Archive for January, 2011

Monday, Jan 31, 2011

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Right after college, I was playing a bazillion hours a week of volleyball to get on the pro tour, and reading a book a night to make up for the fact that I was tortured for eighteen years by having to read what other people told me to read. But when people asked, “What do you do?” I said, “I work at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in arbitrage.”

It’s a good answer, right? I had choices: I could admit to reading like a crazy person. I could admit to trying to be in professional sports but not quite there, or I could give an answer that impressed everyone: I work in currency arbitrage. In reality, I was so incompetent at this job that when currencies went wild after the Berlin Wall fell, I lost a few million dollars for a few violent traders. The only possible reason to keep a dyslexic, literary, arbitrage clerk around was because she was good looking. But I wasn’t good looking enough. I got fired.

Immediately I focused on getting on the pro volleyball tour. At that point, “What do you do?” questions did not get “I’m getting a job in a children’s book store because I worked in the family book store for ten years and I can tell you the publisher of any author–quiz me.”  Instead, I said, “I’m moving to Los Angeles to play professional beach volleyball.” To me, the book store was a step back to support volleyball, which was a step forward.

Describing my move to LA over and over again to prying relatives and concerned strangers actually made me believe it. How you answer the question “What do you do?” is important because it frames your story for you in a much more visceral way than it frames it for anyone else.

Recently, I had the problem again. I was sort of working at my startup, Brazen Careerist, but not really. The company got a new CEO and was moving to Washington, DC , and I was staying in Wisconsin and marrying the farmer.

“What do you do?” came up a lot because I was redecorating the farm house and traveling back and forth between DC and Madison and NY and Darlington. People in cities asked me what I was doing because clearly, I was not full-time at Brazen Careerist. And people in Darlington asked me because clearly I did not have a life in Darlington.

After trying out a lot of answers that came out poorly (like, I’m working at my company but not really) I came up with “I’m taking a few months off my job to decorate the house while I’m moving to the farm.”

It was a good answer. It was true, of course, but there are lots of true answers this type of question, and not all truthful answers are effective answers. It was a good answer because it reminded me that moving to the farm was a huge job. But also it made me realize that I had given myself an enormous education in interior design in a very short period of time.

I learned about Steampunk styling from hundreds of hours on the Internet. I absolutely fell in love with the idea of repurposing old things for new things, and seeing old in a new way.

I learned about color theory and practice from Maria Killam, who spent hours on the phone with me until I understood when orange on the fabric swatch will look red on a sofa (and why you should never do color on your wall without a consult from an expert).

I obsessively guarded against having anything in the house that did not have a use. All things had to be special and beautiful but nothing could be there only because it was special and beautiful.

When I told people I was decorating the house, they were happy for me. And worried for me. Because I am not going to make a living as a decorator. But the best answer to the question “What do you do?” is “Here’s what I’m passionately learning right now.”

If I had answered in a way that focused on my worries about not knowing where my career was going, then there would have been nothing to talk about. But when I answered in a way that revealed my excitement about the house and everything I was learning, then there was a lot to talk about.

I tell you this to show that everyone has trouble answering the question at some points in their life, but the more comfortable we are being lost, the faster we can get unlost, and this is a good example of why—you can tell yourself better stories about yourself.

So here are some steps to help you get better at the process of answering the question “What do you do?”

1.    Understand the question.
Assume there is no hidden, evil agenda. Assume the person asking simply wants to know more about you. Of course, only people who have a good answer to the question themselves end up asking the question of others, but still, it’s a reasonable question.

2.    Focus on a differentiator.
The problem with getting to know someone is that if you ask people, “What’s important to you?” you won’t learn anything. Because 90% of people will say things like family, friends, learning, being kind, or other routine things — the things, actually, that are on my refrigerator, in the first photo.

You get to know more about a person by asking how they spend their time. Because, while we all have similar goals (really, I bet the same few New Years Resolutions are made by 80% of all people) we all try to reach them in different ways.

