A new calling is calling my name

“Well, I’ve got a lot of callings. You can’t just limit
it to one. … Life’s too short to devote yourself to
a single thing, and luckily for me, I’m interested
in other things. And one must pursue those things.”

~ Charlie Trotter

Acclaimed chef Charlie Trotter announced he’s closing his famous Chicago restaurant, and he this comment above during a radio interview yesterday with American Public Media’s Marketplace. Trotter is turning from cooking to studying philosophy and political theory.

You go, Mr. Trotter! His words rang true with me as I launch a new venture: Clickago Storywerks. My role with the Association of Personal Photo Organizers has evolved from territory manager to member and membership rep, and now I’m in the business of helping people tell their stories and organize their pictures.

I’m a storyteller at heart, which explains why I’ve dutifully kept up this little blog for three and half years. (Hey! I’m now the No. 1 Google entry when you type in “Minnesota transplant blog” — it wasn’t always that way, people! I own that space, and in search engine optimized terms, that means something.)

I’ve been a newspaper reporter, a headline writer, a marketing executive, a communications director and a territory manager. But what’s always stayed the same is that I was working for someone else. Now, I’m going to try a new thing: Working for myself as a photo organizer.

Trotter said something else, too, that applies to people’s photo collections:

“Fine dining is the one luxury experience that’s pretty much available to everyone — not every day or once a week, but maybe once a year, because it only costs something like $100 an hour for the experience. And it takes 80 people to do. Whereas even the lamest plumber charges $115 an hour and he’s by himself. So fine dining is a luxury experience that is available and accessible to everybody.”

If people can spring $100 an hour for a fine dining experience, or $115 an hour for a plumber, I’m betting they’ll invest in a certified professional to help them enjoy their photos, too. While food and running water might rank high on one’s list of priorities, one’s stories and memories ought to be right up there. I spoke to 48 people yesterday morning at the Gail Borden Public Library in Elgin about organizing their photos — 48 people showed up on a Tuesday morning to learn how to tackle their projects! Like making a soufflé or installing an operational faucet, organizing photos isn’t for the faint of heart — it requires discipline, the right tools and technical expertise. Bring it on — I can help.

I’ve updated my Clickago blog, the little blog about family photos I started when I began with the Association of Personal Photo Organizers. I’ll still share photo ideas, but I’ll be talking about sharing stories in other ways, too, including books and blogs. Click here to see the made-over Clickago Storywerks blog.

Speaking of books, I’m publishing the memoir I finished last summer. Stay tuned for news on that front.

Let’s toast the pursuit of new things!

Wunderbar Wunderlist makes it virtually impossible to procrastinate

The latest app I can’t live without: Wunderlist.

It’s a virtual to-do list that works on all your devices (PC, iPad, iPhone, etc.) and can be shared with people who are important to you.

For example, I can share my to-do Wunderlist with my Beloved, and he can add tasks to it like, “Make an appointment with the dog groomer.” You could share lists with co-workers or a boss.

I can create a grocery Wunderlist that I can add to whenever I think of it (and so can the hubby) and when I’m standing in the grocery store, I can whip out my phone and ta-da! There’s what I need to pick up.

I started a books-to-read Wunderlist today — no more Post-It Notes all over my desk!

You can add dates to the list, too, so you’re not clogging up today’s list with stuff that needs to be done next week.

Best of all: Wunderlist is free.

Check it out: Wunderlist.

Ode to the self-employed

The more I mingle with people who own their businesses, the more I admire them.

When I first started drinking the Corporate Kool-Aid, I was a ladder climber who thought small business owners were wannabes. My father owned his own business selling and fixing TVs, and though he worked long hours, he made it look easy. I mistakenly thought it was a snap to run a business and therefore assumed working for Big Acme was a more difficult higher calling.

Ah, the simplicity of youth. Dad made it look easy, maybe, but I wasn’t getting — or perhaps absorbing — the whole story. While working for The Man, I was always told what to do, either directly or indirectly. I chafed under that kind of leadership. But honestly, it’s pretty easy to take orders.

