As long time readers know, I write about business and parenting and sometimes how the two combine or don’t combine. Well, this post is about a little bit of both. My kids, age 8 and 5 1/2, have pretty much reached the age of reason — most days. Of course there are those times when the term ‘reason’ resonates with no one (including myself) around here, but on most days they are reasonable. I discovered recently, they have reached the age where they will play together. I mean, they have played together in the past but they’ve always wanted me involved, didn’t fully agree with what the other wanted to play, wanted to watch TV, or play the Wii. I’d get frustrated and just tell them to watch TV and then feel like a less than stellar mom for putting them in front of the TV after I’ve had a long day at work and needed some time to catch up with home stuff, organize stuff or even just sit down for a minute!
In the last few weeks, I’ve been able to go tell them to play cards or a board game while I cook, clean, check some emails, or lay down for a bit and they actually listen! On a couple of occasions, I’ve even had to tell them to wrap up playing if they wanted to watch a little TV before they went to bed. I don’t know why but I feel much less mom guilt when they play with each other even if they are chasing each other around the house playing tag and I happen to be home base (safety) while I’m trying to do the dishes. In a weird way, their aging is allowing me to have time to do more things because they entertain themselves. I knew there was a reason I had two kids because it certainly wasn’t a rational decision at the time given my son didn’t sleep more than a few hours in a row until he was over 4 years old! When I see them playing, hear them discussing the rules of the game they are about the play, and sorting out their disagreements, my heart smiles, my other troubles disappear for a while, and I think to myself how lucky I truly am.
I just got back from a week long part stay-cation and part away-cation with some friends who live in two different cities. We visited some local Austin famous places like the Oasis and Hamilton Pool. We also saw The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (nice movie). I always feel so blessed after I get to spend time with these particular friends because I’ve known them for 20+ years now. Our kids have virtually grown up together and at one point in each of their lives, they thought they were cousins. It didn’t matter that we looked different, to them they just felt like family. I feel lucky to have them in my and my kids lives.
During this time, I read a very interesting book (that most of the rest of the world already knows about because the movie is now out starring Julia Roberts) Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia (Amazon Link) by Elizabeth Gilbert. It was if the author was writing parts of my story! It got enough positive reviews to warrant a movie starring Julia Roberts but it certainly touched a nerve with some of the Amazon reviewers who decided it was self indulgent! One of the moms at a water park we went to saw I was reading it and told me how great it was and she loved it. She told me “just wait until you get to the part when she’s in India.” This is obviously a book that elicits very different responses from people depending where they are in their life/spiritual journey.
I won’t quote some of passages (that I desperately want to) here because my blog is read by many people…not just women age 30+ going through a mid-life awakening and search for meaning. This is a non-fiction account of the author’s experience of taking one year ‘off’ to find God/herself. She does not have kids and received a hefty book advance which makes this a much easier endeavor. She spends 4 months in Italy (eating), 4 months in India (praying), and 4 months in Indonesia, specifically Bali (loving). She writes about divorce, marriage, God, spirituality, crushes, love, food, different cultures, depression, not wanting to live, yoga, meditation, physical intimacy, soul mates, etc. The only character in India who the author says she uses his real name is Richard from Texas. Richard has an interesting take on soul mates (see quote below) and apparently he builds houses in Austin. I SO want to run into Richard from Texas some day! Given I live in Austin, it might happen. Now for some quotes:
“Sincere spiritual investigation is, and always has been, an endeavor of methodical discipline. Looking for Truth is not some kind of spazzy free-for-all, not even during this, the great age of the spazzy free-for-all.” p. 2.
I’m not going to type it all here, but the top of p. 49 she talks about how she tried to make sense of her depression and why she would feel this way from chemical, diet, seasonal, to being an artist/writer, to her situation, to her parents, to xyz and she concluded it was probably a little bit of everything and things she didn’t even understand.
“Virginia Woolf wrote, ‘Across the broad continent of a woman’s life falls the shadow of a sword.’ On one side of that sword, she said, there lies convention and tradition and order, where ‘all is correct.’ But on the other side of that sword, if you’re crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention, ‘all is confusion. Nothing follows a regular course.’ Her argument was that the crossing of the shadow of that sword may bring a far more interesting existence to a woman, but you can bet it will also be more perilous.” p. 95
“The Bhagavad Gita – that ancient Indian Yogic text – says that is is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection.” p. 95
“The classical Indian sages wrote that there are three factors which indicate whether a soul has been blessed with the highest and most auspicious luck in the universe: 1. To have been born a human being, capable of conscious inquiry. 2. To have been born with – or to have developed – a yearning to understand the nature of the universe. 3. To have found a living spiritual master.” p. 124
“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it….[they] shake you up…tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light could get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you [have] to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master and beat it.” p. 149
“To know God, you need only to renounce one thing – your sense of division from God. Otherwise, just stay as you were made, within your natural character.” p. 192
“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.” p. 260
“The Yogic sages say that all the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy. We create words to define our experience and those words bring attendant emotions that jerk us around like dogs on a leash. We get seduced by our own mantras (I’m a failure…I’m lonely…I’m a failure…I’m lonely…) and we become monuments to them. To stop talking for a while then, is to attempt to strip away the power of words, to stop choking ourselves with words, to liberate ourselves from our suffocating mantras.” p. 325
Yes, this is a great book to read for those of you on a journey ‘to understand the nature of the universe’ which is a means to understand yourself.
