ten glorious days off stretch ahead

...and man do i need them. and i also really need an old-fashioned blog post, where i just sit down to write and see what comes out my fingers. because that's the best way to make sense of it all. and much of it doesn't make sense. weird decisions, or lack thereof. good people being fired for crappy/nonexistent/unbelievable reasons. colleagues behaving badly. or strangely, or out of character, no doubt because they see their bonuses slipping away in a changed economy. people being asked to take on more work. way more work. like a whole additional job within a job. and no additional pay. and no appreciation or understanding for how much work it is. people going down with stress. because no wonder. 

sometimes i wonder if we're all still behaving like we're in kindergarten because that's where we all learned how to behave? i have more thoughts, but they're not coming out my fingers. hopefully they will over the next few days. maybe a g&t the size of my head will help. 

what you plant has a way of growing

we had a bit of rain of late and now the weather is warm, so the garden is going crazy. the zucchini is abundant, as are cucumbers in the greenhouse and the tomatoes are loving this warm weather and starting to come on. my broad beans are finished and i only had a few purple (green) beans. my spinach has bolted. the indigo is ready to play with (maybe this weekend) and i'm picking the first real bouquets of dahlias this weekend. i've decided i love zinnias (they're now in my top five with lilacs, peonies, ranunculus and dahlias). i have one huge white pumpkin (and a few small ones). i'm going to have a good supply of hokkaido squash, which i have to find a way to store and keep into the autumn. i'm drying herbs and freezing them down to cubes (with olive oil, i'm looking at you, basil) so that next winter future me will thank present me. but most of all, i'm enjoying hanging out there at the end of my days, watching my lovely indian running ducks, who are so quirky and sweet and shy but curious and rather talkative and social despite their shyness. 

all of this contentment in the garden coincides with contentment at work. i've recently had an enthusiastic go-ahead on two things that i proposed and i'm feeling very positive about being given time and space to just make cool shit. that's all i really want to do. i don't want to be anyone's boss, or get a big promotion. i just want to work with great people and make things i can be proud of, while having a bit of fun. and i'm in the position to do that now, due to the seeds i've planted. what a great feeling! maybe we really do reap what we sow. how did it take me so long to learn that?

the body knows

i've been sick all week. fever. headache. ringing ears. persistent cough. it's that time of year, but also surely my body saying "enough!" i haven't been that happy at work of late. my wonderful boss left. what's left of our department has been tossed to and fro across the organization, used as pawns in political game-playing, for more than a year now. we've landed with a manager we were told was interim, but who is looking more and more permanent and who hasn't, shall we say...settled into the role as of yet. even tho' it's been six months. good colleagues are fleeing. there's too much work and too little appreciation. and come january, there is micromanagement on the horizon. and i think that my body took a look at all of this and said, "you need some rest honey. you need to snuggle under the covers with netflix and a kitten and get some rest. you need to stop worrying about things you can't change or control and get right in yourself. and if it takes giving you a temperature of 39.6 for two days, followed by slowly ramping down to almost normal as of today, then so be it young lady." my body still thinks i'm a young lady, you see. and my body knows me and what i need. but it also knows that i don't listen to it very well, so this time, it took extreme measures, and i listened. and i'm starting to feel better.

making my way through the fog

we have the most beautiful, long, strangely warmish autumn this year. since my dear bloggy and real life friend, cyndy, died, i've found myself consciously paying more attention to the beauty of the world around me and stopping to appreciate it. i've been pulling the car over and carrying a real camera with me again, rather than only relying on my iPhone (tho' that camera is pretty good these days).  the other day, the camera actually had a hard time finding focus in the fog, but i liked the shot anyway. it kind of conveys my life of late - the path ahead is a bit foggy and uncertain. things are a bit in turmoil at work, with multiple reorgs over the past year that have bounced our department all over the organisation, landing it finally in a strange place where it doesn't really fit. it's draining. i'm a person who can tolerate a high level of uncertainty, but being tossed all over the organization and not really feeling as if all the work you do is particularly appreciated takes its toll after more than a year. so, i've been feeling a bit like i'm not sure what's next. do you wait for things to get better or do you seize other opportunities? i'm doing a little bit of both at the moment. the actual work i do is wonderful and engaging and i get to work with some amazing photographers and filmmakers and tell great stories and that's been keeping me going. i've also been seizing every opportunity i can of late to travel and it helps to be away from the cramped, dark space we've been been banished to in another building since just after the summer holiday. i've really come to realize how important your workspace is to your satisfaction at work. and how important it is to have enough space around you and not feel like the desks are all crammed together. we've very crowded now and when people are on the phone, it's completely impossible to get any work done. i find myself dreading going to the office these days and i never felt that way before. your surroundings just matter so much. and so, i travel all i can. this week, it's berlin and istanbul. and i can't wait!

