I reached a milestone yesterday: I finally got 500 LinkedIn connections. If you have 499 connections, LinkedIn says you have 499 connections. If you have 500 it says you have 500+ connections. I now look like I could have infinity LinkedIn connections!

It was a goal for me to reach 500. I really wanted to get there this summer. This summer I was looking for a job, so I spend a good amount of time on LinkedIn. Looking for a job is very uncomfortable. It felt as if my goal–getting a new position–was entirely the product of happenstance.

Except everywhere I looked, there was someone giving advice on how to do it the “right” way. Which was a lot of pressure.

So every day I would get up and try to look for a job. I began to get more and more single-minded and narrow in my focus. A JOB. I WANT A JOB. I NEED A JOB.

And every day I would not get a job.

I knew I was starting to get crazy. I was super unhappy. I didn’t want to be.

I knew I had to set myself up with an achievable victory, or a goal that I had more control over.

So. I decided to try to get 500 LinkedIn connections. I had 400 something connections. Surely I could fill that out and push it into the 500+ realm.

And still I couldn’t quite get there. So I was doubly foiled. Even the thing that I thought should be easy and achievable I was failing at.

Some of the job search advice talks about this. Our jobs can easily become our identity. I know I had put on my job–the one I’d lost–on like a fancy uniform and told the world what it was I did.

It was as if that uniform came off and so did my skin. I had no buffer. No wonder I was unhappy!

I didn’t have a space in my own mind to inhabit. What it seemed like I had a big clear spot for a vicious fearful inner voice to talk to me. A perfect acoustic amphitheater for my fears and insecurities.

I knew it was getting out of control. Here’s a job for self help and support groups!

One of my groups is reading a book called Loveability, which talks about self-love. Self-love is not something I would have pursued on my own. And yet…

In the isolation chamber of applying for jobs, nobody loves me. They don’t hate me, usually; they just don’t care very much. In the face of overarching indifference, I was left with the voices in my mind that were very mean and afraid.

If I wasn’t on my own side, it’s hard to persuade someone else to be.

So that’s what this self-love thing is trying to tell me. I get to be on my own side and keep a good opinion of myself. That I can move closer to compassion for myself and further away from being critical.

I haven’t finished the book yet. When I found this sentence, I saw myself:

How I felt about me was determined by how they felt about me.

I don’t want that to be true about me! And yet, especially during my job search, that is exactly how I felt. I must be worth nothing because that is how these hiring managers and HR people are treating me.

I know I am of value. How on earth did I let myself fall to these depths?

I have a job now. For three months I’ve been going to my office and doing work. Nobody is mean to me. I could tell myself, “Whew! I’m glad that’s over!”

I am glad it’s over. But it will happen again. I will find myself looking for a job again. Or there will likely find myself in a situation where I am valuing others’ opinions of me more highly than my own opinions of me.

Those 500 LinkedIn connections–when I don’t need a job anymore–feel sort of anticlimactic. These new lessons in self-love could seem that way too. Yet I know, I am going to need to build up my positive connections for when they are all I have. Especially with myself.

That’s how many posts until I reach 2 thousand

numbers can be fun.

And yet…rather meaningless

Mommy, I need to grow up faster

Well, you are having a birthday soon.

Des having a birthday make you grow up?

Yes, every birthday makes you a year older.

It’s really important that I grow up faster. I was talking to God about it.

What would you do if you were grown up?

I would do everything you do.

Like me? What do I do that you want to do?

Well…I want to be a super hero.

You are getting bigger every day, don’t worry. Maybe you will get to be a superhero

I have superhero costumes!

Yes you do!

Seth Godin declares that there is no more mass culture anymore, and I believe it. So why do I feel like I’m being trite by having so many mass-culture-reference blog posts in a row?

Maybe the New Year is one of the few remaining cultural touchstones. Yes. The world is still spinning.

It’s not new to have resolutions and examine one’s life in January.

We’ve been cleaning out our garage. Such masses of STUFF that I must sort through. I confess I am a notebook hoarder. I feel deeply uncomfortable if I don’t have a notebook with me at all times. And I can’t bear to throw them away. Some delicious poems or essays are in these pages.

And there are a lot of to do lists. These papers don’t need to be in my life anymore.

So I can tear out the to do lists and phone messages scribbled in my notebooks.

Digging deeper into my boxes of papers, I even found old college syllabuses and term papers.

Time machine.

Reading again, I see that professor was saying something encouraging. “If you can expand on this topic, you’ll really have something…”

I remember at the time interpreting that to mean ‘as it stands you have nothing…’

Silly me. I’m not going to write that paper on transcendentalism again, but maybe I’ll learn to be gentler on myself.

Oh crap, look at this. A performance review from several jobs ago. I remember this one. My first ‘needs improvement’ ever.

Ever.

AND HE WAS SO WRONG!!!

I was shocked at the unfairness of that manager. He was peeved over a serious of other things that weren’t going his way, and he took it out on me so hard. I could barely believe it. In fact, I carried the memory of that review around like a trophy of horror. I told friends and co-workers, repeating it and fully expecting gasps of “he didn’t!”

I got them. I got affirmation I prompted them for.

What I didn’t do? Fight the unfair review at the time. I didn’t refuse to sign it. I should have. That’s the real lesson of that unfair review.

So now…more than a decade later…I still have that review. Like a dark shadow, saved and treasured in my garage.

What a foolish thing!

I flipped through the pages, remembered how it had shocked me at the time. Then I walked out to the recycle bin and dumped it.

Some old memories and acquaintances can be forgot.

It’s okay to make room for the memories that have a better return on investment.

