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Day 18: Cats (30th Birthday Countdown)

Written by Jennifer on 5th March 2010

As a countdown to my 30th birthday on March 18, I’ve committed to offering 30 people, things and experiences I want to celebrate from the last 30 years. Grab a piece of cake and enjoy reading!

I am one cat shy, one husband too many and 15 years too young to be a crazy cat lady, but should the situation change and in 15 years I find myself widowed and still childless, I will undoubtedly stock up on cats.

The cats I grew up with were Paprika (a calico) and Dots (a stripped tabby). Both of these little ladies went around the block a few times, so our home was frequently blessed with kittens in boxes and sock drawers.  Alas, Paprika was run over by a cop in town when I was still in elementary school and I discovered Dots, curled up in the corner and cold, one afternoon in the 7th grade.

These days, my husband, Scott, and I are proud caretakers of Malcolm (aka Crazy) and Niko (aka Cow Cat). There could not be a 30-day series of celebrations without including them.

(Niko and Malcolm)

I adore these cats. Really. I’m just this side of obsessed with my unusually tall feline friends. But for the life of me I can’t quite figure out why. Sure, they’re damn cute. And they purr. And the imagination runs rampant with anthropomorphization. But they also cause my allergies to flare up, destroy furniture, act rather entitled and can be difficult to communicate with.

So I hunted around briefly for an explanation, thinking perhaps some researcher had written the final word on the appeal of these furry critters. No such luck, but the Pets for the Elderly Foundation did have this to say about pet ownership:

Pets offer affection, unconditional love, fight loneliness, and can help ease the loss of a loved one.

Somehow this doesn’t quite measure up for me. I’m 99% certain that my cats’ love is far from unconditional. I’m not even sure you could call it love. Mostly, I think we’re all pretending.

I won’t be home when I reach the big three-oh so I won’t be able to force the cats to celebrate with me. But that’s okay. I’ll be celebrating them, and all the love and imagination they somehow draw forth from me, making me an undoubtedly more generous person.

And because this is what people who are obsessed with their pets do, I’ll also probably be imagining that they’re trying to figure out how to operate the webcam so they can dial up Marrakesh and meow me a rendition of Happy Birthday. You know, what with their unconditional love and all.

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Posted in celebration, change, communication, creativity, happiness | No Comments »

Day 16: Robyn aka Rubby (30th Birthday Countdown)

Written by Jennifer on 3rd March 2010

As a countdown to my 30th birthday on March 18, I’ve committed to offering 30 people, things and experiences I want to celebrate from the last 30 years. Grab a piece of cake and enjoy reading!

This post is actually a celebration of ALL my college roommates: Stacy, Varonica, Ingrid, Sarah and Robyn. (And you, too, Jake, because you were like a half roommate.) Without them, I would still be a royal pain in the ass to live with.

Robyn was my first chosen roommate in college. We got an apartment together our sophomore year and promptly set up house, by which I mean we repainted yard sale furniture and slid the ski ball machine against the south-facing wall. While we ditched the arcade games after year one, we continued to live together through the first half of my senior year, at which point the Rubsters graduated early.

(Robyn and Me, 1999)

To have spent time with Robyn and me in college would have been to overindulge in homemade salsa, laugh more than a little too loudly and address questions about the meaning of life and art.

But this longstanding friendship that so closely bore witness to the evolution from adolescent to adult might best be glimpsed in a recent facebook exchange. I posted a photo to which Robyn commented that it reminded her of one of our apartments.

I responded, “Yeah, but I’m nicer now.”

She followed up with, “Well, I say what I mean now.”

I am not sure who I would be without my college roommates. I am certainly not sure who I would be without Robyn for she is one of the most significant people in my life from the last 10 years.

And so I celebrate that we were thrown into the same freshman orientation group. And that she has forgiven me for behaving like a 19 year old when I was 19 years old. And that I can pick up the phone or train to NY and be certain I will have the opportunity to laugh late into the night.

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Posted in celebration, change, communication | 3 Comments »

Day 14: Divorce (30th Birthday Countdown)

Written by Jennifer on 1st March 2010

As a countdown to my 30th birthday on March 18, I’ve committed to offering 30 people, things and experiences I want to celebrate from the last 30 years. Grab a piece of cake and enjoy reading!

Okay, on the one hand, I don’t get a say in the value of divorce. After all I haven’t been divorced and therefore haven’t suffered the heartache, the sense of disillusionment and failure or the struggle to communicate a new life situation.

But I am what the kids these days call a “child of divorce” and I am married to a man who was also married previously (and subsequently divorced, lest you think we’ve got something entirely different going on).

In any event, it doesn’t matter, because this is my blog and my countdown of things I celebrate.

(I really wish I could credit the designer here; alas, unknown.)

