I often tell myself that if I had a trust fund, I’d be a yoga instructor and a travel writer. Although I titter and quickly change the subject when I tell practical folks about my less-than-lucrative calling in life, it’s true. I think I’d make a decent travel writer, even though a handful of obligated family members, a well-intentioned friend or two, and an odd stalker-type ex-boyfriend might be the only people to read my work. I have no idea whether I’d be an inspiring yoga teacher or not, or if I would accidentally break someone’s spine.

Basically, had been born with a silver spoon rather than to divorced parents who struggled to pay the rent, I’d be way more Type B than my current corporate job and focus on maxing out my Roth IRA contributions and employer 401k match might suggest. I would have moved to Boulder to flit about in a drum circle on Pearl Street Mall. Maybe I’d be writing about life force rather than how too many nonprofit workplaces resemble Milgram experiments. Instead of looking to Suze Orman and The Harvard Business Review for sage wisdom, I’d sign up for a retreat with Deepak Chopra.

I know this all sounds awfully cheeky, but it’s not too far from the truth. I spent the first 30 years of my life constantly broke, either because my family was living on the financial edge, I was in college or grad school or serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Southern Africa, or I was travelling around the world with little more than a passport and a backpack.

Over the past five years, though, I’ve settled into a comfortable, practical, lovely life in South Minneapolis. I love my husband, our two dogs, my job, and being financially stable. We shop at a local food co-op and go to the gym together after work. Last month we started experimenting with a Breville juicer and we recently purchased a new memory foam mattress during a Macy’s sale. Cruising to Home Depot in our Ford Focus station wagon, we wonder when we should replace the windows in our house and whether to paint our new front door plantation brown or shaker red.

Things feel a bit too vanilla lately (or heron plume, as they might say at Sherwin-Williams), but my supportive, non-yogi husband wants me to be happy. Not too long ago, he sent me a Star Tribune article about an unlikely CorePower Yoga instructor named Ken and asked me to think about signing up for yoga teacher training.

Ken is a retired corporate executive who found yoga and later became a yoga instructor. I know I’m not Ken, but next week I’m starting an eight-week, 200-hour Vinyasa Flow Teacher Training course at CorePower Yoga. While I’m not about to quit my day job, I think it’s time to pursue the path I’ve been tittering about for the past three years. Oh sure, I’m not the best yogi in Lululemons, but why not put myself out there? Give it a go. If teaching yoga doesn’t feel like a good fit, then at least I tried. And who knows? Maybe I’ll connect with other people pursuing a life of balance, health, and wellness, too.

Facebook. I love it, usually. Yes, it is the ultimate time suck, but how else could I maintain connections with so many friends spread out around the world in real time? We can reaffirm that we share the same likes and dislikes, share pictures, and know what’s on each other’s minds. Perhaps Facebook is somewhat superficial, but I love connecting with friends in South Africa, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, New Zealand, France, the Yukon and all across the United States, especially during the World Cup and UEFA Championships.

Except when you find out, through friends of friends who you’ve friended on Facebook, that a new friend is a friend of a really lousy ex-boyfriend who you’ve spent the past 10 years erasing from your brain. Why I dated that bipolar with a drinking problem who was searching for religion but found a girl named Kristjan instead I’ll never know. At first he was that awesome guy at the party that everyone adored, but after the party, he turned into a depressive drunk and shrewd manipulator.

I can deal with the fact that he can google my name all he wants, but to be linked via Facebook is annoying. It means that we could show up at the same party someday through mutual friends, which means small talk, awkward silences, and probably some explanation of why I refused his Friend Request. Oh, and he will ask me why we can’t be friends and insist, in a socially polite manner, that I’m the one with the problem.

How do you tell someone politely that, even after 10 years, he still makes your skin crawl and stomach heave? Trust me, no one wants to get Status Updates from a lousy ex, unless the updates indicate that he’s losing his hair, bouncing checks at Pamida, and has a colonoscopy scheduled for tomorrow morning. Then I would friend him.

I suppose one option for me is not to listen to the signals my body is giving me and pretend that I can transcend these visceral feelings of disgust that scream “Get the hell away from him!” But why live incongruently? It’s perfectly OK by me that he’s not on my greeting card list. Another option could be to friend the sorry schmuck and leave status updates that indicate that everything about me is going swimmingly – you know, like Everyday my career gets better and better! or I just don’t know what to do with all this excess money in my bank accounts! or Losing those last 10 pounds was so easy! Then I could photo shop all of my pictures, removing any acne, wrinkles, or flub.

Or I could just blog it all out of my system and move on with my life. Which is what I’m doing now. Thank you. Carry on.

Digging through my hotmail account this morning, I found an email from 1999 that I wrote to my brother Bjorn, who was about the age I am now when I wrote to him. In August 1999, I was three months out of college – a 22-year-old living abroad in Scotland, working in the Human Resources Department of Standard Life Bank. Even then, I was tortured soul when it came to the workplace. But at least I was funny about it.

***

Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 08:48:32 PDT

Okay, BJ, is it just me or does Macalester have little in common with the real world? Did I spend my time in Saint Paul living in a bubble? It may be a tinge of college sickness, but I miss the atmosphere of Macalester. The real world, I find, is filled with far too many non-thinking, dull and routine people who actually enjoy seeking careers in middle management of large corporations.

I think I'll go be a hippi now - or an academic. Fluorescent lighting, pastel & grey office decor, and inefficiency are not my ultimate priorities in life. Oh, the torture! But it pays the bills, right? Maybe I'll look into sustainable agriculture. Organic farming? Dog grooming? Gimme some career ideas, PUH-LEASE!!! Tell me I haven’t spent the first 22 of my life preparing for lifetime of monotonous paperwork and coffee breaks! Reality is so cruel. I think I'll go back to school and suspend reality for a wee bit longer.

Perhaps mom isn't so insane after all – at least being an artist is inspiring. Broke, yes, but also inspiring. Do you know anything more about mom’s career search? I think we should label her experience "Mom in search of self." It is true that working for people who value your work and what drives you is much better than working for people like, oh say, Larry Rehfield.

Offices suck monkey scrotums. Great visual there, eh?

Aside from corporate Scotland, things are alright. Nothing too amazing is happening. Actually, I take that back. I am studying for my GREs. Bummer that I have to spend time learning how to take standardized tests rather than exploring memory research in psychology - something actually pertinent to what I want to do.

On Wednesday I attended a television filming of Top of the Pops, which is the British equivalent to American Bandstand. I saw plenty of bands. I taped the program and you can see the back of my head bouncing up and down in a few shots. Obviously, I'm famous now AND soon I'll be able to live off the royalties of all the re-runs.

The highlight of my week happened yesterday when I discovered a small Mexican-American grocery store about a half mile from my flat. I found black beans, salsa, blue corn ships, cajun sauces, tortillas, guacamole, ben & jerry's ice cream, and hershey's chocolate syrup! What a dream!! Due to the low to non-existent Latino population in Scotland, as one might imagine, there is a definite shortage of Mexican food items. Heck, I have yet to meet anyone who’s heard of Tex-Mex food.

Well, I gotta dash. I hope all is going well at the Fort. Hey - I changed my return ticket from September 1st to December 11th...the next three months had better damn well be worth it!! Cross your fingers for me.

I'll talk to you later!

Love,

Sarah Kristjan

Over the weekend I listened to Freakonomics’ Radio Show on The Upside of Quitting. Quitting has evoked such traumatic responses from me, which often involve too many glasses of wine or gin & tonics as I slowly arrive at the self-pitying conclusion that I can’t hack it. So many people are then forced to endure my lesser qualities, like insecurity, denial, and humorless diatribes for months on end. What’s usually been the case, though, is that I’ve landed in unhealthy work environments, surrounded by insecure, incompetent leaders and catty colleagues whispering about one another in cubicles.

Why I invested even more time and energy in those work places, rather than sprinting out the nearest exit, is beyond me. I suppose I felt that quitting meant failure. Winners never quit and quitters never win, right?

Well, Freakonomics suggests that, if you do want to quit, do so quickly and don’t look back. Don’t worry about what economists call sunk costs, or all the time, money, and emotion one has invested in a losing endeavor. Two years ago, my husband gave me the same advice as I tortured everyone around me about whether or not to leave the community clinic where I had invested four years of my life and way too much of my self-worth. But, for whatever reason, I needed a radio show to validate what my nearest & dearest friends had been telling me all along.

Unfortunately, this clinic was the Vietnam War of community clinics and my supervisor was its Ngo Dinh Diem. Pulling out should have been a no-brainer, but instead I rationalized why I should invest even more of my career and myself into that clinic. I’ve since watched two close colleagues go through the same internal conflicts and wage the same tortured arguments with their husbands, eventually making the decision to leave.

I’m not sure if we were too entrenched to let go. Maybe we felt that, if we allowed our marriages and families to come first (for once), we would be bailing on the patients and clinic’s mission. As hardworking Idealists, we each felt doubly lousy about quitting.

About three years ago, I put in so many hours at that clinic that an endless cold morphed into pneumonia. I was sick for three months because I couldn’t use any sick time to recuperate. There were too many grants to write, data queries to design, projects to manage, and reports to write. Around this time a close friend, probably watching my descent into the never-ending workload abyss, emailed a quote by Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky.

“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist fighting for peace most easily succumbs: activism and over-work. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone and everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes work for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of the work because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes the work fruitful.”

I really like this quote. It gets right to the heart – and the heartache - of my internal struggle. I loved my job at that community clinic. I loved the mission. I loved the patients. I loved so many of my colleagues. I loved that I could combine my analytical, writing, and project management skills to make people’s lives better. But I also love my husband. I love being healthy. I love being sane. I love being able to look to my director and other leaders and know that both the patients’ needs and my personal life are in good hands.

So I left. And, when the next job didn’t pan out in the Competent Leadership & Healthy Workplace Departments, I left again – only this time I left much more quickly. Now I find myself on a sharp, dedicated team with a dynamic, highly-effective director who isn’t threatened by me when I do a damn fine job. Don’t get me wrong - the Idealist in me still yearns to be back in a community health clinic.

I’ll get back to community health: it’s in my DNA. But no more sunk costs or contemporary violence, please. When I return to community health, I’ll be a much stronger, healthier leader for having quit in October 2009 to find stronger leadership and healthier role models. My future is bright.

Over the past two weeks work has become much more manageable, mostly because my big “first 90 day” project is finally smooth and everyone is calm. The nursing team that I supervise connected with the project lead (an MD) and got their long list of clinical questions answered. Then I worked with the nursing team to adjust their workflows and with the project lead to send out organization-wide status updates on the project.

On Monday, we even trained another RN joining the project. I was amazed how easily this training went. At 4:15 I checked in with the team to see if anyone had any questions and concerns. Everyone was fine. Everyone knew exactly what to do; everyone except me because I had grown accustomed to being needed until 6:30 in the evening. It took me about 15 minutes to realize that I could go home.

This past week I made headway on so much other work that had piled up, and I was able to arrive at the office by 8:15 and leave by 4:45 each day, without any struggles. It was the most unfamiliar feeling. The sky was not falling in. No one was bailing on the project. No one was complaining. No one was lost, dazed, or confused.

A girl could get used to this.

Nine days ago I experienced a rough patch at work. Okay, perhaps it was more of a meltdown. After five intense weeks of ten-hour days and taking work home with me on weekends, I cracked. Cracked looks like me slumped over my desk whimpering, writing down everything that needs to be done on small yellow post-it notes, chunking the notes into increasingly overwhelming to-do categories on flip-chart paper, highlighting the ten tasks that must be done in the next three days, while colleagues drift by to encourage me to take better care of myself.

“No shit,” I thought.

The truth of the matter is that, two weeks into my new gig, I inherited the responsibility of cleaning up a one-year, enterprise-wide project that had gone awry months ago – well before I was even interviewing for my current position. The planning phase was delayed. One of the project leaders bailed. The project had cycled through two previous project managers, who had each gone one maternity leave. The testing and pilot phases weren’t completed adequately before spreading the new tools and workflows throughout the organization and there was a huge glitch in the data required for public reporting.

So there I was with a highly visible project to clean up and an email from the CEO, along with other C-Suite staff, that urged “Let’s go!” I had one month to establish a project goal, secure budgets, staffing, and resources, chart a project plan, assemble a new project team, develop new workflows and training, and figure out what on earth was going on with our reporting data. Then I was given until June 30th to get results.

No pressure, right?

I’ve since made a lot of magic happen – a lot more magic than anyone thought possible by surpassing the project goal two weeks ago – and we still have four weeks to go. I’ve experienced some substantial hurdles as new employee: delayed access to the data and operation systems that form the foundation of the new workflows; unfamiliarity with the organizational structure and culture; and the inability to access my email and computer files from off-site until six month into my employment.

But, despite these setbacks, I’m still hauling ass and will make the organization look damn good when it comes time to publicly report their progress in July. When I step back, the Achiever in me beams about the accomplishments I’ve made during the first 90 days on the job.

Unfortunately, there’s a downside. I’m exhausted. I’ve pulled out of the activities that I love: I cancelled my yoga membership because I can’t make it to any classes and I’ve missed my weekly German class three times in the past 90 days because I’m too brain dead to function auf Deutsch. What they don’t tell you about big successes during the first 90 days on the job is that the side effects may include frustration, stress, anxiety, insomnia, irritability, and lack of perspective.

I think what eats most at me is an impending sense of failure. By failure, I mean my inability to perform extremely well at my job, hold onto my personal life, and retain my sanity at the same time. I just don’t think this is possible in America, where we work long hours and are allotted two to three weeks off a year. Four weeks, if we’re lucky. I can’t even imagine how my colleagues, friends and family juggle all of this and raise children. I doubt that I could.

This past week I slowed down. I worked 8-9 hour days and even found time to take a one-hour lunch break on Thursday. I’m not exactly where I want to be, but I took some baby steps towards that fuzzy, potentially nonexistent notion called work-life balance. I squeezed in a yoga class, completed a couple of five-mile runs, attended my German class and went out for drinks afterwards. It was nice and I hope to have many more weeks like this.

I accepted a new job almost three months ago. I had good vibes about my director and team and, on the whole, I still do. What happened, though, is that I’m now in way over my head with project-related work. I’m so far under water that I don’t know where to start or what to do anymore. I pretty much feel like a complete failure. I don’t know if any of you have ever had the involuntary phrase, YOU ARE A FAILURE, as your mantra of the week, but it sucks. Totally sucks.

For a while I thought, “I’m new – it will take time to get up to speed.” The problem is that I have no time to get-up-to-speed because there are so many things to fix NOW. “Now now” as the Basotho would say. But, when I’m two months into a new job immersed in 6-8 projects, working 10 hour days and bringing work home over the weekend, time isn’t what I have. Insecurity and insomnia I have in spades, but time – not so much. I even cancelled my yoga membership because I can’t make it to any classes. Work just keeps proliferating.

This is not what I intended. I came to this new position, treating it as a litmus test for my career in health care. If I can succeed in this job and remain sane, I’ll stay in healthcare. If I can’t succeed or maintain my sanity, then it’s time for some major self-evaluation and a career change. It’s looking like a career change might be in my future. Probably not in my immediate future, but somewhere in the next 2-4 years, or until my director asks me to leave, whichever comes first.

A friend of mine recently posted a Facebook status wishing something along the lines of wanting to go back five years in time and choosing the other career path instead of the one she’s on now. I feel the same, wishing I could have gone back to the summer of 2007 to stack my odds differently. Then again, by returning to Minnesota I met my wonderful husband, who has helped me through all my tumultuous work situations and feelings of professional inadequacy.

Maybe for both my friend and me, we should keep plugging away with an eye on a better destination. Maybe we slow down just a little bit and start to correct our course, adjusting our sails and crossing our fingers for less stormy seas. And, until then, we find a life preserver and hang on for dear life.

This week I’ve been vacillating between feeling that everything will be OK and we’re all free to be you and me, and feeling that people behave in the oddest, most inaccessible ways and it’s a wonder that we’re not all in court-mandated mental health rehabilitation, myself included. I can’t tell if I’m awkwardly self-aware or painfully self-absorbed: mostly, it depends on whether I’ve been talking with colleagues in my current work place or people from my previous work places.

This may have an awful lot to do with the fact that I’m five weeks into my new job, operating at a higher level of responsibility among directors, vice presidents, senior vice presidents, and C-level leaders. Being politically, culturally and emotionally astute is so vital at this level, so I feel like I’m exploring some deep, dark jungle rife with jackals, gorillas and leopards. In the past these explorations have been organizational manifestations of Heart of Darkness or the all-female casting of Lord of the Flies, so, as you can imagine I’m a bit circumspect about my new employer.

Still, despite my previous encounters with bullies, gossip, and duplicity, my new organization is feeling a bit more Jane Goodall. Which is a relief. I’m impressed by my director and team and their focus on healthy workplace behavior, but I’m worried that I’ve picked up some really bad, unhealthy behaviors from my previous positions and that these behaviors may bite me in the ass. I’m just not sure.

Last month I wrote an entry about handstands in yoga class and how I yearned for a new director who would be like my yoga teacher in San Luis Obispo: someone who leads me into challenging new territory and promises not to let me fall. Someone who can bring out the best in me and guides me from trepidation into exploration and discovery. I’ve found this person in my new director - it feels like I’ve won the lottery. Like my first reactions in that yoga studio, I’ve felt panicked and unsure of myself. Slowly, though, I’ll figure it out, calm down, engage the right skills and move with more grace. It will simply take time and practice and tumbling over a few times.

