Rethinking fear

Sometime back I think I said my new mantra was something like do what scares me. Not just do what interests me, but do what scares me. At the time I think I was referring to the challenge of committing 100% to my fledgling business start-up. That makes sense. Being self-employed is a daunting prospect. I admit I'm terrified. But self-employment is a worthwhile endeavor—for many reasons, which I'll talk about some other time if I remember—in spite of the fear it may generate.

Today I'm thinking some more about fear. Up until recently I assumed fear was my enemy. My assumption was based on the reactions of people around me when I expressed fear. The typical advice I heard also happens to be the title of a well worn book probably everyone has heard about but not felt like reading: Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway. Whatever it is, is up to each person, I suppose. I don't remember reading the book, but I probably did, back in the days when I was searching for my soul in the self-help section. Anyway, when I expressed fear, people seemed to hear it as a call to arms, a rallying cry. Fear! Must obliterate fear!

I had occasion this weekend to express a certain fear to a small group of folks who know me pretty well. The group was trying to decide if it wanted to host an annual conference in our city in August of 2015. My job was to facilitate their decision making process. Notwithstanding the fact that August of 2015 is more than a year away, I dolefully expressed my fears about how difficult the undertaking, how overwhelming the task, how likely it would be that people who step up now with exuberant enthusiasm in March of 2014 will collapse by the wayside by July 2015, when there are two weeks till Go Live and the volunteers have melted into the woods. I've been around that block before. I know a hole in the sidewalk when I see it.

The outcome was unexpected. I fear that expressing my fear actually whipped the members of this small group into a righteous fervor. After I had my say, it came time to vote on the decision. I looked them in the eyes, one after another, and polled them, one by one. To a person, they all forthrightly proclaimed their willingness to submit the bid with a firm and resounding “Yes!” I was dumbfounded. The group had spoken. I think expressing my misgivings about the endeavor, rather than dissuading them, actually spurred them in the opposite direction!

After I stopped bleeding (metaphorically speaking), I started thinking, is fear always something to be identified, walked toward, walked through? Are there no instances where fear actually protects us from the temptation of leaping foolishly toward something that could kill us?

I remember when I used to drive a school bus. I was terrified every day, and with good reason. I ferried peoples' children, the most precious of cargo. Every day was a chance to get hit by the MAX train, or to run over a child who had dropped a backpack in the gutter, or to smash in a kid's skull with the wheel chair lift. (These are all things that almost happened.) I don't know if my fear protected me then, during that tense academic year. But I know the thought of reliving that fear protects me now. No matter how badly I need a job, I will never again drive a school bus. My fear will prevent me. And I am grateful for that fear.

So maybe my original blithe remark about challenging myself by doing what scares me was a bit naive, maybe not thoroughly considered. Maybe fear isn't always the enemy. Maybe sometimes fear can be a friend. Maybe it's like any other situation—or person—we meet in life: a bit of both.

Dusting off my parental translation machine

As I putter from task to task, hoping at least one of my marketing strategies will bring a client to my email inbox, I hear the almost constant voice of my mother in my head. Not in a good way.

I used to hear the voice of both my parents. The parents used to tag team, good cop (literally, my father was in law enforcement) and bad cop. My father would keep me tied to him with handouts of money, while my mother would do her best to shove me out of the nest with admonitions along the lines of, “Get a job!” Since 2004 the paternal parental unit is enjoying the great Superbowl game in the sky, so all I have left is my mother to carry on the tradition of reminding me how epic is my failure at life.

I see my mother once every couple weeks and talk to her frequently on the phone. Not a whole lot has changed over the years. The last time I visited, while I stood by my car, one foot in, wondering if I would escape intact, she asked, “How's it going?”

I knew what she was asking. She wanted to know if I was earning any money yet. My mind began to scurry like a rat in a maze, looking for the response that would produce the least amount of psychic trauma. For me and for her.

“I'm working on it,” I said tersely.

“Anything happening?” This was not a casual question. It may sound casual to you, but I assure you, it was loaded with layers. You know what I mean. It's the confluence of tone and words that launch you automatically into flight or fight. Should I leap into my car and drive away? Or should I punch her lights out? That makes me laugh. She looks like you could breathe hard and knock her down, but in her younger years she was known as Mighty Mouse, so I don't assume anything. I think I could take her, but...

With one foot in my car, I looked at her and thought to myself, This is where my old parental translation machine would really come in handy.

What is a parental translation machine, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. It won't come as a surprise, once I tell you what it is. I'm sure you have one of your own. The parental translation machine is the mental meat grinder we use to translate what our parents say into what they really mean. Really mean.

Here's a classic example from my late teenhood. My father used to criticize my appearance. I resented that, understandably, and I felt especially hurt because I was enamored with the world of fashion. I used my appearance to express my personality. Which means most of the time I looked like a nut. A fashionable nut. I sewed my own clothes: hot pants, bell bottoms, peplummed jackets with ties in the back that would inevitably fall into the toilet... I thought I was pretty darn cool. My father was not impressed.

“Why don't you wear some nice Ship n Shore slack outfits?” he said. From his point of view it made perfect sense: mix and match separates, perfect for home or office or in my case, college. What's not to love?

Because I had not yet developed my parental translation device, I interpreted his comment as, “You look like an idiot! No one is going to take you seriously when you dress like a fool. Plus you are making me look like a fool! How do you think I feel, standing next to my daughter, who is wearing red corduroy hot pants?”

Of course, because I interpreted his comment as a criticism, my response was to fly off the handle, say something mean, and sulk in my bedroom among my unfinished sewing projects.

But if I had had the parental translation device, I would have realized something very important. I would have realized what my father was really trying to tell me. He was trying to say, “Daughter, I love you. And because I love you, I want you to be safe and secure in this world. I want to protect you from public shame and ridicule. I want to stand next to you and feel proud of what a talented and creative young woman you have become. I say these things because I love you and I want the best for you.”

If I had only had that device sooner.

So now that I am older, wiser, and I have the parental translation device, I know that when my mother asks a loaded question about my capacity to earn, she is really expressing her love and concern for me. She is saying she wants me to be safe. She wants to die knowing that I will be okay, that I won't be struggling to survive.

How did I respond? I usually get mad and stuff it down, and get away from her as fast as I can. This time I said, “Mom, I appreciate that you are worried about me. I am grateful for your love and care. Would you be willing to keep your fear to yourself, if you can, as I am carrying enough fear for the both of us. I can tell you I am doing all that I can, that this process takes time, and I have plenty of money in the bank. I will not starve.”

“I just don't want to see you use up all your savings,” she whined. “You know, when your brother got laid off from his job, when he went back to school, he didn't call us!” Duh, Mom. I'm not surprised, considering what happens when we interact with you. I put her new comment into my parental translation machine, and the message that came out was, “You are so independent. I know you will be okay. But I need to be needed sometimes, remember. I love you for your amazing strength and perseverance.”

Oh, man. I just started bawling. To imagine my mother saying those words was more than I could bear. It won't happen in my lifetime, but I know that is what she would say if she could.

Today I received an official email from my university, stating that my graduation had been processed and I will be receiving my Ph.D. diploma in a few weeks. My transcripts are now updated. I'm officially an alum. It could be I'm weeping over that a little bit, too.

Marketing people talk really fast

Yesterday I got up before the sun and drove out I-84 to a marketing conference at Edgefield, a former county poorhouse, now a retro-chic hotel operated by a Northwest outfit called McMenamins. I was too tired to appreciate fully the hand-painted murals on the interior walls and doors of the venerable old building as I asked a worker, “Where is the ballroom?” I was directed to the second floor window-lined auditorium, which was configured with narrow tables, all facing forward, classroom style. Ah... familiar.

A long table was laid out along the side of the room, loaded with bagels and various breakfast spreads. I ignored it and stumbled to a chair near the back that wasn't right next to another person and parked my bag. I sank onto a barely padded seat, taking note of the massive mural on the wall of the ballroom... horses, was it? Locomotives?

“They've got us packed in like sardines,” I observed to the guy two chairs to my left. He was an older guy with a smattering of sandy hair laid on his bald head like a doily. He grimaced.

At that moment a 30-something long-haired fellow strode over to the table. “Anyone sitting here? Hi, I'm Sundown.” We shook hands. Sundown introduced himself to the guy on the end. They shook hands. The guy on the end leaned over toward me, holding out his hand. I automatically reached out my hand.

“Paul,” he said, and we shook, hard. I tried not to let my eyes pop out of my head. Ow. I got up to get some coffee. The others headed for the bagel table.

