Work Space

Finally! I got a gig! Ok, it's a small gig blogging for my awesome friends over at Extanz. And one blog a week hardly translates into retiring from Helix, BUT it's a small, meaningful (!) step toward uniting my interests and forging a new work path. Got to start somewhere...

Making Parents Proud

I flew back to Pittsburgh last week to surprise my father for his 90th birthday. As hoped, he answered his apartment door with shock and gratitude. Together with my sister who drove up from D.C. and Dad's "girlfriend", Angie, we celebrated the hallmark with steaks, the proverbial candle and reminiscent stories. Dad asked about the kids, I shared my Shutterfly photo album, and we all agreed that children grow too fast. (Was he thinking that of me?)

Entrepreneurial couple or supportive wife?

So I asked some female friends, "Would YOU work with your husband?"

Unequivocally they answered, "No! I could never do it."

"Why not?"

The answers varied from 'we have different communication styles' to 'I don't want to have to answer to my husband' to the simplest, 'I don't want a divorce.'

What's the motive behind my pseudo-interviews? Confirmation that I'm not crazy. Confirmation that working with MY husband is HARD work. Confirmation that we're not the only husband-wife business co-owners with conflict, at work and at home. But the confirmations weren't enough.

Being the post-academic I am, I sought literature too, to help "explain" what I've already learned but haven't been able to articulate. Amazon.com offered up Kathy Marshack's Entrepreneurial Couples, a book about "making it work at work and at home". Intrigued, I hit the Prime, Two-day 1-click button and awaited some insight.

While not a huge fan of self-help books--self-assessments and checklists are littered throughout the text, I must shows that intimate partners, particularly with children, struggle to balance (meaningful) work, family life, and marriage. While this may seem a no-brainer, the specific challenges for copreneurs are different from, say, dual-career partners. Starting, maintaining, & growing a start-up is no easy task and the stresses often exceed that of traditional employer-employee relationships. For example, the risk of immersing the family's entire financial livelihood into a start-up can create insomnia in the best of us. In fact, the whole endeavor can be a recipe for disaster, or delight. The jury is leaning toward the former in our case.

Two years ago, Pat had been working as a sales rep for a software company when a long-time mentor introduced him to the property preservation industry. I believe he saw this as an opportunity to earn more money and overall fulfill the American dream of the self-made man. He started taking “orders” from the mentor’s son’s company and within months, built and claimed the Colorado market for himself. In fact, business took off so quickly that he quit his job in software sales, and requested my help to manage the volume. After all “Nikki, you’re not making any money, you’re dissatisfied with academe, and you’re not going to make tenure.” Given I couldn't argue with any of his claims, I quit my tenure track job and began to “help” Pat. Quickly, Pat and the mentor’s son argued over money and went their separate ways. Pat asked if I wanted to become his business partner (with me taking 51% ownership so as to take advantage of a woman-owned business status--which to date we never have). I agreed and we incorporated Helix.

In those early days, Pat and I shared high hopes that I’d draw upon my academic skills and contribute to Helix by researching and writing about the industry, and working with higher-level stakeholders to define and address the problems within the industry (there are many). But we quickly learned that running a small business demands all your waking hours and energies and resources, and within record time, the small business was running us. Recruitment, training, payroll, tax planning, paper processing, sub-contractor (subs) management, and other host of other daily tasks supplanted any lofty aspirations of industry reform. And those tasks quickly became divided along stereotypical gender lines. Pat worked “in the field” and managed subs, while I became the primary paper processor and bid writer.

Fast-forward to today, Pat and I continue to argue over when, how, and or if I'll contribute to Helix. And from Marshack’s categorization of entrepreneurial types, I can begin to see where some of the conflict is arising. Given her criteria, I’d surmise that we’re the “solo entrepreneur with a supportive spouse” type. We aren’t “dual entrepreneurs” who each have their own venture, and given our history and division of labor, we aren’t truly “copreneurs”. Instead, the whole endeavor fell in Pat’s lap, and I came on board to help. And, at the end of the day, I’m probably too competitive to be anyone’s helper, even (or especially?) my adoring husband’s.

Where to go from here? I don’t want a divorce either, so I guess I better start reading Chapter 2 now…

Back to Work (?)

Summer vacation is officially over. The kids have been back to school for a week now. The morning air carries that old, familiar chill of autumn. And my husband has requested my presence back at work. Really? I thought I was finally “out”…

This past May, I called a meeting with Pat and our HR/organizational consultant, Courtney. I asked that she attend so there would be a 3rd party to mediate. (Working with your spouse is not always easy, and we had been less than discreet with our conflict in the office. In fact, our "disagreements" had reached an all-time high (low?). Our employees were suffering and our marriage was teetering as a consequence.) I needed to share how very frustrated I was with our business and its impact on our marriage, my self, and our family. Because all my earlier attempts to phase out of the business were unsuccessful (I’d tried over 6 different times to “leave” in the past 2 years), I was willing to pull the ultimate card—our business or our marriage. And while I didn’t want to leave Pat in a bind, I was simply at my breaking point.

