Hardwood Floor Exorcisms

Three years ago I prevailed in a battle with the demons of hardwood floor refinishing.  The story of my victory was published in my previous blog.  I've brought it out of the archives because I'm performing one last hardwood floor exorcism in this house as a gift to the next owners.  This post is the first of several DIY stories I plan on sharing with you.  May they amuse you and serve as cautionary tales should you want to join the DIY ranks.

We are the ultimate do-it-yourself people.  If it can be done with two hands and a not-so-modest number of power tools, we will try it.  So it was only logical that we would decide to refinish the floors in two of our bedrooms ourselves.  We read up, even gathered first-hand advice from other such DIYers.  The floors were repaired and tediously patched with flooring obtained from a local architectural salvage shop.  We rented a floor sander and in a weekend we were able to remove the old finish and restore a virgin-like quality to our 80 year old white oak floors.  Everything seemed to be going as planned.

Because the white oak was indeed very light when unfinished and the rest of the house was finished in a beautiful golden blonde, we went with oil-based varathane.  In preparation for THE RITUAL of finishing, we vacuumed up all of the sanding dust, barricaded the room against the furry animals, turned off the furnace, cracked open the windows and bathed the floor.  That's right - it got a bath, 50/50 distilled water and denatured alcohol (which got us carded in the checkout line, by the way).  What started as a "damp rag" application to gently open the grain morphed into sloshing the mixture around, which now required thorough drying before THE RITUAL.

THE RITUAL began with stirring.  The cans of varathane had been sitting on the store shelf for some time, wearily settling and waiting for us to bring them home.  Mixing in the stubborn sludge at the bottom of the can was only the beginning of the patience required.  As we stirred, a song from a grade school Halloween play looped on automatic repeat in my head..."stirring and stirring my brrreeewwww...".  Just that one line.  If theres anything I remember from third grade it's that one line from that one damn play.  After stirring the murky mixture for many, many minutes, we poured some into a tray, added around 10% mineral spirits and then we mixed a little more.  The spike of 10% mineral spirits was suggested by a few sources to help the first coat of finish penetrate the wood more, and who were we to turn down such helpful advice.

We were finally ready for application.  The lambswool applicator was rinsed in mineral spirits (as suggested on the packaging), I donned some protective gloves, put on a hat to contain my hair, and took the honor of applying the first coat.  With the applicator pad attached to a broom handle, I dipped it in the tray and began applying it to the floor.  I expected that it would be difficult to achieve even coverage with the first coat.  In the somewhat dim glow of the overhead room light it appeared that the coverage was even, so my efforts to push the applicator along the floor were paying off.  It was not unlike mopping, and using mopping-type motions I had both rooms covered fairly quickly.

Later that evening we inspected the floors.  There were bubbles.  Lots of clusters of little and not-so-little bubbles.  There was disappointment, but not worry as this was just the first coat.  After some thought, I suspected the mopping motion was forcing out uneven amounts of varathane and undoubtedly causing bubble, both from entrapped air and from having little regions of lakes rather than a nice smooth coat.  Re-reading our reference material, I felt my suspicion was confirmed.

We lightly sanded both rooms and cleaned up the dust in preparation for the second coat.  Taking the results of the first coat into consideration, we tried a different application technique.  I thought that maybe the lambswool applicator was part of the problem, soaking up too much finish and making it difficult to apply even, thin coats.  For the next performance of THE RITUAL, we used clean t-shirt rags and applied the finish on our hands and knees.  No bubbles this time, and we were close enough tot he work to keep an eye on missed spots.  The oil-based finish dries slowly and the label touts its ability to self-level.  This part of the varathane must have been on vacation that day.  There was no self-leveling taking place.

When the second coat was done, it was mostly bubble-free, although even in the dim light I could see fan-like application streaks.  It is difficult to maintain the positioning of the rags because they are not on a rigid frame.  The rags also do not hold much finish so now instead of an over-generous layer we were too stingy, which is of course why the varathane did not self-level.

These problems are why even most DIYers hire this activity out.  And they are why I was more determined than ever to make it work.

After letting the floors dry for a couple of days, I stocked up on supplies.  I bought more sanding pads, applicator frames and multiple lambswool applicator pads.  I had learned from the last two coats and the third was going to be the charm.  Did you hear the floor demons snicker right there?  I swear I heard them.

I crawled around both floors on my hands and knees, sanding and knocking off the rough spots.  I vacuumed yet again and prepared once more for THE RITUAL.

Very gently (avoiding air entrapment) and very thoroughly (sludge happens), I stirred the varathane.  Then slowly I poured the varathane in the tray.  I had already rinsed the applicator with mineral spirits and now it was time.  I began the application, on my hands and knees, gliding the mixture along.  It seemed to be going fine.  In the empty rooms I worked alone, singing and wondering if perhaps this was the final coat.

I don't know if you hear them or not, but I think the floor demons progressed beyond snickering at this point.

The next morning I optimistically ventured in to inspect my work.  It was obviously not the final coat.  While the color was beautiful and the application was even, it was bumpy.  Small bubbles, much smaller than what occurred with the first coat, but still there.  The taste of defeat was very sour indeed.

