Zap.

And the brain started churning with the thoughts I had most carefully avoided by reading National Geographic and refusing to allow my conscious brain to wander over into ‘real life’ territory.

By ‘real life’ (and I so want to put that in air quotes) I mean the day-to-day events and people who make my brain swirl as I try to put 2 and 2 together and come up with something resembling “4″ rather than just “ick.”

Things like this tend to float around in my subconscious a long time before they suddenly coalesce into a concrete idea. Then suddenly (like now) I find myself getting out of bed to try and put them into words. Have to get it down before I forget and the morning finds the realizations paler and somewhat muddied.

2009 was a challenging year for me on one particular front — I found myself wondering why basically good people could see bad things being done and not speak out.

I’m not speaking of global atrocities or some great conspiracy. I’m just talking about what happens on the every day, personal, small-scale interactions.

You know what I mean

One guy is dishonest in his dealings with everyone. Good people who have reason to know talk amongst themselves as to how awful his behavior is. But they only talk amongst themselves. Only as members of some bizarre club of people who have been taken in by him or who have narrowly avoided it. They don’t speak out against him publicly. A woman is known to show two faces to everyone with whom she deals. The same people speak amongst themselves as to how she is whomever she thinks her audience wants her to be as long as she thinks it will get her ahead. But when her name comes up in ‘non-insider’ conversation those who talk amongst themselves say nothing to those who would most appreciate the warning. A company is clearly scamming its clients – talking a good game but in the end its nothing but talk.  Still the clients are paying money thinking that it must be a good company or surely someone would say something. Again, the basically good people who know? Nary a peep.

It just didn’t jibe with my world view.

Why didn’t those people who I knew to be honest, caring, moral people speak up? Especially when they knew that to stay silent was to imply that the liars, swindlers, and dishonest folks were okay, as they were busy churning through the unwary?

Then I looked around more carefully

I realized that there are some folks I know who do speak up. They live out loud. They put their feet forward and say with passion and certainty what they believe.  Whether it’s about a person, a company, or an event that has ignited their passion, they speak up.

I have to say that I don’t always agree with my friend Erin Kotecki Vest (aka @QueenofSpain). But damn how I wish I had her courage. I’ve never seen Erin back down from a fight. You want to know if she thinks someone is good people or bad? Ask her. She’ll tell you outright. Then again, you don’t always have to ask. She’s out there putting it black & white for people to read. She doesn’t hide behind a persona. She is who she is. Trust me – the first time I met her in person it was like just finally sharing oxygen with someone I’d known for a long time.

And Micah Baldwin (@micah)… another one of those people who is about as fearless and open as anyone you could imagine. Moreso, actually. Micah puts things out there that consistently blow me away. His fearlessness when it comes to stating what he experiences and believes publicly and standing behind his words is a little terrifying, to be honest. The first time I met him I rather expected him to growl instead of grinning like he did.

So why then are there folks like these two (and believe me, I could start listing more, but they’re extremely good examples!) but also so many who seem so afraid to speak out?

I didn’t get it

Again – my subconscious went quietly (and sometimes noisily) about working on the puzzle. It started breaking things down a little further. There were folks like Erin and Micah who don’t pull the punches. There were folks who were “in the know” about the men, women, and companies that were dishonest but didn’t say anything while personally avoiding working with them. And then there were folks who knew, but still went along as if they didn’t. Working with, being pleasant to, and even tacitly endorsing those ‘bad eggs.’

Suddenly as I lay in my bed thinking that I needed something more distracting than iPhone games to keep my brain from working on this it clicked.

Mostly because I finally examined my own silence.

You see, I figured out that I fall in the “publicly silent but unwilling to endorse the bad guys by pretending they aren’t” group.

Why? Fear mostly. Fear that is based on past experience.

In the past, when I’ve called someone out for dishonesty, disreputable behavior, and being unethical it’s just proven to be something that was used against me. “Oh, well, Lucretia… you know. She can be a problem.” The problem? That I didn’t go along with the charade. The people I thought might appreciate the warning didn’t. Either they convinced themselves that things would be different for them, or they convinced themselves that the problem really lay with me.

The inevitable “wow, I should’ve listened to you” conversation just hasn’t been worth the personal cost of being someone who spoke out.  In fact, altogether too often, I had friends who told me I really ought to quit speaking out.

So if it happens that way with me, why not with those others? Of course it does. They don’t risk it either because they know that the potential negative impact to their own reputation isn’t worth trying to ’save’ those who don’t want to be saved… those who want you to be wrong because it benefits them if you are.

Which kind of brings up that last group. Those who know, but are still working with, endorsing, and engaging with the ‘bad eggs’ despite their knowledge.

