numbers don't lie

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of attending an awesome wedding in Madison with old friends.  The recent discovery of a gluten intolerance meant I could not participate in the college-style beer consumption while touring our old stomping grounds in a trolley for wedding party pictures.  That, combined with being one of the only single attendees at the wedding, had me at the bar ordering a mandarin martini promptly upon arrival at the reception.

The really outgoing and awesome girlfriend of one of my college friends quickly approached me and introduced herself.  She didn't really know anyone at the wedding, and within two minutes of talking to her, I felt like we had been friends for years.  As I instructed the bartender on my martini preferences (more dry than sweet), my new friend, Christina, was suddenly engrossed in conversation with a short, soft-spoken older woman standing next to her at the bar.  My martini arrived, and I was scanning the room for who I should talk to next when Christina quickly turned to me, her eyes huge.  She grabbed my arm and mouthed, "you HAVE to talk to this lady."  Shaking her head, she turned back to the older woman and bent down so the woman could speak directly into her ear.  I learned later that the woman's name was Beverly Kay.  She was a friend of the bride's parents.  And she lived in the town I grew up in.  It was eerie already.

Christina and Beverly began writing numbers on a piece of paper, and I realized this woman was a psychic of some kind.  Immediately, I was skeptical.  I find astrology very intriguing, but "psychics" were a little much.  Over the next few minutes, I caught bits and pieces of what Beverly had to say to Christina, but more importantly, it was impossible to ignore Christina's reaction.  At the end of her reading, Christina grabbed my arm and pushed me over to Beverly.  Talk to her.  You HAVE to talk to her.  Come find me when you're done, and she walked away dumbfounded.

Beverly introduced herself to me and immediately told me to write down my birthday month and day.  I liked where this started.  Those who know me, know how proud of my birthday I am and that I take every opportunity to talk about how it was the coolest possible day to be born that year.  Clearly, Beverly was my kind of lady.  As I wrote down the 8 and the 3, it was Beverly's turn to grab MY arm.  I've been doing this, in one fashion or another, since I was 5 years old, she whispered.  And in all my years, I have only met four other people with my birthday.  You're the fifth.  She quickly began writing down numbers and muttering under her breath.  She told me how she knew these numbers inside and out because they were her numbers too. You're witty and animated.  Your friends think you're funny and you like to own a room.  But sometimes you go too far and put your foot in your mouth.  Then, you're confused when no one thinks it's funny.  Ummm... yep, that's accurate.  Go on Beverly, you have my attention.

She next instructed me to write down my birth year: 1983 (it's worth noting that this was NOT also her birth year).  Again, she jumped in with a flurry of numbers and muttering.  Her eyes poured into the cocktail napkin in front of us.  Suddenly, she stopped and looked up at me.  She cocked her head to the side and a small smile twitched at the corners of her mouth.

So when are you going to start writing those books?

I recoiled like I had been punched in the stomach.  Chills from head to toe, and my eyes immediately filled with tears.  Christina, who had been watching me from across the room, undoubtedly anticipating this reaction, was by my side in a second.  All I could do was shake my head.  Beverly waited patiently (she clearly got this response often).  I took a deep breath and stepped toward her again.  You're very talented.  This is going to be a great year for you, but you need to get started now.  Don't wait. 

...And with that, I let someone else have a turn.  I had heard all I needed to hear.  It's funny... out of all the things a psychic could have told me, that was the one that went straight to my soul.  Interestingly, however, it's not the thing I would have asked about, given the chance.  I suppose I have to believe she probably knew that too.  Actually, I don't "have" to believe anything.  Which is why it doesn't matter to me whether Beverly is a mind-reader, a really good mathematician, or just a lucky guesser. 

What matters is, she was right.

Quite literally rocking my world right now.

i am not an island

If you want to go quickly, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together.
-African proverb

help, help*

There’s nothing like the adrenaline of running sprinting through the airport knowing you have a one in a million chance of making your flight, but hoping beyond hope that somehow you pull it off.  Thanks to the help of a GREAT friend (who thought I was asking him to help me change my flat tire, when, in actuality, I was asking him to drive me to the airport during rush hour traffic), I’m miraculously on my flight to Milwaukee.  Thank you, NateDogg – you’re the epitome of awesome.

