Don’t Look Down!

I tend to think in metaphors. Right now, the imagery I am using to put my current situation into perspective is that of a rock climber. I’ve been bouldering for months by myself. It’s tiring, but around each turn there are unexpected finds that I would not have come across had I not been alone with my thoughts. My project idea has survived a few different reincarnations already, and I need to keep moving and protect the space in my head to get there.

Now I’m at the base of this mountain. It’s breathtaking – and terrifying. I’ve been able to get a little ways up by hoisting myself on fairly easy, obvious footholds. The branding process is complete, and our logo is perfect. It inspires me and is my vision for the company. The COMING SOON page on our website is in the works. I am off the ground but not high. Falling from here would injure my pride more than my body.

The next stage in the journey requires ropes, harnesses and expertise. I’ll need equipment which takes money – more than I have, of course, or this blog post would be irrelevant. The dilemma is one which is familiar to small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs. The options are these: put my family’s house up as collateral to get an SBA loan, lose some autonomy and take on investors or put the project up on Kickstarter and risk someone else taking my idea and launching it before I can get funding together. I have posed all three as negative, though each one certainly has its advantages.

I know that people in business take calculated risks all the time. They use their understanding of the context surrounding their situation to decide whether to leap or to wait. And I suspect that they often do not regret having leaped at an inopportune time if that experience makes them wiser the next time around. Live and learn. But when you don’t have a string of successes beneath you to buffer a misstep, the stakes feel higher.

When the house where my kids sleep is on the line – or I risk losing the opportunity to pursue this dream altogether because I shared when I should have kept it close – I want to pull the ropes tighter, lean towards the rock and steady myself, wait until there’s no wind at all and think hard about my next move. But when in life does that strategy work out for anyone? In life, as in rock climbing, looking down is counterproductive and pointless. Eye on the prize – ever upward – and forward march.

Worst Case Scenario Dinner

Okay, folks. Things are decidedly closer to rocking and rolling.

I had a significant sit-down, worst-case-scenario talk with my husband about the potential (and probable) financial ramifications of quitting my job. We talked about how we could scale down to make it on less income, and I even prepped him for the possibility of turning off the cable (deep sigh from him) and my iPhone service (sniffle and forced brave face from me). I hadn’t thought to put that conversation on my list of things to do, so I wrote WORST CASE SCENARIO DINNER at the bottom and marked it off. Rock and roll.

But that’s not all the exciting stuff that’s happened this week. We have logo! Those crafty gents at Reactor Design Studio pitched me 4 logo ideas on Friday. I spent the weekend polling friends and family and walking by the printout of my favorite one posted on the fridge with wide eyes and squinty eyes and slowly and quickly and probably gained a few pounds as I stalked this prospective logo and opened the fridge to play it off. I needed to know that I felt comfortable with it, and I do. I made the final decision yesterday. It’s so awesome.

It feels amazing to finally have something tangible – albeit two-dimensional – to give this idea of mine some gravity on this planet. It’s not just all in my head anymore. Whoa. Wow. Yes.

Swan Dive? Belly Flop? Cannonball!

The title of this post is the closest I have ever come to articulating my personal philosophy about life-living. When making big changes, I think the swan dive is too much to wish for. Change can be wild and gritty. Change can be cumbersome, like that moving box that isn’t quite too heavy to carry by yourself but you just can’t get enough of grip on to move for more than a few steps. I don’t expect to handle great changes gracefully, especially as stress builds and instability seems to permeate everything. There will be some thunder. I will get wet on this ride.

I think belly flops are for people who can’t change position fast enough. You see the surface coming and know how badly it’s going to sting, how the sound of the pain will resonate and the way you’ll pause underwater, stunned for a moment, before limping up to the surface. All you had to do was swing your legs up to your chest or pitch forward, point your arms down and slice right into the water. Somehow being a participant in the spectacle of the thing makes it worthwhile for some – reminds me a bit of how some middle school kids rationalize their behavior, actually. If you have something you care about, like an exciting idea or, you know, your internal organs, why not position yourself better before jumping in?

I’ve always had a fear of heights. It was never severe enough to keep me from thinking I might do whatever it was, from traveling by zip-line in Girl Scouts at age 10 to riding the Zambezi Zinger roller coaster at Worlds of Fun at 15 to jumping off an insanely huge boulder into Lake Powell at age 20. I chickened out easily as often as I actually did these things or – even worse – stood for interminable lengths of time pondering the worst case scenario, listening to my heart pound, wishing I were anywhere else.

