Professionally Promiscuous

I realized today that I am a career whore.

Exhibit A

Most of us twenty-something ladies are interested in finding (or if you’ve already found then cultivating) “the one”. We buy elf-sized dresses to stretch suggestively around our little rumps, and we spend hours every Saturday showering, shaving two thirds of our bodies, and straightening-to-then-curl, because we want to meet someone worthwhile.

Well said, Ryan

We want to feel love the way it was marketed to us on Sex and the City – like fireworks. Something beautiful that makes us insanely happy and at times just a little nuts (like Carrie 85% of the time). It should be consuming, powerful, and transcendent. And we don’t want a dud either; we want him to be smart, funny, panty-droppingly handsome (see right), and above all else, a decent man who just can’t help but love us –backarm fat, half-wavy hair, bad jokes and all.

And while we have our doubts sometimes, there is a reason we watch rom-coms and cry drops of sorrow and hopeless joy (and a tinge of envy) when that old couple coils together in a nursing-home bed and with clasped wrinkled hands, welcomes death (male readers pretending not to get this, I’m referring to the end of The Notebook). We believe it’s out there.

As with most motivated young individuals, we do not sit idly by as our biological clock drops eggs like bombs over Baghdad. Instead, we take matters into our own hands and spend our spare time at bars, nightclubs, and social gatherings, secretly hunting. Not that we don’t enjoy ourselves or have other priorities and--ahem, tons of friends--because of course we do! We're not fembots! (though the jury is still out on those girls who manage to look wide-eyed, hydrated, and freshly blow-dried after long plane rides—highly suspicious. You know the ones I mean, they never seem to slouch either. How are they doing that?!) It is just that finding this person is important to us in a way that is deep and fundamental.

Damn you fembots

And when we aren’t working towards this end, we are (whether we mean to or not) mentally managing it. Countless empty minutes of the workday or silent car rides are spent replaying, analyzing, and planning our current loves. We can’t help it. It’s one of the first questions old girlfriends ask each other over cocktails: still sleeping with Joe? What’s the deal with you and Adam? How’s not-talking-to-Brett going? So his back hair’s really a deal-breaker, huh?

We are unapologetically dogmatic in our belief that we can find our fireworks man and that when he comes we’ll somehow magically know and melt into a happiness more freeing than a permanent overdose of E (or so I hear…). Kind of like this puppy:

Found fireworks

And so what if it means sometimes opening up a little too early and too much, or to the wrong person. Or going too far the first time around (anal WHAT?). Or letting some unworthy jerk perform what feels like a violent Irish step dance on top of your heart.

We tolerate our own recklessness and allow ourselves these blunders because they are all an earnest (albeit often misguided) attempt to find fireworks. And all other things considered (friends, family, good job—check, check, check-ish), that is what we want for ourselves. Not (as men often paranoidly suspect) marriage, just magic.

Exhibit B (coworkers)

But this is where I am unusual. I don’t know if it is because I am a really old soul (trapped in a breathtaking young body), or if it was because my parents’ marriage ended in utter catastrophe (love you mom!), but I don’t do any of this. (I’m having myself tested).

Instead, I take this desperate-to-the-point-of-sluttiness ‘man-bition’ and put it towards my professional trajectory.

That’s right, I spend my spare minutes obsessing over my long-term career with the same annoying “where is this going” micromanagement usually reserved for boyfriends/boyfriends-to-be. I think about “the future” in anxious panicky ways, wondering if I will ever be “truly happy” with this path I’m on. I exhaust myself expecting fireworks from my career the way most women expect them from “the one”. And when it inevitably disappoints, I become as surly as a forgotten girlfriend on Valentine’s Day.

Oh dear God

For me, fireworks means being professionally challenged, stimulated, and fulfilled. Not every moment of every day, of course, because I understand that tediousness and disappointment are inevitable (in relationships as well as at work), but I yearn to minimize them. After all, this path that I am deciding upon right now is the thing that I will probably spend most of my waking hours doing: 8-10 hours a day, 5 days a week, 49 weeks a year, for the next 50 years. That’s 122,500 precious hours! Shouldn’t it be nothing short of fantastic?

Because of this self-imposed pressure, I flit between passions the same way socialites juggle I-bankers, wondering which path will turn out to be the prince charming of careers. I obsesses over researching new fields, constantly revamping my resume to make myself more attractive to yet another industry. I dread picking a grad program and narrowing my scope, but am also anxious to enroll--before menopause! I live perpetually envious and terrified of specialization.