This actually reminds me of the opening of  Anna Karenina. “All happy families are the same, and each unhappy families is unhappy in different ways.” The modern version of that is “all goals for attaining a happy life are the same, but all the paths to not reaching those goals are misguided in different ways.”

So the question “What do you do?” is an attempt to find out what makes you different.  Which means that everyone has an answer.

3.     Don’t focus on your job.
This is not a job interview—it’s an attempt to get to know you so the person can connect with you. So you don’t need to go straight to your job for an answer. Some people have a job that does define them. Some people do not. Once you realize you can go either way on this, you can come up with the best answer for you.

4.     Focus on where you spend your time and energy.
If you work at Starbuck’s to support your marathon training, you can say you’re training for a marathon. That is interesting and will immediately spark a fine conversation. Plus, you show that you are someone worth getting to know—you set challenging goals for yourself and you work hard to meet them.

5.     Focus on what you are learning.
A career is not an earning path, it’s a learning path. So if you tell someone what you are learning about now, they will not actually care what your job is. What you choose to learn, and what interests you, actually says way more about you than the type of job you have. Some people learn a lot on their jobs, some people learn more away from their jobs. Where you learn is not as important as what you learn.

If you are not learning anything, and not doing anything special, ask yourself why. You can do anything in your free time. Make it matter.

6.      Don’t be defensive
Remember that people are asking to be kind. They are trying to create a connection so that you can talk to each other about things that matter to both of you. Surely that is appealing to you as well. So be helpful with your answer by being vulnerable and forthcoming instead of defensive.

7.     Ask about the other person.
Sometimes we get so stressed answering the question that we forget to actually make conversation. Ask the other person what he or she does. Then find common ground. At work or at a cocktail party or talking to someone we wish we didn’t have to talk to—being interested in  both ourselves and in someone else is one of the most important things we can do.

Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist

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Sunday, Jan 30, 2011

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I have two new goats.

In a nod to Tom Sawyer and his fence, I told my sons the goats are for me only, and I want to take care of them. When my sons thought of 100 names for each goat, I told them that the person who takes care of the goats gets to name the goats.

So the goats are named Samuel and Snowflake. And I am supervising feeding instead of feeding.

I know you’re not supposed to name farm animals you are planning to eat. But last summer my son bottle fed a calf that did not have a mom to take care of it, and now my son seems to be fine with the idea of killing the calf.

The farmer made the idea more palatable to my son by telling him that my son will get money for taking care of the calf. My son asked for ,000. The farmer pointed out that we cannot sell a calf for ,000 and when all was said and done with the financial lesson, it became clear that if you add labor, and milk replacer, and the small size of the orphaned calf, it costs more money to keep the calf alive and slaughter it for meat than it would have cost to kill the calf when it was born.

“We don’t kill our animals here unless they are in pain,” said the farmer to my son.

So it was easy to explain to my son why our goats were free. “The dairy goat farmer doesn’t want them,” I said. “It costs too much in labor and feed to keep the goat alive. That farmer would lose money.”

I didn’t tell my sons that farmers all over the cheese belt of America are banging goat babies on the head to kill them as soon as they are born.

If this were a PETA blog, there would be really gross pictures. But my kids go to school with tons of dairy farm kids, so I have to be careful.

But here’s the problem with the milk industry. To get milk from animals they have to give birth. And their milk slows down if they don’t give birth a lot. If the dairy cow gives birth to a girl, there’s hope that the girl cow will give milk when she grows up, so it’s not a total waste of money to keep the calf alive.

If the dairy cow gives birth to a boy, there’s not really anything to make it economically sensible to keep it alive.You have probably never had a dairy cow steak in your life—they’re just not that good. But dairy cow meat can go into low-cost food like McDonald’s hamburgers. So McDonald’s is saving the lives of tons of boy dairy cows by creating a market for them.

The dairy goats are not so lucky. Just like the cow business, there are meat goats and dairy goats. But there is not enough money is the goat meat market for people to pay a decent price to kill dairy goats for meat. There’s not enough meat on the dairy goat to make it worth raising the dairy goat.

