Showing Up
Last weekend at Camp Mighty, artist Lisa Congdon shared some of her guiding personal and professional principles. Among them was the concept of showing up -- being there, as much as you can, for the peeps in your life. (I'm not sure whether this was planned or not, but in Maggie's intro of Lisa, Maggie noted that Lisa is one of those people who is everywhere -- often at multiple events in an evening.) Now, I’m someone who really, really tries to show up for things. However, my schedule tends to be challenging, Jon bristles against over scheduling, and my schedule will become increasingly challenging next week once we completely change up our childcare routine from steady, conveniently at home, but vasty complicated in other ways to a cobbled together plan that I can barely keep straight even with the assistance of Outlook.
But I digress.
The point is, per usual following a trip, this week has been crazy, with piles of e-mail to catch up on, client work banging at the door, and a family well in need of snuggle time. As I looked forward on my calendar to Wednesday night, I had pretty much convinced myself that I was going to bag out on my double booked evening.
But then yesterday morning, I thought of two people in my life and said: SHOW UP. Or possible even, SHOW THE HELL UP!
The first person is my friend Roxanna. She's the kind of person who is awesome to work with, easy to confide in, and just generally fun to be around. She's also the kind of friend who -- when I post woeful cryptic messages publicly -- e-mails right away to check in and see if I need anything. Roxanna recently started working for Mom.com (if you click on that link and sign up, $2 will go to Room to Grow...a worthy, worthy charitable organization) and there was a launch party last night at Isis Parenting to celebrate. Honestly, I didn't even care so much that Andrew Shue was there, as I did about supporting Roxanna and my other friends at Isis. I'm so glad I showed up. I pink puffy heart you, Roxanna. Also, your skin always looks fantastic.
After the Mom.com/Isis party, it would have been easy to call it a night. My feet were aching (the 4 inch peep toe platforms were worth it) and the rain was practically shouting "Go home and crawl into your jammies!" at me, but I forged on and headed in to Boston to celebrate 360PR's 10th birthday.
I have known Laura Tomasetti of 360PR for a long time now -- I met her in my early days of blogging. In fact, she is the person who bossed me into getting on Twitter. She is a lovely person, an incredibly smart and talented woman, and she has been so generous in connecting me with various clients for different opportunities. This summer I was really, really close to completely rearranging my life and accepting a position to work with Laura...she is that awesome. When I walked in the door, Laura immediately rushed over and said, "I'm so happy you showed up!" Me too.
As I said, the reality of my life is that I can't show up to everything. But I was really glad that last night I did. Thanks, Roxanna and Laura, for inspiring me to action. You ladies rock.