plotting a return
I realize it’s been a while. Partially this has been by design. Partially this has been out of laziness. I have my iPhone app back to functional again, so I can write remotely. Will try to do that more this week.
I’ll pose one thought that has been plaguing me lately:
It’s unfortunate that the times in life when we’re loving life the most seem to be the times that go by the fastest.
new year
I’ve never been one for New Year’s Resolutions. Not because I think I’m not in need of modification or improvement, but mostly because I always thought that if I felt compelled enough to change something, I shouldn’t need to peg the change to an arbitrary date like 1/1.
That said, the pace at which the last 4 months have gone by has caused me to think maybe this is a good time to take a quick inventory of the things I’d like to do, accomplish or experience in the coming year.
MORE:
writing, photography, attention to learning, attention to friends, travel, exercise, cooking, openness to nonproductivity for the sake of resting, focus on the present
LESS:
nail biting, stressing, junk food, calendar management, focus on what’s next
Thanks for reading this past year.
Wishing you a spectacular 2009…
the importance of boredom
I came home for Christmas this year (as I do every year). I was unusually bored. It could be that I was procrastinating working on the job search. It could also be that many of the friends I had here are either not here any more, married, or both. More likely is the fact that I went from life at 150MPH to life in a slower lane when the semester ended.
At first this was frustrating.
Thinking about it now, though, I’m realizing that in two weeks, as I’m just finishing my first day of classes of the 2nd term, I’m probably going to wish I had boredom on the calendar. Wish I was back here right now. Funny to imagine.
I think it’s important to be bored every once and a while. It clears the mind. Forces you to decompress and relax. Boredom also causes you to appreciate the busy time, the time when you have tons to do, and helps you realize what parts of the busy time are most meaningful.
it’s the people, stupid
I was watching one of my favorite movies, “Stand By Me” while working on cover letters and resumes tonight. The movie ends with this quote:
I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anybody?
I used to think that was a pretty interesting quote. I partially agreed with it. I suppose it captures something about the truth in friendship that occurs at such an age. Thinking about it tonight, though, I realized I had an answer to the question asked. Yes, yes, I do.
I can go on about this more later, and I will, but I really do feel very fortunate to have come to school this year and to be in the section I’m in. I’ve made incredible friends in a short amount of time, and there are friendships that I’ve no doubt will last a lifetime. I’m not sure if it’s the connection around the shared experience, the genuine commonality around intellect and drive, or just luck – but there is a bond among people here that is truly great.
I gave a toast at a dinner party the a couple Saturdays ago. I had always said I perceived half the value in the mba program to be in the education and half the value to be in the people you meet (the network). I said at dinner that I’m starting to believe it may be weighted more heavily in favor of the people, after all.
This should surprise anyone who perceives HBS as having a stigma of arrogance or obnoxiousness. It did me. That stigma simply hasn’t presented itself (at least not in the level I thought it would – because surely you can’t rid the world of jerks entirely). But it has confounded me how genuinely good the majority of people are at school.
Anyway – long way of saying that I do feel like I’ve had friends as good since I was 12. I have them right now.
snapshots in time
It is funny to think about life in increments. For instance, what was I doing last year at this time? I was stressed out about completing b-school essays, most of which I was still unhappy with, and most of which were due the first week of January. I was also stressing about producing a major component of the back to back republican and democratic presidential candidates debates, which also happened to be airing… yes, the first week of January.
Flash forward to this year and I’ve been through an entire semester already. And towards the end of that semester, prospective students with interviews started showing up in class. The cycle moves quickly and soon there will be another set of admits. Weird.
Currently, I’m staring down the barrel of the resume drop deadline for formal recruiting: which is the first week of January. Stressful, ya. But I signed up for this and I’m not really sure that I can complain. It’s a great position to be in.
Whenever I find myself in these types of spots – uncertainty on the horizon – I always find it helpful to look backward before looking forward. Think about where I was 5 years ago today. I had just started my first job. I was thrilled about being at a television network. I couldn’t have imagined ever leaving. And yet here I am, in an entirely differrnt place, completly enthralled by what I’m doing. That gives me great hope. Despite whatever worries me about what’s next, 5 years from now I will hopefully look back at today and think, why was I ever worried?
rested and reflecting
Have been home with the family this weekend. Finally feeling caught up on sleep for the first time since August. Feels good. Strange. But good.
Has also been good to catch up with high school friends here. Was thinking a lot about what life was like in high school and what, at that time, I pictured my life being like in the future. Certainly I don’t think I imagined myself in the spot I am today. But, more than that, I was thinking about the people – my friends – that made high school so great. Similarly, later, I could peg the experience of college to the people. I could peg my work experience to the people. Every time I’ve enjoyed something, it’s usually been because of the people.
Then I got to thinking – how life really is like a series of flash mobs. In the same way that people organize randomly for stunts, gathering instantaneously, performing some gag, and then dispersing. Life is filled with convergences of people. That convergence creates a context or an environment. It is in that environment that experience happens. And then people scatter. And the environment becomes a memory.
All this, I suppose, is a way of reconciling the fact that you can’t really go back to what was. Coming home is great, I love reconnecting with people, I love being at home. But there’s just something different. Age, people, circumstance. Different. Not bad, just different.
autumn, trash, and turkeys in cambridge
This post will wander around a bit…
Funny thing about the City of Cambridge. They have a very fickle trash collection policy. It is not very clearly articulated on their website, and every week, after trash collection, it is always fun to come home and play roulette: “which container will still be sitting there full on the curb today?”