To me, a sense of humor is really important. But funny enough what some people think is funny others don’t. The best comedians appeal to a majority of people with their jokes because usually they pick on the insecurities many of us have. If you can’t laugh at yourself, your mistakes, or even others from time to time, you’ll go insane. In my opinion, a good sense of humor is important with friends, family, and in the workplace. I like to laugh and I like to make others laugh. I’m certainly not a comedian by any stretch of the imagination, but I tend to show my humor much more off blog than on blog because I really don’t know what will resonate with you hundreds upon hundreds of readers out there. (Are you still there? Feedburner, Google Analytics and WordPress stats say you are. )
There are two cartoons that I think are hilarious that my kids watch. I like to watch them too and my kids ask me (while they are laughing) why I think they are so funny and I tell them “I just do.” They are Penguins of Madagascar (based on the DreamWorks movie series Madagascar) and Emmy award winning Disney channel’s Phineas and Ferb. King Julien, the ring-tailed lemur, cracks me up in his self absorbed ways in Penguins of Madagascar. The crafty penguins with their dry wit, make me laugh out loud.
The creativity (and obliviousness) of the two little step brothers in Phineas and Ferb, their older classically teenage sister (Candace) who is always trying to BUST them in their over-the-top, dangerous projects, and Perry the Platypus who is always busting the evil Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz, are so well ‘cast’ together. The brother’s Firecamp Girl (play on Girl Scouts) friend Isabella helps them with their projects and always greets them with a “Watcha doing?” when she sees them. According to the Wikipedia link, the creators of Phineas and Ferb pitched the concept for 16 freaking long years before Disney picked it up. Wow! To me, it’s pure genius.
I also just rented Monty Python’s Meaning of Life, Life of Brian, and The Holy Grail because a friend (Earl Lundquist – soccer blogger) mentioned that he and the family were watching Monty Python on one of his facebook updates. It reminded me that I hadn’t seen those movies in a really long time, and I think Monty Python is classic British wit that pokes fun of many sensitive subjects (religion, politics, personal relationships, gender) at its finest. I re-watched Meaning of Life last night and it still is so funny. The scene where Death comes to visit, or the scene where the professor is trying to teach sex-ed to a seemingly uninterested group of boys by going through the mechanical acts of procreation with his wife, or the scene where the Catholic mother is doing the dishes and gives birth to her 30th child and they sing about not being able to use protection, or the scene where they come to harvest a liver from a live donor are just classic.
I can’t wait until my kids are old enough to watch them with me. I think if they can laugh at themselves or find the humor in things, they will hopefully be happier individuals overall. [Although I do have a limit to the bodily functions humor they both seem to like.] I hope they find Monty Python funny too and don’t roll their eyes at me and think how embarrassing their mother is, but I’m prepared for the worst. Well, maybe my sense of humor is odd, but hey at least I can laugh at something (some people are so serious they can’t see the lighter side of things). Plus they say laughter is the best medicine and it can be just what you need to make a breakthrough in a tough project at home or work. <— that’s me Laughing Out Loud (LOL).
I often refer to my kids as little ventures (i.e. start-ups). They are so unique and the most important ventures in my life. This week has been a tough week because my daughter was home sick for 3 days. She was better the last day but considering she had a really high temperature the day before, I figured it best to keep her home one more day. Her dad and I juggled watching her so we could both make our important meetings. I even called the teenage girl who lives across the street who we’ve used for babysitting before to come watch her for a few hours today. Fortunately, it’s summer so she was able to come over on short notice and my daughter likes her.
My son has been going to summer camp while she has been sick and my daughter likes the camp so much that she wanted to go despite being sick. I was a little concerned about sending them to the YMCA summer camp because they wouldn’t know anyone there and they usually know someone. Turns out the first week they went, they did end up knowing someone…a boy from my son’s soccer team and his younger sister. Plus, they both were in the same section even though they are different ages so they knew each other although they hung out with different kids. I told them to look out for each other, and I think they both rolled their eyes at me and my son said in a partially whining tone something like ‘she’s not even going to be playing with the same friends I am!’ I told him it doesn’t matter and that he should keep an eye out for her and I told her the same. My guess is that she keeps more tabs on him that he does of her.
I’m now glad they are going because they are exposed to a different crowd of kids than the private school they go to. I was a public school kid myself (except for two years at a private Episcopalian school) and although my knowledge of geography is not great because the US public schools weren’t really into teaching much about other countries, I certainly got to know many kinds of people which I think helped me during my stint at one of the largest universities in the country, UT Austin, and in business working with different kinds of people from different walks of life. I made up a little for my lack of knowledge of geography by being born into an international family who traveled a lot.
I think being around and working with a diverse set of kids, helps them prepare for the real world (college, businesses, etc.) where there are so many different kinds of people. The diversity in the workforce is so much greater than even 20 years ago. School or summer camp aren’t the only place kids can experience diversity…when my kids are older I hope to travel with them to many fun and different places around the world.
At any rate, both my kids have enjoyed the camp and have said they have made so many friends that are younger and older than they are, which to me is great. To them every kid is their friend whether they remember their name or not. It’s kind of nice to live like that…too bad as adults we don’t consider all the new people we meet our friends.
I have sometimes wondered how a fad is created. In the tech/web world, there is all this talk about ‘viral’ this and ‘viral’ that about creating a gimmick that will cause adoption of your products/services to suddenly go through the roof. Us consumers are fickle and trying to predict what we will like in a mass scale is much more art & luck than science from my viewpoint.
My kids came home after a birthday party with these little plastic toys that mostly look like junk and a waste of petroleum based products to me. I asked them what they wanted to do with them and if I should recycle them or throw them away, but they both were like ‘no way, we need those!‘ Of course need and want in a child’s mind is the same thing. My son then proceeded to take them and line them up on top of the TV. For some reason I thought his enthusiasm and interest in doing something with them was cute so now they adorn the top of the TV and will probably be there for quite some time because that’s where they ‘need‘ to be. I have to admit that I smile when I see them mostly because in my mind I see his excitement of finding a place for them that made sense to him, and I remember him smiling while he was putting them up there. (See photos of these little toys to the left and right in this post.)