out of focus colors

as we close in on the summer holiday, i'm feeling a bit fuzzy to say the least. it's been a long haul, these past months. it's really hard when a job you dearly love turns sour, but it so often happens in a time of growth and disruption. i love both growth, disruption and also change, but it's been a bit ridiculous of late. when the wrong people are brought in and the good people leave and the company culture changes radically, it creates change that's not good or productive. i'm ready for a holiday. and happily, we are getting on a plane next week. it also helped that i went to an intimate and utterly blissful yin yoga class today. my mind quieted down and i saw a veritable rainbow of colors during some of the long poses. it centered me and put me, at least momentarily, in touch with my body. this color thing is really interesting. i've had flashes of synesthesia over the years, but it's really started to show itself in new ways during my recent bodywork sessions. i need to learn what the colors mean, even if it's only what they mean for me...i saw everything from rich, bright, vibrant red - it's never just one uniform color, there are nuances - to salmon to yellow and orange to green and teal to the most velvety indigo. my sense of it is that it's when i'm in touch with emotions, or more like touching them, as i wouldn't say i could articulate them. i've read some pieces about colors associated with the chakras and perhaps there's also something of that in it, when one or another is activated, but it feels more connected to some kind of emotional bedrock inside me. one which i've been probably out of touch with for far too long. if i ever was in touch with it. but i have hope, with the appearance of all these colors when i'm doing bodywork or yoga, that i can get in touch, maybe also at other times. maybe it's just a reminder that i need to live a more colorful life. but first...vacation.

fragments of niceness

i spotted this art project in the heart of copenhagen last week. #fragmentsofniceness by artist kit kjølhede. the sun was shining, i'd just come from a good meeting with my favorite colleagues and i was feeling buoyant. the bright colors, the happy snippets of conversation overheard in copenhagen spoke straight to my soul. what an admirable project - with all that's bad and awful (and orange-tinged) in the world these days, this was precisely what i needed. hell, it's what we all need!

this hasn't been an easy time. a not-very-well planned or communicated reorg about six months ago created a period of limbo and inertia. in such a situation, there are always some ambitious types who take advantage of the vacuum and grab more than they should. and in the absence of clear messages, everyone makes up their own stories and runs with them. and it can create a negative, unproductive space. i believe this is compounded by the darkness of the winter months in our northern climes. but things are beginning to be brighter and it's not just welcome rays of actual sunshine, but things really are becoming clearer. maybe we can only appreciate clarity when we have been wandering in fog.

and maybe the best way to break free of the uncertainty and negativity is to focus on the positive. to laugh instead of bristling and feeling angry. to help instead of hinder. to be open instead of closed. to overhear the positive and nice things. to listen instead of refusing to hear. to seek out nice things to say. and even more importantly, to think. to make sure the inner narrative is positive and open. to say yes to life and possibilities and new challenges and to let go of what's not working. 

i'm ordering a set of these postcards from the artist to hang up to remind myself to look and listen for positivity around me. i really do believe that you attract what you are looking for. and i also admit that of late, i've been looking for ghosts and schemes and lies and games being played - and guess what, i've found all of those in great quantity. well, no more. the time for negativity is past. 

this is the season to embrace change. it's boring when everything stays the same. this is the time to seek the most amazing stories and tell them well. this is the time to let go of what's not working. and to let go of things which are working but not moving anywhere in order to move on to newer, more exciting things. hanging on to the past isn't productive or healthy. it's not how we grow and learn and evolve and become better, stronger, more capable versions of ourselves. and while this may all sound dire, it's really not. it feels like stretching long unused muscles after a winter hibernation, feeling them out once again, exposing them to the warming rays of the sun, getting to know them and put them to good use.

of course, not everything needs to change - home, husband, child, cats and garden remain the fertile ground from which to grow, they are most definitely my own very best fragments of niceness. that and my t-rex costume. everyone should have one of those. they cheer you right up.

