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If we were living in normal times I would’ve been writing about current events on my blog as a way of processing and inviting conversation. Instead I’ve been deliberately silent.

I stayed silent because so many people are strongly and poignantly expressing the collective horror, sadness and outrage that I also feel over the murder of George Floyd and the countless other black men and women dying from injustice.

Because I respect the need to center Black voices in the ongoing struggle against racism, I have retweeted, reposted and amplified to my admittedly small circle.

I am doing what I can, where I can, when I can and I know I can do better. I committed long ago to challenge my biases, to engage other white people around race, to work to dismantle systemic oppression, and to broaden the conversation about DEI.

What’s prompting me to write now is the wave of despair I feel witnessing relentless Calling Out against allies because they are not devoting 100% of their attention to anti-racism 100% of the time.

There is legitimate and undisputed need for anti-black racism to remain in the public awareness through news, social media and active protest.  American citizens habitually lose interest and look away when a tragedy dominates the news cycle for “too long”. So we know that it’s essential that people don’t move on when nothing has yet changed.

But what is gained by Calling Out or shaming an ally for posting on Insta or Twitter about something significant in their life not connected to racism?

I’m not talking about influencers taking a #BLM selfie for product placement, or celebrities making tone-deaf, self-serving public statements, I’m talking about people who have committed to being non-performative advocates and allies willing to own all of their flaws & mistakes along the way.

I know that allyship is in the eye of the beholder, but I fear that so much calling out & attacking will lead to shame and inaction.

It’s a big leap for some folks to even realize that all Black people are not aligned on how white allies should engage.

  • One person says “Remember to check on your Black friends and co-workers” and another person says “Stop performing caring and leave us alone!”.
  • One co-worker says “Stand up for me and speak out”, and another colleague says “Don’t presume to save me or speak for me”.

The conflicting messages are, in fact, the first part of the learning. Feeling uncertainty and discomfort about doing or saying the wrong thing is baseline for personal growth.

Calling someone out is easy on Twitter/Insta/FaceBook. Calling someone In is harder and takes more time. It’s that same immediacy that causes us to withhold the grace for others mistakes that we often have in person.

Our society appears to be increasingly susceptible to polarization and absolutes rather than nuance. This is nowhere more apparent than on the internet where “with us or against us” is now signaled by a persons willingness to wear a mask during a pandemic.

The calls for justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and others, criminal justice reform, and defunding police/refunding the community have caused some people on social media to adopt a “with us or against us” attitude toward posting.

Some folks are viewing any deviation from anti-racist content on social media as grounds for attacking the sincerity of the supposed ally’s commitment to anti-racism. That requirement moves allyship from an ongoing process of learning about and taking action against oppression (my definition) to an impossible place of never messing up and never posting about anything other than racism.

That feels like defeat to me.

I know I can’t live up to that measure on social media, in my work or in my life. I don’t abandon my allyship because of fatigue or because as a white cis-gender woman I have the privilege of ignoring racism. But I reserve the right to have the fullness of life – the sorrow and the joy, the horror and the beauty, the serious and the frivolous.

I am single minded in my devotion to working to make the world more compassionate, equitable and just. I am just as single minded in my commitment to my ongoing learning about my own biases, privileges, and blind spots.

Enjoying a cat video or a beautiful garden doesn’t diminish my commitment to Black Lives Matter. Posting on Twitter about PRIDE, or disability rights or Women in STEM doesn’t diminish my commitment anti-racism. Things may slow me down, life events might interfere, but my dedication doesn’t change.

I was thinking of the Emma Goldman quote “If I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution” as I scrolled through various attacks and subsequent mea culpas social media. We have a framed print by the activist artist Ricardo Levins Morales in our house to remind us of the fullness of life.

We have another print included below that illustrates a quote by the labor activist Rose Schneiderman that I read daily. It is my prayer for the world – that we will all have the right to life, and the sun, and music and art. That we all have bread and roses.

But first we need to find faith in each other and a little grace.

Ricardo Levins Morales illustrates a quote by Rose Schneiderman

 

 

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I’m updating my website with the help of a super talented, visually oriented friend.

