From Here to Autonomy

Passing the Gymboree Test

Last week I signed up Olive for Gymboree; actually I guess I signed both of us up. Weekends have become my time with Olive, given she's with Daddy full-time during the week. He gets on his new custom cross-bike, helps me tuck Liv into her stroller and sees us on our way. Previous Saturdays I followed her around the house, took her to the park, ran errands, read to her and tried to coax her into taking a nap. I craved more structured time with her, where she could be around other kids, where she could play age appropriate games and stand on things meant for little people.

Liv is on the cusp of two of the Gymboree-defined age cohorts. The group leader suggested we go for the older-kid session, due to her inclination to climb on everything and verbally refuse to do things. As soon as I get her shoes and jacket off she runs to a climbing structure. She attempts to run up the attached slide and succeeds. When the group leader starts to sing, a subtle call to parents to corral our youngsters and engage in a group activity, I attempt to nudge her toward the center of the room, but she'll have none of it.

After a group song, the group leader sets a large, padded cylinder across two brackets and invites the kids to walk across. Liv wants to go first. Then Liv wants to go again. Then Liv wants to go again.

"Let's let Ella go now, Liv," I say, referring to the youngster standing next to us with her dad.

"Zane is going now Sweetie. Let Zane go."

"Will you let William go? Let's let William get on."

Later, Liv spots Ella with two balls and makes her way over to her to relieve her of one. I know I am supposed to apologize to Ella's Dad for Liv's presumption. And he does his part as well.

"Share your ball, Ella," he says.

Liv bumps into a little boy.

"Oh please do excuse us!" I say.

Liv slides down a makeshift slide and then attempts to walk up it when Haley is trying to go down.

"You've had your turn, Liv. Now let the other kids go."

Liv walks up to a girl and half-waves.

"Wave back at Olive," her Mom says.

"Say hello, Liv!" I say.

The group leader lays out a parachute, blows bubbles into the air, and invites all the parents and their toddler to join her there. Liv stands on the center of the parachute, watching the bubbles float over her head and slowly drop to the floor.

"Come join Mama, Liv! C'mon! C'mon! C'mon! C'mon! Cmon!" I start singing the parachute song to the pretend child in my lap. I am the sucker who keeps clapping my hands when the clapping stops and everyone places their hand on their heads. The only other person whose hands are not on her head is Liv.

"Bub-boos … Bub-boos." She says to the air.

The class is already ending. It was built to be short, like a child's attention span. I'm exhausted and watch Liv run across the room to another apparatus. I know it is my job to follow her.

"Come get shoes on, Liv."

She shakes her head no.

Ella and her Dad are about to leave.

"Say goodbye to Olive," Ella's Dad says. Ella weakly waves. Olive stares back,

"Say bye-bye Liv.

Say bye-bye!

Say bye-bye!

Say bye-bye!

Say bye-bye!

Say bye-bye!

OK, wave bye-bye!

Wave bye-bye!

Look at Ella!

Wave bye-bye!

I tell her there's juice near her shoes; if she follows me to them she can have some. I lied. Before she discovers this is the case I grab her, put her on my lap and put on her shoes.

We both need a nap. Once home the phone rings; it's my husband calling from the top of some peak he just climbed with his new bike.

"How'd she do?" he asks.

I say: "We did fine."

The Disappearance of Downtime

Before becoming an entrepreneur, I set out to write for a living. This sounds like a fantastical existence, but it was actually hard, even if joyous, work. I woke up early in the morning, walked to a coffee shop, and started reading--anything. It didn't matter what I read; the process of focusing on something unrelated to my writing task and caffeine constituted the formula required to tap my creative well. After 45 minutes or so thoughts would bubble up, and my only job was to collect them. Editing would come later in the afternoon, when my mind was tired out and drained of inspiration for the day. I knew to give myself the entire morning for the creative process, even if it yielded only 100 words. Looking back, this process was a pure luxury.