And just like the long and arduous search for love, all these wrong turns and rejections prove exhausting and discouraging. Every so often I succumb to fear; I crouch down on the shower floor and with palms covering my face let hot tears blend into the rivulets of water slipping off my chin, steaming up mirrors with my angst at the overwhelming options, at the impossibility of ever finding that one thing that I was born to do. My bliss. (#dramaqueen)

Of course I know even as I write this, that the idea of finding “the perfect job” is just as laughable –if not more so—than finding the perfect guy. You can’t expect any one thing to make you feel whole or satiated. It is like trying to get all your nutrition from one food.

And I also recognize that my behavior is just as naïve, impractical, and ultimately self-destructive as those women who plunge blindly into relationships, expecting too much too soon and setting themselves up to be under-whelmed. But somehow, just like them, I justify my behavior because my intentions are honest ones (misguided maybe, but honest). Besides, what else would you have me do? Nothing?

I’m beginning to think nothing might be better. Life is funny (and not always in the ha-ha sense). Most of the time this “magic” we are tearing our lives apart looking for seems to happen when our backs are turned. Whether you’re searching for love, career, or both, perhaps our deepest desires are less like a high-hanging fruit and more like a watched pot—all we can do is fill it with water, light the stove, and practice patience. If we do these things, eventually, it has to boil. It just has to.

One of my favorite college professors (gray ear hair, platypus lips) liked to use the metaphor of a door closing into a lock to explain the way things at the end of a poem slide into place. Sometimes the door seems closed but it isn’t in the latch; you must listen intently for that subtle click. It takes great skill to hear and to heed.

I think this applies to life too. However, while we are right to be listening for the click, should we really be hunting it? When listening too closely, everything grows louder – a slight buzzing from the television, the whir of ceiling fan, the tick of an oven, someone’s boots on the pavement below. If you're too focused, these small noise pollutions drown out everything else. And what’s worse—you grow antsy, are more easily frustrated by failure and more prone to false alarms.

Furthermore, with the bleak job market and the rapid decline in religious zeal over the past few generations (church attendance dropped roughly 9% or ~28.3 million Americans in the past 30 years, while unemployment increased a whopping 2.6% or 8.2 million in about the same time frame), I suspect we’ve collectively lost our trust in this idea that things work themselves out. At least, I have. Until very recently (two hours ago), I believed “destiny” was something stoners invented as an excuse to pack one more weekday bowl and order another Meat Lover’s Supreme.

But perhaps, when used correctly, this idea is not entirely naiveté and baseless. Maybe we need to recover just a little bit of trust in life’s mysterious workings (I’m picturing Adam Smith’s invisible hand v2.0–for lovers and young professionals).

Bringing sexy back

Though it is counter-intuitive and goes against every cell in our breathing, beating, bodies as can-do Americans, perhaps the goddamn-hippies and crazy-bible-thumpers were onto something; perhaps we should do a little less. Ease our death-grip on the life-compass (at least enough to return bloodflow to our taut colorless knuckles). Watch. Wait. Listen. Be.

Maybe—just maybe—we are so anxiously, "proactively" moving from lover to lover and job to job, that we are disrupting a kind of natural progression. Ever wonder why you’re either hopelessly begrudgingly single--home eating Entemen’s by the carton with an outbox spate with rejected sexts,-- OR you are trying to decide between a Friday night with three equally viable hunks and your current boyfriend? 

Ah, the single life

I suspect it has to do with some vague primordial energy (of the sort that hippies “cleanse”) and is proof that, apart from the LSATs, the bedroom, and the sports field, over-exertion gets us nowhere. Maybe our overeager seizure of our destiny is our own worst enemy. Maybe we don't need tighter butts or more obscure fellowships; maybe we just need to employ a little quiet faith.

Then again, maybe not. I don’t really know. I’m a silly 25 year old with a fantastic imagination and perfectly shaped eyebrows. I have no credentials or authority (despite what my 37 CVCs may claim). But right now this life-patience sounds like an appealing, less painful, more effective alternative to the ruthless career crusade I’ve been waging on myself (and a good way to prevent premature aging).

A few weeks ago I came across this quote by Brazilian author Paolo Coelho that continued to revisit me: “everything will be all right in the end; if it is not all right it is not the end”. I sincerely hope so. But how do I stop myself from doubting? And how does one, after all these years, learn to trust inaction?

Of that I'm not sure, but my good friends Bear, Bodie, and Piper are already proving to be great teachers:

Bear

Bodie

Piper

Is there any limit to what we can learn from Brazilians and puppies?