Chapter One

It all started before I was born. My mother divorced her first husband with whom she had three kids (my half siblings). She married my father and had two more kids (me and my brother). Her ex-husband married a divorced woman who had one kid (my half-step-sister). My mother and my father divorced and he married Stephanie and, after Stephanie died, JoAnn, who has two kids (my stepsisters).

And now we have the biggest, most confusing and delightful family ever. (Which reminds me: I tend to celebrate divorce very little around the holidays.)

Chapter Two

To be honest, I was significantly less inclined to celebrate divorce before meeting my husband. Certainly, his recounting of his own experience clarified the underpinning of deep loss many divorcees experience and the many reasons it should not be taken lightly. But you can imagine how divorce rose in the rankings once I fell madly in love and realized I’d never have had the opportunity to spend my life with him had he not extricated himself from his first marriage.

Chapter Three

I also have friends and colleagues and clients who have been married and divorced and, for many of them, living in a time and place where divorce is an option has provided them with increased opportunities to be whole, happy and authentic. Because they have suffered the loss of a marriage, their ability to empathize has deepened; because they are able to find healthier relationships, their ability to love is widened; because they are no longer burdened by abusive or manipulative partners, they are able to contribute more fully.

In Conclusion

Divorce has been a HUGE part of my life. It’s fundamentally impossible to imagine my life without it and I have a pretty sweet life. So tonight I think I’ll celebrate by calling my step-mom, facebooking with my half-step-sister and joining my husband in raising a glass to being able to sign on the dotted line and start life anew…

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Posted in authenticity, celebration, change, communication, freedom, holidays | 7 Comments »

Day 10: Hindsight (30th Birthday Countdown)

Written by Jennifer on 25th February 2010

As a countdown to my 30th birthday on March 18, I’ve committed to offering 30 people, things and experiences I want to celebrate from the last 30 years. Grab a piece of cake and enjoy reading!

Like most formal education, mine required knowledge of a multitude of useless facts. This showed up most significantly in history classes, in which we’d often memorize dates and names, as opposed to wrestle with motivation, ethics or patterns. To some degree, the way history was (and must still be) taught sucked the life out of me. I knew there were stories that needed to be told, ideas that needed to be explored and events that needed new eyes. I just could never see how the memorization of facts added value to my life or the contribution I might make to the world.

And so I made this known.

The movie Amistad had recently been released and after seeing it I decided – in my infinite teenaged wisdom – that my fellow students and I should be learning history in these kinds of ways. In ways that made it real, made it stick. That got at the issues.

So a good friend and I went to the school board president to plead this very case. Nada. And if I’d had a hair’s less passion I might have stopped there. Instead, I took it upon myself to draft a letter to THE ENTIRE FACULTY asserting my perspective and placing it in each teacher’s mailbox.

I might not cringe today at my assuredly bold move had I not come across this letter a few years ago at my dad’s house. I remembered this event rather positively and indeed, underneath the hyperbole existed some very valuable points. But what I wrote was patronizing. Condescending. It was painful to read.

So today I’m celebrating the hindsight that allows us to see our former selves in new ways – whether it be with pride or humiliation. And the fact that maturity breeds choice, as in “I can now generally state my opinion without degrading other people, departments or institutions.” I don’t believe hindsight is 20/20, but I believe it’s enough that we get the chance to see ourselves anew.

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Posted in celebration, change, communication, story | No Comments »

Communication 101

Written by Jennifer on 18th September 2009

I often co-present with my colleague, Maria van Hekken, on how organizations can leverage generational diversity as an asset. If you’re not up to speed on the generational stuff, suffice it to say that individuals and organizations are having a hard time dealing with the relatively new phenomenon of four generations of adults in the workplace. We help people address this through our joint venture, GenEdge.

Maria and I have a unique standpoint: multiple generations is a good thing. Additionally, the biggest piece of the “generation gap” sits in our own sterotypes, prejudices and assumptions. Once we help our audience flesh that out, we share with them our Top 5 Strategies for Leveraging Generation Capital. Interested? Check out our super cool, very funny audio thingamajig here.

I digress.

At the end of a recent presentation, one fellow commented that our material could really be applied to anything. He said, “It’s communication 101.” Maria’s immediate response was right on target: “We couldn’t agree with you more.”

It was never clear to me whether the comment was meant as an insult. But here’s the deal: it doesn’t matter. The conversation we had with the group was powerful. Powerful enough that a woman come up to us afterwards, sharing how a lightbulb went off for her, enabling her to see an entirely new way of addressing some intergenerational issues she as facing.

Communication 101 is what most of us need. We forget to lay aside our prejudice and stereotypes. We resist the idea that collaboration is better than jockeying for power. We never get around to asking open-ended questions and then shutting up to let someone fully answer. We stop speaking respectfully.

Communicating effectively is no easy endeavor. Whether it’s between friends, lovers, colleagues, races, genders or generations, we’re always swimming in a sea of noise. The good news is there are some presentations out there that remind us of some new ways to do this. The good news is we can always go back to basics.

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Posted in communication | 3 Comments »

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