From Here to Autonomy

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?

 

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.

Life of a Secondary Caregiver

"KYE!" My daughter was yelling at me yesterday, pointing upwards. I looked at my husband, not understanding.

"Yes, My Love, SKY!" he said. It was another word in her repertoire, one that I hadn't inspired.

Last weekend, when I put on her shoes I thought she was babbling. And then I realized what she was saying,

"BUT … BUT …"

She wanted me to put on her boots.

"Don't let her wear those socks," Jesse said, as I was putting a lavender pair on her little feet. "She can't walk around in those."

"It's not a biggie," I said, putting them on and then watching Liv slip and slide on the wooden floors.

Months into coming back to work I started to notice the difference, the disconnect. I could no longer correctly guess my daughter's every need as she needed it. I could not figure out why she patted her stomach, or screeched in delight. Daddy knew how to make her laugh, while with my attempts she looked at me, not unamused but perhaps a bit confused. I watched her like a student, waiting for a teacher to explain to me what I was witnessing.

I catch myself saying things to my husband:

"Can I give her this?" I ask, holding a cup of juice. I know he has a system and doesn't want her to drink too much juice at bedtime. And then I ask myself, "Why am I asking for permission?"

"Think we can take off her sweater when she eats?"

"I think YOU can," Jesse says.

I know that when I come in the door it's my turn to be the parent. But sometimes I'm rusty, especially when I'm coming from a business trip. I put my stuff down (forgetting to zip up my purse--big mistake as its contents will inevitably be strewn across the floor once she gets to it). I want to talk about my day. Jesse wants to finish the game he'd started on his iPhone two hours before, when he last had a minute to kill.

I didn't finish an email before getting off the plane, so I open up the laptop. I just need 90 seconds to get it done.

"Are you going to be with her, or are you going to do email?" Jesse asks. He's making dinner.

"This is going to take just a minute." She comes for me with her arms out. The email is going to have to wait.

With a few moments of exception, I've learned to stop trying to fit in emails before dinner. My goal has become to put everything down and have my hands washed before she comes around the corner with her arms up. I love that she's made it difficult for me; before her no one had succeeded.

Today I'm squeezing in a blog post, a few emails, and some online shopping into her nap time. Jesse's just come back from his Saturday bike ride--one of two or three times he gets to himself during the week. He comes in the front door, avoiding the garage door, which can sometimes wake her when opened.

"What time did she go down?"

I tell him what time. And I know it's 30 minutes later than he suggested to avoid her becoming overtired.

"Bummer," he says, walking his bike through the kitchen.

I don't worry about it. She'll get used to these days with Mom. When naptimes are off, when a bottle is forgotten. She knows that I live for this time with her, however imperfect it may be.

Something

The other day I was in NYC for a new conference BlogHer launched for writers named, well, BlogHer Writers. I had learned to disassociate myself with the content of our conferences long ago, back when I sensed frustration at having to run, versus attend, my company's events. While I very much wanted to sit in and enjoy sessions, I knew that more realistically I would be running over to a sponsor to make sure they were pleased with their investment, or run back to the press room for an interview. After a few years, it just became understood, or rather, assumed, that I would be doing things other than attend the conference.

BlogHer Writers was built for bloggers seeking to publish. Yes, these people exist. We haven't sucked every vestige of traditional media into our vortex just yet. But publishers like Penguin have become smart to the ways of the new, new writer, who oftentimes now came to print via blog success first. There were many familiar faces in the room--women I'd come to know over the years who had slowly built a platform and who, over time, came to call themselves writers. There were other faces in the room as well, faces of people I'd known even longer, who hardly recognized me. After all, I hadn't stayed for very long. I was 21 years old and had moved from the Midwest to work at a book publishing house--Penguin, actually. My goal had not been to be an editor, or even to work in New York. It was to become a writer.

"Nice company you have here," one of them told me.