 

As my heart rate slowly returns to normal and the coughing and wheezing lets up (yes, seriously), I find myself engaged in a bit of adrenaline-induced introspection.

Why do I have SUCH a hard time asking for help?  I anticipate that this post will be as much personal as it is professional, despite the author’s preference that it be strictly the latter.  The fact that my friend thought I was asking him to come downtown and help me change my tire illustrates explicitly what I’m going to discuss in this post.  Why didn’t (couldn’t) I just say to him, “I’m in a really bad spot.  I have a flat tire, and I REALLY need a ride to the airport right this second if I have any chance of making my flight?”? (This grammar nazi isn’t quite sure that’s the accurate punctuation, but just go with it).

Instead, what I said to him (and a couple others) was more along the lines of, “Hey!  How’s it going? … Good, good! ....  Oh me?  Well, yeah, I’m not so great.  I actually have to catch a flight to Wisconsin, and I just came out to my parking lot, and I have a flat tire…. Yeah, seriously.  Can you believe it?  Murphy’s law, right? … Yeah, well I don’t know what I’m going to do.  What are you doing right now? … If you’re busy, I’m sure I could grab a cab.”  NateDogg, who knows me so well and, admittedly, over the years, has taken me under his wing as a bit of a second dependent (his wife is one of my besties), immediately said, “No, no, I’ll come help you.  Where are you?”

Thinking he was coming to help me change my tire, he called to let me know he had arrived at the designated corner.  I bounded out of my office, threw my suitcase in the backseat and hopped in the front seat.  “Thank you SO much for taking me to the airport.  You’re the absolute BEST!!!  Do you think we can make it there in 25 minutes?!?!” I gushed, breathless (ps – It was rush hour).

Ummm… what?  Wait… Um, yeah, I guess I can take you to the airport.  I just need to make a couple calls because I’m supposed to be at a dinner down south… No, no, it’s ok - I’ll take you.  Wait, where’s your car?  I thought you needed help with your tire?

Huh?  My tire?  Oh.  Shit.  “I know you believe you understand what you think I said; however, I’m not sure you realize that what you heard, is not what I meant.”

It’s my job to manage expectations.  I am expected to tell it to people straight and let them know what’s ahead.  And from the feedback I’ve received, I think I’m good at my job.  I don’t say this arrogantly… I have A LOT to learn, but I like to think I’m direct and people respect me for it.  So why, WHY, do I have such a difficult time saying to a close, trusted friend, “Hey, I’m incredibly vulnerable right now and completely dependent on your support.  Please, help me.”?

Why can’t I tell my superiors or colleagues that I can’t handle something, that I need direction, support, resources, etc.?  Why do I wait until it’s to the point that it’s absolutely unbearable before I’ll cry uncle?

I perceive a request for help as a personal weakness.  There, I said it.  Let’s start there (I realize I’m well into this post, and I think I’m just “starting”).  I hate admitting that I can’t do something for myself, which means I have a really, really (REALLY) difficult time asking for help.  I know this is flat-out wrong, on many levels (both personal and professional), but I just can’t help the internal reaction I get from admitting defeat.  I’m cringing just writing this.  I hate it.  Surprisingly, however, when other people ask me for help, I don’t perceive them as weak (when requests for help are used reasonably, of course – not necessarily sparingly, just reasonably).  In fact, I love to help other people.  This is strictly a self- perception, and it’s very much a double standard.

Before I effectively (unintentionally) tricked NateDogg into taking me to the airport, I had two VERY good friends say to me “I am busy, but if you NEED me to take you to the airport, just tell me and I’ll take you.”  And I couldn’t tell them.  Of course I needed them to take me to the airport – how else was I going to get there?  I knew I needed them to take me to the airport.  I knew my flight left in an hour.  I knew that even if I could even get a cab, it would be 65 bucks and the driver likely wouldn’t absorb my sense of urgency. I knew I was out of options. But I couldn’t form the words.  Three simple words that absolutely kill me to admit: I. Need. Help.

