Mid-Year Report and Brief Blog Vacation, Or Saturday Morning at 7:12am

Many years in the corporate world trained me to provide regular status reports. Writing this blog is a different sort of work environment. I have enormous latitude. You, my bosses, are very lenient, and smile affectionately as I wander these virtual halls, mug of tea in hand, stopping at your virtual cubicles, showing you my shoes, telling you about my children and my Aunt Priscilla's wedding.

I started Privilege in February of 2009. A year later, I asked you all to give me some direction via an online questionnaire. I thought now, 6 or so months later, was a good time for update on my responses to your very generous feedback.

1. I asked you what you wanted me to write about.

You said, "Stay the course," meaning style; High WASP fashion, culture and mores; cultural anthropology; social etiquette; the raptures of living. Well, you might not have said cultural anthropology, but I inferred freely. My Saturday morning posts and India stories were less globally popular, but those who liked them really liked them, and most others were at least tolerant. Permission to continue granted. I did take away from your comments that I should spend a little more time on High WASP houses and have done so, relying of course on my family's places. You know, since my fading family fortune and I live in a little mid-century, California ranch-style house. It's been fun, all of this. Thank you. I plan to persist.

2. I asked you about ads and making money and such.

You said it would be OK. However, although requests have begun to come in I've done nothing concrete to date. I realized I did not have the infrastructure to present ads in any way that made me comfortable, and that any income received would be outweighed by the complications involved.

3. I asked you about writing a book.

You kindly said, for the most part, that I should give it a try. So I've begun a book proposal. Can I just take a moment to tell my manager that this is tough? New respect for serious writers in my house. I have realized that in many ways this blog is enough to fulfill my need to write. However, I have also vowed that come hell or high water I will at least finish the book proposal and submit it. To someone. Somewhere. Finish what you start if at all possible, a lesson learned young.

And then, something about which I did not ask you, Privilege's design, or lack thereof. I've been working with a designer and tech company on a redesign which will accomplish several things.

• Allows for one ad on the home page. If I find a companies with extraordinary goods, worthy of our paragon of readership, I'll work with them to put something in place. One at a time. If the fit is right.
  
• Adds a few pages of additional information and a place to ask questions.
• Puts a new look in place to reflect the High WASP ethos - graceful, formal, slight whiff of decay - mixed up with an effort to knock on the door of the 21st century. Exactly what you all are gracious enough to let me explore.
  

Oh, and while we're on the subject, design, in my experience, is the one thing not to do by committee. But I digress.

One more thing. I will be taking next week off to prepare to send my son to school and pay attention to family affairs. I will be back the first full week of September.

Thank you again for reading, and certainly for your ideas and guidance. Have a wonderful weekend.

Absolute Rules For What You Wear, Or, Saturday Morning at 9:07am

I believe that there are very few absolute rules. Besides religion, of course, but let's leave that aside for now.

If we aren't discussing religion, and I am not, what then remains as absolute? To my way of thinking, kindness, violence, responsibility.

What we ought to wear? Not absolute. The question of what is "appropriate" dress always needs to be answered with a question. "Appropriate in what context?"

I'm thinking in particular about two recent posts. One, my own about manicures and pedicures. The other, on Corporette, about what to wear to trial. I confessed to jumping to conclusions about the wearing of colored fingernail polish, others said that bare nails were "unprofessional." In the Corporette comments, lawyer after lawyer debated whether to wear pants or skirts to trial.

The trial example has a rational, analytical answer. While we might struggle with the idea that women are held to a different standard than men, or that something like clothing can trump talent or even justice, the judge rules his or her courtroom. The jurors decide your client's fate. In that situation, there are rules. They are absolute - in the smaller context of that judge, that jury, that room. No point in fighting. The consequences of breaking the judge's rules probably isn't worth it. Fight the larger battle - "Why can't we wear pants, if they are more comfortable, if men can?" - elsewhere. I for one will thank you. Skirts bug me. Sturdy Gals really prefer pants.

But let's consider fingernails. Professional networks are more diffuse than courtrooms. No judge sits at the head of the system, clearly establishing rules. In the absence of a final arbiter, all we are left with are biases. Biases which we may or not may share with others.