Sometime during the night, there was THE EPIPHANY.  The small bubbles were occurring because there was solvent trapped underneath the surface.  Where was the solvent coming from?  From rinsing the damn applicator with mineral spirits.  Holy crap, batman!

More sanding, more vacuuming.  I even vacuumed the applicator to remove loose fibers since I observed an unwanted distribution of them hiding amongst the bubbles.  This was it.  My heart said it was going to work.  My brain said apply a little section, let it dry and see how it turns out before wasting time on the whole floor.  And then there was THE SECOND EPIPHANY.  I needed to really see the surface as I applied the finish.  The dim overhead light disguised what the demons were up to.  I dragged in the halogen light and when I turned it on, the floor demons were suddenly very quiet.

I went to the far corner of one bedroom and set down to work.  I dipped the dry applicator into the varathane and began coating the floor.  No bubbles, but wait a minute, there were little fibers.  Everywhere.  Even the Festool Cleantec dust extractor with its 134 cubic feet per minute of suction was no match for the loose fibers in that applicator.  The floor demons just high-fived each other and sauntered down the street.  The acoustics of the empty room captured my words, all coincidentally four letters long.

Suddenly, I knew what was wrong.  Our research had told us about this step.  And now a cosmic "I told you so" was reverberating around those empty rooms.  The innocent little lambswool applicators had to go through a laundry wash cycle.  I had one applicator left.  This was the last chance before sanding it all back down and calling a professional.

The applicator was washed and dried (no fabric softener).  I had taken a couple of days to regroup and prepare my constitution for what would likely be yet another disappointment.  I was going to face it and get it over with.

I had on my gloves, and for the last round with the floor demons, I added a respirator with organic vapor cartridges.  As it turns out, being nose-level with the floor looking for bubbles and fibers in the varathane does not get you high.  Not even a little bit.  It does, however, make your sinuses burn and your head ache.  I tucked a pair of tweezers in my back pocket (for fibers and errant cat hairs) and gathered ther est of my supplies.  As I closed the hallway door behind me and walked into the first room, I could sense the floor demons had taken notice of my courage, of my strong will, and the Rocky theme song began to play.

Stirring and stirring, then pouring into the tray.  The halogen light was on and positioned for maximum visibility in the room.  I began applying the finish.  It went on very smoothly and this time, no fiber trails.  No bubbles.  Yeah, that's right.  No bubbles.  The lambswool glided over the wet finish and the finish self-leveled.  It was peaceful and right, like the manifestation of a universal truth.  Every once in a while there would be a hair, a fiber, some stray speck of something.  I was prepared, my tweezers at the ready. Before I knew it, I was done with room and starting on the second.  It went just as smoothly as the first room.  Was it too good to be true?  Were the floor demons waiting outside with a victory bottle of tequila?

Not so.  The floors, needing only now to dry, were done.  After several hourly inspections, the floors were drying to their desired semi-gloss state, free of new bubbles.  After a few days, I planed to open the hallway to all household traffic, turn on some music and conduct my victory dance barefoot.

-Andrea

Our house needs a personal ad

Think about where you're living right now.  What is it that makes it home? What makes it yours?

You could say the buildings we live in are structures, material things that we've accepted as part of our lives.  I would say they are the most intimate spaces we occupy.  They reflect us.  Our personality can be inferred from the apparent choices that fill every room: colors, styles of furniture, how we organize space.  Whether we are neat freaks or walking disasters.  Where we relax, where we work.  The music we listen to, the movies we watch, the books and magazines we read.  Whether or not we recycle.  How we balance welcoming people with protecting our privacy.  All the choices we make that add up to making these structures what we call home.

We moved into our first house almost a decade ago.  It wasn't home then with it's peachy pink, plaster and lathe walls and frilly, dusty lace drapes.  Drafty windows painted shut.  Knob and tube electrical wiring.  It took several years for it to become home.  It was a fixer-upper, and we put effort into this 80-year old house as if we would be here forever.  We performed serious renovation work ourselves, armed with power tools, respirators, work boots and several sets of "work clothes." We endured weekends full of achy muscles.  My husband spent so much time under the house with electrical and plumbing work that it should be considered an additional room.  I broke a finger and became an Urgent Care regular.  All for hand-rubbed cherry woodwork in the Arts-and-Crafts style.  Custom stained glass.  Triple-pane windows.  Insulated walls.  An abundance of outlets and switches.  A house full of intentional color.  A workshop disguised as a two-car garage we built by ourselves. Details we cared about, that met our standards.  

And now, we're leaving.

It was wrenching, at first.  The worst future buyer scenarios started playing out in my head.  They would paint over the trim and park fluid-dripping cars in the workshop.  They would discard everything of the 1920's style character we tried to evoke in fixtures and tiles and paint.  Hand-painted schoolhouse lampshades would be thrown out in favor of something on sale at Home Depot.  They would turn our kitchen into a Tuscan cliche.

Of course, I had assumed they wouldn't love this house the way that we have loved it.

And then I realized that I was assuming only one part of the possible future.  I hadn't considered the buyers that could love it like we did, or better yet, more than us.  And by finishing all the odds and ends before putting it up for sale, we are preparing it for someone else to love.

Still bittersweet, but no longer wrenching and filled with discouraging thoughts about what might happen.

