Unseasonable Low

A hidden tide tugs

dragging earth to sea 

over and over.

Used to be higher ground

where the tall grass grew

and whole seashells

bit into the toes.

Fall lay waste the green

in a dirty sullen brown.

There is ground still

where waves don't batter

The bruising has been

long, from full moon to new.

Maybe best for Spring

to speckle the green.

And till then walk 

by water and shore,

until the tide can turn.

 

The Facebooking of LinkedIn

The only social media I personally use is LinkedIn. Have been there since the earliest days - among the first ten thousand users. Since that time LinkedIn has served me very well professionally. It used to be a way to keep in touch with former clients, co-workers, business connections, vendors and such. Most people were deliberate about who they added to their network. When looking for a new opportunity it was common practice to request an introduction to the decision maker through someone in your network that was directly connected to them. More often than not such introductions produced great results. 

When you received an update via email from LinkedIn, it was usually actionable - a connection had moved to a new job, they had messaged you, you received an invite or someone had accepted yours. Each notification could result in some follow-up and so you actually cared about them. Since Microsoft got in the driver's seat, LinkedIn looks more like Facebook and less like itself and that is such a tragedy. The updates from my network and all those that they follow and like is an inundation of information I don't need. It is no longer enough to be a passive actor on LinkedIn. There is an expectation of constant contribution to stay relevant. The quality of content declining in inverse proportion to the volume which grows exponentially.

To that end, people are posting self-congratulatory pictures and videos of themselves in action in their professional lives, recognizing peers and bosses for their accomplishments. Whereas in the past, there was value to catching up with your connection for coffee there is none anymore. You likely caught up to the last hour on what they have been up to. If you are not actively creating content for others to feed on, you don't exist. By not staying top of mind and above the fold so to speak, you become irrelevant to your network. 

The lines between professional and personal blur over time with no real benefits to either part of your life. In addition to staying relevant and connected to your thousand some friends on Facebook, you now have to repeat that whole process for your connections on LinkedIn. Employers expect you to be their brand ambassador and spread the word they want to spread via LinkedIn. Instead of shilling your favorite cosmetic brand on Facebook, you now extoll the virtues of your employer on LinkedIn, make sure you give your boss a shout out for being so awesome and tell your intern that they are a rockstar. This is not the venue for the jaded and disaffected and not being active on LinkedIn seems to connote both.

Bring your daughter or pet to work day merits two treatments now instead of one. A new job could entail a move and so the story needs to be told two different ways. Facebook has managed to socially isolate people and LinkedIn at the going rate will cease to be relevant as a professional network. It will increase the level of anxiety around professional standing and relative accomplishments but fail to give people what it once did - useful mentors, interesting opportunities, professional advice, ability to find connections in places where you did not have direct access.

Illusions of Choice

Read some very relatable lines from beautiful a poem by Imtiaz Dharker

Choice

I may raise my child in this man’s house

or that man’s love,

warm her on this one’s smile, wean

her to that one’s wit,

praise or blame at a chosen moment,

in a considered way, say

yes or no, true, false, tomorrow

not today. . .

finally, who will she be

when the choices are made,

when the choosers are dead,

and of the men I love, the teeth are left

chattering with me underground?

just the sum of me

and this or that

other?

Who can she be but, helplessly,

herself?

An English Mantra

I first heard these lines when I was in high school studying Julius Caesar in English class but the words have proven to be my mantra for life. 

"Cowards die many times before their deaths; 

The valiant never taste of death but once."

Every time catch myself worrying in vain about future events that I can neither predict nor control, these lines remind me not to be a coward. We spent a whole year studying this play and our English teacher was one of those who changes the lives of their students. The impact of the play or Mr. J's teaching of it would not be apparent to me until a good decade later when I first came into contact with significant real-life difficulties. 

People find solace in reciting mantras in times of trouble, meditating or praying in silence. The words of Caesar as imagined by Shakespeare have served me just as well. I may not be quite as "valiant" as I would like but it helps to have these words play in my head each time I fail to live up to my own expectations as a human being. 