"Amazing to see things come around full circle," I said back to her. And I meant it. So many times we see life as a series of lost opportunities, or failed attempts. And yet my attempts, while being short of the goal I had set for myself of supporting myself by writing, had sparked a fire elsewhere, causing that original trajectory I used to look up at, wanting to realize, to melt and warp in my direction. The worlds I had wanted to become a part of had somehow come to me.

In the morning we hosted panels of experts in the publishing world--agents and editors--who could speak to how to get a book published, what they looked for, how to have your book stand out. Agents attended to meet writers. One told me, "I have to be here to meet writers. You all have PLATFORMS! That's half the battle." I recall a much bigger battle being waged five years ago, when I tried to sell my book and getting a contract if I could accept changing my target audience. I recall another publisher saying that they wish I'd gone more Cosmo and made my stories more how-to. I recall a publisher sharing with my agent that I didn't need to write a book so much as see a therapist. After founding BlogHer I recall an agent who came to speak who left a stack of business cards on a table before leaving--she didn't want to be mobbed by a bunch of bloggers wanting to get published.

I recall waking up in the morning and going to a coffee shop with no wireless by design so that I would not check email as I hammered out pages and pages of copy. I had no job, I simply wanted to write and get a book published.

Things have changed.

"You are at an advantage," one of the speakers from the publishing side said at the conference, "you all are in the habit of writing every day."

I look at the date on my last blog post and wonder how that happened. The sad reality is that it wasn't hard not writing. I knew how encompassing writing could be. I knew how when I got into writing everything else tended to fall away. Where would I start? What if  had nothing to say?

One friend offered up a nice metaphor: Creativity is a muscle. When you go running for the first time, you feel like shit. But keep going every day, and slowly it starts to feel good. You start to run faster and more efficiently. You know how to inspire your creativity. You re-learn how to call it up.

"Just write short," friends have told me, "just get something up there." That's what I tell other people. But I'm really not very satisfied to do that.

I saw a friend this weekend when I was out in the neighborhood with my one year old.

"You inspired me to blog," she said. She's been actively blogging and consulting in the social media space now for five or six years. "It makes me sad to go over to your blog and see nothing there."

She challenged me to write a blog post while on the plane flying home from business trips.

"I've tried that," I said. "I have a lot of stuff I need to finish. I don't know if I can commit to that."

"Just write something she said."

Today I saw an email she left in my inbox. The subject line: It's Blogging Day!

Making it Work: Traveling while lactating

I have no expectations of earning any bloggys for this series of posts, in which I share the practicalities of being a working mom of a baby girl. I realize that this solidifies my status as "one of those people" who think that every mundane aspect of parenting deserves to be chronicled.

But I feel strongly about writing about my experience, even if that experience is not that exciting, or doesn't lend itself to engaging prose. I find that as a relatively new mom I slurp up others' anecdotes, as I'm hungry for hearing about how other women manage in what seems to be at times two self-canceling realities: working and parenting. Indulge me, or tune in another time when I am back in working mode...

I had worried about how difficult it might be to return to work. Not the work part, the being away from the babe part. And the pumping part. Actually the transition has been--dare I say--good. Better than expected.

I enjoyed every second I had spent with my daughter on mat leave, but I was jonesing for a schedule. I like having to adhere to a schedule and having dedicated thinking time. Having this space in the day only makes seeing my daughter at the end of it that much more enjoyable.

The pumping is a pain, but everyone at the office is supportive. We've made our supply room the "Pump Room" for the time-being. I duck in and put a sign on the door, requesting 30 minutes of privacy, three times a day. I crank out email and even take calls in there if they are internal. If it's a client call, I take it in my office. 

Travel has been interesting. I started off slow--a day trip down to LA--fly in, fly out. How hard could it be? Still, it was my first, and a new milestone in my time away from child.

"It will be like I'm at the office," I told H-band, only it really wouldn't be. I had a place to pump at the office, and I hardly knew where I would pump in LA. Surprisingly I'd yet to have the dignity-dissolving experience of pumping while perched on the john, the slurping sound of my hands-free Medela echoing off the tiled walls of a public bathroom.

