Back in 1997, before Apple was cool. That’s my then Mac-consultant hubby begging the technology giant not to fold. Through the good, bad and ugly, they persevered. (Note the really lax landscaping…yeah, it was that bad.)
* “Shipping” refers to a challenge lots of Seth Godin followers took in January with his project manager, Winnie to show up every day and deliver. It’s an example I’m trying to follow. (Some days are harder than others!)
Have you ever gotten so excited to finally clear out the cobwebs, clutter, old emails or the like, only to find out it ain’t all that easy?
I suppose this is true of lots of things we want to swiftly clean out of our lives.
Today, I’m in a perpetual arm-wrestle with Gmail and Apple mail as I try to clear out a massively overcrowded inbox (OK, two inboxes). I’ve hit my limit and want to see it all cleared out.
But it’s just not that simple.
Call it an “ID10T” error or blind ambition, but I’m determined to win this – or, at least act like I won it. That inbox won’t be quite at zero, but it’ll be much, much closer. For me, that’s a “W.”
I’m on a mission.
I have a very special friend, Kris, who is lovely and complicated and talented – all in the best possible ways. We met at work over 10 years ago and still share similar – not identical by any means – but similar interests and passions.
One is a love of things creative. I’m definitely more of an observer and Kris is more of a Maker – in the truest sense. Some people sew (I try), knit or crochet.
Well, she does all of the above (and way more), often using her own exotic fibers and textiles and tools she procures from all over the world. It’s not the exotic that makes her talented. It’s what she does with her God-given abilities, powered by the tools, that is so spectacular. And she is so open to sharing and teaching. (Check out this great project she’s involved with that is empowering women in Uganda to generate their own income and support their families.)
Just a few of my friend Kris’s handmade journal gifts. I usually have at least one journal with me, wherever I go. If the occasion is special enough, I use one of hers.
While I don’t know what the heck she is talking about half the time, I simply LOVE hearing her dream about and brainstorm her projects. It certainly doesn’t hurt that she shares – pretty liberally, I might add – her incredible handiwork. Kris has gifted me with some of my favorite writing instruments, beautiful handmade scarves and so many gorgeous journals, I can hardly count them.
Lord knows, as a paper-and-pulp lover, I hate to violate these pieces of artwork, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Like many I know, I love to write by hand, but it is getting harder and harder to write as fast as I’m thinking these days. Such is the plight of a straddling generation – one foot in the analog, the other, digital.
Anyway, Kris, who did much of her growing up in West Africa, challenged me sometime ago to blog about my own international experience and travels.
Thing is, many of those memories are locked up in my travel journals…somewhere. I’m getting warmer in my search, but so far, those little pocket-sized Moleskines are eluding me.
To be honest, I’m kind of nervous about finding and unbundling them and rediscovering what I first learned on my first trip to Haiti in 2003 and one of my last trips to Dominican Republic. So I pray again for courage as that wall of memory comes down.
I guess que será será.
I’m really happy there is finally some representation of ethnic families with sitcoms like ABC’s “Blackish” and “Cristela.” Most weeks Blackish makes me laugh until I cry. Culturally, though, I relate most to Cristela.
While I don’t find Cristela’s mom’s character entirely believable as a first-generation American, I can appreciate the lessons she teaches.
Tonight’s episode especially hit home with me.
ABC’s Cristela’s mom Natalia (Terri Hoyos) defends a difficult parenting decision. (Source: Cristela FB page)
In this episode, Cristela’s mom, Natalia, reveals she had not entered Cristela, now a 20- or 30-something legal intern, into the gifted and talented program when she was a little girl because “people like us” didn’t belong in “fancy programs” like that. Basically, they would have been aiming too high, beyond their social status.
Cristela’s character eventually comes to appreciate her mother’s decision, made out of the desire to protect her. Natalia was, after all, a single mom doing the best she could for her young family.