We snuggled back in. Another guy inserted himself in the chair to my right. He stayed for about 30 seconds, and then he was moving on. “I need more room,” he laughed, shaking hands all around. He took the chair with him. Awesome. I spread out, shifting my chair inch by inch to fill up his empty space. Whew. I stopped feeling like a sardine and started listening to the opening remarks.

Marketing people talk really fast. In my bleary-eyed state, keeping up was a challenge. I lagged abut 8.5 seconds behind each speaker, the entire day. Part of my problem was that I was torn between taking notes or watching the PowerPoint slides. Doing both requires bi-focals, which I currently choose not to use. So, reading glasses or distance glasses? I opted for distance so I could read the slides, but then the scribbles in my notebook were a hazy blur. Getting old is hell.

My shining moment came when the moderator asked the audience for some ideas of businesses for which we might have a hard time identifying an emotional component. Someone said “children's lunch subsidies.” I called out, “marketing research.” Members of the audience volunteered three more ideas, which were so bland I can't remember them now. Then we five volunteers were asked to leave our chairs and stand in different areas of the ballroom.

Resigned, I got up from my chair and walked toward the back of the room to take up a position by the untended bar. The other volunteers went to their respective corners.

“Go help these people figure out the emotional component of their dry, unemotional businesses,” shouted the moderator gaily. The audience erupted slowly out of their seats. I waited, half hoping no one would would be interested. One guy came hesitantly over to me.

“Marketing research?” he asked.

“Hi, I'm Carol. What do you do?”

“I'm John. I'm in real estate.”

“How nice.” I waited. When it looked like nothing further was forthcoming, I prodded him by saying, “What emotion do you think might be lurking in marketing research?”

Before he had a chance to say more than a few words, an older white-haired woman came trotting up.

“Fear!” she said confidently. Wow. Was I so obvious? I looked at her, frozen.

“Fear of the consequences of making the wrong decision,” she clarified. She stuffed a piece of bagel in her mouth.

Ah, she didn't mean me and my fear. She meant the fear the prospective client might be feeling, which would prompt them to hire me. To assuage or avoid their fear. Okay, I get it.

Another woman joined us, youngish, dark-haired. “I'm from So-and-So ColorPlace!” she said and proceeded to tell us about how her company has to change its name because a rapper has recently used the name in a nasty song. Wow. Now, that's something to be afraid of, that your company name will be inadvertently destroyed by a rapper. I couldn't compete, so I let her ramble on. Soon it was time to return to our seats, and I fell back into obscurity.

That was pretty much the high heart rate point of the day, except maybe for the moment when the last speaker stopped talking and the beer began flowing. I politely declined the beer ticket the assistant waved at me, still appalled that I had managed to imbibe three of the five deadly food groups at lunch: wheat, dairy, and sugar. (If you add caffeine in there, another whoops.) Beer would have put paid to my self-esteem crisis. At that point I was sure what would serve me best was bath and bed, so I gathered up my gear and headed for home.

Later, the phone rang during my oblivion, but I merely noted that it was not my mother and buried my head back in the pillow. Exit, stage right. I'm not sure why the day was so grueling. There were only 65 people there, not a massive crowd. Everyone was well behaved. Hardly anyone talked to me, so I didn't have to fend off energy vampires. My table mates were pleasant. Other than the fact that I was sleep deprived and I ate a crappy lunch, I have no excuse for feeling obliterated by the day.

Today, the day after, I've had some time to think about it. I think I've figured it out. It's marketing, that is what it is. I've got the marketing disease. It's the Don't sell, persuade! syndrome, in which we desperately seek the magical combination of words and images that will inspire/motivate/persuade a potential client to respond to our call to action: Pick up the phone! Click on this link! Give me your email! Please, please, pretty please! What can I give you, what would it take, to make you like me, to make you want me, to make you hire me? Tell me, tell me, tell me...

Another way for employers to say, "No thanks (loser), we don't want you"

I'm discontented. I just found out about the Bright Score. Do you know about this? You probably do. As usual, I'm the last to catch on. On the Consumer Adoption Curve, I'm slower than the slowest laggard. I mean, I don't even have a data plan! Whatever. Anyway, the Bright Score (for those of you who may not have recently considered giving up all hope of self-employment success and applying for any job within 50 miles of your home) is a score calculated by a computer algorithm that lets employers know if you are a good fit for their job opening.

As you may remember, until six months ago, I taught business courses at a for-profit career college. I held that job for almost 10 years. And you may also recall that I recently earned a doctorate in Business Administration. I say this not to brag, but to remind you of my qualifications. I get job alerts from Indeed for faculty openings around town. It would be great to teach a couple classes while I'm developing my research business, right? Makes sense to me. So, I ask you, what better job to apply for than one like the one I had: teaching business courses at a career college. Seems like a classic no-brainer to me.

Notification of an opening appeared in my email inbox. I applied. One click took me to a web interface I had not seen before, presented by a company called Bright Score. I registered, a quick, painless process, and uploaded my resume. I deleted a few skills, added a few skills... and then I searched for the faculty opening I'd seen in the alert. A message came up: Calculating your Bright Score. (Cue Jeopardy music.) Bam. Say, what? My Bright Score for the faculty job was a paltry, measly, wholly inadequate 62! Epic fail!

As a consolation prize, Bright Score kindly suggested a couple jobs where I had a fighting chance (in the low 70s): a senior graphic designer for an unnamed company and a project supply assistant at Xerox. Okaaaay. I went back to my profile and tweaked my skills some more. I took out anything to do with art and graphic design and added skills related to teaching and education. Wham! Take that, Bright Score! Click calculate.... What! 63? No way!

In disgust, I searched for any job in the metro area for which I might actually qualify. You'll never guess what Bright Score suggested for me: Admissions Rep at the same darn for-profit college. How nutty is that? And my Bright Score was 83... Not Great, but slightly better than Good. Essentially a B+. Which means I probably could get an interview, were I inclined to try.

One thing Bright Score does not tell you is how to improve your score. They do tell you it is a combination of factors. It's not about just choosing the keywords that employers want to see. In fact, Bright Score analyzes the frequency and usage of key words, along with your experience and timelines. It also takes into consideration the structure of your resume itself, for example, length, grammar and spelling, and whether or not there is an objective. But they don't offer any tangible hints, like two-page resumes are a no-no. The secret sauce is hidden, and you only get five tries per month to improve your score. Sigh. I already used up one.

I think I will create a bogus resume, full of buzz words and upload that. I can test out the parameters. What happens if I go over one page? What happens if I add more jargon? What happens if I repeat many words and phrases from the job description? Ha! I'll get you, Bright Score! Hey, wait, what am I doing? I don't want to be an Admissions Rep or a supply assistant. I just wanted to teach a couple classes, for crying out loud. Curses, blocked again! I am being funneled into a tighter and tighter path, it feels like. Self-employment seems to be the only hope for me, but I am afraid success may be a long time coming. It will come, eventually, I have no doubt. But if I'm living under a bridge—or hiding out in my mother's spare bedroom, which may possibly be worse than the bridge—I may not be around to enjoy it.

Isn't it nice, though, to know now that I'm wasting my time applying for jobs like the one I had? What a gift from the universe. I don't really want a job like the one I had. And now it looks like I won't get one. Maybe there is a god.

Bad news: My top five strengths have given me an emotional hernia

A friend of mine who is a business coach sometimes helps me with business stuff. We talk weekly. I help her with market research ideas, she listens to me spin (verbally) in circles, which apparently is not uncommon among her paying clients. As a way to stop spinning, or at least, to find out why I am spinning, she suggested I take an assessment called Strengthsfinder, which is an instrument offered by Gallup to help people maximize their strengths.

Back in 2007, the career college I used to work for paid for all its instructors to take the $9.95 assessment to find out their top five strengths. Those were the days when the college was riding high on the seemingly endless waves of federal student loan funding. The administration even gave us all a copy of Teach with your Strengths. I think I still have it somewhere, unless I bequeathed it to the dumpsters after they closed the campus last year. That's a story I've already discussed ad nauseum, no more about that here. What I will say about that whole teach with your strengths thing, though, is that (in my opinion) it gave carte blanche to teachers who weren't feeling motivated to improve the teaching skills they happened to be weak in, for example, organizing skills or time management skills. Instead, these instructors serenely informed us that they were teaching with their strengths. And of course, students continued to complain, which eventually led to some terminations, because administrators don't really care how you teach but they do read those all-important student evaluations.

But that was then, and here I am now, self-employed and trying to figure out my value proposition. And that is why my friend suggested taking the Strengthsfinder test. Again. Because apparently one's strengths can change over time. Although Gallup doesn't think so, because they wouldn't let me take the test again under the same name I used before. Once I created a new identity and paid my $9.95, I was given the link to the instrument: 177 questions not unlike the ones you see on the Myers Briggs or any online employment test. It's a tedious task to read the two options and click one of the five bubbles, especially when it seemed to me that more than one option applied. But whatever. Those Ph.D.s must know something, right? Hey...

