A Vision For 2009

Through my friend Cynthia Cotte Griffiths, I discovered a great way to put together a vision to guide oneself.

Just in time, too! Most years I spend New Year’s Day writing out my goals for the coming year. This year, for some reason, I did not do that and I have been hankering to get to it. However, I have felt for some time now that my efforts in this regard have been too clever and cerebral — I would create these interlocking systems that, come April, were unworkable.

But my friend pointed me to Cindy Ronzoni’s “vision board” idea. This is really just a posterboard with a bunch of photos or drawings on it, a lot like the collages my daughter often makes. The images are meant to evoke things you want to do in the coming year.

This is obviously not rocket science, but it’s a useful way of looking at the task. Even more useful, though, is a set of questions to ask myself in order to generate the vision board.

Here they are:

• Where would you like to vacation this year?
• What inspires you?
• What would you like to learn this year?
• If you want to change jobs this year, where would you like to work?
• What are some of your passions?
• What have you always wanted to do?
• Who inspires you?
• What “words” reflect who you are?
• Do you want to exercise more or change your diet?
• What goals do you have for work?
• What financial goals do you have?
• Do you want to volunteer and if so where?
• What colors depict you or designs?
• What kind of relationships would you like?
• Is there an item you’d like to buy yourself?
• Are there any fears that you would like to overcome?
• Any groups you want to join?
• Any events to attend this year?

I love these, because they are so concrete and not airy-fairy.

Now I just have to answer them!

Thanks, Cindy.

I’m Here. I’m Here.

The other night, a close friend was ill. The next day, recovered, we discussed an interesting thought that kept going through their mind. Every few moments, with some change in symptoms or worsening of feeling, they felt compelled to describe it to themselves in the lingo of a status update: “X is lying in bed,” “X is hoping to get better.” They were too ill to run to the computer, but still, the thought was there.

Most readers of this blog will know that a status update is a brief (one sentence or so) description of what you are up to, how you are doing, or what’s going on. In Facebook, the status update is one of the main ways that people interact, posting sometimes trivial, other times significant dispatches from their daily lives.

One way to look at this anecdote is with a certain amount of alarm: See? The “status update” culture has infiltrated the world’s psyche!

But another way to look at it is to see it for proof that there is something powerful that Facebook, Twitter, and other microblog outlets have tapped into. I think many people have an innate desire to say what they are up to, almost as a way of just verifying that they are present.

As a user of Twitter and Facebook status updates, I can tell you that they have come to matter to me in a way that I find surprising. Seeing a list of what all my friends, family, and acquaintances are up to helps me to feel connected to them. This is not just silly “Joe Blow is at the mall shopping for an iPhone” trivia either, though that is a crucial element of social currency. Important information can be conveyed, too. It was through a status update that I learned of an old friend’s work in freeing slaves in Calcutta, for example.

In fact, it is the haphazardness of it all that is compelling.

I am reminded of my old friend Charlie’s college admittance essay. Charlie was a brilliant, creative, enigmatic person. He wrote an admissions essay for colleges that was a meditation on social interactions at a neighborhood gas station (where he worked). At the time, I recall, it was too brilliant for anyone to really grasp.

But now I sort of get it.

Charlie’s essay, as it reached its punchline, touched on research into whale songs. It seems that after decades of research into the content of whale songs, scientists had been able to determine that, essentially, whales are mostly giving status updates and alerting one another to our (humans’) presence, watching them:

WHALE HERE
MAN HERE

I do not know if this is really true about whales, but I do know that often my status updates are whalesong: I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.

What are you up to?

In The Entourage

It turns out that it was not Queen Latifah who had her jewlelry stolen in Tobago, but a member of her entourage, according to the Trinidad and Tobago Express.

Reading the item made me remember that I used to be in an entourage myself. What a strange life it was.

Unless you have been in one, you cannot really imagine what it is like day to day, wondering what you will do next, knowing that it is entirely at the whim of your entourage’s anchor.

In my case, the anchor of my entourage was not a star but rather a charismatic business person. We were all working on a startup company in the electric transportation field. It was in Los Angeles.

It’s a story I don’t often tell because it takes too much time for all its strangeness to soak in. So here are a few of the less salacious details. I could go on at depth but some of it just should not be talked about in polite company! Also, some of the memories are a bit hazy.

• For about nine months, there were no offices. We would all congregate at the founder’s Malibu beachfront condo (which, it turned out, he was renting with investor money). We’d sit in the living room watching the surf, each of us in a separate living room chair, working a phone.

• I got a call every morning at seven to “plan the day.” My boss and the second-in-command were kindred spirits when it came to this — hyper morning people. They had decided it was rude to call people they did not know well before seven, so they would wait, chomping at the bit, until that hour. Then we would all suddenly get caffeine-fueled calls.
• Our daily plans typically included simple business errand: go here to pick up the new logo t-shorts. Go there to drop off a form. These were complicated because we all had to go together, because we were part of an entourage. We were always waiting for someone. It seemed that, if the size of the traveling party decreased below a certain threshold, our anchor got depressed. There always needed to be a bunch of people around to hold cell phones, fetch water bottles, drive cars, etc.
• No one had a real job description, but we had our “areas of expertise.” These typically had little to do with actual skills any of us had. I was typically deployed when there was some perceived need for someone who understood politics.
• The founder loved women. There was always a new young woman floating around in the condo. Many meetings were held with him in bed, us hangers-on standing in a semicircle at the foot of the bed, taking notes.
• For a while, there was a houseboy. I have no idea where he came from. But one day we all showed up and there he was. He got us drinks and cookies. It was not clear what his duties were in comparison to others in the entourage (everyone did everything). Eventually he faded away.
• One day we all piled into a couple of cars and went to a meeting at a Hollywood mansion. We were meeting with a big TV person (I recall it was Aaron Spelling but I may be wrong) and his people, looking for investment money. As I recall, we showed up late on purpose. To make some kind of point. TV Exec wore fancy pajamas to the meeting. I do not know if that was to make a point.
• For a while, there were plans on the books for the company to buy a mini-bus, which would be outfitted as a rolling office. We would all just spend all our time in the bus, rolling around LA.

Eventually, I left the company to do my own thing. I’ll always remember that time. I am not sure how useful any of it was — but it sure was interesting.