On Monday, I realized it was November 16 — 10 days to go before my birthday, Thanksgiving, and the end of my Feed 40×40 birthday wish.
And as much as I knew he was right, my PR self took over and started imagining the post I’d write if we didn’t reach the goal of 1,600. I’d share the amazing things I’d heard and seen, thanks to my generous friends and family. The people I’ve never met who pitched in because they heard that some lady was trying to do a food drive to celebrate her 40th birthday. My office coworkers who organized a food drive on their own. My son’s fourth grade class, deciding on a food drive for their November service project. And my husband, who had the idea to smoke an extra turkey to give to a family — strangers, quite likely — that could use help putting a nice dinner on the table.
I’m a PR person, and the messaging was coming together in my mind. I thought, “I can share these stories and tell people — or, at least tell myself — that 1,600 was just a number, that our effort made a difference.” There would be no shame in falling short of a lofty goal.
But then Monday happened. And Tuesday, and Wednesday. And with every ding that rang out from my social media notifications, I was joyfully reminded of the generosity and kindness of friends and strangers. By Monday night, we had passed 1,100. By Tuesday night, 1,200. And this morning? Nearly 1,400.
I’ll post again before this is all done. But I wanted to check in now and let you know: What’s happening is really special.
For as long as I can remember, Thanksgiving has been one of my favorite holidays. A day that celebrates food, family and blessings is a gift in and of itself.
Fast forward four decades, and I will be celebrating my 40th this year on Thanksgiving Day. When I discovered this, I had mixed feelings. Thanksgiving birthdays — my husband has been known to call them Birthgiving Days — are usually pretty forgettable. Thanksgiving, in all its glory, takes over. But turning 40, especially on Thanksgiving, makes me pause.
During the month of November, I’m challenging my friends, my family and my followers — YOU — to give to your local food bank. I’m calling it Feed 40×40, and my goal is to generate a collective donation of 1,600 food items and/or dollars to local food banks across Kansas and across the country.
Donate a little (or a lot) to your local food pantry.
Share this post and/or your donation story, and encourage your friends to donate to their local food pantry. Let social media work for you!
Organize a mini food drive in your office or neighborhood this month.
Focus on the items that food pantries have trouble keeping on their shelves… peanut butter, breakfast cereal, dried pasta and grains, personal hygiene products, bathroom tissue.
Change your social media and/or e-mail profile pic to the Feed 40×40 graphic, for an hour, a day, or the whole month.
Help me spread the word. Help me make a difference. And help me spread thankfulness all month long — to those who have a lot, and to those who don’t.
I don’t normally ask people to do things for me. But it’s my birthday. Won’t you help make it special?
What Happens When the Wheels Come Off?
At this particular moment in my life, I am the president of the Kansas School Public Relations Association. And at this particular point in the year, I’m in the final days of planning our group’s annual fall conference. Since the beginning of the planning process, I have had the time and resources to do things the way I like. Great speakers were locked in many months in advance. The conference site was reserved 10 months ago. Sponsors have been abundant and generous. And a dedicated and hard-working committee of friends and colleagues make the rest of this machine run.
So imagine my surprise last week — 26 days before the opening session — when I got a call from the sponsor and partner who had helped us secure a beautiful meeting space for our event.
And with that phone call, my conference — and the 50+ colleagues, speakers and sponsors scheduled to attend — had become a conference without a home. We were going to be professionally homeless for two days in November.
The next several hours were exactly what anyone would expect, given the circumstances. Drop everything. Get started making phone calls, sending Facebook and Twitter messages, exchanging texts and e-mails. Try to identify any potential connection and call out every potential favor. And, of course, mobilize the great people I know to do the same.
Incredibly, not 24 hours after that phone call, we had a new space that is no more than a hundred yards from the original space. (Huge props to our sponsor and partner for doing the heavy lifting to get us in such a nice space, so quickly.) Looking back it’s a no-big-deal-all-is-well-that-ends-well kind of thing, but the eventual answer was anything but obvious at the time. Mercifully, this oh-my-goodness-please-do-not-be-true experience was short lived. But most amazing to me was my persistent calm. I did not panic. I did not cry. I did not even feel like crying. How can this be?
And then it hit me. My Disney-bound friend and I were actually in the same shoes. We were both faced with something that we couldn’t control, that threatened to all but undo an otherwise awesome experience. And instead of panic, shouting or bathroom tears, we chose resolve.
Maybe this is maturity — this don’t-panic-just-solve-the-problem state of mind. Whatever it is, I love it. Crying in the bathroom may feel good for a short time, but it’s pretty useless when there are problems to solve.