What motivates them? In a word: money

Okay two words. Money *and* pride. That last group thinks they can dance with the Devil, skirt the danger, and come out unscathed with money in their pockets. They think that they’re smarter, savvier, wiser, and somehow will avoid the fate of everyone else who has been burned by the individuals and companies that are no good.

Yes. There’s money to be had if you deal with the crooks, liars, and cheats. But the thing so many of the last group don’t get is that unless you *are* a crook, liar, and cheat? They’ll always get the better of you. You can’t come out unscathed. You can’t take money from a thief and turn it into honest money. You can’t align yourself with a cheat and not end up cheating someone else.

There is no honor among thieves

So then, back to my friends Erin & Micah and others like them. What makes them so fearless? I don’t know. But I intend to find out. Because I’m tired of being the person who is afraid to point out the Emperor’s lack of clothing lest the rest of the court shun me.

I’d rather be genuine.
I’d rather be moral.
I’d rather live my life out loud.

Despite late nights at extended family birthday dinners and emotionally exhausting (despite satisfying) days for everyone in the GeekFamily, the kidlet and I have had a couple of serious heart-to-hearts right before bedtime in an attempt to process some of the more perplexing parts of behavior of other kids.

It seems my daughter comes honestly by the tendency to process the day’s events not as they happen but in one huge data dump right before sleep just like her mother.  While GeekDaddy has a tendency to wish the overly-chatty women could not attempt to discuss every nuance of their days moments before unconsciousness, the kidlet and I are often incapable of achieving sleep if events are not processed to a certain point beforehand.

For me, this has resulted in many a late night sitting in coffee shops with a good friend or on the phone with them trying to work through a flow-chart of “what-ifs” and probabilities.  It even led to my blogging habits and my initial Twitter forays – as there’s always *someone* to talk to on the Internet.

But when you’re 7 years old and in first grade, you’re sort of stuck hoping that one or the other of your parents is the sort who will work through things with you or relegating yourself to  just not sleeping well a lot.

The really cool thing as her Mother though?  Sometimes when I’m helping her work through stuff, I realize how parallel our situations are and how much I need to remember the particular lesson I’m trying to help her work through.

One of tonight’s themes was about caring about the opinions of those you respect or love while learning how not to take to heart negative words from those who fall in neither category.

Easier said than done, isn’t it?

So many of us are equipped with the standard, vulnerable and fragile human ego.  We learn early that we’re not supposed to care about the cruel words of bullies, strangers, or the spiteful — all the while secretly wondering if perhaps there’s truth to what they say and if we just can’t trust the people we should trust if they don’t agree.

This makes the average person susceptible to those few who actually are trying to make them insecure or hurt out of some misguided sense of power or revenge.   And it leads to a LOT of therapy for insecurities and trust issues and neuroses.  And a lot of people who could benefit from the therapy but will never go because secretly they’re sure that their worthlessness will be exposed.

I tend to feel more empowered when I remind myself that the weight of 1,000,000 random strangers telling me I’m not ‘worthy’ holds no candle to the weight of just one person whose opinions I respect, and who has truly taken the time to get to know me, saying ‘yes you are.’

]]> http://geekmommy.net/2010/01/26/taking-my-own-advice/feed/ 4 http://geekmommy.net/2010/01/25/oh-where-oh-where-has-my-little-blog-gone/ http://geekmommy.net/2010/01/25/oh-where-oh-where-has-my-little-blog-gone/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:20:58 +0000 GeekMommy http://geekmommy.net/?p=841 As I slog through the 2000+ unread emails in my inbox at 4 a.m. it occurs to me that the emotional well I’ve been falling into for the past two months is much, much deeper than I’ve been admitting to myself.

I’m about 1/3 the way through December and pausing to write this because I need to do it right now or it will simply be another blog post that I’ve thought about and haven’t written.

I haven’t really looked at my inbox since December 1st, 2009.

No, really.  From December 1st through today, January 25th, I have let everything in my online life pretty much do the metaphoric equivalent of “Go To Voicemail.”  I didn’t even know I was capable of doing that.

What happened?

Oh, I suppose I could say it was a combination of seasonal depression, a series of disappointing revelations about other people and relationships, the feeling that somehow I failed miserably at my last job, and a dozen other issues piled one on top of the other until it just snowballed into me ‘checking out.’

But the end result was pretty much that I hit a level of apathy and depression that let me just walk away.

The thing is – it’s this horrible spiral.  You don’t let people know that it’s not just their emails you aren’t answering because you’re not seeing those emails at all.  And they start to think there’s something wrong that is specific to them.  Then there are repercussions.

