Skinny Love.

Sitting near an open window proves challenging for me for a number of reasons. The first might be that my contact with the outside world is often just walking from my house to a vehicle then from vehicle to buildings on campus. Sometimes I walk out of my building or end up a little farther afield and am reminded that there is more than just off white walls and dark city streets. While it is a hard to be removed from the outside these glimmers of light and colour, a cool breeze across collar bones, is what i live for. Today was a perfect fall day. The whole air smelt of it and everything was saturated with colour. Red leaves, grass still so green, sky blue. The whole day was a gift.

I spent much of the middle of it caught by every rustle of breeze I glimpsed through the open window. Feeling my muscles tighten under my skin at the touch of a breeze. I wanted to be out there, in it all. Funny enough I should have known this would happen. I am past my 4 month rule and it is fall. Those things in combination make it next to impossible to sit still, to be in the moment, to be here. Itchy feet and a persistent need for change drive all the fibbers of my being and yet... I have committed to something for the first time in as long as I can remember. It feels good but, like birds migrating south for the winter, my heart pulls me towards newness, adventure, something different. Something more. Not that I can handle more right now, I am so saturated.

To end the story on a high note I did get outside today. My jacket abandoned and the cool fall breeze bringing much needed colour to my cheeks. I found solace in the trees of campus and in the golden light of evening. This nervous energy will just have to be tamed and i must convince my heart not to try to run this time.

Sandpaper Kisses

I collect words and images. I have books, journals, memory cards, hard drives and 2 computers full of them. Ideas and memories, my own or others, fill the spaces of my room, my heart and my mind.

It is with such care that I picked tonight out of time and space. I don't often get time to myself in this city. More precious still is driving time. Alone in a vehicle is pure magic to me. Tonight was a taste of that freedom and independence and it tugged hard and fast at the heart strings in my chest. Warm air when it is cool and damp out side and tunes on the stereo make life sweet. I was strategic tonight, knowing I had about 15 minutes of quality time driving back from an enlightening dinner on the north shore. I put on a little Bon Iver and settled into the drivers seat. Crossing the bridge with the lights leading me home I was struck. Struck by the lack of space. I have felt this weight, this pressure like not being able to catch my breath. It is better when I am busy, it is better when I am out on campus, near more open ocean. Tonight, after too many to be coincidental, talks of what makes Albertans special it all came up at once. I was wracked with longing for big sky, open land, space to breath and move and figure it all out. To be fair I have a pretty exceptional case of cabin fever these days which plays a role. Weaving my way through stanley park, the fog rolling across the road, all I could think of was snow. How there were just things we did and do to get through the winters at home. How those things were what bonded us together. How Albertans are the kind of people who embrace that. They don't shy away.

I am learning a lot lately about what it means to have character.  It keeps coming back to setbacks, obstacles,  challenges and the choices we make as a result. Hardship teaches us about ourselves and makes each subsequent hardship a little easier to deal with. It is all about grace.

Days like this.

When it rains it pours. Today was one of those days in Vancouver. I stepped out of my car at the other end of West 4th and was hit with fat drops, soaking the canvas of my shoes, sliding off the protective finish of my coat. Life was like this today as well.

It's hard not to create, to open up possibilities when honesty is so profoundly saturated in my life these days. It all started with a trip to the career centre at school. I have been avoiding meeting with my counsellor mostly because I don't have a clear picture of what I want. The fact that so many others seemed to have a path and I didn't scared me. What I didn't get was that was the point. I have half an hour of prime time with someone who is doing what I want to do. Who has the resources, advice and guidance that is so valuable to me. I missed out a bit simply because I didn't cowboy up and get myself into her office. That being said after our chat I feel I so clear. It all feels like it is going to fall into place, it is exciting and there are opportunities I wasn't even aware of. I walked away from our meeting feeling empowered, excited and a little lighter. I was on the road, I have direction... just not destination.

Luckily I had a half hour break then off to my leadership coaching session. This is where the magic happens folks. I came in with my breakthroughs and learnings from the last month but what I really wanted to dig into were two distinctions. First I was intrigued about my seemingly conflicting values of being authentic and being liked. We dug into what that looks like, how those two aspects can be defined and redefined to fit together. Lately I have seen that they really are one and the same and who knows... I can get on board with the idea that I really only want people to like me if they like me for who I am.

