... = ugh.
i'm 41 years old, people. FORTY-ONE. are you kidding me that i have to learn this again? (plus, not to be culturally insensitive, but who plows fields anymore?)
seriously, though, with the test in 3 days, i think it's time to start tapering. i remember how happy i was when i was racing - it was almost worth the brutal month before the race to enjoy that blissful week of going out for a little 5-mile jaunt or, the day before the race, a positively heavenly 2-mile jog. so i'm thinking a couple more writing exercises, a couple more reviews of math formulas and maybe working a few more of those damn mixture problems (i just can't seem to get those. i must have known how to do them at one point, but i can't seem to get it back.) no more vocab words. i just don't have to know what "calumny" means, ever. (why would i not just say "slander"??)
on the other hand, classes are going pretty well. it's trippy being in undergrad classes again. my morning class is, predictably, full of younguns, whereas my evening class has older people (not as old as i am, but older). i have one professor that my mom would call a "pistol." she's funny and doesn't take shit from anyone and doesn't hesitate to embarrass you (in a nice kind of way, if that is possible) if you're bullshitting. my other one is smart, you can tell, but disorganized: the type of professor that has a ton of papers when she's lecturing and can never quite find the one she's looking for. when she does find it, sometimes she just reads from it, a mile a minute. no way can you get all that down. we all end up looking around at each other like "did anyone get that? no? ok then ..."
AND i scored a work contract that i'm excited about. it starts, predictably, the day after the GRE. more on that as it unfolds.
9.04.2011
fun and games ... sort of
i think i should take it as a good sign that i need a career change when i'm already tired of writing about my career to date. but we're nearly caught up, and then i think this journey will get more interesting.
so ... summer, 2009. i've accepted a job as the director of brand communications for a company called glu mobile (NASDAQ: GLUU). i liked the people i met during the interview process, which was quick and efficient. i was especially happy to have a strong female mentor, who was the first person I'd met while interviewing. and it was also the first time i realized the size and power of my network from yahoo - i was practically hand-picked for the position by an old friend from there, and when i arrived, i found that another yahoo friend was also working there.
glu was a short, interesting ride. on my second day in the office, the CEO of the company (whom i'd met during the interview process and really liked) came into my office and told me that he was leaving the company as soon as his replacement had been found. this is never good news. it means that immediately you have a lame duck CEO, and the markets don't like that. plus, i'd met him during the interview process and really liked him, so personally i was sad about it. but there wasn't anything i could do but roll with it.
then, two days later, my counterpart on the product marketing side, whom i'd barely met, came into my office and told me that he was leaving too. now i started to get somewhat alarmed. not only was it the second departure i'd heard about in three days, but this one was a guy in my department, and it was unclear that he was going to be replaced given that the company was doing ... well, ok, but not great. that could mean that i was going to be taking on his role as well as my own. i was pretty sure i could do both jobs, but i wasn't thrilled at the prospect. it meant more responsibility and longer hours for likely no more pay, not to mention the administrivia that comes with having more direct reports, etc. not to mention that one of said direct reports seemed to think that he should have gotten the job, and i was too new to know if he was right. but again, i rolled with it. i didn't have much choice in the matter.
the next few months, though, were OK. i had a very supportive manager (not the mentor i spoke of before, but still a great guy) who, after a couple months of trying to manage the product marketing team himself, handed it over to me at my urging - and gave me a commensurate raise to go with it, which he didn't have to do. however, the company, as i mentioned, wasn't doing great. the iPhone was the new device for casual games, at which the company excelled, but we were a bit late to the game in terms of developing and marketing compelling titles for that platform. in addition, how quickly a game got approved and how well it did was largely dictated by Apple, which would choose certain games to be featured according to some formula that appeared to not actually be any formula at all.
and then, as the fall slipped away and winter approached, my depression started creeping in again. i attributed it to not being particularly happy at the job; the departure of my aforementioned mentor, who left to be the CEO of a startup company in san francisco; the breakup of a relationship under rather difficult circumstances; a 20-mile commute each direction; and an early, rainy winter that made the sun scarce and resulted in a 3-week stretch where it rained on my way to work, on my way home, or both, making the commute that much worse. i worked as hard as i was able, as my critical, perfectionist self would have accepted no less, but my heart wasn't in it. and my mentor had subtly suggested on her departure that she needed someone to run marketing at her new company, so that stuck in the back of my mind as well. come december, i began to start seriously considering a move, even though i'd only been at glu for about six months. i met with the new company immediately after the holiday break, which i'd largely spent at home watching movies and bad television, and went to glu the next day and gave my manager my two weeks' notice. and come the end of january, i was the new vice president of marketing at a small consumer photo-sharing site called Scrapblog. [Note: Scrapblog was acquired by Mixbook in January 2011. So you know where this story is going.]
8.24.2011
feeling like a walking pharmacy
if you've ever taken psych meds, or know anyone who has, you know there's often a lot of trial and error involved. what works for one person might have absolutely no effect - or worse, a deleterious effect - on someone else. or it might relieve your depression but have unwanted, even unbearable side effects. to add insult to injury, the patient often has to wait 4-6 weeks to determine if a drug is having any positive effect (whereas the negative effects usually make themselves known more quickly).
i take psych meds. a long time ago i was ashamed of that, but i'm not anymore. and i recently started a new one that was intended to kick up the positive effects of another - a booster, if you will. and it did, actually, and i felt better than i had in a long time. as we increased the dosage last week, however (gradually, as you do with almost all these medications), i developed akathisia, which is just a fancy word for feeling as though you're going to jump out of your skin. it's uncomfortable, bordering on painful, just to sit still. my meditation practice went out the window, as you can imagine, and that was one of the only things keeping me sane. not to mention that pacing around my house constantly was more than a little annoying too.
so i talked to my doctor, and there were essentially two options: 1) stop taking the drug that was causing the akathisia (duh), or 2) add yet another, extremely low-risk drug to control the akathisia (a beta blocker, often prescribed for high blood pressure). i didn't like either option, but ultimately i went with option 2. i now am taking five prescribed medications. so yeah, feeling like a walking pharmacy. there's a bad song in there somewhere.
i take psych meds. a long time ago i was ashamed of that, but i'm not anymore. and i recently started a new one that was intended to kick up the positive effects of another - a booster, if you will. and it did, actually, and i felt better than i had in a long time. as we increased the dosage last week, however (gradually, as you do with almost all these medications), i developed akathisia, which is just a fancy word for feeling as though you're going to jump out of your skin. it's uncomfortable, bordering on painful, just to sit still. my meditation practice went out the window, as you can imagine, and that was one of the only things keeping me sane. not to mention that pacing around my house constantly was more than a little annoying too.
so i talked to my doctor, and there were essentially two options: 1) stop taking the drug that was causing the akathisia (duh), or 2) add yet another, extremely low-risk drug to control the akathisia (a beta blocker, often prescribed for high blood pressure). i didn't like either option, but ultimately i went with option 2. i now am taking five prescribed medications. so yeah, feeling like a walking pharmacy. there's a bad song in there somewhere.
