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Regaining Charge

J was about ten when I experienced a series of hardships ballooning into an unmanageable mess. While I was able to keep our unit of two afloat, my batteries were completely drained and could not be recharged. It was a year-long struggle and every bit of energy I could summon up was spent in creating the facade of normal for the kid. I would wake up on time, make breakfast and get her ready for school. For that hour, I was the mom she had always known. Once she left the house, I curled back up in bed feeling the walls closing in on me. There was simply no way I could leave the bed and not feel horrible - this was my only safe place. It was an incredible blessing that my work was remote and our conference calls did not involve video. My laptop always sat on the nightstand in those days. So I would work from bed until it was time for me to prep a snack for J and pick her up from school. It was also the time, the I finally made my bed. The rest of the afternoon, I worked from the kitchen t

Fake Wisdom

Read this very self-serving and blithely oblivious to reality piece of wisdom predictably dispensed by a rich and entitled tech bro. If I had to guess he rose to the level that he did in large part on account of being at the right place at the time while being a white male. His worldview seems rather myopic. As such , he picks on the poor, hapless Eloise who has correctly sized up that she is in a dead-end team where leadership has no strategy or vision and no matter what she does she has no path forward, she will just spin like a hamster in its wheel with the chance of promotion dangled before her just a bit out of reach so she continues to spin away and do the relentless grunt work needed to keep mismanaged things from falling apart.  This is the reality of life that even the supposedly unintelligent, unsophisticated and non-big picture seeing lowest guy in the totem is able to size up fairly quickly. Eloise made the mistake of speaking truth to power in this instance and became the

Train Living

Such an interesting way to work remotely - just live in a train . It seems to be working out for someone:  Lasse travels 600 miles a day throughout Germany aboard Deutsche Bahn trains. He travels first class, sleeps on night trains, has breakfast in DB lounges and takes showers in public swimming pools and leisure centres, all using his unlimited annual railcard. Having to carry your material belongings with you at all times and be on the move has a certain ascetic quality to it. The story made me wonder, if I person kept at this way of life for long enough would they ever want to return to a stationary and "normal" way of life where your belongings no longer fit in a backpack. Maybe this notion of being free to leave any moment is a function of youth. I know a few young people with similar dreams and recall how into my thirties I often took stock of my belongings and asked the question if it could all fit in the trunk of my car. If not, I probably had too much. This test hel

Unwanted Wishes

I had the amusing experience of S (one of my best friends from high school) call me on International Women's Day to ask if it was okay for him to wish me on the occasion. He was concerned I would be  offended and consider such action pejorative. As it turns out he had seen a flurry of angry exchanges between folks (we both knew from back in the day) when men had wished women. S was very sure there was no ill-will from the men but their felicitations were very poorly received. We chatted for a bit, caught up on things but S was not sure he would risk congratulating any other women that day - too stressful and not worth the trouble. I told S I would not be receptive to wishes from random guys (people I work with or know socially etc.) because chances are I am dealing with a man who makes it difficult for me to negotiate the world as a woman.  Being wished on Women's Day by a man of this ilk would feel like insult upon injury - I would be unhappy. For this to work and not become a

New Baseline

I was chatting with another parent with grown-up kids about how we dodged the bullet by getting kids out of college before the time of ChatGPT and the like. That conversation left me thinking about why we both felt that way - what harm can come to the process of educating a child due to AI, how much of it is the fear of unknown versus feeling inadequate about seizing the opportunity that is now available.  Reading this excerpt about Swami Vivekananda's views on what education is and is not, helped clarify my thinking a bit. If education is the manifestation of perfection already in us, then the presence of AI should not feel threatening at all. We can perhaps enlist as one of the many tools to help manifest that perfection - maybe it even helps with doing that. Information or access to information is not education:  “If education is identical with information, the libraries are the greatest sages in the world, and encyclopedias are the rishis.” Access to and assimilation of inform

Line Crossing

Just got done reading Kristi Coulter's Exit Interview and would highly recommend it to one and all - not just current or former Amazon employees (though they would be the most edified of all). She had a great story to tell and it is told extremely well. The core of what makes this company (and others similar to it) so incredibly hard to survive is captured with authenticity. No matter what you do, its never good enough, never world-changing enough and so on. And if you are not superhuman don't even bother to get recognized. On the off-chance that you are superhuman, then make sure you are at the right place and the right time being observed by the right people so they can shine a light on your superhumanity. While you wait for those multifarious miracles to visit you, be prepared to see others who don't seem to bring anything to the table beyond what you do (if that), hop skip and jump ahead. Their proof points will remain a complete mystery to you. You will be told to bel

Pot Stirring

I don't know that I can agree with this idea of women needing to ignore all the popular wisdom about career . A mentor can be from outside the organization entirely and from a different business. They should be selected on the basis on their own accomplishments which the mentee might want to emulate. The championship is not a required criteria. Any person should have several mentors not just women. Changing the way you speak is also gender neutral in a sense.  There is company specific speech coding people do need to adapt if they want to get ahead, be considered an insider and so on. This means adapting you speech to smooth out what is not considered company-speak. Failing to make these corrections may impact women disproportionately depending on on male-centric the company's culture is. It seems unwise to deny such reality. Being confident in many situations is to take on a big hairy audacious goal and believing you have what it takes to deliver. If you don't do as well a