Flowing Upstream

A lot of times, people will tell you that life is all about timing, but, through personal experiences, I would like to say that life, whether it's in relation to work, school, or friendships and relationships, is actually more about agility and flexibility then timing. Yes, sometimes it is being about being in the right place at the right time, but most of the time, things will only happen if you can roll with the punches and work with what you're given. Maybe this is just my "glass half empty" ethos coming out right now, but I've always been taught that you always have to be prepared to do things the hard way... by yourself... while walking up mountain... in a blizzard. Alright, well maybe that's being a little overdramatic, but I'm sure you get the point.  


Ever had it where you got all the good professors for every class you needed at all the time slots you wanted? Yea, me neither. Was it because you overslept? Had a bad registration time? Were just totally unprepared to schedule when you should have? Maybe it was one or a mixture of many of those things, but if you had back up plans and a willingness to make it happen, you still end up having a decent schedule for the next semester.  


You know that awesome job you wanted so bad that everyone knew you were a shoe-in for? Yea, sorry that went to someone "more experienced with better qualifications", but you did get offered something way down on the food chain. Gonna take it or do you have too much pride for the gesture of "sympathy"? Well that's pretty easy. If you want something bad enough, you should do everything and anything to prove yourself. 


Is that perfect, hunky "Mr. Right" you met at The Boot last semester is going abroad next semester, just a few days before the sorority party he was supposed to be your date for? Well I guess that sucks, it's definitely going to be hard to find another man willing to dress up in a Clifford the Big Red Dog costume for you on such short notice. 


Could all of these things been avoided if timing was different? of course. But can you control everything in life? No. Take a more challenging professor, try a different job or a different path to the same goal, thing of a new costume idea for your date; don't hope to be dealt a perfect hand, just deal with the cards you are handed the best you can. Nothing will ever be perfect because life just tends to fluctuate and go up and down with no rhyme or reason. Treat it like a roller coaster, I mean, no one ever complains about a day at Six Flags, right? Have fun with things but still succeed by being able to think on your feet and forging a path if necessary. Perfect opportunities hardly ever just land in your lap, at least not for me, which I've actually learned to appreciate. It's made me stronger, more innovative, quick-witted, malleable; all things that I'm able to use every day to improve my life. As Gary Ryan Blair, a nationally recognized authority on goal setting and personal strategic planning, once said, "You cannot afford to wait for perfect conditions. Goal setting is often a matter of balancing timing against available resources. Opportunities are easily lost while waiting for perfect conditions." To me that means, do what you can, when you can. Don't waste so much time waiting around, if you miss a second, you could miss a lot.

Realizations

So back a few days ago at the Cardoner speaker event with John Deveny when he was talking about how he found his way into Public Relations I sat there listening and thinking to myself "if only it was only that easy"; sometimes, as it turns out, like has a sick sense of humor in regards to the sarcastic remarks I make to myself.

This past weekend, I volunteered at The Voodoo Experience music festival working in artist relations for the main stage artists. My boss told me that my role was going to be to assist her and it turns out the way in which she needed assistance was for me to be the point person for most of the headliners and filtering the situations which she'd be called over to handle. In this capacity, I got to have a lot of interactions with the artists' management. I got to talk to these people a great amount of the day and had a chance to really get to know what they do, and it all sounded like tasks I would not only enjoy but excel at. I also got to take a problem, try to find a solution while calling in my boss as little as possible, and disperse tasks between myself and others to accomplish a goal or accommodate a need; a process which I found I was very good at and enjoyed very much.

I've always seen myself probably working at a label or possibly at my own company providing services that I always believed were in the best interest of the artist, but also at the expense of the artist (in the form of taking a commission regardless of what the artist would make) and never really saw very much of a problem with that, after all, I would be providing them a service, it they didn't want to pay, they could just try to provide that service for themselves. After talking to all of these people all weekend though and hearing their stories, I realized it would be more morally appealing to me to work directly with the artist, on the artist's behalf, and only profit from the money they make because of me. I think I finally realized that I want to be a tour manager or at the very least an artist relations person. This volunteer position encompassed things I normally hate like waking up early, being on my feet all day, manual labor, working 16 hour days while not getting paid, etc., but every morning I could not wait to wake up and get there. I genuinely liked what I was doing and was sad to have to stop doing it, something I never thought would happen.

