A Political Stance - So What?

I don't really want to have to say it. My political opinion shouldn't sway you from yours in any way, except...
 
Eight years ago, I did not vote for President Obama. I did not agree with his politics, think he was the best candidate nor drink his Kool-Aid. I also did not suspect that he was the Anti-Christ.

Don't laugh! Lots of people around me really thought someone was going to prove he wasn't born here, or was a Muslim, or was the actual real, panic-inducing, biblical Anti-Christ. I read a LOT of articles, blog posts, Facebook rants and came to the conclusion that he was none of the above.

Not only was President Obama not the incarnate beginning of the End, I was pretty sure he wouldn't be the end of Western Capitalism as we know it. Good thing, I had work to do.

And that's what I've done every day for the last 7.5 years. I've gotten up 5 days a week, 50 weeks out of each year, and gone to work. I have worked hard to provide good and faithful service for my God, my family and my company.

On all the other days, I've worked hard at raising and loving a family. I have parented my son to question everything but respect authority, especially our President. It is a tenet of our faith. We give unto Caesar what Caesar is due.

We are BLESSED to go to work and go to school every day in the greatest country in the world (IMHO). With that comes the responsibility of both doing it, and teaching our son to do it - joyfully contributing to that greatness in the ways we are called to contribute. Like taxes.

So taxes were my only real concern when it came to President Obama's reign. I did buy into a little of the fear mongering that us hardworking middle class Americans would be decimated by the weight the administration would put on us of supporting everyone else. I say I bought into it a little because I still went to work everyday. It never occurred to me that I'd end up "upside down" in this working thing and should quit my job to save on taxes. Turns out my base instincts were right and continuing to work to the best of my ability for the last 7.5 years has been a profitable proposition.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like to pay less taxes. And sometimes, I even feel it's unfair how much I do pay in taxes. But mostly, I am just aware of how blessed I am to complain about taxes and not get shot or locked up for doing so.

So, back to the original point of this story - my political opinion in this crazy election season.

I don't love any of the candidates.

I would have voted for Dr. Ben Carson in all honesty. But it looks like that ship has sailed.

The point is, whether your candidate is still in the race or not, whether your candidate is in the lead or not, whether your candidate is a decent person or not, my political opinion is, "So What?"

I get it. Some of us need to throw tantrums over candidates. We NEED to make everyone agree with us. We NEED to tear down others' candidate to prove ours isn't so bad. We NEED people to understand that choosing the wrong candidate will RUIN EVERYTHING! I get it. But I humbly disagree.

Unless the other candidate is the real-life Anti-Christ, in which case, scream on!

Otherwise, someone will be elected this Fall. I will vote for someone I believe is best qualified to do the job, based on the best intel I can gather from LOTS of sources. I will vote for this person because it is my duty to do so, for no other reason than other people died to make sure I could.

You should too.

But when it's over, and we wake up to a new President-Elect, my choice or not, I will get out of bed and go to work. Unless it's a Saturday.

Writing about writing - the guts of me

I've worked for a publishing company for almost 15 years now. I have loved selling and producing great advertising campaigns for a WIDE variety of clients. I have lived, loved and grown up swimming in words and images.

There has also never been a single word of editorial content, not an errant byline stating Created By Marielle Howard, printed in any of our publications.

Louisiana Business Inc, which was just Business Report and its annual supplements when I started this journey, has a strict, concrete thick strict, division between its advertising and editorial teams. This has given me both pain and relief over the years. Regardless of how I felt about our line in the sand, it was there.

I guess if I hadn't loved selling and creating advertising so much, the line might have posed a moral dilemma well before now. A few years ago, I began missing exercising the art of writing and reporting. But the line was still there.

My love of writing began in high school. A brave and brash English teacher taught a poor tomboy girl how to use poetry and prose to express herself. From tentative journal pages, to collections of short poems, to full fledged contest entries and even my first foray into publishing of mine and my classmates poetry in a magazine, Margaret Goode instilled in me a passion for the written word.

Mrs. Goode so profoundly influenced my life that to this day, I want to grow up to be a high school gifted English teacher. She changed my definition of myself, gave me permission to write my own story and the courage to laugh at myself along the journey.

And what a journey it's been. I continued to write after high school. From published analyses in my political science classes, to stories in LSU's student newspaper, I managed to feed my love of writing and share that love with a wider audience. My second degree in public relations was as much about my love of writing as my awareness that I would need a real job after college and I didn't know any political scientists.