An unexpected response to the necessary questions like “who is your audience?”, and “what do you want people to feel when they visit your website?”, is my deep and sincere sense of panic at answering them.

Do I tell the truth? Or do I stick with my default of describing my work with simple, practical language in as spare a way as possible. The goal is to convey a professional persona that makes people think “reliable”, “serious”, “focused”, “knowledgeable”… “Let’s hire her!” and so forth.

Along the way I completely stripped out that I am any fun or even have a personality.

I could justify this mode of communication because of the need to be professional, and blah, and blah and blah. Truthfully, it was a fear based choice.

I was afraid that if the messy bits of who I am get out again they would undermine the image I should portray to the world. Yeah I said “should.”

The reality is that its a lot of work to live up to “shoulds”: to monitor and suppress parts of yourself that you or society deem “unacceptable.” My little problem stems from years of being told that my personality was “too much”, “too big”, and “intimidating”.  That I needed to “tone it down”.

I believed the criticism and developed a serious style as a form of self-preservation and as a way to fit in where I was told I didn’t.

The serious style stuck because there is a risk to being complex and nuanced in a sound-bite world. A world where we can know and share everything instantly and no communication is immune to a well-timed screen shot.

As I am now writing descriptions to represent how and what I do when I coach & facilitate, I’m looking for ways to create a more authentic picture of myself that includes the flash and flamboyance, the irreverence and humor, that I (mostly) keep wrapped up and out of site.

The reason for the change is at this point in my career I prefer to work with people who know and accept who I am as a whole person, rather than continue to squeeze myself into a non-threatening, low-risk, “toned down” black suited shape.

Nearly everything I do when coaching and facilitating starts in a place of discomfort for participants. Its a risk to engage in personal development, or talk about race/gender/LGBTQ bias, equity and inclusion, and discomfort accompanies progress.

So with less attention on the risk of my being “too much”, I’ll work with my friend to see if we can get my website to authentically reflect who I am, how I work and what to expect when you hire me as your coach or facilitator.

With or without the black suit and serious expression.

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I realize I have not been living up to my intention with this blog lately. I can usually see the humor in an situation, but there is little that is making me laugh lately. Most likely because national, regional and local politics are a depressing reflection of our deeply flawed society.

Also because I am attempting to write an essay to submit for publication. This will be a first for me other than plays and poems I submitted to contests when I was younger.

The essay I am writing is about growing up during desegregation, known locally as “busing”. I am prepared for rejection.

I have two things in draft right now about Bronies and setting new rules as the daughter ages out of the old system, that will have to wait while I polish up this essay enough to have my husband have a first read. Guest posts are welcome as I dither over pretending I am writer.

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In an alternate future-world I will read the New Yorker magazine the day that it arrives in the mail. In present reality-land, they are scattered throughout the house in no real order. Some in the living room, some in the kitchen, a few hidden under piles of books in my daughters room, so I never actually read them in order. Which can be fascinating.

I recently read an analysis of Mitt Romney that ran prior to the November election and it was a great hindsight view of what went wrong in his campaign (thank God!). I do, however,  have a way of filing the magazines I’ve read so I am at least reaching for new (to me) content when I do grab one.

I just picked up the April 8, 2013 issue and read a Shouts & Murmurs that just slayed me. This regular feature can be hit or miss, but this one was dead on. Paul Rudnick did a scathing parody of the overprivileged Mommy Blogger. While I do write about my family, my daughter and parenting in general, when someone called my Rant a Mommy Blog a while back I was hurt & offended. Rudnick’s humorous, not so unrealistic, depiction of blogging is my darkest fear with my writing.

This post is a bit longer than my usual, but the Rudncik is well worth the read. I don’t think I am a Mommy Blogger and there is additional proof in the fact that I have not disabled the comments.

“I’m Jyll Cimmaron Stelton, and every morning, even before I crawl out from under my down comforter, I grab my iPad and start to mommyblog. I always begin by composing a prayer of gratitude for my beautiful children: Sonnet, Cascade, Nebula, and the baby, Diaspora. I’m not sure what the word “diaspora” means, but it sounds so pretty, and it was either that or Chipotle.