They are also into these things called Silly Bandz, which are basically colored rubber bands in all sorts of different shapes and sizes (e.g., dinosaurs, sea animals, princesses, pets, etc.). I don’t know where they first got them but my son just showed up with them one day and said he got them from a friend. I think their dad bought them a bunch more. My son is pretty good at getting more of them but my daughter ends up giving hers away to other kids and then gets upset and wants more from her brother.
They both have seemingly opposite ways of dealing with these things. I remember my son would come home with a bunch of Pokemon cards, and I’d ask him where he got them. He would say “they gave them to me.“ I would ask him who gave them to him and he would say some friends at school. I would then ask him what he gave them and he said “nothing.” I said how can that be that they just gave you these and you didn’t give them anything and he said “I dunno, they just wanted to give them to me.“ I was perplexed at that but I really couldn’t ask him anything else because I know that he gets along well with other kids. I find myself wondering if this is a talent of his I should encourage or not! Now my daughter is the one who wants to give her things to people and I’ve seen her give things to her brother when he asks, but I’ve also seen him give her stuff when she asks. If someone likes her Silly Bandz and asks her for them she’ll gladly give them away, but I don’t think she really wants too but feels she has to because later (as I mentioned) she will go try to get some from her brother because she thinks it’s unfair that he now has more than she does. I try to explain to her (she’s only 5) that it’s not her brother’s fault that she has less but she doesn’t get that and then eventually her brother will let her have a few of the ones he doesn’t want. The end result is that I’ve decided they can’t take the Silly Bandz to summer camp. We’ll see how long that lasts.
So I wonder how these fads are created and I wonder when these particular ones will subside. Us humans ebb and flow in our desire for things whether they be big, life changing things or silly things like rubber bands in the shape of a dolphin.
One of my favorite female singers is Sarah McLachlan. My lifestyle doesn’t really allow me to keep up with all the latest things going on in the world of music, but I picked up a copy of a recent M-Music & Musicians magazine at my voice teacher’s studio, Octave Higher, this Saturday because she was on the cover. The title of the article is called Resurfacing. She just released a new album after 7 years called Laws Of Illusion (Amazon link). At the bottom of this post is a video of one of her new songs called “Loving You Is Easy,” which is probably the most upbeat song that I’ve heard from her. She says “It was based on a new relationship, and on hope and excitement and the fact that it is possible to feel this way again. I didn’t think I could. It was about the thrill of possibility and, quite frankly, lust.“ She said she is 42 and that she’s going to have “fun” tattooed on her arm because she’s determined to have more of it! She also said (and I agree) that “Writing about happiness and giddy love is tricky. It’s not as easy to write about as sadness and heavier things….happiness is quite fleeting. It’s very light and it’s not something that you can pinpoint.”
She got divorced a couple of years ago and says her music reflects much of her emotional life. I think most singers/writers works reflect their emotional lives. I know my writing does. She has two daughters named India and Taja, whose father is Indian. It’s nice to see that she has been able to use her emotional experiences to write songs. She admits it’s harder now with two small kids because “being able to have long periods of time to focus on nothing but myself and writing is long over. I live in a pretty ADD world right now.”
She is also reviving the female musician focused Lilith Fair tour that she helped start many years ago. Successful musicians to me are the ultimate entrepreneurs. They are betting against the odds of making it big that are probably 100 times greater than a technology company making it big. There are so many more people trying to be successful singers (e.g., just look at American Idol) than there are business entrepreneurs. I was reading the article and wondering how it would be to go to a studio every day of the week to work with someone as talented as her musical partner, Pierre Marchand, who helps her complete her songs. I have to say I was day dreaming a bit while I was reading the article. She has the benefit of great successes behind her before she had kids and she can play the piano as well as the guitar. I can’t play either…but there’s hope! They also featured Ozzy Osbourne in the magazine and he says he can’t play any instruments either.
I sing one of her older songs called Ice Cream (you tube link) to my kids sometimes. I drop them on the couch during the part where she sings “It’s a long way down” and they laugh hysterically. It makes me laugh while I’m singing it to them. “Your love is better than ice cream…your love is better than chocolate.”
I wonder if it’s possible to find someone out there who could be my music partner who is looking for a lyricist/singer like me and if we could both take a month or so off and create music. A nice little dream…
It’s a valuable book for any manager/leader/entrepreneur to read because it discusses in simple terms how many of us have challenges processing our emotions and using them as tools to get a better understanding of what is happening inside of us and outside of us. So many of us have been trained not to fully feel our emotions or stop them because we have been judged, place judgment on them, or simply feel we can’t deal with them right now. We are a bundle of feelings and they surface, just like thoughts, to give us data points to help us navigate this crazy world. I was speaking to one of our entrepreneurs at the Austin Technology Incubator recently and he said something like “I don’t have time to feel right now.“ I could relate to that statement because when I was running my companies, I put many things on the back burner and one of those things was my feelings. The same thing happens when you are parenting little kids who take so much of your mental and physical energy…you feel like you have to keep up a front of having it all together so the kids don’t see what you are processing. But you know what? Even if they don’t see it, they feel it. Of course your ‘gut feeling’ is always right there but sometimes we ignore it and defer to the ‘powers that be’ when if we had only listened to it earlier we might have taken action earlier and ended up in a better place earlier.