This past weekend we freshened up the bathroom with new cabinets, paint and porcelain fixtures.  Before putting the new medicine cabinet into the wall, I taped a note inside the wall to be found sometime in the future.  Maybe it will be found by the very next owners.  Maybe it won't be found for another decade.  

It was my way of letting go, of passing on stewardship to someone else, another family interested in a long-term, loving relationship with this home.

-Andrea

Unsettled routine

Sidewalks express embellishments of stories that have already taken place.  My eyes have traced the sidewalk as I've walked mile after mile, recording fragments and forgotten details.  Discarded food containers, dropped reminder notes, store receipts, cash, broken glass, candy wrappers, leaves, fallen fruit, crushed flower petals.  Used dog waste bags left for someone else to deal with.  Cigarettes in every variety, some still in the pack.  Lost homework pages scribbled on wildly by little hands still learning how to write.  Trash escaped from the transfer to the collection truck.  Gardening equipment.  Broken sprinklers.  Screws, bolts and springs.  Business cards, shopping bags, coupons and dirty rags.  Jackets and underwear.  Expired squirrels and birds.  Uncollected yard sale signs.  Unwanted furniture and appliances waiting to be free-cycled.  Ruined couches and chairs.  Faded messages drawn in sidewalk chalk, paint, marker.  Inscriptions and paw prints left before the concrete had set.  Survey marks and the shorthand used to mark places for repair of the unseen, underground network.

Remnants of ordinary, daily life.

I've walked past a particular block on almost every route I've taken.  The routine of it is comforting.  The same dogs that regard me with sleepy eyes and casually alert ears.  They are bored with my regularity and stopped barking at me long ago.  Regular.  Routine.  Unchanging.

Today, the sidewalks showed evidence of a different story. An exception to the routine.  An event that unsettled the comfort of ordinary.

I noticed two officers, taking notes in a yard across the street from me, shiny badges on dark uniforms catching the morning sun out of the corner of my eye.  It seemed odd not to see a police cruiser close by.  Half a block later, I realized I was walking on more than dropped, dried fruit from the trees along the street.  I was walking on someone else's blood, a trail of burst droplets growing more urgent and leading all the way around the corner.  It was fresh and heavy enough here to be accompanied by more officers and a line up of police cars, but old enough not to smudge or take an impression of my footprints.  A spattered, wavering line ran from the public sidewalk up to a front porch.  Pools of blood on the porch and over the threshold of the open front door.  Something dramatic had happened to someone here.  An accident, maybe.  A crime.  A misunderstanding escalated to the point of being unrecoverable.  Latex gloves sat left behind from an investigator trying to piece it together.  A stillness hung in the neighborhood punctuated by the mumble of police radios and my footfalls as I continued home.

The sidewalk knows the story.  It was there the whole time.  But it's not telling any more than it already has.

-Andrea

Needy is needy for a good antonym

A local headline helped me find a puzzling burr in my bonnet this evening:

Needy children get ready for school at Santa Anita Park

"Needy" is defined as being in want or lacking.  "Less fortunate" or "underprivileged" are also similarly used.

You and I have become accustomed to hearing these words and understanding their context .  Reading them just now probably evoked an image in your head.  Don't worry.  I'm not going to ask you about the image.

But I am going to ask for your help.

"Needy," "less fortunate" and "underprivileged" have something in common.  They are descriptions framed in negative perception. It's easy to depict a situation by hitting the negative items first. Think about what you notice when you walk into a room or meet someone.  Think about the last time you were in traffic. We are trained to diagnose, to identify weakness, to solve problems.  We're good at it, too.  So good that noticing a defect is more natural than noticing a strength.

This is exactly why it is so difficult to describe situations from a positive reference point, to use strengths as an index over weakness.

Is it possible for the headline to adequately capture the story from a positive reference point?  Would we understand the events that took place if the headline read "School supplies donated to community students" or "Volunteers give time to prepare children for school"?  I believe so. But I don't believe it is automatic for us to hit that perspective first, especially if the intent is to grab attention.  

Does it feel more appropriate to focus on the act of giving or the act of receiving?  Help me explore this, my friends, by sharing your thoughts.

-Andrea

The peril of easy money

The nuggets: 

• You can reap fresh-fallen fruit or even low-hanging fruit just by walking up to the tree, but so can everybody else.  You can win by always being first to the tree, but you're just doing something anyone else can do.  
• For a bit more effort, there's much more fruit to be had.

Ever have a bit of luck and hope it happens again?  How far do you go with that hope? Are people losing money for your benefit or are you delivering something of value?

During a recent evening walk I found a receipt folded up with some cash on the sidewalk.  A few steps farther was more cash.  By the end of that block I had picked up $41.

Last night I walked past that same place. I knew another find was improbable, but I slowed my pace and looked around more closely that whole block.  Of course I didn't find any more cash.  But that didn't stop me from looking.

By the time I reached the next block I felt silly.  I had fallen into the trap of doing something again, knowing it probably wouldn't work, but giving it a shot anyway just in case.  I could walk miles all over town and never find more than a penny.  If I really wanted to make sure I found more money on the sidewalk, I would have to focus on getting cash thrown about in public than random treasure hunting. Doesn't sound like an attractive business model, especially the part where people lose money purely for my benefit.

