Dabble Babble

Look at that. It's after midnight. 12.12.12. As has just been pointed out to me on Facebook, the last repetitive date any of us will see in our lifetime (unless you have a secret plan to make it to 01.01.3001 and the planet decides to stick around for you). It might not be the end of the world (Mayans were notoriously unreliable, I hear) but it is one of those times when the hour gets late and the night gets cold and you start thinking about life and Purpose. With a capital P.

I've been reading a lot about Purpose lately. Purpose and transformation. As this blog's title suggests, transformation is a bit of a theme for me, and here I am, once again, transforming. But what am I transforming into? Ideally, especially if I wanted to start writing self-help books or star in a Hallmark card, I would be transforming into "The Real Me". With three capitals. But who the heck is that? Haven't I always been The Real Me? Look, there I am, six years back, The Real Me pretending to be a lawyer. Then there's The Real Me pretending to be a consultant, The Real Me pretending to be a writer, The Real Me pretending to be someone's boss. I'm fairly certain I was always me, no body snatchers were involved. But who should The Real Me be now? And why should this new variation provide any more Purpose than the others?

I read on Twitter the other day (Facebook and Twitter, these are the sources of profound thought for me these days) that Meaning and Purpose require Devotion. And I get that, I really do. People with passion for something, be it saving starving children, sailing around the globe, painting wild canvasses, whatever - those people inspire me. There, I think, now that is Purpose. And The Real Them for sure.

Only problem is, I can't relate. I have no passion for anything. I could never devote myself to anything. I am simply incapable of that kind of single-minded obsession.

Instead, there are hundreds of things I'm pretty keen on. I find the law quite interesting. I rather fancy writing. And running is jolly nice. To tell you the truth, I suspect I was born with a mutating gene of Britishness, circa Downton Abbey.

Because I am a dabbler. I love to dabble. Pick anything you can think of. Really. As long as it doesn't involve insects or ladders, I'm probably interested in it. And if I'm not, I'll happily add it to the list of things I would like to become more interested in.

Aye, there's the rub. I'm interested in everything, but devoted to nothing. Except dabbling. I am a devoted dabbler. A Devoted Dabbler, even. Because maybe that's a thing?

There's no place like home

There's something that has been gnawing at me recently. No, not the fact that I haven't managed to post to the blog with any consistency since I don't know when (although it's somewhat related to that). Nor the fact that everyone who hears my story thinks I'm insane or, put more kindly, "certainly not boring" (although it's somewhat related to that as well).

No, what's been nibbling at my insides and clogging up my brain stem is all down to one troublesome HBR post by the Justin Bieber of INSEAD academia, and my idol, the one and only GP.

If you're an INSEADer who follows such things, or otherwise a GP fan (and who can blame you, really) you'll have probably seen his most recent offering on the blog affiliated with that Other Business School, in which (and I hope he'll forgive me for paraphrasing and grossly simplifying his prose) he argues that leaders cannot lead unless they have some connection to a local, geographically determined "home". Now, that home may be where you were born, where you grew up, where you live now, no matter. But there has to be one that you can point to and say "There! That place out yonder with the red brick chimney and white picket fence is mine. I belong there."

Well, now that puts me in a bit of a pickle.

There is no place I can think of that is "mine", no place that answers to the epitath of "home". Wherever I go, I am a foreigner, and that is true of Paris as well as New York (and anywhere else I or my family members have lived). It doesn't make me love either of those places any less, but neither one is my "home" (or they are both equally so, which I think defeats the point). I am the one who can never answer the question, "Where are you from?"

But there are two ways to look at this. Sure, on the one hand, you could describe me as an outcast, a "stranger" (to quote GP) who does not belong and so will never lead. You could also point out that I have stubbornly refused to choose a home (is that even a choice you can make?), refused to commit to one place over another. Again, as GP has once said to me personally, if you don't commit, you don't belong.

That's a fair point. In fact, it's such a fair point that it's bugging the crap out of me (if I may put things bluntly). And then I start wondering whether perhaps the writing has dried up and died because, lacking not just a "room of my own" but a "home of my own", Virginia Woolf herself has given up hope that I will ever be able to pull myself together and create anything of value, even if it's just on this meager blog.

So I can't commit, I don't belong, I'm homeless and will never be either a writer or a leader. (Although, to be fair, I'm not sure "leader" was ever on my wish list - still, it's the principle of the thing.)

But... (and here the grammarians among you will be pleased because I'm finally getting to my "other hand")... on the other hand... doesn't my rootlessness mean I can empathise with more than one perspective at once? Feel attachment to more than one place at once? Break free of arbitrary biases and preferences that would otherwise tie me to "the way we do things back home" for no good reason other than the fact that life's circumstances once whisked me up and dumped me there like Dorothy in the Land of Oz? In fact, if Dorothy hadn't been so bloody obsessed with getting back "home" to Kansas, who knows what she might have achieved in that magical land of yellow brick roads and talking tin men?

But I digress.

The sad fact is I don't have an answer for my conundrum. Am I doomed to wander the flight paths of the earth for all eternity, never realising that all I needed was a place my ruby slippers could take me back to? Or am I all the richer for being able to embrace the contradictions and ambiguities of the truly homeless? Or both?