So farmers that provide goat milk to the cheese industry kill the boy baby goats.

You can get angry at the farmers if you want, but what can they do? They could raise the prices of goat milk, but someone would undersell them. And people who are great at raising goats can’t switch their farm over to something else. They don’t know how and they don’t have enough money for a capital investment.

We have seen this business problem before. We see it in corporate life all the time. It’s much easier to make money without the burden of a moral compass. Until you go to jail. But also, most of us have our own moral compass and we are always trying to balance ethical problems: feeding ourselves and our families and being the good person we envision ourselves to be. Making real world business decisions requires a constant recalibration of the right and wrong of our own perspective against what’s at stake.

The type of business makes a huge difference. Take Bernie Madoff, for instance. It’s hard for me to understand the laws he violated and the numbers he faked. So who knows what I would have done with the opportunity to make decisions for him? But when I first met the farmer, I could look in his pig pen (technically called a "farrowing pen") and see that I really don’t like how he’s birthing pigs. He has the moms immobilized so they don’t roll over onto babies.

My perspective: It’s inhumane to tie down an animal during birth and if pigs would roll over onto babies in natural childbirth then probably that’s why there are such big litters—because some would die naturally.

The farmer’s perspective: His whole system is set up this way and it’s too much to change right now and it’s just balancing the pain of a birthing mother versus the pain of a baby being squashed, and who am I to guess which is more painful? (This is what most animal arguments with the farmer come down to: “Don’t anthropomorphize the animals!”)

So it’s never absolutely clear to me what is right and what is wrong on a family farm. And most of these goat milk farms are family farms.

What is clear to me, though, is that goat cheese is like veal: If you had any idea what animals are going through to get you this meal, you would be horrified.

The great thing about awareness, though, is that once people understood the horrors of the veal industry, the veal industry tanked. And now a new industry of veal cows with a high quality of life has emerged.

So, I got two boy goats from a woman whose specialty is taking boy goats from milk farmers who don’t want them. Here’s a photo of Samuel today. Four days old.

The farmers control the births so they get an optimum price for milk. Milk prices are high now. So babies are being born in the coldest part of winter. They are not in heated barns because it’s too costly to heat a barn for animals that make so little money at slaughter. Of the boy baby goats that are not intentionally killed at birth, a large percentage of them die from frostbite. And even more die because when you take them away from their mother, they have no will to eat.

Because I make money from something other than goat milk, and I can afford to turn my boy goats into sort-of house pets, we have two in a small heated shed. I am having to force-feed them to teach them how to eat. It reminds me a little of feeding my own boy babies that hadn’t learned to latch onto the nipple.

Here’s my idea. I’m going to learn about how to take care of boy baby goats, and then I’m going to figure out how to change the goat cheese industry so that people understand that the moral cost of goat cheese is very high right now. But it doesn’t have to be. Somehow I want to try to figure out how to make morally responsible goat cheese.

Does anyone have ideas? Also, if you want to know what it looks like to figure out a new idea for a company, here’s what looks like: Going down seemingly insane paths, learning skills that may or may not be useful in life, meeting a wide range of people who may or may not help you, and then telling everyone your idea in order to get feedback.

Photos by Melissa Sconyers.

Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist

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Saturday, Jan 29, 2011

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You become the people you surrounded yourself with. Once you accept this, it’s much easier to answer tough questions like “Where should I live?” or “What job’s right for me?” or “Who should I marry?” I think the biggest barrier to making decisions based on how we become the people we hang out with is that we live in denial.

1. Geographic stereotypes are true.
When I moved from LA to NYC, I was horrified at the lack of yoga studios in NY. Yoga was already huge in LA, but not yet in NY. I was also scared that New Yorkers were always a little bedraggled, and I had just spent ten years learning how to look perfect everywhere I went in LA. It’s fun. It’s fun to have no weather and no fat and no rushing in LA. It’s fun to get a day off from work to prepare for watching the Oscars. I grew up in Illinois, but I got used to living in LA.

