InnerTeub

Read Full Post »

Started my new (same firm, new role) job Monday. Or, as we like to call it: “Yesterday”

Have I mentioned that it’s a remote team? So I’m free to work from whichever company office I choose, including my home.

So I am at home.

I’ve had flexible working arrangements before – I had a great team for while where, while we were all based out of the same office, it was kind of understood that if the weather sucked, or one person had a lot of conference calls and/or work that could be better done from home, then coming in wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t everyday, but it was enough so that you could make the judgement call that if you could get more done at home, you could stay.

That was really nice. It was a good balance. But with my new gig, when I realized I wasn’t needed to be in at ALL if I didn’t want to be, working all day in my yoga pants suddenly felt…slovenly. Like, I might not ever take them off again, even to shower, because why would I shower? I’M NEVER LEAVING THE HOUSE, EVER.

I read a quote once, and I think it would sum up how I feel about working in my pajamas pretty well:

“Working at home in your pajamas” sounds really nice, but for me it was a black hole where all my self-respect went to die.

Soooooo, new rule: yoga pants to a minimum. Shower is essential.

Guys, it’s been like, one day on the job. ONE DAY. And I want to be clear: I LOVE my job. I am SO excited it worked out. The team seems awesome, the actual job itself is exactly what I want to be doing: I LOVE IT.  And I’m VERY good at remote teams.

But I had this vision, of me. In the same yoga pants. EVERY DAY. And, as Amalah says, that is where your self respect goes to die.

(I am of course making caveats for NICE yoga pants on a SHOWERED body. Obviously.)

So wish me luck. You know, with that showering thing. Because I somehow managed to make it this far in my life with a need to remind myself.

Read Full Post »

TheBoss just quit his job. His last day as a big company consultant is Friday, and we’re totally stoked. Well, scared and potentially broke, but stoked. He liked his job enough, but it is the wrong career for him, and this move is long overdue. I want for him more than anything to have a job and career that he loves, and feel a purpose to his day that has been missing in recent years. It’s always scary to walk away from something familiar and known towards the unknown, but we’ll figure it out as a family. (Hat tip to the Marine Corps for our health insurance, a nice little detail that facilitates this greatly.)

(Don’t worry, Mom. We have a plan.)

Randomly, I came across this list today of 11 famous people who were in completely the wrong career at age 30. It is, to say the very least, quite timely.

Since I’m cut and pasting completely, give the authors their due and throw ’em a click through.

1. Sylvester Stallone, deli counter attendant. After getting no career traction as an actor in his 20s, Stallone attacked his 30s like any 5’3 man should: He wrote a movie where he was an all-American hero with unbelievable success in sports.

   That movie was “Rocky”… he banged out the “Rocky” screenplay in three days, in between working at a deli counter and as a movie theater usher… and it launched his career with an Academy Award for Best Picture.

2. Andrea Bocelli, lawyer. He’d loved music and singing his whole life… but didn’t really see (no pun intended) it as a career possibility. So, after school, he got a law degree at the University of Pisa. At age 30 he was working as a lawyer and moonlighting in a piano bar for fun and extra cash. He didn’t catch a break as a singer until 1992, at age 34.
3. Martha Stewart, stockbroker. When she was 30, Martha Stewart was a stockbroker, no doubt learning all about finance and the ethics involved therein. Two years later she and her husband purchased a beat-down farmhouse in Connecticut… she led the restoration… transitioned into a domestic lifestyle… and parlayed that into her evil, evil career.
4. Mao Tse-Tung, elementary school principal. At age 30, Mao was involved in communism… he was a young star of the Chinese Communist Party… but didn’t realize it could be a career. (Probably didn’t see communism as being very lucrative…?)

   Instead, he was working as the principal of an elementary school. Where, no doubt, hall passes were decadent. Four years later he started a communist group that eventually became the Red Army and put him in power.

5. Julia Child, government spy. Absolutely the wrong career. At age 30, Child wasn’t cooking… she was working for the U.S. government as a spy. She went on clandestine missions to China and Sri Lanka (which, at the time, was called Ceylon) to get intelligence documents to agents in the field. She didn’t enter cooking school until age 36

   How it took until now to make a movie about her life (it comes out in like a week, with Meryl Streep) is mind blowing. They made a movie about the life of MC Hammer. They made a sitcom out of the Geico cavemen. I mean… someone bought the rights to make a movie out of “Where’s Waldo?” You’re telling me Waldo’s more interesting than female spy-turned-TV cooking superstar? It’s “Alias” meets “Top Chef”! Just because Waldo traveled to a bunch of exotic places where he managed to mingle with lots of other people wearing deceptive red-and-white striped shirts doesn’t make him movie-worthy

6. James Joyce, singing. By 30, Joyce was writing… just not getting published. So to make ends meet he reviewed books, taught and, weirdly, made a lot of money thanks to his gorgeous tenor singing voice. (He was also a raging alcoholic, which isn’t financially lucrative until you become an author and can parlay those drunken antics into stories. Ask Hemingway. Or James Frey, sort of.)

   Joyce finally got his first book, “Dubliners”, published at age 32, which launched his career as, arguably, one of the most successful authors of all time.

   So I’ve decided to co-opt his style and will write the next point on this list completely in the manner of James Joyce..

7. Colonel Sanders, tons of blue collar jobs. When yes Harland Sanders was turning 30 yes he was still yes switching from one yes career yes to yes another yes: Steamboat pilot (yes!), insurance salesman (yes!), farmer (yes!), railroad fireman (yes!), gigolo (no!). He didn’t yes start cooking chicken until he was 40 yes and yes, yes, yes didn’t start franchising until, yes, age 65.
8. Michael Jordan, baseball player At age 30, Michael Jordan was the biggest star in the world, had just led the Chicago Bulls to three straight NBA championships… and promptly quit to become a minor league baseball later.

   This remains one of the most suspicious moves any celebrity has made in our lifetimes. If this happened today, the Internet would actually blow up with people debating the real reason why Jordan quit. The NBA secretly suspended him for gambling but couldn’t afford to admit he’d gambled on their games? Scottie Pippen took photos of him having gay sex with Bill Wennington and threatened to blackmail Jordan unless he stepped away? He killed a man? It’s all equally plausible (especially the Wennington thing).

   Anyway, I included this on the list because it shows that even Michael Jordan was still searching for the right career at age 30.

9. Rodney Dangerfield, aluminum siding salesman. He started doing stand-up at age 19… then gave up on it in his mid-20s.. He started working as an acrobatic diver (true… and wow, I never realized that was the influence for the Triple Lindy)… and then as an aluminum siding salesman. He didn’t start getting back into comedy until he was 40.
10. Harrison Ford, carpenter. When Ford was 30, he starred in “American Graffiti”… which was a huge hit. But he got paid a pittance for acting in it, decided he was never going to make it as an actor, and quit the business to get back into the more financially dependable world of construction.

    Four years later, he met up with George Lucas again (for those who don’t know, Lucas directed “Graffiti”) and Lucas cast him as Han Solo.

11. Jesus, carpenter. At age 30, Jesus finally stopped doing carpentry and started performing miracles. See, Harrison Ford and Jesus have more in common than you’d think.

Read Full Post »

Someone passed along the following quote from Mark’s Daily Apple:

“The contention I have is the media and corporate influence that have lured the masses to believe that running a marathon or finishing an Ironman is the ultimate endurance achievement. To me this seems backwards – to get persuaded by hype, mystique and peer pressure into an athletic goal and then re-arrange your lifestyle in order to pursue that goal. It makes better sense to make a careful analysis of your life circumstances, responsibilities, obligations and potential impact on your family, career and overall well-being, and then choose an appropriate competitive goal. Aspiring to a less challenging event that requires less training time and less physical stress might be a win/win situation all around.

I think that is where I am with endurance racing. I had some time to think during the Ironman (…ha), and I was really thinking about what it meant to me to finish that race, and if I didn’t finish, would I feel like I had to do another one to “redeem” myself (answer: resounding NO).

The entire time I was training for that race, I felt this push/pull friction against wanting to jerryrig my whole life around this race. I did that for the first race, and for my lifestyle at the time (husband deployed/flex work schedule/friends training for the same race), it worked. Life is different now, in ways I wouldn’t trade for the world, and I just didn’t want to structure a life that lived in service to Ironman training.

I got lucky – I had a coach and a training plan that Totally Got It, and I could not have asked for a better set up. If I do it again – and hey, I might – I will absolutely do the exact same thing.

I am proud of myself for being an Ironman. I spent a lot of time saying the phrase “I can’t do it” (“it” being defined as strenuous activity) because of my heart problem, and I was really able to retrain my attitude and beliefs out of that cop out. But now I think it’s more important for me to find a way to feel successful and badass while living my life in all arenas that aren’t athletically related.

So. The Plan:

1. Crossfit, baby. I love Crossfit so much, I cannot even tell you. I hesitate to be a complete fitness douche about it, because I know that wears thin, but man, it is such a fun way to get in shape/stay in shape/kick your own ass. So I’m going to focus on that, as much as I can, because it’s awesome. If I could give everyone I know a gift, I would give them the motivation to go check it out and see what it’s about so they could stop rolling their eyes when I talk about it and start seeing how awesome it is.

2. I want to run the Army 10 miler this fall, and I want to do it well. I haven’t really defined what “well” looks like just yet, but in a very abstract way I can say that I want to feel very proud of my time and my effort.

3. Primal/Paleo eating. In addition to not wanting to be a fitness douche, I also super don’t want to be a food douche, but there’s so many good things that come to me from eating well that I’m having a hard time avoiding talking about it. But needless to say, The Boss and I cook a lot at home, and while we generally trend towards a Paleo cooking lifestyle, we got away from it at the end of IM training (we just had to have the carbs. It was too hard without it), but I’m happy to be back to it. (Especially now that I’ve finish the MDot birthday cake.)

So. I think I can do all these things and still be a fully functional participant in my life. Hell, I think these things will aid me in being a fully functional participant in my life.

For now, anyway. Ironman’s a cruel bitch and she almost always gets you to come back.

Read Full Post »

So, I am transitioning to a new role in my company that is not based in D.C., which means when I don’t have to be elsewhere, I can be at home.

It’s quite lovely. (The role is actually great in many ways, the ability to work in yoga pants frequently is only one of them)

I have been thinking to myself that one of the main benefits is I’ll have better control – or options, anyway – over food during the day, and not subject to the whims of the 4th floor fro yo machine calling my name every day at 3pm, etc. Save money! Eat more healthy! Woo!

And then:

My good friend Jen surprised me last night with an M-Dot (the Ironman symbol) birthday cake. OMG, you guys. It is so good.

And it is huge:

And the leftovers are sitting on my counter, staring at me, begging to be eaten:

Seriously, you guys. I am only so strong.

Anyway, like I said: I’m *transitioning* to this role. I haven’t *started* yet. So clearly this week does not count. Ahem.

Read Full Post »

Having a birthday on the Fourth of July is so great. Everyone has the day off, is in the mood to gather and relax and enjoy the day, and there’s fireworks at the end. What’s not to love?

I’m having a wonderfully simple day, and am feeling very lucky to have my life, complete with my family and friends (and dogs!) that make it so lovely.

Speaking of dogs, I was walking Moose earlier this morning, and we sat for about an hour reading (me) and chewing a stick (him), and it reminded me of one of my favorite pictures from the Italy trip:

Truly, I could have sat in that garden and read for weeks.

Anyway, this is turning into a great day filled with both quiet moments (park! moose!) and lively ones (fireworks!) and really, it’s just such a nice life.

Read Full Post »

I have a very strict rule about my life, namely, if your archaeologist brother invites you to Italy, you go. It is because of this rule I’ve gotten to see random dusty patches of earth outside of Roman suburbs, the best Irish bar near the Vatican, gotten to see my brother in his element, as much as I can.

McKenzie and Karlyn’s wedding was in Radda a Chianti, a small town in the hills of Tuscany, a place so beautiful I would have thought him exaggerating if he tried to use words to tell me about it. It was so wonderful for them to bring us all there, to show us what they love about where they met, show us what it is about this one hilltop in Italy that keeps them coming back, again and again, and I promise, if I ever find my camera, I’ll upload pictures and try to show you myself.

(It was also wonderful for them to give us the opportunity to spend a healthy 30 minutes discussing possible captions of the [hypothetical] “Girls of Cetamura” calendar; contenders include: “Get Your Rocks Off!” “Archaeologists Like it Deep!” and “Bone Diggers.” It’s the little things, really, that keep us together.)

ANYWAY- Congratulations, McKenzie and Karlyn, and thank you, again, for bringing us out. It was fantastic.

Read Full Post »

I loved my friend Lucy’s wedding vows so much that when I had to plan my own wedding ceremony, I blatantly stole them.

Our anniversary seems to be a good time to revisit, especially since we’re so busy and stressed that we’re basically hanging on by a thread, promising to just be polite to each other until after this month is over.

I take you to be no other than yourself,

Loving what I know of you,

trusting what I don’t yet know.

I promise to express my love for you

in all ways possible

to share in your pleasure and in your pain

and to let you share in my own

I promise to help you and to comfort you,

to trust you and to deserve your trust,

Through all our years,

and in all that life may bring us,

I pledge my life as your partner

To quote from a reading we read during the ceremony, “these vows are our way of saying to each other: ‘You know all those things we’ve promised and hoped and dreamed- well, I meant it all, every word.'”

I meant it all, honey. Every word.

PS: In “Trusting Things You Don’t Yet Know”, I suspect you now know that when I say”We’ll see,” that is code for “Not going to happen”, right? xoxo.

Read Full Post »

We had to write essay’s detailing why we wanted to volunteer at the Warrior Games this week. That’s a fair request – my company is paying for the whole trip, including our time away from our clients, they had a right to ask us to detail why we think we should receive such an honor.

It was an easy essay for me to write. If the purpose of the Warrior Games is to promote rehabilitation through competition and athletics, well, I can relate to that. (I was a heart patient before I was a triathlete, right?). If it’s to honor our troops who have sacrificed greatly in service to our country, well, I look at my veteran husband and can relate to that, too. But the essay was about me, and what the games meant to me, and that was probably the first indication that I had no idea what I was doing here this week.

It’s only Wednesday. The games aren’t over, and I haven’t even begun to process the final outcome of what it means to be out here, doing this, for me, but especially for them. I’m not sure I can process how hard it was for me to look into the eyes of a 20 year old whose face was completely covered in bandages, as the skin had all been burned off, and how disappointed I was in myself for not being able to take it in stride. Or how I looked at a blind double amputee and thought, “He swims faster than me. Holy god.” Or how I see an athlete who appears to be able bodied, and know that the injuries I can’t see might be the worst of all.

I worked yesterday at the preliminary round of the seated volleyball competition. The Marines were killing it (of course they were), but all the athletes were amazing. The athletes with legs were complaining that their legs were getting in the way of their moving around the court, and they were right. There was one call I had to make, a serve that went juuuuuuust a bit outside, and I swear I thought the entire Army team, in addition to their 50 spectators, were going to rush the field and kick my everloving ass. It was the most intense sporting event I’ve ever been to, and I prayed for the game to be won definitively, not by a line judge call, so I could leave there without armed escort, and that’s pretty much the moment I stopped seeing the missing legs and fingers and started cheering for these athletes.

Read Full Post »

Hi all! Just wanted to throw a gratutious self pimp out there to let you know that I’ll be contributing to the Waypoint Group’s blog, “Customer Insight= Revenue”. I’ve worked in the field of client satisfaction/quality programs for awhile, and the guys at Waypoint are doing some great thinking/writing regarding the field as a whole. I’m thrilled they asked me to contribute, and excited to have another outlet with which to complain about bad customer service (United Airlines, I am STILL looking at you.)

Oh, I’m just kidding, this field is more than just complaining – there are some really great school of thought regarding the best and most profitable ways to leverage customer feedback, and I’m glad to be included as a contributing mind.

I know this is interesting to exactly 1% of the population, but that 1% is you, feel free to go check it out!

Read Full Post »