I know it’s been a little while since I’ve posted. I have a few mulling around in my head and a guest post waiting to be published that I haven’t had time to review. In case you are interested, here are the potential titles of those posts: “Signal to Noise – What Really Is Noise?” and “Everything In Moderation – What Really Is Moderation?” and “Helping Young Moms Go To School” and “Something About Entrepreneurship (well, that’s not really the title but I guess it could be!).”
My resolutions this year are to believe/trust in myself, believe in my kids, believe in the kindness and beauty in others, smile/laugh more, make others smile/laugh more, create songs and sing a song (Carpenter’s lyrics link).
Sing, sing a song
Sing out loud, sing out strong
Sing of good things not bad
Sing of happy not sad
Sing, sing a song
Make it simple to last your whole life long
Don’t worry that it’s not good enough
For anyone else to hear
Just sing, sing a song .
Oh and LOVE more! As Hugh McLeod (@gapingvoid) cartoons Love, regardless of cost. For those curious folks, here is what I wrote for Resolutions Past:
Happy New Year to all of you my loyal readers and everyone else who happens upon my blog when searching for something to help them with their life, their posts, their kids, or their businesses. May you find the courage to follow your dreams…in other words your heart! <3 <— that’s a heart symbol for those of you who didn’t know that.
We’ve all heard the saying “You only live once,” so may you conquer your fear just a little bit at a time to live life (at least next year) grandly and to it’s fullest. It’s not easy but it’s worth it…even if you get what “it” means for a few short minutes…you will never forget, can never go back, and will never compromise to the point that you lose yourself again.
Today I spent most of the day just getting rid of stuff. Shipping clothes to relatives with younger kids, giving toys and other sundries to Goodwill, and moving things around. I took bags of stuff to Goodwill. I have boxes of stuff to take to the kids’ school. I threw bags of (ugh) plastic little useless toys away that can’t be recycled, and I dread the thought of them being in a landfill like in Toy Story 3, but it had to be done. The house feels lighter. I feel lighter. The kids were about 25% helpful but mostly got caught up playing with toys they didn’t want to get rid of. They were good helpers when I gave them instructions and didn’t argue too much when I told them to throw certain things away or put something in a certain pile, but they would find excuses to play hide and seek, scream and laugh up a storm, work on puzzles, try to play the iPhone, etc. which made me frustrated but smile at the same time. I’m so glad they get along so well. I know the day is coming when they won’t get along so I’m savoring it now. I was too exhausted to cook anything for dinner after a busy day of cleaning so we went to Kerbey Lane Cafe for dinner and the waitress even commented on how well they got along. [I’m knocking on wood right now!] My son even encouraged my daughter to play Mario Kart (that he got for Christmas from Grandma) on the Wii with him and made sure she was making enough progress to keep her interested in continuing to play with him. He’s smart like that…anything to play the Wii! She’s not much into playing video games but there are a few sports games and things like Mario Kart she likes.
I like an organized house and my house hasn’t been as organized as I’d like in the past couple of years, but I just decided I had to give in to the “lived in” look and the chaos of two kids for my sanity. Some things are just not worth getting that upset about (i.e., clothes/jackets hanging on chairs/sofas, toys in various places in the house, etc.). As long as I’m not tripping on something, it’s all good and the kids are pretty good about keeping things out of the way. My daughter seems to enjoy helping me or being next to me most of the time, but my son would rather play the Wii or the iPhone and it’s hit or miss on his attitude about taking his socks he left on the floor to his dirty clothes bin. But if it’s night time, then mom has to be close by so he can go to sleep!
I still have the garage, my office, my bathroom, and the kitchen drawers to get through. Sigh!
