Leading Mama

I'm Jealous!

In honor of Pour Your Heart Out Wednesday, I'll share a dirty little (or not-so-little) secret. Lately, I've been seeing green. Not good-for-the-planet green, either.

For two weeks I've been reading pre-BlogHer bluster and post-BlogHer highlights. And I'm jealous that I missed it.

I wanted to go. I really, really, really wanted to go. (Picture me stomping one foot, hands on hips like a bratty four-year-old now.) I wanted to dress up and have drinks with women who love to write, and who can turn everyday doldrums and drama into A+ entertainment.

I don't so much care about swag bags, or meetings with company reps.

I don't so much care that I missed San Diego, which is a lovely place with stand-out Mexican food.

I don't worry I can't catch up with the latest blogging gadgets and gizmos. My friends online will keep me up-to-date on all that. (Thanks to Nicole at Moments that Define Life; Liz and Kristen at Eli Rose Social Media Marketing;  Jessica at My Time As Mom; Christina Katz, the Writer's Workout Coach, and Courtney at The Mommy Matters) 

Why so green, then, you ask???

I envy the time to think about work without interruption. It's a 7-hour flight from here to San Diego. 7 hours is more work time than I had all week.

I envy the opportunity to meet in person the people who make blogging fun and rewarding. (Like our hostess for today's linkup, Shell at Things I Can't Say; Nichole at In these Small Moments and the hostess of tomorrow's festivities, the cool cat behind Mama Kat's Losin' It)

Exclusive private parties? Who cares.

I'd like to hear all these ladies' real voices, see their quirky and not-so-quirky mannerisms, listen to them laugh. Those are the currency of friendship in-real-life, and I'm feeling a little bit bankrupt right now.

Oh, and I'd like to ogle (maybe even covet) their shoes. I simply love shoes.

Alas, the timing didn't work. At all. This wasn't my year for BlogHer for lots of reasons. And jealousy isn't all bad. Envious emotions are signals that smart people can leverage to learn more about what they value and to make better (more satisfying) decisions. (Read more about that on my other blog, The Psychologist Next Door)

Next year, I'll be at BlogHer in NYC. I'll wear something green so you'll recognize me.

 

Image credit: GREEN SHOES by Antonsokolov

 

Rockin' the Baby

Just a short, super-sweet post to share baby pics today because I'm linking up with Shell for Rock the Baby! Take a trip with me down memory lane...

Little Man snoozing on Boppy after he nursed himself to sleep, 3 weeks old (sniff, sniff)

 

Little Mama posing on her special afghan blanket made by Great Grandma McKinney, 3 weeks old

We had pics of the kids taken this past Sunday -- can't wait to share those with you soon! Share pics of your own babes and link up with Rockin' the Baby.

Military Wife Life: Milspouse Friday Fill-In #46

It's been ages since I joined in on the Milspouse Friday Fill-In over at Wife of a Sailor. This week's questions are super interesting. Can't wait to read other milspouse's responses!

NOTE: I am on the lookout for milspouse-written blogs to feature in an upcoming issue of Military Spouse magazine. If you'd like to make sure I check out your blog in my search, leave a comment or email me. We're featuring blogs from all branches of service on a wide range of topics!

 

1. Are you a different person than you were five years ago? submitted by Sisterly Thoughts

The personality psychologist in me says, "No, I am the same person I always was." The traits that make me who I am haven't changed all that much:

• I am an information junkie. Love learning.
• I talk (almost) non-stop if I have someone to talk to. Sometimes I talk to myself, too.
• I love to cook and eat. Yesterday I made blueberry crisp with Little Man using berries we picked ourselves. Delish!
• I have more negative emotion than the average bear. I worry when I shouldn't. I get angry faster than I should. It's hard for me to let go when I get in a funk...my bad moods settle in like a stalled storm system, swirling around for hours.

