Cheering on the Knights

Tonight was a softball night. I went to sit in the warm summer air and cheer on my husband and his friends in a game that turned out to be a rout. The Knights shut down the game in a 13:1 run rule.

I yelled my heart out.

There were drinks and food at a nearby pub afterward.

I got to catch up with Shane. Jeff held a door open for me. And I laughed at Steve telling funny vacation stories.

After an incredibly difficult work day, it was a really great night.

The Actual Face Reunion

Here I am. Laying in bed on a Sunday morning with my laptop. From my vantage point I can see a few remnants of the party last night. An unfinished wine glass I have yet to clean and put away. (How did I miss one?) A green bag from HEB left behind. (Probably from Lynette since that is a chain from her area.) A slight breeze is moving the wind chimes and the light from the windows keeps changing as the clouds move in and out.

It's a nice feeling. The glow that remains from getting to spend an evening of laughter reconnecting with the people you learned about life with.

It was amazing to me how beautiful everyone was. How much the same. Cathy Sylvester still has such a compassionate heart. John Gray can still make eveyone feel like they belong at the party. Barbara Clements has the same delightful laugh. Donna Gatewood still gives "the look"...

It was fun to hang out in a group once more with the crowd I spent most of my teenage years with. Fun to interact as adults.

At the end of the evening, after cracking up at our own lack of memory skills (and the not-so-subtle cheating) in "Four on a Couch" each person told a story of what they remembered. I loved John's account of TP'ing Laura Coston's house and falling off the brick wall as Pat Brownfield sped away in the red Nissan. Laura said Mike Bray had come up to her earlier in the evening and showed his crooked finger. (Different night. Same mission. Same brick wall.)

Kevin Lipscomb told of the day the police helicopter chased him and Craig Carlisle when they were hunting birds in the field behind my house. Someone brought up JRob calling out "hand check" in any trip on a bus or van. (I had completely forgotten about that one. Too hilarious.) We talked about movies watched at Becky and Tammie Lemmond's and nights where way too many of us crammed into Tammie's waterbed to talk about boys. (Donna reminded them that what we said wasn't always good!) Paul told about asking Lynette out to a function and then she started dating the guy who could bench press the most at Southwest High School. (Paul's account of nervously approaching Hal to discuss the matter was too funny!)

While the connection on Facebook is wonderful and facilitated the reunion, it doesn't compare with the hugs and the laughter of being there in real life.

For those of you who were there last night, thanks for coming and being part. And to my wonderful husband and daughter who pulled everything together before I got home...thank you!

Reunion Weekend

About 12 years ago, I had a dream somewhere in the early hours of the morning. Four of my high school friends and I were together for a weekend away together. The date kept coming up in the dream. It seemed so real that when I woke up, I created an invitation for that date for those friends inviting them to my house for an official slumber party. (At that point I hadn't seen some of these friends in eight years, but I mailed the invitation that very day without even a phone call.)

We've done this reunion every year since and no one has missed yet. (Okay, I did have to miss last year, but I was the only one and that was only time. LP even came sick one year though she only got to stay for an hour.)

One of the most interesting things that I noticed that very first weekend was that the group dynamics are the same as they were in high school. Kristi is the socialite of the group. She knows what everyone is doing and keeps all of the memoribilia. (She even has a scribbled on church bulletin we passed back and forth in church one day back in middle school.) Lynette-the-Cowgirl, is a planner and coordinator. She is still the one who works out the logistics and makes things happen. Laura P. is still "the smart one" (also still the most athletic). Laura C. still throws out the dry one-liners at exactly the right time taking us all down in fits of laughter.

Though I noticed all of this, I didn't know who I was in the group.

One year, Lynette mentioned to me that she noticed we all still played the same roles. It was pretty incredible to me that she saw it too.

"But who am I?" I asked. "What do I do?"

"You're the idea girl. You think up all the fun things for us to do."

"Back then, too?"

"Back then too."

As far as roles go, that's a fun one to have. I can't wait for this weekend!

Staying Sparkly

There's something about being twenty. Anything is possible. The whole world is out there waiting to be discovered. But somewhere along the way, we begin thinking we have it figured out. We get comfortable in who we are and it becomes easy to stay there. The sparkle encountered so often in the eyes of twenty year olds isn't as easily seen in the eyes of the forty and up.

Today Matt Yohe sent the entire office an e-mail with the subject: Can an Old Dog Learn New Tricks? It linked to a fascinating article in the NY Times that explores how our minds work and how to keep them continually developing.

“Getting into the stretch zone is good for you,” Ms. Ryan says in “This Year I Will... .” “It helps keep your brain healthy. It turns out that unless we continue to learn new things, which challenges our brains to create new pathways, they literally begin to atrophy, which may result in dementia, Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases. Continuously stretching ourselves will even help us lose weight, according to one study. Researchers who asked folks to do something different every day — listen to a new radio station, for instance — found that they lost and kept off weight. No one is sure why, but scientists speculate that getting out of routines makes us more aware in general.”