I was grateful that my first business trip since returning from mat leave was a relatively simple one. I carried a purse and my pumping equipment in a second canvas bag. It's been beautiful on the West Coast; I didn't even need to fuss with a coat. I figured, what could befall me other than a flight delay?

The first obstacle was in security. I hadn't even pumped yet, but my equipment bag had to go through a second inspection. Still I got through to my flight. Easy peasy.

I didn't fly into LAX but rather Orange County, a smaller airport, but fortunately it had a Red Carpet Club. All of the enclosed offices had glass walls overlooking the airport--a nice touch, but not for someone looking for a private place to pump. I headed to the women's restroom.

It was a onesie. With no stall. Shit.

I did the math: Meeting in little over an hour; four hours since I'd pumped. I needed to do this--now. I held the restroom hostage, grateful that only one poor soul knocked.

I flew out of LAX, which was much more amenable, meaning I used a stall in the club on the far end of the rest room that had a changing table--just enough space to lay out my gear, strap up, and read email on my Blackberry while pumping.

Amazing how grateful you become for the little things.

But security was a bear.

"What's in your bag, ma'am?"

"A pump. And some milk."

"Security check! We have some milk here."

I walk past the conveyor belt toward another station with different equipment.

"Ma'am, do I have your permission to take the contents out of this bag, or would you like me to do this in private?"

It wasn't like he was asking me to nurse in public."

"Here is fine."

I felt a bit sheepish, as he held up half of one bottle--all that I had managed to squeeze out in Orange County. All this freaking work for three ounces.

"I'm going to put this through a radiation test," the TSA official said.

It failed.

"What does this mean?" I asked, that my milk is radioactive?

"No ma'am. We just need to do another test." He opened the bottle of milk and put what looked like a litmus strip over the top to "test the fumes."  I was free to go.

This week I traveled cross-country for several days. I'd mapped out my meetings and marked in my calendar good times to pump, but I didn't know for certain where--or if--there would be places to take my get up. Even if I could duck into a bathroom at any one of the places I was headed, I wasn't sure I wanted to pump at a client engagement. I looked at my schedule and noted that I was cutting it close between my last meeting and my flight home. I wondered if it would be gauche to pump in the cab on my way to the airport. Are there rules about that?

UPDATE: I opted not to pump in the cab--too messy, and the trip went fine, though I'm quite positive my boobs are confused. I pumped at our NY offices whenever I had a chance, then went for long stretches of nada. Watching what I consider liquid gold go down the drain (I had resolved myself to pumping and dumping, rather than try and figure out how I'd keep my milk fresh for three days) was more painful than I thought. In the early days I fought hard to establish a supply, and for three days my goal was to just get rid of it.

On the way back to CA I managed to pump before my flight, in the club restroom. I appreciated all the free tampons, pads, feminine aids that were available in the rest room, but I would have traded this bounty for a stall large enough to place all of my luggage and pumping equipment, and a surface in the stall to place my stuff.

I had just enough time afterward to grab a snack in the club and make it to my boarding gate. By the time I landed in SF I looked like Dolly Parton from the neck down. 

Concerns of a Mom returning to work

This is the last weekend of my maternity leave, which I've anticipated for a long time. I've been planning the timing of things in my head and practicing on the breast pump--which for all its necessary function also is a bit dehumanizing. Even as I rely on them, I'm a bit repulsed by the pump, the plastic milk storage bags, these poor facsimiles of maternal role replacement. I know, I know, many women have done this before me; broken the seal of the little bubble of constancy created around them and their child. It has to be done sometime, but I still find myself recoiling from the inevitable pop.

I remember asking a woman in my office who had recently returned from maternity leave how she felt to be back. She was glad to be working again but confessed that she cried dropping her son off at daycare. A friend of mine who returned to work three months ago said she cried every day for two weeks very morning, after dropping off her daughter with a shared nanny. I'm lucky: My husband will be staying at home with my daughter--no emotional drop-offs; no wondering if she's clean or scared. I don't imagine myself crying, but rather digging in to work like I've done for the past 17 years. Work has a way of helping me temporarily forget things. But I worry: what if I don't temporarily forget? What if I find it too easy to forget?