It’s been a rough several months. Unbelievably heavy professional work load, uncommonly stressful personal trials.
I’ve also discovered the overwhelm of amazing opportunities, the invitations to do something awesome — to use my skills to make a difference. The chance to meet great people, do important work, and relish the abundance that exists when you say yes to something great. It’s awesome. Unless your hair’s on fire.
In May I was invited to join a couple of respected colleagues on a new communications venture. This came in the same weeks that I was spending time with my 92-year-old granddad as his life was ending. And supporting my young son in an especially difficult bout of anxiety. At work, I was migrating a massive website, studying for my APR professional accreditation exam and wrapping up a school year. I was so flattered by the invitation, and intrigued by the opportunity to use my expertise to support others. But something was holding me back.
In a phone call with a very wise friend a week or two later, I reflected on how busy I’d been in the past year, even without the stress that May presented. Writing a book. Building a personal website. Working with a new superintendent.
Sitting in my parked car — where I’ve discovered I tend to be unusually productive — I told her that I’d reached the point of busy where I resented it. I was unhappy. I love being engaged in work that challenges and rewards. (And besides, who doesn’t love the feeling of being asked to play a role in something cool? Write a book? Deliver a presentation? Start a new venture? Count me in!) But this was different, I said. This kind of busy was stealing my joy.
I told her it was a Lighting My Hair On Fire busy. And in that moment, I realized that’s why I was unhappy.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that any hair on fire scenario, whether literal or metaphorical, is probably bad. I’m a loyal subscriber to the notion that you make time for the things that are important to you, and I believe there is generally enough time for those important things, even in the finite 24-hour day. Call me selfish, but eating, sleeping, showering and hugging my kids rank high among my most important things.
Doing my best professional work also ranks up there pretty high, but I needed to simplify. The idealist in me is always wooed by the chance to do The Good Work, but I needed to step away from a few volunteer boards, at least temporarily. I needed to think harder every time I was invited to spend a day on the road to deliver a 45-minute presentation.
I’ve found it can be physically painful to turn down an invitation to do what I love — to make things better through strategic communications and collaboration. But that pain is far less than the pain of hair on fire — running around, frantic and desperate to put it out. That’s no way to live a joyful life.
I’m learning to name my top priorities — caring for my family and myself, and delivering professional value to my colleagues — and go from there. If a new opportunity cuts too deeply into any of them, it’s too much. I’ll probably always be working toward that sweet spot, where I can grow and learn, love on my family, and breathe. But as I unhook myself from some commitments, and simply finish up others without replacing them, I’m getting closer.
I don’t seek perfect, continuous balance. It doesn’t exist. But I do seek the calm contentment that comes with knowing that, even when I’m busy, the most important pieces of my life still fit.
Going Viral. There are few phrases in the world of social media — and in today’s culture, for that matter — with more immediate meaning. We know the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge videos that filled our feeds. We know Justin Bieber, Susan Boyle and Gangnam Style. We know the Harlem Shake. And we know more sad cat, cute puppy and funny baby videos than we care to count.
It’s completely natural, in this age of information and sharing, to aspire to create viral content. And unless you’re breaking out a new superstar or the latest adorable child/animal, it’s only reasonable to admit that going viral is a pie-in-the-sky aspiration, at best. But in an age when celebrity status is currency, it’s also completely natural to think, Wouldn’t it be amazing if this went viral?, when releasing a message, video, photo or story that we know really is special. I can only imagine the conversations that took place at the ALS Association when they talked about this silly idea — this special idea — and contemplated how far the ice-bucket-dumping-cash-donating phenomenon would travel. I doubt anyone in the room that day predicted it would raise $115 million in two months, more than 3,500% of the money raised the year before. Viral, anyone?
Back in early February, I had a bit of a lucky spell. A Facebook post on my district page went viral. I also had two personal posts (here and here), shared just a few minutes apart with some reflections on the state of public education in my home state of Kansas. And in a way I’ve never personally experienced, these also caught fire with friends, with friends of friends and — I would come to learn — with complete strangers.
In that mad and crazy week, I learned some lessons I never expected, and a couple of them still bother me a little, sometimes.
For someone who works in public relations — and who delights in the Facebook Insight data on a near-daily basis — the sheer inability to measure has been hard to admit. I kept thinking there just had to be a way to compile metrics on how far our post really reached, but I eventually conceded defeat. We were able to easily measure our reach from the original post, including shares and shares of shares. But there were too many original posts about our content on Facebook, often with zero connection to our first post. No matter the approach, I learned no amount of searching, measuring and piecing together would give me the complete picture. I’d just have be willing to settle on this highly scientific evaluation: An Unbelievably Large Number Of People That Destroyed Anything Else We’ve Ever Posted.