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amazing 9-year-old slays new yorker cartoon captions.

and for a bit more low brow version, check out these shitty captions for new yorker cartoons.

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if you find yourself rolling your eyes at the crystal-obsessed, this is for you.

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and one more from the new yorker...

molly ringwald is such a good writer.

rising from the ashes

i'm not a fan of brené brown (pretentious git, i could not stand this ted talk by her), but this post about her work on brain pickings did speak to me.  it makes me realize that it's time to release the notion of idealized perfection and acknowledge that it's been really hard for the past year. my dream job being taken away for reasons that feel false and disingenuous has left me wounded in ways from which it feels like i might never recover. to have found something that felt so perfect and so much like home and have it taken away hurts so much. i wonder if i'll find a job that feels so right ever again? will all other jobs pale in comparison? and the thought that i might not ever be as happy in my work again is truly frightening and leaves me paralyzed. at times, it just seems like too much and i want to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head and just sleep until the world is different. or at least until my view on it changes.

but brown's work is about rising from the ashes of defeat, not about sleeping it off. it's about the guts and resilience it takes. she says, "the process of regaining our emotional footing in the midst of struggle is where our courage is tested and our values are forged." the grit it takes to do this is often lauded in today's world, as we rush headlong towards happy endings, but brown says that discounts the pain and the hard work of rising again after a defeat. "embracing failure without acknowledging the real hurt and fear that it can cause, or the complex journey that underlies rising strong, is gold-plating grit. to strip failure of its real emotional consequences is to scrub the concepts of grit and resilience of the very qualities that make them both so important — toughness, doggedness, and perseverance."

the truth is, i feel that some part of my identity was stripped from me along with my dream job and it feels like purposeful cruelty. and while i have been fighting the notion that i am my work for a good many years now, the truth is that it's inescapable in our culture. so i am left wondering who i am and what's next. and i'm feeling like any grit i once had that would help me through such an experience is gone for good.

but perhaps each time i acknowledge the hurt and pick a bit more at the wound, it will get a little bit better and i will find a way to rise once again from a failure not really my own. and perhaps that's the problem. this happened to me due to the cold, unfeeling reality of corporate decision-making and despite how very personal it feels, it actually wasn't when it comes down to it. and that makes it hard to know what to learn from it - should i become less trusting? be a cold, unfeeling spectre? do i give less of myself the next time? should i not fall in love with a job i love? do i stop being my real self in order to protect that self the next time around? it's all still very bewildering. i wonder when it will get any easier...

in need of gratitude

things have been a bit rocky of late...i feel i've once again fallen victim to caring too much. but at the same time, i wouldn't be authentically me if i didn't wholeheartedly drink the kool-aid and give myself over completely. holding back is a rocky road of a different kind, so i don't regret falling in love a little too hard. but perhaps the honeymoon is over and we're settling into a place where it just requires more work, like any relationship that's worth it. 

if this were facebook, that would be vaguebooking.

but so be it.

i have a need to make a little list of things for which i am grateful:

~ colleagues who support me, make me laugh, listen to me, confide in me, laugh at my jokes, include me, ask whether i have a kitten for them (and then proceed to fall head over heels in love with said kitten), eat cake with me, and did i mention make me laugh?

~ my openness and tendency to trust people. it can bite me in the ass sometimes, but overall, i'd much rather be open and trusting than not. even if it means i trust too much and tell too much sometimes. so be it. i wouldn't be myself without that tendency.

~ cats. i know we have a few too many, but every single one of them offers me comfort in their own unique way. and we have a lot of space, so there's room for everyone. and i feed them well and provide them with all the services they expect. and they give me so much in return. the comfort i'm seeking and yes, even laughter, with all of their adorable playfulness.

~ husband. he talks me down from the ledges. he makes me laugh. sometimes from the very first words out of his mouth in the morning. this morning, they were musings on the human foot and what it would be like if we didn't have them. he's not normal, but that's perfect for me. and i'm grateful for him every single day. he never stops planning the next project and striving for something new. he gets me.

~ having a pretty fornuftig teenager in the house. fornuftig means sensible, but somehow has an extra dimension in danish, so i'm mixing the two languages. i can do that after all these years in denmark. and you all should be accustomed to it by now. and that kid, despite all of the many things she wants, is pretty awesome. and that awesomeness was just in her when she arrived. i don't think i had much to do with it at all.