Later, when my company was new--no employees yet, just us founders--I used to plan my day around optimizing productivity, and gone were the mornings that I dedicated to creating. Since much of my work involved communication with sponsors and partners on the East Coast, I reserved the mornings for "busy work"--calls and email primarily. And creative tasks that required more uninterrupted focus time, such as writing proposals or blog posts, I reserved for the afternoon. We didn't have an office, so if I wasn't meeting with my partners in person at a cafe or one of our houses, I did my busy work primarily at home and my uninterrupted work at nearby coffee shops.

Of course, as the business grew, this separation between busy and focus time became much more difficult to maintain. People--God forbid--would occasionally call me back in the afternoon, in the middle of my focus time. Increasingly I found I always needed to speak with people when they called, and I de-prioritized my focus time to the free crevices in my afternoon, which didn't really exist. I tried to schedule in time for creativity like I did appointments--in a short and specific timeframe. I could no longer wait around for ideas to percolate in my mind. I had to force them to come during the period I'd designated to briefly focus. Creative ideas were stifled, deprived of the air they needed to be really great. This bothered me for a long time, but, I reasoned, most professionals have to deal with the pressures of meetings and deadlines. If I was going to grow my business effectively I had to be more productive. I had to back away from things like writing blog posts and reading to stimulate creative thought.

When we received venture funding and hired employees we moved into an office, taking away the change of scenery that normally signaled my uninterrupted focus time, and new activities--meetings, and normal face to face interactions with people--began to fill in. I found pockets of time to sit and think, usually during my hour-long commute to and from the office, but as our East Coast staff grew that time was increasingly used to touch base with clients and colleagues. I would get to our office parking lot not even remembering the drive to work.

As I traveled more I realized that there were built-in periods of disconnectedness when no one could reach me, and I could not reach them even if I wanted to. During these times I finished presentations, sketched out strategies, caught up on business trades, perhaps even wrote a blog post or two. Having this time was what made traveling constantly for the past five years bearable. I knew that once I got off the plane there would be no time to focus anymore; my life would consist of a brief and intense series of trains, taxis, meetings, working lunches, and periods of "downtime", in between used to catch up on email and make calls.

Every year at this time I look at my schedule while it is only marginally complicated compared to how it looked at the end of the previous year, and I ask myself the same question--how do I build in more uninterrupted focus time? And why, during the holidays when I make time to relax and reflect, do I find it so difficult to focus? The blog posts that I expected to ooze out of me have more like sputtered out incoherently. When I have periods of crucial time, like now, I think of all the small quickie tasks that I could be knocking out instead. I check email, my Facebook page, my Twitter feed, my calendar. I realize that I am out of practice.

And I realize that there is an ongoing argument occurring in my mind--the more eloquent side sharing that the multitude means of communication that exist today are not only personally convenient and enriching, but justify my work in social media. I've succeeded because of this shift in the balance of downtime and our obsession with being always on. And I've been plagued by it--the time that I used to take to allow creativity to manifest has evaporated into busyness. Will we, as a society, have a decreasing capability to create because we've erased unplugged reflection from our lives?

Pico Iyer wrote in the New York Times this week:

In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them — often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. Like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much all but overnight.

He shares how a premium has been placed on opportunities that allow us to unplug--fancy spas, even moves to rural areas. But ultimately we have an inability to sit still.

In the early days of my company we had the challenge of proving to sponsors and advertisers the value of social media. While we suspected that recommendations by digital influencers were valuable, there was no tangible proof for years that social media could move the needle for marketers. Now they are convinced. How, similarly, can I make the case for unplugged reflection time? How can we show that it ultimately makes us more productive?

 

Acknowledging the Professional IS Personal

"We Are operating above the neck whenever we assume that what we think is more important than what we feel. We are operating above the neck when we emphasize data over personal experience. We are operating above the neck when we deify logic and denigrate intuition."  

                                                --Maggie Craddock, The Authentic Career

I was introduced to Maggie Craddock by a mutual friend. We hit it off immediately, and she send me her latest book, "Power Genes" which I ate like it was chocolate mousse. I saved little bites for plane rides and hotel stays and ended up reading tub-fuls in a sitting. When I finished I felt full, but realized that I'd eaten dessert before the meal. I'm finally getting around to the main course and reading her previous book, "The Authentic Career".

