Life, Work & Wonder

Tag: writing

  • Going To Be A Career Day Speaker

    A week ago there was an email from my kids’ high school looking for adults willing to be a Career Day speaker wherein we prepare a 15 minute presentation about our career and then present it to the students during Career Day. I volunteered to talk about what it’s like being a Seattle Real Estate Agent. Today I learned I’ve been approved and will be presenting. I can’t tell you how excited I am!

    There’s that old joke that more people are afraid of public speaking than death, which means people would rather be the person in the casket than the person giving the eulogy. And time was that I thought I was a terrible speaker and hated giving speeches.

    But I’ve learned in recent years that I’m actually pretty decent at giving speeches when I like what I’m talking about. Following a prescriptive Corporate Powerpoint Presentation with all the typical “look how amazing we are” slides? I’m awful. Giving a QBR presentation? Very hit and miss depending on if I like the team and the presentation isn’t too formulaic.

    But give me a topic I want to talk about, give me some time to ponder how to go about presenting it, and give me an open format to work with, and often I’m decidedly okay giving a presentation and I actually like it and can be relatively funny.

    In late 2019 my moronic manager took my client presentation and tweaked it a short time before I was supposed to give the presentation in person while jet lagged. It didn’t go very well. Partially because he turned it into the same eye-rolling presentation a million other software companies deliver to the poor prospective clients, partially because the last second changes didn’t give me time to prepare the new presentation, partially because the changes ripped apart the flow I’d been rehearsing in my head for a few days before the speech, and partly because of the time I would have been physically (eating) and mentally (breathing) preparing for the speech I was trying to learn his last minute tweaks. When he tried to do the same thing two months later, I ignored his changes and did my original presentation that client presentation went much better (spoiler alert: we lost the first client opportunity and won the second).

    A few months later I gave a presentation to medical students about my experience with a rare lung disease. I had a few weeks to prepare, had an open format to work with, and was passionate about the topic. The result when I gave that speech? It went great! So great that even my ex-wife who was embarrassed by everything I did at the time and was in the audience as a medical student herself even seemed remotely impressed.

    I love real estate. I love being a real estate agent in Seattle. So I’m excited to talk about my career in a few weeks. And excited to talk about my career to a group of high school students who are trying to figure out this career thing. I’m grateful to be given the opportunity and am looking forward to preparing and then giving the presentation.

  • AutoPay and Digital Music Are The Greatest Inventions In My Lifetime :)

    The most important invention in your lifetime is…

    The world has changed so much in my lifetime.

    When I was born, we’d never been to the moon. It’s possible it was all a hoax and we still haven’t been to the moon, but let’s assume that it’s real and we indeed have been to the moon. That was the year after I was born. Pretty amazing. In my lifetime, so much has changed, of course. There are too many inventions and changes to even begin listing since we all know what those are. But, for me, the greatest inventions have been autopay and digital music.

    How much I hated paying bills before the 2000s. How much drudgery it was. There were checks to write, stamps to buy so I could send in those checks, reconciliation at the end of the month to make sure everything was accurate. Then for every day spending there was so much speculation how much cash I might need, then persistent worry I might lose or miscalculate the cash. Now it all — everything — just goes on my Visa which I can then peruse in a few minutes at the end of the month, challenge quickly online with Visa if something seems amiss, and then pay with the click of a button. Every expense imaginable goes on that credit card, and it has just made everything so much easier to deal with!

    And then there’s music.

    How much time did I waste in my life making mixed tapes. Or rewinding cassettes. Or cleaning records. How much money I spent for albums that overall I didn’t like very much but had two songs I liked. And how many times did I have to listen to a song over and over and over again on the radio until the point a song that I might have once liked became absolutely intolerable to listen to, not to mention all the ads in-between songs. But with digital on-demand music, every song I could possibly imagine is right there for free.

    The world has changed so much. Many of these have been bad, some of these have been good, and there’s no doubt it has changed the world so very much in 50 short years.

    But my favorite changes are on-demand music and auto pay. They’ve made my life so much easier and more enjoyable — every single day.

  • Pride Is Folly

    Pride.

    There was a time I had too much pride.

    Waaayyyyyy to much pride.

    It was pride that prevented me from being too open and out there in public. For example, I dreaded sales calling because of pride. And didn’t have social media accounts because of pride. And never ever allowed dirty dishes to be in the kitchen because of pride.

    Pride brought my spirit down when there was a flaw with my house or car. It made me sensitive (and lash out) at criticism (“f— you!”). It made me fret too much about silly statistics, like batting average or shooting percentage or quota attainment percentage. Who cares what I batted in recreational softball??