~ awesome projects to work on. i'm learning every day and there is at least one moment every day (even amidst the rocky times), where i am just super happy to have the privilege to do what i do, to meet the people i meet, to work with the projects and people i get to work with.

~ the all-too-fleeting zen feeling, where i know that this too shall pass and it will all be ok, even if it wasn't what i imagined. and whatever happens, it will be a learning experience that contains a lesson meant for me. whether that lesson is to trust or to roll with the punches doesn't much matter, as it is my lesson to learn, either way. life is a matter of practicing. and i need to practice letting go of expectations and being open to what's next. it's gotten me this far. so it will surely take me to the next level. 

~ impending travels to seattle and new york city (for the first time ever) and also connecticut, where i've also never been. it is good to have plane tickets and hotel reservations and all kinds of meetings with a whole bunch of awesome people planned.

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the hipster disney princesses are way better than the real ones.

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john malkovich as...everyone.

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speaking of which...mr. bean makes an appearance in historical paintings.

what does a creative workspace look like?

i've been pondering what makes the physical surroundings of a workspace creative. because it strikes me that just filling it with creative people doesn't necessarily do the trick. i've been pondering this for awhile and have collected quite a lot of inspiration on a couple of pinterest boards - kulturhus and stationen (co-working). interestingly, some of the first photos i pinned were of a workspace in LEGO's project house, several years before i ever started working there. the space looks amazing - with light, open spaces, bright colors and even includes a slide.

it's a light, bright open space and you can look down upon it from above. but even in most of the photos, there aren't any people working in the space (that could, i grant, be because the photos were purposely taken when hardly anyone was around). the photos represent a common area, and what they don't show is that they are surrounded by a traditional open workspace filled with normal office desks (which can raise and lower, of course). they also don't show the noise factor and the fact that if anyone actually uses the slide, it's quite disturbing to those working around it.

there are small meeting rooms overlooking the space. this meeting room, while colorful and (of course) filled with danish designer furniture (arne jacobsen 7 chairs and a peit hein super ellipse table), looks pretty small and cramped to me. and what about the distraction of looking down on the bustling workspace below or having those below be able to look up? does that promote or hinder creativity?

the cabinets there are filled with LEGO in all sorts of shapes, colors and sizes where the designers go to get the materials of their creativity. these cabinets are found in many areas around the company and there is something delightful about having all of those creative materials at hand.

this couch looks inviting and like a great place for an informal sparring session or impromptu chat. however, it's right above the big space below and it feels like everyone would be able to hear your conversation. this could be bad if you're discussing something confidential, but it could just also be quite disturbing to those trying to work below. especially as conversations in LEGO can take place in many different languages.

and stepping back a little bit, you can see that there's another informal workspace, just beside this couch, where it's even more obvious that the spaces are potentially more disruptive to work than facilitating it.

interestingly, every aspect of this area was thoroughly thought-through and deemed to be very creative and to promote creativity. all of the intentions were in place. but, in my opinion, it just doesn't work. it's too open, too many desk-laden areas are adjacent and it's too disruptive to getting work done. but i don't necessarily have any answers as to what would be better. i have an intuition that it involves getting rid of outlook and powerpoint as the main tools of people's work. and i also have an idea that it doesn't involve big, open spaces, but little, enclosed cavelike ones, to which people can retreat and do solitary, intensive work and then re-emerge and engage with others. i'm not sure precisely what that looks like. but i'm pretty sure it doesn't involve noise-canceling headphones for the entire department.

i suspect similar amazing-looking, well-intentioned spaces at google and various co-working places are equally not conducive to creativity.

i've got this book, on the evolution of workspaces, on my order list.  and after i published this, i came across this article on how etsy tackles the problem. and then i came across this one, which i think has some great ideas.

what do you think an ideal creative workspace would look like?

tho' it's totally unlike me to use someone else's photos, i did in this post. all photos came from here. 

work and defining oneself

i think a lot about words. and how the way they're (mis)used shapes the culture around us. as i've been working on my scandinavian welfare state book, i've encountered countless interesting linguistic turns of phrase. for example, it seems that we can no longer refer to our work as a job, it must be a career. every "course" designed to help the unemployed get back to work is called something with career - the career way, the career cannon, and the like. even if the job it leads to is cleaning hotel rooms or sitting at the cash register in a grocery store or stocking shelves in a warehouse. those are now careers. and i think it diminishes the word "career" to call every job by that name. because where does it leave us when we want to refer to work that requires years of education and work experience, built up over a long period? 