The panic about New York was unnecessary, though. After ten years of living in NYC, when I imagined leaving, I thought I could never leave because the cultural opportunities are so amazing. The expertise people have in NYC is so vast and varied and I thought I’d never get that anywhere else.

When I left NYC I didn’t care about looking perfect everywhere I went. I didn’t care about the kind of car I drove. I was  a New Yorker.

2. Never say never.
When I moved to Madison, WI, there were some things that were just plain shocking. There are no foreign cars here. I mean, maybe there are. Maybe ten percent of all people drive a foreign car. It’s usually someone from out of state. Recently moved here. Because after you live here for a while, you get so used to the idea of driving a Ford that it doesn’t seem weird.

You know the pictures of Midwesterners in NYC? I spent ten years learning how to spot a Midwesterner in NYC but really, it only takes ten minutes. Because people in the Midwest have no style. It’s plain top, plain pants, plain shoes. You can rarely peg the decade their outfit comes from because it is tied to no particular style. I have made fun of this for years. And now I'm pretty sure it's what I look like.

3. It’s not about genes.
If your friends are fat, you’ll be fat. This is true irrelevant of class, education, race, etc. The Framingham Heart Study goes a good distance to show who you hang out with is who you become. Not just for fat. For drinking and smoking and dying early. (Interesting tidbit from the Framingham Study: You are likely to drink the amount the women in your life drink. Men don't like drinking without women.)

4. It’s not about values.
How many people go to law school thinking they are going to represent the underdog and save the world?  Thousands. And how many people can pay off law school loans and support a family and save the world? None. You have to marry someone who makes more money.

This is so common that people are making parodies about the save-the-world-types who apply to law school.

Once you get to corporate law, you don’t want to leave. This is what you tell yourself: You will just stay there to pay off your loans. Then you’ll stay there and do pro bono work. Then you tell yourself it’s silly to go to nonprofit law when you can earn so much in a big law firm and just donate the money.

It happens to everyone. It’s arrogant and delusional to think you’ll be the exception.

And that is true for everything. When you are deciding what you want to do with your life, look at peoples’ lifestyles. Ask yourself if you want that lifestyle. Don’t tell yourself you’ll be different. Statistically, that is absurd. And why put yourself in a situation where you have to be different than all the people you choose to be around every day?

5. Emotions are contagious.
If you have a happy person close to you, you'll increase your own happiness by 9%. I have announced, of course, that I am done looking for happiness in my life. I think it's overrated. Which means reading this blog is not going to boost your happiness by 9%. But I am hoping that interesting lives are also contagious and your life is much more interesting from spending time with me.

Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist

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Friday, Jan 28, 2011

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Myth: Executive level jobs are best found through recruiters and fee-based, high level job boards.

Truth: Both recruiters and fee based executive level job boards can severely limit your job search and the responses you receive.

Executive recruiters can only help you if you have the exact qualifications to help them…fill their key search assignments that is.

And fee based job boards usually yield about 1% to maybe 7% response rates. You are going to have to send out a lot of resumes to get any response at all, and of course don’t forget about the intense amount of executive competition you will face for the very same job.

Most executives are all about working smarter, not harder. Though connecting with recruiters and answering 6-figure job ads might seem like the easiest way from point A to point B, it’s actually more work on your part to market yourself thoroughly enough using only these two outlets to get you the kind of results you are hoping for. It’s counterintuitive to your objective.

Want an easier solution? Of course it depends on the industry and position but I find that executive level jobs are best found using the following system:

1. Identification of the industry(s) of interest
2. Identification of the position(s) sought
3. Launching a campaign to penetrate those industries

To be successful (and when I say successful I mean conducting a job search that results in a number of high quality interviews for opportunities you are genuinely interested in, and obtaining one or more viable job offers) you must have a clear plan, followed by a significant level of market exposure.

