This one houses a fusebox. There’s a much longer and more interesting story about surprise nooks in Maine houses, but I should sleep now.
one of my favorite things about houses in Maine: random suprise doors.
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Category Archives: Miscellanea
Hmmm… I wonder what kind of disaster the government wants us to be ready for?
Comparisons are wasteful
I don’t have a business degree. I don’t even have a design degree. What I do have is a knack for storytelling, and a keen ability to figure out what I need to learn in order to solve almost any problem I encounter. And if I can’t learn what I need, I know who to ask in order to get the problem solved.
My journey in business has been tempered by this contrast. On one hand, I know that anything life throws me I can handle it–and have. On the other, I spend hours worrying about this lack of “education.” I worry that I won’t be able to prove myself, or that people with business degrees somehow have an advantage that I don’t. I daydream about returning to school, partially because of this feeling that my education is inadequate, partially because I feel that people are secretly judging me, and partly because I really enjoyed the structure and accountability of school.
But what I’m beginning to realize is, all of that is bullshit.
In five years of running a small design studio, the only people who have ever judged me for not having a degree were people I didn’t want to work with. And everything I’ve needed to know about running a business I’ve learned by doing, or by knowing who to ask.
I focus on the word “I.” here because it should be clear that I am not you–just as I am not all the others that I waste time comparing myself to. While healthy competition is healthy, comparison is wasteful. As a business owner, and as a human, it’s not up to anyone but you decide who you are. Others can lend perspective, and it’s wonderful to get that perspective, but if the goal of your life is to be like them, whose life are you actually living?
The search for balance
I have to admit that I’m a bit of a workaholic. Running a business that (thankfully!) seems to be thriving in this economy ends up taking a serious toll on every other aspect of my life, from dishes to working out to getting to sleep early enough so I don’t want to kill people the next day.
But somehow, this year is going to be different. Here’s what I’m choosing to do:
- Make more time for fiction. While some of my friends (who are also busy with work) claim that they “don’t have time for fiction,” frankly, I bill myself as a visual storyteller. How can I do that authentically if I’m not spending time reading good stories? Therefore, I’m making time for fiction. After all, it’s technically research.
- Never miss a workout. This is an easy one for me to talk myself out of, but even if I have to get up at 5:30 every morning, I have to get my workout in. It helps me focus for the day, and I’m actually more productive as a result.
- Keep lots of healthy food handy. One of my biggest problems working from the home studio is feeling like I don’t have time to make lunch; I find that if I make a big pot of soup on the weekend, I can heat some up for lunch and eat well without interrupting the flow of my day.
- Make a list for the week. One of the best things I’ve implemented recently is a 5-days-a-week To-Do list, inspired by Knock Knock’s awesome “5 Days a Week” mousepad. Being able to fill out my tasks for the week on Sunday night, and block them out by day, has been an immense help in getting everything done.
So far, so good – I’ve felt more productive than I have in months, and I’m still making time for the things I love. What do you do to balance everything?
Movie Review: NEW IN TOWN
Admittedly, I’ve never really understood the image of executive women that’s typically presented in the media. Being a business owner, and one who’s achieved what I consider to be success, it’s always confused me that the image of a “successful” woman in magazines is inevitably someone wearing completely impractical heels and a bag that costs as much as I pay for groceries in a year – who wakes up at 5am every morning, goes to bed at midnight, and somewhere in there manages to fit in a family. Call me crazy, but I walk everywhere. I’m a flats and hiking boots kinda girl.
When I started watching New in Town (the new Renée Zellweger film from Lionsgate), I initially bristled at Zellweger’s character, a Miami-based food company executive who gets thrust into running one of the company’s plants in Minnesota and facilitating a changeover in product lines. Initially, Zellweger’s character is portrayed as someone who’s too caught up in her work to notice the world around her. She wears impractical clothing. She insults the locals (and, as it turns out, all the people who would be in the best position to help her). I found her shallow and annoying.
But, as the movie goes on, Zellweger’s character begins to adapt to her new situation, and the movie offers a few really important lessons to professional women.
1. Don’t underestimate the folks that work beneath you. Zellweger’s character initially behaves, well, badly, towards her assistant when she invites Connick to dinner so Zellweger can meet him. Although Zellweger thought that the assistant was inviting Connick to set her up with him, she actually invited him because he’s the union boss, and she wanted to give her the chance to meet him casually before they had to meet professionally, and discuss potential layoffs.
2. Be adaptable. Although it takes her a while, Zellweger realizes that making her new situation work isn’t just about suits and stilettos and being tough as nails. She had to find ways to work with a completely different set of people with an entirely different set of needs, and she managed it very well.
3. When disaster threatens to strike, look for the opportunity. Without getting too much into movie spoilers, one of my favorite moments in the movie is when Zellweger is faced with orders from above that could dismantle everything she’d worked for. Instead of accepting defeat, she finds an opportunity within the community that creates a win-win for everyone.
All this, and the chemistry between Zellweger and Connick is, quite frankly, really nice to watch.