Good Girl Gone Bad

One day when I was 6 years old, I don’t recall why, but I was very bad for the babysitter (who happened to be my loving, generous, and sassy cousin, Marissa). Just the worst. A complete nightmare. Repeating everything she said, running and shouting all over the house, touching the crystal chandelier, conspiring with my brother on how to let a bee loose in the living room (a feat that he eventually managed without my help), and a million other things that I can’t even remember but that I am sure Marissa could bend your ear re-counting (sorry Rissa!).

Not me, but I kind of wish it was...

This behavior was puzzling to everyone (including me), because I was usually freakishly well-behaved. I thrived off being told how good I was. Ask me nicely, and I’d sit still and read for hours while you did laundry or ran errands or, in Rissa's case, used the landline to call boys while watching 90210. But not on this night.

On this particular occasion, I was so horrible that when Marissa, at wit’s end, decided to lock me in my room on extended “timeout,” I hauled my plastic Little Fischer table on top of my bed in an attempt to break out of the high ranch windows, screaming throughout the whole ordeal.

Thankfully, I was caught mid-escape wedged in the window looking down at the ground some 12 feet below. Not knowing what else to do, Marissa had acted on her usually-hollow (though very much abused) threat and called in the reinforcements: my Auntie Gail and Uncle Dan. I don't really remember how it all ended, but let's just say that I did not "go quietly".

The Happy Clan -  Cape Cod 2012

When I woke up the next morning the memory of my behavior came into sharp focus, and for the first time in my young life I understood mortification (call it the first of many moral hangovers). How could I have been so bad? Done that to Marissa? And Aunty Gail and Uncle Dan had seen it all! Oh the report they must’ve given my mother!

I was so ashamed that instead of escaping, I wanted to never leave my room. Yes, that was the new plan. If the guilt did not kill me then I would die a slow death locked in this bear-ballerina wallpapered cell. I spent the next few hours crying quietly in solitude, calling to my mother that I was not hungry (at the time I thought I was being sneaky, but in retrospect she must’ve known I was beating myself up in there). After a few hours of self-loathing, I heard a knock. My mother called for me to open the door – Aunty Gail wanted to see me.

Aunty Gail - drawn to scale

If I had known any swear words at this point, I am pretty sure I would have mentally said them all. I was terrified, embarrassed, and most of all, ashamed. But what choice did I have? Wiping my red-rimmed eyes and elbowing the loose snot from my nose, I went to let her in, to face the music, to place my neck dutifully into the gallows.

You can imagine my shock when I opened the door and was immediately pulled close into two gigantic breasts and squeezed tight with so much love it almost hurt. She murmured sweetly to me Aunty Gail loves you and I hugged her back with the kind of desperate intensity grown ups almost never put behind their embraces. I was confused but oh-so-happy. Didn’t she despise me just as much as I did myself? The realization was a profound one. She did not.

In fact, the reason she had come over that day was to give me a present (seriously?!?!!). From her purse she pulled out a hardcover children’s book called “Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day,” and we began to read it. It was about a child who also had a funky “off-day,” and it reminded us that with a little forgiveness, each day is a chance to start over.

It is not that I grew up in a house without love, because it was quite the opposite. I grew up showered with so much love that I understood in a deep way—and probably took for granted—what it was like to be loved unconditionally. That morning when I woke up, I knew without question that of course everyone still loved me. But they didn’t have to be nice to me. Or even really like me anymore. You see, it was a fair house, and we had rules for this sort of thing. I knew the rules, and us Swansons strongly disapproved of bad-asses (I would later learn that almost all the adults were a bit hypocritical in this stance). 

Despite being a strict enforcer of this familial law of ethics, my Aunty Gail is a woman of incredible insight and kindness, who knew me far better than I could fathom. She somehow instinctually understood that the lesson I needed this time was not one about acting-up, but about learning how to forgive yourself. And how to accept others’ forgiveness. She understood that in order for me to find the strength do this, I needed to understand how much I was loved. So she showed on up.

Aunty Gail, me, Uncle Dan, WFU graduation 2010

These moments are not always easy to spot. Sometimes when a person acts out or does something to disappoint, your instinct is to punish them, make them understand the consequences of their actions. And more often than not, this is an appropriate response. However, sometimes—just sometimes—a person is too frail for all that. Sometimes what they really need is for us to walk towards them with open arms as they continue to fire bullets and repeat: I love you, I love you, I love you.