What is the result you're hoping for, and how can you let go of what you're doing now in order to try something different?

Are you going for a long-lasting result, or just a quick windfall?  Are you betting that if you do what worked once before enough times, eventually something will happen?

-Andrea

Resentment and customer service robotics: It's all about you

The nuggets:

• Resenting a task doesn't make it faster or more pleasant.  Choose to accept.
• Don't treat the humans that help you do a task like robots.  Choose to be human.

Grocery shopping.  Pick up from the dry cleaners.  Mail a package.  Deposit a check.  Get gas before you have to push your car home.  Typical errands, right?  Ugh.  

Want to know something about all those errands, all those mundane tasks you have to do as part of, well, life?  They take as long as they take, whether you resent them or not.  Resentment doesn't feel very good to hold on to, so there's not much risk in simply accepting the things that need to be done.

What about all those times you've waited in line, growing more irritated at how unprepared the people ahead of you are, at how much small talk is being exchanged?  How many times have you reached the counter or cashier and been so focused on getting done that you completely ignored the person on the other side?  If you treat these interactions as if they were disposable, that's exactly the kind of experience you're going to get.  As emotional beings, we don't like feeling disposable.

Think I'm wrong?  Next time you go to the grocery store, smile, even just a little, as you walk up to the line.  The person in front of you may not acknowledge you as you walk up, but if they do, give them your smile and I bet they'll smile back. 

Give the cashier a smile, too, and the most sincere greeting you can muster.  Can you imagine what it must be like to deal with customers that treat you like a robot, as a purveyor of inconvenience?  Chances are you shop at the same grocery store with the same cashiers every time you shop.  Find a favorite and be happy to see them again.  

The opportunities for human interaction as we go about our routine business are less than before.  We have automated phone menus, ATMs, pay at the pump gas stations, even self-checkout lines at some stores.  It is possible (and dreadful) that we can go through a series of errands without ever being acknowledged by another person, without having our questions answered, without any emotional involvement other than what we bring to the situation.  If by chance there is an actual human waiting there to help you, be human. Because being acknowledged is so much better than being ignored, right?  And is there anything more enriching than sharing a smile with someone?

It's your choice.

-Andrea

Why choose separate burners when you can build a big fire instead?

"I’ve said all along that life-work balance is overrated. If you’re not happy with your life, you should change it like plenty of other people have done. If your job sucks and you’re miserable, you should quit." From Chris Guillebeau's post The Four Burners Theory - Your Thoughts? If you're not reading Chris Guillebeau, you should be. You can find him at The Art of Non-Conformity and depending on where you live, you might even be able to meet him in person during his Unconventional Book Tour kicking off in September 2010.

Reviewing a bit, the Four Burners Theory says that our lives have four burners: family, friends, health and work. To keep life under control, it might be tempting to keep all the burners on but set them on low heat. The theory proposes that successful people sacrifice one burner and really successful people sacrifice two in order to burn hot somewhere else.

The Four Burners Theory doesn't jive with me, not right away at least.  Dividing life into separate burners implies having to control them all.  This feels too rigid for real life, like freedom is slipping away. Without freedom there is no play and without play, the flow of fresh air stops and the fire suffocates itself.

From this perspective, a really successful or even just successful life doesn't seem satisfying.  How can an unsatisfying life feel...balanced. Are you following me with this?

Another word for balance is equilibrium. It's something that can be re-established when there has been a shift.  Think about gymnasts or ice skaters.  There are inconsistent athletes, the ones that either hit their elements in perfect form all the way through or execute a disaster from start to finish.  They never fall in-between.  Then there are the ones that are much more consistent because when they bobble, they quickly recover their equilibrium.  They have an inner strength that allows flexibility and readjustment when the unexpected happens.

Here's how I think it works.  First, you have to know what you want out of your life.  It's not about what other people want out of theirs since the only person responsible for living your life is you.  An interesting way to find out what you want from life is to write your obituary.  I've had the opportunity to do this (which you can read about here) and I recommend going through the exercise.

Second, you have to decide how you're going to use your energy to get what you want.  As the Cheshire cat told Alice in Wonderland, "if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."  This is where strength comes in.  You have to be strong enough to say no, to stand up for what you want.  Some of your most important decisions are not about what you will do, but what you won't do.  If you're not willing to be that strong, is there any point in worrying about your life balance?

Third, you have to be willing to be out of equilibrium, to let balance shift from time to time.  Re-establishing equilibrium is often uncomfortable, but worth it because you get better at it the more it happens.  Think about our ice skater friends learning a brand new routine or skill.  Over the course of a career they will have to learn many routines.  They get past the falls, the uncertainty, and eventually they get through it.  You will, too.  Lance Armstrong reminds us that "If you worried about falling off the bike, you'd never get on."  Do you dread the shifts or welcome them?  Do you put off making changes because you'd rather stay in an unsatisfied state of balance than experience the adjustment towards a new equilibrium?

Ultimately the life you feel you are living is where your emotions are present.  Achieving life balance is not about analysis, magic equations or helpful analogies.  You can divide up priorities in life, give them equal attention and be unsatisfied.  What's important is to be fully present wherever you are giving your attention.  If you're not distracted, you detect when your foot is slipping so you don't have to land on your bottom to realize you've lost your balance.

