So this is my last week at work. "Just like Oprah", my sister commented.
After three years of working in both California and New York (and with one of my best friends Greta to create a new 'green' division), I'm leaving my marketing agency to join a large environmental NGO next month.
It's been bittersweet to say 'be seeing you' to the people I see and work closely with every day, my clients, and Uma our office pug. Though every time I think about the new opportunity, I feel like doing cartwheels - I'm just so excited about it!
It's hard to predict when change happens. Even if you're 'ready for a change', in my experience I don't think it arrives on your timetable. It's often caught me off guard, or happened only after something I really, really wanted to have happen, didn't.
It's hard to know when to let go of whatever river bank you're holding on to, to jump back into the stream.
Though I think when you feel 'it' inside, you can't ignore it. You just have to close your eyes, plug your nose perhaps...
My agency just launched a new campaign for Clif Bar, a company I've written about before, as they were who we all looked up to when I was working at Sambazon.
In the founder's book "Raising the Bar" he wrote about an epic cycling adventure in the Alps where they deviated from the expected path:
"...Our trip kept getting better and better now that we knew the types of roads we wanted to travel....Michelin maps defined roads as red, yellow or white. Main roads, busy with buses, trucks, and cars, were marked boldly in red. Yellow roads were minor arteries, not as big as red roads but well traveled. The hundreds of roads branching off from the red and yellow roads were marked in white....I learned a lot on this trip. White road and red road journeys are qualitatively different. You need the right map. On the red road it is about the destination. On the white road it is about the road. On the white road you must travel light. The white road is quiet. It’s about simplicity. It’s often adventurous. You need to dig deep. Sometimes there is no road. You have to trust your gut.”
Their new campaign, Meet the Moment, inspires us to travel those white roads.
Yoga teachers often say we're only given a finite number of breaths.
Sitting cross legged on my couch, computer on lap, from my perch in Brooklyn Heights I can look out my living room window and see the hole in the sky where the Twin Towers used to be.
Like most people, I remember nearly every single detail of that day - being at work early for a new business meeting, standing in front of the gas station at 6th Avenue and Spring street and watching the second plane hit the tower and still not comprehending that it was terrorism, my friend Lisa showing up at my office who was in Soho and had just seen the Towers fall, my friend Erin from work who had another fight with her on-again off-again boyfriend Jake the night before, who just started his new job at Cantor Fitzgerald a few weeks earlier...
Today, with the news of Osama Bin Laden's death, all the information and disinformation of that time flooded back:
The way the air smelled for two months after, as the building burned until Thanksgiving. The missing people signs all over lower Manhattan. Bars full of people, dulling the pain, and wanting to connect. Break ups and make ups. Everyone in a bad mood, about a month later, when the shock was wearing off and New York was just a hard place to get around with all the security barricades. Fighter jets overhead at night. The Mayor and the President telling everyone to come to New York and to go shopping. Having a 'big boozy' lunch, two days after September 11th, with my friend Dave and Jodi, and all deciding we were moving to California....
All day today I kept thinking something was wrong with me because I didn't have that "The Yankees won!" feeling inside. I felt somber and reflective, not celebratory, and have avoided turning on the television since I got home.
Then I saw this...
"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."- Martin Luther King Jr.