Dr. Frederick used very powerful examples based on his client’s stories that many people can relate to. It’s hard to summarize this book, so I’m just going to highlight some key quotes/takeaways:
He says that “in general the spectrum of our emotions is actually made up of eight primary feelings and their related shades and combinations,” which are Anger, Sadness, Happiness, Love, Fear, Guilt-Shame, Surprise, and Disgust. (p. 54-55). He lumps Guilt-Shame together as one category but makes a distinction that I found very enlightening. Guilt is feeling bad about something you did and shame is feeling as if you are a bad person.
The fear of feelings is apparently common. “In fact, most of us are afraid of our feelings. We’re afraid to feel the full extent of our emotions and afraid of being emotionally alive and present with others. We’re afraid of being vulnerable, of drawing attention to ourselves, of looking like a fool. We’re afraid of being overwhelmed, of losing control, of getting out of hand. We’re afraid of being seen for who we really are.” So “We distract ourselves, push our feelings aside, stuff them back in, and hope they’ll go away. But they don’t. They keep trying to get our attention, to be heard, to be responded to — that’s their nature. They reemerge as the sense that something is off, odd, or not right; as worry, irritability, restlessness, anxiety, or depression.” (p. xiv-xv).
In the last few years there have been many studies on emotions leading to a better understanding of how the brain works. “We now know that emotions can play a more powerful role than thoughts in bringing about well-being and lasting change. Our feelings can arise much faster and be more intense than our thoughts. At times, no matter what we do to suppress them or how hard we try to control them, they’ll have the edge. In addition, recent discoveries in the field of neuroplasticity…reveal that emotional experience actually has the power to rewire our brain!” (p. xvii). “In recent years, technological advances have enabled scientists to understand more precisely just how the brain functions. Joseph LeDoux, in his fascinating book The Emotional Brain, clearly illustrates how the neural connections that run from the emotional parts of the brain to the thinking parts of the brain are actually much stronger and more numerous than the connections that run in the other direction. This helps explain why at times emotions are able to overwhelm our thoughts and dominate our thinking and why it can be difficult to control strong emotions through rational thought alone.” (p. 18).
There are so many ways we avoid our feelings that I can’t type them all here but I recognized myself in many of the descriptions including things like “Overthinking issues, getting ‘stuck’ in your head. Having to be in control or being overly self-sufficient (otherwise, your strong facade might crack and allow your emotions to come through).” (p. 78)
The amygdala is a cluster of neural circuitry deep inside our brain and is a storehouse for significant emotional memories. It also gauges the emotional significance of events and it’s the place where fear originates so it has the ability to overwhelm rational thought and overlook reality. It has the ability to hijack the brain. (p. 90).
He discusses letting yourself actually feel the emotion through it’s entirety. When you don’t, it never gets really dealt with and you keep reliving it instead of letting the emotion come through like a wave to its natural conclusion. It’s a process and doesn’t happen overnight. Attaching a label to a feeling (e.g., anger, sadness, etc.) dampens the fear response and decreases emotional distress. (p. 94). He also gives tools to help you name and process the feeling.
As a business person and a parent, understanding and paying attention to your feelings about situations can help you make better decisions in all aspects of your life. I know so many entrepreneur’s who look back and wish they had listened to their ‘gut feelings’ during critical times but they were too afraid to do so. I’ve been there and done that! The maternal (parental) instinct (based on feelings) is strong and I’m not sure if there have been any studies done but I’m guessing that instinct has saved many a baby’s life.
We shouldn’t be afraid of our feelings because they “1. Impart information. 2. Provide insight. 3. Give us guidance.” (p. 135)
Here’s to your emotional health and well-being! I’ll end this post with a quote the author has on p. 131 that starts Chapter 7 of his book: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk to bloom.” – Anais Nin.
I took the kids to Barnes & Noble a couple of weeks ago to look at books and play with the train set in the kids section. When I can’t think of anything else to do, I go there because I can get a Starbuck’s hot chocolate or passion tea lemonade and hang out with them while they look at books. My son happened upon a book series on display called The 39 Clues (there’s even an official website!) and for some reason he decided he wanted the books. I think there are 9 in the series and he was excited because the 9th book took place in the Bahamas which was a place they were about to go to with their dad. Although he’s not quite the recommended age (9 to 12 years) for the books, I was thrilled he wanted to read them. He’s a good reader, but he really hasn’t been that interested in sitting down for any length of time and reading a book. He loves any and all things sports related and usually prefers to play Wii NFL Madden football than read a book. He asked me almost every day since the day he saw them if the books were here…well they arrived today.
This book series seems to be about kids searching out clues around the world to unlock and discover the secret to their family’s powers. It’s apparently a New York Times bestselling series and it comes with special clue cards.
As for children’s chatter, I love listening to my kids having conversations with each other. The things they talk about are so funny and interesting. While driving around running errands with them after work today, they decided to ask me how babies are made and I explained to them as simply as I could how a baby gets inside a mommy’s tummy. They grasped the concept but not really the details as I didn’t get into the mechanics of how it happens. [My daughter usually says she does not want to have babies. I ask her why and she says because her tummy would get big. But then a few minutes later, she's playing with her baby dolls! My son hopes to only have boy babies because other than his sister, he much prefers hanging with his buddies.] Anyway, they laughed and then started talking to each other about turning into sand. My daughter said she wanted to turn into sand after she died. My son said that according to the Chinese, you become an animal after you die. He asked me if that was true and I just told him that some people believe certain things and no one really knows what happens after someone dies. My daughter kept asking her brother if he wanted to turn into sand and after a while he agreed that he would also want to turn into sand. She then smiled a victorious smile because she got her brother to agree to something she wanted to do. I feel so blessed that they usually get along really well with each other right now. They really seem to look out for each other and make sure the other is OK. I hope it lasts and I can’t wait to overhear their next sandy conversation.