Maggie is that rare combination of experienced business leader and psychologist (she left a successful career as a financial industry superstar before receiving clinical training. I love her work, not only because it's a rare example of both real-world corporate experience and clinical expertise, but because it reflects what I see in the best of entrepreneurs--the ability to create a profession from strongly held belief in what is missing in the world. Before becoming an expert, Maggie searched for executive level coaching that could also address the underlying subconscious elements that contribute to professional shortcomings and burnout.

I'm a fan of both therapy and coaching, but never have I been able to "talk shop" with a therapist. Nor have I been able to get past more business oriented solutions when addressing career issues. And yet I've always held a strong belief that the professional IS inherently personal. We are supposed to keep our personal lives out of the workplace, and yet we barf our personal lives onto people unwittingly when we don't address stressors in our lives. Actions ranging from a cruelly castigating an employee to awkwardly fumbling your way through a harmless inquiry by your boss are results of deeper experiences. Perhaps you always struggled to be heard when you were a child in a house of more aggressive siblings. Perhaps you harbor deep-seated resentment of someone who is junior but whose ease with other people triggers you. All of these issues are game for discussion in Maggie's book. In fact, these issues are superficial compared to others that stem from unquestioned beliefs around money and love that we absorbed as children.

I'm just starting to journey in and am intrigued at what I am discovering.

Am I about to end the season of my discontent? Working at 40

Like a moth to a flame I clicked to a story on Knowledge@Wharton Today entitled "The Discontented Thirties." I didn't do so because I consider myself discontented, but like any type A about to turn 40 (I have a few months), I question. I look at all that I accomplished in my 30s, like turning a life passion into a business, getting married, and having a daughter, and I say to myself "why couldn't I have done that in my twenties?" Of course reading stories like this about young media influentials in their teens and twenties doesn't help to contain the self-criticism.

My ridiculousness aside, the KW article says that of all of the working-age cohorts, those age 30-39 report the most work dissatisfaction. This is the time when many in that cohort are starting families and experiencing work-life balance issues, and when their work responsibilities are increasing. Later, in our 40s, experts opine, we "can get their minds back in the game". And by our 50s, we have more work satisfaction because we are enjoying the benefits of the upper echelons of the corporate ladder.

All of this makes me think of whether I have even more to look forward to in my 40s. My 30s was a mixed bag. I recall entering my 30s gainfully unemployed, meaning the start-up I had worked at went belly-up, and I was enjoying the life of free agency. Enjoying, at least, until I ran out of money. Then I found a job that paid rent but did little else for me. I almost went to grad school and decided to stick it out for another job, where I was paid little, but got to explore a new industry. It was also the decade that I took up blogging, and met my business partners, and started a company. I don't think I could ever look at work the same way again. Work changed from a series of jobs to a mission.

My 30s were fraught with change, and concern about my future, and hard work. And this was the decade that I became an entrepreneur. I don't feel discontented; I feel quite satisfied.

Do Nice Girls Self-Promote?

I got to see a ton of bloggers I haven't seen in a long time at the BlogHer Holiday Party. One, in particular, inspired a post.

She's one of the "old-timers", meaning she's been blogging for more than five years. And like many of the women I met in the early days of BlogHer, she sticks to her knitting--posts a few times a week, uses Facebook and Twitter as tools, is adept in audio and videoblogging. And she considers herself a "professional who blogs," not a professional blogger.

There's a big difference here: Some bloggers put a good deal of their energy into monetizing their blogs and are successful at it--those are professional bloggers. Others use their blogs as a means of building opportunities, but by no means make their living off of them, or are known for them; those are professionals who blog.

My friend falls into this latter group. She earns her living as a consultant, who often helps others build and even monetize their blogs, and her blog content is useful in helping others develop professionally. But her blog itself isn't a revenue driver. And therein lies her problem--she wants it to.

"I see so many blogger/guru types who are successfully building their businesses by selling their books and eCourses on their sites," she said. "I don't think I'm capable of talking up my work in that way."

She was referring to bloggers who have no problem posting requests on their blogs,

"Go check me out here!" …

"Sign up for my teleclass!"