8.23.2011
a method to the madness
i'd been following method and using their products for a couple of years, but somehow it had escaped me that their headquarters were located right in san francisco. like most of the jobs i've gotten, i came across the opportunity serendipitously when a friend of mine participated in a focus group there after being recruited by a friend from graduate school. he knew that i was looking for something that was more aligned with my values and philosophies, and preserving the environment was right up there on the list. I knew that cleaning products contained toxic chemicals that were getting washed down our drains every minute of every day. i knew that new moms washed their kitchen floors with products that contained bleach and other toxins and then let their babies crawl around on them, not being aware of the possible deleterious effects. this was really cool stuff, the idea that you could create cleaning and personal care products that worked as well as the ones that contained the dangerous chemicals but didn't pose harm to people or the environment.
my friend, being the resourceful and thoughtful guy that he is, got the contact information for method's chief marketing officer and did an email introduction between us. about a month later, i had my first informational interview at the company. it took about three additional months to sort out all the details (if you can call making up a job description a detail!), but i started at method as the director of customer advocacy in november '07.
i fell hard and fast for this company. it had been around for about 7 years at that time, and the two young founders were still very much involved, one on the branding and marketing side and the other on the formulation side. and my job - well, i worked hard, but my dirty little secret was that some of the job almost did itself. our customers were so passionate about the products that they engaged in a ton of word-of-mouth marketing on our behalf without us having to do a whole lot to cultivate it. we did everything we could to make them feel special, including mailing out early samples of new products before they were available to the general public. during my tenure there, we doubled the size of the email database as well as the advocacy (our "VIP"s) database. after a few months, i took over the brand communications department, expanding my responsibilities beyond advocacy and customer support into the web site, ecommerce, public relations, and branding and advertising.
unfortunately, however, my new responsibilities came at a price: the company had had its first-ever layoff. the economy was beginning to go south, and method sold premium-priced products in a world of inexpensive mass production, up against behemoths like Procter & Gamble and Clorox. we prided ourselves on the inevitable david & goliath comparisons, but the truth of the matter was that those companies were jumping on the "green" bandwagon too, and they could do it less expensively than we could since their production runs were so much larger.
somewhere in here, the chief marketing officer, who'd been my big champion, left the company. and probably not coincidentally, i made it through one more round of layoffs, but not the third. actually, although it was positioned as a layoff, it's pretty safe to say i got fired. i'd never been fired from a job before, not even come close - well, as far as i knew, anyway. but i guess there was a pattern where there was always one person, at a lot of companies where i worked, who really didn't like me and didn't approve of my work. my peers and the people who worked for me were never among them - again, as far as i knew.
i took it pretty hard. i'd been at yahoo for 4-1/2 years, and i'd wanted method to be my new home for the next 4-1/2, at least, and it had only been 16 months or so. it had taken me a while to break into the company, and there are only so many local businesses who boasted the "socially and environmentally responsible" label. i licked my wounds for a couple weeks and then got busy looking for work, knowing that in the current market (by now, it was almost mid-2009) i'd likely have to compromise my ideals, or at least put them on the back burner in terms of the criteria i used to evaluate new opportunities. i was a single person with a mortgage, and i just needed to be realistic. happily, i found a couple of options relatively quickly, and in early july i started as the director of brand communications for a gaming company called glu mobile.
my friend, being the resourceful and thoughtful guy that he is, got the contact information for method's chief marketing officer and did an email introduction between us. about a month later, i had my first informational interview at the company. it took about three additional months to sort out all the details (if you can call making up a job description a detail!), but i started at method as the director of customer advocacy in november '07.
i fell hard and fast for this company. it had been around for about 7 years at that time, and the two young founders were still very much involved, one on the branding and marketing side and the other on the formulation side. and my job - well, i worked hard, but my dirty little secret was that some of the job almost did itself. our customers were so passionate about the products that they engaged in a ton of word-of-mouth marketing on our behalf without us having to do a whole lot to cultivate it. we did everything we could to make them feel special, including mailing out early samples of new products before they were available to the general public. during my tenure there, we doubled the size of the email database as well as the advocacy (our "VIP"s) database. after a few months, i took over the brand communications department, expanding my responsibilities beyond advocacy and customer support into the web site, ecommerce, public relations, and branding and advertising.
unfortunately, however, my new responsibilities came at a price: the company had had its first-ever layoff. the economy was beginning to go south, and method sold premium-priced products in a world of inexpensive mass production, up against behemoths like Procter & Gamble and Clorox. we prided ourselves on the inevitable david & goliath comparisons, but the truth of the matter was that those companies were jumping on the "green" bandwagon too, and they could do it less expensively than we could since their production runs were so much larger.
somewhere in here, the chief marketing officer, who'd been my big champion, left the company. and probably not coincidentally, i made it through one more round of layoffs, but not the third. actually, although it was positioned as a layoff, it's pretty safe to say i got fired. i'd never been fired from a job before, not even come close - well, as far as i knew, anyway. but i guess there was a pattern where there was always one person, at a lot of companies where i worked, who really didn't like me and didn't approve of my work. my peers and the people who worked for me were never among them - again, as far as i knew.
i took it pretty hard. i'd been at yahoo for 4-1/2 years, and i'd wanted method to be my new home for the next 4-1/2, at least, and it had only been 16 months or so. it had taken me a while to break into the company, and there are only so many local businesses who boasted the "socially and environmentally responsible" label. i licked my wounds for a couple weeks and then got busy looking for work, knowing that in the current market (by now, it was almost mid-2009) i'd likely have to compromise my ideals, or at least put them on the back burner in terms of the criteria i used to evaluate new opportunities. i was a single person with a mortgage, and i just needed to be realistic. happily, i found a couple of options relatively quickly, and in early july i started as the director of brand communications for a gaming company called glu mobile.
8.18.2011
first day of school
boy, is *that* an inaccurate title. let's see what a more realistic number might be. (i get to practice for the GRE at the same time i do this, bonus.)
kindergarten: 180 half days = 90 days
grades 1-12: 180 days each = 2160 days
4 years undergrad: average 4.5 days/week, 16 weeks per semester = 576 days
4 years grad school: average 4 days/week, 16 weeks per semester = 512 days
so if i did that right, this is actually approximately my 3,339th day of school. that's 9.15 years. egads.
my class starts in 20 minutes. the classroom is locked and there are a bunch of people lined up outside waiting to get in. i'm among them for 2 reasons: 1) i way overestimated the amount of time it would take me to get here; and 2) i need to get into the room early to make sure i can grab an electrical outlet for my ancient laptop with the battery that lasts approximately half an hour on a full charge. that is, if these classrooms even have electrical outlets. this building looks as though it was built 40-50 years ago, during the architectural high life of the 1960s and 70s.
doors just opened and i did in fact grab an outlet. i shouldn't have worried - i'm the only one in here with a laptop. i'm absolutely stunned by that.