I must confess, I miss being focused on things for longer than three minutes, with no distractions.

My child has not been away from me for 3.5 months. There was one day when Daddy took her out thinking he would come home sooner, but, amazed that she took a bottle in her sleep, he stayed out a whopping six hours. Aside from that anomalous day we've been apart no longer than three hours. Never has a relatively short eight hour work day seemed like such a hurdle.

We've tried to get her to take a bottle (asleep or awake) for two months, and we have had no luck aside from the aforementioned "dream feed". Sometimes she screams during our attempts; most times she plays with the nipple of the bottle, thinking we're offering her a new toy, happy to chew on it for a few seconds but ultimately rejecting it. We've offered the bottle with Mommy out of sight, with Mommy in the room, with Mommy subbing it in for the breast during a nursing, with experienced Grandmas and Aunts helming the effort, with Daddy begging her to consider, with bottles that look like boobs, with bottles that look like pacifiers, and with bottles that look like bottles, but nada.

We're now resorting to what friends tell us is the final, most effective method: Mommy goes back to work and makes the baby take a bottle or starve. This option is more than unsettling.

The babe also doesn't like to sleep in her crib. The past three months has elapsed over a long series of hand-offs between me and my husband; and if you are the one she falls asleep on, you must transition her to the nearest bed-like surface. Sometimes this can be a crib, or co-sleeper, or reclined baby swing or couch. The transition is done with the grace and precision of an experienced tai chi practitioner, as the babe cannot feel any slackening, dropping, or fidgeting or she will wake up.

This on-demand service will be impossible to continue when I go back to work, including the days when I'm working from home. In other words, unless we get this kid trained to fall asleep on her own, in her own bed, my husband will be the sole set of arms for eight-hour stretches of time. I've been praying for him and reminding him that, in retrospect, these times pass by all too quickly.

There were short stretches during my leave when I took a work call, sat in on an important meeting, responded to email, jotted down some thoughts I had about something business-related. All of these moments were all-encompassing. I know myself, and while I often multitask, I cannot integrate mothering with working. Both must be done exclusively during the times I've designated for them.

This, in itself, is a mixed blessing because it forces me to keep these realms separate, but it also forces them to compete. The work side can no longer sneak in minutes, that turn into hours, pursuing unscheduled ideas and entering spontaneous discussions. All of my spontaneity will be paradoxically planned; hemmed into my work day. The Mom side has to acknowledge the future I'm building at its short-term expense. I'll miss some milestones of my daughter's development and catch her at the crankier end of the day.

And I'll abandon someone I once left before, years ago, with whom I'd become reacquainted over the past three months. She knows how to sit in a room without looking at the clock. She forgets appointments. She sometimes forgets to bring her cell phone with her when she's out. She calls her friends in the middle of the day and apologizes if she catches them working. She finds joy in crazy things like changing diapers. She's not hankering to go places. She gets weepy from looking at babies, particularly ones she has to leave.   

My New Venture: Olive Des Jardins Markman

 

This post has been a work in progress since September 16, two days after Olive was born. Every day I added a paragraph to the account of her expedient birth (four hours all-told of labor; I'm told I'm an anomaly), of the range of emotions that followed, of my struggle to back away from the computer (which c'mon people, why the hell not browse the Internet while nursing?). And every day, a new distraction that has kept me from finishing this post. I have several versions, each with a new start. Today, I finally said, to hell with it. Just start writing, and once you have a semblance of a schedule and more than five minutes to devote substantive thought toward a more organized post THEN I can get all prosy.