Shared biases become group norms. Singular biases, well, they make good drunken rants, or text exchanges with your best friend. "Can you believe he's wearing pleated pants in 2010? What does he think this is, 'Welcome Back, Kotter?'"

Most likely, everyone in formal corporations will share the bias that long fake nails are inappropriate for women in most positions. Evidently the feelings about short nails in medium shades of pink are mixed. Some women feel that bare nails look unprofessional. My 1970's-raised self clears her throat and wants to say, "Why do women have to groom and make glossy every centimeter of their body? Who says?" But that battle is too big to fight with two hands only.

What matters is that in these gray areas, without a judge in robes, or swinging doors to the courtroom, we own up to the fact that what we feel are biases, and no more. Social disapproval is valuable when it drives productive normative behavior. Normative behavior can allow a group to work well together, by removing social friction. If we are similar, we trust each other and don't waste time questioning why others diverge from our ways of doing things. But this goes only so far. Social disapproval becomes pursed lips, nothing more, when it prevents us from valuing the work of those who differ from us. Balancing the drive to norms with the acceptance of differences is the science of culture and management. It applies to style too. I'm guessing that we all know this and that even so you will not object to a reminder.

I confess my High WASP biases here. So that they are out in the open. So that where they have value they endure, and where they only shame they fall. Once my kind were dominant. Rules we invented live on, for better or for worse, and I hope that deconstruction leaves good bones in place.

By the way, you are all the most wonderful set of readers and commenters. Thank you.

"God Am I Fabulous!"

We work hard at developing selves. A personal style both reflective and supportive of those selves. Some of us push through our High WASP reticence. We confess to feelings of anxiety and shameful desires for shiny eggplant purses. Others buy new black patent leather half boots or shift dresses covered in green palm trees or beaded vintage cardigans. We might, any one of us, feel that the leopard print scarf we itch to own will tell the story of our self, or even write it.

What we can't forget, not for a moment, is that fashion is business. Businesses want first and foremost to make money. That's a law of physics. They don't particularly care about selves. To be clear, I have nothing against industry, per se. High WASPs are perhaps not supposed to be "in trade", but all that money had to come from somewhere at one point. My mother's family made their way up the capitalist mountain, from ministers to company owners, on the back of a valve factory. My father's family made their money, at least the last version, by financing railroads. Lots of iron on both sides. I digress.

Fashion has a complex set of players. Consider. Like any other industry, fashion has a supply chain, a product, and end users. With a few twists. The end users are us. The product would seem to be clothing. But it isn't. The industry couldn't make enough money to profit all its players on clothing. The pieces of cloth and leather, decorated with feathers, or metal perhaps, are a vehicle for the real product. That addictive thrill of "God Am I Fabulous!" That little click of desire. The moment of rightness in the dressing room. Most of us, thankfully, have enough pieces of various forms of textile to keep ourselves warm and dry and out of jail. We're buying more than cloth. We already understand that, I believe.

Nor does the supply chain consist, as might appear at first glance, only of textile mills, factory workers in Guangzhou, a few designers, and a whole lot of purchase points. In most industries, software, chemicals, even supermarkets, the associated media and influential talkers provide reasonably indepent analysis and commentary. Every industry has its trade publication. Progressive Grocer anyone? To say nothing of the Wall Street Journal. In fashion, because of the ephemeral nature of what is being sold, fashion media, both those beautiful pictures and the often ridiculous accompanying text, is part of the supply chain. Doesn't analyze the product, instead is part of the product. This is unusual.

Below please find the Fashion Supply Chain in all its glory.

1. Designers (known by name)
2. Fashion Media (print, online publications, bloggers, Satorialist...)
3. Standalone Brands (Lilly Pulitzer, J. Crew, Banana Republic, Anthropologie - you already know the URLs:))
4. Multibrand Retailers (Neiman Marcus, Macy's, Bluefly, net-a-porter)
5. Little Guys (Goods, i.e. m0851, Fluevog, bensimons, etc. and Retailers, i.e. catbird, etc.)
6. Stylists (Responsible for the photo ops for most items of desire)
7. Visible Fashion Individuals (Celebrities, socialites, and occasionally the stylists and media types themselves. Rachel Zoe anyone?)