I just got back from Barcelona, Spain, and I don’t recall another time in my life where I’ve had the time to sit, think, write and let the words come without having some daily routine distraction. I was in Barcelona visiting my cousin, Ashan Pillai (a true Outlier) on my way back from a business trip to Portugal. After getting all the gifts for my kids (couldn’t forget the Spanish team soccer/futbal outfit), I sat in a plaza near the famous Ramblas shopping area in Barcelona with a notebook, listened to the people, listened to the street noises & pigeons, and waited for the words to appear. I had a lofty goal of writing 7 song lyrics. I should have gone with the goal of 3 that Brett Wintermeyer, our courier at work and also band member of The Sophisticates suggested, but I have an ‘eyes bigger than stomach’ tendency. I wrote 3 lyrics and started 2 others. I wrote 5 poems and started 2 others. Many more started and swirled around my head but never made it to paper or computer. I still have no idea if my lyrics are any good as I haven’t yet put them to actual music.
The thing with poetry that I’ve discovered over the past year or so is that sometimes its meaning is different between the writer and the reader. Who or what the poem is about becomes about the readers personal experience or interpretation of the words. As a writer I know that I often write things that have double meanings which are both true but the degree to which one is truer can only be fully known by the writer and possibly specific readers close to the writer.
The meaning can also slightly change depending on how it’s read out loud…the rhythm of the reading can affect someone in ways unknown. If you are a poet, this is probably not news to you. I suppose that’s the point…if it can touch someone even if it’s different than intended then it would have served its purpose. I wonder how many poems/lyrics go unread by others because there are so many writers out there who write for themselves as they struggle with their humanity. I suppose the really famous writers have their poems discovered after their death and people are left to interpret them best they can, but for us mostly unknown writers they probably disappear into oblivion.
I have never shared my poetry on this blog…well not the serious ones anyway but after being inspired by Shaku letting me post her Icarus In Flight poem on my blog, I thought I’d share just one. On a side note, in addition to me knowing Shaku through a non-profit organization, she also worked for an Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) company called Webify that was bought by IBM. It’s a small world considering I work for ATI now.
I wrote the following poem in my cousin’s neighborhood (the day before I went to the Ramblas) after hearing a song in a video my aunt was playing for me that evoked many juxtaposing emotions that compelled me to escape outside. Fortunately, the weather is gorgeous in Barcelona this time of year. This poem is a mixture of recent stories…a little bit of mine, a little bit of his, a little bit of people who changed our lives. He is in the middle (or shall I say the beginning) of an experience no new father should ever have to go through. So without further ado…
Streets of Barcelona
On the streets of Barcelona
I wander with ancient tears in my eyes
Thinking of you and nights all alone
At Last the song with many sighs
A translucent marriage to a soul
Recently departed to a sully sea foam world
Because one could not wait to grow old
Afraid to take comfort in touches never know’d
The blustery city noises and a pigeon’s soft coo
Might wash out the pain of consequence ridden choices
And obliterate irrelevant, life altering feelings taken by you
While holes you exposed must be filled with clear voices
True sadness eludes me because fear
Overrules the quixotic, addictive emotion of love
But steely sharpness of knowledge shall bring forth to bear
Wavering courage to continue onward from Above
Well it doesn’t solve everything, but for a kid it seems to take away pain. No matter how many times I explain to my kids that a band aid is supposed to just cover a wound so dirt won’t get in it or so that blood won’t spurt out everywhere, they still think it takes away pain. My daughter has a long scrape on her leg from trying to move/drive one of those big drivable electric rechargeable cars at a friend’s birthday party last weekend. Strange on many levels I know…she seems to have a little bit of tomboy in her like her mom. But before the driving incident she was making bracelets. When she first showed me the scrape she was calm about it. Then I took her inside the house, and she started saying how much it hurt. We cleaned it up and put a band aid on it. Then she was fine and went back to playing.
As soon as I take off the band aid because the scrape needs to be cleaned or to replace the band aid, excruciating pain all of a sudden appears! She refuses to take it off when taking a bath. She will only let me take it off for a few minutes to put Mederma or Neosporin on it and put another one on. I say to her “Why don’t we just leave the band aid off so the scrape can breathe? It’s not bleeding, and we really shouldn’t be wasting band aids.” Her response is to whine and moan in agony about how much it hurts and how much she needs the band aid because it hurts so much. She’ll even start limping and saying she can’t walk without the band aid. I sigh, give up the useless discussion and put another band aid on it. She smiles and goes off on her merry way.
Oh if band aids still held such pain relief magic for grown-ups, I would be putting them over my heart and head every day!
Back late last year (November 21, 2009 to be exact) this quote fell into my in box from Jeffrey Fry’s daily quote email list: “The spirited horse, which will try to win the race of its own accord, will run even faster if encouraged.” –Ovid. I think I’ve met Jeffrey (also an entrepreneur) twice, but we’ve exchanged several emails about our life’s journey’s.
That quote hit me for some reason. And I just now realized that quote came in almost exactly a year after I stood at the Entrepreneurial Ledge (I wrote that post on November 20, 2008 with tears in my eyes) after having heard that the first company I founded had gone out of business. I subsequently heard that the assets had been sold to a manufacturing company and some of the people went to work for that company so the technology in some form has survived. I know that some people might find it cheesy or maybe even ‘girly’ to be so affected by such news because after all, it’s just a company. But to me it was like a baby. The people were important to me and I cared about them. I have heard many of my entrepreneur friends refer to their businesses as their baby. They equate the experience to one of giving birth to and nurturing it as best they can. Starting a business is a wild financial, emotional, and physical ride very much akin to rearing kids!
