Career Rocket Fuel

Read a great article this morning by Brian Fetherstonhaugh in my half awake zombie-ness state on how to think about your career. It's so true, in my opinion, that younger people often don't give much thought to their career paths beyond years 2 and 3 or even that next promotion. We should give more thought to the years of peak earning power, which occurs in your late 30s and 40s.

Read here.

Work Life Balance: Still a Very REAL Dilemma for us Ladies

This Linkedin post by entrepreneur Inge Geerdens really irked me when I read it the other day. Basically she expresses a mild level of exasperation in having to field questions from people about balancing her work and home life that her male counterparts don't have to deal with. As she states,

"Being a female entrepreneur has its upsides, but also its disadvantages. Like having to find an answer to the question I - contrary to my male colleagues ? - get asked a lot. “As a mother of three children, how do you balance your work and your private life?”"

Um, hello, Ms Geerdens? In case you didn't notice, this is a very real issue that characterizes the very being of working mothers. People wouldn't be asking these questions and highlighting this imbalance if it didn't exist. She goes on to reveal the true reason that having to balance work and home life has never been an issue for her:

"At some point in our life my husband and I had the feeling we weren’t around enough for our children and we had to make a choice. And we did: we decided I would expand my business, while my husband became a stay-at-home dad helping me as well, but mainly during school hours...My husband and I make a great team. We found a way to live the life we love, without feeling guilty. So the answer is: I never have to think about a balance. I work with the people I like, I live with the people I love and I love the job I do."

Is this a footnote? An asterisk? No, it defines - and is the sole and key reason - her situation and experience are unlike that of other ambitious, family-loving women. And she inserted it in there breezily, giving it a lot less credit than it deserved for why she was able to have the "great life" any right-minded, hard-working woman would want. Her post would have been tons more helpful if she described how she was able to snag a man like that. Sadly her experience reinforced the fact that to make it to the upper echelons of the corporate world, there have to be career sacrifices made by one party of the relationship if children are in the picture. More often than not, that ends up being the mother.

Unfortunately Ms Geerdens, you are the exception, and not the rule.

An Insight on Working

I REALLY am appreciating weekends now as a working gal. I feel like I am holding the proverbial breath all week long during workdays, and then when Friday night arrives I just let out that breath in a sigh of relief. Other things I didn't consider joys during my time as a student but now are finding as real treats? Free time. Reading the news. Blogging. My blog really misses me. I know it. We used to be such good friends. Can you forgive me? < 3

Tonight, instead of staying in as I have been recently on Friday nights in order to R&R, I went to a Jason Mraz concert with my sister and friends. He is so, so good live. I am not a concert person. I have never understood the appeal of listening to an artist who sounds like a dream on your iPod, but sounds like they are piercing your bubble while live. In short, I don't go to concerts. But I'm really glad I went to this one. Jason Mraz must be one of the very few on this earth who sounds just as good, if not better, live as he does on his recordings. I was so entertained. And happy I took the extra effort to do something fun and different on a Friday night, breaking my domestic streak. See what I mean about becoming a very dull person in the working world?

My Mind is Getting in the Way of my Thinking

This weekend is hosting-my-family-at-the-apartment weekend. It's been a bit stressful, planning things for them to do, making sure they're well-rested and happy, all the while thinking about how much work I have waiting for me on Monday when I return.

This is where my scatterbrain-ness really does me a disservice than any other time. I think my ability to remember things is negatively correlated with my stress level. Even in moments where I am supposed to be in partial or pure relaxation, I find my mind wandering and trying to make a mental checklist of all the things I need to do. I'll be reading a magazine and thinking, what was that ONE gosh darn thing I forgot to put on my to-do list? Or lying in savasana in my yoga practice and thinking about how I'll sequence the ever-accumulating tasks I have for work. I need to prioritize my tasks. All tasks are priority. I'm always thinking about work. I don't want to, but my mind involuntarily starts thinking about it, perusing it. I'm doing it right now. RIGHT NOW, as I'm blogging. I make checklists in numerous spots so I have no centralized checklist and sometimes I'll have to make a checklist to make sure I've remembered where all my checklists are.

Help? I need the Yoga Cove.

The Q Center

Programming is hard. If I had become a Computer Science major in school I most likely would have flunked out. Every day in class I find myself staring at lines of gibberish with a blank look on my face. For the past week, this has pretty much been the routine each time we get a different activity to code.
1) Open program and stare for a long time. Click around Power Points and sample coding in hopes of finding answer.
2) Twirl hair for a bit and look around to see what everyone else is doing. (They all seem to be busy at work.) Try to google the answer (rarely find it).
3) Ping friend and ask for code. If not available, get up and go find snack. Sometimes coffee too. This part is going to cause me to gain an exponential amount of weight.
4) Play around on phone, check email, look at work stuff. Basically neglect the activity at hand. If I'm feeling brave that day, try to input some code. If not, use Office Communicator and Gchat until instructor looks over my shoulder.
5) Ask instructor tons of stupid questions. They start doing some of the coding and answering said stupid questions.
6) Instructor shows class the solution. I feel a little better for understanding some of it, but immediately feel like an idiot again when we move on to the next activity.

Other than that Chicago's been fun. I'm adapting to the cold weather better than I thought I would (this is probably also due to the fact that I haven't been outdoors in days). The atmosphere is friendly and cordial, but I think everyone also is anxious about getting adjusted into their roles and finding their first project. I know I am. I want to go out and have fun, but in the back of my mind I know right now is not supposed to be playtime. I need to take advantage of this time before work really starts to get acquainted with the organization and its internal workings.

I'm a little sad I didn't bring my camera USB cord to upload the pictures I've been taking. They would have been nice to post, but I guess I'll just do that when I get back. After 3.5 weeks here, I'm sure I'll be pretty happy to go back to LA. I miss my family, including my dog. I was just looking at pictures of her and my brother told me she got fatter. I believe it. Our family is very bad at keeping pets healthy. Nina gained so much weight when she was with us, thanks to my dad's incessant feeding. Oy.

Brandon: k i know

  can u guess how many friends iu have on facebook?

10:59 PM me: you or me

 Brandon: whoops

  me

 me: 14

11:00 PM i see it on your profile

 Brandon: yea

  thats a lot right

 me: yah

  guess how many i have

 Brandon: 830 i saw on your profile

  oh wait

11:01 PM are you mocking me?

I also miss friends back at home. Sometimes I'll see something cool here and wish they were here so we could laugh/talk/make fun of it together. Soon enough!

System.out.println("2 weeks to go");

A White Christmas

Mom: Wear a lot of coats and warm socks. It's so cold in Chicago you feel like your ears are going to fall off. You don't want to freeze and have your ears fall off and then you won't feel like going to training anymore. Eat a lot and stay warm or else you'll collapse. That's bad.