Each and every one looking to define the meaning of fabulous and reap the classic profit of the monopolist. The person who corners the market makes a killing. Every year. This can complicate matters for the rest of us. How many emails entitled All The Fall Trends?, from stores mostly, sit in your inbox right now? And the fashion media is not, as would the technology media, gleefully debunking what the manufacturers and retailers say.

Industries share some similar fault patterns. For example. Experts in every discipline occasionally design for themselves. In technology, software geniuses write programs that only other software geniuses could use. In fashion, designers design clothes that are NOT anything that was seen last year, targeted at impressing their peers. Unfortunately, sometimes NOT anything that we want to wear. Industries which provide self-expression and large sums of money to the talent, when said talent is plentiful in mediocrity and rare in excellence, chew up a lot of youth. Think fashion, music, movies. But the fault pattern in which commenting media is part of the supply chain? That may be unique to fashion.

Let me reassure you. I have no issue with business making money. That is its raison d'etre. But any industry lacking a true commenting media, as well as objective metrics for successful delivery of value to customers, requires some caution on the part of the participants. In particular, we end users lining up for delivery of "God Am I Fabulous!" need a pretty good knowledge of just what in hell fabulous means to us.

Or not. It's OK to participate in an industry non-critically. Just be aware that in the absence of our healthy skepticism the forces of micro-economics are apt to give other players more than their fare share of the value created.

Image: Style.com

Tag, 10 Previously Unknown Things

Muffy Martini tagged* me the other day. Muffy is, to my way of thinking, a slightly offbeat preppy blogger. Which to my way of thinking, is a compliment. She likes ostriches, goes to rock concerts, and laughs really loudly on her blog. She may have trademarked HAHAHAHAHA!

10 previously unknown things about myself. OK.

Of course, being of a metaphysical bent, I would like to tell you things about myself that I don’t even know. But at 52, I believe that finding out 10 things I don’t know about myself might require a trip around the world, or spelunking, or fasting. So I’ll stick to the rules.

1. My first job was working for Cameron Mackintosh in London. My second job was working for Circle Repertory Company in New York. My third job was working for an ex-McKinsey consultant who also ran primal scream workshops. And yes, that’s quite a High WASP set of things to do, as long as they are done young.

2. I joined an eating club at Princeton. My senior year I quit (the club, not Princeton) and learned to cook.

3. My favorite color to wear is navy blue. Oh wait, you know that. Just pretend it’s a surprise.

4. In the late 1970’s my photo was in the Museum of Modern Art for a show of Larry Fink’s photos about parties. One series was of parties from a lower socioeconomic demographic and one series was of parties from a higher socioeconomic demographic. Guess where my photo wound up. I had been invited by a friend to attend the Hungarian Debutante Ball. Not something I did very often. I dressed up. I went. I was laughing with some friends and Larry Fink took our picture and apparently we looked tres** dissolute. The New York Times felt the same way I did. I didn’t know the photo was in the museum until a friend told me.

5. At one point I loved cooking so much I wanted to start a restaurant. In that dreaming-but-knowing-it’s-a-terrible-idea kind of way.

6. I adore the smell of lavender. To the point where every time I pass a lavender bush I pinch a flower head off and hold it to my nose and sniff. If it was your lavender, sorry.

7. When I was 23 I went on a date with William Hurt. I knew him as Bill.

8. I drink tea and eat whole grain toast every morning for breakfast. Oh wait, you know that. Just pretend it’s a surprise.

9. The story I would most like to tell on this blog is of my 3 month trip to India when I was 25. I have slides. I have my journal from the trip. Probably it will make its way here eventually.

10. Although all of this may sound a tad glamorous, it felt quite usual to live.

*I seem not to have the stomach to tag anyone else at this point. Tant pis pour moi.
**I seem not to have accents, neither grave nor aigu, on my keyboard. Encore tant pis pour moi.
***I used to speak French. Hmm. That's 11.