"Go see my piece in Parenting magazine…"

And they have no problem sharing their good news --

"I just made Babble's Top 50 Moms list…"

"I just got a TV deal …"

I understood my friend's dilemma. Her mojo was much more "talk about others' great work" not "talk about my great work." And yet she cannot deny that self-promotional birds get the worm. And she's a media skeptic, like myself. She knows too much about how the promotional sausage gets made to want to serve it up to her beloved readers. Earlier this week I learned that I was included in Working Mother Magazine's Most Powerful Moms in Social Media list (Note: I don't actually provide a link, proof of my neurosis). Normally I don't care for lists; for every one I make there are dozens that I don't, so I maintain any sense of self-worth by not investing too much stock in them. And as a general rule we stay away from them at BlogHer, as some can drip with link-baiting intention meant to inspire more debate than appreciation. But shucks, I knew that my family would get a kick out of seeing my mug up there. And I actually agreed with their inclusion of some of my favorite bloggers, even if not all of my favorites were included. After bullshitting with myself that I was doing this for the love of Momblogging, not out of any self-interest, I posted a link to the story on my Facebook and Twitter page; it took restraint the next morning, when I saw a list of congratulatory comments on my Facebook wall, to not write back to each FB friend personally and apologize for gunking up their update feed with my business. I had to say to myself, "Wait--what the hell is social media for, if not to share your good news?"

So yes, even though I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how to build OTHER bloggers' and brands' traffic to insane levels, the thought of applying some of these tactics to my own platform embarrasses me. And if I get a "hit" in the form of a spike in traffic or a congratulatory note I will immediately question whether I provided enough content value to deserve it.

In fact, I, too, have sat with this question around self-promotion. While it's absolutely critical to promote your work and accomplishments to garner recognition and more opportunities, how much self-promotion will have a diminishing effect on your credibility with your readers and community? How much of this concern is really just my issue with feeling my work is not worth promoting if it's about me?

As someone who tends to gravitate toward personal and professional development blogs, I know my share of gurus, through their work and personally. Most of them have embraced the requirement of promoting their work, much the way an actor embraces the need to show up to an audition. It ain't glamorous, but it's a necessary part of sustaining a living. "Here, folks, is a link to my new book. Now back to our regular programming…"

Others have taken the self promotion to a different level. Their accomplishments have become the content.

A subject of their latest blog post may be their latest dilemma: Guys, should I change the focus of my book for the fat deal with Random House?

Or a situation: I was sitting with my friend who shall remain nameless (@Oprah)..."

Or promotion as a favor to someone else who can promote your work later: My pal Magda is the BOMB! Take her teleclass now, tell them I sent you, and get 50% off!!!

This sort of copy always appears in my brain in bright red letters and huge exclamation points, even when it's done tastefully. It's like noise to me and, rather than be alienated by it I tend to tune it out.

I said to my PR-averse friend, "You know, maybe YOUR readers aren't as interested in special offers and announcements."

She didn't buy it: "But I still see plenty of people who fall into the more audacious camp, and they have tons of readers, and they actually make money off of their various projects. I have to wonder if I'm in denial about what it takes to be successful in this increasingly expert-saturated space."

Honestly I don't know the answer to that. Perhaps the challenge isn't learning to become more comfortable with being self-promotional, but rather learning to play within the range of what your community considers acceptable (defined by your own bullshit meter).

That means if you tend to feel uncomfortable promoting your work, endeavor to squeeze in a bit of personal PR thoughtfully and remember: There are some real freaking crazies out there who actually want to read your stuff, see the pics of your trip to LegoLand, take your teleclass. And who are YOU to not deliver?

You see? It's really not about you.

The Imperative of Being Uncomfortable

I've always ducked into and out of my yoga practice as I've made time for it in my life. It's one of the few things about which I'm not ambitious. I don't do it to get to level three, or to one day stand on my hands with my legs crossed. I do it because it's one of the few things in my life that has grounded me. And when I lose grounding I seek it out.

I've been threatening to go to the yoga place in my new neighborhood, which isn't so new anymore. I'd taken a very practical approach to my fitness and joined a gym, where I could work out when I wanted to, how I wanted to. Since having a baby I'd worked my way back to my regular routine of treadmill and weights. The same one I'd developed for myself nearly 20 years ago.

