I’ve been thinking about transitions. Some people transition quickly and some slowly or shall we say not as quickly. But those who transition quickly sometimes pay later because they act too fast which can result in suboptimal decisions. Some act too slowly which also result in suboptimal decisions where they have to pay the piper painfully in pickled peppers.
In the world of entrepreneurship, you have to make quick decisions as though you had the time to make a well thought out one, while at the same time having very limited data. In larger companies, you have more time to research, prepare, and analyze before making a decision which could end up not working anyway. Larger companies can spend millions of dollars on a bad product/idea and still survive. Entrepreneurs/small businesses can’t. They will lose people, money and time.
So how companies handle transitions depends on their culture. It has been demonstrated that some of the most successful businesses transitioned many times during their existence and their starting business plans looked very different than the one that proved successful.
Think about how you handle transitions in your personal, parenting, and professional lives. Are they similar or different? Does it depend on the people you have around you and the strengths and weaknesses they evoke? I’ve noticed that I’m strongly effected by the people around me during times of transition, and I try to move towards those who have a positive effect on me but am sometimes seemingly demonically pulled towards those who make the transition harder, but fortunately my inner core is more attracted to positive people. 😀
Ah, transitions…one of the things in life you can always expect to happen!
These two links are interesting because I wrote the posts…well not just that, they also have some great entrepreneurial content related to my job at the Austin Technology Incubator.
IBM and ATI Announce Partnership On Novel Summer Internship Program
It took us a while to be able to talk about the above partnership that I helped coordinate, but just last week we were finally able to talk about the unique intern program we set up. It’s pretty exciting news since we helped create three internships that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. Click the link to read the full story including quotes from our executive director, Isaac Barchas, and a vice president at IBM, Manoj Saxena.
Human Resources Best Practices – Lunch & Learn
One of the many things I do at ATI is organize periodic Lunch & Learn’s with relevant topics/speakers for our companies. The last one we did was on HR and we had some fantastic speakers (see below). Check out the post for key questions asked and key takeaways from their talk as well as their full bios.
Lori Knowlton, Vice President, Human Resources at HomeAway, Inc.
Alise Mullins, Vice President of Human Resources atLifeSize
Beth Ruffing, SPHR, Team Manager, Service Operations,Administaff, Inc.
It’s been almost six months since I’ve done a post on fortune cookies but I got one recently that seemed appropriate. I was having lunch with Laura Benold, a former ATI marketing associate extraordinaire, last week and got the following fortune: “Impatience may be appropriate at this time.” We both laughed and thought it was relevant given our conversation at the time. Although I like to get things done and get them done quickly, I have been more than patient about some things (contrary to some people’s beliefs about me) in the last few years mostly because I was dealing with a personal tsunami of my own, but my patience on certain things has about run out. So maybe I should be more visible with my impatience for a while. 🙂
Another fortune (i.e., a statement, which seem to be the trend in fortune cookies these days) I got in the last couple of months is something like “Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.” That is so true about people, products, markets, etc. I have a blog post brewing in my head about that one. I think entrepreneurs have an even greater imagination than most. I can’t imagine living life without an active imagination. Entrepreneurs (business people, scientists, writers, etc.) are sometimes crazy enough to attempt to try and make what they imagine real!
The title of this post was one of 4 pieces of advice that Coach Augie Garrido (wikipedia) gave during his talk last week at the Austin chapter of the Technology Entrepreneur’s Exchange (Texchange). I have attended several Texchange events and I was a table moderator for this event. My great neighbor, who sits on the board of Texchange, and who also happens to be a long time reader of my blog :-), invited me to be a table moderator. He knew I might enjoy it and have some words of wisdom to contribute since the topic was “Facing Adversity.”
Coach Garrido coaches the University of Texas at Austin baseball team and is the “all time winningest coach in the NCAA Division 1 Baseball.” He is a six-time National Coach of the Year and has won five national championships. Now, I don’t follow most sports and least of all baseball, but he had several gems of advice and motivation to share. The one that stuck out most to me was “Treat yourself like your own best friend.” He said that often players will encourage/support/forgive others on their team that messed up, but judge themselves harshly which can really throw them off their game. He also said something like “baseball is a game of failure.” It’s hard to get all the way around and get someone through home plate so that means to me, you have to deal with more than a few screw-ups.
Here are a few other things he said that resonated with me:
Teamwork is about trust. It starts with trust and from trust comes respect and from respect comes teamwork.