Safe In Harbour

Work can be hard. It matters to be able to come home. To take a deep long breath and put your feet up on the sofa. Look out the window with nothing in mind. Maybe, imaginary if not real, the smell of the bay and the sounds of sails in the wind. A foghorn. Familiar waters.

From Peonies and Polaroid's etsy store. If you somehow missed her wedding recaps, (maybe you aren't obsessed with weddings like me?) they are among the most beautiful ever, in both word and image. Beautiful pictures are a good way to recover from hard work. Even better if they are on your wall at home.

Safe in harbour.

Fierce At 50, Or, The Risk/Return Curve

In two years of business school, I learned 10 things that were worth the effort. Approximately. Almost all of these fell into the general category of: find a problem people have, make or do something that solves that problem, do it better than anyone else, find a good way to explain why your way is better, and then find the people who care and tell them over and over and over again. Or that accounting is a terrible, terrible invention. Or that good team chemistry can make almost any assignment bearable.

Never mind that. In the interest of how to have a career that keeps you fierce at 50, introducing, for those who are lucky enough not to have gone to business school, the Risk/Return curve. It was developed by exceedingly smart economists (whose names I can't remember) to understand financial investing. Why use a concept from the impenetrable world of finance and investments? Think about it. Every job you take is an investment of your time. I sound like one of those mellifluous voices on public television speaking to rapt audiences of middle-aged women but I can’t help it. From the vantage point of my 50's, this is true. Your time is what you really have in life, and you choose where to invest it.


You can interpret the risk/return curve as follows. ON AVERAGE, those investments with the highest probability of a big return are also the riskiest. They are the ones who also have the highest probability of little or no return. They are volatile. Those investments which have ON AVERAGE the lowest return are the safest. Low risk, very predictable, equals probable low return. High risk, higher volatility, equals possible higher return. You invest on what they call the Efficient Frontier. Where you are taking the right amount of risk for the possible return. No more, no less.

How does this idea work to model your career? It doesn't mean that risky jobs earn big returns. It means that risky careers earn big returns. The careers where you go after jobs and opportunities where success is not guaranteed, or where success requires a big investment in time. To earn a lot of money and fame, the returns on investment for your career, you have to take risks. You can incur the risk of going to school for a long time, like law school, or the debt risk of starting your own business, or the statistical risk of trying for a career that millions of people want in athletics or entertainment or at the top of the corporate pyramid, or the sheer win-loss risk of pure financial investing. But risks have to be taken to be successful in the ways of recognition and fortune. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to make money from your gullible self. The fear you have of going after your heart's dream? It's logical. To be expected. You are supposed to be afraid. Risk/return.

However, careers differ from financial markets in several ways. Most importantly, one assumes that the financial Efficient Frontier is pretty much knowable. That the information is out there for you to locate yourself right on the black line. This is the concept of a perfect market (which of course is always being broken by greed and manipulation and regulation and deregulation but never mind all that terrible stuff that forced me to watch hours of Saturday Night Live when I was in business school in order to recover from the sheer horror). Morningstar and Motley Fool and people who are good with quantitative analysis put enormous amounts of data into enormous computers and get numberish things back. Betas. Standard deviations. Makes me say eek. That’s how risk/return is understood in finance.

Life, that little sucker, is not a perfect market. We do not have perfect information. No trading pits for jobs which generate huge amounts of data to be analyzed by huge computers. The information is much more qualitative. Harder to find. And this is the task. Increasing our access to information to balance our risk with our returns. To stay on our own efficient frontier.

I am not done yet. However, to make sure I mislead no one, let me say I would never claim to have universal answers. Living until 52 and then misplacing your job and spending an inordinate amount of time sitting on the sofa and staring out the window doesn’t provide answers. No matter how lovely the roses. Driving on the freeway and suffering from raptures of the open horizon and California summer doesn’t provide answers. Even solving the problems of notecards and envelopes doesn’t provide answers. Just a glimpse of framework. A mode of thinking that can pare away emotion from a problem and leave space to consider.

Rapture. Toes.

Sometimes as I drive up 101 on the way to work I am seized by rapture. I find life to be a blinding light at which we can rarely bear to look.

