Dig, if you will, this picture…of me and my cheese plate engaged in some bliss:

The photo was taken six months ago in a wine bar during a social gathering for the Local Yuppies, the creative class / talent development organization of which I was then vice president. There were about 30 people in attendance, but only two board members, and the absence of the president made me the ranking officer. Since I was under pressure to take over as president for the 2016-17 fiscal year, it was a chance to see how I would run the organization.

I had gotten to the wine bar early, ostensibly to make sure everything ran smoothly, but mostly because I was excited about my new daily planner and wanted some alone time: just me, my planner, a glass of wine, and, most importantly, some food. I was starving.

Alas, at least three other people decided to be early, so I had to start performing my duties the moment I got there. I ordered my wine and food as quickly as I could, then set about networking, a word of yuppie origin that loosely translates as “talking to people.”

I eventually found a tall chair and sat with a new attendee while sipping Pinot Grigio. My cheese plate arrived and it was huge. For $10, I got a smorgasbord. The woman delivering it to my table asked if I want honey or hummus. “Can I have both?” I asked, and she said of course. This in addition to the cheeses, bread slices, crackers, fruits, chocolate deserts, and scone. A scone. The cheese plate included an entire fucking scone.

At the same time I was managing my hunger, I was also managing Local Yuppie business, greeting people and posing for photos. I scolded a few book club members for not showing up to that contentious May meeting. At one point, I had to go to the front of the room, leaving my table companion with the suggestion to eat whatever she liked off my plate.

In my travels to the front of the bar, a distance of about 20 feet with about that many people in the vicinity, two separate individuals stopped me to ask me about the cheese plate. See, our social venues usually (but not always) provide free appetizers to pair with the drinks we are buying. However, since this social had been planned at the last minute, there would be no free nibbles that night. Upon seeing the giant plate of food at the table of the acting president, it was perfectly reasonable for some members to assume it was a shared plate.

So I shared. I told people it was my food, but there was plenty of it and they were welcome to pick off the plate. Over the course of the evening, I watched my apple slices, an entire cluster of grapes, three out of four bread slices, and one of my chocolate desserts disappear from my plate. One girl sat down in front of me and ate that entire fucking scone while telling me how awesome she was and how she would run things if she were in charge. I finally interrupted her to crumble off a corner of the scone, just so I could find out how it tasted.

It was around this time, watching my food go travelling off my plate whilst dispensing career advice and volunteer opportunities, that I had this exact epiphany:

Yes, apparently I am the mom. And my kids were hungry. So I fed them.

All this time, I’ve been wondering what the organization could do for me. In two years, I have hired only one writer through the LY network, the original reason I joined the organization. I don’t see it advancing my own career either, partly because publishing isn’t really a growth industry around here, and partly because I’m 30-something and more advanced in my career than most if not all of the LYs. Some of them are barely out of college. But it does raise questions about mentorship and paying it forward and how I can truly develop some leadership skills, instead of shrugging off the chance to take charge because I don’t like responsibility. We’re all adults here, yes, but some of us are more grown than others: when the waitress took my empty plate away, I noticed not a single person other than me had ordered food.

With service to any organization, the rewards aren’t always immediate or even visible. It’s November now, the new fiscal year, and I did wind up being president of the Local Yuppies. I’ve avoided the word “leadership” since high school, so it’s odd learning to steer a ship again. Today, I went to lunch with one of our new board members to make plans for the holiday charity season. She said she didn’t often get asked to lunch and appreciated the invitation.

Then she paid for my food.

 

 

[*This is a draft from a year ago. I redacted the details.]

I’m writing my first article in three years, and I’m struggling to get where I want to be. I have the basic angle the editor asked for, my own interest in the topic, and a buttload of quotes from relevant people. However, the article is not quite doing what I want it to do. I want it to be funny and fresh, not boring and overdone. I’m not covering breaking news, and I need to be able to impose my own worldview on this piece.

And lately I’ve been panicking that I have no worldview, that I don’t know where I stand on [redacted] and therefore I must be a cardboard cutout of a human being. Especially since we’re looking at starting our own chapter, I wonder what we could be doing differently, or if I’m just trying to reinvent the wheel. We had [redacted], and not enough people signed up. We don’t need to be doing more stuff; we need to do the stuff we’re doing better.

And then I’m looking at how I need to be a content writer, not just a writer, how I need to package myself and my writing. And this is all really interesting to me but now that I have a chance to put it into action I’m balking. Because I ALWAYS have this problem and I’m a terrible human being and I will never succeed at anything. This is exhausting, and it’s getting a little old.