It’s professionally reminiscent of the moment when my boss told me to start making calls and begin building a team because we were to the point where I needed help.  I don’t need help, not yet anyway.  I got this, I thought defiantly.  But, lucky for me, he insisted (“as a precaution”), and I followed his instruction and made my first call for “help.”  We hired my referral (who is AWESOME) pretty much immediately.

Three months later, I’ve made two specific calls for help, and I couldn’t imagine my life without them.  There have been a couple of projects and a couple of clients that I, admittedly, only reluctantly released control over.  I had taken it as an insult when colleagues and superiors told me that there was no way I would be able to chew all that I had bitten off.  This week, however, we all laughed at how insane it would have been for me to have held on to those pieces.  I let go of them, and somehow, my days are still overflowing, my job is still fulfilling and I’m still respected.

Thank you, NateDogg, for helping me when I couldn’t ask for it.  Thank you to my two other friends for offering to help me, if I could just ask for it.  Both are more valuable than you’ll know. 

* There’s a famous Denver homeless man, who is notorious for violently shaking his change cup at you and hollering “HELP, HELP” as you walk by.  Because of him, the phrase has taken on a bit of a second meaning among some of us locals.

other people's wisdom

Recently, I've been hearing the same message a number of different ways - that it's really important to spend time learning from other people's experiences.  This means committing some serious time to reading business books and blogs.

Before I do that though, I need to admit that this isn't really appealing to me.  I love to read, but admittedly, my literary choices range from smart fiction to trashy magazines.  By way of example, I'm currently enjoying the second book in the Twlight series, and I apologize for nothing.  In a way, I blame law school for this (shocker, I know).  But, I feel as though I reached my lifetime "educational reading" quota somewhere around the middle of second year.  Since then, it's been very difficult for me to spend "free time" reading anything that isn't mindless.  I'd like to change that this year. 

A couple of my close colleagues and I continually remind each other that by experiencing the ups and downs and goods and bads of working at a start-up, we're getting our MBAs - one lesson at a time.  It's such a phenomenal opportunity that I would be crazy to not maximize the experience.  I need to think of business books and blogs as my course materials and start taking them very seriously. 

This guy's blog is a great place to start.

on the first day of Christmas (break)

... I stayed up with my parents drinking wine in front of the fireplace until 2 am (I know this doesn't rhyme with "pear tree," but I got tired of thinking about it).   The equally glorious part is I got to sleep in until 11 am this morning.  My dad is making potato pancakes, and I'm drinking coffee and blogging.  It's really nice to be home for Christmas.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who uses Christmas time as the evaluation point in the year to reflect on what has gone well and what changes I need to make in the coming year.  It isn't a conscious evaluation process.  I certainly don't sit down with a form and rank my experiences one to five, but instead, it seems to be something that just happens on its own.  This year, I had 16 hours of driving for this evaluation process.  16 hours of driving and some really great music.  It was like Pandora had a window to my soul and played all of the songs I didn't even know I wanted to hear.

The conclusion of my evaluation: It never ceases to amaze me the difference a year makes.

I think this can be best illustrated by comparing  last year's Christmas party to this year's.  First, read about last year.  How do you know you've hit rock bottom in law?  When your ranting offends the bartender at the firm Christmas party.  Bartenders have decencies of steel, and offending those decencies is quite the feat.

While I definitely "over-stepped" and succeeded in speaking my mind at both events, the messages were completely different.  Last year, the crux of my rant was that I was wasting my life, my hard work and energy, and I was miserable.  This year, my boss and I got into a heart-to-heart at the bar over tidal wave shots.  I went on and on... and on about how much I love what I'm doing and what an incredible opportunity I have with this company.  I told him point blank that I want to make a million dollars.  My inner Veruca Salt came out a bit, and I may have been embarrassingly adamant.  But the next day in the office, my boss gave me a high five and laughed.  I sheepishly apologized for talking his ear off.  He said, Nic, I want to make a million dollars too.  More than that.  So let's do it. 