-Andrea

Connecting recreation to occupation: Part 2

"You work so hard at it.  Just put it down and let it lie.  If you work that same spot over and over again, it's going to get muddy." 

Ever work hard at something, but the harder you worked the more elusive the desired outcome became?  You knew exactly what the result had to be, what it needed to look like.  Even if by sheer brute force, you would make it happen.  Except, it didn't quite work.

It can be quite discouraging.  It can even convince you that you are not a maker.

Several years ago I received one-on-one watercolor painting lessons from a woman in her 80s that was full of stories, curiosity and quiet observation.  She would introduce a concept, give me an assignment and then leave me to paint by myself for a while.  She would glance over periodically and return to her own painting without a word.  That is, except for the time I was trying to paint a clematis flower from reference material she had brought.  I was struggling with it, adding more paint in one color and then another, over and over, knowing that my persistence would be rewarded with a crisp, realistic reproduction of the reference flower.

She watched my painting for a bit and as she turned back to her work, she said, "You work so hard at it.  Just put it down and let it lie.  If you work that same spot over and over again, it's going to get muddy." 

The next time I showed up for class she handed me a packet of colored tissue paper, a bottle of Elmers glue and the same reference material I was using the week before.  She asked me to tear tissue paper into pieces and glue it on the paper so that I could paint the flowers over it.  She responded to my skeptical look by telling me I needed to loosen up, to learn to just go with it.  A collage painting was the prescription for my relentless style.

The painting I made from that exercise was my first finished painting.  She convinced me to enter it in the student portion of a show at the gallery she belonged to.  It meant I had to get my painting professionally framed and I had to sign it.  As a first painting, it was understandably amateur, but later when I had my own office at work I hung the painting above my desk.  At the time, it was reminder that I had interests outside of work.  Now that I finally understand the lesson, it is much more significant.  It was my first glimpse into how lessons from my "side" interests could carry over into my professional life.

-Andrea

Connecting recreation to occupation: Part 1

Are you a "maker"? Do you know what it's like to create?  Think about the last thing you made and keep that in mind while you consider this series of tweets I posted over lunch about a week ago.

Don't think that you are a maker?  Do you assume that you are not a creative person?  Let's just see.  Humor me for now.

Art = series of deliberate actions & reactions to circumstance that add up to something beautiful & elegant.  

Every line, every brush stroke is a deliberate choice. The outcome informs the next action, changes the overall picture. 

Every action & decision you make is a choice. Is it deliberate? Where does it fit into the overall picture? 

Life can = art.  

Are you living accidentally today? Or are you living with intention? 

Intention is not the same as control.  

Control restricts the end big picture result. You think you know in advance what the masterpiece is going to be.  

Intent pauses, observes, experiments. The end result is a natural evolution. Not forced. That's what makes it beautiful.

Hmmm....seeds for thought...

Are you really convinced that you are just not cut out to be a maker?  Stick with me through this series.  It's not about changing your mind.  It's about expanding what you are able to see.

-Andrea

Seeking your inner superhero

Have you ever thought about what you would change if you were truly a superhero?  

Yesterday evening I saw the following on Twitter from Streetlights94:

If I had gotten my way and become Wonder Woman I would have been able to prevent bad hair today, stop the oil spill, and conquered idiocy.

I loved this tweet.  It got me thinking about what I would do if I could get my way and be my own superhero.  Here are the first 5 things that occurred to me:

1. It would never occur to people to drink bottled water except in the case of emergencies.  In fact, bottled water would stay in the superhero supply warehouse until said emergencies.  
2. Vending machines would dispense string cheese.  And Baby Bell cheese.  
3. You know those "health" indicators in video games?  We would all have one floating above our heads letting the innocent people around us know if we were hungry, grumpy or having a less-than-smart day.  In return, we would get a little understanding, a little space and maybe a little snack.
4. Workplaces would have pets, like office mascots.  Maybe in every department.    
5. Women's magazines would not market to self-doubt or perceived weaknesses, and they would not benchmark us against each other.

Now it's your turn.  Picture yourself in a cape, kick-ass boots, tights if it works for you and a cool superhero mask.  Off the top of your head, what 5 things would be different about the world?  I challenge you to use your imagination!

-Andrea

Change is in the air...

Last week I wrote about the little identity crisis going on with this blog.  I've decided to split the content and do some renovation.

I'm going to continue posting insights and observations about life, relationships and the general human condition here at Sweeping Up The Moments.  The blog will remain at this location for now, but a move is in the works.  Blogger has been a good temporary home, but it's kind of like renting a room in someone else's house: you get the urge to paint and change it up, and eventually you get tired of your name being listed care/of those who own the digs.  In other words, Sweeping Up The Moments is getting its own house, complete with new furnishings and housewarming parties (you're all invited, by the way).

My business-related content will be moved to a blog under The Lewicki Agency, my professional site that will come online soon. The Lewicki Agency house was all ready to go but before the power was switched on, I decided to do some last-minute demolition and reconstruction.  It's going to be a blast over there, and I encourage you all to stop by and get a goodie bag during the grand opening.

So, in summary, stay tuned and remember you're invited to a housewarming and a grand opening.  Make sure to wear your party shoes!