At any rate, after letting that quote sit in my Outlook Inbox for a few days or weeks…I can’t really recall, I sent the following email to my fellow Director’s at the Austin Technology Incubator.
I think this [encouragement] is an important part of what we do. As an entrepreneur (spirited horse) you have so many forces trying to bring you down, being critical, double guessing you, etc. that even the slightest amount of encouragement can keep you going and running faster.
Because our incentives are not set up like most investors/VCs, we can be liberal with our encouragement which I think is a huge intangible benefit we offer towards the success of our companies/entrepreneurs.
Giving someone (or a group) positive energy helps them see things they might not have been able to see or better said makes it easier for them to see things because they don’t feel threatened by criticism/limits. I’d say a good example of this is what’s happening with [XYZ Company] with their big business model change. But I can point to a few more companies as well who when encouraged and highlighted have increased their odds of success.
But that’s just me. I believe in energy flows/vibrations at the sub atomic level and if you’ve noticed scientists have been proving and writing about this phenomenon. And as someone who broke her arm at the age of 13 riding a big, black ex-race horse (whose name I think was Jude) who was inadvertently encouraged to run faster by another horse, I speak from experience.
I do believe that encouraging someone can go a long way to the success of that individual and/or the company. Of course, encouragement has to be tempered with reality. I don’t believe in the “let’s all win a medal for lifting a cup to our mouths” encouragement that some kids are subjected to because I think that sets them up for huge disappointment later. As we all know, we don’t get medals just for showing up to work. In fact, I like playing board games with my kids because someone has to lose and they have to realize that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose and in many cases the person who wins is determined by who draws the first card (e.g., Candy-land)! Plus when one of them starts to say ‘that’s not fair,’ it’s prime teaching time to let them know many things don’t seem fair in this world but they just have to deal with it.
But the right amount of encouragement, with a nice side helping of humorous perspective, can help someone (e.g., an entrepreneur) immensely especially during times when it seems like the rest of their world (investors, board members, employees, family) is pulling them down or doesn’t see or feel what they do. I think the mere act of believing in someone, helping them focus on their strengths, and being there for them during a tough time, can have a huge impact on their ability to reach their full potential.
As usual the gorgeous photo is by my good friend Sandy Blanchard. When I look at it, I see a flower that was encouraged by the right amounts of sun, rain, and nutrients to open up and present such stunning beauty to the world…
Some of you may have been wondering why I took such an extended blogging break and why I’ve been so spotty in the times between posting. I thought quite some time about posting this, but then I thought I might never reach my potential as a writer or even as a human being if I don’t throw caution to the wind and risk offending or for that matter validating/pleasing others. Plus I thought that if it helps one person or helps someone think differently even if just for a nanosecond, then it would have been worth it. Some of you may recall I wrote About Laughter, About Sleep, About Writing and About Car Paint. This post is About Pain.
There’s physical pain and then there’s emotional, mental, and spiritual pain. Most of us have experienced all different kinds in life. The worst physical pain in my life came as a result of breastfeeding my son over 7 1/2 years ago now. I developed an infection that hurt so bad I couldn’t sleep and if I was able to nod off, I would wake up with tears in my eyes. I remember thinking “I want to die right now, but I can’t because I must feed my baby.“ I was determined to breastfeed him no matter how many people said I should give up. I have never wished to die before or since. I have wished to be waited on hand & foot while laying in a hammock on a beach drinking a pina colada and having my feet massaged, so if that’s what happens after death, I’m all in! Thankfully the maternal instinct is so strong, and we live in a day & age where antibiotics are available that in a few excruciating weeks the pain was gone. But I still occasionally have memory pain that has diminished over time.
But emotional, mental, and spiritual pain seems to last much longer (unless you have chronic physical pain which probably exacerbates the emotional kind as well). And unfortunately, a week of antibiotics doesn’t cure this kind of pain. This kind of pain can start from childhood and stick with you…flaring up at various times in your life when things trigger your deep seated fears and emotional memories. There’s a theory that you are often attracted to people that have some of the same traits as people in your family did growing up because it’s a known/comfortable pattern. The theory continues that down deep, you want to resolve some of the pain that you as a child were never able to resolve, see your parents resolve, or resolve with your parents. This theory is outlined in a book called Intimate Partners: Patterns in Love and Marriage (Amazon Link), and I read it before I got married, but I didn’t really get it until now because I didn’t know what those patterns were until I was immersed in it as an adult and mother.
What happens when someone in a marriage (with kids) finally realizes that the pattern is not resolvable or they don’t know how to, don’t want to, or can’t resolve it? They suffer or get divorced and the pain is horrid. Especially the pain you feel for the kids as you imagine the pain they might feel. I lived through a divorce myself as a child and was often caught in the middle of a lot of bitterness and anger, and I have relived that pain for my kids even though it’s a completely different situation and their dad is a very good, involved father.
What’s even harder is when you are both good people that happened to have a lot of unexpected crap happen throughout the marriage. You wonder what is wrong with you. When in most cases, there is really nothing wrong with you, but you look back and realize that neither of you knew how to nurture a marriage or you didn’t see or understand the signs that should have been big clues that something huge needed to fundamentally change in each of you. It’s like you both have blinders on until suddenly one of you takes them off and doesn’t like what they see, don’t see, feel, or don’t feel. Marriage, like life, does not come with an instruction manual and even if it did everyone is so different it would be hard to apply to your unique marriage and you would think you could wing it or that it didn’t apply to you. There are more instructions around a divorce which requires a signed agreement between the two of you outlining your responsibilities than there is before a marriage.