This struggle triggered something in me I totally didn’t expect – a belated appreciation for my mom’s determination to ensure my best possible future.
It actually set off my tear ducts.
[Cue high school memory scene.]
One time, in high school, I came home with less-than-perfect grades – mostly As, with a couple of A- and a B+. I was so excited to show my mom! She would be so proud.
“You can do better.” That was her response.
What??? I can do what??? You mean, that wasn’t good enough?
I carried this disbelief, the shock and the sense that I’d disappointed my mom for – well, let’s just say it went on far too long.
What I didn’t realize then that I realize now – and, truly, especially after watching Cristela tonight – was that my mom was pushing me to aim higher.
Nothing at all wrong with protecting one’s kids from ridicule and humiliation. My mom, however, was willing to take that risk – taking me with her – of not being accepted for being different (which, by this age, I was pretty good at).
As someone who had to leave school at 12 to work and support her family, she knew working harder would grow both my character and my capacity. She knew I could do better.
My mom has never done anything less than teach me to be strong, have faith and, in the face of difficulty, get back up and dust myself off.
As we approach in a few weeks what would have been my parents’ 60th anniversary, I can’t help but be grateful for her strength and endurance since losing my dad nearly 30 years ago.
She remains my best girlfriend and biggest cheerleader. Even today, the way she lives her life is a reminder that we can always do better. So I will.
I miss our frequent visits to the Bay Area for conferences. I seriously could stare at this view. All. Day. Long. (Image: Axel Anta)
Or at least, what lies just ahead.
Work (or anything, really) can be like a fog, occupying our minds and keeping our lives busy, too full to accommodate one more idea or commitment. Certainly no room for dreaming.
After months on a fairly sizable freelance project, I’m taking off for a few weeks.
On this first day off, there was no pile of work to plow through. No emails to answer or meetings to attend.
Free to think, breathe and generally just chill, I found clarity like I hadn’t had in sometime. Oh, the peace.
Jeremiah 29:11
Sometimes I look back through my social media posts to see what they tell me about where my heart and mind have been the last few months.
It looks like lately, I’ve mentioned – a lot – the longer days, starting with Dec. 22, the day after winter solstice. I used not to care a lot about winter (or summer) solstice – the shortest and longest days of the year, respectively.
These days, I care a whole lot about them. I guess it’s because they have everything to do with getting to the other side: the other side of winter, short days, cold. Or, the other side of tennis season – a break for my body and muscles, a time to slow down with the seasons.
I won’t lie – I love winter solstice most. Because on the other side of that is spring, summer, my garden, new life, fresh perspective for a new year.
There was a time, for about five years, when I spent a lot of time on airplanes, trying to get to the other side of the world and back again.
Most of those trips lasted 10-15 days each. A few were longer. One thing I learned then was this mind-blowing fact about myself: I’m a home body. I love to be home.
Good thing my name comes from Latin “nido,” meaning “nest.” Because I took my nest with me wherever I went, settling into my aisle seats with music, pillow, book, travel wallet, journal and favorite writing pens.
I would set up for the long haul – literally – and miss home every minute I was away. Never mind the wonderful relationships on the outbound side. Nothing ever can replace those. I just like to be home, that’s all.
So I had to devise a strategy for keeping myself “up” for the duration of each trip, whether I was there for training, story-gathering, meetings or whatever. I prayed for health and strength and presence for what I went there to do.
What I came up with was this very simple formula: Imagine myself on the other side of my trip. Imagine what I’d do when I first got home, besides eat a cheeseburger. That didn’t count. Enjoy friendships, spend time with my hubby, get groceries, talk to my mom every day. Simple things.
So on every trip, each day I would tell myself: In 9 days, I’ll be home in my own bed, or In 3 days, I head back on the midnight flight.
Knowing I was working in my strengths – bringing clarity to issues around children in poverty and equipping others for the same – gave me assurance I was in the right place at the right time. That helped a lot.