Too many things fall through the cracks.  You realize even from a huge emotional distance that there are probably things sitting in your inbox that are long past the point of “easy fixes” so you just avoid the inbox with more determination than ever and more things & people fall through the cracks.

I’ve never really experienced this sort of thing before.

I’ve been wired for so many years that it’s second nature to me to open up the computer and close out the rest of the world when I’m withdrawing into myself… In the past, it was phone calls, social events, and in person contact that fell by the wayside.  I’ve never just ignored my email for weeks.

Then there’s the blog thing.

Oh, the blog thing.

It’s another “I just can’t face it today, I’ll try again tomorrow” area.  Why?  In my head, blogging but ignoring email is sort of the same as not showing up for work, not calling, not explaining why – but sitting in the coffee shop in the lobby of the building where you work pretending that there’s nothing out of the ordinary.

How could I write here when there are people who have sent me dozens of emails without so much as a “Lucretia is out of the universe right now, please leave a message at the sound of the beep and she’ll get back to you when she stops spiraling out of control” response?

So no email, no blogging. What else fell into the apathy well?

Twitter.  Meaningful interactions online.  Work.  Projects I’d committed myself to but haven’t even touched.  Pretty much everything that had to do with the computer except, oddly, mindless Facebook games.  Oddly, if it was something that consisted of repetition without strategy or conversation, I’ve been fanatical about it.  Given that I’m usually attracted to the opposite, I’m still trying to figure that one out.

What didn’t fall into the well?

My family.  My daughter and my husband – and a number of my extended family.  A few good friends.  Getting up out of bed, eating, getting through the bits of the day that are really necessary if you’re not going to live in a dark closet.

What a switch that is, I tell you.  As far back as I can recall, when I’ve had to drop some of the balls we all juggle in life, work, family and everything else, I’d retreat into either books or my online world.  Then again, those were usually much shorter periods of time.  A few days, a couple of weeks.  Never before has it been quite this extended.

But today I’m unleashing my secret weapon against my own apathy & depression: anxiety.

No really.  It turns out that if you let anxiety out of the box you’ve been stuffing it into for so many years you find that a good, solid panic attack can do wonders toward getting you back in the game.

I say this because I’m at 1443 unread and working my way down.  I’m deleting outright the things that I know don’t need my time… I’m letting myself know that I have to face the music in a lot of cases and that some of the things that fell through the cracks will be unrecoverable.  I’m using fear of what happens if I don’t do it nownownow outweigh the wall of apathy that has let me pretend that I’d “start doing things right tomorrow” only to ignore it again.

I’m not sure what that means for this blog, honestly.  I really have a lot of stuff I want to write about – just as soon as I take care of the things that I absolutely must address first.  But here? I’m not sure.  I’ve clearly got some stuff to work out in my life before this ball can definitely be picked up and put back in the ones that I’m keeping in the air right now.

But at the moment, I have to get back to that inbox.  Those 1443 unread emails are not going to magically disappear if I don’t.  And I want my online life back.  So first things first.

If you’re reading this and you’ve emailed me since December 1st? I apologize – expect to hear from me shortly, part of which will include a personal apology.  And thanks for bearing with me long enough to read this despite my resounding silence in the other arena.

If you’re reading this and you want to email me? Can you hold off a bit?  I promise not to make you listen to nasty, homogenized, crackly hold music if you can’t – but I’m not promising I won’t hum ‘Girl From Ipanema‘ if you insist on hanging on the line.

It was far too early. 

I’m not a morning person by nature… usually, if I’m seeing the dawn it’s because I stayed up too late, not because I got up too early.  Traveling eastward is somewhat nightmarish for me, as it puts me getting up even earlier than usual… whereas westward is soothing since I get an excuse to stay up later and the morning lets me sleep in just a bit.

My darling husband usually takes Buttercup to school in the mornings.  This is good – because really, even when I am awake, I’m not sure driving at that hour is my best bet.  But with enough coffee, a 5 Hour Energy, and a good reason, I can be “she who braves the cross-town rush hour traffic” and get my daughter safely there.

Of course, GeekDaddy being out of town usually provides the good reason.

This week he has been in New York and Philadelphia on business, so I’ve been on morning, afternoon, and night duty.  This explains to those who know me why I fell down the stairs.  I’m ten times more accident prone when my husband is out of town.  He claims this is because I’m trying to get him to come home.  I think perhaps my subconcious agrees with him.  Because it seems to throw me down stairs, drop things on my head, sprain things, burn and cut and bruise things, and generally leave me in sorry shape whenever he is gone.  He gets back tonight.  I’m glad, because that means I’m less likely to end up in the E.R. before the weekend.