Zhu Zhu pet
It’s good to get rid of stuff, baggage, old ways of doing things even in an entrepreneurial endeavor. If you don’t get rid of the old ways of thinking and doing things, you can’t make room for the new and I’ve seen many a start-up fail because they get stuck in the ‘well, it’s always been like this‘ attitude and they don’t take time to make room for some fresh thinking and of course new gadgets. Who couldn’t use a room full of new Zhu Zhu or Kung Zhu pets and their paraphernalia to get the entrepreneurial juices flowing! 😀
I hope you are all having a great Christmas Day. Ours was full of presents and things in our stockings…well at least the kid’s stockings. They already tangled up their slinky’s that I got from the dollar bins at Michael’s. Even mom got a gift from Santa (from a very talented cousin) and from the kids (a camera and a tool kit!). 🙂 They got some gift cards from Grandma so they will get to buy even more presents!
The kids are surprised that Santa came and gave them more than one gift and ate the cookies/sweet breads we left for him overnight. My 8 year old kind of knows but wants to believe anyway because he knows if he believes he’ll get presents…smart kid.
The kids got more than they needed/wanted and are already playing with their gifts. One required some C batteries, which I don’t have. Most toys don’t seem to use C batteries these days. The Husky Powertek screwdriver has come in handy to open all these battery compartments! Now, I have to find some tweezers to get something out that my son got stuck in his new soccer ball that he gets to decorate!
So Merry Christmas to you all. No matter what religion you might follow, ’tis the season to be jolly, giving, and take some time to enjoy the excitement generated by the children in your lives. Oh and eat some Japanese food since all the other restaurants are closed. Our favorite is Kobe steakhouse so we’ll be there later today. Ho, Ho, Ho!
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!
As I watch my son play soccer, I think to myself how great it is that he is part of a team. I watch him and his other 7 to 8 year old buddies communicate with each other on the field and off. There’s a neat camaraderie and chemistry they have even at this young age. They can be intensely focused on winning but realize that you win some, you lose some, you get some goals, you totally choke and miss some goals, and you are still a team. The team skills are something I see him picking up organically because although I know I could try to explain to him the importance of playing certain positions, playing to your strengths, working with others on a team, etc. he would never really get it unless he experienced it. He doesn’t know that he’s already learning valuable life lessons on the field and when he hangs out with those same buddies off the field. Right now their team seems to work really well together and they win most of their games, which is good because they enjoy it and it motivates them to continue. I think those people who played team sports growing up or were in groups like the military have an advantage when starting businesses or working on teams that are creating innovative products because working with other people can be the most enjoyable and yet sometimes the most emotionally draining experience you can have. Knowing how to ride the waves of your own and others humanity can be the difference between success and failure in an endeavor or a work place.
My daughter seems to prefer swimming which is a more individual sport but if she gets good enough, she might want to join a swim team. I played team sports at various times during my elementary/junior high school years (track, bowling, basketball) and then later in junior high and college I rode horses competitively as part of a team. I also participated in some college intramural sports and company sports teams…mostly softball, but I wish I had done more. I don’t really remember most of the people on those teams, but I do remember a few that made strong impressions on me based on their personalities and talents.
As the saying goes: “There is no “I” in Team.” Even investors in the high tech entrepreneurial world will say they would rather invest in an A Team with a B idea than a B Team with an A idea because the A Team has a better chance of navigating changes that inevitably get thrust upon them.
You would think that would be obvious, but half way to the roller skating rink where we attended a kid’s birthday party last weekend, I realized I was wearing flip flops. Too late to turn back. I had never been to the skating rink with them before, fortunately however, they both had been to Playland Skate Center before with their dad. My son went off on his own (which surprised me a bit) skating around the rink and participating in limbo and other games. I just kept hoping he would be OK and not get lost or have a major crash while I was with my daughter. I can’t remember when I crossed the mental line of worrying too much about him in large, but enclosed entertainment places (e.g., Chuck E Cheese, Inflatable places, etc.) or him going to the Men’s restroom (shudder) without me nearby, but it happened in the last year or so. I guess I finally trusted him to find his way back to me, a bad guy wouldn’t suddenly steal him, or that I would find him. She wanted me to be near her most of the time so as she used the rail to get around the rink, I had to stand just outside and help her across some longer spots wearing my flip flops. Needless to say both she and her brother ran into my feet a few times. Ouch!