But I'm different, too. My values have been re-tooled by marriage and motherhood. I don't expect perfection all the time. I'm more apt to reflect on why things happen and what they mean. Forgiveness comes easier than it used to.  

 

2. If you could go on Amazing Race, who would you take with you as your partner and why? submitted by Thoughts from a Poekitten

My sister, Jen, because I miss her. The Amazing Race would give us time to hang out. We wouldn't win, but we'd have tons of fun.  

 

3. Does Facebook or Twitter actually bring more stress or good in to your life? submitted by Just an Arizona Girl

Neither FB or Twitter cause me stress. I'd love to spend more time on both, but I recognize that other work is more important. Without FB, I wouldn't see my friends' kids grow up or learn about what's happening in their lives. I am terrible at keeping in touch. FB helps with that! Twitter is addictive and I try hard to keep it in check!  

 

4. June is National Soul Food Month- what's your soul food? submitted by NH Girl Displaced

Hmmm. Chocolate cake with espresso cream filling and chocolate ganache. And a glass of red wine.

Or thai chicken with basil.

Or aloo gobi (curried Indian cauliflower and potatoes).

Dang, now I am hungry.

 

5. If you could live in any other era than the current, which one would it be & why? submitted by Sugar in My Grits

I'd like to live in WWII America to experience the level of national camaraderie that generation experienced. Despite many challenges, the shared commitment to a cause must have been very powerful.

 

Sunday Soapbox: Yes or No, Damnit

It's Sunday already and time for Sunday Soapbox. Just in time for the Ultimate Blog Party at 5MinutesforMom.com and the sending of Little Mama's first birthday party invitations, I bring you "Yes or No, Damnit." That's the modern American English translation of RSVP.

 

R.S.V.P. Four little letters.

 

Répondez, s'il vous plaît.

 

It's a simple request, really.

 

R.S.V.P. means please tell me whether you plan to come to the event I am lovingly and painstakingly planning. Or. Not.

 

Please tell me if you'll grace us with your sparkling social energy. Or tell me to go to hell. I don't really care what you tell me, I just want you to RESPOND, s'il vous plaît. I said "please." (That's the s'il vous plaît part...)

 

For the last two large social events I planned, I hand-addressed invitations. Call me old-fashioned, but I think hand-addressed invitations are classy. And thoughtful. Hand-addressed invitations say "I want you to join us." They say "I thought especially of you."

 

In the end, I can't help but shudder at the RSVP rate for these events. I'd say it's less than 20%. That is, fewer than 20% of people RESPOND to say Yes or No to a social invitation.  Mostly, if people don't respond, it means they aren't coming. But not always. It depends on the event.

 

Here's the problem. Without a response, I simply don't know how many chairs I need. How many party favors. How much beer. Whether I should bar-be-cue burgers and hot dogs or roast an entire pig with an apple in it's mouth. That's why I ask for an RSVP.

 

Given my tendency to overthink EVERYTHING, I've thought of several reasons for the low rate of return on requests.

 

1) No one speaks French. Except for when they're talking about food or sex, as in "I'll have the menage a trois a la mode, please."   

 

2) People are too information-saturated to respond to inquiries in a timely fashion. Invitations simply get lost in the shuffle. I probably have three of them on my desk right now. Under. the. clutter.

 

3) Commitment is scary. If you say "yes" to my invitation, you risk having to say "No" when the producers of So You Think You Can Dance (or sing, or cook, or fart the alphabet) contact you for a last-minute callback audition scheduled at the precise time of my daughter's party.

 

4) The social world is big and impersonal. What feels like rude interaction is really just isolated indifference. "Oh, a person sent this invitation?! To me?!" "I had no idea. I've been spoiled by constant and unwanted solicitations from spammers and telemarketers."

 

As I send out these invitations, I once again asked recipients to Répondez, s'il vous plaît. I considered replacing "RSVP" with a bold, American English "Yes or No, Damnit," but it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi.