The other piece, and perhaps more up the alley of this writing here was the entangled, integrated, cycle of learning and creativity in my life. It started talking about not having enough time to put into my writing and photography that I would ideally like to but grew from there. We talked about this. Yup, Heart Skipped A Beat. And it turns out, as you probably know, that this means the world to me. It is my practice field. It is my lens not only to view my world and those in but to be viewed through in turn. There is no re-describing, there is no looking good, there is no miscommunication. This is who I am. It is me at my most vulnerable. Really, it is me at my peak. A little insight into the mind of one other person. It is my forum for learning and for creativity.

We talk about what we would save from a fire, if we only get to salvage what we can carry in our arms.
What I am learning about what I value is that it has less and less to do with money, with material things and more and more all it has to with is words, images and putting it all together.

"It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most."

Yesterday was huge for me. It was day 7 with less than acceptable levels of sleep and long as prairies are flat. Days like this only mean one thing. Change.

I sat in a room for 2 hours yesterday learning a little something about creativity and collaboration. As part of this amazing program a trio of musicians were brought in, along with a composer to help us understand the creative process a little bit better. I connected to this in a number of ways but what struck me most was when the composer spoke to consistency, to practice, to sitting down to create everyday whether brilliance was flowing or not. This is writing to me. This is photography. If I do not practice I find inspiration less. If this blog has taught me nothing it is that, like Picasso said, inspiration must find you working. You must sit down ready to let creativity flow through you or you are unlikely to create at all. You can all bear witness to the fact that sometimes this blog is atrocious. It is not well written, the ideas are unimaginative or not thoughtful. These are the practice days for when there is more. For when greatness strikes. Creative careers are just like any job, you must be there to get it done. You must be productive whether you like it or not. I am in love with writing all over again.

This brings me to my second learning (yes, learning as a noun is not a word... I know). So I did something that truly scared the crap out of me yesterday. I have always been fearful of running for elected positions because the fear of failure, the fear of not seeming qualified, of not being liked, paralyses me. When I heard that the were a position on our exec titled VP Strategic Vision I fell in love. I couldn't not run. So my name went down as a nomination and low and behold so did the name of one of the most charismatic people in our program. Now that most of the voting is finished with I will admit that I almost dropped out at this point. I proceeded to thinking about doing it until the moment I got up to give my speech. Two things kept me going. The first was the simple fact that I really want this. That this position aligns with what I am great at, with what I am passionate about. The second is, frankly, that this is 2011. When it started I swore I wouldn't let any opportunity go un taken, this was my year to really see what I could make of my self and like hell I was going to give that up. Plus, if I lose i guarantee no one will hold it against me, or even remeber.

This push to try new things without fear of failure leads me to one last point. What legacy will we leave? This was the basis of my speech, my vision. It comes up in strategy class, whether our prof knows it or not, and glimmers throughout our whole course load. Who are we going to be and what will we change in our passing through this program and through the rest of our lives. It is something to put thought into now and in the coming months. I know that I want to live this next 14 months with no regrets. I want to leave a legacy of passion.

Give faith a fighting chance

Re-connection.

It happens to the best of us I think. Those friends or acquaintances who show up in your life when timing dictates. Often apart for years, when they re-emerge it is like it was yesterday you last saw them but with so much more richness of experience.

These are some of the experiences I value most. Like milestones, old friends can help you see how far you've come and perhaps, where you need to go next. They are like a map, tracing your past to the present.  It is with this in mind that have decided to keep a daily reminder of what I am grateful for. Each day to record with certainty at least one thing that helps to mark the little steps forward, or where ever they may lead. Life has been hectic to say the least these past few weeks and I would hate to skip over an opportunity to learn from in, to enjoy it, to remind myself that I am keeping up with the flow... most days at least.

So this morning I am grateful for connection and re-connection. I am grateful for the friends who have come into my life recently and for those who have shown up, practically on my door step, full of new insight and ideas.

Are you holding back?

My golden girl and I have been speaking at length about the remarkable lives we have fallen into these days. Who are we kidding, we created them. For lack of any better description I can grasp at we are living the lives we barely had the guts to try to imagine.

We call each other daily to remark at what had happened that was beyond what we thought possible. Life isn't perfect. Don't get me wrong, it is hard, and we both continue to exclaim how exhausted we are but this development and the lessons we are learning are too great to sleep. It's funny when this happens all at once.