There is so much to learn.

Joe and I are now back on the frozen tundra. I’m not sure why we felt compelled to book a return flight to Minnesota, but walking home from the VA Light Rail Station in 16 degrees with 18 mile-per-hour winds out of the north at six in the morning screamed the vacation is over! O-V-E-R. Over!

Looking outside our bedroom window I still see 20 inches of snow on the ground. I can also hear our neighbor, Tim, chipping away at ice dams on his roof and cranking up the ol’ snow blower to clear his walkways again. Despite the twenty-degree weather this mid-March weekend, folks are excited because we have a "warm week ahead of us" with highs in the 40s - possibly in the low 50s, which means we will get rain instead of snow this week.

Minnesota sure has a way of humbling a person. I'm trying to stay strong, but I’m reminiscing about the taste the fresh, ripe strawberries from Santa Maria while our washing machine removes the last grains of California sand from my clothes downstairs.

With a glimmer of hope in my mind’s California-honed eye, I peeked online for apartments near Santa Monica and jobs at UCLA this afternoon. There is an opening for a Senior Fund Manager at the UCLA Program in Global Health. It totally has my name on it and it’s located five miles from the Pacific Ocean. And I’m sure that Joe and I could shell out $2200/month for a small rental in Westwood, within walking distance to UCLA, or a “spacious” 826 square feet apartment located 2 blocks from the Santa Monica Beach. I could do good work by day and, by night or weekend, we could take our dogs to the Santa Monica Pier and learn how to swing around adult-sized jungle gyms with the Trapeze School of New York-Los Angeles.

Or, you know, I could humbly and diligently focus on my New Employee Orientation at HealthPartners, which starts tomorrow at 8:30am and remain in our 1,400 square feet home with a huge backyard that costs considerably less that $2,200/month to own. Yes, I hear wonderful things about working at HealthPartners and I’ll only have a 10 minute commute to work each day via light rail. But, you see, HealthPartners and our home are located 1,900 miles away from the Santa Monica Pier, which is a mega drawback to residing in Minnesota.

Yesterday I dropped in on a Strong Vinyasa class at Smiling Dog Yoga Studio in San Luis Obispo, California. The teacher was a Hare Krishna dude with a shaved head and good sense of humor. He howled in Warrior II pose. And, due to restricting bread, dairy and beer from his diet, he’s lost 67 pounds and still has about 10 more pounds to go to get to his goal weight. What I liked most about him, though, is that he - quite unpredictably - pulled me up into a handstand in the middle of class and held me there for a good 30 seconds and commanded me to squeeze.

At first I panicked: What the fuck! GET ME DOWN!!! I didn’t know what part of me to squeeze and I was sure I’d tumble backwards. When he promised that he wouldn’t drop me, I thanked him quietly and felt the fear morph into complete awareness of the grip my hands had on the floor, the tightening of my core, thighs and glutes, and the total need for me to continue building strength in my shoulders and triceps. Later we practiced kicking up into a handstand on the wall. I wasn’t able to kick-up yesterday, but I started to get the gist of what I’ll need to do. It was exhilarating to explore this new challenge and to begin conquering the trepidation!

I’m not one to indulge in fate and I don’t usually subscribe to some universe-inspired notion that I am exactly where I need to be right now. Mostly I tend to think that life is a matter of showing up, hauling ass, and surrounding yourself with kind, witty, sharp people who can remind you to stop hauling ass every once in a while and to start smelling the roses.

Still, Mr. Hare Krishna Yoga Teacher, with all his humor and howling, also offered some much-needed reflections in his class yesterday. The universe doesn’t really care if I can kick up into a handstand or not. The universe also doesn’t care if I fall over or not. It matters not. Just like it really doesn’t matter if I succeeded at my last job. Pretty much the only person who cares about my status at my last job is me. My husband doesn’t think less of me just because my former colleagues held me in such low regard. My parents still love me. My friends still love me. The people (and dogs) who matter most to me still love me even though my former colleagues don’t think I’ll all that and a bag of chips.

He reminded us that every one of us has been hurt deeply and that we all have some dark moments, thoughts, and behaviors that we may not be so proud of. Every single one of us. But it doesn’t do us any good to succumb to those dark aspects of ourselves or to let how we’ve been wounded define ourselves. Dogs do an excellent job of getting over pain. If you accidentally step on their tail, a dog will yip one second and then start licking you the next second. Dogs don’t hole themselves up for a week crying over someone stepping on their tail.

Our pain may be temporary or fleeting and each day offers a new chance to strip ourselves of bad behaviors. During some final stretches in class, the teacher asked us to think about where we are today and whether this place is the hill that we want to die on. In my mind’s eye, of course, I’m reeling from the pain of leaving a job in such a tumultuous way as well as coming to grips with some less-than-graceful behaviors I perpetrated before I left. During my last six months on the job, I gossiped rampantly and grew impatient and condescending towards my colleagues. I knew the position was a poor fit for me long ago and yet I still wasn’t able to let go in a healthy way that fostered grace and compassion towards my colleagues. I’m not very proud of my own behavior.

I’ll admit, after I left my job on Friday, I had what felt like an insurmountable fear about starting my next job. I worried about feelings of failure and falling into the same negative patterns of gossip and impatience. Fortunately, though, today is a new day and Monday offers a fresh start at a new job. We’ll see if my next director is like my yoga instructor - someone who leads me into challenging new territory and promises not to let me fall. Someone who can bring out the best in me and guides me from trepidation into exploration and discovery. I really hope she is.

I don’t recall crying this much after I left my last job, a job that I absolutely loved and was completely conflicted over leaving, except for the fact that I was completely burnt out. Non-profit work can do that do a girl. Tonight, though, I came home after a lovely, small happy hour and just sobbed uncontrollably for about an hour.

Never before have I been so disliked by so many of my colleagues. It does make me take pause, wondering if I really am the biggest asshole in the room and whether everyone would be better off if I just overdosed on sleeping pills right now. And, while that could be true, I don’t think that’s an ideal solution. I know I morphed into an impatient, frustrated jerk after one year on the job, but this was after one year of a colleague consistently holding court with both my manager and director, oh-so-very concerned that I wasn’t able to provide clear instruction and direction for a major project.

Nevermind the fact that I walked into the project without much documentation about what was done in the past or that the project was a complete mess years before I even accepted the job offer. Or the fact that, over the past 5-10 years, no one has been able to last in my role for longer than two years or that I took that project further than it has ever been in that organization. Still, she spent so much time talking up her concerns and anxiety about my work to my manager and director that, no matter what I did or didn’t do, I just looked bad and was disregarded at every single meeting. EVERY...SINGLE...MEETING. This colleague took over my meetings and their agendas and took over the direction of the project. For some reason she expected me to be grateful for her initiative.

Today, on my last day with this organization, she decided to stop talking to me altogether because I got upset with her for messing up the work that I was trying to wrap up before I left. And, of course, she made sure to complain about me and the status of the project to my director and then made sure that folks in another department sent me emails with the work-language equivalent of “kiss off” on my last day.

It was swell. Really f-ing swell.

I’ve come to accept that I will be blamed for everything that goes wrong with this project and that my colleague will be esteemed with anything that goes right with this project. I get it. That’s how they all roll, but I don’t think I can go through this again, at least not in the next 2-3 years. This was so senselessly brutal. It was so high school.

Fortunately, Joe and I are heading to California tomorrow. I’ll have one week in sixty degree weather to rejuvenate and turn over a new leaf. So, if anyone has anything nice or remotely supportive to say about me, now would be an excellent time to tell me.

Yes, I think it would kill them to say thank you. I bet, too, if they forced themselves to think upstream – just the tiniest little bit upstream - that their heads would explode, which (of course) would necessitate closed-casket funerals. So it’s no wonder that thanking me for thinking so far upstream so often, in a way that makes everyone’s work downstream so much quicker & smoother, is so risky. God forbid I get recognition for going above and beyond in my work, translating into potentially millions of dollars for the organization without requiring any additional budget lines, staffing, or schmoozing. God forbid.

Perhaps it is better just to think small, concrete, and last-minute. React to fires. Be a hero for actions that shouldn’t have required heroism in the first place.

I think I’m a little edgy today. After a meeting with a colleague whom I’ve nicknamed “Debbie Downer,” I posted a Facebook status update that read Sometimes, like today, I feel like kicking someone so hard. You see, Debbie Downer took over my meeting, focusing on a tiny piece of the picture (the tiny piece that just so happens to be hers). She focused on that task because it is also a very concrete task with well-defined turnaround times and expectations. Unfortunately, there are a lot of fluid, critical, abstract tasks that must be executed elegantly in order for her concrete task to be neat and tidy…or even feasible.

And whose been working on all of those never-before-seen, fluid, abstract tasks over the past three months? Me. And whose questions didn’t get addressed during the meeting? Yep, mine.

I know I’m a pretty sharp gal. I also know that I’m having a really hard time selling people on the importance of planning, thinking upstream, and seeing the big picture along with its requisite detailed components. Of course, I only have seven more work days with this work team, so I won’t have to sell these folks on my skill set for much longer.

But, what if I get to my next workplace and they decide that these skills aren’t very valuable either? Or, what if I really am the condescending know-it-all jerk that my current colleagues, manager, and director think I am? Oh my. Well, then I suppose I get serious about becoming a yoga instructor and a travel writer after all.

I have over-shared my honest-to-God diaphragm experience with two trusted individuals in my life. Both have indicated a strong desire to share this story with others, so I thought I’d be the first to over-share this experience with my blog audience. Warning: Ew factor ahead.

On Christmas Day, the day Christians around the world celebrate the birth of the sweet baby Jesus, I stopped using the birth control pill. No longer could I tolerate the side effects, like DD boobs, acne flair ups, irregular periods, yeast infections, flattening emotion, and water retention. I was just done with it, despite the fact that Joe is still not ready to let go of my DD breasts (quite literally).

Don't worry – I’m not pregnant.

So, earlier this month I went into my primary care provider, a former hippie wearing brown Dansko clogs, who finally convinced me to switch to a diaphragm. Yep, that's right, Kristjan is going old school.

Have you ever experienced inserting and removing a silicon diaphragm multiple times in front of a health care professional? It's a bit awkward, but being the go-getter than I am, I hopped to it. Hand me a silicone object that looks like Yakama for Jewish gnome and an ounce of lube and I shift into over-achiever gear. In fact, it turns out that I’m an old pro at removing and inserting a diaphragm thanks to my experience in college with a disposable DivaCup-like feminine hygiene product that I purchased at Target. The other women on my floor even christened me with the nickname "Cup Girl.”

Standing in front of my doctor with the paper gown falling to the floor beneath me, I inserted the diaphragm for the first time in less than two minutes. Two minutes! Other novices take up to 45 minutes. A+ for Special K (another college nickname of mine).

I proudly strutted out of Dr. Erhardt’s office with my new 65mm diaphragm prescription. What I didn't realize is that obtaining a diaphragm and an inexpensive spermicidal lubricant in a simple 3.8 ounce tube takes a lot of searching in the Twin Cities Metro Area. Not to mention complete unflappability. My health insurance plan doesn't cover a prescription for the device and, apparently, Walgreen’s Pharmacy doesn't stock diaphragms or spermicidal lubricants in simple 3.8 ounce tubes. But they do have the Sponge in stock. Also, the pharmacists I talked to tend to think that diaphragms don't exist anymore. This is somewhat true, considering that only 0.2% of American women use a diaphragm. However, after an extensive web search on the topic, I learned that several reputable feminist contraceptive organizations are all about the diaphragm. It appears to be the next best thing to speculums & self exams.

Anyway, so I went to my local Walgreen’s Pharmacy with my prescription in hand thinking this will all be really quick. In and out in less than five minutes, just like my practice sessions in front of Dr. Erhardt. Nope. The pharmacist called their supplier on speaker phone, but thankfully used the National Drug Code (NDC) number instead of repeating, "Diaphragm. Yes, I said, Diaphragm. DI-A-PHRA-MMMM." That was kind. So Walgreen’s ordered my 65mm diaphragm and asked me to return the next day to retrieve it.

When I returned, however, the Walgreen's pharmacists knew that the diaphragm was in stock, but no one knew where the supplier had put it. I had a few ideas about where they could put it, but I didn't share my comments aloud. All I wanted was to go home and have uber-protected, non-baby-making sex with my condom-wearing husband. But no dice.

So I returned last night for a second time. I again searched the shelves for spermicidal lubricant and got in the pharmacy line with my big box of spermicide that comes in individual applicators, waiting for my turn at the Walgreen’s Pharmacy counter. And I kid you not, but right when it was my turn to approach the counter, a pharmacist called out over the loud speaker, "Mr. Sieman, your prescription is ready."

Seconds later, Mr. Sieman tapped me on my shoulder and cut ahead of me in line, "I'm Tim Sieman. I was paged over the loud speaker."

And I muttered, my arms brimming with spermicide, "Go ahead. I can wait." Mr. Sieman raised an eyebrow.

Then it was my turn to approach the pharmacist for my prescription, with my arms loaded with applicators full of spermicidal lubricant. I sighed to the man behind the counter, "The irony of this situation is not lost on me. I’m Kristjan Selvig and I’m here to pick up my prescription."

The pharmacist retrieved my prescription, raised an eyebrow, rung me up at the cash register, and then said, "Have a good one."

"I always do," I responded.

Today, focus is not in my vocabulary. I am trying to get my act together, but this one woman show is in intermission. Yesterday was productive and I’m sure tomorrow will be productive, too. Just not today. So I thought I’d type up a little blog about my experience with job interviewing, from my recent perspective as an interviewee.

Interviewing feels an awful lot like dating, with LinkedIn being the professional equivalent of eHarmony. You make a date with a prospective employer, do a bit of googling, ransack your closet for the right outfit that communicates the appropriate physical message, draft a list of conversation topics, and show up still not knowing if you have prepared enough, revealed too much or too little, appeared overly eager, or will be invited back for a second date or to meet the family.

And, ever so gingerly, you have to address why things haven’t worked out in previous relationships without implying that any of it was ever your fault. “I’m looking for more work/life balance,” might gloss over the fact that your current director is a compensatory narcissist with Attention Deficit Disorder. “I’m looking to take on more professional responsibility” could either indicate that you’re sick of being a professional meeting scheduler, ego stroker, and ass coverer in your current role or it might mean that you are a power-hungry megalomaniac. On the one hand, you do want to move up in this world. On the other hand, the person interviewing you probably doesn’t want your next move to be his/her position in the company. At least not until s/he has figured out how to take over their supervisor’s position.

Then you leave the interview and you wait by the phone and check your email ten times each hour to see if the department’s executive assistant is trying to contact you for another date with the director or the team, or perhaps to take a psychometric assessment in Human Resources. Your confidence bangs and crashes around as your heart rate and blood pressure rise and self-esteem plummets with each passing hour. How could they not want me? Of course they want me! Why haven’t they called yet? Screw them - I’m too good for them anyway! Omigod, I will be stuck in this dead-end job for the rest of my life ‘cuz lord knows Social Security and my 401(k) will probably shrivel up when I retire. Maybe it’s time to explore a life of travel writing, yoga instruction, and poverty. Damn it! I missed their call because I left my cell phone on Silent.”

Actually, I think my job search & interview experience is far less dramatic for me than it is for a lot of talented people out there because I have been fortunate enough to search for other positions while being employed. I am lucky to have a safety net called a steady paycheck, even though those paychecks have needed approvals from a compensatory narcissist or department director bolting around with undiagnosed ADD.

Interviewing is tough. Finding the right career fit is even tougher. But I’m going to keep putting myself out there. In fact, a department’s executive assistant called me up yesterday to “meet the team” at the end of this month. Last week, I met with the director of that department and we dorked out on healthcare quality indicator data and graphs for 90 minutes. She had me hooked at the end of the interview when she said, "You have to be able to build relationships. If you can't build relationships, you can't do this job." I nearly dropped to one knee and proposed to her right then. All of it was music to my ears and, as I drove home, I felt like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.

So if you’re looking for a job or need a stiff drink after a bizarre interview, send me an email. We’ll talk. We’ll commiserate. And, eventually, we’ll soon be on better, saner, more passionate career paths. We just have to learn how to be ourselves. Well, maybe just 80% of ourselves on the first date.

This weekend is an excellent time for hibernating in Minnesota. About 8-10 inches of snow has already fallen, another six inches is on the way, and then the strong winds and arctic cold blast will soon swoop into the Twin Cities. So, if you didn’t stock up on beer, carbs, and coffee last night at your local grocery store, chances are that you are S.O.L. for a few days until all the snow plows, snow blowers, and snow shovelers have restored order to the white washed chaos outside.

Moroho refuses to spend much time outdoors and I’m not sure if he can lift his leg high enough to pee on the snowbanks. The snowbanks are very, very high and getting higher by the minute. I’m even less sure how he’ll negotiate a number two. Somedays it just sucks to be a transplant from Africa, even though Minnesota is a land of milk and honey (ie, Chuck n Don’s Pet Store). Right now he’s curled up by my feet, snoring. Cozy. Dreading the implications of a full bladder.