H-band just asked me how I'm feeling. I'm feeling good. Relieved and grateful to the point of tears that when I look at Liv I see the universe has delivered well past my hope for a healthy baby. And I'm feeling like I'm living in molasses. Every accomplishment--whether it's eating lunch or just getting dressed--requires a plan, and is often thwarted. I endeavor to return to my cup of yogurt, or finish flossing, and often get sidetracked. I often feel half-done, and distracted by this little girl when she struggles to focus on me. I stare at her and realize that the day is already over.

Staring at Liv is perhaps the most inefficient thing I've ever done. There's no multitasking involved, and it could be a while before she realizes that the face attached to the boobs belongs to Mom. But I've set a new goal that I intend to reach: When she finally can focus her little eyes on me I want to be looking back.

Breastfeeding in the office: My view

I recall a conversation I had with a woman who was my neighbor at the time, telling me how she handled feeding her newborn as a working mom: It really wasn't an issue, she said, she simply brought her baby to work with her and nursed her in the office. I was far enough away from having to plan my own parenting options that I simply took mental note of it and finished drinking my glass of wine.

Two years later I'm sitting in a lactation class, seemingly the only one with questions. "But if I'm coming into and out of the office, or even traveling, how do I get on a SCHEDULE?" I ask the woman at the top of the circle. "You just breast feed like you normally would, and then you pump some additional for when you are in the office," she said.

This answer didn't satisfy me. What if I didn't have more milk to pump? She seemed to assume I was going to have a steady presence in the office, but seeing as my job involves a lot of travel, that wasn't going to be the case. How would I manage pumping in, say, airport bathrooms, or after a day of back to back meetings? And what about others' around me? Would everyone understand my need to nurse? I spent my first few months of pregnancy in silence, taking perhaps more meetings and going on more business trips, as if to shore up enough pre-mommyhood chips for when I'd need to cash them in later.

I didn't want to make this group class all about me, so I let the questions linger in my head. Later, asking other women how they managed to breastfeed while working I was told much the same thing by all of them, "You just figure it out." I envisioned  "figuring it out" meaning something akin to developing a milk inventory spreadsheet, wearing a breast pump under my clothes and people associating me with this constant, electric sucking sound.

I was glad to see women like Margaret Heffernan--whose book about the dynamics of women in the workplace The Naked Truth I practically ate it was so relevant and consuming--address this issue of being a lactating executive. On the face of it, feeding one's child is such an unquestioned necessity; why is the management of this task so fraught with anxiety? Why should the fact that I am working while handling this activity make others--and hence myself--so uncomfortable?

"I don't know why you can't sometimes take the baby with you to work and nurse her when you need to," H-band said. I looked at him like he'd just suggested we join the circus.

"No no no no no. Nope. Not doing that. No. I mean, no. Not appropriate." And yet, didn't my former neighbor say that she did that at her job with the city? What makes me so different? Shouldn't I feel more empowered to develop a strategy that works for me as my company's co-founder?

Heffernan's post describes how another executive mom, Sabrina Parsons, struggles but manages the day to day feeding of her baby while heading up a Silicon Valley software company. Fact is, as one of Heffernan's readers points out, the law requires that women be allowed time and a place to express milk while at work, whether she's the CEO of the company or entry level. I know from personal stories how companies such as Walmart even provide spaces for employees to handle the care--and feeding--of their newborns.

But, notes Heffernan, "...the true barrier to women breastfeeding at work isn't legal; it is cultural. I could get away with it because I was the CEO. There are many, many companies that find this very difficult to take, not least because it reminds them that their employees do have other priorities in their lives beyond work!"

I recall several years ago a sponsor at BlogHer who called me after the conference to complain about how inappropriate it was that women were allowed to breastfeed in the vicinity of their sponsored area. I reminded this person that we not only allowed breastfeeding, we provided a lounge for it. Then why, the female sponsor asked, didn't we kindly ask women who opted to breastfeed in more public places to go to the lounge? Because, I told her, we didn't think of nursing anywhere at the conference as inappropriate. The lactation lounge was for women who wanted quiet and privacy. For those who didn't require either, the rest of our space was also fair game.