After college, my writing became about profit. My career took a turn into the marketing world and I wrote, a lot. It wasn't the great investigative or insightful analysis pieces of my college days, but it was pen to paper with a paycheck. Oddly, this stab at writing was equally enjoyable.

From there, I ended up in sales and advertising. More specifically, I was in the business of selling advertising. Probing questions, concise proposals and fast ad headlines filled my time. All the while, life was happening and I drifted further from my love of creative writing.

A husband, kids, a career, cancer, life, death, marriage, sales, goals, life. My creative energy found lots of outlets. Photography, scrapbooking, home decorating, arts and crafts, teacher gifts, coworker gifts, baby gifts. I was telling stories, just in other ways.

One afternoon while at a professional conference in rural Tennessee, I learned about Eastern Tennessee State University. This magical place actually has a master's program in - wait for it - STORY TELLING! I told everyone I knew for months after this encounter that I was moving to rural Tennessee and going back to college. I felt my calling.

Then I discovered blogging. What a perfect way to burn my creative fuel! Pictures + words + readers, I thought this was going to be my lifelong outlet for all of the stories I've collected.

As I began experimenting with blogging, my work life changed. I'd never considered it, but the art of selling was being redefined in the most amazing way. Self appointed experts were now raking in the bucks teaching sales teams around the country that sales wasn't about probing questions, concise proposals and fast ad headlines, instead sales and advertising were now all about STORY TELLING!

If you ever doubt if there is a God, then the long thread of this story should at least convince you there is some greater and infinitely humorous power bringing us all full circle. I have no doubt there is a God and he had just revealed the guts of me - shown me my core purpose and passion in life - I am a Story Teller of the first order.

So now I am exposed to the core. I know what my Purpose is, with a capital P. Now what?
Lots of little projects, a story here, a press release there, a stint writing newsletter articles later and I was longing for a byline again. Part of me really wanted to see one of my stories, presented with authority, for consumers to chew on, be dragged into and sent away from different.

This summer, completely by accident, that powerful moment came.
"Would you consider reviewing the dinner you attended this weekend?"
"Would I!?!?"
"We'll have to get permission"
Patiently waiting while banging out the lead and first 5 paragraphs anticipating getting the chance.
"OK, this once, you can do this if you still want to."
"SIGN ME UP! WHEN IS IT DUE?"
"It's here!"

I have always been a story teller. At my core, it is what I am and what I love doing. I didn't need a byline to know that.

This byline gives me something completely other than validation of my life's true calling.
It gives me the joy of work.
It gives me the giddy excitement of opening an issue of one of our magazines like it's the BIG present under the Christmas tree.
It gives me immense gratitude for the people and challenges that have given me a voice.
It gives me pride that I work for an organization that gives stories life and import.

Comparing your backstory

To others' highlight reels.

What a convicting statement. All of our new media, technology tantalizing, selfie saturated self promotion is a problem.

While watching a great online video shared on facebook today, I realized that I am guilty and charged of feeding both my pride and insecurities on the same banquet of bitterness.

http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=W6GZ6LNX

How often do I scroll through countless photos of others' great lives, their highlighted, instagram filtered perfection, and think, "I want a life like that." Now certainly, mild social media envy of your Caribbean vacation isn't a sin. But day after day of wanting someone else's anything, well that points to a deeper longing in me than I knew I had. And because I am a personal responsibility nut, surely I must be doing something wrong if I can't be in Disney World as often as you are.

I have a great life. I love my life. But your highlights look AMAZINGLY BETTER than my everyday average. My long Mondays, late for carpool, forgetting to take my vitamins, messing up my paperwork (that I even have to do paperwork!), all seem far darker compared to your azure blue skies. Why?

For all of my happiness, all of my blessings, I am insecure. I think there's a chance that I may not have worked hard enough to do everything God intended for me to do to find all of the blessings he's put in place for me. Or, simply, why don't I deserve to be on a tropical beach today? What's wrong with me that Space Mountain isn't on my to-do list this week?

To be perfectly honest, there's lots wrong with me. But none of it is keeping me from living a great life. I am smack dab in the middle of all of the blessings God promised me. I am walking his path to my purpose and even on the darkest days, I am blessed.

So I share my blessings as a testimony to grace and forgiveness. And therein lies the other side of this coin, my own endless stream of awesomeness.

I wholeheartedly admit that my facebook feed looks like an adventure novel. It is squeaky clean fun where my house is always clean, my kid is always witty and my husband always adores me.