Sometimes I think about whether I can afford a pedicure and if so whether I should have my toes painted blatant or demure pink.

Humanity. What to do about it?

High WASP True Colors - Navy #2

There are those working days when you plain and simply have to gear up to fight. When what you have to accomplish is going to require your last iota of capability, cognitive, emotional, physical. In the corporate world those days call for navy blue. Every single woman going into law or finance or industry ought to make her first purchase and most frequent purchase over time a navy suit. Or suit equivalent. The particulars can change decade by decade. I celebrated my 30th birthday by buying my first non-suit for work. A navy blue dress that buttoned down the front, big shoulders, wide belt. It was 1986, remember? Throughout my 40's I had a Vestimenta crepe wool navy blue suit. Hung perfectly. Wore it with flat black Ferragamo loafers. Nowadays I wear my Giorgio Armani navy tweed jacket with unmatching wide legged navy linen pants. Manolo Blahnik ballet flats. Heels cause me to wiggle, and wiggling causes me to falter.

Understand that I am not a big shopper. My closet is small. I only buy what I have to. I don't have oodles and oodles of designer labels festooning my hangers. I have figured out the High WASP way of doing nothing wrong with my work wardrobe. No one will ever talk about my clothes behind my back. But some days I need to drop the gloves. I prepare myself for metaphorical blood on the ice. I get my tailored blue and white striped Brooks Brothers shirt, my Rolex Cellini, my bag. All the top level accessories. I wear not one thing that causes me to use up capability on doubt, no wrinkled shirt, no sub-optimal earrings, no scuffed shoes. I put on my navy blue jacket and pants. I prepare to prevail. Against all odds, sometimes.

Wow, this really gets my testosterone going. Line up the accessories like hand grenades.

Must Win Work Days by High WASP featuring Salvatore Ferragamo shoes

Now I might wear just a little bit of blue mascara to remind myself that I used to frequent CBGB's back in the '80s. To remind myself that I find the whiteness of rice quite overwhelming. But that's a small private sign. And the mascara is still navy blue.

Job

The job that got misplaced, then found, is now playing hide and seek. Sort of like a toddler, as in here I am behind the sofa and you can’t see me. As long as you are willing to pretend with me that the entire lower half of my body sticking out does not mean that the upper half is there too. Peekaboo.

In other words, I am working part time. It’s somewhat dislocating, working part time. Over the years I have developed such a distinctive work persona, one only tangentially related to my at home persona, that making the switch in the way that part time work requires feels odd.

Sometimes I am having phone calls from my sofa while What Not To Wear is muted on the television, as I assure a client that I understand their requirements. Sometimes I go from shorts and a t-shirt to linen pants and a jacket to sweatpants and a gym top all in the course of 4 hours. Shining new light on the meaning of personality, that’s for sure. I have to really pay attention to what pair of shoes I have on at any given moment.

Door To Door - 2009

Yesterday I was outside on my front lawn. Picking up rose branches left from cutting roses for my kitchen counter. A man walked up to say hello to me. This was odd. I live in a cul-de-sac and usually people who are not my neighbors don’t walk up to me as I stand on my front lawn. The man was wearing a suit, a very white shirt, and a tie. It was a gray suit, not black, so he wasn’t a Latter Day Saint coming to tell me why I am wrong-headed in my atheism. Besides, they never come alone. The Latter Day Saints always come to me in trios.

“Hello,” he said, “I am starting a local business.” He named an investment firm, named for some long dead man, of which apparently he is opening a branch. “Sorry,” I said, “I’m very committed to my current firm. “Well, thank you,” he said, and shook my hand, and left.

Door-to-door investment counselors? It reminded me of the 1960’s, when my parents’ insurance salesman would come to our house. It felt like a moment in the Great Depression, men in suits, walking on pavements, calling on strangers. Or as though "Mad Men" had sprung to life on my sidewalk. Minus the hat. However, I commended him on his enterprise.

