I’m stuck in a hotel and watching the cable I don’t have at home while I fly around the world via the amazing Internet. As I flip through the channels I discover Donny Deutsch interviewing the PB Loco founders. I then thought back to a First Crack Podcast by Garrick where he interviewed the same team.
My world just got a little smaller and Garrick just got one degree of separation closer to Donny Deutsch. Life is odd.
Often we humans don’t think things through. You can start down a path and realize much later that if you had thought it through, you may have been able to forsee unintended consequences. It’s important to think things through, I don’t think that happens enough.
I’m interested in this notion and my husband is the one who brought it to my attention. I’m sure I’ll be thinking about this topic some more.
Ever noticed how many songs, album titles, band names contain the word broken? I was cleaning out my library and I searched for the band Broken West and it struck me that ‘broken’ brought back more results than I would have thought it would.
I’ve always made a point to celebrate my birthday. In fact, as I was discussing this with some colleagues that have founded their own company, they are considering instituting some kind of mandatory day off for your birthday at their outfit. That would be the kind of benefit that would definitely get me interested in a company. 
As it turns out though, my mom spoiled me rotten. She made our birthdays out to be such huge awesome events that nobody could ever make me feel quite that special in my future life. We didn’t have much money at all when I was growing up, so I think that’s why I (and my sisters too on their birthdays) got even more attention. Big elaborate plans were made, special themed cakes were prepared, my favorite food was always present, I was always consulted regarding the party planning, and somehow I always seemed to get some amazing gift I wanted that my parents probably should not have been spending their money on.
So then I grew up. As the years went on my poor husband, without any real knowledge of the history of my birthdays at home, ended up gettting this pressure put upon him. I didn’t realize I was doing it and this year it all kind of came to a disturbing and unpleasant head. It was an oddly rough year. I think it had to do with the fact that I’m getting old and because it was a Tuesday, but for some reason, I just could not be satisfied with anything yesterday. My poor husband tried to make me happy all day and nothing seemed or felt right. I was of course very verbal about this and made his life pretty rough all day long.
Luckily, my husband is patient and kind. After I finally stopped being such a brat (mind you almost the entire day went this way-except for VERY brief moments), we sat and we talked about what my major malfunction was and I now know, more than ever, that communication is vital to good marriages. You have to push through the ickiness and the bad behavior. You have to be patient and kind (like my awesome husband) and if you can manage this, you’ll get to the core issues of what is bothering you so much faster.
In the end, the birthday turned out wonderful. I got an awesome gift from my awesome husband and we saw one of the best movies ever at the $1 theater. I think the best gift of all though, a gift you can’t go out and buy, was how my husband spent the end of the day with me, talking, caring, listening, and helping. He forgave that bad behavior and helped me understand where it came from. I’m a lucky, lucky girl.
This is it. The last day of 2006. I’m a little sad because i really liked this year. I liked the way it started and I like how it is ending. I like the round even number of the ’6′ and I like the fact that we got our democracy back into more of a balanced state this year. And then we ended with three monumental deaths, a president, a dictator, and the godfather of soul. Goodbye to them and goodbye to 2006.
I have so many things to be thankful for this year. I love my work and home lives. I have a happy and healthy family. I’m well into my 30′s and have kept health issues to a minimum. The one I’ve been thinking about lately is how lucky I was to have been born in the middle of the heartland in this country. I have had so many opportunities because I am American and was born this way.
This holiday let’s us step back and think about why we are thankful. How lucky we are to be able to even think about such a thing.
Sometimes you get taken out. Your body takes over and takes away your ability to participate in life. It might be a broken limb, a disease, a sudden accident and many many things of lesser and worse degrees.
I got that experience over the last several days. It was a tooth. A bundle of nerves in my mouth that went on to get infected. Five days of coping with pain. It’s the kind of thing that recenters you. It makes you realize how important health is and how lucky to live somewhere that I can be fixed. This could have easily killed me without proper medical care. A slow and painful death too.
But it’s over. I’m back with the living. I missed you.
I had a memory earlier today. It was about grade school music class. We were being taught a song that we were to sing in rounds. All the rounds were about how America was great. ‘My country rocks…’ etc. It was a fine song and all but propaganda none the less.
Hmmmmm. So many influences guide us. It’s hard to say how we become what we are because some of it must be unconscious. These experiences that seep in unnoticed because we are young or for some other reason. It’s a good example of why it’s not such a bad idea to question what you are being told.
I haven’t heard people talking about this, but it’s definitely happening. Things that get put out there on the Internet find people to look at them. Maybe it’s a few friends listening to your new rock song ala myspace. I have found that this digital world has given me so many more ways to interact and create. Better yet, so many more ways to share that creation with friends. I feel so lucky. All of these ways of creating are becoming more accessible. If you have something to say, it’s so much easier to find people that want to listen. We are all more connected now. I know there are people that fear all this time people spend on computers these days but those people are not taking into account what is being done during that time and the growth and human connection that really is occurring.
The world is changing. I guess I’m just constantly amazed and excited by it. It’s really fun to watch, experience and participate in.
I wonder why there is this triad. I know in my life when there has been a death, there have always been two more to follow. Women all over the country have lost three strong, important and diverse figures in the last few days. When I woke up yesterday and heard that Betty Friedan had died, it was the third. Wendy Wasserstein, Coretta Scott King and Betty Friedan are gone now. We are sadder for it. Thank you ladies, we’ll miss your influence and the things you might have done. I am extremely grateful to all of you for the things that you did do.
I have one very fond memory of a Wendy Wasserstein play. It was a college show I was in. It was an excerpt from one of Ms. Wasserstein’s plays. I had a sign and I marched for ‘Women in Art’. It was one of the best scenes and one of the best characters I ever experienced and I have her to thank for that.
I’m sure all of these women touched so many people they never even met. The only thing to do now is to keep that memory and let it inspire us to do better with the time we have left.
