Hydrant dreams during fire drills

Putting the fire out

“Let me know when your whole life goes up in smoke. Means it's time for a promotion.” Nigel, The Devil Wears Prada

For the past year, I have been up for promotion. I have the bags under my eyes and dollars debited to Hot Yoga to prove it. Over the course of the last year, fire drills were constant personally and professional. I hit a point where getting to the next level became all about solving problems and building relationships. As a result, equipped with my natural hair and seasonally appropriate suits, I took risks for growth andput my best foot forward. I have been tested, shedding a layer of weird girl physicist left over from undergraduate studies, and earning the official seal of consultant. 

Now that I’ve earned the promotion, the smoke has not cleared. In fact, the forest fire is raging and requiring my constant attention. Managing others has brought a whole new perspective into my professional space. And the other ‘stuff’ did not go away.  Additionally, personal matters need to be tended to. There has been no time for me to celebrate or reflect, just the constant push forward.

Recently, I am finding solace in organization. My Life List excel spreadsheet has become a savior. When it comes to after 5 pm, well planned, intentional social gatherings and Skype calls with new friends have helped me to be in firefighter mode by 8 am sharp.

Hydrant Dreams

Sometimes I dream of a world with minimal firedrills. It could be my industry, functional, or career choice, but I doubt it. It seems as if the current global market is a flurried state of constant emergency. News headlines show that there is little solace for the world of business. So, when I get bogged down with my own world and there is no motivation to be found on my daily news outlets, I dream of my own enterprise where I am chief firefighter. I do not have a business plan or structure for my dream enterprise, but I do have standards.

-Noone, regardless of location or coordination across locations will work before 6 am or after 8 pm. –This standard in itself may still seem like I’m a slave driver, but I work in technology which needs tending to 24 hours a day. I personally feel that despite this, we all should have time for sleep and family.

-At each promotion point, all promotion announcements will happen on a Wednesday, and a celebratory 2-day sabbatical will be granted allowing for a 4 day weekend. – Most people do not have time to celebrate their success which really takes away from the shininess of it all.

-Open and honest communication will happen across the organization to everyone including all third party and vendors. – There will be no secret changes communicated out with 30 day’s notice. People will be the central focus of my dream enterprise and will be treated as necessary

-Third party and vendors must have a high enough emotional and ethical IQ to have the best interest of my enterprise in mind.

-To the extent possible, hierarchies will not exist. – Do flat organizations work? Need to look into this.

-We will have an event catered to family, friends, and pets. – Our loved ones have to hear all about our work days, so they should be able to party on the enterprise dime for all those unclocked listening hours.

When did I first fall in love with hip-hop?

I wish I grew up in an era where I could have experienced the beginning of hip hop. What I would have given to be in the boogie down Bronx to experience Doug E. Fresh free style, or see the best crews break.

I wasn’t there at the inception of something that would change the world. I, on the other hand, inherited the change. I was born with hip-hop being my brother, my friend, and eventually, my lover. I couldn’t have asked for something more wonderful – a life filled with music. Noise consumed the blocks I grew up on. As soon as I learned how to walk and how to talk, I was popping my lips and rolling my eyes and listening to the sounds. Tape decks were rewound and remixed and amplified from boomboxes for all to hear. Yes, there were people free-stylin’ and beat boxin’, but this was not the early 80’s and it damn sure wasn’t the Bronx. Hip-hop’s daddy had been a rolling stone, moving on to the life of a corporate sell-out, and leaving only the name and the skill behind.

I fell in love on a magical night. It was 1998. The Chicago Bulls were playing in the championship, and they were about to take it home again. My mama had let me stay up past nine to watch the game in her store-front shop that she kept open that night. When we won the game, she let me walk to the store with an older sister friend. People were whoopin’ and hollerin’, flooding the streets. I watched in awe as we navigated the crowds towards the store. Then I heard it, Big Pun, Still Not a Player cascading from the speakers on the corner. Looking back, this song was no Common or Lupe, and as an educated woman, I am almost ashamed to admit that this is when he got my heart. But, I lead with the truth.  I was down for hip-hop in that moment. Little did I know that our relationship would test me for years to come.

Hip-hop was angry. As a result, he wasn’t saying nothing nice about me or my budding womanness. Still, I obliged him. As the resident candy lady, I was there with sour patch kids, flaming hots, and a cold pop to sustain him for hours on end. Hip-hop was spicy. I mean the foods influenced by the beginning of time, a taste I experienced only in a small restaurant on the shores of Mumbai. Hip-hop was mean. He was plenty nice when I counted out his 2 cent candy, and he winked and gave me a quarter extra. Or even sneaking and giving me a ride around the block on the handlebars of his bicycle. But, hip-hop’s words cut like a dagger. Not meant for me, he said. I am not who he’s talking about. He said that because I was young, sweet, and naïve. Even if I am still reserved as innocent in the eyes of hip-hop, I would break a heart eventually, and those lyrics would come back to hunt me.