I believe that childhood is a brief, perfect state of being, and so I’ve tried to enclose my family in a shimmering sphere of enchantment, a realm that I call WonderPlanet, right here in our Park Slope brownstone. On WonderPlanet, anything is possible, as long as everyone loves one another and Goldman Sachs comes through with Daddy’s Easter bonus. I teach my children that money is like fairy dust, because when we sprinkle it around we can dream and sing and fly, usually in business class, and we can bake heart-shaped cookies that we can share with all the other children who aren’t allergic to stone-milled spelt flour, carob chips, whey protein, and smiles.

Some people have criticized me for not going back to work after my children were born, and for hiring a nanny. But I think of nurturing WonderPlanet as a full-time occupation, and someday I do plan on returning to my career as an advocate for women over forty who still want to grow and maintain waist-length hair. In addition, I’ve begun to sell a selection of trademarked WonderPlanet collectibles online, including hand-thrown ceramic mugs inscribed with the mottoes “Wander Into Wonder,” “I’m a Stay-at-Home Dreambuilder,” and “End Bullying Today—Buy a Mug.” I’m also marketing a line of meadow-dried teas, called Peaseblossom Morn, Smoochberries ’n’ Yarn, and Private Tutor. And in just a few weeks I’ll be introducing my WonderPlanet homewares line, in collaboration with Target, which will feature handwoven raffia boxes designed to hold smaller handwoven raffia boxes.

As for our nanny, well, because Tula is really more like a member of our family, we call her our Friendgiver. Sometimes, when I’m on the chaise longue in my home office, editing the audio of the duets where I sing along with Taylor Swift and then mimic Taylor’s voice thanking me, I get a little jealous, because Tula is enjoying the gift of bathing my children and inspecting their scalps for head lice. Once the little ones are all fresh-smelling, with their heads shaved and shining, Tula and I love to create games like Let’s All Be Butterflies and Pretend That Tula Is a Windshield, and Let’s All Change Tula’s Name Again and Ignore Her Until She Answers to Mrs. Melonbutt T. Wiggleburp.

One afternoon last week, I came upon Tula sobbing quietly in a corner, and I didn’t want to upset her by asking why, but I knew: it was because, at the end of each perfect Brooklyn day, she’s forced to return to her own home, in an outlying borough that the children and I call Underplace. I curled my arm so that it hovered about four inches away from her shoulders, and stroked the air above her head, while murmuring, “There, there, don’t cry. Next weekend, I’ll let the children stay with you in Underplace, so I can finish the proposal for my cookbook, called ‘Sparkle Soup and Gummi Flax: Imaginary Recipes for Obese Children in Public Schools.’ ”

Of course, I dread the day when Sonnet, my eldest, will begin her half-days at St. Elizabeth’s, the only preschool in our area where children are required to wear wings, crowns, and non-gender-specific leg warmers. I have refused to confine or label my children in any way, and sometimes I tell Cascade that his penis is called a vagina, just so I can watch him pound his tiny head against the wall with secret joy. And once, after Nebula asked me where babies come from, we had a wonderful afternoon, filling condoms with water and then hurling them at Tula.

Most of our days, however, are spent dressing up in hand-embroidered Swedish linen smocks, tulle tutus, and velvet tunics, and fashioning dance/performance pieces illustrating what I like to call “Ye Enchantable Historye of WonderPlanet.” Yesterday, when some neighboring children came over, Nebula chose to play the Darkling Shrew, a mother who neglects her children by selfishly pursuing a life of social work and city planning. The other children all played positive emanations, including Kindness, Quiet Time, and Really Listening. They surrounded the Darkling Shrew and punched her until she promised to quit her job and devote more time to Instagramming photos of them touching oversized soap bubbles.

The afternoon flew by, and before we knew it Daddy came home, carrying a bunch of daffodils, a loaf of still warm cracked-carraway-seed bread from our local bakery, which is staffed entirely by Dartmouth Ph.D.s, and all of Mommy’s prescriptions, which I immediately sorted into imported French porcelain pillboxes, labelled “Stress,” “Mood,” and “I Wish I Had a Gun.”