I’m also curled up with my laptop, wondering if I should blog about workplace dynamics or finding my professional self. I think an awful lot about who I am professionally and where I want to go professionally and it consumes so much of me. I hardly think the worry and panic is worth the energy, mostly because I’m unconvinced that being a Miz Big Shot equates to being a good person. Also, I don’t think that measuring myself by a series of job titles or performance reviews is indicative of whether or not I’m accomplishing meaningful life goals. Sometimes I think I get bit off-track by comparing myself to others’ achievements and waiting around for my professional peers to validate me.

What I’m trying to do is find a few good hobbies. I definitely have two hobbies that have developed recently: practicing Yoga and learning German. Perhaps this seems like an odd combination, but it works for me. Both keep me active - one physically and one mentally - and both help me filter out all sorts of insecure noise so that I can focus on one thing in the present moment. When I was younger, I used to get the same feeling from drawing still lifes: it was just me, a pad of paper and a graphite pencil, and my hand and eyes tracing the lines of the objects before me. Everything else vanished for an hour.

Quieting my mind is bliss. I don’t know if you’ve tried to kick up into a headstand with grace and ease, but I’ve found that I need to be fully immersed in the moment when I do. My mind and body sync together, scanning my forearms, head, shoulders, core, hips, and legs to make sure I’m balanced. I don’t think about anything else other than breathe. I don’t know if you’ve tried to learn a new language either, but I also find that I need to be awfully focused in order to figure out where Bitte bleiben Sie am Apparat fits into a telephone conversation.

The freedom to make lots of mistakes while learning something new is also bliss. Like a baby taking its first steps or learning its first words, I am constantly toppling over in yoga or mispronouncing or misspelling words in German. Yet no tells me to stop trying; my yoga instructor will simply adjust my pose or friends will correct my German. And, as far as I can tell, nobody is jealous when I do succeed. I’m pretty sure my ability to do a headstand or say “Please hold” in German doesn’t threaten anyone. In fact, most people probably consider these accomplishments nice party tricks. I love it.

So that’s my Saturday for you. Shoveling. Hibernating. Ruminating. Rubbing my dog’s belly. Heading back outdoors to shovel again. And again. And again. It’s actually quite nice to be stuck in the house, unable to go anywhere. Like my hobbies, this weather is also creating a place of stillness, where my dog and I can curl up together and enjoy the moment. Fortunately, Joe ran to the store last night to stock up on food and drink, so we are totally set for the weekend. I hope you are able to savor your weekend, too.

I’m not sure how to approach this blog posting without offending women. Still, I’m driven to explore how competent, articulate, thoughtful women can transcend other women who feel threatened by these qualities in the workplace. Surviving the sisterhood of workplace infighting is what Peggy Klaus, a leadership coach in Berkeley, CA, refers to as the “the pink elephant in the room.” Throughout my professional journey through college, graduate school, internships, fellowships, U.S. Peace Corps service, and my career in healthcare quality improvement, I’ve forged strong, supportive friendships with an amazing group of brilliant, driven women in their late 20’s and early 30’s. In my most recent professional positions, however, I’ve run into a female bully for a supervisor and now a team of five women, four of whom spent the first six to twelve months of my employment ostracizing me. My female manager and director continue to isolate and sabotage me in other indirect ways, too.

I’m a competent, sharp, articulate, mindful, dedicated employee who is really good at her job. So what gives? Why can women be our own worst enemies at work?

Klaus presents a few theories explaining why the women’s movement didn’t remove the very real barrier of how badly women can treat one another in the workplace. Perhaps the scarcity of senior level positions drives women to obstruct other women who could potentially replace them. A very likely consequence is that women bully other women who threaten their ascent to the top. I’m 80% sure this is why a former female supervisor spent over a year bullying me. No matter what kind of challenge she threw at me, I maintained collegial, collaborative working relationships with diverse staff throughout the organization, learned how to use the organization’s business analytics tools without any training whatsoever, and successfully fulfilled an intense schedule of annual grant writing and reporting deadlines. I was excellent at my job and I was getting many compliments from senior leadership. However, the more I achieved and the more attention I received, the worse her bullying became.

Other people posit that women may feel that no one helped them get to where they are and insist that other women pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, too. Similarly, women may fear being accused of showing favoritism, and so they inadvertently undermine one another. Then there are explanations that center on women’s hyper-emotionality or assert that women haven’t been socialized to compete in the workplace in a healthy way. Another phenomenon I’ve witnessed is a codependent, mother-daughter-like bond that forms between an incompetent senior leader in her mid to late fifties and an incompetent manager in her early to mid thirties. The manager shields her senior leader from any criticism, either constructive or negative, while the senior leader protects her manager from the destructive consequences of her actions. It seems that these women need their alliance to remain in their positions of power.

Whatever the reason may be, transcending the pink elephant in the room requires a keen insight into gender office politics and being an introspective, discerning employee who can stay focused on her job, form strategic alliances, find a mentor, and refuse to participate in triangulation and gossip. As an INTJ female, thriving in a blame-oriented hierarchical work culture comprised of insecure female managers and directors, talking around the issues, and trying not to offend female colleagues threatened by other women isn’t my strong suit. Yet this is exactly where I find myself today. Operating in this culture chips away at my self-confidence and repeats all of the negative labels that family members and colleagues have attributed to me over the years; that is, that I’m too aloof, direct, argumentative, detached, and intimidating.

Yes, of course, I’m far from perfect and I have plenty of opportunities for improvement, as we like to say in the quality industry. But wallowing over my female colleagues’ snide 360 review comments such as “Kristjan tries too hard to appear competent...” doesn’t help in the long term. For whatever reason, I think my female colleagues would prefer that I be less competent or, at the very least, appear less competent than what I am. I’m not sure that forgoing competence in order to fit in is worth the sacrifice, though. I simply love to problem-solve, communicate complicated regulations and information in a concise, easy-to-understand manner, develop proactive, creative solutions to challenging problems, and be mindful of other departments’ and colleagues’ time, processes, and priorities. It’s the way I’m built.

Recently, I related my pink elephant challenges to a former Peace Corps colleague who initially intimidated me. She’s driven, competent, hardworking, articulate, and dedicated; I remember pegging her as a show off and worrying that she would compete with me when I first met her. Still, I dug deep and admitted that my own insecurities were the real issue - not my colleague’s brilliance. So, during the first week of our Peace Corps training, I deliberately spent more time getting to know her. I figured it would be really hard to be jealous or insecure if I learned that she was human. I’m so glad that I made the effort; as it turns out, she’s one of the most deeply caring and concerned women I’ve ever known. The reason she works so damn hard is because she truly cares about improving the health and welfare of others. Plus, it’s simply her nature to strive for excellence, which I can totally understand.

We became good friends who provided invaluable support to one another throughout our difficult service. Her work and dedication continue to inspire to me. Unfortunately, other women in her professional life continue to ostracize and sabotage her. “There are women - always women - who I feel hate me for no good reason.  I've never (to my knowledge) said anything mean about them, kicked their puppy, put salt in their sugar dish or put them down in front of a superior.” Like me, this eats away at her self-confidence and she spends a disproportionate amount of energy complimenting other women, giving credit for major accomplishments to other colleagues, and figuring out how to change herself so that other women will like her. “No dice,” she reports, many women still won’t give her a chance.

Clearly, I’m not alone. I don’t feel that my former Peace Corps colleague should change one thing about herself. Trust me - she’s amazing. So what can women do to support each other? I suppose we could start by recognizing that the pink elephant exists and addressing female bullying and sabotage in seminars on women’s leadership. I also think we need to figure out, on a personal level, how to move past our own jealousies and insecurities so that we can form wonderful, mutually supportive relationships with other women. For myself, more specifically, I need to take responsibility for my own bad behavior in my current work situation. That is, I need to focus more on what I love about my job, form constructive alliances and relationships with others, find a professional mentor, and stop participating in workplace gossip and triangulation.

Sometimes I feel like I need to make a silly choice between beating other women or joining other women in bad workplace behavior, but this seems like a rather false, lose-lose dichotomy. Instead, I want it all. I want to be an ethical, supportive, healthy woman who does good work and forms strong professional bonds with other women so that we can all support one another and do good work. Maybe this sounds very pie-in-the-sky or too impossible, but this is what I hope to develop in my professional life over the next 30-40 years.

I read an article recently that thanked bad management because, without it, so few people would strike out to become entrepreneurs. Natalie Clifford Barney, an American playwright, poet, and novelist, also added, “Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the trouble making individual.” Right now I am definitely acquiring the adjective of trouble making. Or analytical female with a dry sense of humor, whatever.

Sometimes I wonder if I should blame my parents for both being self-employed entrepreneurs because I think their example ruined me for any and all jobs that require me to answer to someone else, especially if that someone is one item short of an agenda. My parents have certainly called their own shots, but they have also been B-R-O-K-E.

When I think back to the third grade and what I wanted to be when I grew up, I clearly remember wanting to be a poet, or Albert Einstein. I am a long, long way from being a poet laureate anytime soon, or Einstein. In fact, I seem to have gotten sidetracked by statistics, economics, psychology, community health, and project management over the years. The upshot is that these interests happen to come with a decent pay check and health insurance. Then again, too frequently they have also come with a whole host of narcissistic and insecure supervisors.

Following up on my last posting, it turns out that I’m not the Jolly Green Giant of Peter’s Principle - that is, in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence. I’m not $10,000 richer today, but I did get a $4500 increase in salary and reclassified. This is really swell, especially in this employment market, but I think the bump up was bestowed upon me more out of fear than recognition. You see, two of my more competent colleagues are leaving our five person team next month and I don’t think losing one more person at this time is feasible for my manager. So, I represent more of the garden-gnome scale of Peter’s Principle. It’s not exactly an honor, but I can live with that until I find my next job.

I don’t know why I’m not happy with empty status and unearned raises; it would be so much easier to get by in this world if I could be. I think it would give me a capacity for bullshit, a much needed attribute in the work place. Unfortunately, I was raised by two parents who have zero tolerance for bullshit and, as much as it pains me to admit, I have inherited this and many other traits from my parents.

Like my parents, my head and heart also need more fulfillment than my bank account: I find this aspect of my personality totally annoying, and not exactly lucrative. It’s the kind of thing that launches me into non-profit job searches or dreams of entrepreneuralism, knowing full well that I won’t be raking in the cash. So we’ll see where I go next. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I've got to get back to re-writing those resumes and cover letters.

I am restricting access to my blog. This sucks. This totally sucks. Well, maybe I should take that back. I’m pretty sure no one is sitting on the edge of his ergonomic chair, biting his finger nails to the quick, wondering aloud, “What will Kristjan post next? Like, will she regain her sense of humor...ever???” Probably not, so I doubt I’m letting anyone down.

Mostly, I’m restricting my blog because reflecting on the absurdity of being a working professional in America will get me really, really unemployed. In fact, I have a cousin who has, on more than one occasion, reminded me that all of my potential future employers can read what I’m thinking. What I’m thinking, I’m afraid, isn’t all that impressive. Or pertinent. Or desirable.

My ramblings are not what every manager or director or human resources specialist would consider appropriate. I feel badly about this - I do, but it is taking ever more glasses of red wine to help me cope with each and every passing day. Plus, I’m trying to find a new employer while hanging on to some semblance of sanity about working for my current employer. The odds that I’ll be able to hold it together aren’t exactly in my favor.

Today was definitely a red wine day: I received comments back from my 360 review. In theory, I understand the value of a 360. In practice, I work for an organization that is 75% female and all of my working relationships are with women. Women from Minnesota. Nice, passive aggressive women from Minnesota who prefer to avoid conflict, unless they are de-identified on Survey Monkey.

I’m unconvinced that the Survey Monkey 360 is a constructive feedback tool for Minnesotan women. What you get are a series of nebulous jabs about your work style being too direct/not direct enough, over-communicating/not communicating enough, and proactive/not proactive enough without any context whatsoever. So, I tried to tease out who said what and in which context and it just drives me to drink. I can tell that my director is not impressed with me, so I suppose our feelings about one another are mutual. But, hey, look on the bright side: at least we finally have one thing in common.

Overall, though, I had a good Annual Review: I’m being re-classified one level higher than what I am and I’m getting a raise on top of it all for meeting my performance goals and expectations. In total, this may amount to a $10,000 salary increase starting this week. It just seems so odd that my colleagues, including my director, can say so many vaguely disheartening things about me and I still get $10,000 richer. Am I now Peter’s Principle personified? Oh God, what a dubious honor!

The irony is that I’m applying for a position at a non-profit organization that does really meaningful work and has a really good, competent staff, but I would make $15,000-$25,000 less than my current salary if they consider me for the position. But somehow the pay cut would seem worth a few trips to the Democratic Republic of Congo to support dedicated staff working with torture victims.

Really, what is the price of losing my perspective, humor, feelings of competency, and sense of meaning? Is it worth $15,000-$25,000 per year? Right now I'd rather have my sanity back. Of course, right now is two o’clock in the morning after a day that involved leaving work early to hyperventilate in my car for five minutes due to a series of snarky 360 comments from my colleagues.

More updates to come, I’m sure. In the meantime, I need to drag my sorry self back to bed and, now that I’ve gotten a few matters off my chest, get some shut eye. Good night!

I’m finally getting around to reading the book Leading Change by John P. Kotter. A former colleague of mine gave it to me two years ago at a time when I had pneumonia and a million grant proposal and report deadlines that weren’t waiting patiently for me to get well. Since then, I’ve had a job change and a bit more professional experience in quality improvement and change efforts. I also learned that I’m turned on by strategic planning and process improvement more than grant writing and fundraising. Good to know.

Still, my better defined professional interests don’t constitute a walk in the park. It is still difficult to navigate organizational leadership and collaborate with a team of colleagues to create intentional, intelligent, meaningful change. I don’t think it matters how smart or effective you are: change is hard. So, now that I’m resting on the couch recuperating from another 6-week upper respiratory infection, I’m going back to Kotter and reacquainting myself with other quality improvement methods like Lean, Six-Sigma, PDSA cycles, etc. And, perhaps, someday I might get around to Baldrige, but for now I’ve got plenty to digest.

I think I can safely say, without jeopardizing my career too much, that process improvement or change efforts too easily fail or fade away. I’ve seen it every organization where I’ve worked. I used to think that this was only true for under-resourced non-profit settings, but I’ve felt similar frustrations at companies with more resources and better paid professionals, too. The biggest difference is that lower-resource settings draft far fewer meeting minutes documenting their descent down the rabbit hole, where the need for reduced costs, improved quality, more efficiency or a new strategic direction is lost in some alternate reality.

The reason I’ve plucked Kotter from my bookshelf today is because I want to grow from my experience rather than become stunted by frustration or pessimism. From Kotter, I’m reading up on the Eight-Stage Process of Creating Major Change, which includes

1) Establishing a sense of urgency,

2) Creating the guiding coalition,

3) Developing a vision and strategy,

4) Communicating the change vision,

5) Empowering broad-based action,

6) Generating short-term wins,

7) Consolidating gains and producing more change, and

8) Anchoring new approaches in the culture.

While I could argue that this process doesn’t apply to me because I’m not in a senior leadership position (or any leadership position for that matter), it would be far wiser for me to cultivate these processes and reflect on the stages I take for granted in my current work. Perhaps this is because I want to be a leader someday; not just any leader, but a damn fine leader who helps staff and colleagues feel valued and that their 40+ hours each week are making a positive difference in people’s lives. I also know, being the analytical person that I am, that the “softer” side of change is more challenging for me, and I better get competent at the personal, political and cultural forces effecting change rather than relying on my analytical, planning and problem-solving strengths.

Kotter also points out the distinction between management and leadership. Successful change, he asserts, requires 20% management and 80% leadership. Management involves planning & budgeting, organizing & staffing and controlling & problem solving; in effect, it focuses on predictability, order and short-term results. Leadership, on the other hand, requires establishing direction, aligning people and motivating & inspiring people. Leadership produces change, which can be unpredictable, messy and long-term.

Kotter argues that many organizations are over-managed and under-led. As a project manager, I think he might be on to something. For the past six years, my job has been to manage change, which has often translated into minimizing change while meeting regulatory requirements tied to local and national healthcare reform. Many gains, whether real or anticipated, have dissipated after a project ends...or dies.

As a staff member looking for direction and motivation from above, I’ve also witnessed the lack of leadership - that is, vision, alignment and inspiration - on several quality improvement projects that I’ve managed. I remember one scenario when I was looking for motivation during a particularly chaotic time and asked my manager to translate leadership’s strategy for a major change initiative into my daily work. My manager was unable to articulate their vision or strategy, even though the organization’s ability to survive financially was dependent on the change initiative being successful. During the next year, my team’s time was poorly managed and our efforts were stifled by poor planning, inertia, conflict and bureaucracy. Many of my highly competent teammates grew disillusioned and launched job searches for positions outside of our organization. We lost talent - the very talent that could take the organization to the next level, beyond survival to success.

What if professionals in most organizations are better at managing and minimizing change than leading it? Personally, I am learning how to be a better project manager each and every day, but I’d like to find a mentor who can help me think about how to lead change five or ten years down the road. Kotter suggests a little experiment that my colleagues at other organizations and I may find interesting. He suggests searching our organization’s documents over the past year for two phrases: managing change and leading change. Of course, this is far easier to do now than it was in 1996 when his book was first published due to the use of search terms.

So, for now, perhaps I’ll start with Kotter’s experiment, continue reading up on quality & process improvement methods, and keep my eyes open for a mentor who leads change efforts. I’ll keep learning from my own mistakes and I’ll keep my chin up. Because no matter how difficult managing or leading change may be, it can also be an exhilarating ride on the leading edge of an industry when it’s done well. And that’s where I’d like to be.