These are the days. These are the game changers. Those disruptive moments that break all the rules then redefine the hell out of them. This is what we live for. These are the moments that remind us of faith, faith in the goodness of people, in our own strength, in the universe. These fractions of moments that we allow to slip in through the cracks that change it all.

I stumbled across this video

This is what kicked off my morning and it reminded me that we all make sacrifices for greatness and also that in the end the journey and the destination are worth it. Oh yeah, and that I need to hit a gym... hard.

Somebody like you.

Sitting in the dark theatre I felt like a real person for the first time in so long. I was going to a movie on a Friday night with an old, dear friend and my sister. A great combo and little piece of reality. I realized that my life for the past little while had revolved around school 100%, which is great but a little dose of reality was nice last night.

That being said we saw Moneyball. My economics prof recommended it and I was intrigued. For a man who is both on Obama’s economic council and watches Jersey Shore I was interested in his movie recommendation.  It was great. I felt like it was a $12.99 recap of my MBA thus far. I was happily surprised to see aspects of many of our core areas. The significance of statistics, economics, finance, entrepreneurship and a whole lot of freaking strategy. What stood out for me the most brought me back to our OBHR classes. Leadership. Culture. People Development. Change Management. What stood out for me was a leader who saw in people what others did not necessarily see and brought out greatness in them. Empowering them. Changing with them in the times that they needed that support. To be honest this is why I love sports movies, this is why I love sports. There is something about a coach or a teammate that brings greatness out in his or her people. Especially when those people are underdogs. I feel like those players, like the econ major from Yale in the movie. Yes, I bring something to the table but it took someone, a few people, to tell me that that something was valuable, that it was a contribution, for me to really step up and take it on. To play on the field instead of sitting in the stands.

Like everything in life these moments were not grand gestures, out pouring of gratitude. They were subtle but powerful. Moments when my dear girl told me that I ‘got’ accounting. Moments when a new friend, smart, thoughtful and likely unaware of the significance of his leadership, mentioned that I was creative, smart, or contributing. This is leadership at its finest. The ability to see greatness in others, draw it out of them and empower their contribution.

There is one scene in the movie where one player asks a new first basemen what his greatest fear in the game was. He replied “that a baseball will come anywhere near me.” The other man laughed and then realized the first baseman wasn’t kidding. This is just how I felt at first, how I still feel sometimes. Like someone is going to figure it all out, that maybe what they saw just isn’t there. This isn’t the case. Just believe the good press and take the bad with a grain of salt. Oh, and believe your econ profs when they make a movie recommendation, likely they are way smarter than you anyway.

Wide Open Spaces.

Something’s are hard to put your finger on. These are the subtleties that make up our lives. That are what push us beyond the day to day unremarkable. I am blessed these days; my life is full of extra ordinary. I can’t stress enough that this is part comes from the space in my life these days. Where is this space you may ask? Yes, I am busy. Yes, I am perpetually exhausted. Yes, it seems like I have no time for anything other than 12 hour school days, followed by never-ending hours of homework but this space is something more. It is the fact that because I have so little time so many trivial worries have had to give up their prime real estate in my brain to make way for the space I need.

It is with this clear head that decision-making seems to come a little easier. I am more of a ‘truth machine’ (as my golden girl would say) than one that makes meaning out of every tiny thing. I simply don’t have the time or energy to give up space for trying to make up things that are inauthentic.

I have long known I am a much more true version of myself when I am busy. Simply for the reasons above but also because when I do more there are more wins in a day, also more losses but who’s counting. The really pressing issues are the ones that matter and the others, well I just deal with them and get on with it.

There is that same feeling when you go to your first yoga class after running a race, or a long week. Space is wrung out of you, you feel stiff and inflexible and bound. Slowly, subtlety you find places to let go, breathe a little life into. For me it is in my hips that I find the space that parallels my life. Twisting and folding and breathing I can feel the tiny pockets of openness in the sinews lying just on top of my hipbones.  Yes, there is so much tightness other wise; my shoulders and neck don’t move the way I wish. My glutes and pecs and hamstrings are busy resisting my good intentions, like my program resists my good intention to get some sleep. But my hips… the space there mimics the precious space in my mind.

All in all, it is humbling and inspiring. I feel that if nothing else these days are teaching me about letting go and finding places that allow me to create and not get caught up. ‘And that has made all the difference…’

Cold hands, warm hearts.