Oh, by the way, none of that is true.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. So what does the picture painted by my public profile say? Does it speak of struggle, and the fight to overcome that struggle? Does it point to the realities of flat tires, messy pets, big arguments and too much homework? Does it show God's heart for all of his people?

I am afraid not. And I am challenged to change that.

Now I will be the first to say that I hate it when my feed fills up with pity party grandstanding. You know, the "I hate when people who pretend to be your friend...you know who you are." posts that make us all mildly uncomfortable wondering if they are talking about us.

So that's not how I see myself changing how you see me socially. Instead, I am going to publish and consume all social media from a different perspective.

"This snapshot of Marielle's life is just that, a highlight reel. There are dark, challenging and even less than honorable life moments not shown here. Please don't believe anyone's life is as squeaky clean as this page portrays. This life has been photoshopped for your entertainment and comfortable consumption."

Growth vs. Profit

I read an interesting article this morning. It looked at the interesting business perspective, and practice, of Amazon. Specifically, it examines Jeff Bezos' belief that Amazon must, "keep investing, because to take profit out of the business would be to waste the opportunity."

While this approach is clearly working for Amazon, with reports valuing the company upwards of $90 billion, it creates a conundrum for me. As a professional, as a parent and as a person, the struggle between growth and profit is a continual one. And it is one that I am always looking for new insights into.

In all aspects of my life, my success is directly measured in both growth and profit. In my sales driven professional world, the profit is actually the bottom line of my growth. However, I have grown to understand that my balance sheet shows a much more important accounting of life changing commitment and excellence through:

• Reading - I allow myself to read one fun non-fiction book (often a trashy sci-fi romance romp) in exchange for feeding my mind one positive, life-affirming, person-improving, career building non-fiction title each month. I know that reading makes me smarter and the smarter I read, the stronger I become.

• Networking - The more people I meet, the more perspectives I collect. It's easy to get along with people who see the world like me. Early on in my career and life, I surrounded myself with these affirming voices. However, now I enjoy meeting people way outside of my comfort zone even more, for they are the ones that most often challenge me to see the world in a different way. Because I focus on pouring back into my relationships at least as much as I get out of them, what began as professional networking to sell more, has grown into a diverse and exciting collection of dear friends I truly value.

• Empowering - My second calling, when I finally put down the sales professional baton, is teaching. I look forward to the day when I can give back to the next generation as much as my great teachers gave to me. In the meantime, I am cutting my teaching teeth on helping my clients, friends and colleagues better understand marketing, advertising, public relations and sales. By focusing on empowering those around me to make better decisions for their companies and organizations, I am growing my ability to teach.

By committing to these disciplines, I have been blessed to do good work. My commitment to growing myself has created profit for my company and my family.

Profit is important. I have to deliver value to my company. All of the personal growth in the world won't justify not hitting my goals or producing results for my team. I am responsible for the bottom line, as are we all in one way or another.

The reason that report cards, monthly goals and deadlines exist is so that we can account for our efforts. But they also give us the opportunity to mark our growth, or not, learn and move forward. They allow up to punctuate our lives with important markers that let us move forward to our next level of success.

My focus will always be on my growth, but I will always equally be responsible for the profit that my growth should produce. Unfortunately, my accounting isn't cushioned by a billion dollar cloud like Amazon. However, I argue that here on the ground, on the front line of sales and life, the stakes are even higher. My professional and personal legacy are at stake.

I'm not at all Psychic (but I've got rock star hindsight)

Ten years ago today, I was just 5 days short of my 30th birthday. And, being the intense A-Type that I am, I had my 5 and 10 year goals clearly laid out. They went something like:

• Be a patiently supportive mom as I watched my then almost-two-year-old son grow to sports and academic fame.
• Stay a humble and service focused leader as I served as an executive in a media or sales related company.
• Live in Utah - long story, but lack of hurricanes and tornadoes was one of the determining factors.
• Have led every professional and service organization directly related to my career to earn even more love and adoration from my colleagues.
• Win some awards and accolades for my hard work and awesomeness.
• Drive a Jaguar convertible.
• Live in a big house in the right zip code.
• Keep that house in Southern Living style all of the time so that I would be the envy of everyone who ever stepped inside.
• Have the perfect marriage that included romantic date nights once a month and the symphony most weekends.