Last Tuesday, curled up in fleece blankets on our couch with a messy cold, I logged into Facebook, which suggested that I may know Steve Wallenberg. A huge grin came over me as I clicked to his page – hell yeah, I know Mr. Wallenberg - and I added him as my friend. Mr. Wallenberg was one of my favorite teachers at Edison Junior High and Lincoln High Schools in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

I don’t remember many details from junior high, but one assignment has always stood out in my memory. During a 7th grade Language Arts assignment in April, Mr. Wallenberg told us that we could write anything about our lives and ourselves to him. He assured us that anything we wrote would remain confidential; so he became the first person I told about my parents’ recent separation. The week before the assignment, I came home after school on a Friday afternoon to learn that my mother had packed my dad’s clothes after we left for school in the morning and had the police issue a restraining order to my father later that day.

I had never felt so much pain: neither my brother nor I had seen it coming. We left for school that Friday morning in early Spring thinking everything in our lives was okay, only to come home that afternoon to find out our family, as we knew it, had forever changed. I hadn’t been able to confide to anyone that my world had come crashing down - not to my friends, my relatives, other teachers or adults. But I trusted Mr. Wallenberg, and the timing of his assignment couldn’t have been more perfect.

Fortunately, when I transitioned to Lincoln High School in the 9th grade, Mr. Wallenberg also shifted to Lincoln where he became my “Ad Room” (aka home room) teacher for four years and my 9th grade English teacher. Every day he took attendance and encouraged us for the first ten minutes of our school days. He had a good sense of humor and an even better perspective on surviving high school.

While I remember much more about my high school days, one salient memory still inspires me. During a 9th grade English class, Mr. Wallenberg asked us if we would like to hear something he had written. He said that he had been working on a story about his own life. If we agreed to treat him with respect, he would agree to read a chapter from his own life story. I totally agreed, as did the rest of the class, so he read to us that Friday afternoon.

As Mr. Wallenberg read aloud about his life and the confusing thoughts and feelings he had as a young teenager, I remember thinking that he was one of the bravest people I had ever known. At the time, writing was becoming an outlet for me, but I could never imagine sharing my writing with anyone, let alone reading it aloud in front of an audience. Writing allowed me to express all the fears and feelings that I didn’t dare share with others. Writing became a safe haven where I could entertain all my dark or dreamy thoughts on paper. It let me write really bad, self-indulgent poetry. The kind of poetry that gets you through high school and the first two years of college, though crushes and confusion and conflict.

Three weeks ago, I read a book that urged us to go thank all the people that inspired us because one day it will be too late. I immediately thought of Mr. Wallenberg. So last Tuesday when I found him on Facebook, I was over the moon, anticipating the thank you note that I would write to him. What I received in response to my friend request was,

“I am so sorry to pass along that Mr. Wallenberg died on April 23, 2010. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a month after he retired. He lived for 10 months through chemo and radiation. He passed peacefully and painlessly with all of us by his side. We miss his daily and dearly. He and I maintained a caring bridge website under his name stevewallenberg (no spaces) if you want to read his story. He or I wrote every day. It was a labor of love and therapy for both of us. Take care. Mrs. Wallenberg…”

Of course, I read through the 100+ pages of his Caring Bridge site and, of course, I heard his voice and the voice of his dedicated wife, also a teacher at Lincoln High School. My heart ached for his family and I agonized over not thanking him sooner.

My Aunt Barb also passed away recently and had communicated her last months of life though a Caring Bridge web site. Reading it, I wished I would have known her better and had been closer to her and her family. I feel like I missed my chance with her, too. So, lately, I’ve been trying to think about what death has to teach us about life and how to connect with the people we love and who inspire us. Over the weekend I listened about a wild love for the world and the great secret of death on my favorite radio show, Speaking of Faith. Joanna Macy read an English translation of a passage written by the Bohemian-Austrian poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, in 1924:

The great secret of death, and perhaps its deepest connection with us, is this: that, in taking from us a being we have loved and venerated, death does not wound us without, at the same time, lifting us toward a more perfect understanding of this being and of ourselves.

This passage brings me joy. Like my Aunt Barb’s family, I want to dedicate this beautiful passage to Mr. Wallenberg and his family, too. His Caring Bridge journal gave me an unguarded glimpse into his life and the brave vulnerability that he brought to his last year. Perhaps on a more selfish level, though, he gave the gift of writing to a knotted up 13-year-old girl, and later a 15-year-old freshman, so that she could develop a better understanding of herself and her world. And for that, Mr. Wallenberg, I thank you.

Today I am sick. I have taken the day off work and am camping out on living room sofa. A box of tissues has become my constant companion, Moroho is curled around my feet, and I’m drinking tap water spiked with orange-flavored EmergenC. Outside the neighbors are wearing shorts and long-sleeved t-shirts, walking their dogs on this perfect day - a gorgeous, sunny 65 degree day with maple leaves turning gold, crimson and amber. These are the very days that entice us into thinking that living in Minnesota, with its unbelievably long & harsh winters and its unbearably hot & humid Augusts, isn’t so bad.

I want to be outside walking my dogs along the Mississippi River, too. But I’d get half a mile from the house, only to find myself longing to be curled up on the couch in a blanket with a box of Kleenex and a hot cup of green tea within reach.

The other problem with being holed up in the house is that I can think of a million things that need doing: dishes, laundry, folding clothes, putting clothes away, vacuuming, changing the bed sheets, cooking chicken noodle soup. But I don’t have the energy to do anything, other than pulling leftover pizza out of the refrigerator for breakfast. I also fantasize about running errands that I’ve been meaning to do for three weeks, like shoe shopping or checking out the Lululemon store in St. Louis Park, but I don’t have the energy for that either. Then I entertain the idea of doing some really deep thinking about the next five years of my life. You know, where do I want to be in five years and what do I want to be doing? Am I becoming a better person? Is my work meaningful? Can I become fluent in German? That kind of thing. But then the dogs start barking at the mailman or some other nut job stops by the house to sell windows or distribute the latest edition of Watchtower Magazine.

Basically, I’m in an unusually whiny state of mind. A state of mind that is best left to doctors - that is, episodes of The Doctors, Dr. Oz, and Dr. Phil. I’m sure I’ll have deeper, more meaningful posts in the future. But, if you’ll excuse me, I feel a sneezing fit coming on.

This past Labor Day, Minnesota Public Radio asked listeners to call in and describe their first job. Where did you work and what life lessons did you learn? Well, I started down my illustrious career path as a Salad Bar Attendant at Valentino’s Grand Italian Buffet in Sioux Falls, South Dakota at age fourteen. My recently divorced parents didn’t make much money as a married couple, so now that everyone was single we were all strapped for cash and looking for work. For $4.25/hour, I donned a white button-down shirt, black pants, red bow tie, red & green polyester apron and sensible black shoes and entered an all-you-can-eat-pizza-buffet kitchen without air conditioning during the hot, humid summers of 1991 & 1992.

On my first day, I dropped a crock of creamy bleu cheese dressing on the tiled kitchen floor, launching one quart of the chucky glop in all directions. Troy, the line cook standing 10 feet away, yelled “Job opening!” and then bent down to wipe bleu cheese from his black rubber-soled shoes. The manager handed me a mop. “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing near you” he chuckled, also swooping down to clean dressing from his shoes.

Over the next year, I proved efficient at setting up the salad bar in the morning, keeping the crocks of cubed ham, sliced olives and chilled carbonara pasta well stocked during the day, and tearing down the salad bar at night. No crock would remain unfilled! Each leaf of decorative kale would be cleaned of all impacted cheddar cheese shreds and repositioned over the iced salad buffet with care! Each personal salad called for three cucumber slices, two tomato wedges, and a few onion circles with croutons over iceberg lettuce, but each would be arranged artfully! Those were my credos; other Salad Bar Attendants simply lived by their smoke breaks.

I was an overly responsible employee and a straight-A student, striving for perfection in all things. Because financial bombs dropped almost daily on my household, though, I was also a serious worrier. I didn’t realize that I had stopped smiling until a few weeks into my job when the franchise owner, John Jones, assured me that it was okay to laugh more often. So, perhaps the most important life lesson for me was learning how to smile in my own over-achieving, stoic way during my two years at Valentino’s. It certainly helped to work with a host of silly and wonderfully kind people in that hot kitchen - John, Joel, Troy, Renee, Greg, Rick, Jill, Melissa and many others.

Looking back, I think I was truly spoiled at my first job. Valentino’s managers created an atmosphere where working hard was expected, but so was having a sense of humor. Managers worked alongside us, helping transport pizzas between the kitchen and the buffet, washing dishes or making pizzas when things got busy. They were genuinely kind and they were definitely funny, much like their employees. What I most treasure is that they took this introverted fourteen year old girl and helped her find a little levity in her day and connect her with the team.

Many of my managers haven’t yet mastered this fine art of good management, which is a precious, wonderful gift to employees, both individually and as teams. Thank you John and Joel - my first two managers at Valentino’s – for setting high expectations and serving as strong examples of what good management can do for employees.

I’m finding it awfully hard to blog in the United States. In Lesotho, I had plenty of time to write and plenty of issues to write about – HIV/AIDS, culture shock, racism, discrimination, sexual harassment, colonialism, medical tourism, and my Afrikaner neighbors painting my house peach with maroon trim. Writing about my Peace Corps stint had relatively few ramifications since hardly anyone had access to the internet and, even if they did, they wouldn’t necessarily care enough (or have the bandwidth) to monitor my words.

Here in the U.S., though, the ramifications of blogging through pesky, if not completely self-indulgent and whiny issues can be more serious. See, I’d love to explore work-related issues, from the Dilbertness of working in a nearly all female department to the less-than-ideal nuances of quality-based healthcare payment programs, but I may quickly end up in an unemployment line if I do. I’d also love to blog about family relationships and how connecting with extended family and old friends over Facebook drudges up past insecurities, making me wonder what kind of monster I was as an adolescent and why my parents couldn’t connect more warmly with their siblings and parents so that I could have developed closer bonds with my cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents.

But everyone is a monster as an adolescent, many people have issues with their family, and most people I know vent about their work at least once a week. Other people are just plain smarter than I am: they don’t process everything on the internet (or they may not process much at all). Too many people I meet these days don’t have a burning desire for their work be personally fulfilling. Or, if they do, they appear far less fussed about shelving their aspirations to find meaningful work and/or explore the planet.

The rest of us who don’t know how to relegate these dreams to “nice but too lofty status” walk around with tortured souls as our families urge us to settle down or, once we do maintain a three-year holding pattern, complement us on maxing out our Roth IRA contributions each year and meeting our 401k employer match. Kudos are also given for transitioning from renter to home owner, which only means that instead of spending $1200 on a trip to Nicaragua, you purchase a 19.7 cubic feet French-door bottom freezer refrigerator with a four-year warranty. Besides, here in the U.S. we don’t get enough time off to take a trip to Nicaragua anyway.

This is all very responsible, yes, but it’s not exactly exciting. Fortunately, I have married a wonderful man who is a fellow traveler and hates Minnesota winters as much as I do. Both of us are open to the idea of quitting our jobs and putting the house on the market by the time the next World Cup rolls around so that we can move to Germany for a few years. And when I say, “Joe, in ten years when the dogs die, let’s quit our jobs and travel around the world for a year,” he doesn’t seem phased at all. That is, aside from the fact I’ve acknowledged that the dogs will die.

So that’s life in Minnesota. Joe and I are gearing up for our belated wedding reception, which will take place at our home later this month. So far it is turning out to be a lovely experience as we connect with extended family members, many of whom have warmly welcomed Joe and me into their families. Each time a cousin, aunt or uncle tells us that they’re coming to the Twin Cities for the reception, I have yet another Sally Fields moment, “You like me, you really like me!” Oh sure, Joe and I were strongly advised to create gift registries for the event, but honestly, the biggest thrill for me about the reception is the opportunity to foster connections among family members and friends. Yes, a La Creuset pan is always nice, but having family and friends surrounding us is much more fulfilling. In a way, their presence confirms our decision to settle down in Minnesota for a while longer and our excitement over new appliance purchases.

This week in the Twin Cities is Bike/Walk Week. My workplace honored this occasion with a watered down version called Bike/Walk Week Day, which was today. For me, this week wasn’t much different than any other week. Two to four days each week, depending on the weather and my work calendar, I light out on a 8.5 mile commute at 6:45am with my red Bianchi Boardwalk, dressed in bike shorts and Danskos with a helmet and a backpack full of work clothes and a packed lunch.

Most days I cruise up the West River Road along the Mississippi River, crossing over the pedestrian bridge on the University of Minnesota Campus, and cut north through Dinky Town and the Como Neighborhood. Other days I follow the Minnehaha Avenue bike path and meet up with the bike trail running parallel to the Light Rail, then bank right to the Mississppi River and pedestrian bridge. The ride takes 35-45 minutes to reach work. I pedal up to the bike rack at the back of the building, lock my bike, then head inside to grab a towel and toiletries at my desk before heading to the women’s locker room for a quick shower.

The only difference is that today I received an extra casual dress day for my biking contribution. Others in my organization were recognized for parking in the large parking lot of a retail complex and walking less than a mile to work. Listening to some overweight colleagues talk about this experience, I heard them describe their Bike/Walk Week Day contribution – the half-mile walk – as both intimidating and physically demanding. “I was huffing and puffing, but I made it!” recounted a woman in my department.

While celebrating alternative work commute options is great, I’m worried because walking less than one mile or biking to work is still physically difficult, if not prohibitive, for many of my colleagues. In my department, for example, half of my coworkers are overweight or obese. Walking less than a mile requires a profound effort for many of them and this makes me anxious about their health status. It just can’t be easy to carry that weight around.

Recently I joined the department’s “Fun Committee” - an oxymoron, I know. We’re tasked with proposing activities that our two teams can enjoy together on a weekday afternoon outside of work. I suppose, in a nutshell, we’re developing team-building ideas that involve 3.2% malt beverages. My ideas included four-person bicycles, 2-3 mile day hikes, canoeing or frisbees. These ideas were quickly shot down, however, because they involved movement. It seems like a successful idea must include ample parking less than a quarter mile from the destination, sitting and eating fatty, saucy and/or fried food.

This leaves me feeling dejected. I think too many adults - or perhaps too many Americans, regardless of age - have lost touch with how movement can make us feel energized, exhilarated and free. When I pedal hard on my bike or pick up speed riding downhill, I feel this childlike sense of complete joy, as the wind rushes past my body. A big grin plants itself across my face and I inhale deep breaths of cool morning air. I’ve gotten the same feeling on a few memorable runs when I’ve run faster or further or stronger than I’ve ever run before and, more recently, during yoga class. Some days I stretch into a position, typically an inversion, and feel like I could hold that pose forever.

I wish more of my colleagues were able to share these experiences with me. Hell, I wish more of my friends were open to sharing these experiences with me. Shaking up familiar routines and inertia is hard. I get it. Once we can do it, though, we get to discover new strengths and connect with forgotten joys. And I think that’s pretty darn cool.

Sometimes, like this past month, life provides a little gratuitous drama. A couple that I’ve known for over ten years catalogued my transgressions dating back to the Summer of 2003 and turned these minor disputes into a zero-sum battle. So I chose to weed this couple from my life because, let’s face it, if someone can’t forgive me for breaking a pyrex plate five years ago that was probably replaced for $2 at a garage sale, what can they forgive me for? Not much.

I am slowly, clumsily trying to get over the need to be liked by everyone at all times, and feeling like a complete loser when can’t maintain relationships with everyone around me at all times. What is the point of maintaining a relationship if the other person insists on me kowtowing every step of the way and serving as her emotional punching bag? Cutting these types people loose, whether they’re lurking in the workplace or creeping into my personal life, is a little easier when I think about Anne Lamotte’s advice on writing and life:

[E]very single one of us at birth is given an emotional acre all our own…And as long as you don’t hurt anyone, you really get to do with your acre as you please. You can plant fruit trees or flowers or alphabetized rows of vegetables, or nothing at all. If you want your acre to look like a giant garage sale, or an auto-wrecking yard, that’s what you get to do with it. There’s a fence around your acre, though, with a gate, and if people keep coming onto your land and sliming it or trying to get you to do what they think is right, you get to ask them to leave. And they have to go, because this is your acre.

I suppose on my acre things break and backfire. I dunno, maybe I have an acre full of broken pyrex plates with “I’m awfully sorry” signs posted every six feet. I’d love to be perfect - believe me, it would let me lord so many things over so many people in my life, but I’m not. I make mistakes. Then I apologize. If forgiveness isn’t an option for me, I can’t stick around in a relationship holding my breath, feeling guilty over a pyrex plate.

And there’s not much to do about the drama other than develop a really good sense of humor while figuring out a core truth or two about life to move past the uncontrollable sobbing, eye rolling, and swearing that happens when people expect me to tiptoe around so that I don’t break anything, ever. It helps to surround myself with people who think that I’m brilliant and beautiful, and who find my shortcomings to be endearing quirks worthy of amusement and patience.

Of course, it can’t hurt to have my fabulous cook of a brother make paella and grilled veggies to bring ten of these more forgiving types to the table. This is what happened at my place over the weekend. After all the racing around for place settings was done, the living room rearranged, the flower arrangements made, the Ikea table set, the house fire averted, the hors d’oeuvres served, and everyone consumed a couple glasses of wine, I felt like opening up again. “Oh, so this is why holding a grudge is silly,” I thought as I surveyed the gathering, “these are good people. And they don’t mind the complete lack of leg room underneath these makeshift dining tables.”