High WASP = Money

flickr

Was I High WASP with my children about money? In how much I had? In my attitude towards it? In what I tried to teach them? My first reaction is to say no, simply because I haven’t had the quantities that I grew up with. But I think that’s wrong. I had money. Enough money to buy a house in the San Francisco Bay Area on low salaries and no savings. Enough money to stay home with my children until my little guy was 18 months, and even then only work part-time until he turned 7. Enough money to send two children to private schools on still lowish salaries and no savings. Enough money to take my family to Sweden and stay on a private island in the Swedish Archipelago where one night we took a motorboat to another island and ate grilled fish sitting at wooden benches while a string trio played a mix of Norwegian folk songs and the soundtrack from The Godfather. (Of course my Swedish stepfather and my mother’s perspicacity in marrying him helped with that moment…) Most of all enough money to give my kids glimpses of privilege without having parents doing the type of work that would have afforded that privilege. Even though I don’t have a private art collection that has been gifted to a museum after my death. (Another true fact).

My own attitude towards money has been absolutely classic. High WASPs really really really didn’t use to talk about money. It was worse than pornography, though carrying the same illicit frisson. To this day I remember a conversation with my father, so much unsaid, where he was trying to give me some kind of financial overview before I went off to college. We were living in the house with 35 rooms at the time, where the attic alone was the size of a barn. My parents had for some reason decided to have an award-winning architect build them a garden shed in the yard. Yes, I said garden shed. Dad and I were walking by the shed. It was the special kind of shed that has two stories. And windows. I found myself blurting out, “Dad, so are we millionaires?” He just looked at the ground and made a noise, some kind of noise of affirmation. I was 17 years old and I hadn’t known.

My inheritance, once it arrived, went to live in lalaland. The land where money you don’t make lives. The land governed by your cousins, and banks with strange names that merge with other banks with strange names, and account statements that follow you all your life. That land sends you a checkbook. When you need money you write a check. At some point, actually frequently, you will write checks that would bounce if you were normal. But since you have money in lalaland, someone calls you and says, “How about if we sell XYZ?” Since you didn’t earn that money, and in fact know nothing about investments or banking or stock markets or bonds, you always say “OK.” Eventually they stop asking you, and lalaland becomes lala and fala and falalalala.

Did I impart this attitude to my children? I do not know. I don’t think so. It is true that in many ways, I have replicated how I was brought up. I didn’t make my kids take jobs in high school. Or work at home to earn their allowances. Because my High WASP family values education above all, to my way of thinking their jobs were to do well in school. I indulged them repeatedly. We stayed at fancy hotels when I took them on college tours. Can you say the Peninsula Hotel in Chicago? OMG. Just LOVE LOVE LOVE the panel by the bed to adjust the room controls, and all that honey-colored silk, and the little dressing room outside the bathroom…. But I digress. Bad High WASP. We are being serious here and not hanging our tongues out about the props of money. I bought my daughter a cashmere coat at Bergdorf’s when she started Princeton. Which in fairly short order was stolen from an eating club. After having had beer poured all over it the year before. I sent my son to Australia for a month with his best friend for his high school graduation.

But. In more ways I took a different approach. Most glaringly, my house does not have 35 rooms. We’re pushing it to say 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, kitchen+living room, den. Oh yeah, and a hallway. And I have always told my kids they would have to work. I started saying to them early, when we were out to dinner and enjoying a restaurant with candles and tablecloths and large ravioli, “Now aren’t you glad Mom has a job?” I have made very clear to them that they can go to college unencumbered only because their grandfather in his infinite wisdom funded trust accounts to pay for it. And when they entered college, I began the process of talking to them about how they would support themselves upon graduation. Certainly no inheritance showed up in my daughter’s bank account last fall.

I have tried to teach them how to find a financial path they want to take. Not that I know from direct experience. No one ever talked to me about a career. As in, I don’t think the word was ever said. Not once. I want my children to understand in a way I never did the importance of choosing a way of earning money that you can live with. Whether that means doing what you most love and letting the money come if it will, or whether it means building a lucrative career and doing what you love as a hobby, no matter. But some degree of thought has to be put into the question. Because careers grab you by the scruff of your neck and shake you until you are dead and you might as well die for something you love and/or believe in.