I have to laugh that this sponsor, who was targeting moms, felt that breastfeeding was so off-brand, even an embarassment. This incident reminds me that while I do not feel in the least bit uncomfortable with the notion of women breastfeeding in my workspace, the possibility of others' discomfort and disenchantment with women who integrate their mothering and their jobs affects me. Indeed, there remains a tension, for me, anyway, around bringing my mom duties to the office. Though we offer lounges for breastfeeding moms at our conferences, we don't have too many precedents in  our office itself. While there are so many mothers at our company, their children are past breastfeeding age, or they work out of their homes, for the most part. I do feel that my choice to have a child and to breastfeed are just that, choices, not sweeping policy decisions that require everyone to have to witness.

I will not push back meetings to go pump. Nor will I feed my kid behind Levolor blinds. I know some people do, and I think it's great they are able to. I will prefer to surreptitiously surrender to someplace that's private and that has an electrical outlet,  pack away the proceeds in a heavily sealed bag in the company refrigerator, and jump on the next con call.

I appreciate that the law and my colleagues will allow me to acknowledge that I am a Mom because the realities of life raising children while working make both unignorable. Though, for now, I need a line drawn, even a self-imposed one, to make both work.

Pregnancy Journal, Week 36: Working with my feet up

A friend of mine called me from New York. We talked for a while about his new job--I may be one of the few people who enjoys discussing with my friends the intricacies of their day to day work.

He asked me, so how are you?

I had to preface my response with a disclaimer,

"Nothing's wrong," I said. "But things are different." My friend probed to determine if I was unhappy.

"Nope," I said. "I'm just getting used to this change." I felt inarticulate, like when I had nightmares as a kid and my mom came into my room and asked me what I was afraid of, and I didn't know. One time I told her, "I'm feeling something skinny; a skinny string." I still get the sensation, but I don't know what it means.

By "change" I think I mean all that has shifted since becoming pregnant. For years I've been told about how the focus of energy shifts when you become a parent. I've held off on my decision to have children knowing this shift occurs. 

But even knowing that I am supposed to slow the centrifugal force that has tied me to a grinding schedule for so long, I find that I still give myself a spin or two to stay in motion, even during times of physical exhaustion. I wonder if I do this out of habit; being in motion is all that I know. Or because the slowdown scares me; all this momentum, what would it take to start up again? What if I fall in love with slow? What if slow feels like a skinny string?

A trusted friend--a powerhouse, even to other powerhouses--tells me that her desire to work, to achieve, didn't change when she had her son, but her reason for working did.

"I did everything because of him," she said.

Some might bristle at that thought, especially since working women are encouraged to have their careers "for themselves". But some of us have been working "for ourselves" for a very, very long time, at the risk of having no perspective and losing the meaning behind what we do. For me, the thought of working for someone else is liberating; it opens possibilities. It bends the rules I set in my mind of the way work must be.

Still, the rules run deep. My business partner said to me last week that if I may not want to bother commuting these last few weeks before the baby is born. Makes sense: an hour-long commute (on a good day) is hardly safe or desirable should I go into labor a few weeks early. After five years of working together (two of those virtually) she knows the work will get done anywhere. But I struggle to take her up on her suggestion. I've always valued physical, tangible presence. Presence is being in motion.

Another co-worker suggested that I use the couch she has in her cube--something she's integrated into her space for extreme back issues. I thanked her and wondered, when would I think to put my feet up? My first job out of college, when my boss traveled I'd sneak cat naps in her office. Why was it so much easier to acknowledge exhaustion when I was 21?

At the BlogHer conference I promised my colleagues and husband that I would put my feet up regularly. It took my husband physically guiding me back to my hotel room 14 hours after I started the day to do what I'd promised. As I sat there, propped by pillows, feet up against the wall, tired and restless, I lamented that it was still so early--I was leaving first thing in the morning and still hadn't seen or done everything I'd wanted to do.