Remove the winning from the process.
You can’t control the things around you, but you can control your response.
We all need a purpose individually and as a team.
You are only as strong as your weakest link. (We’ve all heard that one before and oh, how true it is. The weakest link can bring down your strongest links and cause them to take their eyes off the proverbial ball.)
I think team sports are important for kids to participate in. Being a part of a team really helps you in life and in business. You win some you lose some and on really good teams it’s not just about one or two superstars, it’s about how the team performs together. I see this on my son’s soccer team. The team wins when the players pass well and make goals. The person making the goal can’t make the goal if his team mates don’t pass the ball to him at the opportune time. They aren’t out there worrying about who takes credit. They just want their team to win. Just like in a good sports team, a good team shares ideas and doesn’t feel threatened by other people contributing to the success of the team or helping others. Some get recognition for visibly making business goals, some for passing on information/connections to those who need it, some for making sure things get done.
Great coaches/bosses know how to coordinate it day after week after month after year. And sometimes, you have an off year like our poor UT Austin Longhorn football team is having this year. That’s life! Personally, I’m hoping my off years are behind me and there are only good/winning years ahead since I’m my own mom and business coach (with a lot of help from some fabulous friends, family, and co-workers of course!). One has to have hope… 😀
Time to write is scarce these days. My days are full with work, kids, homework supervision, music, house stuff, friends, and movies. The kids and I saw Megamind in 3D today. 🙂 So that means less time for me to write on the blog, but not to worry I am still getting my creative outlet through song writing. My new music writing partner and I now have 5 prototype songs done. They are still works in progress but for the few people I have played acoustic/rough cut recordings to, they seemed to like them or they did a good job at acting they liked them! My favorite one so far is based on lyrics inspired by my daughter.
This past week, I had the chance to participate in two really neat entrepreneurial related events in Austin. One was the Entrepreneur’s Foundation of Central Texas (EF) annual fundraising Texas Hold ‘Em poker night event. The Austin Technology Incubator, where I work, partners with the EF to handle our company’s equity donations to The University of Texas at Austin. The organization was co-founded by one of my friends, Randi Shade, who is currently an Austin city council member. This was my third year to go and I always have a blast. Each time, I’ve made it past the initial table to the 2nd table. One year I think I made it past the 2nd table, but this year I was out at the 2nd. It’s a fabulous networking event with the who’s who of Austin entrepreneurs and investors in attendance. Last year, they had celebrity guests, one of whom was Heather Graham. I got a picture with her and yes she is as beautiful in person as she is in the movies! She even gave me a stick of chewing gum. The EF provides a great service to our community by helping facilitate donations when companies have a liquidating event to charities of their choice.
The other event was the Idea to Product Competition (I2P). I have judged and served as a feedback judge at I2P for several years now. I remember being part of the early formation discussions of the competition 10+ years ago. I really enjoy participating in this competition for many reasons. The student teams seem to get better every year. I’m always fascinated with the life science companies and this year is no exception. One company had invented a tiny microscope to help detect diseases in blood samples via enhanced imagery. I don’t want to go into too much detail because our advice to them was to really get a clear understanding of their intellectual property ownership. Another had an at home device for testing for certain sexually transmitted diseases. The topic makes me cringe but apparently there is a large and unfortunately growing market. The entrepreneur in me gets excited to see these students interested in commercializing technology they have either created or intend to license from a university. It also reminds me of when I was a student presenting my first company in front of a panel of judges in one business plan competition after another. I can relate to the nerves/anxiety but the thrill of selling the concept kept me going.
As I think I’ve mentioned before, there are many really neat things happening in Austin in the world of high-tech entrepreneurship, and I only wish I had time to write more about them.
And now for a really quick post…Happy Halloween! My kids dressed up as Super Girl and something called a Metal Skull Rider and went trick or treating with their dad. I didn’t dress up, but at my son’s soccer game today I asked one of the mom’s to spray gold glitter in my hair so my daughter would try having some in her hair.
This weekend I showed up to help advise companies that are part of a program called 3 Day Startup hosted by the Austin Technology Incubator (where I work) and coordinated by our wireless/IT director, Bart Bohn. Check out the ATI Blog for an update on the students that were involved and the companies that emerged from the weekend lock-in. Three teams presented tonight to a panel of judgest so that’s where I spent my Halloween evening…with glittery hair.