It has probably been a couple of decades since I had been inside a roller skating rink, and I was suddenly flooded with all those teenage roller skating party memories but this time everything seemed louder, darker, somewhat annoying, but without, as my friend in high school used to say, the teenage bullshit. But I did observe a lot of the teenage BS because there were many teenagers there.
At any rate, I’m not sure what my point is other than I thought this blog title sounded kind of cool. There are a lot of entrepreneurial things going on in Austin. So much I can’t keep up with them, nor do I even have the strength, stamina, or time to blog about. Even Austin Startup blog has slowed down its posts because the founder of that blog has a full time job.
I have hired someone to do a new blog background for me which may inspire me to change the focus of my blog a bit more. Right now the tag line is ‘babbling about business and parenting.’ Maybe I should just change it to “writing in flip flops or bare feet and trying to survive.” 🙂
You’re going about your weekend morning breakfast routine. The kids are having fun and doing fine. You boil eggs for them except they turn out a little runnier than one of your kids likes so you put it in the microwave to harden up the middle a little for 30 seconds. The egg white was already slit and you remark that you hope it doesn’t explode in the microwave. You pull it out and it looks fine. You place it in front of your 5 year old daughter and take a fork to it to cut it for her and BOOM, it explodes all over your face, her face, the table, the chairs, the floor, etc. You are stunned, she’s stunned, her brother is stunned. You can’t see because there are egg pieces in your eyes and your daughter starts crying because she’s startled and scared.
You stand dumbfounded for a moment wondering what happened when you realize there are pieces of egg everywhere. You wipe her face and your face and she walks off to sit on the couch nearby because she doesn’t want to be anywhere near the disaster and she wants to recover. Your 8 year old son keeps walking around where the egg pieces on the floor are despite being told at least 5 times not to walk there, but he’s kind of amused by it all. He keeps saying “sorry, I didn’t realize it was here.” And you roll your eyes at him not comprehending why he couldn’t remember you just told him not to walk there. You start laughing at the craziness and then after a few minutes you all start pointing at each other and laughing at the fact you all have pieces of egg in your hair. You ask your daughter if she’s still hungry and she says she is so you offer her a bagel with cream cheese (which is her favorite) and she says she wants to eat it while sitting on the counter and you let her so you can finish cleaning the breakfast table area. Her brother also wants to sit on the counter and eat a bagel so you let him do it too despite the fact he ate all of his egg because he likes runny eggs.
You clean up, you take them to your voice lesson where they color and play on the iPhone while you have your lesson, for lunch you cut them some apples and make them cheese & ham quesadillas that get slightly burned because you discover more egg pieces and get distracted trying to clean them up, you listen to them complain briefly that their lunch is slightly burned but you don’t get too upset because they are playing nicely together with some board games and staying out of your way while you continue to eradicate the kitchen of random pieces of egg, you take them to your daughter’s swim lesson where your son wants to download more free games to your iPhone, and then you come home. You let them watch TV because you are tired and you lay in between them and fall asleep for 5 minutes before their Dad comes to pick them up.
Then you attempt to catch up on hundreds of emails, housework, paperwork, busy work, eat cereal for dinner because nothing else appeals to you, watch a recording of Mad Men, write this post and then go to bed.
Yes, that was my day today and I wouldn’t trade it for any other because an egg exploded in my face for the first time in my life and my kids were there to see it and everyone is OK. 🙂 And I’m grateful that it was just an egg and not an airplane exploding in my building like what happened 9 years ago in New York on this very date, September 11.