Where was I before I started rambling?

Oh yes, I woke up.  I hurt.  I got up anyways. 

I got ready and got the kidlet ready 20 minutes earlier than usual.  I say “than usual” because I was following GeekDaddy’s morning routine schedule with her.  It usually gets them out of the house just in time to make it to school on time.  I’ve discovered however that part of the issue with his routine is that it involves great stretches of a zombielike kidlet sitting on her bathroom rug staring off into space or playing with toys.  It turns out that the right motivation gets her moving faster.

So, we managed to get one game of Mario Kart for the Wii* in before leaving for school (*cough* the right motivation) and then we took off with both of us just a little more awake than usual.  It seems that crashing cars into each other and off cliffs does something for the adrenaline factor in the morning. Huh. Who knew?

As I drove her the 30+ minute drive to school, the sun was up.  I was on my second cup of coffee.  We chatted a bit.  I ended up on a call with my best friend.

I dropped the kidlet off in her class, chatted with a few parents, headed out and got into my car… but before I started the engine, I looked out the window.

There, off to the West, were the snow-covered caps of the Rocky Mountains that rise up from the plains to eventually meet the Great Divide – where water flows mindlessly toward either the Atlantic or the Pacific oceans.  There, off to the East, the sun was well on her way up into the morning sky… still low enough to cause drivers to need their sunglasses and to prove flipped-down visors useless, but turning the sky the most amazing shade of blue.  The clouds overhead were not omenous or looming, just puffy little white sheep slowing drifting in their airy pastures.

I stopped.

I took a deep breath and expelled it with a somewhat more satisfied sigh of relief than I had expected from myself at such an early hour.

I thought about the world around me and my place in it.  I thought about the changes that are looming by choice and those that were looming whether I desired them or not.  I thought about the possibilities that each new day brings and the metaphors for the dawn and what the rising sun reveals.  I thought about all the cliches that time has worn familiar: “the dawning of a new day” and “it’s always darkest just before the dawn” and “tomorrow is another day”…

And just for a moment – a mere moment of time – I was a “morning person.”  I was optimistic and ready to go and carpe any diem I could find!

Then I laughed at myself for feeling a bit too much like a heroine in a badly written novel (no Jane Austen narrating my existence, thank you.)  I started the engine, called my friend back, and drove home to tackle the dozen mundane tasks of work and life that hold no place in a novel of any sort.

But despite that… Here I am, writing about how sometimes, in the midst of the average day? It helps to just stop. And breathe.  And think of all the possibilities…

*administrative note: this post was not made in conjunction with any brand or advertiser.  No product was supplied or compensation of any sort given to the author.  My daughter just happens to be currently hooked on the game MarioKart, so I’m putting it in here.  But for the record? I fully endorse it – it’s a good game.  I just happen to endorse it of my own free will.

And then I promptly fell off the face of the blogging planet.

I’ve been really busy working a lot since then. I’ve also been really busy learning a lot since then. Mostly, I’ve learned more about the traditional side of marketing. But there were some unexpected lessons as well.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned I should’ve probably figured out somewhere in my twenties, but seemed to have missed in the quest to acquire such useful skills as casting bronze and living in a tent.* It seems that having two totally diverse visions only works well in collaboration if you are John Lennon & Paul McCartney (and even that didn’t last forever.)

In Plain English

Let me just ditch my tendency toward metaphor for a bit and put things down here as clearly as I can.

Over the past four and a half months, I’ve had the privilege to be the Director of Social Media for Collective Bias. But increasingly it’s been evident to both John Andrews (managing partner) and I that we weren’t heading in the same direction.

John and I have known each other since July of 2008 when he started the Walmart ElevenMoms program and asked me to be a part of it. We worked well together on that program and became friends along the way, so when he asked me to join his newly formed Social Media agency? It seemed like a natural fit for both of us.

But in a startup, the pressures are different than they are in an established company. Leadership really must be on the same page and the vision has to be pretty clear. You don’t have the luxury of spending a lot of time negotiating every little detail – there’s a lot of work to be done if you want to make it past the startup phase. And there are always too few people to do that work even in a well-funded startup. No man hours can afford to be wasted on anything that isn’t going to help the company move forward.

Striking the Wrong Chord

It didn’t take John and me very long to figure out that we weren’t harmonizing well. (Yes, we’re back to the music metaphor. I can’t help myself, it fits!) It’s not that we weren’t both accomplished artists, it’s that we were singing entirely different tunes. It was confusing the rest of the band… it was making things sound horrible to the audience… it was generally just not working for anyone.