    It was pride that embarrassed me when my (now ex) wife promoted her business and herself, like that time she stood on the street corner and handed out Halloween candy with her business card on it. I remember having to quietly work so hard to swallow that pride, to let her do what she needed to do without commenting that it was embarrassing seeing my last name being handed out on a street corner.

    And it was pride that drove me to always look my best, to make sure my hair was good and my body was firm and I stayed youthful looking.

    In short, pride made me worry too much about how people perceived me.

    Then lung disease grabbed me in 2011. Put me in a hospital bed. Made me tired. Nearly killed me. Then, by some incredible undeserving miracle, it loosened its grasp on me and retreated, sparing me and letting me not only live but live without an oxygen tank (a 50/50 chance)!

    Maybe best of all, when lung disease retreated, it also took with it my pride. Which I think is a good thing. In fact, it’s a great thing.

    I could care less how people (except Larissa) perceive my career. Or whether they remember me as a good athlete or smart or not. Or see me as attractive or not. Who cares?? What does it change or matter??

    In 2019, when my hurtful ex-wife chose trying to shame me about various things rather than just honestly saying she wanted to move on with her life (i.e. chose gaslighting and shaming rather than transparency), I guffawed at her. “I won’t be judged by you,” I said. “I beat lung disease. What the f— have you done?”

    That was the moment I realized that I was truly confident. That lung disease spared me from the judgement of others. Because when we’ve faced the specter of death, not much in life can scare us after that.

    Now I don’t care how people perceive my career. Or think I’m goofy. Or roll their eyes at my goofy rambling face-book posts.

    It’s incredibly liberating.

    Today I made myself vulnerable. Posted on Facebook and Instagram and my LinkedIn page that I was holding an open house tomorrow. 15 years ago there is no way I would have done that, but today I only felt happy that I could do my best to promote Larissa’s client. It felt good.

    Meanwhile, I could care less if ultimately people on LinkedIn think I’ve had a successful career or not. I know the truth. What do I care how some random person perceives me based on my profile? This also feels good.

    Pride is folly. Because at the end of the day we’re all human and vulnerable and fallible. No matter how perfect we are or rich we are or even strong we are, we’re just a bout with lung disease or cancer away from death. This is humbling. And it’s beautiful.

    Here is to being pride free. And the incredibly luck that is beating terminal illness. I’m so grateful.

  • How The Passage Of Time Has Influenced My Perspective

    How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?

    How The Passage Of Time Has Influenced My Perspective

    I was 43 the first time I started to relax.

    For 20 years of my adulthood I’d fretted and toiled. Fretted and toiled, mostly about each of life’s milestones.

    First, it was to graduate college. I was going to university in a small town that I didn’t like very much, because being in my early 20s I didn’t want to be in a small town — I wanted to be in the city! So I wanted out of that college, and the best way to do that was to graduate, so I fretted and toiled my way toward graduation.

    Then I graduated and it was time to get my career going. Except we were in a mini-recession (early 90s) at the time and no one was hiring recent college graduates. So I worked a series of grunt jobs as a mover and a DJ and bank teller and tutor, and meanwhile went back to school to earn my teaching certification. I’d love to say those were good times, but they weren’t: it was a time of very low checking account balances  and day-to-day drudgery and all through those years I fretted and I toiled.

    Then I got out of school and got my first career job and then wanted so desperately to have a house. I felt like houses were out of my reach, and felt a lot of resentment at older generations for creating a world where I couldn’t afford a house. I spent a lot of time fretting and toiling although after a few years I was actually able to buy a house (!).

    And so it went.

    Every single step of the way, year after year of my 20s and then my 30s, I fretted and toiled. Fretted and toiled. I was pretty miserable most of the time, if I’m honest. Yes, I had my moments of joy, and on the surface everyone always commented how happy I seemed, but there was just this overwhelming sense of toiling and fretting surging through my veins like an invisible poison. I worked and worked, and when I wasn’t working I was taking care of the kids and the house and covering for an always-absent (now ex) wife, and all the time I worried and fretted about this and that, always worrying about the next milestone.

    Then there was hope!

    There was a moment — actually two — when I was 43 when I finally relaxed.