Even so, in terms of the all-out adventure of life-living, the cannonball is, for me, the finest option. It is bold and captivating. A skillful cannonball also involves the audience in the exhibition. I’m bored by the perfection of swan dives and wince even thinking about belly flops, but I could watch cannonballs all day long. Approach, anticipation, giant splash, laughter. Isn’t that how we want all of our greatest adventures to turn out in the end?

Now I need one of you to get a running start…and push me off the edge. I can take it from there.

(I promised myself after my last post that I would not bore y’all or myself with any more posts that centered on my internal struggle about whether to quit my job, how this new business idea is going to work, how to help support my family financially and be able to be present emotionally and physically, too. Easier said than done. The truth is that I feel no closer to accomplishing all that than when I wrote my first blog post. I am so much better at managing these decisions when it’s only my very own ass on the line. Knowing I can survive on rice and beans and Goodwill clothes and friendship and cheap wine has made many big decisions in my life so easy. Twelve years ago, I sat on the floor of my friend Rachel’s house, rolled a Magic 8 Ball in my palm, read the bubbly triangle of advice and resolved to move to Spain. On my own, no decision (or mistake) ever felt irreversible. But I often wonder how head-of-households justify these risks. My best justification for moving forward with the plan in my heart is to be the living example for my kids that IT CAN BE DONE, whatever IT turns out to be for any of us.)

It’s the next big thing. Really.

Ever have the experience of thinking you have an idea that is the Greatest Idea Ever? You might start by keeping to to yourself, then try it out on someone you trust to be kind – before trying it out on someone you trust to be honest. You might do some research to determine if anyone else has had a similar idea and what became of it. You might dream of the extraordinary impact on your life and the lives of others should the Greatest Idea Ever come to fruition.

It gets heady and ridiculous fast, this Greatest Idea Ever fantasy. It makes it hard to maintain perspective and to think with a cool, calculated mind about which elements of the idea are underdeveloped (at best) and counterproductive (at worst). Sometimes the potential an idea has is so intoxicating that momentum builds before a path is defined. The ball is then rolling, quickly, in no particular direction. I’ve seen this more than once in the field of education: it’s fun and exhilarating in the beginning and ultimately an incredible waste of time and resources.

I spent quite a bit of time in the Greatest Idea Ever phase of my new venture. I’m not ashamed of that because my reading on entrepreneurship has led me to believe that this is all part of the process. And this enthusiastic and nothing-is-impossible spirit of a fresh new idea is what sustains the effort when more procedural and less fun steps need to be taken. For me, working on those steps – like writing a business plan and doing the research to get a sense of how much $ is needed to get and keep this project going – has really helped.

While I still think that most of us can’t get the distance we need to evaluate our own Greatest Idea Ever objectively, doing the daily business tasks can help determine whether it’s worth doing in the first place. If I’m spending a gorgeous Sunday afternoon at my computer instead of outside with family and friends (with no fixed launch date for this idea and no guarantee that it will ever make enough money to support my family or have the societal impact that is really at the heart of the project), the answer for me must be yes.

And still, as I write that, my no-fun pragmatic side is asking the spirited, hopeful, let’s-do-it! part of me if she is sure she’s not totally crazy. I go to sleep with this broken-record bickering in my head. That’s when the people I can trust to be honest factor in. I take them at their word and keep on keeping on and hope that I’m glad that I did.

Good morning, paralysis.

So I talk a good game. I thrive on change and do not tend to do most of anything for more than a few years. I like changing houses and hobbies and usually jobs. But this is no usual job.

I’ve been working at my school for nine years now, five as a teacher and four as an administrator. In that time, I have had the distinct honor of getting to know some of the most amazing middle school kids on the planet. Most people hate the idea of middle school, based both on their own experiences at that age and interactions with kids who are that age. I get it. I used to say that middle school is an acquired taste, but the truth is it’s a calling. And the urban middle school is its own particular kind of fun. It is not for the faint of heart. It requires a sense of humor.

If just the words urban middle school make you want to run screaming, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. I’ll be walking in, ever against the current, sitting down next to some very angry boy and getting him to process through and beyond that anger. I am really good at it. I can get most kids from total denial of any culpability in a situation to admitting that this pattern behavior is an obstacle to their fulfilling their potential in a matter of minutes. My seeing them differently allows them to see themselves differently, and therein lies my source of power with kids.

It’s hard to think about walking away from that.