I like people who don’t mind getting their knees bruised underneath my dinner table. Because sometimes relationships that bring a lot of joy and laughter also bring a few bumps and bruises along the way. So, being able to offer a sincere apology or provide space for forgiveness allow us let go of silly grudges and invite family and friends back to the dinner table for more good food, good wine and good laughs.

Having spent the night in Silicon Valley with Joe’s cousin and her active family, we motored north to San Francisco on Thursday morning. We parked off The Embarcadero on Broadway, found a Blue Bottle Coffee stand in a farmer’s market near the Ferry Terminal Plaza, and ate cream-filled donuts for breakfast; I had the maple-bacon cream filling – yum! From there we walked into the Financial District to meet Joe’s colleagues in the Wells Fargo San Francisco Office. They recommended that we take the streetcar to Fisherman’s Wharf (which we did) where we ate clam chowder out of a sour dough bread bowl and tossed a few quarters into the coin-operated arcade games at Musée Mecanique.

On the way to visiting my cousin’s family in Petaluma, about 45 minutes north of San Francisco, we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge and stopped to take a few pictures. Afterwards, we worked our way southeast to Walnut Creek to stay with Joe’s friends for our last two nights in California. In addition to catching up with family and friends, Joe and I were curious to see how folks lived in the Bay Area. Everyone we know here is a transplant from another part of the country or world – South Dakota, Minnesota, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Southern California and Denmark. We’ve been wondering how long their commutes are, what forms of transportation they use, can they afford to buy a house or do they stick to renting, is the weather and lifestyle worth the cost of housing, does any affordable housing exist close to the city, how do they like Californians, what’s the job market like, what do they do for fun, etc.

Basically, everything seems absolutely ideal except for the cost of housing. What would sell for $200,000 in a nice neighborhood in Minneapolis could easily cost $1,000,000 in San Francisco. And though the salaries and wages are higher in California, they don’t make up for the cost of housing. So then Joe and I were left scratching our heads and trying to figure out whether or not the lower cost of housing in the Twin Cities is truly worth the four brutal winter months (not including roughly 1-2 additional months of moderately temperate winter) we suffer each year. It’s a tricky calculus, especially when we started adding fresh produce, wine, redwood forests and an ocean into the equation.

On Friday morning, we set these thoughts aside and took the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) into Berkeley and later into San Francisco on what turned out to be a 10 mile walk through the University of California Berkeley campus and then the Tenderloin, Civic Center, Hayes Valley, The Castro, Upper Haight, Golden Gate Park, Pacific Heights, Chinatown and Union Square neighborhoods of San Francisco. We saw distinct subcultures coexisting, including academics, activists, suits, techies, Latinos, Asian Americans, LGBTQ, trainhoppers, hobos & tramps, tourists, hockers, homeless, bohemians, artists, foodies, runners, cyclists, bikers and almost everything in between. It was a fairly comprehensive day.

So, as always, we felt exhausted as we took the BART back to Walnut Creek around 9:30pm. It was our last day exploring California.

Just a few pictures for you from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This aquarium is built on the former site of a sardine factory and holds all sorts of creatures from sea otters to 800 pound tuna to leopard sharks to jellyfish. It even houses several touch pools – much like petting zoos of our flippered friends - that over-stimulate the hordes of small children on school field trips. The $29.95 adult entry fee covers the cost of the aquarium and invests in aquatic conservation efforts.

Today was a bit of a lazy, meandering day spent mostly in our rental car. We left the Fernwood Motel in Big Sur at 9:30am, stopped at the Bixby Bridge to snap a few pictures, and then wandered into Point Lobos for a quick three-mile hike and whale watching. From there we cruised up to Carmel-by-the-Sea, turned right on Carmel Valley Road to eat lunch at a small Italian bistro in Carmel Valley Village.

During lunch I suggested that we head out to Chalone Wineries, not realizing how far off the beaten path it sat near the Pinnacles deep in the Salinas Valley. The four-hour wine tasting excursion took us past horse farms and cattle ranches tucked into the Carmel Valley and through vast agricultural operations cultivating lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli and strawberries along Highway 101.

We checked into the Super 8 Motel on Munras Avenue and then walked less than a mile into Monterey. As we headed for the tourist traps at Fisherman’s Wharf and Cannery Row, we bought strawberries and pistachios at a local farmers market. One common site that puzzled me was the frequent spotting of Thomas Kinkade Galleries – why all the enthusiasm over this “Painter of Light”? As it turns out, Monterey’s Lighthouse Avenue is home to the Thomas Kinkade National Archives. Being the daughter of a non-commercial artist, I tend to poo-poo the Thomas Kinkades of the art world, now thinking of Kinkade as the Terry Redlin of the West Coast.

Tomorrow we’ll visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium before heading to Mountain View in the San Francisco Bay Area to visit Joe’s cousin.

We knew the day would come when Joe and I had to re-pack our things, pet O & K (aka, The Vineyard Dogs) one last time, be pampered with our final cups of coffee and three course breakfast, and depart Seven Quails Bed & Breakfast. Never before have I used the words beautiful, lovely, wonderful, and perfect and sighed so contently so often in my life. And never before have I fallen in love so deeply with a bathtub than I did with the one in The Room with a View booking at Seven Quails. The only thought that consoled us was the prospect of twisting north along Highway 1 to take in vast ocean vistas complemented by the dramatic green hills of Big Sur.

We started our journey at the junction of Highways 46 and 1 where we turned right through Cambria and San Simeon, skipping the Hearst Castle and stopping along the coast to peep at elephant seals lazing in the warm sun. As we neared Gorda, the landscape the changed – the fog cleared, the hills became taller, the cliffs steeper and the turns tighter. Traffic moved slowly through Big Sur past road repair crews and sharp twists around the hills.

We landed at the bohemian Nepenthe Restaurant for a late lunch. Perched atop a steep hill overlooking the ocean, Nepenthe - once owned by Orson Wells and Rita Hayworth - has breathtaking views of Big Sur along with an ample wine selection and reasonably priced menu. Afterwards, we drove five miles north to check into the Fernwood Motel at the edge of Pfeiffer State Park. We took a five-mile hike from the motel into the park, tramping past redwood trees and up to Buzzard’s Roost where we looked out over the Pacific Ocean.

In the evening we hung out in the Fernwood Motel Restaurant & Lounge, patronized by fellow travelers and local bohemians, watching the Discovery Channel and Women’s NCAA tournament on a large flat screen television. We returned to our room around 9:30pm and, yet again, collapsed in our bed exhausted and content.

On our fifth and penultimate day in Paso Robles, Jesper & Noriko and Joe & I stumbled out of our rooms at 6:30 to eat an early breakfast before heading out to run the Wine Country Run Half Marathon through the vineyards and ranches of Paso Robles. The morning air was a crisp 38 degrees with slight cloud cover and warmed up to around 55 degrees during the morning race. Wine barrels served as mile markers and the winners received their weight in wine. It was a great race atmosphere with post-race breakfast burritos and Starbucks coffee for finishers on the grounds of the Red Oaks Hot Springs Spa.

The race organizers, in addition to sending flowers to our bed & breakfast, saved race numbers 1 and 2 for Joe and me and announced to the runners that the Paso Robles Wine Country Run was our first race together as husband and wife. Overall, this was a gorgeous, well-organized run with perfect weather, caring organizers who brought their warm, personal style to the race, friendly volunteers, and the best post-race food I’ve ever experienced. Joe and I ran at a leisurely 10:30 mile pace, savoring the views and our time together over the 13.1 miles.

Afterwards, we returned to the Seven Quails Bed & Breakfast and sat down to a four-course brunch prepared by Dave & Karina. We relaxed into our meal with mimosas and coffee before moving onto a beautifully arranged plate of pineapple, mango and kiwi fruit dotted with gingery granola. For the main course, we ate scrambled eggs served with potatoes, spinach and sausage along with toast made from freshly baked bread. Our dessert was a puff pastry with a light cream cheese filling and fresh berries. (I would post photos of the courses, but they’re all on Jesper’s camera).

Jesper & Noriko left for San Francisco at 2:00pm, so Joe & I headed to the ocean, driving south on Highway 1 through Cayucos and Moro Bay and ended up back in San Luis Obispo for an early dinner. We strolled through the downtown area to stretch out our legs before driving back to Paso Robles. Then watched the movie Bottleshock at our B&B and crashed in bed after yet another perfect and exhausting day on California’s Central Coast.

Joe and I again woke up to the sun pouring through our patio door windows and another panoramic view of the valley. I took a long bath to relax and prepare for the day (I’ve included a photo of the view of the valley from the bathroom bay windows) while Joe lounged in bed looking at photos of our trip so far. Jesper and Noriko joined us for a breakfast of quiche made from scratch and freshly baked blueberry scones before heading off to our rooms to get dressed for the wedding ceremony with Reverend Mike noon.

After our ceremony Jesper, Noriko, Joe and I shared together lunch at Artisan in downtown Paso Robles. We then picked up our race packets for the half marathon tomorrow before driving west of town to sample olive oils at Pasolivo and visit the newly opened Chateau Margene location along Vineyard Drive. We were greeted with warm smiles, kind wishes and complimentary items all along the way - Paso really takes care of people!

I’m posting a few photos of our small wedding party, another photo of Joe and me with Reverend Mike, and a photo of us frolicking in the vineyard. I’m also including the words to our ceremony. We had a short yet intimate wedding and Joe and I are very happy to announce that we are husband and wife.

WEDDING CEREMONY of JOE MILNER & SARAH KRISTJAN SELVIG

PASO ROBLES, CA

MARCH 20th, 2010

(Rev. Mike) Welcome Kristjan and Joe and thank you for making me part of your special day. Before you start out on your life journey together, I would ask that you always remember to treat yourself and each other with respect, and remind yourself often of what brought you together today. Give the highest priority to the tenderness, gentleness and kindness that your marriage deserves. Love is a miraculous gift and it is your great love for one another that has brought you to this sacred moment to embrace one another as beloved companions and friends. Therefore, this sacred vow is entered into with much consideration, love, respect and joy. We who participate bind ourselves as witness to this vow of love that you state here today.

Kristjan and Joe happiness in marriage is not something that just happens; a good marriage must be created. And it is created in the following ways:

It is never being too old to hold hands.

It is remembering to say "I love you" at least once a day.

It is at no time taking the other for granted.

It is having a mutual sense of values and common goals.

It is standing together, facing what life brings us.

It is forming a circle of love that gathers in the whole family.

It is speaking words of appreciation and demonstrating gratitude.

It is not looking for perfection in each other.

It is cultivating flexibility, patience, understanding, and a sense of humor.

It is having the capacity to forgive and forget.

It is giving each other an atmosphere in which each can grow.

It is a common search for the good and the beautiful.

It is establishing a relationship in which independence is equal, dependence is mutual, and obligation reciprocal.

It is not only marrying the right partner, it is being the right partner.

Readings before Exchange of Vows:

For these readings, Joe and Kristjan have selected two poems that they would like to share with us. The first poem, called Habitation by Margaret Atwood, first tells us what marriage is not. But then the poem sheds light on what marriage is and has the potential to create. The second poem, The Wild Rose by Wendell Berry, reaffirms – again and again – the vows that Kristjan and Joe will promise to each other today.

Habitation by Margaret Atwood:

Marriage is not

a house or even a tent

it is before that, and colder:

the edge of the forest, the edge

of the desert

the unpainted stairs

at the back where we squat

outside, eating popcorn

the edge of the receding glacier

where painfully and with wonder

at having survived even

this far

we are learning to make fire.

The Wild Rose by Wendell Berry

Sometimes hidden from me

in daily custom and in trust

so that I live by you unaware

as by the beating of my heart

Suddenly you flare in my sight,

a wild rose blooming at the edge

of thicket, grace and light

where yesterday there was only shade,

and once again I am blessed, choosing

again what I chose before.

What speaks to Kristjan and Joe in these two poems, particularly as they we read them together today, is how both suggest that marriage is not a warm, comfortable shelter that shields us from the darkness, struggles, potential, joy, and beauty that creating a life together will bring. Nor is marriage an exotic destination in and of itself.

Rather, marriage offers the potential to create warmth and beauty - the fire or wild rose – in the cool, dark, exposed corners of our lives. Marriage is about embracing our vulnerabilities and discovering comfort in one another in both the unexpected and familiar circumstances that life brings us each day. And marriage is about reaffirming our commitment to one another in our quiet reflections – “choosing again what I chose before,” in the grateful words of Wendell Berry.

The Exchange of Vows:

(Rev Mike): Joe, will accept Kristjan to be your wife, to love her and cherish her? Will you share with her your hurts, your joys, your sorrows, and your happiness? Will you comfort her and be comforted, and share with her all things meaningful to you?

(Joe): I do.

(Rev Mike): Kristjan, will accept Joe to be your husband, to love him and cherish him? Will you share with him your hurts, your joys, your sorrows, and your happiness? Will you comfort him and be comforted, and share with him all things meaningful to you?

(Kristjan): I do.

(Rev Mike) Kristjan repeat after me:

I, Kristjan, take you, Joe,

to be my husband,

to be no one other than yourself.

Loving what I know of you,

accepting of what I do not yet know,

I will respect your integrity

and trust in your enduring love for me,

through all our years,

and in all that life may bring us."

(Rev Mike): Joe repeat after me:

I, Joe, take you, Kristjan,

to be my wife,

to be no one other than yourself.

Loving what I know of you,

accepting of what I do not yet know,

I will respect your integrity

and trust in your enduring love for me,

through all our years,

and in all that life may bring us."

The Exchange of Rings:

(Rev Mike): May these rings be blessed as a symbol of this affectionate unity. Your rings are circles that have no beginning and no ending. They are tokens of this growing relationship you have come here today to celebrate and confirm.

(Rev Mike): Joe, in placing the ring on Kristjan’s left hand, please repeat after me:

Kristjan, I give this ring as my gift to you. Wear it and think of me and know that I love you. It is a symbol of my love, my belief in our strength together, and my promise to learn and grow with you."

(Rev Mike): Kristjan, in placing the ring on Joe’s left hand, please repeat after me:

Joe, I give this ring as my gift to you. Wear it and think of me and know that I love you. It is a symbol of my love, my belief in our strength together, and my promise to learn and grow with you."

PRONOUNCEMENT

(Rev Mike): And now that you have stood before me and exchanged these rings and these vows, and have agreed to be married according to the laws of the State of California and as an ordained minister it gives me great pleasure to pronounce Husband and wife.

Congratulations, you may now kiss the bride!

I now have the privilege of introducing to you Mr. Joseph Milner and Mrs. Sarah Kristjan Selvig.

Joe and I woke up to the sun pouring through our patio doors and panoramic views of an expansive green valley northwest of Paso Robles. Coffee was ready for us at 7:30am and two hours later we sat outside eating waffles covered in fresh strawberries and maple syrup, yogurt and bacon and sipping on freshly squeezed orange juice and more french pressed coffee. Katrina and Dave gave us suggestions on wineries and cafés where we could sample local sparkling wines for our wedding tomorrow and we included Chateau Margene into our itinerary since the winery came highly recommended to us by a fellow Minnesotan enthusiastic about Paso Robles.

We started at Tobin James, a raucous Wild West winery about ten miles east of town, and quickly moved along to Bianchi before landing for two hours at Cass Winery around one o’clock. At Cass, we again sat outside and shared crab cakes and truffled goat cheese with pours of Viognier, Roussanne, Rosé, Grenache, Mourvérde, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Petit Sirah. Afterwards we headed south to Chateau Margene, a micro winery known for producing local elite Cabernet Sauvignon, which now offers new Mooney family wines. Mooney’s 2009 Pinot Noir holds beautiful promise a year or two down the road and Joe was impressed by their 2006 Paso Cuvee. In celebration of our wedding tomorrow, the Mooney family gave us a bottle of their 2006 GSM, which has not been released to the public. Who knows how it will taste, but if it’s anything like their other wines, the GSM will be fantastic.

After an hour at Chateau Margene, we headed east on Highway 41 winding through oak groves, green hills and deep valleys before turning north on Highway 101 on our way to downtown Paso Robles. There we sampled Laetitia Brut Cuvee from the Arroyo Grande Valley at Vinoteca Wine Bar. We liked it. So we lit off to Albertson’s - yes, Albertson’s the supermarket - to purchase two bottles of Laetitia sparking wine at the best prices in town for our wedding.

Joe and I returned to Seven Quails B&B just before sunset, exhausted after a fine day of wine tasting and exploring the vineyards around Paso Robles. I giggled as we passed the seven wine barrels posing outside the gates of the B&B and snapped a photo. Jesper & Noriko, Joe’s friends from San Francisco, arrived at 10pm. Unfortunately, the starter on my friend Tarra’s truck died this evening and she won’t be able to make it up from L.A. tomorrow for the wedding. I know she would have loved staying at this B&B, sampling nice wine and eating good food rather than haggling with a mechanic, but she’ll get up here someday and we’ll celebrate together another time.

The good news is that I think tomorrow will be a phenomenal day. The forecast is for sunny skies and temperatures in the 70’s. We have our simple ceremony mapped out and lunch reservations confirmed at Artisan. Ahhhhh…so now I must wish you all a good night because in twelve hours I’ll be married!