Check out this post by Michael Arrington on TechCrunch to find out if you are a Pirate (a.k.a. entrepreneur in search of adventure because finding that pot of gold is rare). He says, “Entrepreneurs, though, are all screwed up. They don’t need to be rewarded for risk, because they actually get utility out of risk itself. In other words, they like adventure. The payouts for starting a business are just terrible when you account for risk. A tiny minority of entrepreneurs ever get rich. And the majority of entrepreneurs would probably make far more money, and have more stable personal relationships, if they just worked for someone else.”
Last weekend, my kid’s school, Magellan International, had its first Fall Festival. We were one of the founding families of the school and it was a great event with lots of kids, booths, sno cones, dragon dancing, and pinatas. I even got my hand painted with henna in classic Indian style. It has made my recent business meetings quite interesting because I feel compelled to explain the ornate henna tatoo on my fingers and palms so that people don’t think I have some rare disease. 🙂 My daughter decided to get her face painted as Spiderman…but fortunately not with henna!
There are always so many things going on that are school related that I’m really impressed with the parents who coordinate events like these. As a full time working mom, I feel like I can’t keep up most of the time so I’m grateful for the other moms & dads who get involved and organize events like these for the school.
The coordinators for this event chose to use VolunteerSpot as their tool to help organize the other parent’s contributions and activities. I was excited they used VolunteerSpot because a friend of mine, Karen Bantuveris, is the founder of the company. I had lunch with Karen last week and told her how I liked using the tool. I signed up to bring paper plates and volunteered my time at one of the booths (mask making for the Brazil booth). It was really easy to sign up and then I got an email reminder before the event letting me know what I had signed up to do. I try to get everything on my calendar but as life and kid’s activities get more complex, I appreciate every little reminder I get.
I was originally going to do a post about all the various issues I’ve had lately with my car, my garage door, and other stuff, but then I rented and watched Slumdog Millionaire last night. My car stopped working last Friday but they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it. Fortunately I happened to be near the dealer and was able to drive it into the lot before it died again. They give free rental cars so I just had to pay about $50 for the diagnostic even though I had a nice new rental car for 4 days. My garage door stopped working Monday night even though I had just replaced the motor just a month ago and spent more money than I’d like to say to get it fixed. I was about to lose it when they told me they would charge me for the service trip, but when he came out he discovered it was a warranty issue so I didn’t get charged. So compared to the life of many street kids in India, I have a pretty sweet set of periodic challenges (knock on wood).
Slumdog Millionaire was a great movie and apparently the Academy thought the same because it won 8 awards in 2009. It’s about the life of orphan street kids in India. I’ve been to India and Sri Lanka and the poverty and abysmal living conditions of many kids is real. Maybe I’m a little cynical these days but the happy ending seemed a bit surreal given the horrible hardships they endured. Spoiler Alert: The main character wins 20 million rupees, he is finally reunited with the girl he fell in love with as a boy, his brother who betrayed him shoots the bad guy and gets killed in the process, etc. However, I’m sure the visuals were even more dramatic on the big screen. If those poor street kids in India can have a positive, entrepreneurial attitude when everything and everyone around them can’t be trusted, then who am I to complain.
One day I hope to take my kids to a true 3rd world country so they will fully appreciate the United States of America and what a nice life we have here. I feel so blessed to be living in America. And hopefully they will finally appreciate it when I tell them “there are poor kids in India who would love to have your food” when they say don’t like something on their plates!
We love stories and movies about people beating the odds. We love the high, the risk, the adrenaline, the rush, the underdog making it. We all want to be that person who beats the odds and we cheer those people on. I saw the movie Secretariat this weekend and what a story. Secretariat was a famous, record breaking race horse. I love horses. I used to ride horses and one day when the stars align, I’d love to be around horses again. What a sweet relationship between Secretariat and his owner.
I think this is why I am drawn to entrepreneurship and people who like to create something out of nothing. People who believe against all odds that what they are doing will change the world and take on the risk of not making it. It’s that passion that you wish you could bottle and release upon the many people in the world who are afraid to try something because they are afraid of failing or looking bad. It’s really scary to do things that go against the grain. To risk being alone. The anxiety in the pit of your stomach is there when you do something that might result in people judging you but you know in your heart of hearts that it’s the right thing to do even if you can’t fully explain why. You only know it’s right when you get to the other side and you win, or you get your freedom, feel the calmness, or you see/feel the fruits of your labor pains. And sometimes you lose, but when you follow your heart there really is no losing because you are true to yourself.