There is a place... somewhere between almost ready to throw in the towel and a second wind. It is right after you decide you may just have to give up and right before you breakthrough. It starts when you are over it. Thinking only about exit strategies. Mediocrity is no longer an option, you are looking for straight up failure, and not the good kind. It feels like there is nothing left in the tank, running on fumes. Then something funny happens. A smile starts to spread to your lips. A feeling in the core of your chest grows. It's warm, this subtle glow that comes over you.

That is it. That is what gets us through. Reminds us that nothing we do is too much for us. Yes, it may not be sustainable but us, you and I, we are the creatures that get to that place of end of the road and find our reserves, our fresh legs, and we pull up our socks and we do what needs to be done. Often we do it so well that we astound ourselves, yes, like doing accounting in a cold arena at midnight on a monday. Often what we produce in these moments of darkness surprises us and we keep them stored safe in our minds and hearts for the next time we are asked to do more than we expect of ourselves. We keep them like shining jewels, to be pulled out and admired from time to time to remind us of who we really are. These are the moments when we re-set how high the bar is. When we learn what we can truly push ourselves to do.

"We do not remember days, we remember moments" -Cesare Pavese

This is how one becomes undone by a smell, a word, a place...

Every so often it finds you again... she said.

Something inside me has been craving words. I have been ravenous, reading with a hunger that has been unsatisfied. Then it found me again and I can't help but savour each word, each image, each carefully crafted phrase.

There are some books that stay with you. No matter what. You can't leave them behind.

Mine is Fugitive Pieces. It is hard to describe the heart strings this pulls at.  I haven't picked it up in a long long time. Today it fell into my life again.

"The shadow past is shaped by everything that never happened. Invisible, it melts the present like rain through karst. A biography of longing. it steers us like magnetism, a spirit torque This is how one becomes undone by a smell, a word, a place, the photo of a mountain of shoes. By love that closes its mouth before calling a name."

Hopelessly I feel like there might be something that I'll miss.

Economics, like life as I am learning, is all about the allocation of scare resources. Whether it's time, money, food, widgets or grades falling either side of the optimal mean somethings in life are just finite. It is how we make choices in how we earn and use these things that defines the kind of life we can lead.

It is the allocation of TIME that plays the biggest role in my life these days. with just 24 hours in each of 7 days in only 52 weeks a year there is literally only so much that can actually get completed. Or even started for that matter. Over the past few weeks I have redefined what I value. What I am willing to put aside for the time and what I couldn't think of doing that to.  It was around 5:30 yesterday evening when I got a text message that re-defined how much I really cared about sleep, or work for that matter. See we have a busy weekend. A little something called a decision brief that involves an extensive amount of research, group work and 2000 words of... well I just want to say bull shit but let's call it analysis. Along with that we have a number of math-y sort of assignments and quizzes coming up. So anyway, now that you have some perspective, I got this message at 5:30 yesterday and low and behold, my soulmate and best friend from Australia was going to be in the Vancouver airport for 4 hours. Today.  It was instinctual and immediate. The decision to write late, stay up as long as possible and free up my morning. Allocating my resources in such a way that I stay true to my values.

Seeing her this morning brightened my life. Both of us wiped with exhaustion, both a little loss for words at the remarkable serendipity of it all. Though the circumstances were not optimal it was worth every second of not working, writing or sleeping to be with her, even for a few hours.

So economics is all about choices. How do we use what we have to get the most from life?  When is the right decision to forgo sleep, money, connection and when is the wrong one? The scarcity in my life has opened me up to a world of possibilities and of gratitude. Morning coffees, periodical runs, an extra half hour in bed, these things are now worth their weight in gold. My values have also become increasingly clear, almost startling so. Connection will always beat out monetary or academic success, surprisingly the later is not faltering from it... at least from what I can tell. The rest finds a balance, give and take across the line of beauty and necessity.

It's all just the allocation of scarce resources. Can I use this as my econ project?

Float On

When I started writing this yesterday morning I had a sense of space, of light in my chest. It is so spectacular how the moments, the world, can change in half a second. Not that life is any worse but I just feel there is more to say now. Now isn’t that remarkable?

To fail or not.

This morning we spent a couple hours talking about risk taking, about allowing ourselves to fail big, or small. Coming into this I knew I had a lot to learn. If I played safe, stayed within my box I would literally be screwed. Not only would I likely not make it through the first few weeks of class but I would come out the other end, if possible, in the exact same position as when I went in… just with a whole lot of debt and two years behind on the corporate ladder.