When John first suggested to me that we really needed to re-evaluate the nature of my role in the company, I couldn’t hear what he was saying. After all, except in the fast-paced world of the Internet, we had barely started.  I heard instead that he didn’t like my tune. So I resisted and kept insisting that we could figure it out if we just tried harder.

I was wrong. Trying harder isn’t always the solution.

It’s kind of like singing louder – it doesn’t make the tune any more pleasant, it just means that you either drown someone else out or you end up shrieking trying to be heard.Neither makes sense.

So a couple of weeks ago, I came to the same conclusion John had already reached. Something had to change. Someone had to back down. And honestly? It had to be me.

I had to realize that just because the band wasn’t going to sing the tunes I have in my head didn’t mean that those tunes weren’t good, and just because they weren’t mine didn’t mean that the ones John was creating weren’t good either. But I’ve been the metaphorical equivalent of a jazz singer trying to fit into a rock band.

Yeah, it took mere months & not years for me to figure out that this band wasn’t the right band for me and for John to figure out that I wasn’t the right singer for his band. So sue us. Maybe we don’t need to have a Yoko Ono to bear the blame. Maybe we’re smart enough to figure it out before we end up only talking through our press agents.

Whether or not anyone else thinks it was enough time to figure it out? We do. So after much conversation, we’ve worked out a transition plan that works best for us.

A Long, Lingering Note

So, at the end of November, I’ll be leaving Collective Bias as their Director of Social Media. We decided to take our time and do it right, so we can get everything transitioned and get the right person/people in place that will help John and his company to move forward with his vision.

If you’ll forgive me for sticking to my band metaphor past the point of prudence? I’ll be finishing a few gigs we already had agreed to while Collective Bias auditions my replacement and s/he learns their songs. I may even sit in from time-to-time down the road if they need me and I’m available (we call that ‘working contractually’ or ‘consulting’ in the non-music world.)

So, was it my dream job? Yes. And No.

But it was definitely worth pursuing to find out – as are all such dreams – and I would do it all over again. I was privileged to work with an amazing team of people and I learned a lot from each of them. I consider myself very fortunate to be given the opportunity.

Are we “breaking up the band” as I said in my title? No, not really. Collective Bias will go on to make their own Social Media music without me.But, after next month? I’ll be able to hang out in the audience enjoying their performances, while I keep working on the songs that are in my own heart.

*Those skills are real, but that’s a post for another day.

I didn’t really know how to answer that. I mean, the last time I actually updated this blog was back in *cough* June.

It’s not that I didn’t think  about writing.  I did.  I thought about it hard every night as I fell asleep exhausted.  It turns out that being a full-time mom and working for a startup is harder than it sounds. 

My daughter was home all summer and yet, there were still things that had to be done.  So of course, something had to give — unfortunately, in my case it meant writing on my blog. 

But my little Buttercup went back to school at the end of last month, so I really have no excuse not to get back into blogging.  Except for that part where I’m still presently working for a startup.  It’s amazing how “spare time” becomes “not a second to spare” in that case.  I kind of forgot.  But then, the last startup I worked for was pre-kidlet.  Sheesh.  A lifetime ago!  That would’ve been 2001!! Whoa.

Still, there are some many things I do want to write about and share with y’all.  So I’m going to have to just make the time, huh?

Much travel coming up.  As usual? I’ll bring my camera and it will live in my suitcase.  Good thing I’ve got an iphone now and can embed Whrrl stories in my blog!! 

Whrrl ? Oh, you’ll see… they’re my favorite obsession of late.  You know how I was talking about Twitter back in 2007 and y’all thought I was crazy?  Yeah, well… if you’re not using Whrrl by 2011 I’ll be surprised.

Check it out.  Pretty awesome.  I think hey deserve a full write up of their own.  Aha! Something to write about this weekend!

This Whrrl story was created by me and some of the Whrrl guys and friends out in Detroit at the MARS home office.  We were there for a visit.  What an awesome day! Wish you could’ve been there with me, but this is the next best thing!

I figured though, if I could find the headline for it, that would make it much easier to write. Fortunately, two women I admire greatly have already written their own variations on this post in the past couple of months — Shannon Paul when she went to work for Peak6 in April and Steph Agresta when she went to work for Porter Novelli just a couple of weeks ago. How could I do any better than to borrow the title both of these amazing women chose to use? Third time is the charm, right?

And it is a good title, you know.

Gig’s a great word for what we do. Dictionary.com offers up this as one of the 22 definitions it has:

gig (2) “job,” first used by jazz musicians, attested from 1915 but said to have been in use c.1905; of uncertain origin.¹

When I say gig, I think of jazz. I think of music as simple as a snare drum and a piano riff that can become as complicated and syncopated as a city street at full tilt.