<sigh> i suppose i should NOT be stunned, however, that the professor looks to be only a few years older than i am.
more later ...
kindergarten: 180 half days = 90 days
grades 1-12: 180 days each = 2160 days
4 years undergrad: average 4.5 days/week, 16 weeks per semester = 576 days
4 years grad school: average 4 days/week, 16 weeks per semester = 512 days
so if i did that right, this is actually approximately my 3,339th day of school. that's 9.15 years. egads.
my class starts in 20 minutes. the classroom is locked and there are a bunch of people lined up outside waiting to get in. i'm among them for 2 reasons: 1) i way overestimated the amount of time it would take me to get here; and 2) i need to get into the room early to make sure i can grab an electrical outlet for my ancient laptop with the battery that lasts approximately half an hour on a full charge. that is, if these classrooms even have electrical outlets. this building looks as though it was built 40-50 years ago, during the architectural high life of the 1960s and 70s.
doors just opened and i did in fact grab an outlet. i shouldn't have worried - i'm the only one in here with a laptop. i'm absolutely stunned by that.
<sigh> i suppose i should NOT be stunned, however, that the professor looks to be only a few years older than i am.
more later ...
8.13.2011
back to work - 2003-2007
in the spring of 2003, after i'd been unemployed for about 5 months, an old friend from my first post-grad school job at the "digital consultancy" put the word out that he was looking for a contractor to do an analysis of a particular market segment - the youth market - for Yahoo!. it was scoped at about a 6-week gig and involved figuring out the current value of the segment to the company, recommending new marketing programs directed specifically to youth, estimating a new customer lifetime value to the company if they enacted such programs, and providing organizational recommendations so that yahoo could effectively carry out the strategy.
i love this kind of stuff. anything that involves research and strategy is right up my alley. throw in a little math (in this instance, a customer lifetime value model i would create, plus the associated sensitivity analysis), and that's just a bonus.
and yet, again, i hesitated. i lived in san francisco and yahoo was "down the peninsula," as we say here, almost in san jose, which as the crow flies is only about 50 miles but on a freeway can take 2 hours or so on a bad day. so we negotiated. i'd have to spend some time in the office, sure, but i could come down on off hours to avoid the worst of the traffic, and i wouldn't have to come every day. problem pretty much solved.
(looking back, i can't help but wonder what would have happened if i didn't take that job - and make no mistake, i was close to not taking it. there was the commute, but there was also the crisis of confidence that comes with depression, and i wasn't totally out of that yet. but we won't speculate. thank goodness i took advantage of that opportunity, because it shaped my career in a fundamental way.)
the project was fun, and although i'd negotiated only 2-3 days a week in the office, i soon found myself going down almost every day. others in the company had already done bits and pieces of the work, but it had never been brought together, so there was a lot of existing research to collect and interviews to conduct. more important, though, was the feeling of camaraderie that i hadn't even realized i'd been missing. i actually enjoyed being there. and although yahoo these days is a mere shadow of its former self, these were its glory days. it was the most popular site on the internet. it was making strategic acquisitions left and right, buying up even more traffic, and therefore commanding more advertising dollars than anyone else on the web.
i had fun and delivered what i thought was an excellent final report and presentation. more importantly, however, my confidence had returned. i knew i could do this work, that i had something - a lot, actually - to contribute. and as the project was winding down, i found out about a permanent position in another area of the company - yahoo mail. it was second only to hotmail (now known as windows live mail) at the time in terms of the number of accounts and page views it commanded, and was poised to take over first place. it was a marketing manager position - i'd join one other marketing manager, several product managers, and a team of engineers - about 35 people in all. (the team now, by the way, is well over 100 people.)
i got the job, and so began four and a half years of mostly fun, stimulating work. it was the first time since before graduate school that i'd worked at a large company, so it came with all the accompanying political BS (for which i became quickly known for having little patience), but overall it was a good experience. i worked with smart, fun people. the product did, indeed, become the #1 webmail product less than a year after i joined the team, which was cause for much celebration. and with the help of many others, particularly in yahoo's data analysis group, i introduced an element of data-driven marketing to not only the mail team, but the company as a whole. i'm very proud of some of the work i did there, and i held three different positions during my tenure at the company, learning a ton in each one.
another cool thing about yahoo that fed my soul was something called the yahoo employee foundation, or YEF for short. employees could have money deducted from each paychecks to go to the foundation, even in very small amounts, which was added to the fund. twice a year, the grants committee would review applications from various nonprofits (to be considered, each nonprofit had to be "sponsored" by someone who worked at yahoo) and choose a few to receive grants of up to about $25,000. i donated to YEF the whole time i worked at yahoo, and i served on the grants committee for two years, once sponsoring a group with which i volunteered called Sports4Kids (now PlayWorks). playworks started out as a grassroots organization in oakland, california, and has since expanded to many more cities around the US. it helps augment physical education programs in schools, which are often among the first to be cut when budgets are slashed, as was the case in oakland at the time. it also helps schools integrate "play" into the actual curriculum at schools, since this has been shown to improve learning for many students. anyway, that's my plug for playworks, and i encourage everyone to check them out. i was thrilled when they were chosen to receive a grant from YEF.
my last position at yahoo, which i held for a little over a year, was the least fulfilling, unfortunately. it was challenging, but not in the good way - in the frustrating way, the how-in-the-hell-are-we-supposed-to-get-this-done way. and my mind was wandering back to its more principled place. sure, yahoo was a great company. it provided useful services, compelling content, and just plain fun to hundreds of millions of people around the world. and yet i couldn't shake that feeling, once again, that although things we did had a huge impact on the web community, they didn't have a ton of meaningful impact on the world - at least, not by my definition of meaningful.
(it's only fair here to cite a few exceptions - or at least one, in particular, that stands out in my mind. in 2005, after hurricane katrina hit the southeastern coast of the US, yahoo galvanized a team of people to go to the astrodome and provide not only humanitarian aid but also set up technical infrastructure so that people could find family members from whom they had become separated during the tragedy. i wasn't one of the people who went - i was on vacation at the time - but i have tremendous respect for those who did.)
so i started poking around and telling my friends that i was looking for something different. and that's how, approximately 6 months after beginning to look for new options, i ended up at a company in san francisco called method, a company that formulated, designed and manufactured environmentally friendly home care and personal care products.
i love this kind of stuff. anything that involves research and strategy is right up my alley. throw in a little math (in this instance, a customer lifetime value model i would create, plus the associated sensitivity analysis), and that's just a bonus.
and yet, again, i hesitated. i lived in san francisco and yahoo was "down the peninsula," as we say here, almost in san jose, which as the crow flies is only about 50 miles but on a freeway can take 2 hours or so on a bad day. so we negotiated. i'd have to spend some time in the office, sure, but i could come down on off hours to avoid the worst of the traffic, and i wouldn't have to come every day. problem pretty much solved.