Tonight it was the cardboard. No explanation why. Perhaps pizza boxes don’t recycle? One of my housemates suggested that it might be nice if they left handwritten notes explaining why they didn’t take it. I chuckle imagining that note.
It is turning to autumn here. Autumn is always a sentimental season for me. Usually I am in New York now, where I want to equate the smells of fall with the starting of something new, like school. This year, I actually am doing something new, like school. And as a bonus, the leaves here actually change colors. They haven’t peaked yet, but there are a few trees here and there on the walk to campus that have turned brilliantly.
This morning, going into our class building, I was attacked by the campus turkey. It’s been written about by the Boston Globe, and it has an attitude now. It chased me across the lawn as half the MBA class was crossing the lawn from Spangler to Aldrich and then tried to follow me into Aldrich. That was great. At least my blood was pumping for the first case this morning.
Walking over the river to make dinner tonight I started complaining to myself (as usual) about how tired I am and how the schedule here is kicking my ass, etc etc. Somewhere on the bridge I had one of those minor epiphanies that happens every now and again. If this were meant to be easy, it probably wouldn’t be that hard to get in here. This is supposed to be hard – that’s why I came here. So my adrenaline started pumping again and I feel like I did when I first got here. (Plus, finally the RC Plague is entirely out of my body).
So here’s to turning a new leaf on the year… a bright red leaf…
taking a break
Yesterday I completed the HBS finance tutorial. And I passed. Glad to have that out of the way. There were a few concepts on it, like levered and unlevered betas, which I found complicated. I thought maybe I was not made for finance, and then my friend from New York arrived last night and told me he had to do levered and unlevered betas on the CFA level 3 in June. I thought my module was supposed to be introductory. The CFA3 is pretty complicated. Oh well.
I’m spending the next two nights in downtown Chicago with the buddy from NYC. Looking forward to a break from suburbanity. Next week a friend from DC visits on Monday, and then I head out of town on Tuesday. Will be racing the clock to finish the QA tutorial for school, but I’m less worried about that than the finance one.
Summer vacation is great.
Sidebar – why is it that people always “can’t wait til summer,” “can’t believe summer’s halfway over,” “can’t believe summer’s going so fast,” etc.? I guess it’s the weather, but I know a lot of people who love cold/winter, and I never hear them say these things about winter. Just a thought.
move. check.
So, I’m done moving to Cambridge. Everything went smoothly (although I do believe I have more stuff than I should… definitely still a packrat, despite having thrown away about 12 bags of stuff). The Penske truck was completely pain-free and actually had a iPod jack… who knew?
I got all my stuff into the house up there, unpacked a few essentials and booked it back to nyc yesterday for one last night in the Big Apple. Now I’m sitting at LaGuardia waiting to fly to Chicago for a few weeks. (And hopefully acquiring an iPhone later today).
Two lessons I learned while moving:
1. Girls have lots of stuff too. But their boxes are labeled with things like “Shoes 1″ and “Shoes 2″ and “Shoes 3″ and “Purses.” Weird.
2. Mt Kisco, New York is not a good place to stop for food while driving between New York and Boston. While attempting to make a rare appearance at Burger King (because who eats Burger King in nyc? do they even have Burger King’s in nyc?), we followed a road sign that said there was a Burger King at the Mt Kisco exit. Well…. literally 3 country roads, 18 minutes, several miles, and a pass thru DOWNTOWN MT KISCO (which is, in fact, nowhere near the interstate), we found the Burger King. It was so far away from the highway that we took a different route back to the highway than we took getting off the highway.
Anyway. Lessons learned.
Looking forward to spending the next few weeks at home. Looking less forward to finishing the Finance and Quantitative Analysis modules for HBS in the next few days, but that’s not so negotiable.
the long goodbye comes to an end
I feel like I’ve been on a Frank Sinatra career-closing farewell tour for the last two weeks. And it’s been nothing short of fantastic. I’ve just gotten rid of my cable boxes and am now stealing wi-fi from some neighbor who doesn’t understand how to WEP a router…
In 24 hours (barring catastrophe), I will be piloting my penske truck full of my stuff and one of my housemates’ stuff up the interstate to Cambridge, Massachusetts. The looming change can only lead one to reflection… 8 years in New York City has been a wild ride. Coming here at the age of 18, attending film school at one of the best in the world. Flexing my creative muscle in the most creative place in the world. Watching 9/11 happen, literally, in front of my face. Looking for a job. Finding a job. Becoming an adult, over and over. Drinking, sometimes heavily. Making new friends, again and again. Covering Katrina. Visiting the White House. Losing a parent. Playing with Facebook, as part of the job. Traveling – to hurricanes for work, to ski slopes with friends, in a hot air balloon for work, to the Hamptons with friends.
8 years will teach you a lot. Where you come from. Who you are. Who you’d like to be. Who you wouldn’t like to be. But it won’t tell you where you’re going… and I guess that’s part of the excitement.
So, while I’m barreling up 95 tomorrow, I’m sure this will be one of the thought lines running through my head. Along with: is everything still in the truck, is the gas gauge right?, why is gas so expensive?, and are we there yet?
New York, it’s been fun. I’ll miss you. But I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again soon. There’s always the Acela, right?