Be that as it may. Here they are, my top strengths, in order: Learner, Intellection, Strategic, Connectedness, and Analytical. When I went back to check my 2007 results, sure enough, similar, but not exactly the same. The strengths of Input and Individualization are now replaced by Connectedness and Analytical. Don't ask me what this means. I hope my coach friend can figure it out. All I know is, four of my five strengths are in the Strategic Thinking area, which could possibly explain why I am a dreamer and not a doer, as I've complained about before. I think this propensity to dream rather than do is a progressive disease, actually. I'm becoming more strategic by the minute, which means I try to scope out the ramifications of every action before acting. I think you can see that an excess of strategic thinking could easily lead to paralysis.

I bolster myself daily with calendars for tracking and planning. I'm making friends with Outlook's task function, which I've always despised. I took a productivity class on skillshare and learned a system for getting things done. I'm clawing my way toward efficiency. I'm even tracking my calories and grams of protein (I really don't want to have to buy new jeans). Yes, I'm getting some useful things done—networking, website revisions, little research projects for friends—but I fear I'm swimming in my own fetid stench, which is what happens when one has the other progressive illness known as introversion. I've got it bad, and I fear it will only get worse. Efficiency is great, but I think I'd prefer effectiveness, if you know what I mean. Hey! Before I start putting up aluminum foil in my windows, where's the number for Introverts Anonymous? And I might as well join Strategic Thinkers Anonymous, too, while I'm at it. You can't be in too many 12-Step programs these days. It's just a fact. Wait a moment while I add that to my task list.

The consequence of starting a business: The trolls are after me!

One of the consequences of starting a business is that you can be found. I guess you could say that willingness to be found is a requirement of starting a business, but I think that is another topic. Today, I'm ruminating on the odd marketing practices of people who would like to use me and my business to make money, both legitimately and nefariously.

Some companies troll through the assumed business name registries and pelt the fledgling entrepreneurs with direct mail missives offering services for everything a new business needs. For example, I've received postcards, flyers, letters, and circulars from companies trying to sell me business card printing, internet access, plastic bags and twisty-ties, conference room rental, and credit cards.

So far I haven't purchased any of those things, but I might. You never know. New business owners are sometimes confused about what to do first, which makes them easy marks for predators. Especially the creditor predator variety. I'm fairly immune to credit card offers, but all it would take is one slip and I'd be sliding back into the giant black hole of unsecured debt that took me so long to crawl out of.

I welcome legitimate marketing offers, because they come from hungry entrepreneurs like me. There are some other marketing ploys that set me to head-scratching. Here's an example. I have a website that no one visits, according to the Google Analytics plug-in. I update the blog about once a month with inane posts that have little content value. However, odd comments have begun to appear, one or two a week, along the lines of Really like your blog, love so-and-so from such-and-such URL. Here's an example, misspellings intact:

Hi, Neat post. There іs a problem with your wеb site in internet explorer, might test this? IE still is the market leаder and a large component of othher folks will leave out уour magnificent writng due to this problеm.

That's pretty nice, huh? He/she is kindly letting me know that my website sucks in Internet Explorer, which is really a shame since my writing is magnificent! If my writing really had been magnificent, I might consider taking this post more seriously. And if the writer hadn't posted a URL that tracks back to some IP address in France that includes the words power play stats. Hmmmm.

Here's my favorite: 

I drop a comment whenever I especially enjoy a article on a blog or I haѵe something to add to the conversation. Usually it's triggered by the fire displayed in the post I read. And on this article [post name]. I was moved enοugh to post a comment :-P I actually do have a couple of questions for you if іt's okay. Could іt be only me or does it give the impression like some of thee respoonseѕ appear like writtten by brаin dead individuals? :-P And, іf you are posting at additional places, Ι'd like to follow everything new you have to post. Would you make a list the complete urls οf your soсial pages lіke your twitter feed, Facеbook page or linkedin profile?

Wow, I can relate to the part about comments written by brain dead individuals. If this commenter found “fire” in my post, I suspect he or she did not really read it, although I suppose fiery posts are in the mind of the reader. It's kind of sweet, though, don't you think? But dude, if you really cared about what I post in other places, please note the convenient links to Facebook and LinkedIn in the upper right hand corner. But really, don't bother, have a nice day.

And then there are the comments that mix random content with several URLs, like this:

Just over two years [URL] For writing it is best to use a felt tip pen with a fine point [URL] This learning experience provided me opportunities to provide pharmaceutical care [URL] I work with computers.

My friends in Minnesota are trying to infuse Facebook with poetry, a wonderful and worthy intention; but I wonder, maybe there is a new form of poetry coming into being, a mash up of art and commerce posted by bizarre humanoid robots in anonymous internet sweatshops in exotic locales around the world. My guess is that the writers of these poetic bits of nonsensical marketing probably don't intend to entertain me; probably they would prefer that I click one of those innocuous URL bombs, which will take me someplace I'd rather not go while adhering vermin and viruses to my trail so I inadvertently track back dirt into the Love Shack.

The other kind of message I repeatedly receive goes into my email inbox and it always starts with something like Attention Dearest One. Eagerly I read ahead to find out who has the temerity to send me an email with such an amusing greeting. If you follow the AIDA marketing communications model, the salutation is the attention-getter. The next paragraph is designed to stimulate my interest with a back-handed insult and an impassioned plea:

I am Charles David, Director of Operations, Eagles Security and Delivering Company, Austin, Texas. USA. It is explicable for you to grow apprehensive reading from me since there was no previous exchange between us. However, I implore your attention on the subject matter hereto contained.

The rest of the message contains, of course, the desire-provoking promise: Somehow this kind gentleman has been saddled with two trunks full of gold bars. Imagine that! And he is contacting me randomly to get some help disposing of said gold bars. Finally, the call to action: All he wants from me is some contact information. I can simply reply to his email and give him my name, address, phone, age, and occupation. I'm pretty sure this guy could then match up my info with whatever data he stole from Target and clean me out.

I can but shake my head in disbelief. It is inexplicable how anyone receiving such a message could believe that it was (a) from a real person, and (b) benevolent in intent. But you gotta love the naive use of what they must think is formal business English. I guess my response is to sigh and remark to myself that if it didn't work occasionally, they wouldn't keep doing it. They are marketers, after all.

Building my relationship network, one stupid event at a time

Last night I braved a little wind, a few raindrops, and horrifying 45° temps to do a little networking at the monthly meeting of the local chapter of a national organization called ODN (which stands for Organizational Development Network). The topic was on conflict resolution. I didn't attend for the topic, for the simple fact that I have no conflicts with anyone. Yes, that's right, the Love Shack is a conflict-free zone. The cat has signed an agreement, promising to lead a conflict-free lifestyle as long as he is on the premises. He is looking at me right now, wondering if he should start a conflict. (He dislikes it when I type.)

I'm always a bit manic when I go to networking events. Large rooms full of people make me skittish. If there is an educational component, I'm okay: I'm a good student. I can sit and zone out while taking notes and drawing pictures. The hardest moments are before and after the program, where one is expected to mingle and talk: building networks, I guess, although I confess I feel better when I'm just a lone node. But in the interests of developing relationships that may be valuable to my research business at some unknown point in the future, I showed up to do my best.

I entered the conference room and introduced myself to three women who sat at a square table. Two of the women (C. and T.) worked at a local conflict mediation center. They were colleagues of the presenter. The other person (V.) used to work with someone who used to work with someone who mentored the two women who work at the mediation center. I began to get the feeling that the conflict resolution field is fairly small, possibly insular, and definitely does not include me. No matter. I'm used to feeling like an outsider, with my goofy knit cap and fingerless gloves (socks), so I didn't hesitate, but plunged right in, determined to press forward with my mission: to network!

Someone (not me) mentioned the topic of emotional intelligence. I thought to myself, oh, that's a cool topic. I wonder how they measure it?

“What instrument do you use to measure emotional intelligence?” I asked politely, looking around the table.

T., an older dark-haired gal, looked at me over her little half-glasses. “Intuition,” she replied flatly. I was astounded.

“How is that working for you?” I asked lamely.

“Very well. After a while, you are able to tell...” She trailed off. Everyone laughed except me.

“We've found that giving people assessments isn't that helpful,” explained V. “People find out what they are good at, and they stop trying to improve.”

“But isn't a desire to improve a hallmark of emotional intelligence?” I asked, feeling somewhat perplexed.