(looking back, i can't help but wonder what would have happened if i didn't take that job - and make no mistake, i was close to not taking it. there was the commute, but there was also the crisis of confidence that comes with depression, and i wasn't totally out of that yet. but we won't speculate. thank goodness i took advantage of that opportunity, because it shaped my career in a fundamental way.)
the project was fun, and although i'd negotiated only 2-3 days a week in the office, i soon found myself going down almost every day. others in the company had already done bits and pieces of the work, but it had never been brought together, so there was a lot of existing research to collect and interviews to conduct. more important, though, was the feeling of camaraderie that i hadn't even realized i'd been missing. i actually enjoyed being there. and although yahoo these days is a mere shadow of its former self, these were its glory days. it was the most popular site on the internet. it was making strategic acquisitions left and right, buying up even more traffic, and therefore commanding more advertising dollars than anyone else on the web.
i had fun and delivered what i thought was an excellent final report and presentation. more importantly, however, my confidence had returned. i knew i could do this work, that i had something - a lot, actually - to contribute. and as the project was winding down, i found out about a permanent position in another area of the company - yahoo mail. it was second only to hotmail (now known as windows live mail) at the time in terms of the number of accounts and page views it commanded, and was poised to take over first place. it was a marketing manager position - i'd join one other marketing manager, several product managers, and a team of engineers - about 35 people in all. (the team now, by the way, is well over 100 people.)
i got the job, and so began four and a half years of mostly fun, stimulating work. it was the first time since before graduate school that i'd worked at a large company, so it came with all the accompanying political BS (for which i became quickly known for having little patience), but overall it was a good experience. i worked with smart, fun people. the product did, indeed, become the #1 webmail product less than a year after i joined the team, which was cause for much celebration. and with the help of many others, particularly in yahoo's data analysis group, i introduced an element of data-driven marketing to not only the mail team, but the company as a whole. i'm very proud of some of the work i did there, and i held three different positions during my tenure at the company, learning a ton in each one.
another cool thing about yahoo that fed my soul was something called the yahoo employee foundation, or YEF for short. employees could have money deducted from each paychecks to go to the foundation, even in very small amounts, which was added to the fund. twice a year, the grants committee would review applications from various nonprofits (to be considered, each nonprofit had to be "sponsored" by someone who worked at yahoo) and choose a few to receive grants of up to about $25,000. i donated to YEF the whole time i worked at yahoo, and i served on the grants committee for two years, once sponsoring a group with which i volunteered called Sports4Kids (now PlayWorks). playworks started out as a grassroots organization in oakland, california, and has since expanded to many more cities around the US. it helps augment physical education programs in schools, which are often among the first to be cut when budgets are slashed, as was the case in oakland at the time. it also helps schools integrate "play" into the actual curriculum at schools, since this has been shown to improve learning for many students. anyway, that's my plug for playworks, and i encourage everyone to check them out. i was thrilled when they were chosen to receive a grant from YEF.
my last position at yahoo, which i held for a little over a year, was the least fulfilling, unfortunately. it was challenging, but not in the good way - in the frustrating way, the how-in-the-hell-are-we-supposed-to-get-this-done way. and my mind was wandering back to its more principled place. sure, yahoo was a great company. it provided useful services, compelling content, and just plain fun to hundreds of millions of people around the world. and yet i couldn't shake that feeling, once again, that although things we did had a huge impact on the web community, they didn't have a ton of meaningful impact on the world - at least, not by my definition of meaningful.
(it's only fair here to cite a few exceptions - or at least one, in particular, that stands out in my mind. in 2005, after hurricane katrina hit the southeastern coast of the US, yahoo galvanized a team of people to go to the astrodome and provide not only humanitarian aid but also set up technical infrastructure so that people could find family members from whom they had become separated during the tragedy. i wasn't one of the people who went - i was on vacation at the time - but i have tremendous respect for those who did.)
so i started poking around and telling my friends that i was looking for something different. and that's how, approximately 6 months after beginning to look for new options, i ended up at a company in san francisco called method, a company that formulated, designed and manufactured environmentally friendly home care and personal care products.
8.12.2011
turns out math IS hard
or, at least, relearning algebra here on the edge of middle age is presenting some challenges. i'll give myself a break since it's DAY ONE, however.
backing up again, though ...
so it was 1994 and i started researching MBA programs with concentrations in nonprofit management. there weren't many, but i found a few at some excellent-to-good schools - stanford, berkeley (haas), the university of texas, the university of indiana, yale. (yale didn't even technically offer an "official" MBA in those days, but they've since jumped on the bandwagon.) sorry, indiana, but i crossed you off the list right away. good school but not great school, and cold climate. (when i applied for undergrad, i didn't apply anywhere north of where i lived in pennsylvania specifically because i hate the cold. great criterion for a pretty important decision, right?) i forsook my social life for some time to study for the GMAT and luckily did well, but i still knew that berkeley and stanford were both a stretch, which was a cause of stress since I was pretty sure i wanted to be back in the bay area. i got the rejection letter from stanford first. boom.
texas and yale graciously admitted me, and yale began wooing me with offers of scholarships (which was the only way on earth i'd be able to go there). no word from berkeley yet. i started getting knots in my stomach when i approached my mailbox when i got home from work.
and then, because it's just what i do, i kept mulling and turning ideas over in my head. what did i really want to do? at the time (i don't know if this is still true), all the applications required that you write a 2-3 page personal statement telling their illustrious admissions department why you deserved to be there and what you wanted to be when you grew up. at the time, i knew mine was 75% horseshit. (later, when i became an applications reader at haas, i learned that most of them were more like 90% horseshit.) but it was also true that i'd done the berkeley application last, so i'd been ruminating on that statement for quite some time. and although i don't remember exactly what i wrote, it involved using this new "Internet" thingamabob to create more integrated networks for nonprofits and people who required their services - social services like education opportunities for single mothers, inexpensive child care, re-entry into the workforce after being homeless - things like that. hey, for 1994 that was pretty advanced thinking, for real.
social services, social services. hmmm. now, isn't that why i'd wanted to go to law school, lo those many (well, several) years ago? and so that's where the idea of the JD popped up again. and then berkeley sent me the fat package, and i had a decision to make.
texas, berkeley and yale all had good law schools. well, yale and berkeley were great and texas was good. texas came off the list next because, well, it was texas. don't hold it against me. you don't want to live in texas either, even if it's austin and austin is "really cool" with a "great music scene" and an "up-and-coming arts community." it's still texas, people. deal with it.