It's been a good year.  A really, really good year.

the oyster

I have been waiting for this exact morning for weeks now... my own house, the Christmas tree coinciding beautifully with a Christmas playlist, a certain brown dog, a great cup of coffee with cinnamon and nutmeg, and absolutely zero obligations.  This weekend is my oyster.

Like so many times I sit down to blog, I'm prompted to get back after it because I received a really nice compliment from someone who "loves my blog" and wishes I would write more often.  Thanks Mary.

Also like the many other times I've sat down to write, I don't have a particular topic in mind.  There are so many places this post could go, and suddenly I'm overwhelmed by how much I have to write about.  It's a funny contrast from 15 minutes ago.  The coffee was brewing and the brown dog was eating his brown chunks, and the thought actually crossed my mind, "I don't think I have anything to write about."  Here I am, three paragraphs later, trying to prioritize where this post should go.

Friday morning, I randomly ran into a good friend and mentor (friend first, mentor second) on the corner of 16th street downtown.  I rolled down my window and hollered to get her attention.  She came running over to my car and immediately told me she's moving.  To California.  On Monday.  We haven't seen each other in a couple months, but she is responsible for a huge chunk of my current professional happiness.  Those of you who have heard my "how and why I got out of law" spiel, would know her as opposing counsel in the deal from hell.  My firm represented the borrower and she represented the bank.  Despite having to deal with my intolerable clients from hell, she was always very respectful to me and my team, even at 3 in the morning as we frantically made changes to the documents from hell (see if you can find the pattern here). 

Finally closing day arrived... this is the day you wait for - the day in a young transactional lawyer's career where you're supposed to feel like all the blood, sweat and tears contained in the thousands of pieces of paper spread out on the massive conference table were somehow worth it.  It's the culmination of months (and sometimes years) worth of work.  Even when your clients are nice and appreciative, you deserve one hell of a drink when the closing is over.  When your clients suck... you deserve twelve drinks.  My own team wasn't able to take for me drinks post-closing, and at the end of the day, as I cleaned up the conference table and organized all of my executed documents, blue pens and "sign here" tabs, I silently prayed that somehow all the i's were dotted and the t's were crossed.  Recognizing that I was the only one from my team left, my now-friend asked if she could take me for a drink.  A strong drink.  And I happily accepted.  We've been friends ever since.

She's the one who basically told me that I was on the path to being her in 8 years.  A go-getter attorney who knew early on that perhaps law wasn't the best fit but whose pride (and massive debt) wouldn't let her admit it.  She talked of the entitlement that comes with working ungodly hours in a job you hate - having the house and the car (on top of the law debt) that simply wouldn't allow you to make less than a six figure, big firm salary.  We drank wine and discussed the toll of law on relationships.  We compared the politics of big firms to small firms and acknowledged the "boys club"mentality of the whole "business."  I explained my view of how the law firm structure is inherently flawed, and how associates, partners and clients can never really be on the same team.  She told me that the work doesn't change, and more often than not, the politics don't change either.  Ultimately, her insight drove me to the conclusion that if I couldn't do it now - if I hated the work and the politics kept me up at night now... then I certainly wasn't going to be able to do it for the rest of my life.  So I quit.  And I've never been happier.

To hear my friend say that she quit her law job, packed her stuff into storage and didn't really have a career plan for when she got to California almost made me happier than my own decision to leave law.  She looked great, with excitement all over her face and sheer terror in her eyes - exactly the way she should feel... but she was doing it.  She was giving professional happiness a shot.  You can't win the lottery if you never buy a ticket. 

I don't know if she knows how influential her opinions and insights were on me and my decision to leave law.  Yes, of course, I had the perfect storm of opportunities and I was in the right place at the right time, and have a lot of people to thank for that.  But in the end, I get to do something that I love today because opposing counsel took me for a martini over a year ago and gave it to me straight. 

I wish her a world of happiness and a career where she can succeed simply by working hard and being herself.  The world is her oyster, and it seems she is finally understanding that.