This weekend, after a week of travel, I simply decided: It's time to take a class. I'd glanced at the schedule for one of the two yoga studios near my house and committed to going to a Hatha Level I class Sunday morning.

The studio seemed nice enough--nice light and plenty of room. I took off my shoes at the door like everyone else and placed my mat next to a man in a T-shirt and shorts who was meditating. I did the same, more to fit in than because I was compelled to meditate. More people arrived and the room started to get warm--really warm. Most of the men in the room had taken off their shirts by now. They looked different then men in other yoga classes I'd taken. Most noticeably, they were ripped. Men and women started taking turns at a chin up bar hanging in the center of the room as a warm-up. I don't recall experiencing this … intensity at the beginning of a Hatha Level 1 class.

I noticed a schedule posted across the room and took a quick peek--shit, I was in the wrong class.  I'd already paid and been acknowledged by the instructor. I reasoned with myself that I couldn't just leave. I'd have to spend the next 105 minutes pretending to belong.

The yoga instructor told jokes that most of the people in the room laughed at. I didn't understand them. I was the odd person out, the one that in another context you would turn to and say, "You just had to be there," to understand.

Class officially started with a chant. I felt like I did the few times I went to Church and had to mumble a psalm I didn't know. It seemed to go on forever. The instructor mumbled the name of an asana, and immediately people in the room responded. I only knew the basic poses and stayed in downward facing dog until I could grasp what I was meant to do. Many of the asanas were far beyond my skill level.

I felt stupid, noticeably inept. And I made a realization: It had been a while since I'd felt this way. And for good reason; I usually avoided situations where I was a newbie. But instead of walking out I stayed and performed the asanas as I could, even blatantly stared at the people in poses next to me, then tried to mimic them.

The instructor was gracious, not correcting me any more or less than anyone else in the class, but occasionally helping to refine my posture so that I could get the most out of the pose.

The final pose--Savasana, or corpse pose--was a welcome one. As I lay there I observed that for years now I've spoken to women who have just started blogging who have demurred at attending our conferences, and I say to them, "You have nothing to worry about." Or encouraging new bloggers and companies to simply embrace new ways of being, saying it from a position of already being "an expert". But I forget how hard it is to put faith into something you are not yet the boss of. How hard it can be to generate momentum at the beginning when the end seems as impossible as standing on your hands with your legs crossed.

My body has been hurting all week. I pushed it in ways it hasn't been pushed in a long time. When I left the yoga class I patted myself on the back for surviving and insisted to myself that I wouldn't put myself in that position again. Next time I would go to a beginner class.

But once you've attempted something harder, it's difficult to go back.

Rituals

When I was a kid, we had a post-Thanksgiving ritual of setting up the Christmas decorations. This had to occur the Friday and weekend after Thanksgiving. My Mom is a pack rat so this was no small chore. The kids had to cart huge boxes in from the garage and storage room; boxes full of tcotchkes--Christmas tree ashtrays, red and green felt wall-hangings, macrame santas, and ornaments. Hundreds of ornaments. Ornaments were Christmas currency in my extended family. No adult walked into a family gathering without ornaments for the kids. My aunts were very craftsy and often made our ornaments. Each one we received had our name and the year inscribed on it.

Since Olive turned one, I've been thinking about how even the most seemingly mundane traditions are developed, and how they create meaning later in life. This weekend, I pulled out a box that my mother sent me of all of the ornaments I had received as a child. Had she not sent this box I would have nothing to put on our Christmas tree--the one we have yet to purchase.

"This is your deal," Jesse said to me. Meaning, because I'm the one who celebrates Christmas in our household, I am in charge of the tree. But this really wasn't true. Even though Jesse is Jewish he does have a say, because anything impacting the house immediately falls into his bucket. If I weren't a Gentile I would have recused myself from holiday decorating altogether. All these years I've lived on my own I've never had a Christmas tree. It made no sense to buy one, as I always traveled to my mother's or my sister's house during the holidays. But this year is different. We've decided to stay home for Christmas, and I want Olive to be as excited as I was as a child by the ritual and spectacle of holiday decorating. Sure, she may be only a year old, but we started early in my childhood home. Very early.