The three of us sat outside on the local Panera’s patio. I began, "Look, I love you but I don't love the business. I have not contributed in ways we originally hoped for, and worse, my daily activities are unforgiving. I can't handle one more inane client phone call asking why I don't have a dump receipt to prove our sub removed a gas can from a property. I can't handle responding to one more insulting client demand to lower our bid prices--it's a BID for a reason, and no, our sub is not working for free!" Pat starts to interject with the specifics of some ridiculous work order when Courtney says, "Stop. Look at Nikki. She's literally curled her body into a knot as you were talking. Nikki?"

Holding my legs to my chest, I say with a finality that brings calm, "I'm done, for now. I choose Pat, not property preservation. For now, at least. I hope you understand."

So, with the present request to return to the office--to act as an office manager, help train new employees and subs, develop performance plans, to “make the employees more productive and efficient”—I’m faced with the "what have you accomplished in this time off anyway?" While I needed to recover from the stress and disappointment of property preservation, and wanted to redefine how I’m to contribute to the world and model for my children how good work can inspire and create and reform, the reality that my “vacation” has not necessary birthed any new ideas, routines, or income stands likes an insurmountable brick wall. 'Am I working outside of the home or Helix?' No. 'Am I regularly blogging?' No. 'Are you bringing any income to the household?' No.

“What the hell do you do all day?” Ok, Pat didn’t explicitly ask it, but the enthymeme feels like the elephant sitting in the living room. Perhaps it's my guilt, guilt derived from living in and coming from a family that considers work a necessary evil, not an (indulgent) fulfilling of one's passion.

As my sister, Cindy, says, "Helix is your family's livelihood. You can't quit because you don't enjoy it. Who the hell enjoys their work? That's why it's called, WORK!"

As my father says, "You job is to support your husband however you can. You have children counting on you."

As Pat says, "Your absence has caused great financial strain. You did the work of 3 processors, and now we have to pay those processors to take your place. That's a loss of income for our household."

Alas, competing paradigms of work are at work. On the one hand, Pat and I own a business that supports many households other than our own; people rely on us to feed their families. I did commit to Helix when I signed the Inc. papers. I implicitly ask my husband to own the lion’s share of responsibilities and bullshit each day I forgo the office. Bills do not get paid on their own…So I need to pull my share, lace up the ole’ bootstraps, and get my hands dirty, again. Get back to work!

On the other hand, I see how the trappings of middle class demand that we work harder at work that we don’t necessarily enjoy. (That I both enjoy and despise these indulgences does not help.) I see that our business is really not our business and in fact our clients’ demands shape how we work in ways that are simply not always humane. I don’t want to be part of the problem anymore; I want to be part of the solution.

Betwixt and between worlds of work…

The Power of One

While someone once said there’s comfort in numbers, I don’t think they were talking about careers. In fact, from the perspective of a 4-year old, I’d surmise that there is comfort in the opposite—the power of one, career.

This past Saturday, the kids and I were walking through the Denver zoo with our family friend, CB, and her 4-year old son, Ben. The boys began scouring one of the habitats for a baby zebra when Ben announced he wanted to be a zookeeper when he grew up. CB asked my son, TT, also 4, what he wanted to be. No surprise, “I want to be a zookeeper too!” he proudly proclaimed. Of course, I had never heard him utter this desire once prior.

As we pushed our way through the encroaching 100degree mark, and our pace began to slow as a consequence, I noticed all the messaging aimed at our children. From hats to pins to plastic tumblers, for a price, any child could be walking around the park as a “junior zookeeper.” Since TT himself can’t read yet, nor, I assume, most of the preschool crowd wandering the exhibits, I deduced that it’s not parents purchasing mere souvenirs, but caregivers actually buying a career aspiration for their kids . “Here Bobby Sue, you’re now a ‘junior zookeeper in training’!”

And she grins with her newfound “job,” and hat or pin or plastic tumbler.

TT didn’t get a souvenir that day, or at least not the “junior zookeeper” type. And in fact, his “I want to be a zookeeper” mantra quickly changed Sunday to “Momma, can I be a truck driver when I grown up?” as he watched 18-wheelers roll down the freeway on our drive to Costco. Ah, recency theory at work.