Small business owners have to tell themselves what to do, and that is far more demanding. Entrepreneurs must find the motivation to push themselves around, and figure out what to do from amid myriad priorities.

My husband owns his own agency, and I see now how much effort is required to do anything — troubleshoot technology, pay taxes, please demanding clients — let alone make money and balance work effort.

I have a friend who is pursuing her dream of selling Polish pottery (check out More Polish Pottery in northern Illinois), and I got to witness her at work yesterday. I marveled at her sales skills, her customer service and her grace, not to mention her tirelessness. Her internal motivation is inspiring.

Today’s Parade magazine in the Sunday paper featured “Real People, Real Salaries” with interesting brief profiles of earners and their earnings. I accepted the invitation to complete an online survey of Americans’ views of their jobs and work cultures (you can complete it, too, here). One of the questions was “What one piece of advice would you give a young person starting a career today?”

I answered, “Work for yourself. The people at the top don’t know more than you do. Why make their mistakes when you could make your own?”

Businesses fail sometimes, and they fail no matter who’s in charge. Businesses fail when MBAs are in charge. They falter when they are run by someone who brags he’s among the top 1,000 businessmen in America. They flounder when rich investors get involved. A master’s degree, self-confidence or money do not guarantee good leadership; good leaders learn to lead by leading, especially themselves.

Having learned throughout my corporate career that stuff happens sometimes, I’m in awe of the people who fearlessly forge ahead, willing to draw from deep within to make their own luck. They’re the smart ones.

Gathering a wardrobe as well as memories

Gatherers tend to enjoy shopping more than hunters.

If you have one thing in mind, and you’re in and out of one store, and you accomplish your mission, you’re a hunter. My Beloved is a hunter, and that’s why he prefers buying pretty much everything online. Click, click, click and he’s done.

I’m generally a hunter, too, but on occasion, I enjoy a gathering-type of expedition. I learned to shop this way from an old supervisor, with whom I shopped once on a business trip. When I was done with one store we entered together, she was only 5% through the racks. Ever the polite follower, I started over again and really looked at the choices. I ended up finding one of the best suits in which I ever invested (I still own and wear it, nearly 15 years later).

Gathering is an especially good approach in a Goodwill, for instance, when you really have to look at every single item. You tend to find things you didn’t know you needed (at excellent prices). A gathering approach is definitely the way to find good deals on any clearance rack.

I enjoyed a gatherer’s approach to shopping this week with my stepdaughter and mother-in-law as we shopped for some career pieces Morgan can wear in her new job (congratulations, Morgan, on her first “real” job!)

The last time I shopped with Morgan was definitely a hunting expedition in search of an interview outfit. But this time, she played the dutiful paper doll and I got to suggest some mix-and-match pieces to dress her. I learned why personal shoppers love their jobs — nothing like spending someone else’s money to make my stepdaughter look good (Grandma footed the bill).

We invested in a lot of colorful tops to balance her conservative black and navy pants, but my favorite piece in Morgan’s new wardrobe: A cuffed-sleeve python print shell from Express. Python is the trend print this season, and it’ll look stellar with black, gray or taupe.

This afternoon, she paid me a sweet little compliment by calling me from a shoe store she was visiting. “I’ve got a fashion question for you,” she said as she queried the work appropriateness of a certain type of shoe.

Oh! She wanted my opinion! This, I thought, must be what mothers feel like. How fun!

Dream works

Grace is “a powerful force originating outside of human consciousness which nurtures the spiritual growth of human beings,” writes M. Scott Peck in “The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth.”

Among other methods, Peck argues, grace speaks in our dreams, so I have been paying better attention to my dreams since I read his book. Coincidentally, my horoscope this morning said, “Your intuition will be very strong at the moment, and you could even end up having some very powerful dreams.”

Early this morning, I dreamt I was standing at the edge of a swimming pool. The pool was crowded with swimmers and flowing over its concrete borders. It was so full, the water was contained only by the surrounding landscape — piles of snow. Standing there looking down at the water teeming with swimmers, I imagined the water to be icy cold.