The second lesson learned — and one that is still slightly uncomfortable to share — is the personal toll that viral content can take.
Anything that goes viral will attract haters. And let’s face it: If these people can find things to criticize on a video of a baby giraffe, they’ll surely find something to dislike about a strongly worded statement about school funding and state government.
But even the positive attention, which accounted for the vast majority of feedback on all three posts, took a toll on my mental health. The constant monitoring, the searching and counting, and just the repeated surprise and flat-out shock that these messages were on fire … these chronic hits of adrenaline made it very hard to tune out at the end of the day. At times the viral content was exhilarating, and the way it resonated with others was certainly affirming. But the roller coaster in a theme park is designed to only lasts a few minutes. As my social media roller coaster lasted hours, and then days, I wore down.
To be perfectly honest, this second lesson learned feels silly to admit. Why didn’t I just shut off my phone or stop checking stats? Why didn’t I reconfigure my personal posts to stop the strangers from seeing them? Why did I let Facebook friend requests from the adorable moms-I-have-never-met creep me out? What exactly was so hard? And why exactly did it affect me so personally?
But more than once, I’ve thought of Jason Russell, the activist filmmaker and mastermind behind the Kony 2012 campaign. His video and cause went viral — 50 million views in three days! Unsurprisingly, this man was instantly in demand for high-profile interviews and phone calls, around the clock. But the intense attention generated by going viral — even though it was exactly what he aimed for — also brought Russell to a harrowing halt when he was hospitalized after a dramatic and very public psychotic break. Putting himself and his work out there for mass consumption took a psychological and physical toll that nobody would have imagined.
Mercifully my experience has only a teeny tiny shred in common with Jason Russell’s. But in the midst of my three posts — one professional and two personal — I glimpsed the way that going viral can scrutinize, overwhelm and ultimately break a content creator. Maybe it’s Introvert Kristin bleeding through here, but a real and lingering internal pressure lurks when content goes viral. I just couldn’t shake the sense that everyone wanted a piece of what I made, they wanted a piece of me, and they wanted it now. At the height of the sharing, I felt hollowed out, I felt overexposed and mostly, I just felt spent. I had no more to give.
But time passed, and much like a swarm of bees people moved on to the next round of content — content that someone else had created and shared. Whew. And now with the benefit of hindsight, these challenges seem more understandable, less bewildering.
Ultimately, I’m a communicator, and the messages I offer reflect my passion, my ideas and my creation. I can’t separate all my content from myself.
When it counts the most, it’s personal.
I imagine I’ll always create content that I hope will catch fire — after all, that’s the whole point of social media. But now, when I prepare to share that special idea with the world, I go in with open eyes. I prepare to feel overwhelmed and vulnerable. I prepare to care for my mental health. And I know that it will pass.
But of all the lessons I’ve learned, perhaps the simplest applies best: Be careful what you wish for … it just might come true.
This, as I sat at my kitchen table with my laptop, while my pukey daughter watched 1982’s Annie (of course) and drifted in and out of sleep on the sofa in the next room. In that moment, in fact, I did feel like a bit of a superhero: impressively productive for work, while attentive and loving for my little patient. My son’s comforter was even clean and hanging to dry outdoors on the unseasonably warm January day. It was effortless.
See? This by-all-appearances-superwoman is also doing some things halfway — and other things not at all. It works.
I imagine there are a lot of moms — and women in general — who give off superwoman vibes, appearing to balancing work, kids, family, friends and — of course — clever and endearing social media posts about any of these things. To my insecurities, these are the ladies who prepare nutritious and tasty meals on a weeknight, have clean clothes folded in dresser drawers, organize chores with magnetic charts, arrange Sunday Funday activities every week, send thoughtful cards and gifts and save all kinds of money on their grocery bill.
But hearing that someone else thinks I’m doing it all stopped me in my tracks. It’s time for some honesty.
Yes, I work full time and love preparing a nice dinner several times a week. I wrote a book last year and still squeezed in a few family trips to the lake. But in exchange, there were things that didn’t happen. Christmas cards didn’t go out, and who had time to arrange a 2014 family photo? My kids don’t have clean bedsheets nearly as often as they should, and our carpets? Forget it, with a big dog and two kids. We rarely do date nights and never weekend getaways because it would mean getting a sitter and making reservations and who has the energy for that? My plan for family dinners is always subject to rushed schedules and a frozen pizza. My weekly grocery bill is, if anything, broken up over 300 trips to the store and rarely a model of savings. And sometimes we forget about preschool “share days” and the third grader’s homework.