Joe and I woke up to the sun pouring through our patio doors and panoramic views of an expansive green valley northwest of Paso Robles. Coffee was ready for us at 7:30am and two hours later we sat outside eating waffles covered in fresh strawberries and maple syrup, yogurt and bacon and sipping on freshly squeezed orange juice and more french pressed coffee. Katrina and Dave gave us suggestions on wineries and cafés where we could sample local sparkling wines for our wedding tomorrow and we included Chateau Margene into our itinerary since the winery came highly recommended to us by a fellow Minnesotan enthusiastic about Paso Robles.

We started at Tobin James, a raucous Wild West winery about ten miles east of town, and quickly moved along to Bianchi before landing for two hours at Cass Winery around one o’clock. At Cass, we again sat outside and shared crab cakes and truffled goat cheese with pours of Viognier, Roussanne, Rosé, Grenache, Mourvérde, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Petit Sirah. Afterwards we headed south to Chateau Margene, a micro winery known for producing local elite Cabernet Sauvignon, which now offers new Mooney family wines. Mooney’s 2009 Pinot Noir holds beautiful promise a year or two down the road and Joe was impressed by their 2006 Paso Cuvee. In celebration of our wedding tomorrow, the Mooney family gave us a bottle of their 2006 GSM, which has not been released to the public. Who knows how it will taste, but if it’s anything like their other wines, the GSM will be fantastic.

After an hour at Chateau Margene, we headed east on Highway 41 winding through oak groves, green hills and deep valleys before turning north on Highway 101 on our way to downtown Paso Robles. There we sampled Laetitia Brut Cuvee from the Arroyo Grande Valley at Vinoteca Wine Bar. We liked it. So we lit off to Albertson’s - yes, Albertson’s the supermarket - to purchase two bottles of Laetitia sparking wine at the best prices in town for our wedding.

Joe and I returned to Seven Quails B&B just before sunset, exhausted after a fine day of wine tasting and exploring the vineyards around Paso Robles. I giggled as we passed the seven wine barrels posing outside the gates of the B&B and snapped a photo. Jesper & Noriko, Joe’s friends from San Francisco, arrived at 10pm. Unfortunately, the starter on my friend Tarra’s truck died this evening and she won’t be able to make it up from L.A. tomorrow for the wedding. I know she would have loved staying at this B&B, sampling nice wine and eating good food rather than haggling with a mechanic, but she’ll get up here someday and we’ll celebrate together another time.

The good news is that I think tomorrow will be a phenomenal day. The forecast is for sunny skies and temperatures in the 70’s. We have our simple ceremony mapped out and lunch reservations confirmed at Artisan. Ahhhhh…so now I must wish you all a good night because in twelve hours I’ll be married!

Joe and I woke up at the Windmill Inn to a hazy, cool morning. By the time we showered and packed the car, the sun had burned off the gray fog and we drove five miles east on Highway 246 to Solvang under blue skies. Solvang is America’s version of old Europe - it is a clean Danish-inspired village with wide, optimistic boulevards and, most likely, strict zoning laws to enforce town’s the quaint but chipper atmosphere that appeals to retirees on bus tours of California’s Central Coast.

We ducked into the Solvang Restaurant, another Sideways location, and “home of Arne’s famous Aebleskiver.” Aebleskivers taste like pancakes griddled into fluffy two-inch balls, smothered in raspberry syrup and coated with powdered sugar. The Solvang Restaurant serves three for $3.80. Delicious. As we waited for our Aebleskivers to arrive, we met Grant & Marge, a retired couple from Duluth, MN celebrating their 49th wedding anniversary. Grant gave me a polished agate from the shores of Lake Superior and he talked with Joe about Memorial Stadium, the old University of Minnesota football stadium. Meeting them along our way to San Luis Obispo, where we obtained our marriage license two hours later, felt like a pretty darn good omen.

We left Solvang at 10:45am and meandered through Santa Ynez and Los Olivos, then turned onto Highway 101 and drove one hour north to San Luis Obispo. San Luis Obispo, also known as SLO, felt like California’s sister city to Boulder, Colorado. It’s home to California Polytechnic State University and, according to the Lonely Planet, SLO is “one of those small cities that doles out urban pleasures and rural charm in equal measure – to wit: drive-throughs are illegal downtown.” It is a charming little place to register for a marriage license, which takes all of 10 minutes to complete at the San Luis Obispo County Government Center. Afterwards, we explored the downtown area and Mission San Luis Obispo del Tolosa before heading another 25 miles north on Highway 101 to Paso Robles.

If SLO is California’s answer to Boulder, then Paso Robles must be the State’s response to Fort Collins. The hills surrounding Paso Robles are less dramatic and the streets are wider, while the people are even friendlier and go out of their way to provide excellent, personable recommendations on accommodation, food, wineries and directions. And everyone seems to know about everybody in town. The folks at the Chamber of Commerce knew our B&B owners and wedding officiant by name. When we arrived at Seven Quails Bed & Breakfast, the Wine Country Run race organizers had sent flowers to welcome us to Paso Robles and wish us a lifetime of joy and love. Plus, rumor has it that someone is sending flowers for our wedding – I’m not sure if this mystery person is a friend of Joe and me or someone from town.

We’ve only been in Paso Robles half a day and we’re practically ready to move here, just like we were moments away from putting the house on the market and moving to Santa Barbara…then San Luis Obispo…and now Paso Robles. It’s simply gorgeous - unpretentious and accessible. Living here is probably very expensive, too, but we’re putting practical thoughts on hold for the next eight days.

We’re having a wonderful, relaxing time so far: we enjoyed a wonderful seared tuna salad and chicken sandwich at Thomas Hill Organics; sampled wine at Erberle Winery; and loved up O & K, the two resident black labs at Seven Quails. In the late afternoon, I took a long bath and Joe settled in for nap before we shared an evening barrel tasting with Dave & Katrina, the Seven Quails B&B owners. We sampled five of their red wines, casked between 2006 to as recently as November 2009, and tasted how a wine progresses from a young, fruity fermentation to a mellow, oak-infused wine.

It was a lovely day and we look forward to more days just like this.

After racing around for the past week cleaning the house, shopping for wedding clothes, celebrating with friends & relatives, wrapping up things up at work and arranging dogsitters for Kölle & Moroho, the morning of our departure arrived. We pulled ourselves out of bed at 3:30am, showered quickly and sent Moroho upstairs to wake up “Uncle Andrew,” who had crashed at our place in South Minneapolis overnight so that he could drive us (voluntarily) to the Lindberg Terminal of the St. Paul/Minneapolis International airport at 4:00am. Andrew is also watching Moroho for 10 days, which places him distinctly under the category of Awesome Brother.

Joe and I flew first to Houston and then to Ontario Airport in Los Angeles, where we picked up a rental car at 11:30am. The trunk of the first car offered to us, a Pontiac G5, smelled like beer and so we traded it for a brand new light blue Nissan Versa. Nice. Next we drove east on Highway 10, merged onto Highway 101, and exited on Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards to gawk at the Chinese Theatre, Hollywood Walk of Fame and the Hollywood sign briefly before escaping L.A.’s traffic.

We arrived in Santa Barbara skatting the theme song from Sideways at 2:30pm and fell in love. At the very least, I lusted after blonde highlights and a tan. The sun was shining, the temperature was 75-80 degrees, and Brophy Brothers Restaurant & Clam Bar had outdoor deck seating available along the wharf off Harbor Way.

This first day, however, was dedicated to living Joe’s Sideways dream. Still skatting the theme song from Sideways, we drove 30 miles north to Buellton to check into at the Days Inn (aka, “The Windmill Inn”) and ate dinner at The Hitching Post II, walking the same half mile stretch of Highway 246 as Miles and Jack. We bellied up to The Hitching Post’s bar after dinner to savor another bottle of their 2005 Highliner Pinot Noir after our meal.

We then walked back to our motel – giddy, buzzed and in love - and crashed in bed by 10:00pm. We feel exhausted but exhilarated, happy to be traveling together along California’s beautiful Central Coast.

During the past week I’ve been in touch with people who travel and will probably spend much of the next twenty years shuttling between continents. There’s the Irish man who I met in Lesotho. He’s completed his doctorate degree in geography and has spent the past year bicycling from Ireland to Cape Town, South Africa, then flew across the Atlantic to Argentina to begin cycling north through the Americas. There’s my cousin who has spent the past ten years in Germany and France and is now back in Minnesota, contemplating whether or not to settle somewhere in these fifty states. Europe is tugging at her and she may very well head back to Germany. There’s another good friend who I met in the Peace Corps; I typically describe her as the “hardest working woman in development.” She’s currently studying at Emory University after spending four years in Lesotho working on HIV/AIDS projects. The next five to twenty years of her life could easily be spent living and working abroad in Africa and Southeast Asia.

The traveler in me is a little envious, romanticizing the thrill of the road and new people and places that I have yet to meet and see. I’ve had breathtaking experiences meeting relatives in Iceland and walking through the Hermitage of Braid and Blackford Hill in Edinburgh; white water rafting down the Nile in Uganda and exploring the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania; living in Wellington and stargazing in New Zealand’s Milford Sound; traveling near the Tibetan border in Yunan Province and ferrying down the Yangtze River; volunteering Lesotho, walking through Soweto, and running my first half marathon in Cape Town, South Africa.

But I’ve got a good thing going here in Minneapolis and I know from my experience as a continent hopper throughout my twenties that traveling often sounds far sexier than it actually is. Dysentery is not glamorous. Long waits for any form of transportation and the long, bumpy, dusty rides themselves get old. Unpredictable telephone and email access to friends and family back home is tough. Being broke and cheap doesn’t always feel exhilarating. The hardest part, I think, is leaving. I’ve met so many crazy, amazing people along the way and have said more than my fair share of goodbyes. Each time, though I may not show it, breaks my heart.

Don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t trade my tumultuous adventures abroad for anything in the world. Perhaps I’ll be traveling again someday before I know it. But for now, I am in love with a man who is love with me and we are planning our lives together. We have a house, our two dogs, and meaningful jobs that we like going to each morning. And I am not broke. Let me tell you that not being broke feels fabulous.

So for now, the big adventures in my life are not some strange food I tasted, a fellow traveler I’ve met, a new word I’ve learned, a cultural faux pas I’ve made, or some wonder of the world I’ve seen. My new explorations, while they may not sound so tantalizing, still fill me with hope and wonder and a sense of discovery. My crazy new experiences include building my life with Joe, opening a savings account and Roth IRA, taking the dogs to the dogpark, learning how to make a latte, and painting another room in the house in order to make our house feel like our home.

I’m developing a sense of home, which is something I didn’t have over the past ten to fifteen years of my life. Creating a home feels a bit weird sometimes – it’s uncharted territory, I suppose. But it fits with where I’m at and what I need. Moroho, my sleepy Afro-Lab, is curled up between Joe and me as we lie in bed. Oh sure, I’ll kick him out once I’m done with this blog, but being snuggled up in bed with my two favorite men feels pretty darn blissful right now. And I wouldn’t trade this for anything in the world either.

This morning feels like any other Sunday morning. I woke up at 7:30, roused myself out of bed, pulled a sweater over my head and padded into the living room to find Moroho sleeping. I rubbed his head and side while he lounged on the couch snuggled in a fleece blanket, thumping his tail against the cushion. Then I walked into the kitchen, ground a few tablespoons of Birchwood Blend Peace Coffee and brewed a pot of coffee. I let Koelle, our vigilant german shepherd, outside to protect our yard from the squirrel mafia.

I pulled two mugs from the cupboard, a white one for Joe with a picture of a lobster and Kennebunkport, Maine written in red, and an aqua mug for me displaying the famous landmarks of Philadelphia, which is penned in dark blue. I poured coffee into each cup, topping them with half ‘n’ half.

I brought the mugs to our bedroom, setting one on Joe’s bed stand and the other on mine, and raised the blinds. Moroho had sauntered into the bedroom while I was in the kitchen, climbed onto the bed and curled up in the warmth where I had been sleeping. Joe slowly opened his sleepy eyes and reached for his coffee. I whispered get up to Moroho. The three of us re-arranged our silent bodies. For an hour we rested quietly in the stillness of the morning while Koelle barked outside at the three or four neighbors walking their dogs past the yard.

I can sense that winter is right around the corner. Frost is smothering the lawns and blanketing the windows of parked cars lining the street. The trees, having shed all their leaves over the past month, stand naked. The gardens are now thickets of gray and rust-colored stalks with shriveled leaves. Crows squat on power lines a few houses down the block, cawing to their mates.

We are slowly beginning move around the room and soon will start our day – eat breakfast, feed the dogs, assemble shelves for the kitchen and embark on a five-mile run. But for now, it is still a sleepy, cold, sunny morning, full of reflection and possibility.

I’m sitting in Swede Hollow Café on East 7th Street in St. Paul, across the street from Metropolitan State University. I love this worn-in café, complete with exposed brick walls, tall ceilings and oversized wooden display cases that dwarf the baristas behind the counter. Handcrafted with swirled foam and a dark chocolate stir sticks, the lattes and cappuccinos offer far more character than the overpriced burnt brews at Starbucks. I can see that the locals like their little neighborhood coffee shop, too. I’m the only one stuck behind a laptop. Nearly everyone else is sitting across the table from a good friend or family member, talking earnestly about workplace politics or family relationships.

I’m pretty sure that my good friends and family members a little burnt out themselves listening to me talk earnestly about workplace politics. And so I type instead of talk.

I’m on my one-week reprieve between jobs, unwinding from my last position and trying not to get too worked up about the role I’m about to take on. As always, I have a hundred doubts circling through my head. What if I suck at my new job? What if I don’t like the new team? What if the new team doesn’t like me? What if my supervisor sends me repeated vibes that communicate the message I will bring you down on my way up? What if I can’t burn off the ten pounds that I gained after being stressed out and exhausted from the past four months at my old job? What if I’m entering Hell, Round 2?

Then again, what if the new position turns out to be a really good fit like I think it will? Over the weekend I visited with a good friend in Chicago who reminded me that the new team chose me for a reason. Something about my experience and our interactions told them that I would be a good fit. I, too, remember walking into the interviews – torn over my decision to leave the clinic, always being impressed with the organization and how my future supervisor allowed everyone to talk or ask questions. She even left the room and let the team interview me candidly for a good 30-45 minutes. It conveyed a sense of shared trust and tells me that they value someone who will be a team player.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that the new job will usher in a new set of workplace politics, but after my two twenty-six month stints at Maluti Hospital in Southern Africa and the community clinic in South Minneapolis, I’m sure I can figure it out. Quite frankly, the past four years have proved that I am a professional who is both adept at taking on increasing levels of responsibility and good at collaborating with people from diverse backgrounds. If I can get some confidence running through my veins, I’ll be great. So now my biggest task over the next six to twelve months is to get my professional self-esteem together while I learn a whole new side of health care.

Maybe I’m going through the big career lesson that women learn in our thirties: we can’t walk around indignant and wounded because someone else wants to maneuver around us on their way to the top. So, while we’re getting engaged and married, contemplating whether or not to have children, and wondering how children will change what we value and how we live, we’re also weighing the impact of work-related stress in our lives and on our families. These are major decisions that will define who we are and what we become over the next ten to twenty years of our lives. I just hope to make these decisions proactively and intentionally so that I can turn out to be a competent, authentic, caring, witty person and surround myself with other competent, authentic, caring, witty people, both at work and home.

Now that I’m entering my last week at the community clinic, I’m reminded of participating in a structured touchy feely activity towards the close of my Peace Corps Service in Lesotho. My fellow Peace Corps Volunteers and I endured many stuctured activities that required self-revelation and flip charts; very few of the activities made a lasting impression on me. One of the activities, though, I found surprisingly insightful. Each of the eighteen volunteers wrote down three to five things that we did not want to take home with us when we leave Lesotho on separate slips of paper. As we read aloud or silently contemplated each item we had written, we burned the slips of paper in a pot. The ashes were then used to fertilize a rose bush which will be planted outside the Peace Corps Office. The activity coordinator then read the Tao of Dying:

Show love toward one person,

And it will seem like you are being loved by two,

And it will feel like you are being loved by three,

And it will be like you are being loved by everyone.

You are half.

In loving the other, you are whole.

In being whole, you rest in completeness.

Resting in completeness, all will be accomplished.

I’m not a sentimental person, but this activity gave me a chance to let go of the anger I experienced at my site in Lesotho. At the time, I remember being under pressure from American medical visitors to flesh out their project ideas at Maluti Hospital. They would swoop into the hospital hoping to leave behind some sort of lasting legacy even though they were returning to the USA after three to four weeks in Lesotho. The visitors embodied a very common American attitude, well-intentioned and misguided, that left the heavy lifting and lack of resources to the people staying behind.

Had I learned how to trust my own strengths and judgment, I would have reacted to these pressures a bit more gracefully. The same could be said about my experience with the community clinic in South Minneapolis, and so my challenge this week is to go through the Tao of Dying as I leave the clinic this Friday. Oh sure, I’ve planned a happy hour on my last day. While two-for-one local beers do have a certain therapeutic value, I know I need to reflect more deeply about some of the pain and anger that led to my decision to leave. My hope is that by letting those feelings go I will be able to reflect on the wonderful relationships and professional growth I discovered at the clinic and focus on who I want to be going forward.