I say this because yesterday I had to walk into the range of fire for someone. And I couldn’t have known to do it without my Aunty Gail (Oh I love my Aunty Gail, yes I do...)

I'm not usually this mushy (I have actually been called emotionally constipated and cold-as-Russia by separate people), but I want to remind my readers (so, my mom) of these moments and these people because I think we have relegated them to the stuff of Hallmark/Disney fables, but they are so real. And they are the catalysts for so much future compassion. We all have an Aunty Gail to be thankful for. And isn't today just as good a day as any to return the favor?

It does not take much to be someone else's saving grace. Let's get to it! 

PS - I'm sorry but I did not bring any embarassing baby photos to Nepal. I tried google-imaging "bad little girl" to see if I could find a funny picture for this entry, but... I'll let your imaginations fill in the blanks, perverts.

The Bonita Lesson

View from Shangri-La, Bangkok

Last week I spent four wonderful, sticky, days in the heart of Bangkok, trying to see if I could sweat through my sundress thoroughly enough to change it from cherry-red to a tight, wet, Harvard crimson. Yep, I’m a really cute traveler. People on the streets generally looked at me like I was some sort of sea monster and etched away, avoiding eye-contact. I suppose they want a “dry friend”. It is disheartening to see how much prejudice exists against overachieving glands. (I believe the word you’re looking for right now is anyways...).

Floating Market

Despite the humidity turning me into a walking Gatorade ad, I love that city. The thing I love most about Bangkok is that there is food everywhere. The city boasts over 6,000 restaurants and god-only-knows-how-many street vendors. Walking down the street is like walking through a food carnival. Carts and fold-up tables with faded rainbow umbrellas and homemade cardboard signs line the sidewalks. Everywhere you look people in mismatched Hawaiian shirts are busy frying up peanuts, grilling bananas with honey, stirring metal vats of noodle soups, and turning slimy skewered squids and fragrant rows of pork skewers glazed in a thick teriyaki marinade. Or they are busy with their fruit stands: dicing pineapple, watermelon, or dragon fruit; skinning fresh mango, coring a papaya so ripe and supple that the knife falls right through.

And of course my favorite are those women busy slapping large live fish against the pavement, and then, (while the fish is still twitching) macheteing their silver head and tailfins right off before rubbing them down with herbs and tossing them (literally) onto the coals. There must be some unwritten rule that if you can’t hear your dinner’s head being cracked out back, then it probably isn’t fresh enough.

In a city that lives to eat, it can be pretty overwhelming choosing a place to dine. Enter tripadvisor. A simple “Bangkok restaurants” search pulls up a list of what travelers rated as the best of the best. Since I’d been in Thailand for a while, I was tired of thai food (if I see one. more. noodle.) and ready to embrace the people’s recommendations. Ranked first was a very pricey Italian place, and since I’m already considering playing the trombone on the sidewalk for extra money, I skipped to #2 – Bonita Café and Social Club: Vegan Restaurant. One point for herbivores! Naturally, I had to try it. And try it I did – three times in four short days.

Here comes the hard part: being honest. The first night’s Japanese curry and brown rice was entirely forgettable. In a city with over 6,000 restaurants, how on earth does #2 get away with that? While the second and third day’s teriyaki burger and veggie pizza were redeemingly delicious, the truth is that, most carnivores would not go home and give these dishes a top-rating on tripadvisor. This begs the question: how did this restaurant make it to #2? Was this a vegan conspiracy? Was PITA behind it? And with so many other well-executed culinary treats around every corner, why did I—a person who never repeats restaurants when traveling—return?

This past January, I read Thomas Friedman’s acclaimed business book, The World is Flat, about globalization and the future of business in a changing and interconnected, “flattened” world. And yes, I know that I am about 7 years late with this ground-breaking work, but ever since I developed breasts and social skills, I’ve had a serious reading list backlog (and yes Kelly, these do count as breasts; and yes Sean these do count as social skills). In fact, I’m still reading my New Yorker magazines from 2010 –the Christmas gift that keeps on giving. Again: anyways…

In this book, Friedman asserts that as technological advances spread, the global competitive playing field evens; today, almost anyone on earth can compete over almost any job (with exceptions of course). For instance, 15 years ago we hired a local accountant to do our taxes, but now we can outsource part or all of that to either a computer program or a top-accounting graduate in New Delhi, for a fraction of the cost of the local sweater-vested, gray nose-haired CPA.