So, yes I just got divorced after what was probably close to a year of being separated mentally, if not physically. This past year is somewhat of a blur. It’s the hardest emotional, mental, and spiritual pain I’ve ever experienced and unfortunately there are no legal drugs I can take to make the pain disappear in a few weeks. Despite the fact that 50%-60% of marriages end up in divorce, it is the 2nd most stress inducing event anyone can experience behind death of a loved one. And it doesn’t really matter if you are the one leaving, the one being left, or it’s mutual. Mix divorce with unusual work dynamics, kids, and other personal issues and you have a recipe for a potential breakdown. Fortunately, I am very lucky/blessed to have wonderful friends, co-workers, family friends, and family who have supported me and let me cry on the phone, on email (yes, it’s possible to cry on email) or in front of them and repeatedly (until I’m sure they were sick of it) told me that everything will be OK. They let me say and write stupid (although sometimes funny) things and were kind anyway. I have never felt so out of control in my life! I mean I’ve gone months without reconciling my check book, was late on a couple of house payments, and my house (although overall neat) more disorganized than I’d like. Plus a whole shit load of other emotional stuff.
I’m still a ways away from being back to normal whatever that is, but we both love the kids immensely and right now we can’t foresee not being friends and friendly for their sakes. From my perspective, we both still respect each other and as hard as this has been, we’ve both taken the high road because that’s the kind of people we are, and we know it’s best for the kids. A child counselor told us it was obvious we loved the kids and they loved us. She also said that they got along so well with each other, were exhibiting normal behavior for going through what they were going through, and seemed happy despite what they were experiencing which of course took off about 80% of my maternal guilt. I did a post back in September 2009, called Double The Trouble, Double The Fun which stemmed from me feeling glad they had each other during this hard time their parents were going through. I felt that I/we had done at least one thing right by giving them the gift of each other to weather storms that life will inevitably bring them.
So now you know why I had such a long break from writing on the blog. My personal life started to bleed into the blog, and I needed to get a handle on things for a little while. I think back to that Entrepreneurial Ledge where I stood almost a year and a half ago. When your sleeping heart wakes up suddenly, it’s a very disorientating, scary feeling. It’s like gasping for air while at the same time trying to soak in all the colors, beauty, sounds, smells, shapes, feelings that you have not noticed/felt for years. You start falling in love with life again and it seems that pain is a part of love. You unknowingly/desperately reach out to people, anyone kind nearby to help ease this searing pain. In the case of some friends and family, they are there for you in ways you never imagined. In the case of others, they can’t or don’t know how to be there like you want/need them to be and it exacerbates and magnifies the pain. You start to realize that you are really reaching out to your lost self and the only one who can save you from drowning is YOU. Then you start the process of excruciatingly, slowly mending a broken heart and falling in love with yourself…and you wonder why and when you fell out of love in the first place.
Thank you for reading.
About the photo: The photo above is of a piece of art that my cousin, who goes by the pseudonym of Isaac Falconer, made for me when I told her I was getting a divorce. I didn’t get to see her that often growing up. She is a unique, vibrant, passionate individual. She has followed her own path and seems to have found happiness in doing so as well as people who appreciate and buy her art! She has even exhibited in Italy. The piece is called No Pleasure Garden (c) 2009 and it’s made of Chantilly lace from Italy with hand made hypo allergenic orchids affixed to two locations on the huge piece of lace. In her words, “It’s meant to be placed across the bottom of your bed as a reminder to you of YOUR personal glory – which has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with your life-mate or your kids or your professional work.“ It looks so lovely at the bottom of my bed and makes me smile when I enter the room.
Today was an interesting point in time for me. March 10, 2010. My son is 7 1/2 years old and my daughter is almost 5. God, I love them so much. A mother’s love cannot be explained in mere words. When we learn to communicate telepathically maybe we can share that intense love and the world would be a better place. I will blog more later about the poignancy of this day which happens to be a day or so before SXSW Interactive 2010 starts.
I picked up my kids from school after their soccer class today, and they rode their bikes near the house for a little bit since it was such a gorgeous, sunny day after the sudden burst of rain earlier in the day. My daughter wants me desparately to take her training wheels off so she can ride like her older brother, and I keep telling her to wait until summer or the weather is consistently better so I have time to teach her like we did my son back in 2008.
I’ll be attending SXSW Interactive this year as a spectator. Last year I organized a panel called Building A Web Business After Hours. It was fun and well attended. I learned since then it’s a very hard thing to keep up especially when you don’t have the time, support, and monetary resources to do it well. I ended up transferring ownership to my amazing partner, Nicole Johnson. This year I submitted a panel idea on how to leverage your online and offline networks, but it was not selected because I think they wanted it to be more narrowly focused. I was kind of relieved actually. I’m looking forward to going and supporting the Austin Technology Incubator‘s presence there via Bart Bohn’s (Wireless/IT Director) involvement with the Entrepreneur’s Lounge, Austin’s Interactive Showcase, and The Accelerator. A couple of ATI’s companies have been nominated and will most likely do very well. I’m also looking forward to the parties I’ve been invited to, catching some interesting panels, and seeing some of my online friends I haven’t seen since last year.
Onward and upward. Today is another day in the journey of the rest of my life…
I interviewed Dr. Ari Brown (pdf) for The University of Texas at Austin’s alumni magazine, The Alcalde, for an article that was published in the July/Aug 2006 issue. My writing partner, Pam Losefksy, and I pulled these articles together a while back and you can see them on the Success Profiles page of this blog. You can see the full article on Ari by clicking HERE (pdf).