A few definitions, according to SmartGirls’ Dream Dictionary:

• To see a swimming pool full of water in your dream is lucky, symbolizing that you will find much happiness and pleasure in friendship, love and marriage.
• Dreams about swimming are related to the need to trust your instincts and look to past situations for answers to problems. They can also signify the need for nurturing or mothering in one’s life (Mom, call me.)
• To dream that you are cold suggests that you are experiencing a breakthrough in some area in your life.
• To dream that you are part of a crowd suggests that you need to start thinking more for yourself instead of following others.

As I ponder these messages of grace, I’m thinking this dream speaks of my career aspirations and my wishes to self-publish my manuscript.

What do you think? How is grace speaking to you?

My happy place

During my fifth year of college  … yeah, I attended one of those state schools that have a four-year graduation rate of a whopping 15 percent, so your point is?

Anyway, during my fifth year of college, I was editor in chief … yeah, that was the official title: Editor in chief. Sort of inflated, but I’ve always thought it was cool and important sounding. (One of my managing editors, by the way, was in his sixth or seventh year of college.)

Anyway, during my fifth year of college, I was editor in chief of the student newspaper. I was made for that job. If you can call it a “job.” I was paid a stipend of next to nothing. But I guess I was paid so it qualifies.

We published twice a week, and I remember many a Sunday and Wednesday nights when I would sit in front of a computer terminal to edit copy and puzzle together the edition’s design. To be clear, I didn’t do any of it by myself. The office was abuzz with people who designed ads, wrote headlines, developed photos and pasted together bits and pieces of news to make a newspaper.

On the way to our basement office, I would often stop at the deli and get a three-cheese bagel and a bag of Doritos to munch while editing. Despite my deplorable meal choices, I lost weight that year because I would forget to eat. I was engrossed in my work, and time meant nothing on those nights. We were there until the bitter end and we had the “we’ll sleep when we’re dead” attitude of a good group of 20somethings no matter how long it took so it didn’t really pay to watch the clock.

I was underpaid, and we worked hard, but I felt like I was doing valuable work. We were putting out the news. We were telling important stories.

This is how I judge a good day’s work, even today. Watching the clock or checking off an endless to-do list of meaningless tasks or sitting in tedious meetings or biting my lip during noisy conference calls is not important work. Telling important stories is valuable work and it is one of the reasons I love to write this blog.

Is my interview posted a couple of days ago with an 8-year-old who colors cats “important”?

Sure it is. It’s important to him. It’s important to me. It made some readers laugh. And it’s forever captured on the internet (which sounds eerily self-important like “editor in chief” but so be it). Roughly once a week, I nail it with a post like that. I capture someone’s interesting story.

And that’s valuable.

Abundance grows where abundance is sown

The abundance mentality always beats the scarcity mentality.

New chances and new opportunities abound, and I soaked in this mentality last night at an interesting networking event called a CRAVE chat.

It was held in a loft-like domicile with an open ceiling, exposed brick and cabinetless kitchen in Chicago. A group of about 40 women — mostly entrepreneurs including a couple jewelry designers, fashion designers and boutique owners — noshed on yummy vegetarian nibbles and sipped wine while mingling and listening to a panel discuss “Women: Collaborators or Competitors?”

The panel representing various other networking groups essentially agreed: Collaborators. There’s more than enough business for everyone, and everyone serves her own unique niche.

Since I spend so much time in a lazy village nestled among cornfields, the whole event last night felt cosmopolitan and high-powered. A place where ideas and opportunity grow.

Abundantly so.

Ah, technology making our lives easier (when it’s not making it harder)

Turn it off, turn it back on.

It’s always the first advice from any computer guru. “Have you turned it off and turned it back on yet?”

I’ve learned. Always turn it off and turn it back on before you even complain.

So last night I’m trying desperately to create a Facebook fan page for my husband’s fabulous insurance business. It looked great but I couldn’t make it public. It just would not show up to anyone but me, the administrator.