-Andrea

Do you think you're smart enough to do it wrong?

Do you ever worry about failure, about not doing it right?  The humans among us naturally worry about such things.  But what would happen if you tried something fully intending to fail?

Earlier this month I read a post on World's Strongest Librarian by Josh Hanagarne where he challenged his readers to a bad poetry contest.  Initially I thought it was simply interesting because unless you are a poet and you know it, anybody could jot down a couple of lines of awkward and unnatural prose.

Later that afternoon I thought the contest was brilliant.  Why?  Because we all have an understanding of what "bad" means.  Our vocabulary for describing what's wrong is stronger than the vocabulary we use to identify what's right.  We're well-trained at finding out why something doesn't work.  It is not unusual or far-fetched for us to know more about what we don't like than what we do.

So consider this: if you think you know what "bad poetry" looks like, try writing some.  Somewhere in your mental archives you have a list of rules that bad poetry violates.  You know what not to do.  So write some poetry where you don't do those things.  Just try it.

It's surprising how creative you have to be to write something that is intentionally bad and cringe-worthy. Even more surprising?  It's a little fun.  That's right.  Fun.  As in loosened up and relaxed and playful.

And that's where the beauty lies.  By trying to intentionally fail, you have to address your individual assumptions about what failure looks like.  Thinking a certain way is not at all the same as acting a certain way, and when you try to put your assumptions about failure into action, suddenly the assumptions don't feel so absolute.

What are some other examples where you claim to know what "bad" looks like, what defines failure?  Think about your resume, the proposal you've been meaning to write, the idea you've been wanting to pitch to your boss if you could only figure out how.

If you were going to do these things intending to do them wrong, what would that look like?  What are the criteria you came up with for making those judgements?  Now flip them around.  Congratulations, you are now your own how-to guru!

-Andrea

Do I use the knife or the fork?

  

I write for different purposes and therein lies the intersection where I find myself staring at light that is not yet green.

Sweeping Up The Moments is where I capture insights and moments that might otherwise slip by quietly.  In my very first post I set out the four things I want to achieve in my life:

1. To have loved well
2. To have been loved well
3. To have lived a meaningful and intentional life
4. To have never stopped learning

I am also embarking on a new professional adventure, an adventure I am designing for myself, taking a big step away from traditional corporate culture and developing a management consulting practice that looks and feels different from the mainstream consulting industry.  Writing is involved here, too.  It is a fundamental part of connecting, evaluating and shaping the work I want to do. Articles I write in this adventure are meant to evoke reflection, to ask questions.  There are white papers and e-books and so much more in the future for this adventure.

Up to now, I dipped my toes a little into each pool and tried to mix them together. There are dozens of draft posts behind the scenes of a more focused, business-related nature that I've been reluctant to post here because, frankly, this is not where the intended audience visits.  There are dozens of other draft posts that go much deeper in the content I've started here that I've also hesitated to post, concerned about the overall balance should I choose to keep it all in one place.  I've found successful examples where other people have successfully merged business and personal into what they offer.  There are also success stories of people who separate these elements.  

I don't think a split can ever be completely distinct and I want my personality and "humanness" to come through no matter where I write.  I also think that one box dilutes the purpose and effectiveness of both efforts.

Ultimately, I know I can decide what will work best for me and run with it.  I can go with the fork, picking it all up at the same time.  Or I can go with the knife, performing surgery and creating two pieces where one existed before.  

Or maybe there's an option I haven't even thought of yet.

-Andrea

Giving up can be worthwhile

Week 2 of 21.5.800.  419/800 words.

What stuff do you hoard?  What do you cling to, reluctant to let go even the stuff is of little importance in your everyday life?  When is the last time you made use of that stuff?

This morning I put action behind a decision I made a couple of weeks ago.  I had decided to give up some of my infrequent hobbies, reducing the amount of stuff I have to store and manage, reducing the burden of unfinished things that call for my attention now and again.  

I have knitted and crocheted on and off every since I learned as a little girl.  Every time I took up the hobby again, I wanted a fresh start, something new and exciting to justify learning a new technique, buying more equipment, or adding to my stockpile of yarn.  By now I have quite a lot of yarn.  Too much, considering I start a project every other year or so and my interest is never held long enough to complete a project.  

So, I found a local group on Meetup.com that knits soft hats for cancer patients.  They are very active and they have a solid group of dedicated members.  I immediately contacted their organizer and offered her my entire stash of yarn.  Not only did she happily accept, but it turns out my collection is perfect for their work because it is super soft and doesn't cause itching.  Their most prolific knitter makes 50 hats a month. She will knit through my stockpile in no time at all!  And best of all, she will be putting my hoard of yarn to far better use.  Through giving up my neglected stuff, I enabled someone else's compassion.

Bottom Line: We often hold on to stuff that could be put to better and immediate use by another group or person.  These things we collect and then neglect are actually resources.  Giving them up frees us from the energy spent to keep them while they gather dust.  Letting go of them means they can finally be put to use.

It's a lesson that applies not only to the things we collect at home, but also to the way we run our businesses.  What do you have out in your warehouse collecting dust?  What about in those long-forgotten storage closets? Maybe you've outgrown it, maybe it's residual from a business you got out of a long time ago.  Give it up, because letting it sit there unused and unnoticed is just another form of waste.

