to take."

I read articles about the challenges of print and television all the time, but this one really resonated with me, perhaps, because I'm relieved that through no particular flash of insight other than just a feeling to go where I can make a difference, I veered to where the action is. A direction now deemed "correct" in the world. I recall my decison to leave New York to take a new media job, ten years ago, and asking a trusted mentor whether it made sense for me to leave and relinquish my somewhat low, but higher than rock-bottom, place on the media ladder.

"You'll be back in six months. Don't lose any numbers," he said. My decision to go was one of the first logically inexplicable ones I'd made. It came from the gut and a voice that said, "Do it anyway."

I share this because I am not taking a self-righteous stance on the new relevance of new media, or social media. I make a living from it, I believe my company rides along the edge of best practices everyday, but I can't say that I knew this would happen; I'd only hoped I would be able to pursue this growing interest in a model counter intuitive to the people I used to work for. A model that democratized media, to a large extent, and made possible a notion terrifying to most people like me who hinged their self-worth on "making it" in traditional media: that there's a whole helluva lot of talent out there and it ain't all on the Hearst, Conde Nast, or Time Warner payrolls. Traditional media just took in whom they could fit, who matched the pedigree, or who had an uncle who could introduce you to the editor, or who had this random bit of luck and was seen for what she could produce, and sometimes bonafide talent. But so may others could not even make it to the filter, let alone make a living at it.

Back in my print days, there was something so alluring about being one of a few selected, whose name would be committed to print. And there's a whole community of folks, I'm sure, who still hold print sacred. I'm one of them, even as someone whose name has only made it via her work in new media. I fretted so long about being a part of it that even while it's suffering I promise to someday return -- if it will have me. Many bloggers who are doing just fine building platforms online still look at the book deal as the summit of success. I'll know I'm fully evolved when I couldn't care less about hardcover, softcover, or any cover.

Blume writes of executives who have dedicated their careers to traditional media and who now have no idea what's next. I recall from back in my editing days that the most likely way to "move up" in traditional media was to jump to a new company. I had friends whose resumes made me dizzy--they moved, often laterally, to a company, then another, sometimes even back to their original company. Anything to extricate them from a previously untenable working situation (untenable, meaning with blocked or unclear paths to promotion). Often their situation wasn't any better when they moved, but even the possibility of shaking lose a few additional thousand per year, or removing the word "associate" from their title was worth it. Movement in itself meant relevance.

But now, after swinging from tall building to tall building like Spiderman, these execs are finding themselves in freefall: The buildings have crashed down.

It's been difficult to share my thoughts on the overarching change that's going on, because it would be so easy to accuse me of advocating for the side on which my bread is buttered. But could any of us really read Blume's piece and think that we've ended up on the "right" or "wrong" side? I read it, felt lucky for a second, and then realized, no matter which side we're on, we can't stop moving. We must simply learn to love the freefall, even when at times someone throws us a net.

What I'm grateful for is not having ended up where I am, but for the voice that had told me, when I thought I should stay in the realm of the known, "Do it anyway."

The Accidental Entrepreneur

I never planned on being an entrepreneur. Independent contractor, yes. Freelancer? Uh huh. But an entrepreneur? I never thought I had it in me.

I don't consider myself a risk taker so much as a demander of work I feel passionate about. I'm ambitious, but you don't have to be a risk-taker to be ambitious. You can get all A's in school, graduate from college early with honors, get a graduate degree and thereby hedge your bets that you will be "successful" in the more superficial sense of the word--money and job opportunities. I've always been a hard worker, but that, too, doesn't mean risk-taker. Just why, then, am I an entrepreneur?

It was an accident. I found myself in a situation where the mission, the people, and the timing were right. We didn't think that the market was ripe for us, we just wanted to do what we did. We didn't think about positioning ourselves at that time. We just created what we thought was missing. We had the time and the energy. Considering all of these factors that just fell into place I'm amazed that I became an entrepreneur. The opportunities where pure passion meet a market where it can be leveraged is SO rare.

I'm reading a book, the Entrepreneurial Imperative. I've just started, so no major takes on it yet. But I am struck by the author's premise, which is we will only help ourselves through entrepreneurism. It's the only way, not only in business but in philosophy. We must be willing to take our futures into our own hands.

This can be interpreted in many ways: we can become entrepreneurial by bringing our passions to the workplace, or creating our own workplace if we can't bring them to our current ones. We must allow intrapreneurism (Nina Simosko writes an interesting piece about the origins and true meaning of this word) in our companies.
 