Front of Bonita Cafe,  Bangkok

Friedman argues that as more people from across the globe compete over finite jobs, it will be increasingly important for you to differentiate. To add whipped cream, sprinkles, and your own unique (in my case, sweaty) cherry on top. He tells an anecdote of a lemonade vendor on the lower deck at Camden Yards who does a little dance as he shakes up your lemonade. Even though he sells the same exact lemonade as the other vendors, everyone lines up for his stand to watch him shake what his momma gave him. His tail feathers. Like a Polaroid picture. This vendor differentiates through delivering a unique customer experience, and Friedman urges us to all try to find our own dance. 

Railway Market

This concept is precisely what Bonita Café understands and emobdies. The answer is that I went back because the owners forged a connection with me that made me feel special. And despite how pathetic and desperate I may sound on this blog, it’s not easy to win this sea-monster’s love.

The owner of Bonita is a lovely Japanese man – a runner, a vegan, and a passionate baker. He and his family run (no pun intended!!!) the place themselves and they are everything you’d want in a home-away-from-home: warm, attentive, thoughtful, and genuine. It was the small things that made me want to go back: there were no free outlets and when he saw me staring longingly at the floorboards he wordlessly ran into the back to bring me an extension cord; I was thirsty from all the lost body fluids permeating down my dress and he patiently refilled my water over 10 times with a smile; as I was leaving he and his wife asked if I had a water bottle they could fill for me to take on the road; when he discovered I liked to run he wrote down an area good for running and listed out how to get there in Thai so I could give it to a tuk tuk driver. As I was leaving his wife asked if she could get a picture with “the vegan runner from Boston” in front of her American quilt (and the next day when I came back in a less-sweaty dress she asked to take a new one because “today you different – today you beautiful!” …but I will let that slide, mostly because it did need to be retaken).

By the end of my three visits, I had two new friends. I knew all about their lives in the intimate and intermittent way that only travelers understand. They made me feel personally cared for and valued. On my last day they gave me a long speech about how if there is anything they can ever do for me I must not hesitate to ask them, and then handed me a card with their home phone number scrawled on the back in blue ink. Then they sent me off with a brown-bagged free vegan cupcake (so I would have something to eat on my upcoming 9 hr bus ride), and stood side-by-side to wave me off as if they were sending their eldest off to college.

Bonita Cafe Ownership

I’d eaten at many amazing places throughout my time in Bangkok, including one of the top 50 restaurants in the world. Food so good you'd have wet dreams about it. But throughout my travels I never felt compelled to actually grace the tripadvisor community with my own feedback. Yes, the food was orgasmic. But so what! I was still a selfish, review-reading, taker (those who know me are nodding, I hate you all). Until I met this family. This is the power of human connections.

In ancient Greece, friendship or “Xenia” was much more than someone to take fishing, confide in, or get drunk with; implicit in the friendship was a contractual financial obligation. Friendship was an economic institution with better repayment rates than modern banks!

Best. Soup. Ever.

Why am I saying all this? Because whether you are looking to develop a meaningful bond with someone or simply to differentiate your business and alter your career track, understanding how to develop friendships is an essential skill. This is not the same thing as getting along with others or getting people to like you. I met plenty of restaurant owners that were perfectly sweet and funny. We all "like" plenty of people. What the Bonita family and other successful individuals do is quite a few steps up from this. They forge a brief but poignant bond that hinges on some basic commonality of what it means to be human. A bond like a small bird that flies deep into another's heart and plants a tiny egg there to hatch, grow, and endure. This requires giving something of yourself in exchange for entry into such a private place. This is not easy to do. You must be, on a fundamental level, a wonderful person. (And no, this is not the MSG talking).

I realized as I wrote this that what Friedman argues and Bonita proves is that, as the world and the terms of commerce continue to mutate, we no longer need to believe that being a success in business means selling out or enslaving yourself to money and "the Man". In fact, the most successful people do just the opposite. Today, being ambitious can (and should) be synonymous with being a kind, generous, free-cupcake-and-water giving person. Because no matter how excellent (or average) the product or service you are delivering is, it is personal connections that compel others most, through an innate sense of loyalty, to go out of their way for you. To stick their necks out. To sweat pounds in the hellish humidity. To eat Japanese mush. To write a tripadvisor review. To baby sit for on their day off. To pretend they’re enjoying themselves for. To dress up and show up for. And I love that, despite all the pervasive cynicism in corporate environments, so much still depends upon one simple thing: being a good person.

And I think to myself, what a wooonnddeerrffulll wooorrrlldddd.