The following quote hit my in box today: 10/10/10 (this must be an auspicious day :-)) from Jeffrey Fry’s Potent Quotables and I took a risk I would never have thought myself capable of doing that might be a mistake or it might just end up being an expensive bit of fun, but time will tell. It felt right to try it out, and I look forward to the adventure. If it’s a mistake, I’ll learn from it, move on, and hopefully help others avoid the same mistake.
“If I could do it all over again, I’d make more mistakes.” –Mark Twain
Time heals all wounds or so they say. Time certainly does makes the wound look different and allows it to close up a bit, but the wound is still there to remind us of something. In the world of high-tech entrepreneurship, people sometimes refer to those wounds as ‘scar tissue’ or ‘battle wounds.’ It means you’ve been through a lot, learned a lot, and in some cases they are looked upon as honored badges of experience here in the US. In other parts of the world, that ‘scar tissue’ is socially a black mark which is why you have fewer risk takers and people trying new things. The results of failure in some cultures/families are not just some scratches you can put Neosporin or Mederma on, learn from and move on, they come to define you as a person.
The trick is to learn from those wounds but also be open enough to recognize that although a situation might remind you of circumstances before you got stabbed previously, you should be aware of the subtle differences so you can move to avoid the hurtling knife or not react in a way that causes history to repeat itself.
Another thing that helps heal wounds is keeping up a strong network of friends, mentors, advisers and to watch a bunch of movies, musicals and TV shows. Talking with people about what they have experienced in life & business, really helps put perspective to what you have experienced. We have all faced challenges and talking about things out loud with others helps heal your hurt ego and heart.
The endless debate on whether life imitates art or art imitates life might never be solved, but it’s sure great to watch them and feel better about your situation. It’s usually never as bad, crazy, funny as what happens in the movies or TV. I recently saw Inception in the theater, watched The Holy Grail (I didn’t have time to re-watch Life of Brian before I had to return it – Ugh!), and saw Mean Girls on TV. I started watching a TV series called Mad Men (set in an advertising firm in the 1960’s) but missed the first several seasons I think. Inception was incredible. It’s about dreams within dreams and I’ve always been eerily effected by movies like The Matrix and this one Twilight zone show about spiders that bite you with this venom that makes the characters think they are fine, but they are really dreaming that everything is fine with occasional glimpses that they are caught in a space shuttle with alien spiders wrapping them in their webs (Scary!).
Last night I saw Jersey Boys: The Story of Franki Valli and The Four Seasons. What a fabulous show. All the drama of their families, debt, drinking, taxes. It makes me wonder if with such talent, misery also follows. You can point to so many great singers/actors whose lives were tragic (e.g., Elvis, Michael Jackson, Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears, etc.). The actor that played the role of Franki Valli had a wonderful voice and I had forgotten all the songs they sang. Some of my favorite songs were My Eyes Adored You, December 1963 (Oh, What A Night), and Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You. But behind those lovely lyrics & melodies was a lot of pain and heartache as well as good times.
The sad thing is that we get older while time is passing by and healing all those wounds, so we have less energy to do more things with those learnings. So we have to learn fast! Self doubt diminishes but so does the stamina. “Youth is wasted on the young.” – George Bernard Shaw. But then there’s always the saying that apparently an internet search can’t even reveal the source “Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.” – unknown
I saw a play/musical called The Drowsy Chaperone this past Friday with some friends at a local Austin theater called Zach (if you click that link you can even see a short video) and it was very good. The narrator was hilarious. He is an obviously gay guy who was married once but now is alone in his apartment listening to old vinyl records, one of which is of the musical The Drowsy Chaperone. He intervenes during the performance with his opinions of each scene with great commentary from his life experience. He is so excited about the musical, where most of the cast end up marrying each other (i.e., 4 weddings take place at the end), but also sad and lonely about his situation about not finding the right person to be with. Actors to me seem to be entrepreneurs, selling themselves for each show in the hopes of getting cast. I’m guessing that unless you are on Broadway in New York, acting is a tough life financially.