A part of the decorating ritual that I did not like growing up was setting up the Christmas Tree, or more accurately, "building" the tree. The trunk was a series of camouflaged tubes that connected to each other and was slipped vertically into a small stand, followed by the branches labeled A through F. Dad did the high branches. Next came the tinsel, which Mom did, then the lights, which Dad did. Then came the ornaments, which all of the kids did, with coaching from my mother:

"Sweetie, don't put the heavy ones on the looser branches ..."

"Put the broken ones toward the back."

"Put the ones Aunt Mary made for you there..."

"Let your brother put his on!"

This part took an hour or more.

As a kid I didn't realize that people actually BOUGHT real trees. For years now I've fantasized about getting a real tree, but Jesse feared that wasn't sustainable. I had to agree.

This weekend I researched artificial trees and was shocked to find that they now come pre-lit--a feature that has probably been around for years. There were so many options. Jesse did more research on PVC, a common chemical in artificial trees and decided that the off-gassing involved with an artificial tree was worse than the sustainability issues he had with buying a live tree.

"We'll buy locally," he said, "and we'll compost it." On the one hand I was relieved--we'd live out my fantasy of having a real tree in the living room. On the other, more practical, hand, I was worried. We'd now need to buy lights and a proper tree stand. I'd have to keep the tree hydrated every day. Would Olive pick off pine needles and leave them in random corners of the house?

Jesse and I debated the timing of purchasing the tree. My take: I leave on a business trip tomorrow--no time like the present. Jesse's more thoughtful take: Let's buy the accessories now and wait until you get back before buying the tree. It made sense, but it poked a hole in my ritual of having the house set up the weekend after Thanksgiving. Granted it was a long-neglected ritual, but I still kept it close.

Jesse didn't understand that without a tree we couldn't have a family picture--another piece of my holiday fantasy once Olive was old enough of having a yearly family photograph embedded in a lovely holiday card. I'm not religious, but in the past I've been religious about sending holiday cards, until about five years ago when the business took over every crevice of my free time. I gave them up begrudgingly and temporarily forgot them. Last year Jesse reasoned with me that our birth announcements added up to enough snail mail correspondence with family and friends to hold us over until the next year. I told Jesse of my plan this year to get a picture done in time to send out cards before the holidays.

"No way," Jesse said. "You are cramming in way too much! You are traveling up to the holidays. And I won't have the time to do it."

"I'll make the time," I said.

I totally understood where Jesse was coming from, but I felt like I'd run out of excuses for not doing the things I loved to do around the holidays. I feel ready to embrace them again. Not because I have the time, but because I want Liv to be surrounded by what I had as a kid--the feeling that for a few weeks time stood still. No one had to be anywhere else. Family and friends meant everything.

Baking Meditation

I've been on vacation all week, spending time with family, doing not much. Wednesday I embarked on baking a pie.

I was proud of myself. I spent time researching recipes the week before. I prepped ingredients in advance, which I've never done in the past. I took more than a second to think about things that have gone wrong in previous attempts--I have chronically weak pie dough--and chilled my ingredients accordingly. I even bought a Kitchen Aid mixer so that I could better beat the dough.

As I was peeling apples I realized I had been spending hours working on this one pie. I don't recall having spent hours doing anything in a long time. Even with work, I do things in pieces--a few emails before jumping on a call. Or pulling together a deck while I wait to board a plane. I don't recall the last time I actually MADE something tangible--something non-digital.

I noticed, while I was rolling dough that I was actually nervous. I have a general anxiety around making things--food, crafts, anything requiring sewing. I don't know which came first, my ineptitude, or the fear of ineptitude, but I get more nervous making things than I do about, say, doing my taxes.

But on Wednesday I took the time--as much as was needed--to do the job right. I dug in as if making this pie were the only think that needed to be done, and it had to be done well.

The Artist as Entrepreneur

Apologies in advance to Lisa Milgram, who told me this parable. I have embellished a bit:

There was a man who used to love to fish on his boat. It was a small boat--no frills, a rowboat. He fished every day for his supper. And every day, he caught something to feed his family. One day, an Old Man floated by on his rowboat and observed the first man fishing.