But when I missed home, I just imagined myself back with my family, and that peace carried me from that moment all the way through the rest of the trip.
That was how I got to the other side: by imagining it.
There’s been a lot of talk about fear lately – of overcoming fear to find your voice, be yourself, etc.
In the end, says novelist Karen Thompson Walker, fear is just another story that propels imagination.
If we approach fear – one of a number of possible stories – with the “coolness of judgement of a scientist,” Walker says, we can face it with more clarity, as one of many choices, and make better decisions.
Take a listen to Walker’s illuminating perspective.
Good days are like that.
They can start out feeling like you can’t see the forest for the trees, and then – all of a sudden, the path is straight. Before long, you’re in a clearing and, while the destination is a long way off, with new clarity, you know exactly where you’re going.
Just keep your head down and keep paddling. You’ll get there.
I recently reloaded content from a very old, long-running blog and just finished scanning it to see the type of stuff I wrote about. This is what I learned:
That last one kind of stings.
Considering that time in my life changed my life completely, I sure managed to suppress how much poverty had taught me – how much I’d learned, how much I had let go of.
Still, in the words of Heather B. Armstrong, one of the first professional bloggers to monetize her blog before monetizing was cool:
“BE YE NOT SO STUPID. Never write about work on the internet unless your boss knows and sanctions that YOU ARE WRITING ABOUT WORK ON THE INTERNET.”
So I journaled (privately) a lot about work. I’m sure many people do. Maybe it’s what keeps us from breaking the law.
Anyway, I also had long hauls of multi-hour flights, with plenty of time to write about everything from:
That was the light stuff.
In fact, what I’d never blogged about is what weighed (then and now) heavily on my heart. It’s also the third – and so far, missing – leg on this blog’s intended three-legged stool: culture, communications and cause.
I’m not sure exactly how the topic of cause – of poverty – will unfold, but it’s feeling more and more like it’s time to let it happen. I’m praying for the courage to go there next.
When I was a pre-teen, I really struggled with a sense of not belonging. We’d just moved cross-country to South Texas where, culturally, I should’ve fit in like a hand in a glove.
It didn’t quite happen that way.
Once again, I wasn’t in the majority. Even though I looked like everyone else, I stuck out, but in a different way than I’d stuck out in Indiana. I couldn’t be called out anymore for having “hair that didn’t match any of [my] clothes” or “being left in the oven for too long.” In Texas, I wasn’t “Hispanic enough” for the locals.
Back in the Midwest, I was usually the 2nd or 3rd Hispanic kid in the entire school. Add to that being a pastor’s kid and you really got looked at like you had three heads. In Texas, people’s eyes got big when they thought my dad was a priest.
I’ve spent a lot of my life being different, and by now, I’m more used to that than I am fitting right in with crowds or conforming to norms.
Somehow, by the grace of God, when I was about 12 or 13, I felt a sudden awareness that there was really not that much to worry about, at least when it came to feeling like I looked funny, dressed funny, or that others were always talking about me behind my back.
Sidenote: There’s this very sad paranoia that goes with that difficult age that just haunts most of us, and I can’t even imagine the pressures on today’s young people. My heart aches for them. Add social media, of course – it all blows up.
Anyway, suddenly I knew I didn’t need to worry about that anymore. Other people were just as busy spending time worrying about their well being, reputation or sense of belonging as I was.
If I was too busy navel-gazing to worry about them, the same had to be true of them with regard to me.
And that was that.
From that day on, I kind lost my interest in giving in to the fabricated peer pressure that had held me hostage. Now, I’m not in any way saying I’ve never suffered from that since. There are, after all, relapses in adulthood, you know.
I’m just saying that, when we consider we are all human, we share much more in common than we have differences.
And you know what – it’s all right. We are normal. We are human. And that, to me, is beautiful common ground.
Whatever you do, don’t give up. You’re not alone.
poor mexican gone 
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