I’m not sure what exactly I’ll write down on those little slips of paper this time. I’ve spent a lot of the past three to four weeks reflecting on someone who has been the source of much of my frustration, trying to shift into place of acceptance and empathy towards them. They have not been straightfoward or honest with me and they have not been truthful in communicating my decision to leave to leadership. I find this heartbreaking more than anything. Through observation and reflection, though, I’ve come to see that this person is not evil or incompetent. They are ambitious and vulnerable, trying to navigate their way through their life just like me.

My hope is that by going through the ritual of the Tao of Dying, I can progess a little bit further in my journey towards becoming a more graceful person. And that means I’ll learn a little bit more about how to trust my own strengths and judgments while setting aside space for acceptance and empathy. Sometimes I wish I could shift into “complete maturity” in zero-to-six seconds, but the actual work appears to take decades’ worth of baby steps – indiscernable tectonic shifts, millimeter by millimeter, that gradully move mountains and redefine oceans.

Usually when I return to Sioux Falls I feel somewhat depressed: my mother’s health is bad; my father’s health is worsening; my parents are broke; I don’t have enough money to save for retirement, let alone fix their financial woes; my high school friends are putting on more weight; someone’s relationship is on the fritz; and another chain restaurant has reared it’s prosaic head on 41st Street.

This trip is a bit different. My mother’s health is fine. She has replaced a few teeth that had been missing for a year or two, she isn’t crippled with rheumatoid arthritis or fatigue, and so she’s up cleaning the refrigerator, cooking dinner, dabbling in her artwork, feeding the cat, shopping, going off to work at a framing gallery she co-owns, etc, etc. My father underwent a $42,000 angioplasty covered by the VA and can now walk 2, 3, even 5 miles and has lost nearly 20 pounds since I last saw him and is well on his way to losing 20 more pounds. My mother has inherited some money that is paying off her debts and setting herself up for retirement and, while my dad is only earning about $10,000/year, I’m starting to make enough money to save for my own retirement and see the possibility of offering him financial support in the future.

Plus, I’ve resigned from the community clinic and have accepted a new role at another health care organization. I’ll admit that the transition - like most transitions - is scary, but I know that I’ve made the right decision. Deciding to leave the community clinic was beyond heartbreaking for me because I’ve developed wonderful working relationships with dedicated colleagues across the clinic and I loved my work, my colleagues and the clinic’s mission. And I was damn good at my job and getting more and more competent with each passing month. My last performance evaluation was even filled with accolades from my colleagues. On many levels, this was the job of my dreams. Unfortunately, I was being bullied by one key staff member. The choice came down to this: stay at the clinic and take serious and repeated blows to my self esteem by this person, or leave the clinic and take my chances that my next workplace will develop my strengths.

We’ll see. Right now I’m amazed to have my personal life in order. Much of this is due to finding a wonderful man named Joe who is as crazy about me as I am about him and being in a kind, caring relationship with him. Another important piece of my personal life is having my finances in order - I’ve saved up eight months of living expenses, I’ve opened a Roth IRA and am on my way to maxing out my 2009 contribution, and I don’t have credit card debt.

Now it’s time to get my professional life in order. My new job is a few steps up in terms of pay and classification. From questions that I asked during the interview process, I think that I'm stepping into a good team with positive working relationships. My hope is that my new job will offer a more respectful, collegial work environment where I’m allowed to both work hard and maintain a healthy work/life balance. I find it so strange that the community clinic seems to be under the impression that desiring a work/life balance means that somehow I don’t want to work as hard anymore and yet nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I’ve always found that I’m more productive when I’m able to take a meaningful break from my work - whether it means that I can leave work at work when I go home for the day or that I’m able to take regular time off. In the past year, for example, I accumlated roughly 160 hours of comp time, used 8 days of sick time and took only 2 vacation days. I think this is a very counter-productive cocktail.

And so my challenge is before me. If anyone out there in blogger world has any advice or personal experience with switching jobs or achieving work/life balance, please share them with me. It’s such a tricky thing to do in the United States where we generally don’t value our “non-productive” personal or family time, but I’m hell-bent on finding this balance.

I first remember meeting Joe on the corner of 54th Street and Hiawatha in South Minneapolis. I was on a seven-mile run on a wintry March day. Joe was running with his nine-month-old german shepherd puppy, who leapt up to greet me as we waited for the traffic light to change. “Is he friendly?” I hesitated, hoping that the answer was yes. Joe fumbled with the dog leash and removed his earphones underneath a red Peruvian tuque. “Is he friendly?” I repeated.

“Yes, he’s very friendly.”

No longer nervous about his dog, I took a good look at Joe. I loved everything about him in that moment. I noticed his tortoise shell glasses and red woolly hat and was impressed that he was running with his dog on a cold March morning. As the lights changed and we crossed Hiawatha Avenue, I told him that I wished my dog would run with me. Then we parted ways: he headed south along the bike path and I turned north along the river road. I looked back at him, thinking he was the most handsome man I’d seen and that he was probably in a well adjusted, committed relationship with some ultra fit Minnesota wonder babe.

What didn’t know at the time was not only that Joe was single, but that he and I also share a sometimes over-developed introverted streak. I saw him frequently over the next five months and became both giddier and shier each time. I never dared to find out if he was in some fabulous relationship because I couldn’t even summon the courage to ask for his name, so I referred to him as German Shepherd Man. “Ooh! I saw German Shepherd Man on the light rail today!” I would coo to my friends.

“Did you talk to him?” Ian would ask, clearly impatient with my lack of initiative.

“Well, no.”

“Don’t talk to me until you talk to him.” Ian replied flatly.

In mid-July during a weekly outing to Minnehaha Dog Park with my four friends and our four hounds, I admitted that I had a crush on someone whom I called German Shepherd Man. Aimee, the most gregarious member of the crew and a german shepherd owner herself, pressed for details. I mentioned where I had seen him and described his glasses, hair color and body type. We weaved through the park, meandering down to the sandy shores of the Mississippi River where we played fetch with our dogs. Fifteen minutes later I saw Joe walking his is puppy 200 yards down the shore from us. “That’s him – down there with the german shepherd.” I told my friends.

“He has a german shepherd!” Aimee charged off, “What’s his name? I’ll go talk to him.”

“I don’t know his name,” I said. “Aimee, wait! I can’t meet him today. I’m wearing my high school gym shorts and I haven’t showered.”

“We’ll talk about german shepherds and how sexy you are! Prrrrrrrrr!” she buzzed, already 25 yards ahead of me.

Despite my profound embarrassment at the time, I must credit Aimee and her husband Dave for introducing Joe and me. Without them, we might still be glancing furtively at one another, wondering what each others name is. Joe and I spent the next two months eying each other on the light rail and at the dog park where we chitchatted in an awkward yet exhilarating manner. Then one Friday morning in September I asked him to join me at the dog park after work with my friends. He agreed. After the dog park outing, I asked him if he would like to go to Oktoberfest on Saint Anthony Main in Minneapolis the next day. He said he would. We exchanged phone numbers and met at the 46th Street Station Lightrail stop the next day at 1:30pm.

And I suppose the rest is history.

Last night I sat across from Joe with a flight of Pinot Noirs, artichoke dip and a wood fired pizza between us. As the first glass of Pinot washed over me, I got all blissed out about my life. Here sat this wonderful man with whom I am deeply in love and the Montes from Chile made my affection feel even more fruit-forward with robust infusions of smoke and cherry. Our dogs have stopped barking now that we’ve installed the PetSafe® Outdoor Bark Control, a small birdhouse-like contraption that uses ultrasonic sound to deter barking. Let me tell you that it is the best $48.95 I have spent on Moroho the tenor Afro-Lab and Koelle the baritone German Shepherd. And in ten days I’ll have completed my second marathon and can then return to weekends filled with much more tolerable five to ten mile runs.

Most importantly, though, I don’t have to return to work for two weeks. Over the past six months I’ve accrued over 60 hours of comp time and now I’ve finally fought off enough people at work so that I can take the time off. What I don’t understand, though, is why my sanity had to go completely down the tubes before anyone started thinking of dumping their workloads in more appropriate places instead of on my desk. Sorry to toot my own horn, but being relatively competent at my job (and the jobs of a few of my colleagues) can be a real curse. I’ve built up a little reputation for getting work done in a timely, high-quality manner, but my colleagues are not rewarding me with accolades or awards. Oh no. They reward me with more work, often with work that is supposed to be done by other people who make significantly more money than me.

I left work yesterday brain dead, practically drooling out of one side of my mouth, and far too zombie-like to feel bitter. Sharing a few drinks and a lovely meal with Joe at the Riverside Wine Bar last night was a perfect start to what I hope will be a rejuvenating vacation to the Pacific Northwest. Over the next two weeks I hope to reflect on my career and my sanity. While I won’t be thinking of work per se, I will be thinking about whether or not I want to continue working where I work and how long I see myself lasting there before I burn out next. Balance is a big theme popping up on my life’s wish list, and I’m not sure if I can find this balance anytime soon.

The Part II of the Doggone Dogsitting fiasco is that four of my friends have stopped talking with me over this incident. For a few weeks I was confused about the brief, civil comments I received over the phone indicating that they wanted to end my call as quickly as possible. On my runs through Minnehaha Park, I would see their cars at the dogpark and wonder why I hadn’t been invited like we always did in the past. No one is talking with me anymore, and so I’m left with an unconfirmed notion is that all of these former friends somehow disproportionately blame Joe and me for Maya’s distress.

Now I’m wondering how I could have befriended people who are so petty that none of them can talk with me about what exactly has upset them so much or are willing to examine what happened from my perspective. “If you don’t know then I’m certainly not going to tell you” doesn’t sit well with me, nor did it when I was in junior high. Two of these friends are a couple that I’ve known for roughly ten years and none of the dogs in this fiasco were theirs. I can understand why Aimee & Dave might not be so impressed with me, but I think they’ve got a lot of owning up to do themselves. They left us with a poorly behaved dog and should have made a stronger effort to pick her up sooner once we contacted them about her stress signs.

Was I perfect at all times? Hell, no. Towards the end of the first long weekend with Maya, I stopped talking to Joe for five hours. I was pissed off that the two german shepherds couldn’t get along and that we had promised to take on Maya for another weekend. Instead of taking out my frustration on the dogs, I took it out on Joe and that wasn’t fair to anyone. After we cried and talked it over, Joe hinted to Aimee & Dave that perhaps they should find another place for Maya the following weekend, but they didn’t pick up on his suggestion.

When Aimee called later that week, chirping about how good it was of Joe & me to take on Maya for one more weekend, I vowed to be much firmer about setting boundaries in our house. I also promised myself that I would call my friends or my father to vent or seek advice when I became exasperated with the dogs’ behavior so that I wouldn’t take my frustrations out on Joe or the dogs. Psyching myself up for the second weekend, I told Aimee & Dave that “Maya is bringing out my strict, German great-grandmother in me” and I think they may have equated strict with mean. I needed one place in my house that could remain clean, safe and calm and that place was my bedroom. Because Maya frequently urinated in the house and readily jumped over baby gates with muddy paws, I made our bedroom completely off-limits to her using the command out.

Mean had nothing to do with setting boundaries. Strict simply meant keeping a close eye on Maya and being absolutely consistent with her. In fact, I rarely had to raise my voice with Maya during the second weekend. I spoke in a calm (almost quiet), assertive tone and used my body to calmly guide her out of the room or body-block her from entering. She challenged this boundary several times and I calmly and consistently re-enforced it each and every time. If her behavior became inappropriately volatile, such as playing too roughly indoors or fighting with Koelle, I would crate her and babygate him in the kitchen until they calmed down. (I would have gladly babygated her in a room. Because she routinely leapt over babygates, I used her crate to control her movement.)

The second weekend was going so much more smoothly than the first weekend. By setting firm boundaries, I found that dogsitting Maya didn’t have to be a crazy, volatile experience. I even began thinking that perhaps Joe and I would be able to dogsit Maya in the future – not anytime soon, but perhaps after Koelle had grown out of his energetic adolescent years. Unfortunately, within 12 hours of having this thought, Maya figured out how to escape from our backyard. I worried about her being hit by a car since we live close to Hiawatha, a major thoroughfare through Minneapolis. After she lunged at a neighbor sitting inside his car next to our house, however, I knew that dogsitting her in the future wouldn’t be an option. I can put up with correcting bad behavior (both in myself and in the dog), but I cannot risk the safety of my neighbors. Nor am I willing to jeopardize the relationships with our neighbors, particularly when it could have negative repercussions on our own dogs.

Meanwhile, though Joe and I were separating Koelle and Maya more often, they were still getting into tense fights. And now we found that we couldn’t separate them by allowing muddy Maya to stay outside while babygating muddy Koelle in the kitchen. Instead, the crate because our option of last resort. When Maya became distressed, right about this time (and I can’t blame her), Joe called Aimee and Dave about returning to the Twin Cities early to get pick up their dog. Like I wrote in my last blog, she panted non-stop for at least 12 hours, hid under furniture and clung to Joe and me. We didn’t call Aimee and Dave because we were at the end of our ropes; we called them because Maya was at the end of hers.

A few weeks later, when I realized that my friends weren’t speaking with me, I again turned to other dog-loving friends to get some perspective on the fiasco. My biggest question for them centered on whether setting boundaries for dogs is intrinsically abusive. Had I done all of this? I talked with my friend Sara who adopted a Great Pyrenees from a local rescue organization. No one could argue that Sara doesn’t spoil her dog – Hannibal gets the freshest, meatiest dog food and organic homemade treats, a special cooling mattress for a bed, the best veterinary care and a small SUV purchased specifically to haul his fluffy white butt around town.

Still, she asserts that she treats her dog like a dog. “Dogs need to be at the bottom of the pack – they need an alpha leader. There are three things that, as an alpha, I control: food; sleep; and movement. As an alpha, I determine where and when my dog will do these three things.” She told me that, soon after rescuing Hannibal, she invested in a canine behavioralist to help her and her family deal with some of his problem behaviors. As it turned out, Sara and her family also had a few bad habits of their own and to re-train themselves to interact more consistently with Hannibal. They had to learn how to act as alphas in order to set appropriate boundaries with food, sleep and movement. Now they have a calmer, well-defined pack and a well-adjusted, well-behaved dog.

Another friend commented on what sometimes happens when couples without children feel that their dogs are their children. “For couples who are replacing children and parenting roles with dogs, anything that you do to question their style is taken very personally. And [not setting boundaries] is also bull shit - dogs, like children, need boundaries.” Elysia has worked with many parents who equate the act of setting boundaries for their children with stifling expression and lowering self-esteem. Unfortunately, it’s these very children that end up with bad behavioral problems – they feel fine about lying, cheating or stealing because they weren’t taught that these behaviors are unacceptable. Her comments echoed an article by Steve Salerno that I read recently. Salerno examines Americans’ fixation with positive thinking; basically, it doesn’t matter how poorly we perform (or behave) as long as we feel good about ourselves. While Salerno isn’t specifically citing the lack of boundary setting for children in his article, he does explore the darker side of falsely praising students for poor performance and shielding them from the consequences of their behavior. What happens is that children develop a narcissistic sense of entitlement and an exaggerated sense of one’s place in the world. In the doggie world, one might think of these children inappropriately assuming an alpha status and dictating when it gets to eat, sleep and move.

I’m going to wrap up this blog because I must continue with my day, if not my life. I have a piece of sectional furniture to see and 11 miles to run. As I have often said in the past, writing helps me process my thoughts when I’m feeling torn or burnt out. Writing these two recent blogs makes me look over the relationships with these four friends and the dogsitting fiasco and realize two things. First, I’ve spent a ridiculous about of time worrying my pretty little head over such a tiny little matter. There is a H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic brewing out there in the world, millions of folks are still losing their homes to foreclosure and, as far as I know, HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria are still wreaking havoc around the globe. A few white middle class people getting uptight over dogs is far from headline news. Second, my friends are being incredibly lame and they have treated me poorly. If someone wants to scrap a ten- to fifteen-year friendship with me because they perceive that I treated someone else’s misbehaved dog badly AND doesn’t have the balls to talk with me about whatever it is that is truly upsetting them, then c’est la vie. I’m a big girl and I can find other friends who have better perspective on life.

Four of my dogpark friends are taking a sabbatical from me. The sabbatical started somewhere in mid to late March as Joe and I were ending what turned out to be serious lapse in judgment, that is, we agreed to dogsit for a three-year-old, female german shepherd “princess” named Maya for two long weekends in a row. We naively agreed to take on this challenge before our own two male dogs – Moroho & Koelle - had fully negotiated a peace agreement among themselves.

Both Joe and I really wanted to help out our friends, Aimee and Dave, who had taken care of our dogs when we went to Obama’s Inauguration in Washington, DC and left for my grandmother’s funeral on short notice later in February. We thought about how well our dogs got along with Maya at the dogpark and in Aimee & Dave’s backyard. We also overlooked two auspicious details: a) Koelle is a male german shepherd on the cusp between adolescence and adulthood – a time when status becomes important to dogs; and b) the play between Koelle and Maya often became volatile whenever Joe was around – meaning that our house may not be the most idyllic spot in the world for Koelle & Maya.