Applying this imperative to the current world situation, we need to allow each other to think our way out of what isn't working. Waiting for cycles of change isn't effective. What will happen if we all take our career lives into our own hands? Make our jobs. Think of our best way to serve.

Perhaps, then, being entrepreneurial would not seem so risky.

The Honesty Diet

No one likes to think of themselves as a liar. I always considered myself a straight talker. Someone who tells it like it is. When my husband tells me I embellish on my blog I tell him he just doesn't understand my angle. When I beat around the bush I like to think I am taking others' feelings into consideration. I have found it difficult to believe people may not understand what I am saying because I am not being clear. If you don't understand me, that's because you just don't get it, not because I am not being clear. But it's occurred to me lately: Maybe I'm not being clear. Maybe, gulp, I'm not being honest.

I have found it amusing listening to presidential debates and noting how words are chosen so carefully, too carefully. And while I love to point out how opaque people can be, I also find it disheartening how we, in general, are pressured to overthink, exaggerate, obfuscate, and purposefully divert people in order to win. I wish honesty was really valued in candidates, not illusions of honesty. Not relying on such things as the Straight Talk Express or stories of difficult childhoods to somehow prove we are what we are not.

I was compelled to read Stephen M.R. Covey's book The Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything for a reason. I figured it was to validate myself; or because the author is the son of the bestselling author Stephen Covey, whose books I enjoy; or because I like business books. But could it be that I might have had some ulterior motives? Perhaps I, Ms. Straight Talker, have noticed some twists and turns in my communication patterns. Leeeeeetle white lies that crop up, leeetle breaches in integrity that I think about during my drives home and then ask myself, did you really NEED to say that? You could have just done THAT. A leeetle pressure that I suspect could be relieved by not having to hold down illusions?

Covey's book makes apparent the "tax" that you pay for breaches of trust. And he illustrates ways that we lie. Most of us don't internalize our lies as lies. We see them as buffers, expediters, strategic ways of positioning, protective measures. And yet, over time, they take a toll. Often they result in failures that can be blamed on something tactical, but actually the cracks formed quietly over time.

I've asked myself why I fall out of integrity sometimes. Why make something sound THIS big when it was just this big? Why not tell someone that they need to get their act together rather than get annoyed at them when they don't? Why assume that the truth won't cut it?

There are ways where I am extremely trustworthy. When I make a mistake that impacts someone else, I clean it up. Quickly. I don't let it fester and hope no one will notice. I fess up, tell you how I will fix it, and then fix it. I share with my colleagues context--even context they may not care to know--because by having it you know why decisions are being made and we can come up with solutions faster. I always tell others seeking business partnerships what I want, and why I may not want what they are proposing. Perhaps by knowing my thoughts we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement.

But there are areas in Covey's book that made me think twice. Made me see where I could clean it up. I think that while I've been such a proponent of Transparency and Authenticity, Honesty has been more elusive. I've seen it as a luxury; something you can achieve only when you are at "X" point in a relationship: When you are married; when you are the boss, when you are speaking with a good friend, when you completely trust the person you are speaking to, when someone has "earned" it. It's something to be parcelled out carefully, not an end in itself. I've noticed that some people make telling the truth easier to do than others; they don't react or lash out when they hear it. Therefore those that do react, by extension, don't deserve it. Sometimes I see the truth like a splinter that finally comes out after prodding. If you don't ask me for the truth you aren't doing enough to get it.

Or, I assume that people just don't need to know the truth. This is the thinking that developed at age 6, when my Aunt asked me how I was, and I provided an in-depth account of my constipation. My Dad winced and said, "there are some things people don't need to know." In later years such things as feeling hurt or threatened were added to the list.

I've confused honesty with discretion: I'm not lying, I'm being "discreet".

I'm keeping my options open.

I'm minding my own business.

I'm sparing you the gory details.

Then there's space-filling dishonesty: I have nothing important to say, though it seems you want me to say something, so I will.

Then there's theoretical dishonesty: What I'm saying is, literally, true, but I know you aren't getting the full story.

I'm going to try something. Utter, tactful, honesty. Even if it means not having anything important to say. Even if it means hearing reactions, even if it's stressful, even if it's awkward, even if I don't have the right words and have to fumble around. Even if I seem incompetent, or mean. Even if I look like an idiot. Even if you think I'm lying.

I'll take notes if I have the nerve.