The children always leap into Daddy’s loving arms, eager for kisses and cuddles and the marvellous lemon-verbena scent of that twenty-three-year-old whom Daddy insists is simply an eager Wharton grad he’s mentoring. Then, because we’re all finally together on WonderPlanet, Tula distributes the wood blocks, tambourines, and Pan flutes, and we become the WonderPlanet Starcarrier Symphony Sensation, led by me strumming my lute, with Daddy keeping time by tapping his glass against the bottle of Scotch. Together, we all perform old family favorites like “Hooray! It’s Tuesday!,” “Tula Is So Slow!,” and “Daddy Is Just Tired from a Very Long Day, So Please Stop Whining About Montauk.”
After dinner, and while waiting for Tula to get all four children in bed, Daddy and I finally grab some alone time. I show him the children’s new watercolors. We marvel at their vivid imaginations, and we ponder what it means that the stick figures in Nebula’s paintings are all on fire, under the words “While They’re Asleep.”

So ends another exhausting, confounding, and inspiring day here on WonderPlanet. I know that this paradise can’t last forever, and that’s why every day I post an affirmation on our family’s Web site and I add a few bills from Daddy’s wallet to my secret lingerie-drawer bank account. And, as I close my eyes and begin to dream of the next morning’s blog entry, I think, I’m so glad I disabled the comments section.” ♦
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One of the interesting things I have found about writing a blog is the sense of obligation I feel to unseen readers. I know I have exactly six followers (the little icons show up on the bottom of the page) and a handful of other folks who have told me they read it. So when I don’t post three or four times a week I feel it niggling in the back of my mind. 

One thought that has returned repeatedly in the time between the last post and this – which was by no means empty I assure you – is the use of the phrase “A drop in the bucket”. This caught my attention a few weeks ago in a story about Syria. The person reporting the International Aid provided had a very disgusted tone and was stressing that it was so little as to be meaningless. Then, as these things do, I started hearing “a drop in the bucket” in all sorts of conversations.

I couldn’t help wondering if the people on the receiving end in Syria, as much as they need a great deal more intervention and attention, were not happy to receive something rather than nothing. It is a curious attitude people often have about the worth of effort. “Choose your battles” is another one that implies futility to me. My question, which I’m sure is rich for psychoanalysis, is ‘Just because something is futile, does that mean you shouldn’t do it?’

I would love to be part of the grand gesture, launch the world-changing movement or earn a place in the history books, but that doesn’t mean I turn away from the individual kindness, the small monetary contribution or the tedium of what needs doing. It’s not even that I have a “pay it forward” mentality (another phrase that could use some critical analysis as to the self-benefit attached to “public” altruism), I think I am much more utilitarian – do what you can, when you can.

The futility calculation translates too easily into helplessness and it’s easily forgotten that drops add up and fill the bucket, that molehills piled on top of each other become a mountain. Sometimes my “something” ends up being simply sending thoughts into the world via my little blog noodlings. Conversation I am having with the world. Or myself. That part is less clear.

But at least its something rather than nothing.

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I am currently reading Isabel Allende’s Zorro. It has been on my nightstand for roughly a year in the “to be read next pile”, but I gave in after a friend’s gentle, if loud, hectoring that I need to “do something that’s not work related!”

I often read fiction but have been swamping myself lately with what my daughter calls my “boring books” whose titles almost always include a colon or subtitle. Two examples next to me on my desk as I type: Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions and Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing your Career.  I read the first one when it came out years ago and wanted to pull some examples, and the other I’m reading because some folks I’m working with are going through big transitions right now.

This post isn’t really about my boring reading habits, its more about unmasking. I have been considering putting this blog under my own name – leaving the clever title of course because I like it – but allowing a public profile & my real name to be shown. When I started it years ago the anonymity was partially because I thought it was pretentious to call myself a writer, even of a blog, so I wanted to hide. And partially because I was afraid the writing was just crap anyway and if it was anonymous I could be less embarrassed about my desire to write and my lack of skill.