-Andrea

Well-Fed Friday (Kicking #FF up a notch)

728 words in this post brings me to 968 words.  Time for yoga!

What's a typical Friday like for you?  Antsy anticipation until you get to shut down the computer and start the weekend?  A little nagging pit of your to-do list in your stomach trying to call attention to what remains unfinished for the week?

First, a bit of personal backstory.  Then, what I'm doing different and why it matters more in the long run.

When I had a traditional desk job in a big company, Friday was my catch up day.  While most people raced through the day to be able to leave early, I locked myself in my office and stayed late, taking advantage of the quiet period in the afternoon when the phone stopped ringing, emails slowed to a trickle, and people stopped visiting my office. In that one day, I believed I would kick ass and make the harried rest of the week worthwhile.

I hit the easy items first, the ones that needed little nudges to keep them moving.  I sent reminders, left voice mail, scheduled meetings.  My burst in uninterrupted productivity meant my coworkers would start the next week even further behind.  Sure, I would suffer the consequences, but I reveled in my momentary feeling of accomplishment.

By lunch time,  I was tackling back burner projects.  It took time to equilibrate with each one, to figure out where I was and what action I planned to take.  I realized I forgot to follow up or I didn't hand off when I needed to.  At this point my day began to derail.  I had kept too much in my court and had become the bottleneck.  I was so far behind!  Anxiety and hopelessness infiltrated my early afternoon.

Then, without fail, the phone would ring around 2:30 pm.  It was the Friday Afternoon Crisis, the thing that would occupy the next several hours because someone needed a miracle delivered.  Desperate customers who need a product delivered Saturday, requiring time to expand and geography to shrink.  Senior managers needing urgent analysis for a presentation next week that they found out about two weeks ago.  Taking charge because no one knows what else to do and Coworker A is on vacation and Coworker B already left for the day and stopped answering his phone.

Miracle delivered or crisis postponed, the presence of my coworkers evaporated by 5:00 pm.  The cleaning crew and I had the building to ourselves.  The stacks of paper on my desk were useless now, the day was too far gone.  I filed it all away again, leaving a trail of sticky notes like bread crumbs for the following Friday.  My desk cleaned, I turned back to my computer for a few last emails.  6:30 pm.  7:00 pm.  7:30 pm.  Sometimes 8:00 pm.  My car was the last one in the parking lot as I headed into a weekend defeated and sapped of motivation.

The only ass that got kicked on those Fridays was mine.

Cut to the present.  I have noticed that even in a state of non-traditional employment, my expectations are not different.  I still look to Friday to deliver miracles I couldn't put together during the week.  My feelings of defeat have not changed because although my venue has changed, my behavior has not.

Last Friday, I decided I'm done with that old and busted behavior.  The new hotness is what I call Well-Fed Fridays.  There are logistics issues with inviting you all over and cooking you big meals to show appreciation.  So instead, I give you my attention on Well-Fed Friday. I'm giving my Fridays over to appreciating the contributions of others and making sure I tell them about it. Examples:

• Writing recommendations for people on LinkedIn
• Contributing to discussions on LinkedIn  
• Commenting on blogs & sharing them with other people
• Sending meaningful direct messages on Twitter
• Picking some Twitter followers and looking at their tweets, their blog if they have one, finding out what they are all about 

Last week I tried it out a little.  Feelings of defeat and depleted motivation were replaced with warmth and connectedness.   Can't wait to find out what a full day of this feels like!

-Andrea

Delivering Happiness: A Review

This post represents 240/800 words today as part of the 21.5.800 project. Thanks for reading!

I'll be honest and say that I didn't know what to expect when I signed up to review* Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.  By the time I had finished reading, I was pleasantly surprised.  There were lessons learned from mistakes and failure.  There were insights that made me stop and reflect on my own career.  There were surprises and revelations of unexpected good consequence.  Best of all, there were moving passages about shared success and collective victory.

Tony tells the stories of his early searches for profits with refreshing honesty and humility.  While I would have liked more depth in the first part of the book and more effort to tie the sections together, the real meat is what Tony took away from those formative business endeavors (even from childhood) and how they shaped his perspective leading up to Zappos.

The story of Zappos as told by Tony is one of people, of the importance of relationships not only within the tight culture of Zappos, but also externally with vendors, customers, the general public.  Tony has shown that it is possible to be successful and care about people, to be inclusive rather than exclusive, to share rather than hoard.  It's an example we can all benefit from.

Overall, it's a quick read and I would recommend taking the time to do so.  Looking forward to hearing more about the next chapter for Zappos and for Tony Hsieh.

-Andrea

*For full disclosure: I received a free, advance copy of the book with the understanding that I would provide an honest review here on my blog.  Statements in this post reflect my own personal opinions and I have not received compensation as to the nature of these opinions.  

A good challenge...

It's great when a challenge comes along that comes two activities I want to spend more time doing: yoga and writing.  Thanks to Bindu Wiles, I will be writing 800 words a day and doing yoga 5 times a week for three weeks.  The project is called 21.5.800.  Yesterday when I signed up, I joined 62 other people that had joined.  This morning there were over 100.  The project kicks off on Tuesday, June 8th.