There are values, which may be related to money, which I have hoped to pass on. Excellence and a degree of honor. Excellence, a degree of honor, and some avoidance of ostentation unless we are only with ourselves and no one will be offended. Or we are inviting people in and sharing. How well we realize those values, who knows? We are all humans and humans are subject to a multitude of flaws. But my mother and my father both believed in integrity, doing the best job you can, and good manners. At least they said they did. And so do I. At least I say I do. But values are a question for another day.

Very Solicitous Robots

Robots keep calling me on the phone. They are such nice young robots. Worried about my financial well-being. In this economy, as they point out, I might need some help. In this economy, they believe, I might need to refinance my house. In this economy, they politely explain, I should call them absolutely right away immediately.

I would thank the robots. Tell them not to worry. That I'm doing OK. But were I to pick up the phone I would be sending my voice, filled with my feelings of fondness, down a long tunnel of bits and bytes and wires and cables and switches and I do not think the robots would actually ever hear me.

So I don't pick up the phone, despite their good intentions. Sorry all you nice robots. If I have been wrong about your sentience, please accept my apologies.

Laid Off Laid On

Looks as though my misplaced job has found a little piece of itself. Part time. For now.

• Time to muster up the discipline not to ask questions before others are done talking
• Time to muster up the testosterone to reply in short, muscular, phrases
• Most of all, time to blow dry my hair. I just hate holding my arm up in the air for that many minutes in a row.

But that's what they pay me for. And that's what I spent 30 years learning how to do. Except I still don't have the hang of the blow drying thing.

Unemployment

I was talking to my youngest sister, who is also looking for work, although in her case as part of her emergence from the life of a full-time mom of 3. She said everyone tells her, "We're waiting." That's what I hear too. What we want to know is, waiting for what? Must be for someone, somewhere, to spend some money. So you, hey you out there! Reach into your purse. Take out your wallet. See that dollar? Yes, the old crinkly one? Give it to someone in exchange for a service or good. And if you can't do it now, can you just let us know when you might plan to do it? So we can go lie in the sun until the world of money, goods, and services is ready to start turning those massive gears and combusting the combustibles? Thanks. Much appreciated.

I'd Rather be a Big Baby Sometimes

My employer has currently, as I have said, misplaced my job. This may change. Still, as of now, I am not working.

This is unusual. I have worked at a paying job most of my post-undergraduate life. After college until business school in various entry level jobs, after business school for a Fortune 250 chemical company until my first pregnancy, 15 months after my second pregnancy on and off in various marketing and strategy consulting projects, and from the time the child the second pregnancy turned into was 7 – full-time in computer hardware and software. Until now.

Being released, however briefly, from corporate life is very interesting. For the last 6 or 7 years I have been a vice president of something or other. Granted, a promoted-very quickly-not-having-enough-experience-for-the-job kind of VP, and an only-had-a-group-working for me for part of that time VP, but still, a VP.

The part of not working that warms my heart is that if I want to be a big baby at any moment - I can. The part of working that I was never really good enough at was this. Executive stature. Imagine your boss, at that time the COO of a well-funded startup, says to you, High WASP, what you need to work on is your executive stature. Eeek. When you are the kind of person who nursed her children past the cultural norm, whose father and mother have never voted Republican, whose high school prom featured Jimi Hendrix music, the concept of executive stature is pretty alien.

I didn’t at first understand what he was saying. What the hell is executive stature? I’m not a tall man with a square jaw? But when he told me what I had been doing that degraded my executive stature, I got it. What had I done? I talked too much. I revealed how I felt about things. I showed my love for people and life outside of work.

Executive stature. The High WASP in me translated. Aha. You mean stiff upper lip. Stiff upper lip crossed with square jawed testosterone production.

Which thankfully is not required for sofa-sitting, taking my recyclables out on Tuesday morning, weeding my front yard, or buying whole grain bread at Whole Foods. Unemployment in other words.

The main problem is that in order to have enough money to stay alive, not to die under a freeway somewhere clutching my bottle of generic alcohol, I need to work. Which in my case, means I have to muster up some executive stature. Deep sigh.