the tricky thing was that i had to decide which MBA program to attend before i could apply to the law school, all because of my rather wretched, or at least ill-timed, planning. and come on, i mean, i had a good LSAT score (i had managed to squeeze in taking the LSAT - again, since my scores from my college try were no longer good - in the spring of 1995, after i had this revelation) and good grades, but yale was the #1-ranked law school in the country. maybe i'd have an advantage already being in the school of management there, but maybe the law school admissions committee would have a good chuckle at my application. and let's face it, california was calling me back with its temperate weather and liberal outlook on life. i wasn't a shoo-in at berkeley (then known as boalt hall school of law) either, but figured my chances were better. and a little ways into my first year as an MBA student, i found out that i had indeed been admitted to boalt and now, instead of being an MBA '97 student, i was now JD/MBA '99.
school itself, well, that's not a terribly important part of the story - although it seems like it should be, doesn't it? what was important was the hurricane that blew through the hallowed halls of berkeley, especially at the business school: THE INTERNET. by the time i graduated, although i still believed wholeheartedly in using the web for good, i was many tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and the "internet consultants" (a term that hadn't existed five years earlier) were a'calling. i took a job at one of them, trying to hide my shock that my starting salary was more than triple what i'd been making before graduate school. (this was because of my extremely low pre-grad school salary, not a huge post-grad school salary, but still.) i wasn't eschewing my principles, i told myself. i was just prudently postponing them until a time when i'd made my first few millions (which couldn't be more than a few years away), and then i'd go back and do good. so, so much good. really.
and then everything busted out, not even a year later. companies lay in ruins all around the bay area, and mine was one of them. i managed to get out while the getting was good and go to a smaller consulting firm focused on digital marketing. i felt lucky to have a decent paycheck. a lot of my friends didn't. (again, you can relate.) i stayed there for about two years, until the opportunity didn't feel like much of an opportunity anymore, and then i left. (i can still hear my mother: "you quit your job?" read: "you left a paying job in the middle of the worst economic downturn since reagan, and you have no prospects?" actually, maybe that was my inner voice, not hers.)
so here's another part of my story, one i don't talk about much, but which is integral to understanding how i got where i am now. yes, i did quit that job because i didn't see much opportunity ahead of me. but i also quit because i couldn't function, couldn't get up in the morning, couldn't sleep, couldn't eat. i suffer (i can't stand that word, but i don't know a better one) from "major depressive disorder" (DSM-IV-TR, axis 1). in other words, if i'm not properly and adequately medicated, or sometimes even if i am, i can fall into a deeply depressed state from which, at the time, it seems i'll never emerge. i had my first episode in college, and my second a couple years later, during my second year in san francisco. i'd thought it was over, but here it was again, about 8 years after my last "episode." shit. shit.
i spent the next few months in a fog. i managed to do a little volunteer/pro bono work, but i spent the majority of the time by myself, desiring very little social interaction. i did manage to get myself to a doctor and get some medication stuff sorted out. and eventually i started sleeping again, got back over 100 pounds. (i went surfing for the first time during the worst of this period, meeting up with a friend whom i hadn't seen in some time. I'll never forget the horrified look on her face when she saw me in my bathing suit. all she said was "oh my god, what happened to you?" i don't think i've ever felt that ashamed.) eventually, life slowly got more "normal" again, and certainly more manageable.
i'll end on that cheery note for today. really, though, if going into a depressed state feels like the worst thing that could ever happen to you, emerging from it is one of the best. and, in fact, i was going to enter a great period in my life very soon.
backing up again, though ...
so it was 1994 and i started researching MBA programs with concentrations in nonprofit management. there weren't many, but i found a few at some excellent-to-good schools - stanford, berkeley (haas), the university of texas, the university of indiana, yale. (yale didn't even technically offer an "official" MBA in those days, but they've since jumped on the bandwagon.) sorry, indiana, but i crossed you off the list right away. good school but not great school, and cold climate. (when i applied for undergrad, i didn't apply anywhere north of where i lived in pennsylvania specifically because i hate the cold. great criterion for a pretty important decision, right?) i forsook my social life for some time to study for the GMAT and luckily did well, but i still knew that berkeley and stanford were both a stretch, which was a cause of stress since I was pretty sure i wanted to be back in the bay area. i got the rejection letter from stanford first. boom.
texas and yale graciously admitted me, and yale began wooing me with offers of scholarships (which was the only way on earth i'd be able to go there). no word from berkeley yet. i started getting knots in my stomach when i approached my mailbox when i got home from work.
and then, because it's just what i do, i kept mulling and turning ideas over in my head. what did i really want to do? at the time (i don't know if this is still true), all the applications required that you write a 2-3 page personal statement telling their illustrious admissions department why you deserved to be there and what you wanted to be when you grew up. at the time, i knew mine was 75% horseshit. (later, when i became an applications reader at haas, i learned that most of them were more like 90% horseshit.) but it was also true that i'd done the berkeley application last, so i'd been ruminating on that statement for quite some time. and although i don't remember exactly what i wrote, it involved using this new "Internet" thingamabob to create more integrated networks for nonprofits and people who required their services - social services like education opportunities for single mothers, inexpensive child care, re-entry into the workforce after being homeless - things like that. hey, for 1994 that was pretty advanced thinking, for real.
social services, social services. hmmm. now, isn't that why i'd wanted to go to law school, lo those many (well, several) years ago? and so that's where the idea of the JD popped up again. and then berkeley sent me the fat package, and i had a decision to make.
texas, berkeley and yale all had good law schools. well, yale and berkeley were great and texas was good. texas came off the list next because, well, it was texas. don't hold it against me. you don't want to live in texas either, even if it's austin and austin is "really cool" with a "great music scene" and an "up-and-coming arts community." it's still texas, people. deal with it.
the tricky thing was that i had to decide which MBA program to attend before i could apply to the law school, all because of my rather wretched, or at least ill-timed, planning. and come on, i mean, i had a good LSAT score (i had managed to squeeze in taking the LSAT - again, since my scores from my college try were no longer good - in the spring of 1995, after i had this revelation) and good grades, but yale was the #1-ranked law school in the country. maybe i'd have an advantage already being in the school of management there, but maybe the law school admissions committee would have a good chuckle at my application. and let's face it, california was calling me back with its temperate weather and liberal outlook on life. i wasn't a shoo-in at berkeley (then known as boalt hall school of law) either, but figured my chances were better. and a little ways into my first year as an MBA student, i found out that i had indeed been admitted to boalt and now, instead of being an MBA '97 student, i was now JD/MBA '99.
school itself, well, that's not a terribly important part of the story - although it seems like it should be, doesn't it? what was important was the hurricane that blew through the hallowed halls of berkeley, especially at the business school: THE INTERNET. by the time i graduated, although i still believed wholeheartedly in using the web for good, i was many tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and the "internet consultants" (a term that hadn't existed five years earlier) were a'calling. i took a job at one of them, trying to hide my shock that my starting salary was more than triple what i'd been making before graduate school. (this was because of my extremely low pre-grad school salary, not a huge post-grad school salary, but still.) i wasn't eschewing my principles, i told myself. i was just prudently postponing them until a time when i'd made my first few millions (which couldn't be more than a few years away), and then i'd go back and do good. so, so much good. really.