Yes, there are those brief and beautiful moments when I really do find myself doing it all. Working remotely from home, with my sick baby getting all the mama time she needs and my work deadlines getting all the attention they need. I’m easily and especially grateful in those moments because they are so uncommon. But the trick is not making those moments the goal because, ultimately, they’re are mostly out of our control. It’s just good luck, like looking in just the right spot at just the right moment to see a shooting star.
Let’s redefine this notion of doing it all. Let’s agree that it means living, loving, working, growing, pausing. And laughing. It means doing some things well, some things not as well, and some things not at all. And the things in that first category may be different, depending on the day.
Don’t get me wrong. I know that this makes a day messy and imperfect — and often the last thing you’d want to post on social media. But I also know that there’s an entire night full of stars out there to enjoy. Don’t let the goal of a shooting star steal the joy of a whole beautiful sky.
Life is changing — always — yes. But there are those times when it seems that the changes are more profound, more apparent, more challenging. For me, that was 2014.
A book deal came in the first part of the year, followed by a madness of interviewing and wondering and writing and editing. As soon as the manuscript was done, I was moving on to video shoots and online content for the enhanced ebook. But before the last round of editing came two months of discernment about what this new project will come to mean for me. What kind of attention will the book bring? What will people want from me? What will readers expect from me?
Don’t get me wrong — at no point in this past year have I ever thought this to be some kind of a book phenomenon in the making. My expectations for the book are exceedingly realistic, and my goal is, simply, to reach the readers who will find support and encouragement in its pages.
But regardless of reach, I knew long before I had written the final chapter that I would need to pull together a polished personal brand online. If a reader, or potential reader, were to look me up online, I want to be found — and I want to be found in a way that clearly affirms my values, skills and traits. As impossible as it feels at times, I need to embrace ways to present myself as intelligent, thoughtful, connected and entirely human. The most logical place to do that was inside this blog.
The first time I blogged, slightly more than 12 months ago, it was just an outlet for me and my thoughts. My first post, in fact, squarely announced that I am not a blogger. At that time, I wasn’t a book author, either.
Thanks to my designer (who also has served at different points as creative director, tech expert, career counselor and overall life coach), the site is now live. It’s not completely optimized for SEO; I have saved that special treat of a project for some of my holiday down time. But the site is ready for the world and, most importantly, ready for my readers. Ready for you!
Looking back, this year has been a roller coaster of confidence and vulnerability, thrill and fatigue, knowledge and ignorance. And because I officially deemed 2014 the year of more-than-I-bargained-for changes, I capped it off last week by getting a new cell phone.
These were the words of a good friend who met me for lunch last spring, as I was thick in the middle of writing a book. She worked for a time in book publishing, so this was my chance to learn how to keep the project on the fast track with my publisher, as well as an opportunity to pick her brain on a few passages I’d written that were giving me problems.
Writing is just what I do — virtually every day, in fact. I write for work because of my job, and I write for pleasure because I enjoy it. I didn’t need help with convention, but the point of view I needed to express was still falling short. I needed to find my “I’m writing a book” voice. I would flirt with it here and there, but it still wasn’t cohesive and clear. With more than half of my manuscript written before our conversation over Subway sandwiches, it clicked: I needed to find my “expert” voice. I needed to own my authority.
I went back through my manuscript with an editor’s eye, and page by page, the language changed. Edit by edit, the changes were subtle. But as the sentences and paragraphs shifted, so did my mindset. My voice evolved from casual storyteller to focused author with the confidence of both expertise and experience.
Owning my authority means acknowledging the value of those things — the skills, insight, point of view — that I bring to work every day because they matter.
This perspective is powerful, especially working as a transplant in a specialized workplace. For those of us serving as communication professionals in other fields — education, banking, social service, retail, government — we will always be outsiders, to a certain degree. Lacking the expertise and experience of a teacher or principal, the authority I have in this system can be obscured. But it is there.
I have skills and expertise that can directly influence the progress and well being of my organization.
My point of view is valuable, even if (I dare say because) my skill set is different from my coworkers.
I can confidently explain what I do, why I do it, and why it matters to someone else.
Whether writing a book, attending a meeting or responding to an e-mail, the ownership of authority is not arrogance, self-righteousness or bravado. Instead, it is a simple, quiet confidence that my voice — your voice — makes a genuine difference — and you’re ready to bring it.
And being Irish doesn’t hurt.
But even with my good luck, I was unprepared for the e-mail I got on a snowy Sunday afternoon in early March.
