Intro: One of my friends told me that at 33, married with a baby, she’s doing some soul searching. She thought at some point that she’d be set and have figured out her career, but she’s realized that things never settle and it’s all journey. This makes her a little sad and confused. Here’s my response:
Willy Wonka: “Don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted.”
I used to think that there was a way to win the game of life. I thought there was a general scheme to the world and if I just worked hard enough, things would work out awesomely. This worked for a while. If I worked hard at school, I would get into a great college. If I worked hard in college I would get a great job. I thought this is the way that life worked too.
It was December 19, 2012. I’m horrible with dates but I remember this one. My grandparents, Bubbie and Zaid,(1)In Yiddish Bubbie means grandmother and Zaid means grandfather. had come over. They came over about once a week. We had these good Jewish grandparent/grandkid fights around how much food they should bring. They wanted to bring 2 chickens a week, some pastrami, some latkas, a quart of matzo ball soup, and then maybe something for us to eat that night when they came over. We had to explain that the fridge was already full from last week’s delivery so maybe they could just bring one chicken that week.
I was excited to give Zaid his Hanukah present. I’d gotten him a limited edition “subscription box” box from a company called Quarterly. We were getting a box curated by John Maeda. Maeda is my favorite digital artist/designer who has a wonderful way of looking at the world. When he was the President of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) he said, “America is a weird country. It’s like I was a waitress somewhere, and now I’m in a movie—a futuristic astronaut cast in a new kind of Wild West picture. [At RISD] I get to make, like, a Space Western.”(2)Maeda’s box was part of a RISD initiative called STEAM. STEAM = STEM + Arts & Humanities.
We had a sad day for America this week. Rioters stormed the capital to disrupt the election. Everyone has a right to protest but it’s the way you protest that matters. At its heart, a good protest is about getting your voice heard while letting other people give their voice as well.(1)The Woodward Report, Yale University’s decades-long policy on protest, has a good summary of why you should do this. This wasn’t a protest, it was an attack on the infrastructure of democracy.
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
— The opening line to Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.
Ziba’s Holiday Gift 2009. Featuring Ugly.
I still have a holiday gift I got in December of 2009 from the design firm Ziba. They created six brochures on trends for 2010: me, we, happy, human, old, and … ugly. (1)Design companies like to create beautiful and provocative gifts. For example, Thomas Heatherwick’s delightful Christmas gifts were featured in a museum.
I’ve always thought that free time was the best thing in the world. What could be better than staying at an all-inclusive resort and sipping margaritas with nothing to do? But free time can be painful if it’s in the wrong context. Don’t believe me? Think about your last trip on an elevator.
Here’s one of my favorite speeches. It’s the story of how a woman named Amelia Earhart flew around the world. You may think you’ve heard it before but it’s unlikely.
I haven’t been posting much because I’ve been focusing more on refining my speechmaking with Toastmasters. You can see many of my speeches along with video. If you’d like to join my Toastmasters group, contact me.
Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
In 1937 Amelia Earhart was the most famous aviatrix(1)Aviatrix = female aviator. in the world. She was the first female passenger to cross the Atlantic by plane, the woman who’d flown higher than anyone else in the world, and whose solo flight across the Atlantic made her into female Charles Lindbergh. Then, on July 2, 1937, Amelia’s plane disappeared on its way from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island.
So imagine my surprise in 2018 when I was watching TV with my sons. A woman named Amelia Earhart told us that she just finished her flight around the world. This, of course, was a different Amelia Earhart. Amelia Rose Earhart was born in 1984. Her parents told her she was a long lost relative of Amelia Earhart, wanted to give her a strong female role model, and figured that no one would ever forget a woman named Amelia Earhart.
Amelia Rose Earhart Holding a Picture of Amelia Earhart
It was hard growing up with the name Amelia Earhart. If I were named Charles Lindbergh I bet people would spend a lot of time making flying jokes like, “Have you flown over the Atlantic any time soon.” And I would spend a lot of time saying, “Ha that’s funny. I haven’t heard that one before. I am Charles Lindbergh the dentist.”
