I never asked

All my life, I wanted to be a part of some crazy, big, amazing, world changing company. Instead, I got some steady jobs for things I thought my skills would do. Marketing isn’t a bad thing. I love my work, I love my people. But marketing for an accounting firm was never a part of my life dream. I’ve been standing on the sidelines of Silicon Valley, looking in and drooling and hyperventilating and yearning. But I realized something huge this morning.

I never asked if I could play.

I assumed that since my schooling was “wrong” and my starting career steps were “wrong” and boring and unsexy and all that, that it had already disqualified me from even asking to play the game. So I never asked. How sad is that.

Well, I think I’m going to start asking. 

Photo Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/halfrain/ 

You know, kids on a playground do something socially impossible. They get on a playground, play around for a bit, and put themselves out there by kind of just doing their own thing. Slide, swing, merry-go-round. And if another kid responds positively – or is just even in the vicinity – they engage. And if that goes well, and they talk and connect, then they ask something amazing ballsy. “Do you want to be my friend?” And there is a gods-honest answer on the other end of that question. Yes, or no, it’s honest, and it is what it is. The asker gets their answer. And if the answer is yes, then big smiles emerge and they start running or talking more or playing harder. If the answer is no, then the asker is sad. But also… it’s kind of a known possible outcome.

I want to be more like that kid on the playground. I want to be bolder in my asking about connecting and building with other people. I want to be prepared for both a no as well as a yes. What if the answer is yes? What if they DO want me to play with them, be a part of their playtime at the playground? Wouldn’t that be wonderful.

But I have to ask. And I'm going to start asking NOW.

Too Much to Celebrate

If you’ve ever been a part of a communications project that centers around holidays, celebrations, awareness days, heritage months, and others, you’d know that it’s insanely difficult to pick and choose between what to highlight when.

For example, do you choose to focus on lighter, more cheerful celebrations or heavier, more provocative history months? Do you focus on food (such as wine day today) or the fact that today is the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s death? This is a dilemma that marketing, PR, and comms people deal with all the time. 

I find that for as taxing as life has become, I have become used to weaving in and out of poignant highs and devastating lows in different hours of the same day. I’m not sure if this is some superpower or just intellectual scarring at this point, but I would like to offer this up on a day like today: pick one thing to think about and reflect on at a time. One thing at a time. It seems basic, but we all know we could use a little encouragement and a reminder every now and then to follow good advice that we used to practice and preach. One thing at a time.

George Floyd. His name was George. And take a moment (or more) to breathe and celebrate the fact that you can take a breath. Take another breath and feel your feels.  And then another before you sip your wine. And another as you note National Missing Children’s Day. And another as you wonder how Towel Day ever came to be. And another as you honor Star Wars’ 44th birthday. Just breathe. Keep breathing.

Brick Houses

I went shooting yesterday for the first time in ages. For as unique as we are, being liberal people who own and enjoy marksmanship, I’m sure my husband and I fit some stereotype somewhere with his startup-branded backpack with an old Bernie Sanders button. Ammo tins, firearms case, shoot-and-sees. Earmuffs, my “baby Yoda” hat, sunglasses, and obligatory COVID face covering (a pink camo pattern). 

We shot next to a trio of Russians, the woman of the group constantly taking pictures and video, and being annoyingly ignorant of the rules. It’s cold range, ma’am. Please do not approach the bench. Or you will get escorted out by the guy in orange with hunting boots, small beer gut, and surprisingly patient approach to people like you and your crew.

It was unusually quiet for a Saturday, the range having been recently renovated. Fresh concrete and wood, freshly painted yellow and red lines, polite people keeping their 6-feet distance – all this populated by a wide range of languages, accents, and skin tones. Yes, this is America. It’s also the Bay Area, it’s very own country. I smell gunpowder and see fit, good-looking nerds out for a few hours of bonding with their friends or parents. Through firearms.

I so enjoy being a combination of the unexpected. A liberal who likes guns. The woman who is the primary breadwinner. An introvert in an extroverted marketing job. And as I think about this, I think it’s more a commentary on why the stereotypes exist at all. It’s not me; it’s the world. Humans are wonderously multi-faceted beings. Why shouldn’t we be full of M. Night Shyamalan twists and turns?

But I’ve also not enjoyed being the unexpected. All my life, I’ve felt the need to exert a systematic release of information with people so I wouldn’t overwhelm them with the complexity of me and my life all at once. Someone once accused me – not in a good way – of always being used to being “queen nerd.” She was telling me to get off my high horse, because I was amongst other nerds. Nerds who apparently didn’t have identify crises about being nerds.  

It’s not just my geekiness that has made me an outsider. It’s also this containership-sized pile of other contradictory and challenging things that from my experience have made me… interesting? Intimidating? Odd? It’s hard to find tribe when you have the kind of shit going on.

And all of the sudden, that was broken as I started talking one-on-one with the women in a writing group/class I entered this year. Recently, one of these beauties confessed she was in the middle of a separation. As if somehow that wasn’t a normal part of our 30s/40s something landscape. I remember how awkward that part of my life was, trying to explain to someone else that my world was being dismembered, and how I couldn’t bear to process their (very natural but most unwelcome) shock and awkwardness and sorrow on top of mine so please don’t say something trite. How comforting it would have been to be in a room where someone – anyone – would just sigh, offer expletives, ask if I was “ok” or needed anything to be fed or safe, and left the silence to speak for all the unspoken. I didn’t have that, but I offered it to her. And then the thought that frees the soul came to me, “Why can’t life be like this more? Why can we just ‘let it all hang out’ like it’s normal?”

Overwhelming health conditions. Abusive relationships or histories. Children with disabilities/limitations that make life excruciating. Devastating poverty. Death and loss. Shattered family lives. Unjust shaming of the outer self. Spouses with disorders who won’t deal with them. Jobs that suck because we haven’t unleashed our personal superpower yet. Caring for older family members in decline.

We are all brick houses. Stout and soulful, not always confident but always full of power. Our physical figures (beauty standards be damned) don’t even begin to tell the tales of our brilliance and resilience.

I think I’m close to the mark, don’t you? I’m dead on target. We are all brick houses?

 

Stacked souls. Minds with “great racks.” We are all brick houses. We are mighty, mighty. May you find a group of people with whom you can let it all hang out. And shake it down, shake it down, shake it down, shake it down now…

Shake it down, shake it down, shake it down, shake it down now…

No joke

(I started the ChairmanMom “Ready Set Write” class last month. It’s changing who I am.)

Suddenly, I wake up to community that GETS me. In so many ways. Women with stories and badassery, women with words and immovable ideas. All of us still struggling to write more, do more, be more, write more. I’ve been taking this class for more than a month now and have been hanging out with my own new thoughts and with new women. I can’t get enough of this. My words are more mine now. My story more mine. My mission more mine. I am more mine.

I can’t let go of this group. They are now a part of me, and I need women like this in my life for the rest of my life. I’m just shy of feeling anxious about how to keep the conversation going. How do I connect? How do I maintan? I don’t even know most of them well. Just an intrinsic trust that what we say together is accepted, amplified, clarified, blessed. We are all reaching toward who we want to be when we grow up. And we are discovering as well that we never want to grow up. At least, that’s me. (Projection much? Lol.)

So. This is what TRIBE feels like? This is what I’ve been missing and yearning for all my life? I’m now happily addicted, and I now swear I shall never go without again. This is too… what’s the word? Explosive, enriching, essential, nurturing, rocket fueling? Words ironically fail me now as I try to express how writing with this group of women means to me.

My sister-from-another-mister Rachel and I started talking a couple of years ago about women who are on The Journey. They are different women. They hear something different inside themselves, and as like calls to like, they hear something different in the world. We strive and struggle differently. Restless, but not wanton. Misunderstood, and almost always “too much” for other people. Hyper analytical, too word-full, too thinky thinky. Rachel and I talked about trying to find more women. More more more. And here they are. I have to get Rachel into this. (just texted her – she has to do this) We weren’t too much. The worlds we were trying to inhabit were too little.

Far be it from me to be the obnoxious, overzealous new convert to some idea that prescribes my solution for my life to everyone else and their lives. But, really. Tribe is where it’s at. It’s hard to find, but like any great treasure, you will hardly have time to regret the journey’s difficulty when you are basking in the glow of your tribe. Go get you some! All women need tribe!

To Blog

I want to blog. But I fear people reading it and, I guess… I fear my oversharing? I want to communicate so much, but I’ve been told all my life that I’m “too much.” Well, no more. No. More. I do this writing/story/idea thing, and I do me. You do you, ok?

And by the way. The problem never was that I was “too much.” I just had this superpower that wasn’t quite honed yet. I hadn’t gone through my superhero montage of discovering my powers and learning that I could weave and weld them for good. I officially dub myself no longer:

• Too smart
• Too curious
• Too wordy
• Too blunt
• Too obtuse

I dub myself:

• World maker
• Story weaver
• Cooker and consumer of delights
• Mother of incredible humans and ideas
• Asker of room-silencing questions 
• Soothsayer of the Whys in our world
• Flexer of my goddam godgiven mental muscles that will inspire

And you, dear reader, dear friend, can choose who I am to you. That’s your prerogative. I know who I am. I am me.