There are so many ways to tie an egg unexpectedly exploding in your face to life as an entrepreneur or parent, that it would take too long to write about here. So I’ll just leave it up to you all to come up with your own egg exploding business start-up and other parenting analogies.
As long time readers know, I write about business and parenting and sometimes how the two combine or don’t combine. Well, this post is about a little bit of both. My kids, age 8 and 5 1/2, have pretty much reached the age of reason — most days. Of course there are those times when the term ‘reason’ resonates with no one (including myself) around here, but on most days they are reasonable. I discovered recently, they have reached the age where they will play together. I mean, they have played together in the past but they’ve always wanted me involved, didn’t fully agree with what the other wanted to play, wanted to watch TV, or play the Wii. I’d get frustrated and just tell them to watch TV and then feel like a less than stellar mom for putting them in front of the TV after I’ve had a long day at work and needed some time to catch up with home stuff, organize stuff or even just sit down for a minute!
In the last few weeks, I’ve been able to go tell them to play cards or a board game while I cook, clean, check some emails, or lay down for a bit and they actually listen! On a couple of occasions, I’ve even had to tell them to wrap up playing if they wanted to watch a little TV before they went to bed. I don’t know why but I feel much less mom guilt when they play with each other even if they are chasing each other around the house playing tag and I happen to be home base (safety) while I’m trying to do the dishes. In a weird way, their aging is allowing me to have time to do more things because they entertain themselves. I knew there was a reason I had two kids because it certainly wasn’t a rational decision at the time given my son didn’t sleep more than a few hours in a row until he was over 4 years old! When I see them playing, hear them discussing the rules of the game they are about the play, and sorting out their disagreements, my heart smiles, my other troubles disappear for a while, and I think to myself how lucky I truly am.
I just got back from a week long part stay-cation and part away-cation with some friends who live in two different cities. We visited some local Austin famous places like the Oasis and Hamilton Pool. We also saw The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (nice movie). I always feel so blessed after I get to spend time with these particular friends because I’ve known them for 20+ years now. Our kids have virtually grown up together and at one point in each of their lives, they thought they were cousins. It didn’t matter that we looked different, to them they just felt like family. I feel lucky to have them in my and my kids lives.
During this time, I read a very interesting book (that most of the rest of the world already knows about because the movie is now out starring Julia Roberts) Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia (Amazon Link) by Elizabeth Gilbert. It was if the author was writing parts of my story! It got enough positive reviews to warrant a movie starring Julia Roberts but it certainly touched a nerve with some of the Amazon reviewers who decided it was self indulgent! One of the moms at a water park we went to saw I was reading it and told me how great it was and she loved it. She told me “just wait until you get to the part when she’s in India.” This is obviously a book that elicits very different responses from people depending where they are in their life/spiritual journey.
I won’t quote some of passages (that I desperately want to) here because my blog is read by many people…not just women age 30+ going through a mid-life awakening and search for meaning. This is a non-fiction account of the author’s experience of taking one year ‘off’ to find God/herself. She does not have kids and received a hefty book advance which makes this a much easier endeavor. She spends 4 months in Italy (eating), 4 months in India (praying), and 4 months in Indonesia, specifically Bali (loving). She writes about divorce, marriage, God, spirituality, crushes, love, food, different cultures, depression, not wanting to live, yoga, meditation, physical intimacy, soul mates, etc. The only character in India who the author says she uses his real name is Richard from Texas. Richard has an interesting take on soul mates (see quote below) and apparently he builds houses in Austin. I SO want to run into Richard from Texas some day! Given I live in Austin, it might happen. Now for some quotes:
“Sincere spiritual investigation is, and always has been, an endeavor of methodical discipline. Looking for Truth is not some kind of spazzy free-for-all, not even during this, the great age of the spazzy free-for-all.” p. 2.
I’m not going to type it all here, but the top of p. 49 she talks about how she tried to make sense of her depression and why she would feel this way from chemical, diet, seasonal, to being an artist/writer, to her situation, to her parents, to xyz and she concluded it was probably a little bit of everything and things she didn’t even understand.