I also discovered a new restaurant called Paggi House. The food was great (except the mussels were too small) and they had half price drinks and appetizers until 7pm so we shared a bunch of interesting things including one of my favorite things: soft shell crab! Well, my friend isn’t a big fan of soft shell crab so she let me eat 95% of it (yummy) with a really interesting sweet/sour/vinegar house made sauce. She had a really interesting salad that I took a few bites of that had vanilla in the dressing!
Saturday and Sunday consisted of meals at homeand Chuy’s as well as seeing the movie Despicable Me with the kids. They had already seen it, but since I hadn’t. I used my strong persuasion skills (not hard) to get them to see it again. It had some pretty funny, but predictable scenes. The main character strives to be the best villain in the world and gets caught by surprise when he adopts 3 little girls as part of one of his schemes to be the best villain. His mother is never pleased with his attempts at villainy as a child and later in life which motivates him but also makes him sad. In the end his mother pays him probably the best and only compliment he’s received from her when she tells him that he is a great parent to the 3 little orphan girls he adopted…”probably even better than me.” You can tell he was pleased that she finally gave him credit for something and it wasn’t for any of his attempts to be a bad guy. Us mothers can cause so much joy and sadness in our kids lives…well according to movies anyway…oh and a few psychologists. 🙂 I wonder where the dads are in these animated movies?!
I had planned to post this earlier, but my Internet has been down for the last couple of days because some squirrels chewed through some of the cabling…those darn squirrels!
A long time Adviser/Mentor of mine, who also happens to be a very successful investor, sent me a link to the Venture Capital Human Capital (VCHC) report. The findings were interesting but not too surprising (except for possibly the average age of the founding team, given I founded my first company at the “didn’t know any better” age of 26) from my vantage point. I have embedded the report below so you should be able to scroll through the pages.
They say: “In part 1 of our first-ever Venture Capital Human Capital Report, we look at the race of founders, the racial composition of founding teams, age of founding teams and the # of founders of VC backed companies to see if there is any relationship between these characteristics and the VC funding received.” Some of their findings:
87% of Founders are White; All-Asian Teams Raise the Most Funding
Nationally, South Asian and East/Southeast Asians are funded to a similar extent
83% of Teams are all White. All Asian teams raise more money.
Average founding team is age 35 to 44 years old.
39% of founders were CEO/Founders before. Sales/Marketing and Product Management/Development were common previous roles.
Majority of companies have two or more founders, but a third are led by one founder.
Most people think the opposite of love is hate, but really it isn’t, and I think most people know this if they take the time to think about it. If people love your products, you do great. If you have a group of people who hate your products, you are still likely to do OK. Take for example the iPhone. People love it because Apple somehow convinced many of us of its greatness. Then there are those who hate it (see iPhone4 vs. HTC Evo YouTube video) and it still does great and its main competitor the Android phone is doing well because people love it. They just spread the word in a less visible/audible way. Another example is twitter or facebook. Some people love them and others think they are a complete waste of freaking time, but they are both doing well from an adoption if not a profitability standpoint.
The same is true of people. Some people love Steve Jobs (founder of Apple) and some hate him for his megalomaniac ways. More often than not people apparently hate Larry Ellison (founder of Oracle) but they still keep buying Oracle products. Some people love president Barack Obama but some hate him for the change he represents and for his sometimes questionable political decisions. The same goes for Rush Limbaugh and former president Bill Clinton for his promiscuous way. Everyone seemed to love Lady Diana and despise Prince Charles because he loved another woman not nearly as beautiful and sweet as Lady Di. The vast majority of people adored Mother Theresa and Gandhi. Some people love hard rock or country music and some can’t stand either. So the products, people, and genre’s that people don’t care about are the one’s that no one gets emotionally charged about either way, and they disappear or have a very small niche.
So the opposite of love is not hate, it’s apathy. What kind of company, product, person are you or do you represent? One that people love or hate? Do they not care enough to pay attention? Do they care if you throw your products into the sea or a landfill? Do they care if you throw yourself into the sea or a landfill? Will they notice if you walk out the door? If they don’t care and you are feeling like furniture (song lyric alert), then maybe it’s time to build another product, start/join another company, transform yourself so people notice you/your products, change your life situation, and/or buy new furniture! All of these things are much easier said than done except, of course, for ‘buying new furniture.’