Here are several highly effective techniques and resources to get going in the right direction:

1. Identify your market

What industry are you interested in and why? You must have a crystal clear direction before you can formulate any sort of plan. Is the market growing, or… are you purposely targeting growing markets? Smart move on your part.

Here are a few examples of market indentification: Technology companies between 20 and 50 million dollars; owners and developers of outpatient surgery centers or US based international civil contractors.

2. Identify your position

In order to target and brand your resume you have to be clear on the type of position you are pursuing. Again, have you thought it through? Are their other emerging positions (e.g.: Chief Ethics Officer) or parallel positions that might offer more challenge, more security or more experience where you need it – that help to achieve your long term career goals? Its worth spending some time here, doing a bit of research and thinking this through.

3. Launching a campaign to penetrate your industry/position of choice

You can do this several ways including:

  • Hiring a firm to research contacts and companies that fit your career parameters.
  • Using a site like zoominfo.com to research your preferences yourself.
  • Hire a career coach (could also be called a career marketer or someone who provides career research)  to analyze, make recommendations and gather the initial information for you.
  • Hire an administrative assistant on a project basis to take care of some of your more mundane job search tasks such as mail merging documents, sending out resumes etc… (you should make phone contacts yourself though).
  • Find (and follow up on) growth opportunities (companies moving/growing/expanding) through setting up a simple tracking system on Google news or through regular checking of business and trade journals.
  • Hire a company to conduct an elite direct mail program for you. Find executive recruiters through a high-end contact that can distribute your resume exclusively to retained search firms.
  • Obtain a list of VC firms or PE firms who specialize in your industry of choice.

These are just a few ways that go way beyond fee based, 6 figure job boards. These methods, once they are set up by you – are just as turnkey as responding to a job ad.

Bottom line, a combination of the right executive job search techniques can improve your results by 20%, 30% and even 40%.

Author: Mary Elizabeth Bradford

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Friday, Jan 28, 2011

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Written by : Wedd2120 ok

Wedding Present Ideas. Setting up pre-wedding activities can be a little excess that is not required, nonetheless absolutely fun and also engaging with the company. When the happy couple keep in mind the length a few company include traveled and also continue activities based on in which a higher level low energy, they really are sure to click about a few succeeding activities.

As you begin setting up activities with the wedding party, keep in mind additional elements at the same time. Perform most people include kids at their side? Certain supply childcare or perhaps will certainly the kids be members within the activities? When you have many company who’re more mature, maybe activities may be customised within a ay they will participate at the same time.

Most of the popular pre-wedding activities consist of offers like a group manicure. Each of the women of all ages within the guests or perhaps ho will be near to the young woman (and absolutely this could consist of males when they like manicures and also need to hang out when using the ladies) visit your nail parlor to get his or her nails completed. This really is calming for a lot of women of all ages and supply your welcome respite in the hustle and also bustle of the wedding party day. This males could elect to golfing or perhaps enjoy a personal game connected with golf when this is certainly occurring.

Countless gals and also grooms elect to supply a certain number of activities for company before the wedding party. When the wedding party can be on the Saturday night time, for example, a few might elect to supplies a Friday pastime, especially if almost all company will be area for the wedding party. You may have your wedding party luau. Often pre-wedding activities middle all over bachelor and also bachelorette parties, nonetheless how about your stag celebration that features all the people of the gals and also grooms people? You may prepare a few fun (and appropriate) video games and also leave to somewhat of a cafe for just a night time connected with fun and also video games. Be sure to restrict that alocohol consumption and also carousing as this will definitely not sit down good together with a few close family.

Factors fun pastime you can do the day the marriage. Include another person take up a present holder. This topic of the holder can be “advice with the couple” and may be started out from the greatest person or perhaps maid connected with honor. Some people have that holder for you to somebody else’s household, maybe the auntie or perhaps step-sister and also keep this on the front doorstep. Of which individual contributes a product (a e-book about easy methods to stop spousal arguments? Or your DVD connected with romantic new music? ) and also provides that holder for you to somebody else’s household. This kind of pastime can start a week or perhaps 2 prior to the wedding party and also every person have to learn it is approaching all over.