Social Media is kind of like that to me — something that’s as natural as one person talking to another; and as complicated as one million people talking amongst themselves. Yeah, gig sounds right for a job that involves Social Media. I think both Stephanie & Shannon got that one bang on the nose.

So if you’ll bear with me? I think I’ll let this unfold a bit more like a piece of impromptu jazz – from the soul, without a plan, but starting with the song in my heart.

The BackBeat

Last year, I was lucky enough to find myself sitting in Las Vegas during BlogWorld Expo at the TechSet² party at Bare, talking to Tony Hsieh. Tony is one of the lowest key guys you’d ever want to meet, but also one of the smartest. There’s a reason his company (Zappos.com) has had such exponential growth under his leadership. His insights are that scary-kind-of-smart that makes you laugh nervously and wonder why you didn’t think of that and then realize that he’s just that sharp.

We were talking about a lot of things and nothing of importance — certainly not talking about the panel he’d graciously agreed to be on for me the next day — when all of a sudden, he looks at me with one of those shrewd looks he gets and says “so tell me… What’s your dream job?”

I was totally caught off guard. So I laughed nervously (like I mentioned above) and told him I’d think about it and get back to him.

That conversation has sat in the back of my mind with every career decision I’ve made since last September. Because I didn’t really even have the least notion of what my dream job was. In fact, I think I’d pretty much stopped believing there was such a thing.

But it did occur to me that a guy like Tony doesn’t ask silly, idle questions about things like that. I mean, his company pays people to quit if they don’t really want to work there after training — because they want people who really want to be there.

The Melody

My dream job… What the heck was that? I guess it meant not working for someone else… because I was tired of having a solution for a problem and not being able to implement it. Tired of seeing an easy fix for something and knowing that meant a lengthy battle to get it applied. Tired pretty much of seeing people & companies hit the wall because it was better to go full-speed ahead into it on the word of “someone very important” than it was to admit that it was a good idea to hit the brakes no matter who pointed out the looming wall — be it the janitor or the receptionist.

I couldn’t imagine the kind of company or bosses that would make working for them a joy rather than an impediment. So I thought I might as well continue to work for myself so that I could fire the client if need be.

You see, I absolutely, positively, no-holds-barred love the field that is currently being called Social Media. Yes, I know – I argued against the term because it originally meant the tools used to have a multi-way conversation. But over the past couple of years it’s come to mean more than that. It has come to mean those who use the tools, what can be done with the tools & the communities, and how it’s being done. Not just marketing, or real estate, or even personal conversations – but all of those – and more.

And I love it. Because it’s this ever-changing, ever-developing, exciting, intriguing field with no ‘this is the way we’ve always done it, so this is the way you have to do it’ ruts.

The Complicated Solo

So I decided to go it alone!

Okay, not quite alone. No one can work in Social Media alone. Whether working for themselves or for a company or an agency — it’s impossible to be the Lone Ranger in this arena. There is no such thing as a community of one.

I just decided that I’d keep working for me and consulting for others and see where it went. It was going pretty well actually. Just starting to get really interesting… and then…

Then? A Whole New Rhythm

You know what happened next? Someone offered me my dream job.

No really. I mean… I had thought it didn’t really exist. But in the back of my head, all these months, I’d been trying to suss out what it would look like if it did exist. So trust me, when it showed up on my doorstep? I knew it. I knew it like you would a lost child that had returned home long after anyone reasonable would’ve given up hope for the doorbell to ring.

The part that I was missing before? It was those great bosses. The visionary ones? The ones who can make things happen if you just say that you’ll work as hard as they do (and they do) and who don’t care who says it if it happens to be right or a good idea — and who know that CEOs can be brilliant, but so can janitors. The ones who make you want to give something your all because you know they are and there’s a joy that comes from the exhaustion of a good job.

Are You Swinging Yet?

Because I am. And as Director of Social Media for Collective Bias — a company that grew out of MARS Advertising — I plan on riding this train through many stations. I’m in the most amazing place in my life — one week into the dream job I had pretty much given up dreaming about. Because honestly? Before I went to work for myself and stopped wondering what a “dream job” looked like, it didn’t exist yet.

And honestly? I already know and love my boss. I’ve worked with John Andrews since last August. Granted, he was working with Walmart when our association first started and I was trying to decide if I wanted to be a part of what has become the Walmart ElevenMoms. But we’ve worked on a lot of projects together over that period of time and I’m really looking forward to working for & with him at Collective Bias. Along with a lot of other amazing folks who I know I’ll wax on about in depth as we go.