    The first moment was on an early morning bike ride. We were at our vacation home, which I loved BUT which I was forever worried about paying for, and we were at the house one summer week when I was on a dawn mountain bike ride through the forest. There was a moment along the river when suddenly I realized the early morning sun was on my face, and the birds were singing all around me, and the river was murmuring next to me, and meanwhile the sweet smell of nature was in the air. And suddenly I just stopped. I stopped, got off my bike, and just soaked in that moment for a minute, then two minutes, then 15 minutes. There literally was not another human being around me, and I suddenly wondered if I were in heaven because it was just soooooo peaceful. Up until that time, I’d never experienced a moment like that before.

    The next moment when I relaxed was THE moment when I relaxed. Age 43, and having dinner with my parents, and was making great money, and my work seemed to love me, and the kids were teens and seemed happy, and my (now ex) wife was around helping a little more often, and I was even still in my athletic prime (I’d batted .920 in and still regularly making diving catches during the recently-ended softball season), and suddenly I thought, “I’ve made it. I’m going to be okay.” I actually thought life might freeze at that very moment, where I’d be okay and age 43 forever.

    But time didn’t stop. And (thankfully) life didn’t stop.

    It kept on coming. Moment after moment, day after day, year after year.

    That was way over 10 years ago.

    In the decade since that moment at dinner with my parents, so many changes have happened in my life. I was let go for the very first time, and then for the second time. I battled a fluke lung disease (successfully, thank goodness). I got divorced and then after promising myself I’d never date again actually dated again and got remarried again (to a much more present person than my ex was). And meanwhile the years just keep on coming. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

    To me, the most shocking things aren’t the life changes I’ve undergone since I was 43 (actually, each one of them has been a blessing). It’s that each year just keeps on passing. That life just keeps on passing. One year after the other. And it makes me realize the folly of toiling and fretting about milestones, about wanting to achieve certain things on a certain timeframe in life at the expense of being in the moment. Because life is in that moment. My amazing ex-grandmother-in-law used to say, “Life is what happens while you’re making your future plans.” How true that is.

    I wish I could go back in time. And to tell myself to stop fretting. And to stop toiling. Because that stole so much happiness from me, and sucked 20 years of my life away.

    But.

    But!

    I’m here now. And presumably I still have a few decades of good life left in me. And I’ve been influenced by the passage of time in that I’ve learned to just be in the moment, to just feel joy in the here and now, and to take a moment to appreciate each and every day.

    Regret is folly. Better is to take what we’ve learned and to apply that to our present and future. Because our present and future is all we have in our life. And I’m just so grateful that time has taught me to appreciate today.

    Wishing you a great day.

    NOTES:

    • Every day WordPress offers a writing prompt. I’ve never been a writing prompt person but actually have been enjoying these prompts. This is my response to today’s prompt.

  • The Folly Of A To-Do List (AKA My Non-Existent To Do List)

    Something on your “to-do list” that never gets done.

    WHAT IS SOMETHING THAT NEVER GETS DONE ON MY TO DO LIST? Nothing. Because nothing is on my to-do list. Because the world doesn’t make time anymore for to-do lists. Explained…

    Years ago I carried around two notebooks everywhere I went.

    The first notebook were my notes. Every call, every meeting, every day, I jotted down the date and who I was talking to and then took detailed notes in real time, often writing in my notebook while keeping my eyes focused on the person in front of me (i.e. I was the master of the no-look note-taking 🙂 ).

    The second notebook was my to-do list. After every single meeting, I copied my to-do items into that list, then every single day I religiously reviewed that list to make sure I was addressing everything I needed (or promised) to take care of.

    Sometime in the early 2010s, I switched to Excel — I had a tab devoted to my to-do list, and then in 2015 I moved from Excel to One Note for keeping track of Asks. In fact, OneNote — and the tables feature in particular — was awesome!

    One of the things I’m most proud of was in 2019 when I had a critical opportunity I was working on. My larger team was struggling (way behind in its numbers) so needed the revenue from this major opportunity I was working on, and my client really needed our (or at least someone’s) SaaS solution to increase their online sales by 400%. Because it was important, the opportunity had a lot of people weighing in on it: my CEO, the client’s CEO, my client’s CFO, my client’s head of PMO, my client’s dozen mid-level people contributing to or influencing the buying process, and the Client Executive Sponsor who was funding the project, not to mention my internal sales engineers and stressed out sales manager who needed the deal to close to presumably keep his job.

    Every single day during the critical middle-few months of this opportunity several items were added to my to-do list for that opportunity, and each of them had multiple facets. In short, I had a to-do list that was scores of items long that contributed to whether or not I would win a $4.1M contract and help a client. If I’m honest, it was a daunting undertaking.