I have every intention of returning to the world of education in some capacity when I’m in a place in my life when putting in those necessary extra hours at work does not inspire resentment in me. I know for a fact and without a doubt that I don’t have this in me right now, and while I will certainly miss the colleagues I have worked with for almost a decade, I am really going to miss my kids. All 551 of them. And probably the pain-in-the-ass kids the most – they’re the ones I spend the most time with anyway.

We as a society have a tendency to make things into anecdotes, oversimplifying them and thus not really doing them justice. I could tell stories about all the urban school crap – fights, drug busts, weapons, etc., etc., etc. I have experienced all that and more.

But if you asked me to summarize my experience at my school, none of those urban school cliches would even make it in. The story is one of the resilience of kids, many of whom are faced with all-too-adult issues as kids. I think that is true more and more of all kids in all schools, which is one of many reasons that I feel that being present as my own kids get older is imperative. But my stomach hurts when I think about quitting, and it feels like I’m quitting kids and not just my job. There’s really no quitting your calling – and no easy walking away from it either.

In the beginning…

This journey actually started on my son Ivan’s second birthday. I was presented with a need and no way to fill it. As with many dilemmas in the parenting arena, there was no “app for that”. I created one, vaguely, in my head, and I stepped back out into the dining room with something in my hand to offer our party guests.

The idea remained filed somewhere in between “write that novel” and “don’t forget to ____ tomorrow” (the million things I did not get to even after the most productive day at work). I thought about the idea now and then and even shared it with my friend Lea over tacos one day, but it went no further.

Then, this winter, snuggled up with my newborn son Elias and scheming up how to stay that way, the idea jumped down out of the filing cabinet in my head and sat down right on the end of my nose. No kidding. I was in that body-conscious post-partum thing, or I would have taken a picture.

I started scheming in earnest then, with direction – two main directions, actually: how best to work the idea and how to get the funding to make it happen. Both are currently in the works. I have learned the hard way that development and funding are part of a vicious cycle: branding is expensive and necessary to get funding, but potential investors don’t take you seriously if you don’t have the basics, like a logo and a comprehensive look.

They say “it takes money to make money”. They are right. And probably rich. That sounds like something a rich person would say to someone like me. And then expect a thank you. Did you know many investors expect a tenfold return on their investment within five years? Seems like the thank you should be coming from them, no?

Here goes something…I hope.

I am…

I am…

I am working on being able to define myself as who I am and not what I do. I am a mother of two and wife to a Spanish ex-pat living in the great American Midwest. I am a writer and a baker and a good friend and sometimes a great cook. I have been an educator in various positions over the past 10 years. Ever worked so hard at your job that you don’t get to the things that top your priority list? That’s me.

And that’s my reason for the deep breath and the bold step forward into unemployment. Unemployment’s a step forward? I know. Check your logic. Think again. Back up. (Wo)man up. Keep on keeping on and stop yer whining, right?

Not this time.

When I had Elias, my second son, almost four months ago, a switch was flipped. The kind I can’t reach myself. The kind that’s un-flip-off-able. (How is someone who would write un-flip-off-able qualified to blog, you might ask? Excellent question – and perhaps the subject of my next entry. Stay tuned.) I felt the all-too-familiar rage at the fact that I would have to leave this amazing creation of mine with another to return to the world of work, though I was luckier than so many other superwomen because I got to spend an incredible ten weeks at home with him. But I only had five weeks off with my older son and returned back to work and grad school and survived, and he’s turning out okay. So what’s the problem this time?

One of my many theories about our complicated modern world is that part of the reason so many of us use prescription drugs and see therapists and still feel “off” is that we’re trying to make fit what doesn’t. Stifling jobs, toxic relationships, unhealthy schedules – there might be a pill for that, but why should I need one?

The trail I am attempting to blaze for myself is heart-led. Heart-led suggests a sentimentality that does not apply here. What I mean is that I have loved loved loved my job and felt energized and driven and inspired by my students even on the toughest days. And then the switch flipped when Elias first burrowed his slimy self into my shaky, exhausted body, and the job I love love love is no longer what I am supposed to be doing right now. Not the right fit. Stifling. Even toxic. Sure, I could check in with my therapist and medicate my heart away. Or just hold my breath and plunge.

So at the risk of sounding disgustingly privileged – I know how lucky I am to have choices, even risky ones – I am choosing to plunge. This blog will be the story of that plunge and hopefully of surfacing safely with my family intact and better for it. I welcome you along for the ride.