Now the big question I have is "how?". How can I get from where I am now to getting to do that for a living? What are those steps? Where do I go from here? I was invited to work at Essence Fest in July (the same people who do Voodoo also plan Essence), but July is too far away. I've had a taste of something great and now I need it again, and soon. There's always the chance of trying to do this at Jazz Fest, but even April is far away, and all of these answers and festivals are all temporary fixes. I want to do this permanently, full-time. Now that it seems as if I've had the "eureka!" moment, it is time for me to start a new journey, and for once, I'm not scared at all.

The Life of a Tourist

On Friday when I was at work, I looked over to the left and saw a new piece of wisdom written on my boss' whiteboard. The quote read, "it's hard to be grateful and unhappy at the same time." Being the Friday before Fall Break, it wasn't my intention to be very thoughtful and think about something so poignantly, but this thought just kind of resonated with me. I don't think that that quote is correct and it's kind of because of something Sylvester Tan said during the Jesuit Speaker Series lecture I attended a few weeks back. When he was talking about the 3 different types of actions and how each had a different level of cognitive participation required, that part of the lecture really stuck with me and relates very well to my boss' quote and my experiences this weekend. Thinking about the quote at hand, it's actually pretty easy to be unhappy and grateful at the same time, I would actually like to go out on a limb and say that that is how a great percentage of people live their lives. Feeling jaded with the world, complacent, overworked, overstressed, there are a lot of outwardly unhappy people who, deep down, are grateful about the things that they do have. These people just don't have the ability to look consciously at life and analyze their surroundings to be able to see "beauty in all things."

Innately, people know that beauty is there, but it takes something extra to step outside yourself, to stop being so jaded, so complacent, so overstressed and busy, and consciously realize how beautiful and special your world really is.

From personal experience, I can tell you that this is such a rewarding yet difficult task to take on. I'm the first to admit that I have too much on my plate and that everyday for me is tightly scheduled and regimented, not leaving very much time to stop and smell the roses. This friday though, being the very beginning of break, tradition dictated it had to be what I call an "Alexa Day." Alexa Day is a holiday (and should honestly be a national holiday, people all around the world would love me if they had days like these!) where I do whatever I want, no questions asked. This particular Alexa Day, I decided to take the streetcar to the French Quarter and see what craziness ensued. On the way there, I got a great seat on the streetcar, second row from the front, right side, totally scenic, I was super excited about it, until it happened; tourists. That's right, the most feared part of any excursion on public transportation, the absolute bane of my existence (I am from the Poconos after all); the map holding, question asking, picture taking, open container carrying tourists. And, as is consistent with the luck that I tend to experience in life, where do they sit? In the row in front of me, behind me, and, of course, right next to me. Not the start to Alexa Day I was hoping for. These tourists though actually taught me something really valuable. They saw things for the first time that I've seen hundreds of times and, at each new sight, really got to appreciate it. After living here for a little over a year, I feel like I was denying myself the right to see the beautiful place I lived; that deep down I do appreciate New Orleans, but I was no longer able to recognize and admire the parts and pieces that made it up. Having that revelation, it was so nice to get walk around the city, seeing things anew again, appreciating them like it was my first time. The gorgeous oak tree lined streets, the wrought ironwork, the different types of people, the architecture, the river, the houses; I'm lucky enough to live in one of the greatest places around.

It would be life changing if every one had the chance to step back and take a day to live the life of a tourist. If people appreciated things as if it were the first time they'd ever seen them, I think there wouldn't be the unhappy, jaded, complacent people we experience oh so often. You never live the same day twice. No matter how strictly you schedule yourself, things in life will always change, and that's not in your control. Try not to let those things be the nuisances that get in your way, but the opportunities to be a tourist. See them, acknowledge them, and appreciate them for the ability they give you to get a fresh breath out of life. Be aware of yourself and your surroundings and see the beauty abounding, it's all too abundant to keep passing up.