You get the picture. In general, my plan was by now, heck by 5 years ago, to be prefect, oh, and live a perfect life while I was at it. Since I was going to be perfect, I would certainly have to train my son and husband into perfection with me, so we'd all be perfect together.

As you may have guessed, now ten years later, I was WAY OFF. In fact, I was so wrong about where I'd be right now, it appears I am the opposite of psychic.

My current reality proves I was not near as dedicated to achieving perfection as I once believed. But, before you or I beat me up too bad for abandoning my worthy ambitions, let me explain.

Life Happened.

It turns out, that as I sit here 5 days short of my 40th birthday, I am most happy about, most blessed by and most thankful for all of the things that happened instead of reaching those decade old goals.
Some of the highlights include:

• Being a patiently supportive mom as I watch my almost-twelve-year-old son struggle with ADHD and school. He's often socially awkward, personally irresponsible and way too easy going to ever be a sports star.
• I couldn't be more in love with him if I tried, in part, because he's not perfect, and I'm not perfect. We gave up on perfection, instead we're both working to be excellent for ourselves and each other.
• I've led, though not always as humbly as I would have liked. More than once in the last 10 years, I've bought into my own PR. I've been uncompassionate, inconsiderate, unsupportive and over-demanding. Not all of the time, but I've also not always been the servant leader I am committed to being.
• I've learned as much from the people I've been blessed to lead as I have from the ones who've trained me to lead. I've been knocked off of my high horse enough to enjoy the view from the ground as much as the one from the saddle.
• We stayed in Baton Rouge, LA. It turns out that being close to family, sharing my culture and history with my son, and helping to make the place I came from better was more important to me than any glamorous publishing career in Utah.
• When I got my cancer diagnosis, my mom immediately told the doctors to pack up my stuff, we were going to MD Anderson. This was the first time I knew, beyond any doubt, that this is my home. I responded, "I don't know if I'll beat this, but I know if I have to try to do it in Houston, away from my friends and family, away from my community, I don't really stand a chance. What is there for me to fight for in Houston?" Turns out all the world class care and inspiration I needed was right here in Baton Rouge.
• I have been blessed to work with some great groups of professionals, doing great work in our community. And while I did get some commendations here and there, it turns out it is the work I am most proud of. Seeing the impact that a group of dedicated volunteers can have on our community is why I now give and serve and couldn't care less if anyone notices.
• It's not a jaguar, but I do drive a convertible. A girl's got to have a dream, right?
• My home is a mess, we call it "domestic chic" and my marriage is equally. One day everything is tidy and romantic and the next there's clutter everywhere and everyone is cranky.
• Now sixteen year married and 20 years together, I don't want perfect. I love our flawed, full and fast-paced life. It isn't pretty, but it's a hell of a lot of fun.

So, I missed the mark. My goals, my hopes, my aspirations have changed. My reality is not nice and neat and it sure isn't perfect. It is however more fun and a bigger adventure than I could have ever imagined.

Life happened and I wouldn't trade or change one minute of it.

Lucky Number 13

Be careful what you ask for.

We've all heard this caution for those who would wish too ambitiously, a reminder that it may not be in our own best interest to get everything we ask for. It also alludes to the universal truth that we often don't even know what's best for ourselves. And in the curious case of my career, it has proven absolutely true.

Thirteen years ago, as a young marketing and design "professional" (I'm using that word VERY loosely), I fell into a job interview that I wasn't looking for. I was a designer, a writer, a buyer, a marketer. I had PR skills. And I had no interest whatsoever in going into sales.

After my first interview with Business Report, I went home and told my husband these people were crazy. I hate salespeople and hate being sold to even more. On top of that, these ladies work for commission, they only get paid if they sell!

After my second interview, I was intrigued. I went home and told David that I'd always been an A student and the idea of working at a job where I got a report card every two weeks was beginning to appeal to me.

Then came my third interview, the pivotal moment when I sentenced myself to a career I never saw coming.

Julio Melara, a ball of fire and purpose to say the least, stormed into the conference room where Debi and I were meeting. He picked up my resume, looked it up and down and promptly tossed it across the table at me. Mind you, not to me, but AT me.

"Your resume looks like a shooting range. A job a year every year since college? What are you looking for?"

Whoa! Intimidated didn't begin to describe what I was feeling. I didn't even want this job, didn't ask for the interview to begin with. Why was he coming at me so directly?

Never one to back down from a challenge, I took a deep breath, put on my best "I'm not intimidated by you" face and replied.