"You know," The Old Man said, "You're really good at fishing! Have you considered starting a fishing BUSINESS! You could buy three more of those boats, train some fishermen, and make money."

The fisherman thought about it for a while. He loved fishing and wasn't sure he knew how to start a fishing business. But perhaps he should make more money doing what he loved by starting this business.

A week later he caught enough fish that he could sell them and buy a second rowboat. He rented out the rowboat to a fisherman, who gave him a portion of his proceeds from his catch. A month later the fisherman could afford to buy another rowboat. And a month later he bought yet another rowboat and hired yet another fisherman.

But sadly the fisherman was unhappy. He never could just sit in his rowboat anymore and fish. There were always things he had to do, like keep track of the earnings of the other fishermen, who didn't have quite the passion for fishing that he did. They just fished to feed their families. When he fished he caught more fish than they could combined. He had to teach the other fishermen new tricks, and had to keep them motivated. He often sat with them in their rowboats and encouraged them. He taught them to love fishing.

Eventually, his fishermen got quite good. Sometimes they caught more fish than the original fisherman did on his best days, back when he fished alone. Years into having his fishing business, the fisherman became quite successful. He was surrounded by dozens of expert fishermen who loved him for helping them to support themselves--and teaching them to love fishing.

The fisherman was happy that he had a thriving business, but he knew that he was unfulfilled because he no longer enjoyed the simplicity of being a master of something that he loved to do.

One day, he set out on his own to fish. It had been a while. He sat out there a long time and caught nothing. In the distance he could see another rowboat. It was weathered and old. As the rowboat got closer the person inside of it started to look familiar. It was the Old Man who, years ago, had encouraged the fisherman to start a fishing business.

"Morning," the man said. "Do you remember me?" the fisherman said. "A long time ago you suggested that I start a fishing business, and I did just that. I have a very successful business, and many successful fishermen working for me."

"Congratulations!" the man said. "But if you are so successful, why do you look so sad?"

"I'm sad because this is the first time I've gone out to fish on my own in years. I'm no good at it anymore. Sometimes I wonder if I ever should have started my fishing business, or if I would have been happier fishing on my own."

The man began to laugh. "I suggested that you start a fishing business not because I think you should be a businessman all of your life. I suggested it so that you could fish for the rest of your life, and be happy."

The fisherman started to understand. His business wasn't designed to keep him from fishing, but to give him the freedom to fish without having to do it for any other reason but the joy of fishing. The fisherman knew that the only thing for him to do now was sit in his boat. And wait.

On being a content creator

Due to a confluence of blogging events of late, I've been around a lot of digital influencers, online platform builders, content creators, call them what you will.

"What is your blog URL?" I'm asked, and I reply with my boilerplate response.

"My blog is old as the hills; I never write anymore. The irony, I suppose, of having co-founded a company by and for bloggers." This is meant to somehow prequalify me as a card-carrying blogger without actually being one.

A friend's wife started a blog and sent me a link to promote, which I was happy to do--she wrote a great piece about traveling with babies on airplanes. It came at just the right time, as we were trying to determine whether to pre-pack Liv's milk or wait until we got past security. I could't help but notice how gorgeous this woman's site was. Not bad for a newbie. Time was, you needed to get some serious help to have a site that professional looking. Now bloggers are building them on their own.

Naturally this got me thinking that I should probably rethink my blog design. My design isn't bad--it's just not what I would call optimized. No newfangled features or optimization. I worked within the templates TypePad gave me--no offloading. I started to plan what I needed to do to re-professionalize. After all, maybe if I had a good looking blog, I would find more time to update it.

But I realized something--a personal truth. The business side has always been easier for me. I can always reach out to people, insert links, optimize for the search engines, establish co-promotion partnerships, pitch myself for syndication, make my site more advertiser friendly. This mode is my default. It helps to distract me from the hard work of getting back in flow.

So this blog will remain boring, er, simple. I won't distract myself and consider what I do manage to write to be wasteful because it wasn't given the ultimate SEO send-off. I need to continue to rev up and not slow down to seek out which parts of my text are linkable, or which posts are visual and need pictures. I need to keep my focus on the foundation and just write.

At some point the bells and whistles will come.