Dr. Brown is a board certified pediatrician at the Capital Pediatric Group in Austin. She’s the co-author of Baby 411: Clear Answers and Smart Advice for your Baby’s First Year and Toddler 411. She received her MD from Baylor College of Medicine and did her residency and fellowship at Harvard Medical School/Boston Children’s Hospital. She has two children.
She shares:
The hallmarks of successful people are perseverance, self confidence, and satisfaction in what they do. In my daily work, I interact with parents, and I truly think being a parent is the most rewarding thing you could possibly do. A parent who is raising his or her children well, being a good advocate for them, and ensuring that they grow up healthy and strong in every sense of the word is a huge success.
She goes on to say:
My advice to young people looking to be successful in life is this: You can do it all, but you can’t do it all at the same time. Pace yourself. You want to accomplish many things in your life, but at the end of the day, your family is really the most important. Don’t put your family on hold to build your career; you have your whole life to work!
Parenting is one of the hardest yet rewarding things I’ve experienced. It’s so true that if you can help someone be a better parent and connect with their kids, the world can be a better place. That’s why I admire those people who take care of children from a childcare or medical perspective. As a parent, it was great to get affirmation from our kid’s doctors that we were doing OK or to get advice from them on what things we could do differently.
I have to constantly remind myself of the fact that I can do a lot of things but not all at the same time. I have a hard time pacing myself but I’m learning and trying and saying “no” to many things…even things I want to do but know I can’t do well right now until I get a few things settled. My kids (as are most parents) are the most important things to me in the world and I hope when all is said and done they grow up knowing, believing, and feeling that so they can do anything (within reason of course) their hearts desire.
I haven’t done a parenting post in a while but I’ve been thinking recently about siblings. I always knew that if I was going to have kids, I was going to have two. I have a sister and despite the occasional hair pulling ups and downs, I wouldn’t trade her for the world! There were times growing up I probably would have traded her, but now I can’t imagine having made it this far without knowing she was there. Although we are very different in many ways and sometimes we don’t understand each other, we are the only two people in the world who have experienced our pre-college years living in the same house. We can reminisce about the good times, the bad, and our perfect dog.
My sister was the pretty/creative one and I was the smart/determined one. Some time in college I realized I was kind of pretty and some time before she got her Master’s she probably realized she was smart too. It’s funny how the labels we get assigned in a family stick with you even when you’ve left home for so many years. I learned a lot from her and was always amazed with what she was able to get away with. I always usually laid everything out on the line and tried to be hyper rational about things since I was a nerd, and she always seemed to know how to get what she wanted. We always had each other. Being the eldest, I would protect her when I could even though she might not remember all those times and even when it got me in trouble. I would bribe her to help me with rolling newspapers when I signed on for my first job, and by association I was a little less nerdy. As little kids we would laugh and play with each other, as older kids we fought and played, as adults and mothers we share.
And that’s why I wanted two kids. The thought crossed my mind for a nanosecond that I couldn’t survive another kid after our son was born. He didn’t sleep consistently through the night until he was probably 4 1/2 years old. He had night terrors and I finally concluded it was past life trauma that he was still trying to sort out. It was a horrible and sleep deprived hazy time. But even after a miscarriage and not sleeping for 2 years, I was determined to have another kid for him before my body couldn’t handle it and fortunately we were blessed with an angel of a girl who slept like a dream. At the time I kept thinking I don’t know if I’ll survive this but I was going to do what I had to do for him to have a sibling. Many of my girlfriend’s felt the same way since we all agreed giving birth and parenting was the hardest things we had ever done. We wondered if our parents felt the same way. Some of my friends weren’t able to have another one for unexpected reasons, but almost all of them wanted at least two kids for the simple reason of them having that shared bond with someone.
As I watch my kids play together, it makes my heart happy. They will run around the house, jump on the bed, and make each other laugh hysterically. They also make each other whine or complain that one is getting more than the other but mostly right now they play well together which gives us a break. They play hide and seek, they build a fort out of all the pillows in the house, they scare and tickle each other, they watch TV together, etc. They genuinely seem to like each other right now. As they get older, I’m sure having each other will hone their negotiation skills plus they will try to devise plans to outsmart us and I’m sure they will succeed!
I am so glad they have each other to share the great times and the inevitable not-so-great times. I hope they will always be there for each other and I hope they’ll be there to turn to each other (knock on wood) after we are long gone. At least they can share the burden of figuring out what to do with us when we get old and senile.
Yes, although I know we will probably have to deal with some sibling rivalry, I feel truly blessed that the greatest gift we were able to give them is each other.
(Amazon Link) by 
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<— that’s me Laughing Out Loud (LOL).
(Amazon link). At the bottom of this post is a video of one of her new songs called “Loving You Is Easy,” which is probably the most upbeat song that I’ve heard from her. She says “It was based on a new relationship, and on hope and excitement and the fact that it is possible to feel this way again. I didn’t think I could. It was about the thrill of possibility and, quite frankly, lust.“ She said she is 42 and that she’s going to have “fun” tattooed on her arm because she’s determined to have more of it! She also said (and I agree) that “Writing about happiness and giddy love is tricky. It’s not as easy to write about as sadness and heavier things….happiness is quite fleeting. It’s very light and it’s not something that you can pinpoint.”
(Amazon link) by Ronald J. Frederick, Ph.D.
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(Amazon Links). It will be interesting to see if he likes them and gets hooked.
(Amazon Link), and I read it before I got married, but I didn’t really get it until now because I didn’t know what those patterns were until I was immersed in it as an adult and mother.