Now I don’t know. Some folks who I admire and trust have said its not half bad. Some say writing an anonymous blog is exaggerating your own importance – that no one will actually care. And that your readers are less connected to you if they don’t “know you” through your profile. So I am looking for feedback.

If you read this blog, or have just read this post, what do you think? Anonymous or no?

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You may have been subjected to a personality test at some point in your adult life – Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Strengths Finder –  there are oh so many to choose from. If you have it’s likely it was a Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator was which I have written about before.

If you have your type memorized (I am either ENTJ or ESTJ depending on the day), you can indulge in the humor of the Prayer Grid below. It is so hard to get out of our boxes. That is one of my goals this year, to at least climb into or try on some new boxes. Recommendations?

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I have a character flaw that blew up like an IED last month. A completely unhealthy reaction that I am, as of yet, unable to beat into submission or transform into something useful.

I over-identify with negative behaviors I witness.

In plain English, when I see behavior I find obnoxious, I start to discover all the ways that I do that exact thing and over compensate in the other direction. When I worked in theatre years ago there were some women who were very blatantly, aggressively sexually provocative in clothing and behavior. My reaction to this was to cover all available skin by wearing a black turtleneck and black pants every day for years. Problem solved: I am not them.

My force field repels “obnoxiously loud” by being silent, diffuses “self-aggrandizement” by deflecting praise and ruthlessly quashes any and all hipster-ish behavior.

This over correction happens almost automatically with certain people that I’ve known for years. Most recently I made the mistake of reading a blog that I found to be almost painfully pretentious and self-involved. And I found the writing to be cringe worthy. I blushed in embarrassment on behalf of the writer. And promptly stopped writing my blog.

The unfortunate part about this is that it wasn’t conscious. I thought I had writers block, or too many jagged thoughts competing in my head, and even while I was feeling bad that I wasn’t writing, I couldn’t figure out why. And then I did.

In the age of participation – when anyone and everyone can self publish, write a blog, have multiple twitter feeds and live their lives in the pseudo public eye of cyber space – I suddenly saw my blog writing as pathetic, self-indulgence. And maybe it is, who knows. But I enjoy writing it.

As a middle aged woman with a boatload of other personal issues, I think I can, in this instance, suck up the fear that I resemble this other writer and continue to write my blog. And, like an alcoholic who first has to admit there is a problem, I’m counting this as “progress”. I will persist in my efforts to overcome the habit of recoiling in horror from blatant self-indulgence and intellectual masturbation. I’ll even work on not blushing on behalf of TV actors wearing costumes in commercials. That one may take a while.

Character flaws in novels can take hundreds of pages to be improved, so by that standard I have at minimum a few more years of blogging to figure myself out.

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I have taken an involuntary hiatus from my blog. Not exactly sure why, but I have been experiencing a kind of writing paralysis that might be called writers block but feels much more destructive.

I generally ruminate and chew my thoughts, but it usually produces something eventually. This time, no matter how much I rub this particular grain of sand, it refuses to cooperate and become a pearl.

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I just want to say I am disappointed that I did not reach my personal goal for my blog this year.

I wanted to have 182 posts in 2012, half of the 365 days in the year. Instead, I had some weeks where I had five and other weeks where I had zero, so I am 59 posts short of my goal. This is better than 2011 when I only managed one post a week. I look much more productive if I count posts per weeks of the year instead of days – averaging 2+ posts a week! – but that was not my goal so that’s cheating. Or playing with statistics. Same thing.

My 2013 goal will have to be 3 posts a week, no excuses.

Since overall this is a very small disappointment in the grand scheme of things, I didn’t want to use a title that blew it out of proportion. Disappointed, Sad, and Regret are all a bit big, so I used Wabsy, a term coined by my daughter and her preschoolers friends that essentially means “Wah, wah, wah, so sad for you, quit your whining”. It is and was a lovely short hand word that we continue to use in our house to tell each other – get over yourself.

Try it the next time someone is acting juvenile about some “First World Problem” they are having. Its very satisfying.