This holder can be circulated that day of the wedding party, nonetheless that sad simply perform in the event so many people are area just in case that they learn that holder can be approaching. So, you’ll find it may be handy to own another person bring that holder to somewhat of a household, accumulate the house along with the have that holder for the upcoming location, lowering that should get every individual have that holder for you to it is upcoming location. When it truly is whole, another person may be in charge of placing that holder items along, wrapping everthing as long as make it appearance nice and having this for the happy couple. It is usually sent to certainly the marriage like a present in and also connected with per se.

What ever activities you ultimately choose, make sure you keep in mind that requires of your company along with the restriction of the people company. If you need to prepare an activity that features every person, so you pick golfing, nonetheless grandpa is within your wheelchair or perhaps utilizes your walker, in which might not be the most effective pastime for you to prepare.

Author is : Wedd2120 ok

Look into to get more detailed guidebook and also information regarding Wedding Present Ideas on http://www-presentfinder.com

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    Thursday, Jan 27, 2011

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    You’re already in the car for your morning and afternoon commute. Why not pop in this book on CD?

    Here’s a sample of a letter by William Congreve… ( I bolded my favorite lines!)

    Dear Madam,

    Not believe that I love you? You cannot pretend to be so incredulous. If you do not believe my tongue, consult my eyes, consult your own. You will find by yours that they have charms; by mine that I have a heart which feels them.

    Recall to mind what happened last night. That at least was a love’s kiss. Its eagerness, its fierceness, its warmth, expressed the God its parent. But oh! its sweetness, and its melting softness expressed him more. With trembling in my limbs, and fevers in my soul I ravish’d it. Convulsions, pantings, murmurings shew’d the mighty disorder within me: the mighty disorder increased by it. For those dear lips shot through my heart, and thro’ my bleeding vitals, delicious poison, and an avoidless but yet a charming ruin.

    What cannot a day produce? The night before I thought myself a happy man, in want of nothing, and in fairest expectation of fortune; approved of by men of wit, and applauded by others. Pleased, nay charmed with my friends, my then dearest friends, sensible of every delicate pleasure, and in their turn possessing all.

    But Love, almighty Love, seems in a moment to have removed me to a prodigious distance from every object but you alone. In the midst of crowds I remain in solitude. Nothing but you can lay hold of my mind, and that can lay hold of nothing but you. (love this line!) I appear transported to some foreign desert with you (oh, that I were really thus transported!), where, abundantly supplied with everything, in thee, I might live out an age of uninterrupted ecstasy.

    The scene of the world’s great stage seems suddenly and sadly chang’d. Unlovely objects are all around me, excepting thee; the charms of all the world appear to be translated to thee. Thus in this said but oh, too pleasing state! my soul can fix upon nothing but thee; thee it contemplates, admires, adores, nay depends on, trusts on you alone.

    If you and hope forsake it, despair and endless attend it.

    I love how men used to be all about falling head over heels in love, and not afraid to make that declaration! Men, be inspired! If you’ve ever fallen for a girl only after one brief encounter, you are NOT alone.

    Dating Advice From A Girl

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    Thursday, Jan 27, 2011

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    If you plant to attend, participate in, and fear a job or career fair and then you don’t attend you will miss low-risk job search practice and networking opportunities.

    With this in mind, here are top 7 ways to crush your fear of Job or Career Fairs and meet helpful people including willing strangers.