She recommends practicing a Japanese technique called kaizen, which calls for tiny, continuous improvements.

“Whenever we initiate change, even a positive one, we activate fear in our emotional brain,” Ms. Ryan notes in her book. “If the fear is big enough, the fight-or-flight response will go off and we’ll run from what we’re trying to do. The small steps in kaizen don’t set off fight or flight, but rather keep us in the thinking brain, where we have access to our creativity and playfulness.”

Simultaneously, take a look at how colleagues approach challenges, Ms. Markova suggests. We tend to believe that those who think the way we do are smarter than those who don’t. That can be fatal in business, particularly for executives who surround themselves with like-thinkers. If seniority and promotion are based on similarity to those at the top, chances are strong that the company lacks intellectual diversity.

“Try lacing your hands together,” Ms. Markova says. “You habitually do it one way. Now try doing it with the other thumb on top. Feels awkward, doesn’t it? That’s the valuable moment we call confusion, when we fuse the old with the new.”

AFTER the churn of confusion, she says, the brain begins organizing the new input, ultimately creating new synaptic connections if the process is repeated enough.

But if, during creation of that new habit, the “Great Decider” steps in to protest against taking the unfamiliar path, “you get convergence and we keep doing the same thing over and over again,” she says.

“You cannot have innovation,” she adds, “unless you are willing and able to move through the unknown and go from curiosity to wonder.”

And wonder, my friends, when seen in the eyes, is very, very sparkly.

Personal Commitments

I could have also titled this post "Yet One More Stephen Covey Inspired Ephiphany" but it seemed like too long of a title.

One of the things Stephen Covey emphasized in his book, The Speed of Trust, was trust in yourself. He also emphasized that a core make-or-break part of that was in your ability to keep personal commitments.

It never occurred to me that personal integrity was linked to my ability to keep commitments to myself. In evaluating that, I started looking at the goals I had for this year to see how well I'm doing. Some, I'm doing regularly. Others are hit or miss.

Thank you, Stephen, for reminding me to clarify them and that they are important. I am now off to yoga class to keep a committment to myself.

Calling the Lurkers to Come Out and Play: Six Word Stories

David-the-Artist-Pastor told me about a fabulous concept by Dan Pink (who wrote Whole New Mind).

The idea comes from the book, Not Quite What I Was Expecting, in which people famous (and not) write their autobiographies in just six words. For example, Stephen Colbert's six-word memoir is "Well, I thought it was funny."

John suggested his would be "No short white guys in NBA."

I've been struggling all day trying to think about mine and have come up with a blank. "Come on lurkers help me out."

Thoughts on Marketing | Culture Shift

Every day in my marketing world I’m living in a culture shift.

I have to say, I am very fortunate to be part of AD. We’re wired collaborative, we’re wired connected and we’re wired future. (If I had to work with a group that was in an old “command and control” model, I’d have slit my wrists long ago.)

I’m used to thinking differently. I can pursue people over projects and relationships over spreadsheets. I’m allowed to experiment simply by sharing the strategic thinking behind it. Here’s the thing. It has been wildly successful.

A couple of weeks ago, Seth Godin posted this: “If it gets to the RFP stage, you lost. Great business to business marketers (and profitable ones) make the sale long before that happens. The RFP is an organizational punt, it's a way of saying, "it's all a commodity, we can't decide, cheap guy wins." The cheap guy, of course, never wins.

The thing is most people in our industry chase leads over building pipelines. And every once in awhile when I’m confronted with that fact, it seems anachronistic.

Today, I responded to a nuts and bolts RFP and I received a call from a very nice marketing rep who shared information on a possible lead in Nebraska. This stood in stark contrast to our efforts earlier in the week providing a highly creative, collaborative, visual deliverable to help a strategic partner win a project in Dubai.

It’s a weird thing to surf a culture shift. Luckily I’m finding myself more often on the future side than in the past.

The Identity Crisis

It started several weeks ago on Bethany's birthday, with an application for a learners permit.

We gathered up all of the neccessary documentation. As it turns out, Bethany has A LOT of documenation since she was born in Panama while John was serving there with the army when she was born.

However, regardless of the ream of official paperwork proving her identity, the DMV couldn't issue the permit. A typo on the report from the US Consular meant that she didn't have three forms of ID that matched. Never mind that both parents have the same last name and that the birth certificate and social security card matched. The extra "N" inserted into our name on the very official US Consular's report of "live birth abroad" rendered it all useless. The DMV actually suggested that we get her social security card changed the wrong spelling to match. Sigh.