"I'm looking for a company that will be as committed to me as I am to it." Booyah!

Thirteen years later, still occasionally intimidated by Julio's direct challenges, here's what I've learned from getting the best job I never imagined I wanted:

• Thank God for people willing to take chances on you. In one way or another, we are all a gamble. Thank God for those people who roll the dice on us for no other reason than a hunch. Debi Brand bet on me, even in the face of her boss' doubts, and I will always love her for that.
• Thank God of the people willing to challenge you. There have been days when I've imagined myself in some quiet little automated desk job. And then I get back to work. My energy and abilities have been challenged A LOT in these 13 years. And I am so thankful that this place, these people always have and will continue to push me to be better. Their challenges to my comfort zones make me a better woman, wife, mom, daughter, friend and employee.
• Thank God for telling a better story with your life than even you could imagine. When I told Julio what I was looking for, I didn't know what it meant, not really. I have learned about commitment 1,000 different ways over the last 13 years. Some have been in my professional life, some in my personal life. And these people I work with everyday have been an important part of all of these lessons. We have laughed, cried, celebrated and mourned together. This has turned out to be so much more than a way to make a living, it has been my way of making a Life.

The rest of my career may be here at Business Report. It may not. That's for God to reveal. But either way, I will love and be committed to this place, these people for the rest of my life. Because the rest of me would not be the same without them.

Man! A Tee!

Recently, David, Hunter and I had the amazing adventure of diving with the manatees in Florida. We prepared for weeks, watching every manatee encounter video that YouTube could share.

I was particularly excited about this adventure because of the manatees' appearance as one of the most perfectly useless, patently serene and purposely sleepy creatures. My A-type overachieving brain just couldn't believe that something this calm and aimless could survive in our Darwinian world. I wanted to make sure they were in fact what they seemed, and perhaps absorb some of their serenity.


I committed to turning off my phone and iPad, disconnecting from my modern world, in order to experience the manatee utopia in all its quiet glory. I wanted to walk on the serene side. I needed these amazing creatures to slow down my brain, fill my heart and send me back into my world with a more peaceful perspective on my day to day.

I know, that's a lot of expectations to put on creatures that can't even manage to thrive as a species without man's intervention. But surely their pinnacle of peace had to rub off on me one way or another.

At 6:30am Saturday morning, reality set in and I began to suspect that this might not be the spiritual retreat I was craving. The fact that I had any realization at 6:30am on a vacation Saturday morning should have clued me into the fact that "sea cows" weren't going to calm my spirit and have me humming Kumbaya any time soon.

We threw together gear in a coffee deprived fog and rushed to meet our boat at the dock for the appointed 8:00am take off, only to have to wait almost an hour for the dive boat operator to get this show going. By the time we finally arrived at the first manatee viewing area, it was clear I wasn't the only one wanting manatee-inspired serenity.

In fact, when my friend texted asking how our trip went after we got back, I summed up my manatee experience this way.

How was your manatee adventure?
A lot like Disney World. Overcrowded with dumb tourists, and you either have to beat the crowds at the crack of dawn or wait in a long line for them to clear out. And, to top it off, I got the odd sense of exiting through the gift shop everywhere we went.

Now in defense of the awesome people and businesses in Crystal River, Florida, I'd sell the heck out the fact that I had endangered rolly-polly cuties in my back yard too. I'd have a So Ugly They're Cute and They Won't Be Around Much Longer Festival to celebrate them and finance my home improvements to show them off. After all, sales and marketing are my thing.

But giving hapless A-type tourists the impression that they could completely unwind and live like a manatee in purposeless tranquility, even for a weekend, might be where I drew the line.

Finally, after sifting through the tons of bottom silt thrown up into the water by throngs of fin-wearing tourists, I saw and interacted with some manatees. It was more than worth the price of admission. They are sweet and cute and playful and lazy. They are so ugly they're cute. And while it's one I may never understand, they have personality.

And so do I. My personality is driven and busy and well-planned and perfectly purposeful. I am the anti-manatee. But that's OK. Because we're both in the universe, there is balance.

Watching the A-type rangers and volunteers bark orders and quote signs and videos to inconsiderate tourists made me realize, manatees need us just the way we are. They need us to protect them. The fact that they need us to protect them from us is a whole nother conundrum to tackle another day.

For now, I am walking away from this once in a lifetime experience with the peace that God made me just the way I am, on purpose. And an "I heart Manatees" t-shirt.