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I have really been struggling lately with a writing requirement for a new program I started. I decided three years ago to become a Gestalt trained coach. I started the program and then let someone talk me out of finishing it. I say “let” because, while the persons comments dismissing the program may have been self-serving, I was the one who took them to heart and believed them.

I committed to the program this fall and, if all goes well, will be certified by the summer. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that I have resolved the issues that caused me to throw in the towel three years ago, only one of which I am fussing with today – the jounaling requirement. I have to submit a certain number of journal entries per month as part of a development plan. I am already behind.

I have a couple of problems with this requirement. First, a journal by definition is supposed to be a private record of ones thoughts. So writing a journal for someone read after the fact to track your developmental progress hangs me up. Secondly, it was explained to me by folks who like this sort of thing that journaling is a kind of self-dialog. When I do that I call it “thinking” and I don’t generally write it down. Unless there is a topic, assignment or an audience.

I have not been able to figure out how to make myself the audience. I write these blog posts but I imagine (perhaps speciously) that I am in conversation with whoever reads them.  And I am not being graded for overall improvement or developmental growth or however the journal will be evaluated. Perhaps I am overthinking. Actually I am without a doubt overthinking. Its one of my many skills that has yet to find a category to live in on my resume.

What I am trying not to do is turn the requirement into a work of fiction. Writing carefully groomed installments with an eye toward that A+ with just the right soupçon of insight and self-deprecating humor. So I am stuck.

I came across a great quote by Susan Orlean today that sums up where I am with my journaling requirement

“Remember this: writer’s block doesn’t exist. What does exist is a condition in which you don’t really know what you’re trying to say, and therefore are having trouble saying it.”

I really don’t know what I am trying to say yet. So I guess I’ll keep blogging until I figure it out.

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The news from Syria is hard to follow. Not that its difficult to track what is going on, who the players are or the international stakeholders, but the very real, very specific civilian death, injury and destruction. I know some people in our local Syrian community and it’s very hard not to see their faces in the images on Al Jazeera English.

I am starting think that Syria may help decide the fundamental direction of our global society for the next thirty years. Here’s why.

The Arab Spring was possible in part because of the information stream going in and out freed people of their isolation. The world was watching. So even if the government shot them down in the street someone would find out about it, someone would be accountable. Cold comfort if you are the one dead in the street, but if what you are fighting for is worth dying, for at least you will not be invisible.

Now the Chinese are using weibo to protest. And getting away with it if they are taking on the provincial or municipal government. Not quite Twitter, the Chinese micro-blogging has more than 300 million users. That’s a lot of messages to filter for “human rights”, “democracy” and “Tienanmen”. I was reminded how many layers there can be in Chinese communication when I heard last month that the Chinese government blocked Ai Weiwei’s “Gangnam Style” video because the homophones he uses in the parody are roughly “F**k your Mother” (the Communist Govt). And its got a good beat.

So what does this have to do with Syria? In the midst of the Internet and cell phone black out the Syrian government has imposed across the country, the UN is working on an International Internet Treaty. Who owns the Internet. The answer to this question will be our future.

Formerly the Age of Information, in the new Age of Participation when we are all citizen journalists and a Twitter alert can cause a riot, who controls the flow of information controls the world. If the UN decides that each Government has to have the right to shut down Internet and cell phone usage (like Syria is doing) at their discretion, then we are headed for a Sci-Fi future that is anyone guess. The pressure is coming from (surprise) China, Russia, Iran and other Arab countries.

The UN should focus on creating some treaty that calls for checks and balances in times of turmoil (like Google & Twitter providing dial-up numbers to Syrian activists) so every member nation has to adhere to information protocols like the Geneva Conventions. Hell lets just add it to the Geneva Conventions since these situations will always come up in times of war/coup.

This is really the final frontier for free speech. If we do not make a global commitment to ensure globally diversified Internet access we have chosen our future. The fewer telecommunications providers the easier it is to flip a switch.

Decisions are being made. Attention must be paid.

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This was the answer given to the question “Why can’t men who have a lot of power keep their pants on?”

The conversation was about the Petraeus scandal and resignation but the response of the talking head – in all seriousness – was that men in power have too much testosterone and take increasingly large risks. She went on to list Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich and many other politicians who unzipped their careers or reputations over the years, as a good argument for electing more women, i.e. power does not increase risk taking in women.