I still have friends from that old job. And from the jobs that followed. I don’t need to spend another minute nursing an old wound.

It would be better spending time with my college friends, the transcendentalists. Emerson provides better food for contemplation:

“Be not the slave of your own past – plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.”

So if you want to make resolutions for this New Year, go for it. More than anything, dive in. Look at this delicious smooth-surfaced year we have to play in! There will be old friends and new, adventures and doubtless a few regrets.

And always our each and glorious individual self to carry through. I am so ready to toss the ballast and make more room for my best self.

It would be good to post every day

IhVe to carve out a time to do it

I have to decide what is most important

After all, so many things are important

Is creation more important than consumption?

Creation takes more concentration

There is this other category: maintenance

Like, it’s not creative to do laundry or dishes

It’s not consuming though

It can feel more like productivity, because it is necessary

One of the wonders of the modern world is how many labor saving devices we have. Freezer, washing machine and dishwasher

My home is a testament to my belief that we should do as little maintenance as possible

What’s the right balance?

it’s called the information age

It’s called the age of the knowledge worker

It’s all those things

AND it’s the age of collaboration

What is crowdsourcing?
What is wikipedia?

It’s all about collaboration

I was running and listening to a song…I heard something sung in the background

“I should look that up. Surely someone has figured this out already”

I COULD have stopped and listened to it myself to figure it out

I still might.

AND I could go ask what other people know about it

I wonder if there is a gender advantage to the age of collaboration?

Are women better at it?

I love what Sal Khan is doing, with his Khan academy because i love learning.

He goes on and on about mastery a the goal.

And yet I am fining in my life that mastery is not as important as I thought. Mastery can take the place of the courage to begin and create.

Mastery comes.

My PMP studies put it this way: Progressively Elaborated.

Isn’t all learning progressively elaborated?

Malcom Gladwell in Outliers talked about the diminishing return of good grades or high IQ. Once you’ve reached the threshold of enough, the rest is a waste of time.

And in fact…Lingering to master my multiplication tables would be the biggest waste of time ever. Experiencing new things and trying a new area would be far more fruitful.

V was Watching penguins of Madagascar

I was reading Seth godin

He got to the part where he praises content creation over consumption

“No more penguins Veronica. Let’s go draw pictures”

Started the day and the year with a morning run

EVEN THOUGH it was freezing, literally, in LA

Good

I tripped while jaywalking

Bummer

I kept running

Good

When I got home, I locked myself and the dog out of the house

Bummer

Chris anwered his phone and let me in

Good

He also said happy birthday

Very good

I’ve decided my bloody knuckles look like I had an adventure

Happy and adventurous new year everyone

My husband likes to read adventure stories. The REAL kind, about people who take crazy risks or climb Mt. Everest.  He was re-telling one of these stories to me, and I narrowed my eyes at him.

“Are you saying you want to climb Mt. Everest?”

“I am just reading about it. It’s very interesting.”

“You are not allowed to climb Mt. Everest. I need you not to die.”

He hugged me and promised he wasn’t going to climb Mt. Everest.

However, there is something compelling about the ones who choose to climb it. What on earth would possess a person to risk life and limb to do this? A lot of people do exactly this sort of thing, define some difficult and nearly impossible goal and throw themselves on the mercy of the wind to accomplish it.

It is at this time of year, the turning of the New Year that people pause to think of these things.  What have I done this year? What will I do next year?

What am I doing with my life? Is this what I choose? Is it the right choice?

I am still slowly making my way through the Iliad, as I’ve mentioned earlier. Of these mythological warriors who are fighting the Trojan War, Achilles is understood to be the best warrior of them all.
Achilles, the son of a goddess and a battle machine, has a deep crisis of faith and identity when he steps away from the fighting. What’s this all about, he wonders. His mother gave his a secret. His fate could go either way. He could go back to the fighting as his brothers-in-arms are begging him to do.He could fight as only he can do, win the war for them, and have glory and honor for all time.

And die.

Not in that order.

Alternatively, he could go home and live at peace for a long life.

Two possible fates.

Of course his goddess mother is an immortal, and she weeps for the short life that her son Achilles is inevitably going to have. What is human life, long or short, in contrast to forever?

It is something to Achilles. Shall he go do what he was born to do, be the warrior beyond compare that he can be? Or shall he tamp that down and be safe at home, enjoying the gentle pleasures and comforts of life?

I am also reading the latest book by Seth Godin: What to do when it’s your turn [and it’s always your turn]. Modern life offers more choices that battle glory. We have so many tools and resources at our disposal.

Often fear keeps us from expressing ourselves, from exercising our strengths and gifts. Stay home. Stay safe. Take that talent of gold and hide it under the ground. It could draw the WORST kind of attention.

Godin says take your turn before it’s offered. That life IS the turn, for each of us, to get up and be and do and fail and get up again and try.

Achilles’ analogy works. Shall we throw ourselves onto the field of battle? Because it’s what we were born to do?

Shall we climb the tallest peak? Because it’s there?

I know that’s why Chris reads those books. It’s a story of ultimate striving. It’s easy to belittle the highest strivings in my life. My aspirations are not as dramatic as Mt. Everest.

And yet. That book I am getting ready to publish…That business I want to start…That movement I want to launch…All these rise above the ordinary and lift my eyes to a higher horizon.

There was once, the one who first climbed Everest. He had to make his own path.  The others followed, striving for what they felt drawn to do.

There is for sure and no doubt, the first and only me. And the first and only you. As this year turns into the new one, I want to try to do the big stuff.

Happy New Year, everybody!