I pounded my head against the keyboard for three hours. By the time I could no longer keep my eyes open, I wanted to punch a hole through the wall.

No insights came to me overnight, so I finally resorted to the Great IT Solution. I permanently deleted the page and started over.

And guess what? There it is.

My Beloved is licensed in many states in the U.S. including Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin and Texas. Interested in a better deal on your home, auto or business insurance? Want to do business with someone who actually answers his own phone? Check out his new website here.

Want to see the magically disappearing and reappearing Facebook page? Do a search for “Axcess Insurance Services Group, Inc.” on Facebook and “like” it. Not only can you admire my fine social media marketing work, you’ll be privy to all my stellar and informative blog posts about insurance.

Enjoy. I’m just thrilled you can see it at all.

Let’s pare an hour from our work rather than our sleep

If you’re sick and tired of losing an hour of sleep every spring, it’s time to join a new movement: Americans For Workday DST.

Americans For Workday DST have a simple platform: Turn the clocks forward during the standard workday on Monday afternoon rather than on a weekend night.

You read it here first, folks. Why aren’t we springing ahead at 2 p.m. Monday afternoon instead of 2 a.m. Sunday morning?

Exactly. No good reason.

Daylight Saving Time is an arbitrary practice that occurs in most industrialized countries — but not all — at roughly the same time — but not exactly. No good reason exists to demand we make this change in the middle of a weekend night. Changing clocks is a pain in the neck no matter time of day it is — why not do it when most of us are wide awake?

Losing an hour of sleep wreaks havoc in Americans’ internal clocks every spring, causing more heart attacks, car accidents and workplace injuries in the two days after the time change.

Meanwhile, Americans work 77  hours a year more than the Japanese and 310 hours a year more than Europeans. Why not lop one hour off that total?

We could return to Standard Daylight Time in the middle of an autumn night — I have no problem getting an extra hour of sleep.

Instead of the little motto “fall back, spring ahead” (which, by the way, doesn’t work in Australia anyway), we could jog our memories by repeating “fall back in bed, spring out of work early.”

Whaddaya say?

Join the movement: Americans for Workday DST. The hour you save might just be your own.

Happiness is health, a short memory and a cold drink

Stress affects short-term memory.

I can’t find easy Google proof of it, but I know it does.

Undergo a stressful event, and poof! You can’t find your car keys.

Yesterday, I encountered a woman I’ve met before at a meeting and had a 10-minute conversation with her. I glanced at her name tag, committing her name to memory because I wanted to make a note to follow-up with her in June. When I got home, I found her name on my to-do list: Apparently, I had already made one note to follow-up with her when I had a phone conversation with her a few weeks ago.

Obviously, she remembered me and our conversation when she engaged me yesterday, but I didn’t remember her. Who knows what idiocy poured out of my mouth? How I remembered her name two hours later, I don’t know.

Then at lunch with someone else, I failed to secure the cover on my tea and dumped it all over the table.

Graceful.

This week has been pressure-packed, perhaps the most stressful I’ve had in two years. At dinner last night, I thought, “Wow, I could really use a drink.” While that might be common for some people, that’s not normal for me. Normal for me when I’m thinking about booze is to think about food-drink pairings: “Should I have Sauvignon Blanc and salmon or a beer and a burger?”

I had two glasses of Sauvignon Blanc. And squash ravioli with sage butter.

It was delicious. But drinking probably isn’t going to improve my memory.

So I’m feeling generally stressed out and stupid and clumsy to boot, and I’m having lunch with yet another new acquaintance today.

Somehow, through the haze, I remember the name of a software program she mentioned and the name of someone she’d made an album for, and she remarked — not once, but twice — on my good memory.

I leaned over to her and touched her arm.

“Omigosh, you have no idea what that means to me today. I have had the most stressful week, and I thought I was losing my mind. Thank you.”

Ah, a moment of lucidity. And I was gracious, too.

Albert Schweitzer once said, “Happiness is good health and a bad memory.” He failed to mention the role of a good glass of vino.

Maybe he preferred beer.