Side-slipping to a Minor Chord

But now that I’ve mentioned the ElevenMoms we have to introduce a sad note into this metaphorical jazz jam of mine. You see, there’s a price sometimes when it comes to following your dreams.

For the past 10 months, I have had the immense privilege and pleasure to be a part of the Walmart Elevenmoms. I can’t tell you how much this group of women has come to mean to me. If you had told me last year at this time that I would meet such a diverse, smart, savvy, incredible group of women and not only learn from them, but also make lifelong friends over what started out as “just a small foray into social media by Walmart”? I surely wouldn’t have believed you. But that is the case, I assure you.

I am very proud to be able to say that I have been a part of the Walmart Elevenmoms program. I consider it a huge honor just to say I’ve worked with the women who are, and with the people at Walmart & Rockfish Interactive who made it possible for me as well.

But you’ll have clearly noticed that I’m speaking in past-tense here.

After discussing it with Wanda Young at Walmart (whom I admire greatly), we’ve kind of both come to the conclusion that it’s probably for the best for me to leave the program at this time, as I take on the huge responsibilities and time commitment that go with working full-time at Collective Bias.

I appreciate so much her willingness to work through this with me to try and find the right solution. It’s hard to even contemplate leaving the program — as it feels somehow like I’m walking away right as the group is about to evolve again. And I have no doubt that what is going to happen will be amazing, given the women and people involved.

I count myself very fortunate to be granted this long to be in the company of such amazing folks! But sadly, it is time for me to move on and to make space for those who are to come.

Please make sure though, that you understand that the Walmart Elevenmoms have my continued support and I am 100% behind them in whatever they choose to do and to pursue. This parting is amicable all around and in fact, I will sorely miss being a part of such an incredible endeavor.

Time to Walk it on Home

So then, where are we? Well, I’m living my dream job as Director of Social Media for Collective Bias. I’m leaving my good friends the Walmart ElevenMoms to continue doing what they do so well, with my best wishes and firm support. I’m still blogging and twittering like I’ve always done… but I’ll also be blogging Social Media over at the Collective Bias site when it’s up and running.

What else do you need to know? Nothin’ but man… dig that Jazz!!

¹ Dictionary.com. Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, Historian. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gig (accessed: June 22, 2009)
² That makes 2 things I owe the lovely & talented Ms. Agresta for!

]]> http://geekmommy.net/2009/06/22/my-new-gig/feed/ 61 http://geekmommy.net/2009/06/10/consistently-inconsistent/ http://geekmommy.net/2009/06/10/consistently-inconsistent/#comments Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:12:03 +0000 GeekMommy http://geekmommy.net/?p=727 If today’s Wednesday, this means I’ve posted 3 days in a row.

Are you back up off of the floor yet?  Yeah, I know, it knocked me for a loop too.

I’ve been saying for a very long time now (months really) that I was going to get back in the saddle and start posting regularly.  But I think it started being sort of a running joke amongst my friends and a bit of a lie that I told myself so that I could pretend that I wasn’t suffering from blogging burn-out.

Why lie to myself?  Well, I think it’s kind of like a mid-life crisis — you don’t want to admit that you’re buying the Porsche and shopping at the hipster clothing stores because you caught a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and it seems you’re a little soft around the middle and crow’s-feetish around the eyes.

I expect I’ll see a large number of my friends over the next couple of years going through it themselves.  There’s a point in your blogging career where you have to tell yourself that one post a day is actually sufficient (thank heavens Twitter seems to have helped a lot of folks burn off the excess urges!) and a point where you feel like a day isn’t complete unless you’ve blogged.  Then there’s the point where you start wondering if you’re running out of interesting things to say.  Then the point where you wonder if anyone would notice if you skipped a day.

And then…

The mid-bloggylife crisis comes when you get to a point where you start arguing with yourself that the reason you aren’t posting today is because you were too busy, too tired, too uninspired, too something… But that you’ll totally post tomorrow.  Or maybe Monday.  Or maybe you’ll take a hiatus and come back fresh and ready to post.  Or maybe it’s just that blog – if you closed it and started a new one…

But the truth is that like anything creative? No matter how much you love doing it – it’s possible to burn  yourself out and need recharging.  And no amount of resolution or self-deception is going to change that.

So here’s what I did — about a year and a half ago, I closed down multiple blogs I’d had for 7 or more years — claimed this one as my primary blog, and spent all of my time on Twitter.

What’s that? Oh, I spent all of my time on Twitter because it was a different type of creative outlet.  A new shiny toy.  If I had been a musician instead of a word-chick? Blogging would’ve been my guitar and Twitter would’ve been my side-trip being obsessed by sitar.  (If you’re not Beatles obsessed or old enough or  to remember? I’m invoking George Harrison here.)