“Yes, I guess you are right,” she admitted, which of course made me feel like I'd scored a point, but underneath I was feeling dismay. I've been thinking that perhaps the ODN people represented a viable target market for my research services. Now I find out they don't even do research? It can't be! Had I committed the classic marketing faux pas of assuming that I know what people need and want? I can't easily sell them on something they don't believe they need. It's like trying to persuade someone who doesn't already eat cereal to buy a new brand of corn flakes. Argh! How can these people help organizations improve without doing some type of assessment? Here I thought I was the shark in a pool of smiling, trusting minnows! How could I have been so wrong?

An answer of sorts came moments later. Apparently a really big shark had beaten me to the pool of unsuspecting minnows. A portly gentleman got up and introduced us to a company (I'll call it Blabla, because I don't really want to give them any publicity, considering that they may be a potential competitor [or employer] of mine someday). Blabla offers tools for OD and HR consultants, a whole slew of fancy tools, all neatly packaged with shiny modern technology (none of this old-fashioned paper and pencil stuff!), and ready for these consultants to use in their practices.

These sharks at Blabla are doing what I want to do, except they are a lot bigger. And I presume they actually know what they are doing. Although you wouldn't know it by the “sales pitch” the portly man gave to the group. He was immediately followed by a younger version of himself (could it truly have been his son?), who proceeded to flatter the group by repeatedly saying, “you guys here in Oregon are the test group!” Maybe I should have felt flattered, but after hearing us addressed as “you guys” five times in as many sentences, I started to think if I just keep at this research thing, I could eventually outlast them just on sheer grammar skills. If he had committed the ultimate sin—“your guyses'”—I would have stood up and walked out.

The announcements ended. The program began. A tall slender man with a pleasant manner spoke into a clip-on microphone as he walked us through a series of PowerPoint slides. The rest of the evening proceeded smoothly. I came away with a handout and a few pages of scribbles, a couple business cards (flagrant networking on my part: Hey, got any more of those business cards? Wanna link up on LinkedIn?), and then it was back out into the embarrassingly warm rain to feel my way home in the bleary darkness.

There's another networking event early tomorrow morning. I'm making no promises.

How to avoid the holidays: Build a Wordpress website

I'm fumbling around in Wordpress and MailChimp, trying to remember how to change layouts and add mailing list forms... it's daunting. Every time I do this, I'm reminded of my mother, who says (repeatedly) that she can no longer handle technology beyond a non-smart cell phone. Actually, I'm not even sure she can handle a land-line anymore. Last week I think I mentioned we went out to celebrate. When I picked her up at her condo, she came out carrying a plastic bag containing her cordless phone and base.

“I'm not getting a dial tone,” my mother complained. “Can we stop at Radio Shack on the way back?”

She thought it might need a new battery. She was pretty sure “the boys” would be able to figure out what was wrong with it. One of the “boys” waited on her, a young, energetic, patient African American. He took her phone and plugged it into an electrical outlet on the counter. “It's got power,” he said.

My mother put the phone to her ear. “But there's no dial tone.”

The kid and I looked at each other, like, Whoa. You want to tackle this, or shall I?

“Mom, the phone needs to be plugged into the phone jack in order to get a dial tone,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and nonjudgmental. She looked at me blankly. Then the light came on.

“Oh. Right. Okay.”

I assured her I would check the phone when we got back to her place. As it turned out, the phone was fine. It had somehow come unplugged from the phone jack. Maybe she was tidying up cords, who knows, and thought, Here's a cord that goes nowhere important. I'll just unplug it. 

Anyway, I feel a lot like how I imagine my mother feels when navigating new technology. I have tentatively dipped a toe in the new millennium by thinking I can learn to use Wordpress. Yet I sink back into my old technology like putting on an old shabby bathrobe: If you are lucky enough to visit the Love Shack, you will see the analog television, converter box, and unsightly antenna suspended from the ceiling, indicating I have not yet committed to high-def or cable. Every time a bus goes by, the signal shatters into a few thousand pixels, causing me to miss crucial dialog. What did she just say? Darn it!  (Have I mentioned I live on the most frequently traveled bus line in the city of Portland?)

I'm updating my websites, bouncing back and forth between technology and content, probably looking like my cat's tail when he can't decide if he wants to snuggle with my hand or eat it. Form or content, which is more important? People won't remember what I write, but they'll remember what they see. I need photos, I guess. (What does marketing research look like?) I've been told I need a video. Oh, boy. Now there's a scary thought. My former students would cringe. Thar she blows! Stay tuned for the Carol Show.

Is there life after doctorate?

This week I'm wrapping up the loose ends of the doctoral journey. The University wanted a pdf file and a hard copy of the dissertation. First, I took my flash drive to Office Depot and had them print one copy (plain paper, no color, 391 pages [Can you bind it? No, are you crazy, it's 391 pages! That will be $31.28]). As I leafed through the massive wretched tome, I noticed the images of the rich pictures looked like blurry crap. Argh. At home I opened up the Word file and tried to sharpen and color correct the images to reduce the blur. It sort of worked, poor man's Photoshop, lame tools in Word. My challenge was to minimize the file size but maximize image quality... sort of like eating a gallon of ice cream and hoping I will still fit in my jeans. Whatever. I reprinted all the color pages using my own old leaky inkjet printer, inserted the new pages, and stuffed the whole thing in a box. The next day I went to the post office, bought a money order for $160 (I'm choosing Open Access, so anyone could potentially find it, should they choose to search on something so esoteric as academic quality in for-profit vocational programs), put it in the box with my Proquest order form, and shipped it off to the University. (Picture me wiping my hands.) Done. Stick a fork in me again, this time, it's really done. As long as I didn't get the pages out of order, or accidentally skip some pages, or fill in the form wrong, or put the wrong amount on the money order, or mail it to the wrong address...

Today I celebrated my new life as a Ph.D. by applying for an adjunct teaching position at a clone of the college that fired my compadres and me last May. No, not fired, we weren't fired. Laid off, is what we were, laid off when the campus closed. No fault of our own. Repeat after me. It's not a moral failing to be laid off from a job, although it sometimes feels like it.

The job I applied for today was for an adjunct Business instructor, three years of experience required. As I read the online application process, I realized they didn't want the cover letter I had so painstakingly taken time to customize just for them. How times have changed. They wanted the resume, but only as a means to fill in the online registration form. Nowadays, it's all about online tests. Before you can apply, you must take a battery of tests. Tests? Really? Just to apply?

Yep. The first one was a 10-minute timed test of math, logic, and vocabulary questions, all mixed together. As I looked at the practice page, I could feel my heart rate start to soar, my typical response to being timed or tested. Being both timed and tested launched me into overdrive. My hands began to shake. My mouth suddenly grew parched. Do I want this stupid adjunct job badly enough to go through this torture?

I took it one question at a time and soon began to realize that whatever capacity for logic my brain used to have must have been beaten out of me over the past eight years of doctoral drudgery. Here's a series of numbers; which one comes next? 15  32  486  2587 24. Hell, I don't know. Ask me another. Okay, a monkey is to manager as a centipede is to a _________ ? Oh, come on. Really?

I'm exaggerating. They didn't really ask those questions, but they asked ones similarly as incomprehensible to me and my tiny tired brain. But that wasn't even the best part. (Best, meaning, worth mentioning.) After ten minutes of this electronic waterboarding, I was allowed to move on to the next section: 12 pages (12, I kid you not!) of psychological questions about my working style, personality, attitudes, and beliefs, which I was to answer using a five-point scale from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. Oh boy, Myers Briggs meets the DISC Assessment! I can do this. I'm the survey queen, after all!

I answered the questions honestly, all 12 pages. What could I do? There were so many similar and repeated questions, they were bound to trip up any carefully devised strategy within three pages. You know what I mean? Hey, wait, I know I've answered that question before, but I forgot how I answered it! Darn it! So I answered honestly. They will no doubt find out I'm an introverted (but highly educated) wackjob clinging to a tiny shred of optimism, nursing a slight mean streak, and presenting vast unplumbed depths of depression, probably due to an inability to manage and control outcomes. Har har har. Story of my life.

In the meantime, I'm still scanning family photos, a hundred or so a night for the past week. It's tedious work, but I am noticing a remarkable byproduct: I'm falling in love with my family. Near and far, alive and dead, I'm savoring the images of the people who inhabited my childhood. I've discovered the holidays are the perfect time to look at old photos. I don't care about Christmas and any of that hoopla; I do care about the people I've known in my life. Could be the season, could be the below-freezing temperatures, could be the completion of the long dark doctorate. Whatever it is, I'm feeling sentimental. I'm missing my sister, missing our dead father, missing the old calico cat, the decrepit farmhouse, the overgrown yard, the funky furniture covered with gaudy hand-made afghans... I'm not judging. I'm appreciating. I'm appreciating the good stuff and forgiving the bad stuff. I may be a party of one, self-unemployed, chronically malcontented... but tonight I'm celebrating.