This process wouldn’t work for me. For others in my class, this is their reality. One of my classmates brought up that he was so afraid of failing in any capacity, he was afraid of “wasting $40 000+ in tuition”, that he was unwaveringly unwilling to deviate from anything he considered his strengths. He simply saw anything else a slight possibility to fail and therefore not acceptable. He stated that in this program we were simply not allowed to fail.

I sat in a room with 110 people in utter disbelief. I felt the exact opposite way. I felt that if I did not risk failure daily that first, I was wasting every penny in tuition, lost salary, living expenses, text books and Thursday night bar tabs and second, that taking these risks enabled me to grow and learn more than I thought possible. Without these risks I was not going to get through the program. I wasn’t going to get what I could out of this. Risking brilliant failure is the only option I can see.

Part of why this works is the what I’ve learned from these risks. If you had asked me in July to take the derivative of a function I would have laughed. Had you asked me whether I would prefer a smaller or larger contribution margin I likely would have given you a blank stare. What is a value proposition? Divergent and convergent thinking? What a venture capital firm really does? Well… none of these things seemed an easy application of my strengths but by putting it out there, learning, relying on my friends and teammates I have made leaps and bounds. So much in fact that I hardly recognize where I came from.

So what now? Today was long, the extra school day tacked onto the end of a long week, preceding a work packed weekend, preceding an even busier week. My life of ungrounded extremes catching up to me in full force. I am tired. Exhausted really. Getting what I can only hope is the flu so I can just go to shoppers and Tylenol and Buckley the heck out of it. I feel overwhelmed a little and less so by the volumes of assignments and quizzes and more so by lack of sleep, nutritionally valuable food and quiet contemplative time. I felt defeated when I left school this afternoon. Funny enough it was a little facebook post by my dear girl that sparked something in me.

It is ok to be the person you want to be when everything is going right but to be that person when the stakes are high, the chips are down or any other common phrase to describe such a time, is true grace. It is courageous and to be applauded. And that’s the point really. To take risks, fail, feel crappy about the things we’ve misplaced or avoided and to strive for greatness through it all.

Drunk on you and high on summer time.

By the definition my golden girl gave me, miracles are possibilities you didn’t even image being created that subsequently change how you think about life.

Whether we like it or not miracles are everywhere. They may be a serendipitous day that you expected to go one way and through nothing went to plan it was a remarkable in the shift in perspective it creates. It may be a breakthrough that you have been pushing for so long that just works it self out. It may be that something you desperately feared once, the one ‘bad’ result, that turns out to give you a possibility too perfect to even be on your radar.

My life has been full of miracles this year. Leaving my job to pursue the life I truly want, moving west on the basis of faith and adventure, giving this program all I’ve got.  It has all worked out better than I could have hoped. Each exceptional possibility has lead me to learn more, reframe my world, open up more space. I can clearly see what it takes to get what I want and even though it’s hard I have the steps to take each day to get there.

Happiest Birthday Heart Skipped a Beat.

My baby turns one today. This blog may just be the only thing I've committed to for this long and if you'd asked me a year ago what would come of it I wouldn't have a single answer for you. I was just so inspired and involved in learning I couldn't keep it to myself anymore.

In this year I can say with certainty I have done more things that scare me almost to the point of freezing than possibly in the rest of my short but exciting life! I have learned more about myself, what I want, don't want, can't live without. I've taken bigger risks and started to see the rewards.

It all hit home two days ago. An old friend dropped me a line letting me know she had an opportunity for me to write and photograph for a blog. For real. For money. If you had asked me a year ago if I was a writer I would have never replied yes. Now, I am grateful and a little shocked that this is something that is part of who I am. It is incredible.

Writing as often as I do has taught me a lot and helped me recognize the transformations in a more tangible way. I find I am much more aware of what's going on, both around me and in my own life. I am able to challenge myself and see the results down the line. It keeps me on track, keeps me grounded in this.

And as I write this on the bus, in between classes on my phone and in our building before meetings I can’t help but be in wonder that people read what I write. Even if it was just one person that would make me so incredibly happy but more than that, astounding?  I am so blessed. Thank you all for making this last year such an incredible journey. Thank you for reading my words… and still wanting to read them the next day.