While I understand the power of immediacy for a 4-year old, I didn’t see any crossover in TT’s thinking. For example, he could be a zookeeper that drives animals from habitat to habitat, or trucks to natural lands to find or save endangered breeds. But these options were as remote as the lost sock in the laundry. And given the proverbial, cultural questions of “what are you going to be when you grow up?” to “what do you do?”, it should come as no surprise that children and adults alike struggle to define their work.

While I’ve worn many hats over the years, from waitress to student to professor, at any given time, I had some “thing” work-wise to call my own. When asked the question ‘what do you do?,’ I could always answer, and I always answered in the singular. “I’m an Assistant Professor.” “I’m a Business Owner.” I have never said, “I’m a wannabe writer, a wife, a business owner, a mother of 2 young children, a dabbler in art and design, and a scourer of estate sales.” In fact, now that I am all those things and no longer have a “work path,” I have avoided all situations where I’d have to answer the proverbial, “What do you do?” question. Truth be told, being without a designated career path is a bit like being Waldo in the zebra habitat at the zoo. Disconcerting.

So how do I encourage a hybrid career to my young children when I too struggle over the absence of the self-possession of a defined career, income, job title, or otherwise, meaningful work outside the home? Or when I yearn, just like my son, for the singular “I want to be an X”?

Learning labor

My son (nickname, “TT”) grabbed hold of his marigold yellow FAO Schwarz toolbox, crawled under the dining table, and while extracting the well-worn wrench proclaimed, “Don’t bother me Momma! I’m working!”

No, the table was not in need of repair. TT was simply in need of an identity—a way to fit into the grown-up world of (male) work. After all, for almost a year, he’d return from preschool only to learn that his Daddy was out “working on a stinky house” and wouldn’t be home until past his bedtime. From his mind’s eye, he saw:

1. Daddy WENT to work (outside of the home).
2. Daddy physically LABORED at work (strength over mind).
3. Daddy used TOOLS at work (machinery manipulated to complete a task).
4. Daddy didn’t LIKE work (‘I HAVE to go work on STINKY houses).
5. And when Daddy was at home, he was STILL working! (Talking to sub-contractors on the phone, completing our own home repairs, etc.)

TT’s Aristotelian view of work as toil came not just from his Dad, but what he picked up at preschool too.

Ever eavesdrop on parent-child drop-off exchanges at daycare? You know, ‘don’t cry baby. Mommy has to leave for work or she’ll be late. But, you’ll have fun. More fun than me! I promise!’ Or, ‘Daddy doesn’t want to go to work either, but I have to go now.’ Hmm...I'm guilty!

How about those preschool career books lying around—ever flipped through the big bold print? You know the books that plant the quickly rooted (American) question ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?” and offer few answers to that very question with a quick portrayal of traditional, sex-typed occupations. ‘Meet Dave. He’s a Doctor. Meet Jane. She’s a Nurse.’ Where are the social media consultants, entrepreneurs, or non-profit leaders???

It’s no wonder that our daughter, Magda, is worried that she might only get to be 1 thing when she grows up! She’s being asked to choose A work identity, now, at age 5!

While Daddy no longer works “in the field” and instead “goes to the office” Monday through Friday (the topic of another post), our son’s developing concept of work continues to gravitate toward that which he can see, manipulate or produce. Waving a hammer holds much more weight for him than sitting in front of the computer, though he enjoys the latter much more than the former...

And so it begins...

On the way to summer kinder camp this morning, my 5-year old daughter asks me, “Mommy, can I be more than one thing when I grow up?”

“Of course!” I say, enchanted that she’s thinking beyond the traditional preschool lecture on work. You know, the ‘ I want to be a teacher when I grow up.’ (Please, teachers take no offense; I was one myself awhile back.)

“I can be 10-things?” she pursues.

“Yep,” I nod, searching for a kid friendly tune on the radio.

Then quiet, though I’m guessing that the conversation is not over. If I listen closely enough, I can hear the wheels churning (and not the car wheels). A “but…” is rising in her consciousness.

“So how can I be 10-things mama when you’re only 1 thing?”

Oh no. I don’t want to ask. I ask anyway, “What one thing am I?”

“You’re just a Mommy,” she declares.

And just then the radio stops on, ‘Life is a highway. I want to drive it all night long…’ My 4-year old son shouts, “Turn it up Mommy!” and I realize that the teaching moment is lost to Lightening McQueen’s theme song.

So I proceed to sing aloud with the giggles from the backseat on our way to summer kinder camp all the while asking the questions that urged me to finally dive into the mommy blog universe. Because I know I am not the only woman to ask how the hell her 42 years of work experiences and pursuits distill into one singular identity of mother? Is this my fault? In my efforts to be a “good mother” have I forgotten to show them other aspects of “me” or “work”? Is this a wake up call to start? Then again, what meaningful work other than mothering do I want to model?

The pursuit begins. Momma needs work.