and then everything busted out, not even a year later. companies lay in ruins all around the bay area, and mine was one of them. i managed to get out while the getting was good and go to a smaller consulting firm focused on digital marketing. i felt lucky to have a decent paycheck. a lot of my friends didn't. (again, you can relate.) i stayed there for about two years, until the opportunity didn't feel like much of an opportunity anymore, and then i left. (i can still hear my mother: "you quit your job?" read: "you left a paying job in the middle of the worst economic downturn since reagan, and you have no prospects?" actually, maybe that was my inner voice, not hers.)
so here's another part of my story, one i don't talk about much, but which is integral to understanding how i got where i am now. yes, i did quit that job because i didn't see much opportunity ahead of me. but i also quit because i couldn't function, couldn't get up in the morning, couldn't sleep, couldn't eat. i suffer (i can't stand that word, but i don't know a better one) from "major depressive disorder" (DSM-IV-TR, axis 1). in other words, if i'm not properly and adequately medicated, or sometimes even if i am, i can fall into a deeply depressed state from which, at the time, it seems i'll never emerge. i had my first episode in college, and my second a couple years later, during my second year in san francisco. i'd thought it was over, but here it was again, about 8 years after my last "episode." shit. shit.
i spent the next few months in a fog. i managed to do a little volunteer/pro bono work, but i spent the majority of the time by myself, desiring very little social interaction. i did manage to get myself to a doctor and get some medication stuff sorted out. and eventually i started sleeping again, got back over 100 pounds. (i went surfing for the first time during the worst of this period, meeting up with a friend whom i hadn't seen in some time. I'll never forget the horrified look on her face when she saw me in my bathing suit. all she said was "oh my god, what happened to you?" i don't think i've ever felt that ashamed.) eventually, life slowly got more "normal" again, and certainly more manageable.
i'll end on that cheery note for today. really, though, if going into a depressed state feels like the worst thing that could ever happen to you, emerging from it is one of the best. and, in fact, i was going to enter a great period in my life very soon.
8.11.2011
and a pang of fear strikes the heart
just got my GRE prep materials from Amazon today. i opened the math review book (i love math, at least this level of math, in which there is still one right answer to a problem) and am scared. quick, what's the surface area of a right regular cylinder 20 inches high and 8 inches in diameter? five and a half weeks to study. i'll have to hope that's enough ... it will be.
8.09.2011
inauguration part 2, week 2
i guess you know you're a "real" blogger when you promise a next-day entry and a week goes by before you get around to it. granted, it's been a busy week. registering for tests and classes, ordering study materials and books, and attending a high school reunion across the country on a whim at the last minute. but i'm getting ahead of myself.
so yeah, there i was, trying to figure out what i wanted to do. my mind kept rolling back to high school and some career aptitude test we all took. it involved a lot of folded-over pieces of paper and a pushpin, and if someone can remember the name of it, i'll devise some sort of excellent (if small - hey, i'm unemployed, remember) prize to give you, because i feel as though i've exhausted every avenue i can think of to find it. anyway, at the end you unfolded it, and maybe ran it through some huge computer mainframe (this was 25-30 years ago, mind you), and it told you what you should be when you grow up. mine came out that i should be in a "helping profession" and made some suggestions: nurse, social worker, guidance counselor. all perfectly respectable choices ... unless you grew up in my family.
with the exception of my mother, who's more of a liberal-artsy person like me, my dad, older sister and younger brother are all engineers. i loved math and science in high school, and i was good at both of them, particularly math, although i had to work at it. so these "helping profession" suggestions made no sense to me. well, maybe nurse - but if i was going into health care, you could be damn sure it'd be as a doctor and not a nurse. (believe me, i have healthy respect for nurses now that i'm older, but i was 15 or 16 at the time, so please forgive my teenage naivete'.)
so at the time there was no consideration of any of these types of options. i figured the test was wrong (of course it was! how could it not be?) and went my merry way to college, intending to be a math major. that's a different entry, or maybe a different blog altogether ("musings of recovering math majors"?), but the cliff notes version is that choice didn't exactly work out (pull the politically incorrect barbie doll string: "Math is hard!") and i switched to political science while at duke university in north carolina.
i graduated with honors, coming very close to also qualifying for majors in history and art history. i took a single math class and a single science class my freshman year and bombed them both. ouch. for the rest of my time at duke, i stayed away completely from anything business-related (econ, finance, marketing, etc.). i figured i was there to learn how to think - to get an excellent general liberal arts education. i took the LSAT (as did, it was rumored, 40% of my senior class), figuring law school was the next step, but decided as i was filling out the applications that more school right at that moment might kill me. and anyway, employers would flock to me just knowing that i'd gone to a great university. right?
well ... it didn't turn out exactly that way. there were two significant flaws in my thinking. first, i graduated in 1991, in the middle of a deep recession. (you can relate.) second, i moved to san francisco, where the duke name had very little pull. (i was actually asked questions like "hmm, duke - that's in virginia, right?" i nearly fell off my chair at the time.) so i worked a lot - and i mean a lot - of temp jobs, and finally landed at a company called working assets (now rebranded credo), which was one of the foundational "socially responsible" businesses in the country, or perhaps the world. aside from making $20K a year and trying to live in san francisco on that, it was a great time. i loved the idea of a for-profit company doing good, especially because i'd had a fair amount of experience volunteering with not-for-profits in college and afterwards and always found myself frustrated at what i interpreted as a lack of organization and a lack of focus on making money. (it was almost as if they were afraid to make too much for fear of looking like a business. some of them didn't seem to understand that making more money was the only road to doing more good.) it also seemed like a very fragmented, redundant community.
you get the idea, so let's skip ahead a few years, to 1994 or so. i had moved from san francisco to washington, dc, and was working as a marketing assistant at a consulting firm. (life lesson: make sure you're "line" and not "staff," wherever you are. this is advice i myself have not followed throughout my career, but do as i say and not as i do - or, more accurately, have done.) and, well, now it was time for graduate school, because that's what i wanted to do. or thought i should do. or thought others expected me to do. take your pick.
i started researching programs. i'd continued to volunteer in dc and wanted to make it a mission to turn around the fucked-up world of nonprofit management. (yes, i was 24 years old and thought i could do this singlehandedly. ah, youth.) so i looked at programs in nonprofit management. and then, i admit it, i thought about the moneymaking potential there and balked a little. but no worries, because I came up with what i thought was a great idea - i'd go get an MBA with a concentration in nonprofit management, and then i could move more seamlessly between the public and private sectors. it was genius, i thought, especially because i'd decided i wanted to live in the bay area, and doing that on a nonprofit salary - well, i just wasn't sure i could pull it off.