 

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Whether you're visiting from the Ultimate Blog Party or a regular follwer of Leading Mama, welcome. I hope you'll hop up on your soap box and share your opinion in the comments. Consider this a personal invitation from Leading Mama. No RSVP required.

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday Standpoint: Every Mom is a Working Mom

When I was a teenager, my Aunt Kathy had a t-shirt that read “Every Mother is a Working Mother.” I didn’t think much about its meaning back then, but lately I think about it a lot.

 

Here's what I think it means.

1)      ECONOMICALLY, every mother is a working mother means mothers' work has economic value.

 

How much economic value? I don’t know.

 

In 2008, Salary.com calculated moms’ worth and arrived at 117K per year.

 

Another website I found lets me calculate my mom paycheck by entering the number of kids I have and how many hours I spend on common mom tasks (laundry, carpool, cooking, nursing, psychologist, household management). Let’s just say my paycheck was a lot less impressive than salary.com suggested. 

Economists can argue. My kids think mom work is priceless. That's why they cling to my leg and won't let their dad strap them in to their carseats.

 

2)      SOCIALLY, every mother is a working mother means “can’t we all just get along?” Pretty please?

 

 The so-called mommy wars aren’t good for anyone. Not working moms. Not stay-at-home moms. Not work-from-home moms.

 

Not long after Little Man was born, my mom brought me a newspaper query written by the friend of a new mom. She asked what moms DO all day. Carolyn Hax of the Washington Post wrote a fantastic reply.   

 

All moms – whether they work for wages or not – give constant attention, vigilance, teaching, and compassion. We put our kids’ needs first. We commit to motherhood 24/7.

 

Moms who work outside the home can't put kids out of mind all day. That’s impossible.

 

Moms who stay home seldom get a break to think grown-up thoughts. That's reality.

 

There's no need to argue about who has it worse. However you do it, motherhood is hard work. Gratifying, yes. But difficult. Martha B says it's the toughest job we’ll ever love (no disrespect to the Peace Corps).  

 

Bottom line: Moms should support each other. Our kids will ensure our egos don’t get too big.

 

3)      PSYCHOLOGICALLY, every mother is a working mother means moms who leave the workforce to raise kids should not feel diminished. We do not become less when we give up the keys to the corner office.

 

When we equate titles with status, we trap ourselves. The transition to stay-at-home motherhood feels like a loss. A loss we cannot share.

 

We tell everyone we’re lucky to be able to stay home with our kids.

 

AND WE ARE.

 

We don’t mention the fact that we feel isolated and unproductive, that we miss feeling smart and sophisticated.

 

We wake up one day and can’t remember who we were before we had kids. It doesn't help that our pre-baby jeans don't fit quite the same.

 

We find great joy but lose ourselves.

 

When we’re up to our eyeballs in laundry, we can’t see how “mom work” is meaningful. How it expands us. How it makes us more of who we are, and I'm not referring to residual baby weight.

  

Every mother is a working mother. Sometimes we need to be reminded of our own worth. That’s my standpoint.

 

What’s yours? Share your thoughts and link up below.

 

 

Community-Sourcing: Leadership isn't DIY

I frequently get thanked for things I didn’t do. That’s because I take on projects that are way too big for one little mama to do all by herself. Like collecting, packaging and distributing cookies to more than 2,000 service members at holiday time. Don’t get me wrong, I love, love, love to bake. But 12,000 cookies? 10 days from now? Forget about it.

Photo by Tim Lewis shared via WikimediaCommons

 

I’m something of a yes-mama. I simply can’t say “no” when I’m asked to take on an enormous project. I’m a project junkie. But I know I can’t be a do-it-myself project junkie.  That would be ludicrous. And it isn't necessary!

 

People love to help with meaningful projects, so reaching out gives others the opportunity to do good. They'll also bring skills, talents and resources that Leading Mama just doesn’t have. Sometimes more is more. So I say “bring it.”