I started looking into people who had unique names or uncommon names. I found this wonderful movie called The Strange Name Movie. They go around the country finding people with unusual names like James Bond or Harry Potter or Paul and Linda McCartney.(2)I’ve got pictures of all of them in the video. But many of these people, like Harry Potter, were going along through life when this giant truck of name Wizardry crashed into him. Now he can’t order a pizza without people snickering. But what about people that know what they’re getting into, like Donald Duck Jr. When he was dating his wife, he said, “Don’t marry me if you don’t want to name your first son Donald Duck III.”
Which brings me to Amelia Earhart. After people asking her for years “Are you going to become a pilot?” or “Are going to fly around the world?” In 2004 she started taking flying lessons, in 2011 she realized she could get sponsors to help her fly around the world, and in 2014 she flew around the world.
Some people looked at Amelia Rose Earhart and said that she was taking advantage of the name. But the Amelia Earharts are very similar. Both got women excited about doing the impossible. Both Amelias used the media for publicity and funding. But Amelia Rose Earhart wanted to do more. She started the Fly with Amelia Foundation to help 16-18 year old girls become pilots. While over Howland Island where the original Amelia disappeared, she gave out the first $120K of scholarships. And in a true finishing touch, Amelia Rose Earhart won the Amelia Earhart Pioneering Achievement Award.
So clearly she’s the heir to the legacy of Amelia Earhart. Plus, she’s the long lost relative of our initial aviatrix. But wait, there’s something I left out earlier. I told you that Amelia’s parents told her that Amelia Earhart was a long lost relative. About a year before the flight, she hired a genealogist and found out that they weren’t related.
She was devastated. She felt like her whole life had been taken away from her. She was thinking of just scrapping the whole flight. Why do it if she wasn’t related to Amelia Earhart. But then, after some serious soul-searching, she realized that the original Amelia Earhart could only take her so far. Having the same name got her to fly and she found out she loved it. It inspired her to take on this fantastic trip around the world. But now it was up to Amelia Rose Earhart to finish the journey.
Amelia Rose Earhart inspires me. We’re all born with gifts and challenges. Some things that look like challenges are can be made into gifts and vice verse. Here’s the story of a woman who started with a name that was incredibly hard to live up to and used it to inspire others. She grew into the name and surpassed it. She completed the goal of the original Amelia Earhart—the flight around the world—77 years after it started.
Human beings want more of everything. We are on a hedonic treadmill that says, “What I have now is OK, but I really want more—more stuff, more money, and more friends. That would make me happy.” From a societal perspective, the hedonic treadmill has some benefits. It keeps us on our toes and moves society forward. It also gives lots of people jobs. If people didn’t want more Oreos, no one would have jobs selling Oreos at the grocery store, or stocking the Oreos on the shelf, or making new kinds of Oreos.
I don’t know exactly when I took the red pill.(1)Red pill and blue pill: I’m referring to the red pill in the movie The Matrix. Neo takes the red pill to see the world for what it really is. He had a choice to take the red pill or the blue pill, which would have left him in blissful ignorance. It’s much easier to talk about a time when I’d taken the red pill and was talking to someone who hadn’t. I was at the Whitney Museum of Art with my friend. We saw the exhibit fruits, vegetables; fruit and vegetable salad.
Red pill and blue pill: I’m referring to the red pill in the movie The Matrix. Neo takes the red pill to see the world for what it really is. He had a choice to take the red pill or the blue pill, which would have left him in blissful ignorance.
This is one of the scariest interview questions. In an interview, you always want to show yourself in the best light. You want to show how perfect you are. But here’s a secret. Interviewers know that you’re not perfect, and that’s OK. It’s more important that you learn from your mistakes and try to get better. This requires you to be honest about where you went wrong in the past and what you’ve done to fix it. If you can’t admit your mistakes, how can you grow?
Many people think of this question as, “Give me a reason not to hire you?” Or they think about a horrible mistake they’ve made it the past, like when they had just started their summer job at the local caterer and completely misinterpreted the instructions for their first order, like:
I know that money wouldn’t make me happy, but I still had dreams of being an early retiree. I dreamt of being that person who quit their job, moved to Hawaii, and sipped margaritas while I cashed my dividend checks. But as I got older, I realized that it’s not about the age of retirement but the quality of that retirement.
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