Diwali

This poem by Mark Strand came to mind this Diwali

Even this late it happens:

the coming of love, the coming of light. 

You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves, 

stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows, 

sending up warm bouquets of air.

Even this late the bones of the body shine 

and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.

Time Travel With Smell

On our last day together in Kolkata, my friend S gave me a bottle of hand lotion. I was looking for mine and having no luck finding it, we were running late and S came to the rescue. Decades ago in college, she had rescued me from things - most importantly from the overwhelming sense of being in the wrong place and having no direction. The long hours in the dorm and cafeteria spent in aimless conversations brought a great deal of clarity for me. Yet, I lacked to wisdom to act on what I had learned about myself. It is said, all those who wander are not lost - I was certainly both. The heady smell of rose in the lotion acts as a trigger whenever I use it. It forces me to think deliberately instead of seeking excuses. 

We can choose to live an expressive life, that touches and benefits many. Or we could just exist for our responsibilities without risk, without such a degree of closeness that can cause discomfort or pain. S and I have lived almost as if in reverse of each other. Professionally, S is like a scuba-diver who needed to see the ocean-floor so badly that they could not wait to either be trained or be outfitted in the right gear. She just dove head first and there was never any turning back. She values things very differently than most people, but her accomplishments are amazing and uniquely her own. In personal life, S has played it extraordinarily safe.  My professional life exactly replicates S's personal life with very analogous results. When we met all these years later, we were both sad and disappointed to think about what the other may have been.  

Bird Watch

People watching interact from afar can be fascinating. There was three of us waiting in a lobby area early on a Saturday morning. The TV in on a channel streaming celeb stories. Most of them I have only vaguely heard of. The older lady is engrossed in the book she is reading. The middle aged man had an animated conversation with that dude that is setting up the appointments. Then he called his wife. His posture acquired a slump and his voice turned limp when I compared it to the manner of his previous conversation with the dude in the shop. Made me wonder what his backstory may have been. Is it more real for a person to have a uniform demeanor no matter who they are interacting with or adapt to the person? 

Clearly, you can’t talk to a baby the way to talk to an adult or a senior who is having trouble remembering things. You naturally adapt your manner. Yet something about this man’s demeanor on the phone with his wife suggested that he needed to be a certain persona for peace in his marriage and that reality had little to do with it. The lady with the book took note too - she looked up briefly from her book almost as if in surprise when the man started to speak with his wife on the phone. She had heard him bantering with shop owner previously but it did not get her attention. The transition was indeed dramatic and gave us strangers pause.

Things To Nurse

I met a young lady recently, T who switched professions in quite a dramatic way. She was studying to be a nurse and somewhere along the way became an auto mechanic. Her epiphany came when she realized she had a very trouble-prone car and understood nothing about it. The car that unreliable and expensive to repair impacted other aspects of her life and livelihood.  

At first, she just sought to be a better-informed customer and hold her own in discussions about what was wrong and needed fixing in her car. But the inner workings of her car drew her in unexpectedly. Before long, she had transitioned from a line of work where her gender made her the norm to one where it made her the exception. All signs are that she is thriving as a minority in the auto-repair business. She is also a single mother of a pre-schooler eager to give her young son the best opportunities that she can. 

Talking to this young lady, made me think about another woman I know - M,   also fairly young and in the business of making workplaces woman and mother-friendly. M had privileges growing up that T did not. M is making great strides in her chosen line of work and doubtless helping many a harried woman integrate her work and life. Yet, when T gets under those cars each day, emerging hours later with grease and grime all over herself, she is probably the best poster-child for workplace diversity. 

There is no big corporation and their expensive PR machine, working to advance T's cause - she does it all on her own. She earns the respect of her skeptical male customers who struggle at first to take her seriously. She was the only female in her trade-school class. T's workplace is not mother-friendly and yet she may end up being a fantastic role model for her little boy.  The coddled and fussed over mothers at M's big-name company that strives to rank globally as a mother-friendly workplace may lack perspective T has. Makes you wonder what women really need to thrive in work and personal life. If the measure of a mother's success is how much she helped her children thrive, what does it mean for a workplace to be mother-friendly?