I am hardly a sadomasochist or born with more energy than others. I just don't know otherwise. I suppose I will learn. And I will learn how to channel that energy where it needs to go. And rather than look upon these offers of support suspiciously, I will learn to put my feet up and note that there are moments that we work and moments that we work FOR.

And that skinny string that keeps us tethered to a life in which we've done very well won't break.

BlogHer '10: My first conference as a working mother

I was chatting with my BlogHer co-panelists last week about our panel: Where's the Line or the Lie: Storytelling, Memoir and Poetic License. I find that I often moderate these more personal-blogging-type sessions at BlogHer, because I started as an identity blogger. I have a natural affinity with those who put it all out there, even if that has not been my reality for five years, since BlogHer began.

I realized, hot damn, I have not posted to this blog in over a month. That's not very bloggy of me. And I and my colleagues will be running a conference built by and for bloggers. I find myself asking, Jory, WTF? Are you still an identity blogger? Do you still see life through the lens of what would make a compelling blog post? The truthful answer is, sometimes.

Sure I've been busy--everybody's busy. Though I must confess the recent disadvantage of pregnancy. I don't cram things in my day anymore, like a blog post or an extra call. I do what's directly in front of my face, get the immediate priorities done, and then call it a day. This has become a physical necessity, one I knew would manifest by my third trimester but chose to not think about...until I noticed things, like how breathless I get when I'm speaking, and how forgetful, and that it's been a month since my last post.

There's a lot of withheld information in my unwritten posts about women, work, and family making; I've thought about this in light of my BlogHer session. Before I was pregnant, I read voraciously about women raising kids and building careers. The only impediment to achieving in both realms, I thought, were others' preconceived notions about women and work--the assumption that once we procreate we're no longer interested in pursuing our careers.

Clearly that's not the case--I know too many women who have achieved even more post-children than pre. Some of the most prolific, and commercially successful, bloggers are full-time moms. While I can't explain why without having been there myself, I do believe it probably has something to do with an efficiency that develops among women who now have two jobs to do: There's no time for questioning your ability; both jobs simply have to get done. Kids need to have their lunches made, just as presentations need to be completed. There's less time to stew and wonder, could I have done that better? Was I less than perfect in that meeting? It's a strange luxury--not having the time to overthink, just to do.

I recall the first BlogHer, when I woke up at 5a.m., arrived at the TechMart at 6am to help post signage and prepare the registration line, and was sick with nerves. Though I was a blogger and can relate to the many pre-BlogHer posts I read by women with social anxieties, my concerns were hardly around who congregated with whom, or what bloggers might blow me off, but rather whether the food was coming out on time, if sponsors got what we promised them, if the sessions were useful. Connecting later with other women over drinks, or even in the hallway on their way to a session, was pure pleasure in comparison.

I realize now that my stress during BlogHer is the kind that lies in the eye of the storm, where anxiety is minimalized to the bare essentials. After BlogHer '05 I cared less about my blog traffic--even stopped monitoring it altogether--or whether I was included in top blogger lists. I was enveloped in a new purpose of creating a space for this community. The act of creation and nurturing something or someone other than yourself immunizes you from seeing the world as a pecking order, or as a series of parties you are not invited to, or as an old-boys network. These constructs melt away; paradoxically, there is less time AND fewer constraints. It's a place of re-invention.

Perhaps, since BlogHer is my "baby" this is not dissimilar to the situation of the working mother.

This year for me will be different. I have a new consideration that is purely physical. I won't likely be able to weather a day of not eating. I won't laugh off suggestions of taking a load off. I'm not concerned about making it to all of the parties, but rather whether I will have the energy to make it to A party. I will literally have to put my feet up at times over the next few days. Perhaps, from this standpoint, I will get to see the event from others' eyes.

But from my own it will be different because I have another job, if you will, that makes some of the rushing, the stressing, the performing a bit absurd. And it will be different because I will be in wonderment at those who have children already, or another baby--literal or figurative--in the making who attack this event like they do every thing else, with no second thoughts.