You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June 2008.
Recently sent a mass email to a group and gotten back the following out-of-office auto-response from this friend: “I am away for the summer on a climbing trip and I will not be checking email (and probably not voicemail either). I’ll be back at the end of August and will get in touch with you then.”
I love it.
Why is it so hard for many of us to just let go and get away?
We seem to have this sense of obligation be in the know, and to achieve a certain something by a certain time. If we stop, pause or do a 180, then everything is going to fall apart (like that VISA commercial of the checkout register). We’re afraid of missing out, to not be included in the fast track to who-knows-where.
Oh how liberating the friend must be feeling to just let go. I can almost taste this sense of freedom…from ourselves.
Well, can’t wait to have my own OOO for the 2.5 weeks that I’ll be in Jarkarta & Lombok (the “untainted” Bali) for my friend’s wedding & honeymoon! Maybe it could be something like- “I’m either surfing, hiking, snorkeling, stuffing my face, or doing nothing right now. I have no idea whether I have internet access or not, but I sure will not be seeing this email until I get back. Have a fantastic day!”
It’s close to 11:30pm, and for the past hour or so, I’ve been having this uncontrollable craving for sweets. Let’s see…a chocolate chip cookie (with melting chocolate dots), a cinnabon, a raspberry white chocolate truffles cheesecake would really hit the spot. Heck, I’m freakin’ desperate here…even a nice piece (ok, maybe chunck) of dark chocolate would’ve been good.
Unfortunately, I have none here and it’s too late to make a snack run. The ONLY thing close to sweet I have within reach is a package of tic tacs, orange “artificially flavored mints.” Well, let me rephrase: I *had* a package of tic tacs. Now, I only have an empty package…
Yes, I’ve stooped to that low. Indeed. Unfortunately, the lame tic tacs didn’t do the trick, leaving me with an orange tongue and aching cravin’ for real sweets. <sigh>
This reminds me of a few months ago when an article in the LA Times got circulated amongst some friends. The article said that everyone has a story, and it can be summarized into a six-word memoir. At the same when I read the article (late night like this one) and was having the very same craving (surprise, surprise), I wrote mine: “Stubborn snacker, seeking fat-free sweets.” HA! Looks like the story of my life stands true to form.
So, because I lounged around this entire past weekend like a lazy seal and didn’t do any training, I now have to pay the consequences on the weekdays. Funny that I do my long bike/swim training on the weekdays.
After work today, I changed into my bike shorts with the good ol’ granny paddings for a date with the bike trainer at my work’s gym. Love it btw- it’s got a CAT EYE-like bike computer that measures your cadence and distance.
The down-fall (or maybe just really “user incompetence”) to the bikes is that it’s really hard to adjust the seat height, etc. As a result, what I had hoped to be a nice jock image of me in dri-fit, bike shorts, clip-in shoes and powerbar in hand…sadly turned into a wanna-be wrestling her way to get the bike seat height adjusted. Bummer.
Luckily, the Wednesday Cycling class instructor whom I had befriended was around and came to my rescue. We had a really nice chat about the lovely sport of Tri and joked about how it makes us anti-social (it really does actually). I felt like I was one of the Tri-ppz and flyin’ high. Then, she gave me suggestions on training for the Half Ironman. She casually suggested that I just need to get in a couple of 60-mile bike rides with oh just about an hour of solid run afterwards…!
OMG! Suddenly I was back to reality, noticing my legs getting tired from pedaling already, and praying that my quads/hamstrings, energy level and ADD-like attention span would allow me last on the bike just for a freakin’ 20-30 miles top.
“Why do we do this to ourselves?!” I whined exasperatedly…like I always do.
“What? Are you talking about working or training?” She responded, coming from a noncorporate background, and had been just telling me how hard her business clients work.
It was like a light bulb going off. I suppose we DO allow us to go through some of these things in many other aspects of our lives. Things that we really do have the power to control, to make a choice. Yet, we see ourselves being helpless and victimized. We were really the ones who have decided on doing what we do because we saw the long-term benefit (hopefully that has not been changed- I think we need to stay aware of the values and benefits that we’re seeking). If that is true, then we should just shut up, quit complaining, and do what we had agreed to do.
Often people bitch and whine too much about the things that are perfectly in their control. Myself included.
ChaCha is a new FREE mobile service where you can ask any question and get answers on your phone as a text. You can ask a question by calling 1-800-2ChaCha, texting 242242, or typing your question on their website.
It’s like having your personal assistant…free! Well, in my case, it’s like having a high-tech magic 8-ball, without the hassle of violently shaking the damn thing.