Where am I now?

I think I’m over my burnout.  I’m hesitant to say that, because let’s be honest, 3 days in a row does not a regular habit make.  But it’s a start.  So is admitting that I seem to have rediscovered the joy of writing something that doesn’t limit me to 140 characters and lets me have really in-depth conversations with folks in the comments section.

Okay, so I’m a little squidgy around the middle, and I have “laugh lines” so deep that you have to wonder what the heck is so darn funny.  But there’s nothing wrong keeping the Porsche and having a mini-van that sits beside it in the driveway, is there?

Before we get too lost in metaphorland, what I’m trying to say is that I believe I’m back to blogging and twittering at the same time.  Yeah, I know that doesn’t seem so amazing to some of you, because you’ve been doing that all along.  But I promise to be sympathetic and not tell you “I told you so” when you hit your own mid-bloggylife crises.

After all,  sometimes a few months of metaphorical sitar lessons are good for the soul…

A week long battle with the Flu in our house followed by 8 days on the road – oh yes, there are blogs coming from those 3 events as well!! – meant that the first time I could even think about blogging something coherently was this past weekend. Annnnd I didn’t.

But on Friday May 8th I got the most unexpected and welcome surprise. I woke up to find I was on the Nielsen Top 50 Power Moms in Digital Media list. (page 5 under Tech Moms – it’s an MS PowerPoint presentation – if you need a free viewer go here)

What does that mean? Well, according to the report:

Nielsen Online’s Power Mom 50 is a collection of leading voices in the mom blogosphere based on a blend of blog posts, comments and link love developed through ongoing monitoring of more than 10,000 mom and parenting blogs as tracked by Nielsen Buzzmetrics. In addition to site engagement, number of Twitter followers, ratings and other metrics were included in the calibration to provide a comprehensive sphere of authority and influence.

I was a little stunned, truth be told.  Because I have been so absent from this space of late.  But then looking at the stats clearly shows that… In fact, it was just the push I needed to get blogging again.

Then while I was perusing the list of other Moms, two things occurred to me:

1. I know a lot of those women.  Most of them, in fact.  And I’m completely in agreement with Nielsen that they are amazing, influential, insightful Moms and social media voices.  It’s just an amazing honor to be listed amongst them.  Almost as much of an honor as it is to know them and to work with them in this space.
2. This isn’t really about me – it’s about you.  Without those connections I have through this blog, through Twitter, and through other Social Networking sites, I might as well be standing in an empty field shouting to myself.  This is really not just about me… it’s about US. You and me together, and all of the people we interact with all over the Internet.  I’m in awe of the power of technology to bring us all together and give us this voice.

So I want to take a minute right NOW (before writing another post or updating another status) to Thank You.  Whether you’re a reader, a fellow blogger, one of the companies I work with or even just someone who Googled your way here?  This would never have happened if it weren’t for you too.

You are amazing – and I aspire to live up to your faith in me.  Thank you.

Somehow, 2 weeks slid by when I wasn’t looking.  I swear, it went by in a heartbeat!  I had this Hannah Montana post all written in my head and set to go (yeah, no – you’re not getting out of that.  There will still be a HM post – those of you without Miley-Cyrus-wannabes in your households can just skim on by.  Those of you with your own little diva will appreciate it.)  All I know is that one minute it was “Easter weekend” (which for those of you without kids in our school meant 4 days off, not 2) and there was skiing, egg-hunting, over-doses of chocolate, and lots of family time.  That was followed quickly by Buttercup’s first ’sick at school’ event.  GeekDaddy’s tire blowing out in the rain on the way to get her.  The weekend (plus) of Family Flu.

All culminating in yesterday – the Tuesday-which-should-never-have-dawned.  Buttercup’s third day of 102° fevers and trip to the pediatrician with GeekDaddy was only outdone by my waking up to find out that my upper right molar had shattered and I had apparently swallowed 1/4 of it without noticing.  1.5 hours at the dentist freaking out (more on that later) resulted in my being referred to a specialist for a “particularly tricky” root canal.  And coming home to no back fence – because our neighbors apparently decided to tear it down yesterday to replace it – with absolutely no word to us.  Hopefully they’ll replace it today – otherwise the dog has 2 yards to look for stinky things to roll in.

Did I mention I’ve written and published this post twice now? Yeah, the aether ate the other one.  Wednesday isn’t boding to much better than the rest of the week so far.

But I’m determined!!

There will be blogging, my friends – oh yes there will!  I apologize in advance if it looks like I’m the only one in your feed reader.  But it’s good stuff, I promise.  And come on, you know you missed me!

You did miss me, right?