After figuring out what it would take to correct the consular's report, talking with an attorney about getting a name change (yes, that was possibly required), yada, yada....it appeared that we were at the mercy of the Passport office. If we could renew Bethany's passport (the Army hospital made sure she got one at just a few days old so we could get her out of the country when we transfered) then that would be all of the ID she needed. We pulled out the passport. AAARGH! It had the same typo as on the consular's report.

I don't completely understand why dealing with the agencies that handle such things has to be such frustrating business. Why couldn't anyone simply look at the report and say..."Oh, clearly there was a typo."

To shorten the story, I spent a day at the passport office and had to fill out an affidavit that she'd been going by an alias (which just happens to be HER REAL NAME) for sixteen years. Silly I know.

Yesterday, Bethany got her passport in the mail--which I told her she can never, EVER, let expire--and she went to get her permit.

There was joy and dancing in the land.

Table and Candelabra: Take Two

So, this weekend while walking through Hobby Lobby looking for a table, a man passed holding a wall hanging that was exactly the right size for a tabletop.

I accosted him and made him tell me where I foundcould find it. After teasing me in my desperation that it was the last one, he finally relented and told me where to go. (And that it was on for 1/2 price.)

A little black spray paint, and it is a perfect solution.

Weekend with the 505 Hutchisons

John and Maidie (aka the 505 Hutchisons) came to visit this weekend. It was fun to have them here.

It was a weekend full of dominoes, coffee, giggling teenage girls (Bethany + four nieces) throwing the football around, a ton of food and multiple trips to Sonic for iced tea.

Today, we went to the Dallas Zoo. We couldn't have asked for a better day. It was gorgeous. One of the highlights of the day--in addition to the ride on the monorail, a curious gorilla and penguins who were as interested in us as we were in them--was the opportunity to feed the manta rays. They were swimming in a low pool where we could touch them. John bought some fish to feed them and they "sucked" them out of my hand. (Which was freakishly cool.)

Chase took the day off work and Nichole was able to join us. We ended the afternoon with a picnic under the large shade trees in the park, then got John and Maidie back just in time to catch their flight back home.

It was a really, really lovely day!

So what DO you put in the religion column?

In looking at the photos of Crosspointe's Ugandan Acoustic Cafe with all of the drums that I posted on Facebook, a high-school friend of mine joked and asked..."now what did you put as your religion?" Said friend has his religion listed on Facebook as "fundamentalist wacko Christian" which made me laugh out loud when I read it.

In writing this post I started looking through what my friends have listed. Most list their denomination. My emergent friends say, "incarnational Christian" or "Christ Follower." Darren--who grew up in my youth group--wrote the interesting "southern baptist vs. science & history."

On my profile, the "religious views" line is blank simply because I had no idea what to put.

My early years include a large Southern Baptist pedigree. I grew up just down the road from Southwestern Baptist Theological seminary, went to a large Southern Baptist Church, and graduated from a Southern Baptist University. The experience gave me a solid foundation in scripture. (All those hours in front of flannel boards, chapel and Bible studies tend to stick with you.)

In high school I spent a lot of time with Charismatics while performing with Cornerstone Theatre. It was there that I discovered the incredible power of worship and was exposed to the "spooky gifts" like prophecy and speaking in tongues. (This was not covered in my Southern Baptist education.)

My summers spent with the Gillhams taught me the healing power of grace and the true depth of what Christ's death meant.

In John's and my early marriage, we connected with a Nazarene church. I couldn't sign off on something called the 'doctrine of complete sanctification' so I wasn't allowed to actually join, but I did meet some incredible people who became my family while we were far from home.

In Panama, we went to a truly wonderful Bible church where we learned a lot about simply how to live life. (We went to another Bible church from 00-04 so that Chase could have a youth group and learned a lot about practical Christianity from Pete Briscoe.)

We're officially Evangelical Presbyterians--through Crosspointe. I have to confess, the whole denomination thing doesn't mean much to me personally. It is really about David-the-Artist-Pastor, Nancy-the-Insightful, the Cobalt people, the Oxygen people, and all of the other wonderful individuals who make up that group of believers.

Add to that a smattering of other experiences... A close Catholic friend who shared with me the beauty of some of the old traditions. A deeply moving service at an Eastern Orthodox church. The writings of Brother Andrew, Augustine and Fr. Thomas Keating...and I'm left as a bit of a compilation.

So, how do you come up with a single label? Is 'Christian' enough? The word doesn't quite capture the way I feel when I wake up in the morning while everyone else is asleep and I sit by the window to pray. Nor does it catch the incredible beauty of reading in Genesis of God's continual pursuit of man. It doesn't cover the miracles of forgiveness and healing that have touched my life. Nor the power, connection and wholeness that flow out of living a life connected to God.

Somehow for me the label on Facebook feels a lot like the plastic fish people put on the back of their car. At the end of the day, your religious views get shouted to the world in who you are. Not just in relationship to God, but to the people around you.

That speaks volumes more than the label you give yourself.