How do you know when you're in the flow?

A few days ago I was contemplating the nature of flow. I refer to a state of being where one is so absorbed in an activity that one loses all track of time. If you are a writer or an artist, you know what I mean. But anyone can experience flow. For example, I'm sure my mother is experiencing flow when she plays Castle Camelot.

I often read a book entitled Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I keep it in my bathroom. It shares a shelf with Smooth Move, Trickle Down Theory, and Evacuate! (I'm kidding. Really. Do such books exist? If not, they should.) I've read Flow before, some years ago. Now I am re-reading it, a paragraph or two at a go, so I really have time to ponder the quality of time and the nature of experience.

I wonder, is it better to engage in some engrossing activity—reading, writing, or painting, for instance—oblivious to the passage of time, surfacing in surprise from your bliss hours later, wondering where the day went? Or is it better to be painfully present to the excruciatingly slow passage of time and thereby retain consciousness of every precious second by engaging in some task that you despise—for example, teaching keyboarding to uninterested students? It's a rhetorical question. But think about it. Would you rather be conscious and miserable, or unconscious and happy? Maybe consciousness is over-rated. (Although paychecks are useful, I must admit.)

Today I received approval for my dissertation manuscript. I emailed my sister and attached the slides for my oral defense. She called tonight to congratulate me; I did my best to hold still and hear the praise. She asked for some PowerPoint tips, so I guess she liked the slide show. I'm glad. She and my mother have been my faithful cheerleaders through this entire eight-year journey. It seems a paltry gift to simply name them on my Acknowledgements page, but that's what they are getting for Christmas.

In just over two weeks, I will present my oral defense via telephone conference call, with my stalwart friend and former colleague Sheryl acting as my proctor. She will sit on my couch amid the dust bunnies and hairballs and be my witness as I read my prepared script to an unseen audience. My Chair and the Nameless, Faceless Committee Member will ask me some questions—If you were to do your study over, what would you do differently? How do you think your recommendations could be implemented? What research will you do next? What was the most difficult part of the process? What words of advice would you give to a Ph.D. candidate just starting her first DIS course?—and I will try to answer the questions briefly and succinctly with a minimum of um's. Then my Chair will say, “Okay, Carol, now you will drop off the call while we confer. Call back in five minutes.”

Assuming I enter the right passcode and am shunted into the correct conference call, I will announce myself. Then she will either say, “Congratulations Dr. Carol,” or she will say, “No soup for you! One year!” No, I'm kidding. Ha ha. No, at this point, it's unlikely she will say anything but nice job, Doctor So-and-So, congratulations, upload your final manuscript, so long, thanks for the $50,000, have fun talking to the Registrar, bye now.

Finishing this Ph.D. is going to open up a massive void in my life. The thought of what comes next is paralyzing. Maybe it won't be so bad, though. While I waited for approval for my dissertation, I had a fun little research project for the past week, thanks to a friend's recommendation, analyzing the results of a quantitative survey for a large manufacturing company. It's a different world than academe, that's for sure. Commercial research is less rigorous in some ways than academic research, but you've got all those client demands and interactions. It's the business world, after all: They are the customer, I'm the vendor. I uploaded the files by the promised delivery date, and that was the last I heard. I don't even know if they believe they got what they asked for. I know they got more than they paid for (assuming they eventually pay me). Still, it was a wonderful four days, during which I spent considerable time in flow, oblivious to everything but the task before me.

I need more work like this. Even though the days will pass more quickly, I will be happily unconscious. That is all I ever wanted, anyway, a relief from consciousness. If I can get paid to check out, what more could a chronically malcontented misfit ask for?

The chronic malcontent twiddles and frets

Today I checked the university course room (as I have been doing at least twice a day for the past 10 days) and found an email from my Chair. She said she has feedback on my dissertation manuscript from the reviewers at the Graduate School. “Not many changes at all,” is how she described it. That sounds promising. Only one problem. The university has failed to set up my next course, a situation that has not occurred in the eight years I've been allowing them to siphon my discretionary income from my bank account. (I suspect it is because I'm technically at the end of my program, no more time on the clock.) So right now I'm not enrolled in any course. Which means the Chair can't upload the feedback. No place to upload to, apparently. She can't just email it to me? Nope. I sent an email to my adviser. Maybe in a few days, they will figure out that they granted me an extension and decide it's okay to set up a new course.

So, the bad news is, the paper was not approved. The good news is, it sounds like the revisions might not be massively substantial. The bad news is I can't see the feedback until the university enrolls me in the next course. The good news is... I guess I get a few more days of thumb-twiddling.

I've cleaned everything I feel like cleaning. Other than laying around watching rom coms and eating bon bons, there's not much to do except fret over how long my savings will last. With the fear monkeys on my back, I've felt inspired to gingerly poke my toe back into my self-employment adventure. I forget what I was working on, though: it's been three months, my brain is a sieve, and information is water. I have a jumbled to-do list, and every time I try to sneak up on an item—update PayPal account, for example—I find myself sitting at my kitchen table drinking coffee and reading vampire romance novels under the soothing glare of my new shop light.

I'm sneaking up on my to-do list while I wait to revise my dissertation. I'm starting slowly, with the easier stuff. For instance, I redesigned my personal website. One Wordpress page, displaying a photo of me, plus a terse explanation of who I am and what I do. That sounds so simple, doesn't it. Not. It's hard to write about oneself. I'd rather write about you. Who are you, by the way?

I also peered (through my fingers) at my two business websites, afraid for some reason that they stop functioning when my attention is elsewhere. I saw some formatting problems (I need to update my themes). Mostly I lack of content. There's a reason for that. It's because I don't know what I'm marketing to whom. It's hard to write spot-on content when you don't know your audience. Lack of clarity leads to ambiguous messages. Sigh.

On top of all that, I find I have forgotten how to do technical things I don't do very often, like uploading files to the server in the sky. How do I...? Oh yeah, I have this little ftp program, I remember now. But what's my password? Where do I upload the...? Oh, nuts. I don't want to admit that I understand why my mother has opted out of the modern technological age. At 84, she regresses a bit more every year. She gave up email and then the internet. Soon I fear she will give up her computer all together. Too expensive, too much trouble. Next to go will be her (nonsmart) cell phone. Back to rotary phones, coffee percolators, black and white TVs, letters written on paper and sent through the postal system, and—dare I say it?—face-to-face conversations, replete with body language, cigarette smoke, farts, halitosis, and hugs. Yikes!

The chronic malcontent slogs through another day

Some days I have a hard time making eye contact with people. I thought today would not be one of those days. Today I uploaded draft one of my dissertation manuscript. Yep. All 12.5 MB, all 382 pages. Of course, that includes 50 pages of back end stuff, but still, it's a hefty gulp of... something. I was going to say something snarky at myself, like I usually do. For some reason, I changed my mind. I realize I should feel a sense of accomplishment. Maybe that sense that I should be celebrating just prevented me from downgrading my achievement to a modest 4 on the Richter scale of self-denigration. Whatever.

Anyway, my refrigerator is empty except for four apples, one zucchini, a bottle of olive oil, a jar of mustard, and some maple syrup. Maybe you can figure out a recipe from that, but I'm a lousy cook. So I just went to get food. If you know me, you know that is not as simple as it sounds. First, I don't eat normal food. By normal, I mean regular food that someone like my mother would eat, for instance. Yogurt. Kraft Mac n Cheese. Pudding from little cups. Me, I aim for organic everything, all fresh, nothing processed, no dairy, no wheat, no soy, no sugar, no corn. That limits my options; on the upside, it keeps things very simple. But I always feel this undercurrent of resentment frisson through my body when I walk past the ice cream case.

Second, I'm not earning much money since I got laid off from the job in May. I get an amount every week from the Tuition Unemployment Insurance program, until the end of November, when my doctoral program officially runs out. So, the whopping $84 grocery bill made me sob a tiny bit. Finances always make me want to cower under the covers.

And third, and here's the clincher for me, the well-meaning older lady who commandeered the bagging operation at the store was inept and... well, she seemed just plain not present. Rather than show compassion for a kindred spirit, I felt compelled to show her the proper way to bag my groceries, all the while being completely unable to look her in the eye. The best I could do was focus somewhere over her shoulder.

Now, in my defense, I will say that my eyesight for objects three feet or closer is none too good when I am wearing my out-of-door driving glasses. She would have been blurry anyway, even if I were able to look her in the eye. The pressure of other customers coming through the line, the $84 grocery bill, and her inability to properly bag my groceries... on a good day, I would be able to sail through it. I thought today would be a good day. Unloading my dissertation off my plate and onto my Chair's plate should feel pretty damn good. Especially considering the long hours I've been putting in on the darn thing.