When we were old enough to give our love a try, he was gentle, sensitive, and sweet, but only in the confines of our personal space. When in public, he was withdrawn and there was no space for me. As I grew, so did we, but unfortunately, so did my conscious. I went through a phase, where I thought that I could keep up with hip-hop. I mean I’m no lyricist and I’m not a player, but I was pretty good on the dance floor and an artist in my own right. But with the emergence of technology, all of my actions and decisions would be visible to .com. I wasn’t really willing to put myself out on the streets like that. Hip-hop was on his way to making it big, which freed up a lot of my time. I was studying decorum, classic ballet, and feminism. I was consumed by books and science experiments. I was seeing the world and discovering other genre’s. The only way to put it, I was growing up and out of our love.

I thought I was angry at him because he wasn’t staying true to the name passed on to him. He was still a genius, and always focused, but he was saying anything and everything and calling it music. Claiming the genre, tainting the game.

I know different now. Hip-hop was growing just as I was. He was defining his own rules and leveraging his own resources. He was the man I always knew he would become. As I rock out to all the new “stuff” influenced by him cross-over, dub-step, and autotune, I realize I been rocking alone for years now waiting for something.

I miss hip-hop, but I am not sure there is anything there. He grew. I grew. Will we ever be able to remerge?

Pick a Player Up

My 16 year old brother flew into Atlanta a few weeks back, and my life was temporarily consumed by what I will call “athlete drama”. He plays little league baseball for a travel team and was part of a week long world series. During the series of games, I learned a lot about baseball. Things I completely missed while focused on getting cute in blue and red for a Braves game or hanging out in the upper deck Chop House. Keeping up with the ones you love requires more focus that knowing just the score and current inning. In fact, I downloaded an app to get a better understanding. Yes, they have an app for everything.

Game Changer the App

One concept of the game really stuck out to me. It’s the idea of being “picked up” by your teammates. It is defined as below.

pick me up link here.

When one player makes a mistake or fails to do something he tried to do, he may ask another, "Pick me up." Or said in praise of his offensive teammates by a pitcher who allowed more runs than he wished: "The guys picked me up with a lot of runs today. I'll have to improve on that outing and get better."^[5] "I just told him, 'Great win for us and thanks for picking me up,' Jones said. Jones had inherited a three-run lead for the ninth -- and allowed four runs to put the Tigers a run down. But with one out in the Tigers' ninth, and with runners on first and second, Cabrera ripped the first pitch from left-handed closer Brian Fuentes far up the rightfield gap."^[6]

This really “hit home” for me because I am making big decisions in my life and not all of them have been the right ones. In the throes of my consequences, being picked up has been essential. I am hoping to find my way, and support is the only way I survive. For the past 6 months I have been consumed by applying to graduate school. It is a very right now process, and I have self-inflicted a great deal of stress in my life. In  asking myself the tough questions, I am sometimes at a stand still.

The tough questions:

What is it that I really want to do? How can I make a difference? What is my purpose? How can I use my experience to achieve my goals?

I could go further into the positions, statistics, or rules and how they all play a part, but I choose to focus on my team. Whether it be my family, friends, GMAT tutor, life coach, or insurance agent, I am surrounding myself who have a common goal to win (succeed) in life. By focusing on improving and contributing to my team, I know that beyond the tough questions is an awesome and fulfilling existence.

My close quote: “Everyone has something interesting about them, something beautiful about them.  And you have to figure out what that is. The thing that they’re really, really passionate about” -Matt Mullenweg founder of WordPress – Found in PandoMonthly Fireside Chat here.

Taking time for self...

Sometimes life calls for a breather. An inhalation that is not filled with an intake of stressors: client deadlines, navigating relationships, analyzing complex excel documents, professional happy hours,….

I just came back from a vacation where I took time to watch the sunset Every. Day.

For 6 days, I did not open my to-do list one time and I limited my laptop time to the writing of reflection pieces. Now I’m back, and life pretty much has been going at warp speed for two hours. With my to-do list open, Power Points needing attention, and emails drafted, I wonder how I will get back to the sunset. 

Joan Solotar, a Senior Managing Director of the Blackstone Group, talks of work life balance in a HBR blog posted a few months ago saying “Draw lines in the sand. Know what it is you absolutely won't give up and stick to it. No one will thank you for not having a life outside of work, never taking vacation. The most successful people I know weave their lives and work together throughout the week. This gives them both career longevity and life fulfillment.”

As I take my head out of the clouds of vacation, I look forward to taking a little bit of sunset with me in my everyday activities.