All I know is this. In New York City, hardly anyone ever asks me where I'm from. And that makes everything simpler.

Live, from New York...

... it's Saturday morning!

Hmmm. Doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?

But here I am, finally, in New York. At least for now. For the first week, I spent all my days in a giddy-happy delirium. I'm not sure you would know the kind I mean, as I had certainly never experienced anything quite like it before, but there I was, constantly grinning. Get in the elevator. Grin. Buy groceries. Grin. Wait for the little red hand to turn into a little white man so you can cross the street. Grin. I grinned in the sun, I grinned in the rain, I grinned when it got so windy that tornadoes hit Brooklyn. Honestly, if I hadn't been so damn happy I would have found myself insufferable.

Fortunately for all, except maybe me, the giddy-happy had to pass. I suppose it was too good to be true. Reality had to hit me eventually. So now, while reasonably pleased with the part of my situation that involves being in New York, I am also stressed. Stressed that I will have to leave New York because no one will have me. Stressed that I am not entirely sure which of my Plans A or B would actually be better for me in the long run (more on the various Plans in future posts, I promise). Stressed that I am running out of money. Stressed that I have some kind of brain-eating fungus that has resulted in me leaving the house once without my wallet and once without my keys in the same week.

And because stress is always accompanied by pints of ice cream and the inability to say no to hamburgers, it has also come with a side of extra weight and the consequent additional stress of not being able to fit into my clothes.

That being said, well, stress schmess, I say. I'm in New York! In the past three days, I have seen stand-up comedy, Molly Ringwald and Siri Hustvedt. Tonight, I'm going to the theatre to experience Ibsen on Broadway. Tomorrow, I have yoga class. Some of my closest friends in the world are but a subway ride away. The sun is shining over the West Village outside my window.

Oh, here we go. Giddy happy is making a comeback!

Who ate all the pies?

I know, I know, I'm unforgivable. I wouldn't blame you if you're fed up to there with my nonsense, or more precisely my failure to write about said nonsense in a punctual and reliable manner. I'm such a disappointment to you.

Trust me, I know just how you feel. I'm very often similarly disappointed with myself. When will I ever just get my shit together and move on, you and I may both, on occasion, wonder? Why do I always seem to get stuck on one thing, and then another? Why can't I just be one of the women that glides? You know the ones I mean. The gliders. Smooth. Elegant. Eternally in a state of not-stuck-ness. They just move right along, right past you, like they're on goddam ice-skates.

Me, I just hop from one pot-hole to the next and sprain my ankle in the process.

I have never been a glider. I am a serial pot-hole monogamist, in all aspects of my life. I can only truly care about one thing at a time... and that time is usually rather short. (This is starting to explain a few things, isn't it?) Relationships, jobs, geographic locations, hobbies, you name it, I've gotten hopelessly stuck in one and suddenly moved right along.

It's time to make a change. From this day forth, I vow to be a serial pot-hole polygamist. (What, you thought I was going to get up and start to glide all over the place? Let's be serious. Rome wasn't built in a day and all that...) Or, put in a slightly less unusual visual metaphor, I will have many fingers in many pies. I will find a way to be passionate about a plethora of wildly inconsistent things, in order to avoid becoming a boring one-apple-pie kind of girl or overly crushed when said apple pie falls apart before I'm ready to move on to the rhubarb.

Okay, now things have gotten so weirdly metaphorical that I'm both very confused and rather peckish, as I assume you are. So let's just leave it there. Things they are a-changin', that's all I'm saying. Details to follow.

Before the turn

The "part one" reference below would seem to preempt a "part two." But part two is not in me right now. Part two has gone awol. On a hiatus from the here and now.

Much like me.

So we're back to "part... zero." Or, in more accurate scientific terms, "part n-1." What "n" turns out to be is anybody's guess right now. Less than 10 days ago, "n" was an almost-certainty, but that's science for you. Everything seems so nice and definite and logical and then all of a sudden Pluto's not a planet and maybe some things actually travel faster than the speed of light (or maybe the calculator's just broken).

So we're back at the cross-roads. I've been here before, it seems. Like a child in Dedaleus' labyrinth, I turn a corner only to reach another (or is it the same?) fork in the road. And not a Minotaur in sight. But the deluded optimist in me tells me this time, the turn will be the right one, whether the path is more or less traveled by, it will be the path for me. My path. N-th time's the charm.

But before the turn, I take a moment to stand still. Collect my thoughts. Accept the blank slate before me. Or not so much a blank slate but a letter, that has been started over and over again, crumpled up and tossed in the trash, then pulled out and pressed more or less smooth again. (Remember those? Before the advent of the deceptive "delete" button?) But you can still write beautiful words on crumpled paper, surely. Can't you?

So wrinkled and smudged, but hopeful. This is how I start out today. At n-1, once more.

Goodbye Helvetica - part one

Still getting on with it (in fact, I will use the extent to which I've been "getting on with it" as an excuse for my absence from these virtual pages. Because I can). Still nothing to report though. "It" remains undefined for the time being, so you'll have to bear with me. I promise you'll know as soon as I do.