To me, a sense of humor is really important. But funny enough what some people think is funny others don’t. The best comedians appeal to a majority of people with their jokes because usually they pick on the insecurities many of us have. If you can’t laugh at yourself, your mistakes, or even others from time to time, you’ll go insane. In my opinion, a good sense of humor is important with friends, family, and in the workplace. I like to laugh and I like to make others laugh. I’m certainly not a comedian by any stretch of the imagination, but I tend to show my humor much more off blog than on blog because I really don’t know what will resonate with you hundreds upon hundreds of readers out there. (Are you still there? Feedburner, Google Analytics and WordPress stats say you are. :-))
There are two cartoons that I think are hilarious that my kids watch. I like to watch them too and my kids ask me (while they are laughing) why I think they are so funny and I tell them “I just do.” They are Penguins of Madagascar (based on the DreamWorks movie series Madagascar) and Emmy award winning Disney channel’s Phineas and Ferb. King Julien, the ring-tailed lemur, cracks me up in his self absorbed ways in Penguins of Madagascar. The crafty penguins with their dry wit, make me laugh out loud.
The creativity (and obliviousness) of the two little step brothers in Phineas and Ferb, their older classically teenage sister (Candace) who is always trying to BUST them in their over-the-top, dangerous projects, and Perry the Platypus who is always busting the evil Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz, are so well ‘cast’ together. The brother’s Firecamp Girl (play on Girl Scouts) friend Isabella helps them with their projects and always greets them with a “Watcha doing?” when she sees them. According to the Wikipedia link, the creators of Phineas and Ferb pitched the concept for 16 freaking long years before Disney picked it up. Wow! To me, it’s pure genius.
I also just rented Monty Python’s Meaning of Life, Life of Brian, and The Holy Grail because a friend (Earl Lundquist – soccer blogger) mentioned that he and the family were watching Monty Python on one of his facebook updates. It reminded me that I hadn’t seen those movies in a really long time, and I think Monty Python is classic British wit that pokes fun of many sensitive subjects (religion, politics, personal relationships, gender) at its finest. I re-watched Meaning of Life last night and it still is so funny. The scene where Death comes to visit, or the scene where the professor is trying to teach sex-ed to a seemingly uninterested group of boys by going through the mechanical acts of procreation with his wife, or the scene where the Catholic mother is doing the dishes and gives birth to her 30th child and they sing about not being able to use protection, or the scene where they come to harvest a liver from a live donor are just classic.
I can’t wait until my kids are old enough to watch them with me. I think if they can laugh at themselves or find the humor in things, they will hopefully be happier individuals overall. [Although I do have a limit to the bodily functions humor they both seem to like.] I hope they find Monty Python funny too and don’t roll their eyes at me and think how embarrassing their mother is, but I’m prepared for the worst. Well, maybe my sense of humor is odd, but hey at least I can laugh at something (some people are so serious they can’t see the lighter side of things). Plus they say laughter is the best medicine and it can be just what you need to make a breakthrough in a tough project at home or work. 😀 <— that’s me Laughing Out Loud (LOL).
I have sometimes wondered how a fad is created. In the tech/web world, there is all this talk about ‘viral’ this and ‘viral’ that about creating a gimmick that will cause adoption of your products/services to suddenly go through the roof. Us consumers are fickle and trying to predict what we will like in a mass scale is much more art & luck than science from my viewpoint.
My kids came home after a birthday party with these little plastic toys that mostly look like junk and a waste of petroleum based products to me. I asked them what they wanted to do with them and if I should recycle them or throw them away, but they both were like ‘no way, we need those!‘ Of course need and want in a child’s mind is the same thing. My son then proceeded to take them and line them up on top of the TV. For some reason I thought his enthusiasm and interest in doing something with them was cute so now they adorn the top of the TV and will probably be there for quite some time because that’s where they ‘need‘ to be. I have to admit that I smile when I see them mostly because in my mind I see his excitement of finding a place for them that made sense to him, and I remember him smiling while he was putting them up there. (See photos of these little toys to the left and right in this post.)
They are also into these things called Silly Bandz, which are basically colored rubber bands in all sorts of different shapes and sizes (e.g., dinosaurs, sea animals, princesses, pets, etc.). I don’t know where they first got them but my son just showed up with them one day and said he got them from a friend. I think their dad bought them a bunch more. My son is pretty good at getting more of them but my daughter ends up giving hers away to other kids and then gets upset and wants more from her brother.