Still, we agreed to take in another german shepherd for seven long, muddy spring days and, like all german shepherds, she and Koelle got as mucky as possible whenever possible, which was pretty much every single time we let them out the door. I would have coped just fine if two filthy dogs and a muddy kitchen floor were all I had to handle on those two long weekends. Oh sure, I may have rolled my eyes and exhaled a bit more melodramatically than usual, but all in all, I would have been A-Okay. I wear rubber boots in the spring, Joe & I have a sturdy mop and plenty of Murphy’s Oil Soap and Moroho is pretty much self-cleaning – no big deal.

Unfortunately, there was more. Much, much more. I could go on at length and, believe me, I called close friends and family spewing frustrations and seeking advice on handling dogs. Maya repeatedly jumped up on Joe & me (one behavior I absolutely will not tolerate) and knocked photographs & artwork off of bookshelves and countertops. She jumped over baby gates in our house and tracked mud through the living room. She hurdled over the couch and peed on the couch. Hell, she peed on everything, including our feet on a daily basis. She repeatedly escaped from our backyard – with or without being attached to a long leash – and lunged at a neighbor.

Nearly in tears, I called my father and told him what had been happening. I had invested one-on-one time with Maya, playing fetch and practicing sit, stay and release. Joe & I had tried to take the dogs to the dogpark and let them play in the backyard, but Maya & Koelle’s fighting got out of control. We leashed the dogs at the park, confined them in separate areas of the house, and tried not to leave them unsupervised. The situation was increasingly frustrating. I saw that Maya could be a sweet dog, but I didn’t think that destroying our backyard, risking our neighbors’ safety or living in a house unsafe for all the canines living under its roof should be part of the dogsitting agreement. “Dad, am I being too hard on this dog?”

My father replied, in a matter-of-fact tone, “A well-behaved dog is an easy dog to love.” And he’s right. It’s really hard to love a dog that snaps at neighbors, destroys your backyard, pees on your feet, knocks personal relics off of bookshelves and fights with your own dog. No one in this house – except for Moroho, who slept through the entire fiasco – was comfortable. Koelle was anxious and peed in the house. Maya was anxious and peed in the house. Joe & I were exhausted and our house was a wreck.

I will admit that I selfishly wanted Maya out of our home, but I also knew that our home wasn’t a safe environment for Maya either. This had been a lose-lose situation for everyone involved. Towards the end of the second week, after Koelle appeared to gain dominance over her, it was obvious that Maya was stressed. She started panting late Sunday night and continued panting for the next 12 hours. She hid under furniture and clung the sides of Joe and me. Joe called Aimee & Dave, telling them about Maya’s anxiety and suggesting that they return to get her as soon as possible. We worried that something – physical, mental or situational – was wrong. We knew that it was time for her to go home.

For New Years 2009, I’ve been asked to share a recipe. The problem is that I rarely follow recipes, which is probably why I’m posting this entry so late. Oh sure, I crave structure and feel that recipes can serve as nice guidelines, but as long as I’m not interfering too much with the laws of chemistry that apply to baking I can generally take a recipe anywhere I want it to go. Otherwise, I consult with my brother Andrew, who doesn’t really believe in defining ingredients in teaspoons, cups or pounds, and tends to give instructions based on generalities. In fact, my brother purses his lips when I press him for specifics, “You give the same recipe to twenty people and you’ll get twenty different results.”

Typically I endorse my brother’s method to cooking because he’s a damn fine cook and traditionally my family turns to him to create festive meals. He adds an artistic, personal flare to his cooking and has a responsive nature in everything he does. But he is not a pragmatist like me. Instead, he is stealthy breed, easily diverted by things of personal interest and not intimidated by price tags or spilling food on other people’s floors. He is a sensitive, creative type and, as a result, we spend an inordinate amount of time rolling our eyes at each other.

Though I’m sure that my brother finds us pragmatic folks uptight and restrictive, I often find him infuriating in an endearing sort of way. For example, he’ll show up late when we’re leaving town for my grandmother’s funeral, but he’s almost always willing to help me move heavy furniture across state lines on a moment’s notice. Or he won’t feel obligated to participate in conversation. I have stood at a meat counter in an upscale grocery market discussing Thanksgiving dinner with Andrew as we waited for the man behind the counter to package our pork tenderloin (for which I was footing the bill) only to turn my head and find that I was talking to myself. Five rows away he was investigating the bulk spice area, sniffing the herbs de provence and fresh pepper.

Perhaps Andrew hoped that living in Africa for two years would have allayed my desire to promote conversation or structure activities in a reciprocal, semi-predictable manner. Unfortunately, his complete lack of urgency still makes me swear like a sailor. My grandmother’s funeral took place in Southwestern Minnesota over the weekend and when we encountered white out conditions five miles south of Mankato, we backtracked to the Holiday Inn to wait out the storm. In the morning, Andrew didn’t feel the need to wake up early, have his dress clothes in the hotel room, or pack his duffel bag on time. I checked out and got directions to Hendricks, MN and Andrew dawdled around the lobby. As Joe and I stepped on the elevator to the parking garage, Andrew decided to hunt down a pack of gum. He fed a dollar into a vending machine and took a few more minutes coming to terms with his loss after it didn’t deliver the gum. About 40 miles down Highway 14, he asked to stop at a gas station to use the restroom, where he spent another 15 to 20 minutes with the door locked.

I practiced Lamaze in the car.

Whether you’re roasting your first pork loin or driving to a funeral, Andrew feels that the destination is far more important than any prescribed journey; so we rolled up to my grandmother’s funeral fifteen minutes late to find a room full of 100 people and an open casket waiting for us to arrive. To him, we made it to the funeral. It doesn’t matter whether we left on time or arrived late because the point is that we made it to our destination. He treats any itinerary as a general roadmap and demands – whether he realizes it or not – that those around him improvise and adjust their plans. This was probably a very good stance to take since our plans had to respond to an overflowing toilet Friday morning, a flat tire later that afternoon and abysmal weather Friday night and Saturday morning. As a process-oriented person, though, I typically insist (unsuccessfully) that we stick to the time-specific preferences of others no matter how impossible the circumstances.

I’ve strayed from the original request that I write about a recipe. In January, when I thought I could stay on topic, I asked Andrew about his view on recipes and he gave me a list of good reasons for not following them. Ingredients may be in or out of season, stovetops and ovens are calibrated differently, and not all cookware is alike. Maybe he accepts that, more or less, life is a crapshoot and you’re better off embracing the fact that there really aren’t any set rules or recipes. So you might as well calm down, see what happens and respond accordingly. Now, I doubt I’ll ever become as laissez-faire about life as Andrew, but having him for a brother does help me keep perspective – even when we are fifteen minutes late to a funeral in Southwestern Minnesota.

It’s official, folks, I am back in the United States of America. This past Friday afternoon I met my Uncle Rick at Door 3 on the lower level of the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport, loaded down with one over-stuffed Kelty backpack, one heavily weighted Kathmandu backpack, one bursting SwissGear computer pack, and a ratty tote bag containing my passport, U.S. dollars, the August edition of Runner’s World-South Africa, my journal, and one worn Old Navy flip flop (I lost the right flop in the Chicago O’Hare Airport). I waited outside Door 3 with my hair pulled back, wearing blue hospital scrubs, a black tank top thrown over a white sports bra, and my dust-stained running shoes, perching on my tiptoes to spot my uncle’s black Toyota Camry over the rooftops of minivans and SUVs.

Mostly I saw hordes of white Minnesotans re-uniting with hugs and smiles after one or two weeks apart, like a little seven-year-old boy running towards his grandparents to show off his stuffed animal beaver and recount his newly acquired knowledge on beaver habitats in Michigan. I noticed Somali and Latino airport staff and a large African American man picking up his buddy who carried two gym bags and a suitcase.

After heaving my bags into my uncle’s trunk, we drove to Café Latte on Grand Avenue in St. Paul. I ordered a chai tea latte and a slice of chocolate orange cake. We found a table near a large window facing Grand; my uncle let me sit where I could watch the passersby and we gabbed for about an hour, touching on the highlights of each other’s lives over the past two years. Then I ran across the street to JCrew and purchased a pair of chinos, flip flops, and two lightweight long-sleeved t-shirts. After thirty-five hours of traveling, I finally ripped off my scrubs and running shoes and pranced out of the store in the chinos and flip flops with a sigh of relief. Next I darted over to the Aveda Juut Salon and treated myself 4.2 fluid ounces of Sap Moss Conditioning Detangler.

My uncle then drove me to my friend’s apartment on Grand Avenue in Minneapolis where I’m staying for the week before heading back to South Dakota. He left and I went for a run around the neighborhood in running shorts that I never dared to wear in Lesotho - I simply could not show that much leg in Mapoteng. To be honest, though, I probably shouldn’t show so much leg in the Twin Cities since my pale calves and quads haven’t seen the sun for two years. One block away I saw a friend from college with her two-year-old daughter and we exchanged quick hellos and promises to get in touch this week. I ran past another college friend’s house and left a note on his porch. Afterwards I looped back the apartment, breathing in the warm, humid Minnesota air.

I took a quick shower to get ready for another college friend’s wedding celebration. While I was away, he met a man and they got married last month in Montreal. Their friends held a celebration for them in Plymouth, a suburb of Minneapolis. So there I sat on a long white couch with my best friend from college, Elysia (one of the groom’s former girlfriend of two years), sipping a pomegranate cosmo in an artsy house in the burbs surrounded by gay men and 3-D inspired paintings while a black shitzu scouted for spring roll and organic mozzarella crumbs. Now, I can’t say that I felt culture shock per se, but the soirée seemed like a bizarre cultural non sequitur, especially when the party favors included the world’s largest condom and a “Dick-orette” patch and the wedding cake was topped with two topless male wrestling figures.

Elysia and I left around 11:30pm, about an hour after a jetlag-induced coma set in. She drove me back to the apartment in Minneapolis. We walked into the apartment and I kicked off my shoes, flipped on the bedroom light, and out swooped a bat. Being proper Minnesotans, we expressed fear in hushed whispers and I hid behind the bedroom door. Elysia, being infinitely braver than I, searched for a trash bin and cardboard lid while the bat swept through the rooms. I remained hiding. She caught the bat and escorted it outdoors. Whew!

Finally, I went to sleep around 1:00am after my first day back in America.

The past few days I've had Europe's "Final Countdown" humming across my chapped lips. In fact, just now I googled "Europe + Final Countdown" and that new-fangled site called YouTube pulled up their 1986 rock video. Look at all that hair! That gloriously well-kept buttrocker hair, not to mention the synthesizer and electric guitar rift. Fascinating.

You know, YouTube wasn't around when I left the States two years ago, and iPod ownership has increased exponentially since I've been gone. When my group entered Lesotho in June 2005, only two of us brought iPods. I was not one of the technologically advanced two. These days, practically everyone brings an iPod to Lesotho, even to the remote areas of Mokhotlong and Thaba Tseka.

Others are now toting MacBook Pro laptops that have phased out the phoneline jacks for dial-up internet connections - it's like the bittersweet passing of eight-tracks and cassette tapes all over again. Believe me, my childhood would have meant nothing without Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues eight-track played in my father's white 1982 Ford SuperCab truck. My brother's adolescence, in fact, was designed around his Def Leppard and Whitesnake cassettes. And now eight tracks and cassette tapes are gone, gone, gone.

Continuing on this eighties theme, I remember releasing my brother's turtles into the Sioux River in Sioux Falls, South Dakota as a kid. Every summer he would catch snapping turtles, painted turtles, and box turtles and keep them as pets, sometimes for a few months, sometimes for a year. When he would release them back into the river, they would often paddle around in a 12" x 30" space similar to the size of the aquariums he had kept them in at home. It took a few minutes before the turtles realized that their world had opened up and that they were indeed back where they belonged; that is, they were home.

Maybe that's how I'm feeling, too. I'm less than one week away from re-entry into my "natural environment" in the Midwest United States. I have a feeling that I'll try to make my world smaller and more manageable for a few months. I may not feel that the Twin Cities are my home or that there is an expanded world before me. But hopefully, after a little while, I'll splash around outside of the space I know and slip back into my home.

I have two weeks remaining at my site and twenty-two days before I return to the United States of America. Sometimes I look at my calendar and wonder if I can make it through these last few weeks and other times I panic about how many errands I have yet to run. When things like dead bodies in the water supply and venereal diseased dogs in chemotherapy polka dot the events of the past few weeks, I’m scared to think what else could happen before I hand in my house keys. I still have to pack up my house, mail a box or two home, paint a couple walls, burn my holey underwear before the village kids run off with it, find a loving home for Half Wit (my kitten), sweet talk the Wellness Center doctor into co-authoring an article on HIV counseling & testing with me, sort my computer files, organize hard files containing the work I’ve completed over the last two years, apply for jobs, close my Lesotho bank account, and watch the entire season three of Grey’s Anatomy with some fellow volunteers.

The upside is that the Wellness Center staff came through for me on the PEPFAR-funded HIV/AIDS education materials, so that project is nearly complete. The downside is that PEPFAR has really silly, overly-involved reporting requirements considering the fact that their $2500 contribution isn’t a huge some of money in the fundraising world.

After finishing the PEPFAR reporting and the rest of my to-do list, I’ll drop off a few stool samples at Peace Corps Medical, submit a Description of Service and my keys to the Peace Corps Admin staff, sign a million or so forms, and I’m good to go! I’m excited to see family and friends, but I’m anxious about heading off into the great unknown – that is, America. For example, new volunteers have asked me what I’ll do when I go home and are stunned to find out that I’m not exactly sure. “I dunno, maybe I’ll live in my mother’s basement and slip into a deep depression until I get a decent job offer. Or maybe I’ll pose as an Australian and buy an Amtrak rail pass for Canada and the United States. Who’s to say?”

The volunteers who are leaving Lesotho with me seem to understand. Many of us have vague notions about what could happen or what might happen, but we’re pretty much open to backpacking through East Africa, bumming around India, hitchhiking to Vancouver, attending grad school in Philadelphia, breaking up with boyfriends, applying to the U.S. Postal Service, or all of the above. We’re flexible like that. However, I think some of our more responsible, dare I say respectable, family members pray that we would settle down and (finally) earn a real income. Maybe save for that retirement account or purchase dental insurance. Something a bit more mundane.

Mundane, however, sounds threatening right now. One of the first understatements I penned in my journal when I arrived at Maluti Hospital in August 2005 was, “Life is going to be different for a while.” The same surely applies to the next few months as I make sense of my two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer, adjust to the United States, and rid myself of a few bad habits I developed in Lesotho. Many western folks in Southern Africa “adjust” to their circumstances by over-eating, drinking, smoking (up), forsaking personal hygiene, and/or swearing. I developed a wicked vocabulary that won’t translate well to daily life in the Midwest. One cannot pace around mumbling “holy fucking monkey balls” and expect the family to understand. No one will serve me a second helping of hotdish with a potty mouth like that.

Luckily, Peace Corps gives us vouchers for three free counseling sessions when we return to the U.S. Perhaps a nice professional counselor in khaki Dockers will teach me to replace the phrase “shitters titters” with “oh for shoot!” He might even help me to embrace generous benefit packages with ten vacation days per year. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll re-learn that stashing my money and cell phone in my bra is inappropriate when paying for rechargeable batteries at Target. We’ll see.

Whatever my prognosis, the next few months promise to be messy and unique, just like the rest of my Peace Corps Service. Please bear with me.

Well, it’s been snowing in Lesotho. The landscape is truly beautiful and, what’s more, I got to pummel snowballs at the Hospital Superintendent with reckless abandon. Of course, I am mindful not to use the yellow snow, unlike my two brothers about twenty years ago.

Walking through Mapoteng yesterday, I found this snow man (ntate oa lehloa) and a horde of teenage boys to accompany him. Maybe I should call him "Ntate Frosty."

Some days I think to myself, “Huh, I wonder what it’s like to have a series of predictable moments in life?” Would I find the chain of predictable moments kind of endearing like an old childhood blanket or would I simply be under-stimulated? Please, someone remind me what it’s like to wake up to National Public Radio in the morning, shower, brew a pot of coffee, go to work, check email, use the Xerox machine, obtain a few signatures, break for coffee, write a memo, do lunch, check email, facilitate a meeting, use the toilet, reply to emails, leave the office, go home, let the dog outside to pee, switch on the local news, cook dinner, eat dinner, take a walk, come home, watch a prime time drama, brush your teeth, curl up in bed with a book, and doze off to sleep.

Because that is not my life these days. Instead, I return home from an outing in Teyateyaneng (TY) on a minibus taxi carrying sixteen passengers and blaring Michael Bolton and Celine Dion to learn that a dead body has been floating around in my water supply for about a week. Apparently, a suicidal patient disappeared from the hospital wards sometime during the past week and staff found the badly bloated and partially decomposed body in one of the hospital’s water tanks this morning.

Obviously this event is wrong on so many levels that I won’t go into right now, but the thing is that I’m awfully thirsty and completely grossed out. I would genuinely prefer not to text message Peace Corps Medical on a Saturday evening with the following: “Hi, if there has been a dead human body floating around in the hospital’s water tank – my water supply – should I be concerned?”

Then again, what I do say to the Hospital Administration and health care providers? “Hello, how’s it going? Say, could you do me little favor? Really, it’s not a big deal or anything, but it would be just super if you could keep track of the patients so they don’t end up in our water supply. Thanks for looking into that for me.”

I doubt anyone’s head will roll for this debacle. Needless to say, I continue to boil my water and run it through my Peace Corps issued filter, as I have done for the past two years. I just gag a lot more this weekend when I drink it. Savor a nice tall glass of cool water for me, everyone. I’m almost home.