I applied for an extension to my program a couple weeks ago. The powers that be at the online university granted it to me yesterday. That's good news. My new drop dead date is June 2014. If I am not done with this thing by then, then I might as well quit on it. I will have no excuse. Unless I drop dead. I guess that would be an acceptable excuse.

The bagger lady wasn't looking at me, either, by the way. She was gazing off at the checker, maybe hoping to be rescued from the insane customer who pulled all the groceries out of the bag to rebag them properly. (That would be me.) I have a lot of experience bagging my own groceries. You could say I'm an expert at it. I buy the same crap twice a week and I always go through the self-service checkout. If they had a self-service checkout at this store I went to today, I would have used it. They have organic gold beets, organic green beans, and organic crimini mushrooms. For those things, I put up with the human-operated check out line.

The box of organic salad (washed three times!) goes on the bottom. The two dozen eggs go next, side by side. Then other stuff can go on top. The bagger lady didn't want to understand. I know that feeling. She was checked out, just hoping the horrible customer would go away. So she put the second egg carton in the bag, but didn't take the time to lay it flat. I was like, wha? No more, like what the funk, lady? Really? How can you possibly think that would work. I managed to simply say, “It's got to lay flat.” I could have gone on. But I stuffed the other crap in the bag, grabbed it, shouldered the other bag, got my receipt, and stomped out the door.

If I could, I would never go back there again. But that's just plain silly. It's not them. They are not at fault. Inept employees are everywhere. Mentally invisible people are all around. It's not them, it's me. For some reason, I'm on edge, and I wasn't expecting it, not today. I was blind-sided by my own insanity. Again.

The past month has been hard. We had the wettest September on record. I have been writing long hours every day, every day of the week, hunched over my computer in my gloomy dank dusty cave. I drink way too much coffee, a really crappy, cold, black, bitter brew. I forget to eat. My friends are leaving me alone. My mother lets me call her. It's like I am encased in a bubble. A ridiculous Ph.D.—A.B.D. bubble. All but dissertation. An eight-year slog.

My little fledgling business is frozen in time. My websites are neglected. I have a comment that needs moderating. Email that needs returning. I can't remember the PIN to my business bank account. It's like I had a dream that I was self-employed. It seems so far away, after these weeks writing, writing, writing on this massive document that represents something I stopped wanting six years ago. But like all amusement park rides, once you get on, you cannot easily get off. There are consequences if you try to get off a roller coaster early. Free fall being one of them.

I just got a robo-call from “Jessica” from Cardholder Services telling me that I need to do something about my credit cards. Sigh. It's time to put my number on the Do not call list again. Thank god I have no credit cards, else I'd be booking a flight to sunny Scottsdale right now. Thank god I have paid cash for this doctoral adventure, so I will owe nothing when it is finally done. And it will someday be done. Maybe that is what is bothering me. I've been doing this so long, I am fearful of what comes next.

Ah, well. The slog continues, one day at a time. Today I am doing what is on my list. I'll worry about tomorrow's slog tomorrow.

The adventures just keep on coming

This morning I rose before the sun for another adventure in downtown Portland. I still can't believe I did it. I don't mean attending the event, which was a digital marketing “breakfast” at Portland State's Urban Center, no, that was easy. All I had to do was sit there, swill coffee, stare out the window, and draw pictures in my notebook. No, the hard part was getting up at 5:15 a.m. when it is dark as sin outside, preparing a hasty meal, and rushing to the MAX station to park my car and shuffle onto the Green Line... a replay of last Friday's events, except without my trusty companion Sheryl. I always have an out-of-body experience when I get up before it's light out: Is that me getting out of bed? Is that me fixing food at this ungodly hour? Am I really leaving the snug and cozy Love Shack to brave the MAX line journey downtown? Again!?

The show wasn't all that inspiring, and the food was the usual coffee, pastries, and watermelon chunks, but what do I expect for nothing except time and lost sleep? There was no fee to attend. The bus tickets were a gift from Bravadita. It was an experiment. An experiment in adventuring, urban style.

The meeting room was small, but I had a great seat by the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows. The mini-blind was rolled up far above my head, so there was nothing but glass and the view of the plaza outside the Urban Center. Water in the lovely Joyce N. Furman Memorial Fountain rippled ceaselessly down a cascade of steps. I could only find one photo of the fountain, and the site was a bit funky loading. You can look it up if you want. It is an interesting feature of the all brick plaza.

If you look at this photo, you'll see a little bit of the plaza. Look in the upper right corner, see those big windows? I was sitting the fourth window from the left, just out of camera shot. See that streetcar below? I saw several of those chug along while I was trying to learn about digital marketing. The streetcar was way more interesting to me for some reason. I had no idea there was so much machinery on top of those things. Every time you see cops and villains duking out on top of a train, it's always a smooth surface, good for fighting. Not so with these streetcars. Just in case you were thinking of engaging in a little fisticuffs on a moving train.

My brain has been mush all day, thanks to the early start. There's so much to talk about—the dearth of faculty for my study, the likely ending of unemployment benefits, the looming monster of my dissertation. So much to complain about, worry over, mangle between clenched teeth. But I'm too tired to work up a really frothy sweat. Lucky you! Maybe tomorrow. I've got another networking event planned for tomorrow night—I'm going after the organizational development crowd. They won't know what hit them. And then Thursday morning, I have a coffee date with a guy I met at the networking event I dragged Sheryl to on Friday. He's going to try to sign me up for his multi-level marketing company. I can hardly wait.

A little networking in the morning is good for the chronic malcontent

Early this morning I dragged myself out of bed, fixed some food and shoveled it into my mouth, and dashed out the door to pick up my friend Sheryl at 7:00 a.m. for our great adventure. The weather was perfect, high clouds, blue sky, a cool breeze. No reason to back out and go home.

I parked my car at the MAX station and showed Sheryl how to validate the ticket I gave her.

“That's it?” she said skeptically. She lives in deathly fear of mass transit.

The train came along in a few minutes, the Green line to Portland State. The train was packed with riders. We had to stand up all the way to downtown Portland, hanging on to bars and straps while the train swayed and clattered along the Gulch. We chatted nervously, thinking of what was to come.

We got off at Mill and walked a few short blocks to 200 SW Market. Hey, I know that black cube, the square squat building covered in black glass... I used to work in that building, about twelve years ago, when things weren't going so well. I was a part-time admin for a software start-up company. The job sucked, and to save money, I walked to work from my place in SE Portland, hiking across the Ross Island Bridge, an hour each way. Now there's a commute that will put hair on your chest. Hey, I got laid off from that job, too. Unlike the career college, though, the start-up (should I say, the close-down) actually gave me a little severance.

Sheryl and I went up the escalator. I was worried I wouldn't find the place, but it was just inside the front door, a largish meeting room set up with a huge square made of tables and chairs, with a large projector screen pulled down at the far end and a small coffee service set up to the left of the door. There wasn't a lot of room, except in the center of the table area. That area was big as a prom dance floor and just as empty. About 15 people were milling around along the walls, talking with each other in small groups. They were getting down to the serious business of networking.

“This is it,” I said to Sheryl. To myself, I added, Do or die. I led the way through the door.

A large bearded man wearing a name tag (Jim so-and-so) planted himself in my path. He held out his hand. I automatically put mine in his.

“Are you here for the networking meeting?”

I introduced myself and Sheryl.

“Do you have a business card?” he demanded.

I had some cheesy cards I made myself, the latest in a long line of tentative designs. I whipped one out and handed it to him. Sheryl looked chagrined; she didn't have a business card.

Jim put my card in a fishbowl and explained that there would be a drawing later. The winner would get five minutes to make his or her pitch to the crowd. I think Big Jim was expecting us to look excited and hopeful. Huh. Not a chance. More people were crowding in behind us. Sheryl and I looked at each other and edged past the crowd into an open space along the wall.

My first instinct was to look nowhere but at Sheryl. I quickly squelched it. Eye contact, that was my goal, even if I... I almost wrote barfed, but that is really too extreme a word. I would be more likely to leave than to barf. I do have some sense of social propriety.

I looked around. Bam. Eye contact! A small man wearing big dark-rimmed glasses took the hint and gamely approached us and introduced himself. Steven, an industrial engineer, looking for employment. I got his card and stared at it blankly. Then I gave him one of mine.