Deeper than the Surface

As years go by, it is natural for one to move up in the ranks of leadership, and it seems as if this past week has seen a lot of that coming to fruition for me, not all of it being positive. I've always felt that leadership is misunderstood by a lot of people or maybe that I just didn't quite know what I expect a leader to be. The title "leader" seems to have a sort of stigma or double standard attached to it, but the more and more I think about it, I feel more confident that I've discovered one of the greatest underlying principles of leadership; that is, it's not about what you do, but how you do it. I know, how creative and astute a revelation I just announced, right? But as simple of a statement as it seems, it really made something go off in my head. A few weeks back, I volunteered with a friend/co-worker to plan a training session for work. As the planning stages went on, I was so focused on the event and presentation and proving myself to others that I feel as though I forgot about actually being a leader. I did almost everything by myself and even though the event ended up being a huge success with great attendance and a lot of learning taking place, I still deem the event as a whole to be a "failure". 

I feel in this situation, I was supposed to be a leader and a role model, I was supposed to be part of a team, I was supposed to motivate myself and others, and I was supposed to create a successful end product; very little of that happened. This is where the "it's not about what you do, but how you do it" analysis comes into play. On the surface, a great training session took place and everyone involved was really pleased with the outcome, but, if you look deeper, things below the surface weren't all they should have been. Neither my friend or I took a role of leadership; we just left it to the undertow to push us along. My friend got through on the back of my work and I got through by wanting to get something done so badly that I wouldn't stop to let true collaboration (and, in a way, leadership) take place. With those descriptions in mind, neither of us were leaders or role models. We followed a stream of action and ended up in roles that we would never prescribe to others as a way to live. In this situation, it worked out where there was a successful outcome, but the means of which it was made were not appropriate.   

Going forward, I know that there's a lot to be taken from the situation though. I love my friend and harbor no resentment in regards to the situation, in fact, I actually kind of think about this as a learning moment. I have a strong personality and I am really receptive to comments and criticism, but I don't tend to openly seek it. In this case, maybe if I had communicated better and sought out more constructive criticism and collaboration, this event could have gone from being great to astounding; we could have gone from followers to leaders; we could have actualized the role model figures we wanted for ourselves in the situation. That whole "it's not the destination, but the journey that matters in life" spiel that we hear oh so often in our lives was actually given meaning to me in this event, and I appreciate that. The end result gave others something to take away, but the journey is what gave the venture any kind of purpose for me, and honestly, I couldn't be any happier to have "failed".

Trickling...

Every year new people come. Every year old people leave. Every year people enter into a repetition of school shopping, Blackboard roster stalking, and gossiping of change. Every year 20 bright-eyed freshmen stumble in a crazed rush into their new homes on the 10th floor of Buddig Hall, beginning one of the most formative journeys of their young lives. From here on out, they will deal with bonding, stress, conflict, scheduling, people coming into their lives, and leaving just as quickly as they arrived. That forecast sounds kind of sad and bleak, doesn't it? Nope, not at all!

All of the changes of life that come with college are a vital part of college, for not only Cardoners, but for all freshmen. Stress and conflict are parts of life that never go away. Whether from school, work, relationships, or home situations, these 2 forces of life are ever-present, only to be relieved by the various ways in which one knows to how to cope with them. Forming friendships and bonds (and learning to let them go) is another of the most pertinent life skills to be learned by leaders and scholars. It's a necessary part of life. Dealing with people you hate, balancing all the people you like, and staying connected to those you left behind; those are the types of activities one engages in that shows the real composition of a person's character. As cliché as it sounds, the person you are when you enter college shouldn't be the same person you are when you leave 3-5 years later; if you don't emerge from the collegiate chrysalis as a rejuvenated butterfly, instead remaining a jaded caterpillar, you surely did not take advantage of all you  should have in college.    

Have the conversations that you're not sure if you want to have. Join the 6 clubs you think you might like. Eat at different times with different people whenever you get a chance. Don't be afraid to take the classes with the "hard" professors. Deal with the pain of overspending your Wolfbucks then learning to budget them next semester. Learn these life skills while you're still in the safety of a community that'd be willing to catch you if you fell. Mistakes are formative and as a leader, as a Cardoner, and as a student, you shouldn't be afraid to be wrong. College is an experience like no other, but it will only be what you make it. For your parents' sake if not your own, make sure to get your money's worth! 

Just a few of my favorite learning/bonding/ formative memories of Freshman year:

 Cardoner ladies' Spring trip to the zoo!

 The end of the Inter- Hall- egiate Challenge put on by RHA, 

one of my favorite organizations to be involved in. 

Staff photo from the summer conference staff I stayed at Loyola

all summer working with