“Virginia Woolf wrote, ‘Across the broad continent of a woman’s life falls the shadow of a sword.’ On one side of that sword, she said, there lies convention and tradition and order, where ‘all is correct.’ But on the other side of that sword, if you’re crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention, ‘all is confusion. Nothing follows a regular course.’ Her argument was that the crossing of the shadow of that sword may bring a far more interesting existence to a woman, but you can bet it will also be more perilous.” p. 95
“The Bhagavad Gita – that ancient Indian Yogic text – says that is is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection.” p. 95
“The classical Indian sages wrote that there are three factors which indicate whether a soul has been blessed with the highest and most auspicious luck in the universe: 1. To have been born a human being, capable of conscious inquiry. 2. To have been born with – or to have developed – a yearning to understand the nature of the universe. 3. To have found a living spiritual master.” p. 124
“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it….[they] shake you up…tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light could get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you [have] to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master and beat it.” p. 149
“To know God, you need only to renounce one thing – your sense of division from God. Otherwise, just stay as you were made, within your natural character.” p. 192
“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.” p. 260
“The Yogic sages say that all the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy. We create words to define our experience and those words bring attendant emotions that jerk us around like dogs on a leash. We get seduced by our own mantras (I’m a failure…I’m lonely…I’m a failure…I’m lonely…) and we become monuments to them. To stop talking for a while then, is to attempt to strip away the power of words, to stop choking ourselves with words, to liberate ourselves from our suffocating mantras.” p. 325
Yes, this is a great book to read for those of you on a journey ‘to understand the nature of the universe’ which is a means to understand yourself.
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 often refer to my kids as little ventures (i.e. start-ups). They are so unique and the most important ventures in my life. This week has been a tough week because my daughter was home sick for 3 days. She was better the last day but considering she had a really high temperature the day before, I figured it best to keep her home one more day. Her dad and I juggled watching her so we could both make our important meetings. I even called the teenage girl who lives across the street who we’ve used for babysitting before to come watch her for a few hours today. Fortunately, it’s summer so she was able to come over on short notice and my daughter likes her.
My son has been going to summer camp while she has been sick and my daughter likes the camp so much that she wanted to go despite being sick. I was a little concerned about sending them to the YMCA summer camp because they wouldn’t know anyone there and they usually know someone. Turns out the first week they went, they did end up knowing someone…a boy from my son’s soccer team and his younger sister. Plus, they both were in the same section even though they are different ages so they knew each other although they hung out with different kids. I told them to look out for each other, and I think they both rolled their eyes at me and my son said in a partially whining tone something like ‘she’s not even going to be playing with the same friends I am!’ I told him it doesn’t matter and that he should keep an eye out for her and I told her the same. My guess is that she keeps more tabs on him that he does of her.
I’m now glad they are going because they are exposed to a different crowd of kids than the private school they go to. I was a public school kid myself (except for two years at a private Episcopalian school) and although my knowledge of geography is not great because the US public schools weren’t really into teaching much about other countries, I certainly got to know many kinds of people which I think helped me during my stint at one of the largest universities in the country, UT Austin, and in business working with different kinds of people from different walks of life. I made up a little for my lack of knowledge of geography by being born into an international family who traveled a lot.
I think being around and working with a diverse set of kids, helps them prepare for the real world (college, businesses, etc.) where there are so many different kinds of people. The diversity in the workforce is so much greater than even 20 years ago. School or summer camp aren’t the only place kids can experience diversity…when my kids are older I hope to travel with them to many fun and different places around the world.
At any rate, both my kids have enjoyed the camp and have said they have made so many friends that are younger and older than they are, which to me is great. To them every kid is their friend whether they remember their name or not. It’s kind of nice to live like that…too bad as adults we don’t consider all the new people we meet our friends.
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) by 
(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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