Some seats had been staked out with purses and briefcases. Sheryl and I moved along toward the front of the room. We sat down in a row, the engineer, me, and then Sheryl. We found out that seating is everything. The guy at the head of the room welcomed us and then pointed our way. Time to talk! Poor old Sheryl was called upon to introduce herself and explain what she was all about—in no more than 30 seconds. She valiantly stood up and told the room her tale of woe: 20 years in education, laid off, looking for work.

Then it was my turn. I spewed something about my new businesses, making it up as I went, stammered a little, but apparently managed to sound more or less coherent. I know this because Sheryl told me so later. I was having an out of body experience, so I wasn't actually there during those 30 seconds.

But once it was over we got to watch the networking pros do their thing, and some of them were very good. There's a formula to it, we discovered: state your name and business, speak your tagline (enthusiastically), explain what you do and who you do it for, list the benefits, state what you want, and close by repeating your name and company name. Bam! And be ready with a stack of business cards when everyone rushes over to talk to you after the introductions are done.

And that was the gist of the event. A large table of 30 people introducing themselves, one after the other (somewhat tediously at times), followed by a little frenetic speed networking, and then the event was over. Some of us lingered. The employed people went to work. I felt a little like a trick-or-treater with a bag full of candy. My haul was business cards: I got seven, plus one for the East Portland Chamber of Commerce, who apparently have twice-monthly networking events at the crack of dawn, and they are open to the public (thanks, Big Jim).

We found our way back to the train station, waited for the next Green Line, and retraced our route back to the parking lot where my car awaited. I tool Sheryl home. I thanked her profusely for being my companion. She went off to take a walk. I went home to bed.

And that is the story of my networking adventure.

I had a victory moment, one shining glory moment, when it all came together, when I really understood the power of connection. A woman who owns a coaching business came over to me after the introductions and asked me about my business. We started talking about marketing research, and it became clear to me that she thought it was too hard and horrible to do herself. I explained what I could teach her in a one-hour webinar. She started to light up as I described the problems I could solve for her, how it's not that hard, and she said.... where can I sign up for your webinar?

I had to tell her the webinars were still in development. She turned away, clearly disappointed. But I was triumphant. I had one on the hook! I had her hooked, just for a moment. Then I had to let her go, but how cool is that? I almost sold her. And all it took was telling her how my product will help her solve a problem. After I woke up from my nap I sent her a LinkedIn invitation. Maybe I'll get her signed up yet.

What do I do? Uh...

I'm so proud of myself. I networked today! Me, the rabid introvert, the chronic malcontent with nothing good to say, I actually managed to show up to a group event and interact with a table full of strangers without spitting up or hiding out in a corner. I wore appropriate clothing, I sat up straight, and I didn't roll a toothpick around in my mouth. (My sister will be pleased.) All in all, I think I did pretty well.

Also, to my credit, I didn't try to be something I wasn't. I didn't wear clothes that weren't my style (like, you know, a crop-top, hot pink skinny pants, and platforms). I wore a tasteful monochromatic palette of black, gray, and white. I wasn't embarrassed to put on my black knit cap and fingerless gloves (former socks) when the air conditioning kicked in. I wasn't too shy to draw pictures in my notebook as I was taking notes during the presentation. The one thing I almost did, but didn't, was pull out my bright blue stainless steel water bottle, the one that says, Holy Water: Tap into it. Redeems parched sinners on the front. You never know who might not think it was funny. I wouldn't want to irritate any of the people in this group, because I hope among them will be my future clients.

I was early, as usual. The registration person was stuck in traffic, so I sat at a table and got a preview of the slide show as the presenter struggled with her technology. A tall man in long shorts and a gorgeous shirt in a splashy green and orange plaid sat down next to me.

“Hi, I'm Dan.”

“Hi, Dan. I'm Carol.”

And then the dreaded question. “What do you do, Carol?”

My shoulders spasmed up to my earlobes with nervous tension. What do I do, what do I do? As my brain spun in circles, I realized, omigod, it's another version of the most dreaded interview question on earth: Tell me about yourself. Well, I flunked the answer to the question, What do I do, I'm sorry to say. With my eyes darting around the room, I stammered some disconnected sentences and chanced a glance at his face to see if I was sunk. He looked a little nonplussed. I took a breath. I'm sure I looked manic at that point.

Eventually I clawed my way to the metaphorical third floor, but not after I crashed the elevator into the basement. You get what I'm saying? The elevator pitch? I'm sure you have one, a lovely 30-second speech about what you do. Right? A little blurb that rolls trippingly off your tongue when someone asks you, What do you do? I actually have an elevator pitch, believe it or not, but it needs some work, especially after today. This morning I met with my business advisor from the SBDC. She did a little niche reconstruction on me (it's not as painful—or humiliating—as it sounds), and now my elevator pitch needs revision.

He could have got up and joined people at another table at that point, but Dan stuck it out the entire evening. Maybe he was taking pity on me, trying to be nice, trying not to be rude. It's possible, I suppose. It's more likely he forgot my disjointed introduction immediately and got busy with his own thoughts. Like a normal person.

The blonde woman who sat down on my left smiled and introduced herself.

“Hi, I'm Kim.”

I introduced myself, relieved to have someone else to be the focus of Dan's attention. But, no, what she said was, “So, Carol, what do you do?”

What is with these people? Don't they care about who I am? Or how I feel? All they want to know is what I do! Like what I do will explain everything. Like what I do is the clue to understanding me. Clearly they don't realize that what I do changes every week! Ten weeks ago, I was a college instructor. Then I was an unemployed loser. Followed the next week by a frustrated doctoral candidate. Then suddenly I was a small business owner! And then I was a website designer, that was a laugh a minute. Now I guess I'm a researcher, although the niche reconstruction is still going on, so I'm not sure if I'm a marketing researcher or what kind of researcher I am, exactly. And I think I have more roles planned for next week.

So what do I say when they ask what I do? It sounds like a metaphysical question, one of those questions whose answer is in the question, or whose answer is a journey not a destination, or whose answer is inside me, like god. (You know what they say about god dwelling inside us, right? That he'd better like enchiladas, because that is what he's getting. Har har har.) Anyway, I'm going to revise my elevator pitch. And I'll tidy up my mission statement and my personal life philosophy, too, as long as I've got the rock overturned. And maybe I'll do some laundry and clean the cat box. At least I'll have something to say the next time someone asks me, What do you do?

Exit, stage right... ah, if only

I've heard people say, “Begin with the end in mind,” and I apply that philosophy to many projects I undertake. But until this evening, I hadn't thought of applying it to the business I am launching. I've been so focused on taking immediate actions, making sure I'm tracking my quarter hours of frenetic activity, fretting over my logo, worrying about the first job... I haven't taken time to wonder, what about the last job? What about that moment when I say, I've had enough?

Now that the idea has been planted in my brain, I just want to skip to the end. I want to leap over all this busy detail, all this day-to-day fear, and get to the part where I hand the passwords to someone else as I'm waltzing out the door. So long, thanks for all the figs. Fish. Whatever.

I suspect I was born to retire. I take after my father. He retired at the first opportunity and defied the averages by living 25 smugly happy years, sitting on the couch watching basketball and complaining about my mother's cooking. Sometimes I would drive up and find him sitting in a lawn chair in the front yard, spraying passersby with the garden hose. Ah, what a life.

None of that sounds all that appealing to me, except the part about retiring. What would I do if I could retire today? Thanks for asking. If I were really a chip off the old paternal block, I would lay around watching romcoms and eating bonbons, maybe occasionally spritzing the cat with a bottle of water. But that wouldn't be my idea of retirement heaven. I think I would spend a lot of time just thinking. And I would make up stories and write them down. Screenplays, novels, whatever. And I would start painting again.

Huh. I don't want to think about this anymore. The angry magic child in me will rise up and threaten to cut our throat if I don't dust off the paintbox in the next five minutes. It does no good to try to reason with her; once she wakes up, she's a pitbull with her teeth sunk in the neighbor kid's leg. I've tried to explain to her that in this time and place, making art—writing or painting—is not respected or revered. In fact, making art is ridiculed or ignored. Who buys art but rich people and artists? Do you have art hanging on your walls? I mean art you didn't buy at Wal-Mart or at some yard sale?

So it doesn't matter that I was born to retire. Retirement for me is called die. It's good I've found a business idea that I actually like and that might actually make some money, if I keep at it. If I don't jump off a bridge first in a fit of frustrated creative pique.

No longer looking in the rear view mirror

Technology separates the whiners from the winners. This past week I've been stumbling from one task to another, overwhelmed by a litany of log-in names (who am I, again?) and a plethora of passwords that must be at least 8 characters (but no more than 20), have at least one number, one symbol, and one uppercase letter, or... or what? Too weak! Inferior! Not strong enough! You know you have hit a bottom when you are getting smacked around by a horde of captchas.