Given that it’s Sunday night, I asked: “will I go to work tomorrow?” It’s response: “The great houdini can see the future, and the answer is yes. You will go to work tomorrow. Why? Well you just need the money.” HOW COOL IS THAT? That’s it, I’m ditching my retarded black 8-ball and upgrading to ChaCha!
So, what’s the catch to this free service? Well, it seems like they’re using search engine technology from InfoSpace (owner of Dogpile from good ol’ days), along with web directories, pay-for-placement, and image & multimedia-specific metasearch engines.
I did a web search using ChaCha search (search.chacha.com) and Google search on “what is the meaning of life,” and…the two search results vary. I mean, the top links overlap, but they’re indexed in slightly different orders. Also, ChaCha returns top 8 pages of web results vs. Google gives you the whole 31,400,000 relevant links. Interesting. We’ll have to wait and see how far they take this search biz-ness.
So, my other question to ChaCha was of course, “what is the meaning of life?” About 10 secs later (fast turnaround), I got a text. Guess what it says? “We’ll be back after the commercial.” J/K! Do YOU really want to know? Check out my “Meaning of Life” page for the answer.
I trained and completed my first Marathon back in 2004. Prior to that, I had never in my life thought I was capable of doing something like this. I was never much of a runner. At the time, a couple of managing parters at where I worked started an informal marathon team. As a part of the initiative, we had organized training runs, team T-shirt, and true to consultants- a biweekly conference call that served as a runner’s forum.
Not sure whether I was really going to be able to run it, I had initially signed up for the Half Marathon distance. Shortly after, a couple of my friends conned me into switching to the Full distance to train with them. In the end, one dropped out from injury and the other ended up running the Half. Somehow, I stuck with it, and found my flow.
I could’ve been the poster kid of the “incessant thinker” syndrome. Yet, for some reason, my mind stopped rambling whenever I was running outside. My whole life, I had been brainwashed to operate on a schedule, allocating each activity with a set of time constraint, obsessively setting expectations and deadlines. When I run, however, I lose the sense of time and productivity, which feels awesomely liberating.
So, in an effort to share my joy from running, I’m happy to announce that I’ve started a Marathon Team for my MBA Women in Leadership organization. This Oct., over thirty of us will be running the Nike Women’s Half/Full Marathon. I’m very excited, and you get a Tiffany necklace for completing the event!
You too, can train and run an event of your choice! Check out the Nike training programs that we’ll be following.
- Half Marathon – Beginner: the most distance you’ve ran is 10K or less. Your goal is to complete and preferably without stopping (12-week program).
- Half Marathon – Advanced: you’ve completed a Half Marathon before, and you would like to improve your time (15-week program).
- Full Marathon – Level 1, Level 2, Level 3: take your pick based on your current base and your goal for the Marathon (15-week program).
If you’re completely new to running, then I highly recommend The Non-Runner’s Marathon Trainer
Happy Running!
How do you go from this? ———> To this!
Most of us MBAs have started our lovely internships by now. My first day went really well, until the moment when I was formally introduced to my cubicle. Cubes!! Maybe I’ve been in school for too long…but it felt so cold and foreign! I was instantly mortified and disgusted. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked in cubes before, but I’ve never had to directly identify one as my own.
Prior to school, I was a nomad consultant straight out of Undergrad and later worked either at home in my PJs as an independent consultant or in the gym as a trainer. To now formally confront this premium piece of 10×10 real estate that I had worked so hard for, I felt more insecure than relieved.
As MBA interns, we are at a disadvantage because we are hyped up by our prior work experience and the MBA brand, so we’re not able to camouflage ourselves with the Undergrad interns when it comes to performance expectations. I guess it won’t fly either way, since we are branded by this weathered look from the year’s worth of beaten in case studies, which promptly rusted away our oh-once youthful glows.
With one more year of school left and loans to be repaid, it’s no wonder that we put this great sense of pressure on ourselves to “make it or die.” But what really is “making it”? We’ve been taught to identify ourselves and our sense of happiness with labels- adjectives, titles, achievements, credentials, etc. Sadly, many of the labels are transient or meaningless. As I went through my past and present labels and happily assuming my new label from the internship, I wanted to make sure that I don’t become too dependent on them. I make my labels, not the other way around.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe that labels serve as tools to help to discover and assess passions in life. If there’s a consistent story coming out of your collection of labels, then you have either found your passion or you are stuck (at simply what you’re good at or comfortable with).
I think it’s what you make out of it and whatever that makes you happy. Chances are, you become happy by doing the things that you love to do. In order to sustain your happiness, these things need to be authentic and meaningful passion.
Would love to hear your take on it.