    1. Packaging - How you dress, How you hair looks. How you accessorize. How you smell. And how clean and polished your shoes are, especially your heels, make a difference, first to you and how you feel, and to the people you meet. You never get a second chance to make a good first impression. Corny, but so true. (Read entire article and learn what is best color to wear to job or career fairs and to any interview).
    2. Attitude – No one on the planet looks forward to a Job or Career Fair except for sponsors and few, very few of those  “working the booths.” Yup! If your attitude is upbeat, edgy, filled with energy, and  “positive,” you will benefit.
    3. Get Remembered - Your mission is To Be Remembered. A) Have a two-sided business card. B) Hand out individually wrapped breath mints before you move to the next booth or person. C) Wear a fresh flower and give some away. D) Bring day-glow imprinted micro-sized helium-filled balloons and give some away. You’ll be remembered.
    4. Huge Legal-Sized Resume - At job fairs, first time through, resume “viewing” time is 5 seconds (not minutes). Enlarge first page of your resume on legal-size (8.5 x 14) piece of paper. Hold it up (higher when applicants are in front of you) so recruiters can say “yes” or “no” to on-the-spot interviewing. Hand out regular-size resumes printed on off-white paper only.
    5. Five (5) Applicants Interviewed At The Same Time – Ugh! That’s what to expect at busy career fairs. Your job: Speak up. With energy and just loud enough to be heard, answer in short statements: “I can do that.” Or “I have done that for 5 years.” Or “That’s what I do best.” (Read entire article to get more tips).
    6. Follow-Up – Get Business Cards. Circle on each lead person’ name. Get primary or best e-mail address. Get direct line number. Mail three days later (not e-mail) thank-you note that starts with the words “you” or “your,” not “Thank you!” Remind them WHO you are by what you were wearing that day. Beat competing applicants.
    7. Expectations – Make a written list of what you must do at job or career fairs. Add that you need to make friends with other professionals. Get acquainted. You give them leads about jobs that match them not you and they will do the same.

    Author: Stephen Q Shannon

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    3. 11 Tips to an Organized Job Search

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    Wednesday, Jan 26, 2011

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    My friend Melissa is here for two weeks. She is one of those Gen-Y jet-set types. But she flew here, to Wisconsin, from Hong Kong, where she just quit her job in finance to become a nanny in Italy.

    I was going to tell you that I love her because she is taking amazing photos with her zillion-dollar camera of stuff on the farm that I can see but I can’t figure out how to get in a photo. Like this. It’s just my house. But it’s the magic of my house in the winter.

    What I really want to tell you about Melissa though, is that she quit her 0,000/year in international finance to hang out with some nine-year-old Italian after school. She speaks Chinese, which is how she got the family to pay her enough money. The family really wanted a nanny who could fix the kid’s English accent because English tutor was from Sweden. But now their getting a two-for-one: Their kid will learn English with an American accent and Chinese with an American accent, too.

    Like me, Melissa has Asperger’s Syndrome. So I can finish her sentences for her, and she can finish my sentences. Which is funny because neither of us ever shuts up, so there are really never any sentences to finish.

    We are both very high-functioning for people with Asperger's. Both of us were in special-ed classes when we were in high school. And both of us were in honors classes as well. We spend a lot of time helping each other deal with Asperger's. Here are things we do.

    1. Stop circular thinking.

    When I want something to happen that does not seem to be going to happen, I cannot stop talking about it. Like, somehow, if I keep talking, nothing bad will happen. Melissa tells me: Shhh! And snaps her finger like I’m a dog. If she does that, I am quiet. Not because I want to be, but because I know I have a problem that I can’t shut up when I don’t like something, so if someone tells me to shut up, I need to do that.

    When she arrived at the house, there was a huge pile of dishes in the sink because I was too upset with the farmer to keep the house clean. I had to obsess about how upset I was, and then I had to tell her, and I told her I was going to die. And she said, “Shhh.” And then she started taking pictures to document the mess.

    So often if I just stop talking about something, it goes away. But I don’t have that natural inclination.

    2. No emails longer than 300 words.

    Melissa sends endless emails. She is generally right, about everything, but people don’t care. They don’t want to read anyone’s discussion of why they are right for five paragraphs. So Melissa tries to just send 300 words, no matter what topic is. I do positive reinforcement by not reading anything from her that I think is too long.

    This goes for talking, too. I mean, it doesn’t really matter if you’re right if you’re boring. Melissa and I help each other to know when the talk is getting boring. Well, or we just talk over each other.