In the meantime, ready or not, my departure from Switzerland approaches at the speed of an oncoming tram. Which means it's time to reflect on what I have learned (or stubbornly refused to learn) during my almost-two years in this quirky version of a country.

Warning: I'll probably end up offending someone. I usually do. Whatever I may have said or am about to say, it should not be taken as an indictment of Switzerland as a whole, or the Swiss in general. I have lots of lovely Swiss friends. Well, actually, I have one Swiss friend. She is very lovely though. And in her honour, I will start by counting down the top 5 things I will miss about Switzerland (other than the friends I've made here). I wanted to do a top 10, of course, à la David L., but I couldn't think of ten. Damn, I've gone and offended someone already, haven't I...

5: How every single bus, tram, and train is connected and freakishly on time. So that you can cross the country and schlep up to a high-altitude village in the middle of nowhere, employing five different modes of transportation, and arrive exactly when the SBB website said you would, without having waited more than a couple minutes at any stop along the way. There's some kind of evil mathematical genius behind all this, I'm certain of it.

4: Hiking in the mountains to the constant sound of cowbells. If you only do it a couple times a year, the ringing doesn't get too annoying. And those cows are pretty great-looking. As are the mountains. Breaking out into song à la Julie Andrews is not unheard of (and yes, I know that was Austria, but you know what I mean).

3: Chocolate. Oh heavenly goodness. The Swiss do know their chocolate. Sprüngli and Läderach, how I will miss you (my waistline, however, will not).

2: Trams (yes, there's a bit of a public transportation theme, here). God, I love the trams. Every city in the world should have trams (and I applaud those that already do). Trams are far superior to subways. They're clean and bright and allow you to look out the window and daydream (ironically, in my case, most of my daydreams involve being on the A train...)

1: Drinking Aperol Spritz by a lake, or a river, or whatever body of water is closest (there is bound to be one, wherever you are in Switzerland). There's something about bright orange bubbly alcoholic drinks that just screams summertime. I plan on exporting a cartload of Aperol on my way out of here. Now, granted, Aperol Spritz is also available in Italy. Plus, if you drink it there, well, then, you're in Italy. But it will always mean Switzerland to me...

So there you go. I'm not entirely biased against Switzerland. Give me a ringing cow, some chocolate, a glass of something orange and plonk me on a tram by a lake and I'm a happy girl.

In my next post, I will explore the many mysteries of Switzerland that, try as I may, I have never been able to figure out.

Outsourced introspection

Let me take advantage of this brief, 20-minute respite in the Crazy Summer of Sport (Roland Garros final rained out and in the break between two football matches) to pop in and say hello to my blog.

Hello blog.

I've been feeling a bit rain delayed myself, lately. The drops keep falling on this, my last "summer" in Switzerland, and I'm in the locker room, waiting. Have I done enough to set myself up to succeed? Will this be a relatively painless three-setter or will I have to slog through 5 sets, not knowing if it will all end in the sweet embrace of victory or in pieces, broken and covered in clay and pretending like I don't want to shatter that silver platter over someone's head.

Clearly, I've been watching too much tennis.

Anyhoo... as I wait to see if the "interviews" work out (and yes, they have as much chance of being interviews than the summer in Zurich has chances of actually being a summer, hence the ironic written air-quotes), I've continued on the path to self-enlightenment by letting my nearest and dearest have a go at enlightening me, for a change. (If there's one thing this management malarkey has taught me, it's how to delegate).

And oh! the responses! They came from the four corners of the world, from friends who have known me since I was fresh out of diapers, from family who knew me before then, from professors who fielded my angst-ridden questions and from all the wonderful people I've met in between (almost all of them women - which says something about something but let's not get into that). I am now surrounded by dozens of shining mirrors, and basking in their soft reflective glow, flaws and all.

Each of the mirrors were asked to answer four questions, identifying in turn my skills, what motivates me, my long-term goals and the myriad of ways in which I'm likely to get in my own way and screw things up (and really, only the people who have known you since before you learned how to lie your way into adulthood have the ability to oh-so-accurately pinpoint exactly what makes you such a mess).

The results were at once flattering, thought-provoking, embarrassing and entertaining. Almost everyone agreed on my skills (I guess I don't have that many). Most commentators had similar things to say regarding my motivations and goals (and those two categories overlapped to a large extent). But everyone had a unique perspective on my flaws - and of course I think they're all spot on.

So there we are then: a few skills, some relatively clear (albeit contradictory) motivations and goals, and a host of really bad habits it's high time I did something about (because who would want to hire - much less date - an impatient, emotionally fragile, intolerant perfectionist?; that chick sounds like a total drag).

But being the analytical, creative, action-oriented kind of gal I am, who is moreover unfazed by complexity, I have turned my mirrors' answers into the nifty graphic below so we can all have a good chuckle and I can feel better about the whole thing.

There it is. You are now blessed with the collective intelligence of everyone I've ever met, in one slide. Lucky you.

Enlightenment: check.

Up next: getting on with it.