They both have seemingly opposite ways of dealing with these things. I remember my son would come home with a bunch of Pokemon cards, and I’d ask him where he got them. He would say “they gave them to me.” I would ask him who gave them to him and he would say some friends at school. I would then ask him what he gave them and he said “nothing.” I said how can that be that they just gave you these and you didn’t give them anything and he said “I dunno, they just wanted to give them to me.” I was perplexed at that but I really couldn’t ask him anything else because I know that he gets along well with other kids. I find myself wondering if this is a talent of his I should encourage or not! Now my daughter is the one who wants to give her things to people and I’ve seen her give things to her brother when he asks, but I’ve also seen him give her stuff when she asks. If someone likes her Silly Bandz and asks her for them she’ll gladly give them away, but I don’t think she really wants too but feels she has to because later (as I mentioned) she will go try to get some from her brother because she thinks it’s unfair that he now has more than she does. I try to explain to her (she’s only 5) that it’s not her brother’s fault that she has less but she doesn’t get that and then eventually her brother will let her have a few of the ones he doesn’t want. The end result is that I’ve decided they can’t take the Silly Bandz to summer camp. We’ll see how long that lasts.
So I wonder how these fads are created and I wonder when these particular ones will subside. Us humans ebb and flow in our desire for things whether they be big, life changing things or silly things like rubber bands in the shape of a dolphin. 🙂
One of my favorite female singers is Sarah McLachlan. My lifestyle doesn’t really allow me to keep up with all the latest things going on in the world of music, but I picked up a copy of a recent M-Music & Musicians magazine at my voice teacher’s studio, Octave Higher, this Saturday because she was on the cover. The title of the article is called Resurfacing. She just released a new album after 7 years called Laws Of Illusion (Amazon link). At the bottom of this post is a video of one of her new songs called “Loving You Is Easy,” which is probably the most upbeat song that I’ve heard from her. She says “It was based on a new relationship, and on hope and excitement and the fact that it is possible to feel this way again. I didn’t think I could. It was about the thrill of possibility and, quite frankly, lust.” She said she is 42 and that she’s going to have “fun” tattooed on her arm because she’s determined to have more of it! She also said (and I agree) that “Writing about happiness and giddy love is tricky. It’s not as easy to write about as sadness and heavier things….happiness is quite fleeting. It’s very light and it’s not something that you can pinpoint.”
She got divorced a couple of years ago and says her music reflects much of her emotional life. I think most singers/writers works reflect their emotional lives. I know my writing does. She has two daughters named India and Taja, whose father is Indian. It’s nice to see that she has been able to use her emotional experiences to write songs. She admits it’s harder now with two small kids because “being able to have long periods of time to focus on nothing but myself and writing is long over. I live in a pretty ADD world right now.”
She is also reviving the female musician focused Lilith Fair tour that she helped start many years ago. Successful musicians to me are the ultimate entrepreneurs. They are betting against the odds of making it big that are probably 100 times greater than a technology company making it big. There are so many more people trying to be successful singers (e.g., just look at American Idol) than there are business entrepreneurs. I was reading the article and wondering how it would be to go to a studio every day of the week to work with someone as talented as her musical partner, Pierre Marchand, who helps her complete her songs. I have to say I was day dreaming a bit while I was reading the article. She has the benefit of great successes behind her before she had kids and she can play the piano as well as the guitar. I can’t play either…but there’s hope! They also featured Ozzy Osbourne in the magazine and he says he can’t play any instruments either. 🙂
I sing one of her older songs called Ice Cream (you tube link) to my kids sometimes. I drop them on the couch during the part where she sings “It’s a long way down” and they laugh hysterically. It makes me laugh while I’m singing it to them. “Your love is better than ice cream…your love is better than chocolate.”
I wonder if it’s possible to find someone out there who could be my music partner who is looking for a lyricist/singer like me and if we could both take a month or so off and create music. A nice little dream…
(Amazon link). At the bottom of this post is a video of one of her new songs called “Loving You Is Easy,” which is probably the most upbeat song that I’ve heard from her. She says “It was based on a new relationship, and on hope and excitement and the fact that it is possible to feel this way again. I didn’t think I could. It was about the thrill of possibility and, quite frankly, lust.” She said she is 42 and that she’s going to have “fun” tattooed on her arm because she’s determined to have more of it! She also said (and I agree) that “Writing about happiness and giddy love is tricky. It’s not as easy to write about as sadness and heavier things….happiness is quite fleeting. It’s very light and it’s not something that you can pinpoint.”
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