    But I’m happy to say I did it, and I did it successfully. I juggled all those items, completed them to satisfaction in that the client said my follow up is what won us the opportunity (vs the two other primary competitors), we signed the contract and basically I owe it all to my use of the tables feature in OneNote wherein one column was the to-do item, the next column was the requestor, and the third column were my running notes on where I was. First thing every single morning at 5:30am, while most of the world was still sleeping, I started running through that to-do list to make sure all my i’s were getting dotted and t’s were getting crossed and everything was moving forward schedule.

    But that was then.

    Now I don’t have a to do list.

    Why?

    Because life is too fast for a to do list.

    It’s fast and it’s too overwhelming.

    There are too many asks from too many sources and a modern-day expectation of instant turn-around times. (I remember a client asking for information in 1999 — I got it to her early the next morning and she said, “That was too fast! I thought it would take a week or so.” But in the 2020s I feel like everyone expects follow-up information not next week and not today but RIGHT FREAKIN’ NOW). So there is almost no point to a to-do list because by the time I jot the item down the requestor is already wanting it to be done.

    So, instead I take notes, bold the key items as I type them in case I need to reference them later, and then get it done as soon as I possibly can, which is usually right now. If something is worth doing, it’s generally worth doing now. And so now is generally when I try to do it. If it’s important enough, and it takes more than a few moments to complete, then I’ll remember to do it, and if it’s not important enough to do right now or to remember that I need to do it (sort of like I don’t need to put down on my to-do list to pay a bill — paying bills is important enough that I’ll remember it). then maybe it shouldn’t be on a to-do list anyway.

    It’s ironic that in an over-busy world a To-Do list has become almost outdated. Because if I take a few days to respond, then it’s probably too late, and if something has been promised and is important enough to promise, than I should do it now not tomorrow. So there just is no point to a to-do list.

    So, when I’m asked what never gets done on my to-do list, I say this: nothing. Because there is nothing on my to-do list. If I’m being honest, I wish that weren’t true — it was a friendlier and less stressful world 25 years ago, when I had a notebook filled with my to do items and a week was acceptable except in case of major fires. But it is what it is, and all I can do is adapt to what is.

    DISCLAIMER:

    • Every day wordpress issues a prompt and I’m finding myself enjoying answering that prompt. Today’s was: What is something on my to do list that never gets done.
    • No AI was used in the creation of this response. It is 100 percent organic which is why it isn’t all that great hahahah

  • PROMPT: What’s My Favorite Thing To Cook

    What’s your favorite thing to cook?

    How much I admire people who love to cook.

    Larissa enjoys cooking, especially for the people she loves. She does not mind after a busy day of work migrating to the kitchen and investing an hour surrounded with pots and pans preparing a meal. For me, that is utter hell.

    I remember when the kids were young. My ex-wife was never ever around. Ninety percent — or more — of the days she was gone early and still gone late, volunteering, on a trip somewhere, or (supposedly) working although she never seemed to bring much money home. Which meant the cooking was on me. I cooked the breakfast, and prepared the lunches for school, and then when it was evening preparing dinner was on me.

    How much I hated to cook.

    I disliked cooking before the kids were born, but that dislike became utter disdain after the years and years of drudgery in the kitchen when raising a family.

    I remember after a long day of work, and it was 5pm, and I needed to help the kids with their homework, and I needed to prepare a meal, and I didn’t know where in the heck my (now) ex-wife was other than she wouldn’t be home, and just being sooooooo worn out. I would make myself a drink, and make myself an espresso, and I would drink the drink and drink the espresso and think, “I can do this. I can do this.” And then I’d do it. I’d make tacos or burritos or chicken or quesadillas or burgers, then the kids and I would sit and eat and laugh about various things (we were always telling stories and laughing, and that memory makes me smile just typing it here). Then I’d clean up, help them with their homework, read them a story or watch a movie with them, then we’d go off to bed to start it all over again the next day.

    When I’m asked, “What’s my favorite thing to cook.” All those memories come roaring back. And I feel so much love for my kids. And resentment toward my ex-wife. And so much gratitude (and admiration) for my wife who cooks so often for us. And so much gratitude for my parents, who prepared meals for me for nearly 20 years.

    But most of all, what I think is this: my favorite meal to cook is any meal I don’t have to cook at all. 🙂

    DISCLAIMERS:

    • This was written 100% organically without the help of AI.
    • I hate to read what I’ve written, which means this was at best quickly scanned for blatant errors. I apologize for any and all typing errors.