but the tendency to refer to all jobs as a career reveals something about the way culture views work. it's everything. it's THE defining feature of a person. when you meet someone new, one of the first questions is always, "what do you do?" and how they view you hinges on that question. we are our work in the eyes of others. which is why everyone needs a career and not just a job. because if i have just a job, then who am i?

i've been working very hard for several years now to NOT be my job. back when i was my job, i wasn't much of anything else. i certainly wasn't much of a mother or wife and i definitely wasn't creative or energetic, i barely remembered who i was. i was just a corporate drone, giving all of my energy to a company that ultimately didn't give a rats' ass. because companies don't care about anything. they can't. it's impossible. but in trying to be my job, i forgot who i really was. and i think that's happening to an awful lot of people.

ink spiller wrote yesterday about being a working woman and i think that's part of the problem. women came into the workplace on male presumptions, trying to fit into a male world, not accounting for their uniquely feminine strengths. however, i think it's only part of the picture, as i've seen female-dominated workplaces that are just as dysfunctional as male-dominated ones and frankly, i'd take the male-dominated kind any day (there's usually (but not always) less crying in meetings). 

i think we have to make it ok again for people to have jobs which provide them with an income, but which don't define them as humans. not every job has to be a career. sometimes it's ok to just have a job. because you find your self-definition elsewhere - in puttering around your garden, in making meaningful handmade gifts for people you love, in making dinner for your family, in daily writing or reading, in spending time with a horse, in laughing at the antics of the chickens (just to name the things i do). maybe you hunt or forage or go to taekwando or a knitting group. 

who we are is the big collection of all of the things we do. i write and i take pictures and i have begun to teach and i do research. but i also cook and plan parties and serve on boards and laugh and entertain and sew and learn new things. i am far too complex to boil it all down to one word that happens to have to do with where i work. and i suspect all of you are too. 

let's take back work. and take back ourselves in the process.

what is work?

all shall be illuminated...

sabin asked me this morning, "why don't you have a real work, mom?" and it really made me stop for a second and hold my breath. in her eyes, what constitutes a job is going to an office every day. what did i do to make that be her concept of what work is? she's growing up in a world where the concept of work is changing. work can be done online, from anywhere. your employer can be in another country or halfway across the world.  a lot more is being done on a freelance basis these days. so how do i explain that although i'm not going to an office on a daily basis, i am working? how to explain that today's work is a more ephemeral thing, with not much concrete to show for it at the end of the day? we're living in a so-called knowledge economy and very few of us actually MAKE things anymore in our daily work.

i think it's what attracts me to sewing and felting and crafting in general. i think we, as humans, WANT there to be something to show for what we've done at the end of the day. something other than an outbox full of emails, or another report. we want something in our hands that we can touch and see and show, as a physical object, to others. to leave a mark, for there to BE something there when we're finished. we want, in short, a less ephemeral existence (ironic, i know, as i'm putting these words out into the ether that is the internet).

i have this feeling that work is changing. and that it will be something completely different for sabin when she grows up. but i clearly have some way to go in preparing her for that. it will be interesting, because i'm not even sure myself what's next for me. i have these vague images of it and i'm working on making those more concrete, but i can't myself see where it will all end up.  so in the meantime, i leave words behind and i sew. and i hope that's enough.

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if you'd like to read some beautiful thoughts about what's next, go here.

and if you're pondering the really big questions in life: big cartel or etsy? go here.

or if you'd like to read about our new adventures in beekeeping, go here.

jetlagged thoughts or talking to myself

how do you maintain professionalism in an awkward situation? how do you educate, without becoming condescending when you've already explained and explained? how not to lose your cool or control?  how do you not care when your tendency is to care too much? and what should you wear?

what about making someone understand when they do not? how is it done? you have explained to no avail. you have written to no avail. and still understanding is but a dim light on the horizon. and that light could be an oncoming train and not the end of the tunnel you desire. do you enter the tunnel or are you already in it?

perhaps achieving a place where i can let go is best for me. letting go of project, of process, of caring. because there are other things i care about...house and home and creativity and child and friends and travel and life. and i am not my job.

life is an endless chain of proving yourself, so i will prove again that i know i what i’m doing (because i do) and the results will speak for themselves. nothing else should be necessary.

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you see, blogging is cheaper than therapy.