 

Crowd-sourcing is a relatively new concept in business. It amounts to getting people to build products without payment for their labor, and it flies in the face of years of pay-for-performance management. Community leaders have been doing something similar for hundreds or thousands of years. Think barnraising technology for the modern world.

 

I call it community-sourcing: harnessing the energies of community networks and everyday people to accomplish a shared pro-social goal.

 

Community-sourcing could help you collect coats for inner city kids or items for the school’s silent auction. It could be used to build affordable housing or clean up and refurbish a dilapidated baseball field. You could community-source a website or blog and get rich content from hundreds of contributors in the virtual community. If you're a ScaryMommy fan, you know what I mean. She has an eight-week waiting list for guest contributors to the Scary Mommy Society and the content is outstanding.

 

Done right, community-sourcing not only gets the job done. It gets the job done faster, smarter, and better. It builds community. And – if you have a tendency to take projects way too big for one person – it just might save you from yourself.

 

How could community-sourcing help you with an upcoming project? And what's stopping you from using it?

Scary Business

In this week’s Prosperous Writer E-zine, Christina Katz relates her experiences at the recent Associated Writers and Writing Programs Conference in Washington, DC. She asked the participants in a social networking session whether they see themselves or their writing as a business. The result? Only 20% of the attendees raised their hands. She was shocked.

 

I am a freelance writer. Writing is my business. And if I had been in Christina’s audience, I would have raised my hand. But I understand why so few people did.

Claiming an identity as a business person is scary.

Doing it in public is even scarier.

Here’s why:

1) Claiming an identity is a commitment. It demands action.

You cannot say you are a writer if you don’t write. And no matter how good a writer – or cook, coach, crafter, singer, stylist, designer, or widget-maker – you are, you cannot say you are in business unless you market and (hopefully) sell your work.

 

2) Selling your work feels a lot like selling yourself. Especially for artists, and especially for women.

Putting a price on your work makes a statement about the value of your ideas, your time, and your creations. And negotiating the value of your work can be off-putting, not to mention downright frightening. Why? We don’t want to confront our own assessment of our value and we don’t want to open ourselves up to scrutiny. As long as your work is a hobby, you don’t have to find out what it, and, by extension, you, are worth. Safety first, right?

 

3) Business has a certain connotation. It is cold and detached. Impersonal. It can be ruthless. Business is dirty and corrupt.

I know these are stereotypes, but these qualities spring to mind without warning when we think about business, and there’s the rub. Claiming we are in business means getting past all that emotional baggage. We want to believe we are thoughtful, creative, and socially aware. These traits are hard to reconcile with our knee-jerk beliefs about business.

 

4) Businesses pay workers for performance, and motivate increases in production by offering larger and larger incentives. Daniel Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us calls this Motivation 2.0

Unfortunately, lots of studies in psychology show that paying people to do tasks they find inherently meaningful and intrinsically motivating is apt to backfire. Athletes paid top dollar for their performance fall out of love with the game. Kids paid to color pictures stop coloring because coloring isn’t fun anymore. Writers worry that being paid to write will mean they no longer find it gratifying, energizing, and expressive. We don’t want money to mess with our mojo. We – incorrectly, I think – equate selling our work with selling out.

 

5) Being in business ups the ante. As long as we don’t claim we’re worth too much, no one will call us out. We can dabble, bumble, and fail at a hobby. The stakes are low. Giving ourselves permission to dabble, bumble and (possibly) fail at our work takes a lot more courage. But risk-taking is vital to any enterprise, including writing.

 

I am proud to say I am a freelance writer. I recognize my work has value and ask others to recognize it, too. That doesn’t make what I do less gratifying, less energizing, or less noble.

 

I am an enterprising mama. As Merriam-Webster defines it, that means I am marked by an independent energetic spirit and a readiness to act. My enterprise is writing. It is difficult, complicated, and risky. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

How about you? What's your enterprise? Be bold and claim it. I double-dog dare you.