At last I have a semblance of a website, after wrestling with WordPress... Why does everyone love it? I don't get it. TablePress? Really? Kind of a clunky way to add a table to a WordPress webpage, don't you think? Remind me to learn php. When I get some time. What is php? I don't know, some kind of drug that makes it so you don't care if your website looks like crap.

Finally, after desperately combing the online forums, I figured out why my Outlook account would send but not receive. (A metaphor for something, I'm sure.) After re-entering the settings a gajillion times, I discovered the Outlook feature called IMAP folders and clicked the folder named with my domain name (not my inbox! who knew!), and voila, suddenly there they were, all the test messages sent from Outlook to the web server, bam, one after the other, lining up like obedient little soldiers. Hah. I won that battle.

On the dissertation data collection front, I'm pleased to say I had a response today from someone who actually qualifies for my study. I was starting to worry a little. All my friends fell over themselves to fill out my web screener survey, bless their tiny heads, and it's nice to know they are willing, just in case the whole thing tanks. But it would be better to interview people I don't know. Gee whiz, you guys. Clearly you didn't read the introductory material. I know it is gobbledegook. I am required to provide it, even though I know most people will skip straight over it. But I must make sure they hear it before I interview them—god forbid I should harm anyone in the interview process. Poke out their eye accidentally with a pen, maybe. Or inadvertently ask them a question that makes them cry. I used to believe teaching for a for-profit career college was a good thing, but I was ignorant and uninformed. What's your excuse?

And don't forget, I'm officially self-employed now. Today, before I got mired in the Outlook mess, I prepared a lovely proposal to conduct a small marketing research study for a friend's business... a sort of pilot test, a practice run to develop my systems. She owns an art school in the Los Angeles area. She teaches a love of creativity to children who are starved for art. What's not to love! We had a great conversation about the challenges she is encountering as she grows her art school. It was satisfying to hear her stories, not just because she is a dear friend, but because it was fascinating to hear about her business experiences. I can help! This is a good sign.

Better than teaching keyboarding, that's for sure.

Zip about php

The gods who lounge around at the Institutional Review Board deigned to smile upon me today by granting me approval to begin conducting the data collection phase of my doctoral study. For a few short moments, I was euphoric. Then I thought about what comes next, and my knees almost buckled. What comes next is the challenge of arranging and conducting ten interviews, transcribing the proceedings, and then analyzing the data to discern the story. And then writing it up in a way that meets the approval of another set of gods—my chairperson, my committee, and the Graduate School reviewers—all following APA format, of course.

Why, oh why, did I ever begin this farce?

Today, I played the role of the intrepid and determined soon-to-be self-employed person and spent much of the day coaxing WordPress to reveal its secrets. Thank the gods for online forums where people much braver than I throw their stupid questions to the experts like naive children throw bread to seagulls. Seagulls aren't especially forgiving if you don't let go of the bread. Similarly, the experts in the WordPress forum don't put up with the slow kids. How do I add Facebook buttons to my sidebar? How do I get the first page to be static? How do I tell this wretched template to behave? All worthy questions for a novice. You should see how some innocent fools got shredded when they didn't catch on fast enough... Make a child template? Wha—? I know this much about html and zip about php, so I won't dare ask anything, but I'm grateful others are not shy.

After some hours, I'm relieved to say I managed to create something that loosely resembles a website, so now I can say I have a presence on the Web. Whoopdedoo. Just add content. Stir. Drink, rinse, repeat.

Doing the time warp... again

My life sure looks different these days. Instead of worrying about grading keyboarding papers and listening to students complain, I am immersed in the hectic puzzling world of self-employment. Every now and then I come to and pinch myself. Is this really happening? Am I caught in a time warp? I may be caught in something. I got busy compiling the results of a survey tonight; when I looked up, three hours had passed. It's time for the news, and I forgot to blog!

I've been sitting on my fancy drafting chair far too long. I'm bound to have clogged a minor artery or two, simply because I haven't moved much today. That is not good, for my veins or my ass. My cat isn't thrilled either.

Everything takes time! Don't get me started on Facebook! I can already tell I hate it. I hated it when it began, and I hate it now. Hmmmm. Hate is such a strong word for a social media tool. Let me rephrase: I would prefer to avoid it, how about that? I got a friend request today from someone I used to work with at the career college. I declined. Should I have done that? I've been told I need more friends. I need more likes. Huh?

Let me get up off my chair for a moment. Hey, what's that sound? Sounds like....

It's just a jump to the left. And then a step to the right. You know what comes next, right? Put your hands on your hips. And bring your knees in tight! 

Come on, you know you want to sing this next part out loud. But it's the pelvic thrust that really drives you in-sa-a-aa-a-ane. Let's do the...

Ok, sorry. I got carried away.

Warm weather is coming. Sunny skies are forecast for Rose Festival weekend. I have no intention of attending the parade or watching the fireworks, but I will bask in the light and the warmth of the season. From the safety of my cave.

Tomorrow I have a call scheduled with my doctoral chairperson. We are trying to figure out how to write my IRB application so it gets approved. I think that is what we are doing. I'm not sure what she will have to say. I've spoken to her only a few times over the past couple years since she became my chairperson. The conversation always begins in a way that makes me think she doesn't remember who I am. Like, uh, what were we talking about? Not promising, but I'm hopeful we will brainstorm a solution. She's got a little more skin in the game now, since she approved my first IRB application. She has to sign off on it before she sends it on to the Graduate School. I hope she sides with me and not against me.

Oh, well. Anything can happen when one is in a time warp. It can be exciting to live at the speed of light, as it were, but I have no control over how it warps me as I dash from one project to another. Today I lost three hours; tomorrow it could be three weeks, or three months.

Oh, here's the cat. Gotta go.

Self-employment and ant wars

While I wait to find out if the Institutional Review Board at my illustrious higher education institution will approve me to interview human subjects, I am floundering deeper into the murky bog of self-employment. My business plan is taking shape. That is part of the problem: I'm mostly form and little content. Story of my life. It's all about look-good. If you look good, then you must be ok. I'm not going to go into any of that, maybe you get my drift, maybe you don't, it doesn't matter. What I'm saying is, my business plan looks awesome!

And they say there's no point in liberal arts degrees. Ha! I knew that B.S. in art would finally pay off. Why, I'm utilizing all kinds of “useless” skills during the process of crafting this plan. Philosophy! (What is my customer service philosophy?) Creativity! (I included a rich picture of the research process. From now on, everything I write will include a rich picture. That should be fun. For example, how about in a note to the Self-Employment Assistance case worker? Hey, wtf is this stupid picture for? Hmmm. Well, maybe not everything...) I'm thinking outside the can of worms, or however the saying goes.

I'm a little nutty. I've spent just over eight hours today working on this plan. I've looked up my local and online competitors, seen some impressive websites (and a few that made me say, hey, I can do it better than that!), thought about my marketing approach, my pricing structure, my communication strategy... my mind is bubbling with ideas that will fade to hazy memories come tomorrow morning. I'm trying to remember everything. I'm trying to shove all the pieces together in my mind, to make a nice, neat diagram. Hence, the rich picture. I'm tired.

I can't think of much I'd rather be doing than creating this fledgling business. Except maybe laying around in the tub, reading vampire romances and eating potato chips and ice cream. That won't be happening, at least not the chips and ice cream part. Starting this business seems like the next best thing. But I fear I'm so involved in doing that I don't have time to worry about whether it will actually work. Sort of like going for a jog with my nose three inches off the ground. Wow, aren't all these pebbles interesting—Blam! Hey, where'd that tree come from? In the business world, we talk about doing the wrong thing well. That could be me.

The last confounding question is this, and this may be the profoundly perplexing metaphysical question of our time: What do ants find interesting in an empty bathtub? I'm serious. I want to know. There are scouts—a few intrepid explorers—relentlessly trundling along the edges, across the bottom, searching for something. What are they seeking? It's raining outside, surely they can't be thirsty. There is no food in there, far as I know. So what are they looking for? I have an idea, and it makes me slightly queasy.

A few nights ago I was relaxing in a hot tub of water, reading some sci-fi escapist trash, when I felt something pinching me on the upper back. What the f—? I leaned forward, looked around, and saw about ten ants swarming right where I'd been leaning. They bit me! The little pissant ants, they bit me! So now, when I see them roaming the empty tub, I have an uncomfortable feeling they are looking for me. The big warm hunk of protein and blubber. Must feed the children! If they can take me down, my dead carcass will keep their larders stocked for years, considering all the extra meat on my bones.

My cheek is twitching. Time for a bath. Hey, if you don't hear from me for a while, send the coroner. He'll probably find me in the tub, feeding the ants.