Want to add your name to the participant list? Click here!

-Andrea

It's coming...Follow Up Perspectives

I enjoy the writing that I do here, and in my last post, I indicated writing is a tool that helps me synthesize and articulate and develop thoughts that would otherwise remain abstract.

Fantastic for me, although perhaps selfish.  I'm flattered whenever something I write resonates with someone or triggers their thinking muscles.  But I want to offer more than just my perspective.

To kick off June (June! Next week! Already!!), I'm going to add a new feature to this blog called Follow Up Perspectives.  It will start as a new category of blog posts of follow-ups that provide links to the writing and analysis other fine people have done on the subject.

Follow Up Perspectives will be:

• Informative, so I will include references that allow you to skim, to swim and dive deep.  
• Balanced and inclusive.  It would be easy to find material that reinforces my conclusions, but that isn't really good sportsmanship.  References to other perspectives and view points.
• Open for discussion.  Your experience and insights matter!  Leave comments, send me links, continue the conversation.  

Follow ups will be published about a week after the initial post.  The first topic will be lessons in complexity.

Until then,
Andrea

Lessons in assumptions and complexity

A perfect knock out in the first round would have been less painful, but that is not the way complexity fights.  Round after round, the matches drag on, exhausting opponents, leaving them battered.  When they've been beat down, a new fresh-faced boxer is thrown into the ring and it all begins again.

On Monday I was working through the second Fire Starter Session.*  Part of the process was reflection and analysis on my three all-time screw-ups, and then letting go of past mistakes to focus on the good stuff.  I paused before letting go because I had an "Aha!" moment I knew I had to capture.  My thoughts and experience had coalesced into a lesson I wanted to make sure I learned.  Now is maybe a good time to admit I write here to fully articulate my thoughts, to sharpen the blurry points that my brain would fill in using the temporary lookup table of recent experience. (Note: I'm going to come back to this idea of a temporary lookup table in a future post.  Get excited.  It will be good. And geeky.)  So, I'm going to write about the insights I had in the hopes of fully developing these lessons for myself so I won't forget them.  I already learned them the hard way once.

My ill-fated match with complexity lasted almost two years and dealt with the relocation of a product line from one manufacturing facility to another.  I could tell you all the reasons why it was complicated, but they don't matter.  I could tell you about the loose ends that morphed into writhing snakes, but they don't matter either.  What matters are the lessons I learned from the experience, which are:

1. Be upfront and open about assumptions.  Write them down because they will need to checked and rechecked.  Share them with everyone who has a stake in the project - the people involved in making it happen, the people committing resources, the people who make project leaders accountable.  Ask other people for their assumptions and compare.  Assumptions should be public knowledge.  Why?  They could be wrong.  They may overlook something.  They may be based on outdated information.  They might overestimate the capability of people, of systems, of the resources to be consumed.  Guess what? It's ok if assumptions turn out to be wrong.  They're assumptions, not facts.  
2. Doing hard things simply is the be all and end all of an elegant solution. If success depends on an exquisitely detailed but rigid plan that rivals the setup for an Ok Go video, it's a good idea to call a time-out and review.  Don't automatically opt for complexity and assume killer project management will make it all work (see Lesson #1).  Bewildering plans contingent on very fine points are prime opportunities for unpleasant surprises.  If this is what Plan A looks like, Plan B is probably better.  Why?  Complexity consumes resources exponentially.  The attention and oversight has to come from somewhere.  Did the hours required for administration get factored into the project cost?  Energy that could be spent on "doing" other important things gets spent on "controlling" when complexity is in the ring. What about that opportunity cost?  The ROI has to be worth all of the hidden costs, too.

Moving on,
Andrea

*The Fire Starter Sessions is the brainchild of the lovely Danielle LaPorte.  If you don't know who she is yet, go ahead and take care of that.  She's inspiring and seriously, you have to experience how this gal talks.  Your day would go a whole lot better if you had a miniature Danielle sitting on your shoulder whispering kick-ass mantras in your ear.  That's not entirely possible, but the experiencing the Fire Starter Sessions is.  The experience happens over 10 sessions on how to burn your brightest, all delivered in a e-book.  You're going to have to self-reflect.  You're going to have to be honest with yourself.  And when it's all said and done, you'll be whispering your own kick-ass mantras.  

Flipping the diet segment

Standing in line for lunch today I saw a row of recently launched drinks sitting on the order counter.  All of them had the word "diet" in the name.

We've come to understand the "diet" description as another word for giving something up, for going without in the name of a longer-term result.  It gets me thinking about market segmentation.

If I owned a soft drink company, I would have two broad segments of offerings, except I would go about naming them a different way.  The healthier options - those with less or no sugar, no artificial flavorings - would just be the regular deal.  I wouldn't call it "diet" drink A or "healthy choice" drink A.  It would be my default offering, the one you would get if you didn't specify any qualifying characteristic.  The other segment would be the one I would call out with a different name.  Maybe "diabetes express" drink A or "High-Carb" drink A.  Don't think that would work?  Is it unprofitable to alienate the population of consumers that haven't yet jumped on the health conscious bandwagon?

Maybe that's why I don't own a soft drink company.

-Andrea