I can be out of the office. (And this is big.) The only way I was able to write a book was to use leave time from my day job and dedicate each of those days, at home, exclusively to the book. I’m a reliable employee with a healthy family, and five-day weeks have nearly always been the norm. This project changed that, with almost three straight months of four-day weeks. Many times I felt disconnected from my colleagues and the everyday hum of an office. And I usually felt some degree of crushed by fitting four days into five, week after week. But I learned this: I can be gone when I need to be gone, and nothing will burn down. (Really!) Once my leave balances are built up again, I will remember to take the time I need and not worry so much about being gone.
I can balance distractions. Working from home on an independent (lonely) project is isolating. Jumping on Twitter or e-mail to get outside of my own head is only natural. But turning on the TV or starting some housekeeping initiative — no matter how small — was a day killer. Setting a clear goal for each day kept me motivated enough to stay on task. And allowing myself breaks short breaks to check my Twitter feed or walk around the block kept me from drowning in my own overwhelm. Even with an enormous mountain to climb, it’s wise to pause every so often and look around.
I can re-learn the Oxford comma. I happily shed that extra piece of punctuation in high school journalism, and I haven’t looked back. But my publisher required it in the manuscript, forcing me to lead a double life for months: Book Author Kristin including that comma before a coordinating conjunction in a series, and Normal Kristin in my regular job and life without it. Somehow I actually managed to include it or drop it at the right time, most of the time. This still amazes me, as it hints that I could maybe re-learn other deeply ingrained habits, too. Whoa.
I eat candy with abandon. Especially when I’m home alone with just my laptop, my dog and unyielding pressure to produce. And most especially when I’ve already bought the Easter basket candy, but Easter is still five days away, and I can always secretly go to the store buy another bag of Whoppers robin eggs.
This list barely scratches the surface of what I’ve discovered on my book author journey. I’m learning to own my authority. I’m learning to brand and market myself. I’m learning to push way outside of my comfort zone and ask people I barely know to get behind my ideas. And I’m learning the joy of collaborating with people — often strangers — who are thrilled at the chance to tell their story.
Right now, I appreciate the simplicity of the four lessons I’ve shared above. They are truths about me as a person, and as a professional — and reflecting on them now is a good reminder of just how lucky I am.
2,500 years ago in China, Confucius was a scholar, a philosopher and, presumably, a pretty great guy. But on one thing — loving your job — he was wrong.
It’s one of those sayings I’ve heard repeated dozens (if not hundreds) of times for as long as I can remember, and it’s one that still gets my attention. What do I love doing so dang much that it wouldn’t feel like work?
Let me be clear: I have a nearly daily love affair with this world and all its opportunity and wonder. But I am certain that everything — everything — feels like work sometimes. Sometimes it even feels like hard work. Like draining work. Like not-sure-if-I’m-working-or-dying work.
The most loved job may be planning, creating, teaching, parenting, designing, serving, or performing. It is that thing that resonates deep inside your being, with reassurance: “This is what I was born to do.” But sometimes it’s still work. If you love to design buildings and your client is hard to please, it’s work. If you love to bake bread and one day the flour delivery is spoiled, it’s work. And if you love to parent, you know that there are moments in each day that are work, often in the hardest possible ways.
Right now, the job I love is work, every day. And it requires me to make an effort, every day. When I get home, I feel like I’ve worked hard all day. I know this time will pass, but right now, it’s work, and it’s hard.
I’ve had jobs where I regularly imagined myself doing something else — in some cases, anything else. But this is different. This is the job that I honestly cannot picture leaving. When openings are posted across listservs, I usually don’t even open them. I can’t imagine a job that is more rewarding, both professionally and personally, than the one I’m in right now. I’m very lucky, and I don’t take that for granted.
“For me, is teaching like a car? Or is it like a marriage?” Because when a car breaks, or gets old, or requires unpleasant effort, you buy a new car. But when a marriage requires effort, you get to work and do your best to weather the storm.
There are plenty of people with enjoyable jobs that aren’t a calling, or that are more “car” than “marriage.” But the key is to remember that all jobs — loved or not — are work. And if you come home at the end of a day feeling like you’ve worked, it doesn’t mean you don’t love your job. Perhaps the Confucius quote reflects a simpler time, or a different interpretation of the words “work” or “love.” But his words have become a sort of subconscious truth in our culture, while at the same time minimizing the value of hard work. Loving a job and working hard are not mutually exclusive; they are two sides of the same coin.
Choose a job you love. Keep working, even when it’s hard. Your rewards will be great.