    3. Xanax as a backup

    I never used to be a Xanax person. In fact, I’m scared of it because I think I could become addicted. But it’s so easy for someone with Asperger’s to go into an anxiety attack. Many people with Asperger's do not vary from their routine at all. Eat the same thing every day, go to the same places every day, some people like routine so much that they will drive ten miles out of the way just to go on roads they know to a new destination. So Melissa and I know tons of self-soothing mechanisms: yoga, hot bath, meditation. But if nothing works, Melissa decides it is a chemical imbalance, and she takes a Xanax. Now when I am panicking about the farmer – it’s almost always about the farmer: he doesn’t love me, he’s leaving, he wants a dog instead of me. I take a Xanax.

    4. Serotonin replacements

    I haven’t written about medication on the blog. It was scary for me to do. I don’t know why. I guess because I’m unsure about it. And look, I wasn’t even going to write about it here, but I can’t write about Melissa with out writing about it. Do you know who diagnosed Melissa with Asperger’s? Me. I can spot someone a mile away. I’ve grown up with it all around me. So I have a dog-scent for it or something.

    She got herself officially diagnosed and then she found this doctor who explained to her that she has extra dopamine because her serotonin is absorbed too quickly.  She needs to slow down the serotonin uptake to balance her out.  Then she read on my blog that I can have a day where all I eat is bread – actually, I have had probably ten million days where all I eat is bread – and she told me I need to replace bread with a serotonin uptake inhibitor.

    5. There is no five.

    This post is digressing into a post about medicating yourself for anxiety. Okay. So all of you who have ever written to me about how you think numbered-lists are for philistines and if I want to write a numbered list I should write for Cosmo. Well, first of all, I’d die of happiness to write for Cosmo because it would mean that someone finally acknowledged that I have skills in the bedroom. But look, now I’m doing the un-list. I have a list that is not a list because list item number five is that Melissa got me to take medication, and I’m happy. It’s a safety net.

    If this were a list with sub-points – like, a, b, and c – they would be about all the reasons I don’t take my medication. Just yesterday I was talking to my therapist about how the only reason I’m trying really hard to take  my medication regularly is because a big sign of manic-depression is that the person doesn’t take their medication.

    She laughed. She said it’s not just manic depressives – it’s everyone. They feel better and then they stop.

    Maybe this is true for me. Here’s another thing. Next time I write a post where I’m sad or happy or I don’t know what, I don’t want you guys saying, “Did you take your medicine?” I don’t know why this scares me so much, hearing you say this.

    You know how when you throw a fit at your boyfriend and he asks you if you have PMS? It sucks, right? Because whether or not you have PMS, the premise of the fit is still true – the boyfriend, or the world, or whatever is still pissing you off.

    At the beginning of the post, my ideas were nice and organized about what I was going to write about Melissa. Now, I’m on shaky territory. I hate people telling me I’m crazy because crazy is not interesting. I want you to think I’m like you. I like being around Melissa so much because she makes me feel normal.

    She has never visited my house before, but when she got here, she immediately gravitated to our yellow disc. She said, "What’s this for?"

    I said, “For standing.”

    “Why?”

    “It’s calming to people who have self-regulating issues.”

    But I didn’t need to tell her. She was already using it.

    Photos by Melissa Sconyers.

    Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist

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    Wednesday, Jan 26, 2011

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    Money and Marriage Two a Narrative Guide to Financial, Estate
    Money and Marriage Two a Narrative Guide to Financial, Estate
    ISBN-13: 9780595310470 ISBN-10: 0595310478 Title: Money and Marriage Two a Narrative Guide

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    Simplify Marriage

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    Tuesday, Jan 25, 2011

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    Written by : Wedd2120 ok
    Wedding Present Idea.Wedding ceremonies certainly are a memorable special occasion nevertheless gets costly from a urgent. Together with wedding party crafts you may place the right touch and also support the value lower in the process. Here are a few ideas to get wedding party crafts to increase luster and also creativeness towards your wedding day.

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