We now have a historical number of women in the US Senate (20, or 20%) and the House of Representatives (77 or 17%), which means that our standing in the world for participation of women in our national politics edges up from #80 to maybe #79. Statistically 79 other countries, among them China, Pakistan and Iraq, have a higher percentage of women in political office than the United States. Apparently we are slow adopters of best practices.

Interestingly, the same concept of moderating risky behavior is what drives many countries around the world into demanding quotas for women on corporate boards of directors. Critical mass of women on corporate boards is documented to reduce unnecessary risk taking, increase overall performance of the companies and lead to greater stability. That must be why, as the Petraeus scandal was breaking, the UK opposed the adoption of quotas for women on boards as a EU policy.

The UK (and others) protested that quotas are an “unwarranted interference in national plans to enhance diversity”. The preference is that companies prove they have “sufficient measures in place to ensure gender equity” which means they can continue to do nothing.

Interesting juxtaposition: The British government saying a “self-regulatory model” of increasing diversity is the best approach (so very 1980’s), a General accused of “being hormonal” and unable to control himself (while controlling the CIA), and women portrayed as calming forces in the face of political and corporate mishegas (evidence based, with a nurture/nature undertone).

Oh yeah, and lets throw in that some bloggers are blaming Holly Petraeus for “letting herself go” and “looking like a dumpy frump” thereby forcing her husband to have an affair with a woman 20 years younger. I must say that November 2012 is a confusing time to be female. Good thing I don’t have to worry about my hormones impacting my decision making.

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First things first is a curious phrase. It makes me think – well how could you do last things first? – anyway it works in this case. I have not had even a few minutes to post since before the election and I’m sure my readers have abandoned me by this point, but I am determined to get back in my groove.

First things first. I can’t begin to offload what would have been in the last 8 – 10 posts (if I’d had 30 minutes in a row to think during the last few weeks), but a brief overview.

Obama won the election. Thank you Jesus, Buddha, Yahweh and millions of volunteers. I really don’t know what I would have done if that hadn’t happened. The consequences of Obama not being elected were so anathema to my values that I was truly in a state of distress watching the returns. Much hard work ahead but man, oh, man, not what it would have been.

I have gotten past a mountain of deadlines and am now (re)considering boundaries. I realized my last full day off was Saturday, October 13th. I am very much looking forward to November 17th when my newly developed sense of logical, healthy boundaries will commence. I tried to explain to someone that I didn’t start out this way. Emergencies turn into priorities and like a frog in a pot of slowly heating water it took me a long to time to understand I was being boiled alive. I have effectively jumped out of the pot never to return. Anyone catching me working on weekends (not for myself) has the right to demand $100 on the spot.

Still need to process:

  • my republican neighbors,
  • baby steps toward making new friends,
  • my plans to launch a new consulting practice,
  • a requirement to “journal” that I am trying to figure how to cheat by using blog posts,
  • my daughter traveling for three days without us,
  • the Sandusky verdict,
  • Sonya Sotomyer helping little girls understand that being a princess is not a career path.

And so much more. Let the writing resume.

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I need an editor. Or a proofreader or something. I write these posts pretty fast and furious (often outraged rather furious actually), and rarely have time to review them carefully for typos or other silly errors.

When I started writing this blog I promised myself I wouldn’t take longer to write a post than it would take someone to read it. Well that rarely happens, but I do try finish in under an hour if I don’t have any interruptions, which also rarely happens. A post can sit in draft and get a few sentences added throughout the day from whatever device I have open at the time, so it can get jagged.

The real problem is when I read the last post and see subject verb agreement issues, spelling errors (I am legendary in my inability to spell) and general typos and wince when I think someone has read it and, like me when I am not the writer, immediately noticed the glaring error.

So I have two choices. Write slower and review more carefully before I hit publish or find someone willing to edit my ramblings. Since my free time will be contracting even more severely as we head into October, (and debate season!!) applications are currently being accepted for editor/proofreader god or goddess.