ok. so once again this is getting long. let me give you an idea of what to expect when i finally get through all this back story. i have, here at the edge of middle age, at fairly significant risk to my finances and overall livelihood (um, especially now, with my investments shrinking daily - why, oh why, didn't i buy gold at $800/ounce?), decided to make a career change. in a little over a week, i will be sitting in an undergraduate psychology class with a group of 18-year-olds who will undoubtedly be wondering why someone who could be their mother (or, if you're a fan of MTV's "16 and Pregnant," their grandmother) is in class with them. i will also be studying for the GRE to get into a masters' program; it will be the fourth time i've taken a post-college standardized exam (the LSAT [twice], the GMAT, and now this). i have vocabulary flashcards en route from amazon as i type this. and that whole process, my friends, is what i really intend to write about. what's it going to be like sitting in that class; studying vocabulary, reading comprehension, algebra, and analytic writing; actually sitting for the exam; and going through the application process to get yet another degree? the idea is pretty fascinating to me, so i'm hoping it might be interesting to others as well.
plus, i'm as solipsistic as the next person (there's a good GRE word for you), so there's that. Until next time ...
so yeah, there i was, trying to figure out what i wanted to do. my mind kept rolling back to high school and some career aptitude test we all took. it involved a lot of folded-over pieces of paper and a pushpin, and if someone can remember the name of it, i'll devise some sort of excellent (if small - hey, i'm unemployed, remember) prize to give you, because i feel as though i've exhausted every avenue i can think of to find it. anyway, at the end you unfolded it, and maybe ran it through some huge computer mainframe (this was 25-30 years ago, mind you), and it told you what you should be when you grow up. mine came out that i should be in a "helping profession" and made some suggestions: nurse, social worker, guidance counselor. all perfectly respectable choices ... unless you grew up in my family.
with the exception of my mother, who's more of a liberal-artsy person like me, my dad, older sister and younger brother are all engineers. i loved math and science in high school, and i was good at both of them, particularly math, although i had to work at it. so these "helping profession" suggestions made no sense to me. well, maybe nurse - but if i was going into health care, you could be damn sure it'd be as a doctor and not a nurse. (believe me, i have healthy respect for nurses now that i'm older, but i was 15 or 16 at the time, so please forgive my teenage naivete'.)
so at the time there was no consideration of any of these types of options. i figured the test was wrong (of course it was! how could it not be?) and went my merry way to college, intending to be a math major. that's a different entry, or maybe a different blog altogether ("musings of recovering math majors"?), but the cliff notes version is that choice didn't exactly work out (pull the politically incorrect barbie doll string: "Math is hard!") and i switched to political science while at duke university in north carolina.
i graduated with honors, coming very close to also qualifying for majors in history and art history. i took a single math class and a single science class my freshman year and bombed them both. ouch. for the rest of my time at duke, i stayed away completely from anything business-related (econ, finance, marketing, etc.). i figured i was there to learn how to think - to get an excellent general liberal arts education. i took the LSAT (as did, it was rumored, 40% of my senior class), figuring law school was the next step, but decided as i was filling out the applications that more school right at that moment might kill me. and anyway, employers would flock to me just knowing that i'd gone to a great university. right?
well ... it didn't turn out exactly that way. there were two significant flaws in my thinking. first, i graduated in 1991, in the middle of a deep recession. (you can relate.) second, i moved to san francisco, where the duke name had very little pull. (i was actually asked questions like "hmm, duke - that's in virginia, right?" i nearly fell off my chair at the time.) so i worked a lot - and i mean a lot - of temp jobs, and finally landed at a company called working assets (now rebranded credo), which was one of the foundational "socially responsible" businesses in the country, or perhaps the world. aside from making $20K a year and trying to live in san francisco on that, it was a great time. i loved the idea of a for-profit company doing good, especially because i'd had a fair amount of experience volunteering with not-for-profits in college and afterwards and always found myself frustrated at what i interpreted as a lack of organization and a lack of focus on making money. (it was almost as if they were afraid to make too much for fear of looking like a business. some of them didn't seem to understand that making more money was the only road to doing more good.) it also seemed like a very fragmented, redundant community.
you get the idea, so let's skip ahead a few years, to 1994 or so. i had moved from san francisco to washington, dc, and was working as a marketing assistant at a consulting firm. (life lesson: make sure you're "line" and not "staff," wherever you are. this is advice i myself have not followed throughout my career, but do as i say and not as i do - or, more accurately, have done.) and, well, now it was time for graduate school, because that's what i wanted to do. or thought i should do. or thought others expected me to do. take your pick.
i started researching programs. i'd continued to volunteer in dc and wanted to make it a mission to turn around the fucked-up world of nonprofit management. (yes, i was 24 years old and thought i could do this singlehandedly. ah, youth.) so i looked at programs in nonprofit management. and then, i admit it, i thought about the moneymaking potential there and balked a little. but no worries, because I came up with what i thought was a great idea - i'd go get an MBA with a concentration in nonprofit management, and then i could move more seamlessly between the public and private sectors. it was genius, i thought, especially because i'd decided i wanted to live in the bay area, and doing that on a nonprofit salary - well, i just wasn't sure i could pull it off.
ok. so once again this is getting long. let me give you an idea of what to expect when i finally get through all this back story. i have, here at the edge of middle age, at fairly significant risk to my finances and overall livelihood (um, especially now, with my investments shrinking daily - why, oh why, didn't i buy gold at $800/ounce?), decided to make a career change. in a little over a week, i will be sitting in an undergraduate psychology class with a group of 18-year-olds who will undoubtedly be wondering why someone who could be their mother (or, if you're a fan of MTV's "16 and Pregnant," their grandmother) is in class with them. i will also be studying for the GRE to get into a masters' program; it will be the fourth time i've taken a post-college standardized exam (the LSAT [twice], the GMAT, and now this). i have vocabulary flashcards en route from amazon as i type this. and that whole process, my friends, is what i really intend to write about. what's it going to be like sitting in that class; studying vocabulary, reading comprehension, algebra, and analytic writing; actually sitting for the exam; and going through the application process to get yet another degree? the idea is pretty fascinating to me, so i'm hoping it might be interesting to others as well.
plus, i'm as solipsistic as the next person (there's a good GRE word for you), so there's that. Until next time ...
8.02.2011
inauguration day
i think just the title of this blog will keep anyone from reading it, except maybe my mom. unlike most bloggers, however, i don't necessarily consider that a bad thing.
so first off i guess we should deal with this issue of being on the edge of middle age. i just turned 41. my maternal grandmother (my last surviving grandparent and the only one who didn't die a somewhat untimely death) is going strong at 94. i'm pretty sure that, despite my best efforts - jaywalking against traffic lights, driving too fast, living the high life in sunny california, etc. - i'll live to be 100. ugh. i'm tired now. seriously.
in november of last year, the startup i was working for went belly up. if you live in the bay area, or know someone who does, you know that this is not at all an unusual occurrence - and in fact, is somewhat of a badge of honor, or at the very least a rite of passage. except for a short stint of unemployment after being "downsized" - oh, whatever, i was fired - in the spring of 2009, i'd been pretty blessed when it came to jobs, even in this oh-so-crappy market. i landed a marketing job at a mobile gaming company, and then jumped to the startup about 7 months later, following a mentor from the gaming company. (by the way, again, if you live in the bay area or know someone who does, you know that working somewhere for only 7 months isn't necessarily looked upon negatively; we're very opportunistic, and recruiters and HR people know it.)
and there i was. vice president of marketing. everything i'd worked for since graduate school. i'd arrived. about damn time.
and i was scared shitless. i mean, i was ulcer-inducing, looking-over-my-shoulder-to-make-sure-people-didn't-figure-out-i-had-no-idea-how-to-do-this-job terrified. but we were a good little group (operative word being "little," and it got smaller and smaller during my time there), and we were motivated to own something. so we worked hard, tried a bunch of stuff. some of it worked; some of it didn't. we learned to fail fast. indecision kills in environments like this. you can't wait around for consensus all the time.
but despite our best efforts, it didn't work out. after the requisite self-flagellation (preceded only by getting my unemployment paperwork in), i moved on. even though it was right before thanksgiving, i started interviewing for jobs. one company who had considered buying our startup invited me to come on to be their VP marketing. i was really flattered - i'd only met them for a few hours, but after spending a few more hours with me in san francisco and then flying me to their headquarters and spending a few more, they were willing to take the plunge.
so why wasn't i? gun shy, i told myself. you have every right to be. this company's bigger, but you're not totally confident about their market or their product, and the job would be much like, well, all the jobs you've had (granted, with progressively more responsibility) over the past ten years or so. consumer internet marketing. it sounds fun. it even sounds sort of glamorous to some people. problem was, it didn't sound glamorous to me anymore. or interesting. or ... useful. i wanted to be useful, in a "I'd like to help you with that problem you're having with your business partner/landlord/government agency/spouse" kind of way. not a "I'm going to optimize our search marketing budget and cut costs by 20% while increasing traffic 20% at the same time" kind of way. I was 40. I had to do something different. if i didn't i'd wake up, rip van winkle-like, in 10 more years, and then i'd really be fucked.
so i bit the bullet and politely told them no. and promptly went into a total tailspin, accelerated by an intense crisis of confidence.
the next few months were, frankly, awful. it was a wet, dreary, san francisco winter, and i realized i had no idea how to change careers, or any confidence that i'd be able to do it even if i figured it out. i started volunteering to fill my time - first at the san francisco spca (puppy therapy, people - try it, it works), then at the san francisco tenants' union, where i dusted off my ancient, little-used legal education to help people who were getting wrongfully evicted, or harassed by landlords who were almost certainly certifiable, or worse. i was amazed at how many of these folks were on the edge of homelessness. and i was helping them, and it was awesome. it would have been really awesome if i could get paid for it. (i'm not greedy. just let me cover my mortgage and student loans and go out to eat once a week or so, and i'm good.) but there just aren't too many opportunities in tenant law, and i'd never taken the california bar, and that wasn't high on the list of things i wanted to do.
so what did i want to do? the $64,000 question. the answer to which will wait for tomorrow. ooh, a cliffhanger. (actually, it's just dinnertime and i'm hungry.)
so first off i guess we should deal with this issue of being on the edge of middle age. i just turned 41. my maternal grandmother (my last surviving grandparent and the only one who didn't die a somewhat untimely death) is going strong at 94. i'm pretty sure that, despite my best efforts - jaywalking against traffic lights, driving too fast, living the high life in sunny california, etc. - i'll live to be 100. ugh. i'm tired now. seriously.
in november of last year, the startup i was working for went belly up. if you live in the bay area, or know someone who does, you know that this is not at all an unusual occurrence - and in fact, is somewhat of a badge of honor, or at the very least a rite of passage. except for a short stint of unemployment after being "downsized" - oh, whatever, i was fired - in the spring of 2009, i'd been pretty blessed when it came to jobs, even in this oh-so-crappy market. i landed a marketing job at a mobile gaming company, and then jumped to the startup about 7 months later, following a mentor from the gaming company. (by the way, again, if you live in the bay area or know someone who does, you know that working somewhere for only 7 months isn't necessarily looked upon negatively; we're very opportunistic, and recruiters and HR people know it.)
and there i was. vice president of marketing. everything i'd worked for since graduate school. i'd arrived. about damn time.
and i was scared shitless. i mean, i was ulcer-inducing, looking-over-my-shoulder-to-make-sure-people-didn't-figure-out-i-had-no-idea-how-to-do-this-job terrified. but we were a good little group (operative word being "little," and it got smaller and smaller during my time there), and we were motivated to own something. so we worked hard, tried a bunch of stuff. some of it worked; some of it didn't. we learned to fail fast. indecision kills in environments like this. you can't wait around for consensus all the time.
but despite our best efforts, it didn't work out. after the requisite self-flagellation (preceded only by getting my unemployment paperwork in), i moved on. even though it was right before thanksgiving, i started interviewing for jobs. one company who had considered buying our startup invited me to come on to be their VP marketing. i was really flattered - i'd only met them for a few hours, but after spending a few more hours with me in san francisco and then flying me to their headquarters and spending a few more, they were willing to take the plunge.
so why wasn't i? gun shy, i told myself. you have every right to be. this company's bigger, but you're not totally confident about their market or their product, and the job would be much like, well, all the jobs you've had (granted, with progressively more responsibility) over the past ten years or so. consumer internet marketing. it sounds fun. it even sounds sort of glamorous to some people. problem was, it didn't sound glamorous to me anymore. or interesting. or ... useful. i wanted to be useful, in a "I'd like to help you with that problem you're having with your business partner/landlord/government agency/spouse" kind of way. not a "I'm going to optimize our search marketing budget and cut costs by 20% while increasing traffic 20% at the same time" kind of way. I was 40. I had to do something different. if i didn't i'd wake up, rip van winkle-like, in 10 more years, and then i'd really be fucked.
so i bit the bullet and politely told them no. and promptly went into a total tailspin, accelerated by an intense crisis of confidence.
the next few months were, frankly, awful. it was a wet, dreary, san francisco winter, and i realized i had no idea how to change careers, or any confidence that i'd be able to do it even if i figured it out. i started volunteering to fill my time - first at the san francisco spca (puppy therapy, people - try it, it works), then at the san francisco tenants' union, where i dusted off my ancient, little-used legal education to help people who were getting wrongfully evicted, or harassed by landlords who were almost certainly certifiable, or worse. i was amazed at how many of these folks were on the edge of homelessness. and i was helping them, and it was awesome. it would have been really awesome if i could get paid for it. (i'm not greedy. just let me cover my mortgage and student loans and go out to eat once a week or so, and i'm good.) but there just aren't too many opportunities in tenant law, and i'd never taken the california bar, and that wasn't high on the list of things i wanted to do.
so what did i want to do? the $64,000 question. the answer to which will wait for tomorrow. ooh, a cliffhanger. (actually, it's just dinnertime and i'm hungry.)
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