So let’s try something new and believe in ourself/ves? Believe in elves.

The first thing I need is a title. It will probably be changed, but it’s basic that I should craft one anyway. Maybe I need an outline as well.

1. Children
2. [redacted]
3. Nonprofit Organization

You’re stalling. Scared to make a call. Looking for permission, or call it research if you must.

What do people need to know?

I wrote some more last night, reading the research by the pool. I’ll put that into my document after I’ve retrieved it from the car, but I don’t think this is very good. I’m not happy with it.

What I want to say is that [redacted] are people who don’t actually use the [redacted], just want to support its continued existence. But I have to say that in a way that 1) considers that some of them will insist they actually do use the [redacted] and 2) doesn’t raise class division issues and 3) is funny.

You’re balancing:

1. What your editor wants.
2. What the reader wants.
3. What you want to write.
4. The information you have.
5. What the subject would like to see written.
6. What is good for the world.

People nowadays prefer listicles.

 

Harlem (1951)
by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Lately it seems everyone I know wants to be an entrepreneur. I don’t know if it’s my age or my geographical location, but everyone is talking about their business plans.

But I have yet to see an actual business plan.

One girl told me yesterday that she wants to start a nonprofit, buy an existing business, and take on a part-time job (this is in addition to her full-time job), all while finishing grad school. Oh, and she and her husband want to start a family. He, too, is either about to change jobs or start his own business, they aren’t sure which.

I’m not saying it can’t be done… I’m just wondering how much of it is bullshit.

More than likely, most people are just voicing their unfiltered dreams. Everyone has an idea for a business that would fill a need, or a charity that would cure a cause célèbre. I am currently Founder/CEO of three separate imaginary businesses, and just picked a location for a fourth. That location is in my head, which is where most of these ideas should probably stay.

I do understand the appeal of talking things through with people, and I am well aware that collaboration is a sort of human sorcery that creates ideas stronger than the sum of their parts. And I don’t mind having discussions about a friend’s ambitions, provided my input is actually welcomed and he is not just using me as an echo chamber. These businesses are rarely presented as ideas, though. They’re presented as sort of self-validation, like the person is using these imaginary enterprises to establish their own personal brand, without having done any of the actual work.

I once listened to someone spend three years telling everyone she knew that she was starting a nonprofit. I was in a nonprofit training course at the time and tried to be of assistance. She eventually gave up on those plans when she learned that nonprofits… do… not… make… profits. Nonprofit: it does exactly what it says on the tin. She hadn’t realized she would be assigned a salary. “I want to make bank,” she told me, and we never heard about the nonprofit again. I swear this actually happened. I’m not making it up.

What I always fear is, if you do this often enough, you unintentionally market yourself in a negative fashion. You’re more likely to be seen as a person who never follows through on anything. Ideas are easy, guys. They are. What’s rare is the grit and gumption to see ideas through to fruition, and that’s really all that matters.

Another friend told me, just this morning, “I only like the start of things. I should be a venture capitalist.” And I see the temptation, I really do. I would much rather be an “idea man” or a “big picture person.” But I wind up doing a lot of legwork for idea (wo)men, and usually all it does is make me lose respect for them. I get the value of learning how to actually run things, and more often than not, the people who matter–the higher-ups, the team members, the end user–are perfectly capable of seeing who is really taking care of business.

If you’re an idea man who doesn’t have the luxury of letting someone else do the legwork for you, your dream will never even leave your head. How painful that must be, for you and everyone around you. I’m reading A Raisin in the Sun for work right now, and just happened to see on my calendar that yesterday was Lorraine Hansberry’s birthday. I saw a production of the play in London about 15 years ago, but I’ve never actually read it, and there’s this interesting side note about “the rat scene” that doesn’t exist in the original text. I found the 1961 Sidney Poitier movie last night as well, but I’ll wait until I finish reading.

I used to identify with Beneatha, but I’m a little older now (and weary) so Ruth is the one that gets my sympathy. She’s married to one of these people, the ones with the dreams deferred:

RUTH (Wearily). Honey, you never say nothing new. I listen to you every day, every night and every morning, and you never say nothing new. (Shrugging) So you would rather be Mr. Arnold than be his chauffeur. So–I would rather be living in Buckingham Palace.

One of the perks of working on a college campus is that you never really have to let go of that well-rounded, renaissance man-dy, interdisciplinary ethos. You still get to do a little bit of everything: