Wow! This is apparently a hot topic, and there were a ton of great submissions from everyone. Thanks to everyone who participated! I’m going to post the links to everyone’s posts (in no particular order) and give you a brief snapshot of what they’re about. Perspectives range from those who don’t want or need mentors, to those who pine for them, and to others who grateful for the ones they’ve had. Happy traffic and pagerank to you all.

I Want What You Have – The New Mentorship My post on mentorship explores a new definition and criteria for mentorship – wanting what that person has. I also introduce you to the village of mentors I have. As someone said, “Wow. Sounds like you have a lot of support.” Yeaaaaaaah…

Moving On From A Mentor or Friend Steve Errey goes back to our original Twitter conversation about what happens when you outgrow a friend or mentor. He says that besides the natural wearing away of time, there are only two good reasons to move on. Read his post to find them out. And I love that he uses our original tweets to make his points.

Are Mentors Just A Myth? Chris Catania is the third player in the original Twitter conversation. Chris hasn’t had a mentor since he outgrew his at the age of 22, and our tweeting stirred up “wish I had a mentor” feelings in him.

Mentoring Will Change Your Life From the folks who inspired the round table concept, Lance encourages readers to actively seek out people to mentor. He provides examples of times in his life when he wishes he had a mentor, and makes the case for anyone with a strong suit to find someone to mentor in that area.

I Don’t Need A Mentor Jun Loayaza has never had a mentor, in his idea of the word, and isn’t sure he wants one. He sees people as teammates or partners rather than mentors. Jun even throws in a little Buddhism.

6 Ways to Find Your Next Mentor Steph Auteri thinks you need a mentor. And this lady’s gonna tell you where to find them. From the classroom to your peers to your book shelf, Steph breaks it down.

If The Mentor Shoe Fits, Wear It Michelle Poteet shares about a pushy boss who wants to be a mentor. And coins this little gem: “… a great mentor is like a fabulous pair of pumps. Nice on the outside, but can definitely push you to the limits on the inside.”

The Golden Rules of Mentorship Carlos Miceli warns against deifying your mentors, relying on them for too much, and gives advice as to mentor selection. He dedicates the post to his own set of mentors.

Who Are Your Mentors? Matthew Egan remembers his mentors, including his grandfather, and talks about the journey from friendship to mentorship. He sees his mentors in hindsight, figures who emerged to lead him forward.

Of Mentor and Countrypeople Jess Commins has a mentor to thank for the miserable failing of her dream business. But she really means it. And she goes from blog-reader to being coached by the blogger. Like me, she pays some of her mentors too.

You Need A Mentor Edward Antrobus is desperately seeking mentors. He may have found one – and shocker – she’s younger than him.

Mentors | How Important Are They To Your Success? Hani is the only video blog entry! And she’s so cute and fun to watch! Oh, and there’s substance there too. Hani talks about the stereotypical mentor and whether or not we need them to succeed.

My Mentor Jacki Welsh’s mentors have always been teachers. One in particular, an Elvis-loving English teacher, made her a writer at grade 7.

I’ve Never Had a Mentor, and That’s OK Ryan Paugh adds to the anti-mentor movement. His post opens with a would-be mentor turning him down, and swiftly moves from hate to friendship to self-sufficiency.

Mentors . . . Carol Kiphart has a hard time concentrating on the subject dealing with a personal crisis, but she manages to remember a few of her mentors in her time of distress. She leaves off with the thought that mentorship is like love: it doesn’t come knocking until the moment we think we don’t need it.

Mentorship is a Gift We Give and Receive Melissa Marks Garner is embarking on a year-long journey to make her dreams come true with a life coach and 7 other individuals, people she hopes might be “mentors-in-the-making.”

Mentor Me This, Mentor Me That Gerard McLean sees his lack of mentors as “support system of bumper rails without risk of co-dependency.” Fearing he’s failed past mentees, he sees his blog as a replacement for his desire to mentor.

What I Learned From My Mentor Chris Silk typically writes about drama in the confines of his local Starbucks, but he breaks from that to share a beautiful story about growing up in a poor, rural town and how he went from not knowing how to read to being in a highly selective Gifted & Talented program.

My First Blogging Round Table: Mentors Sara Martisek proves it’s never too young to have outgrown a mentor. At 22 and preparing to graduate, she has two others already.

Give Me Failure, or Give Me Death In true RestlessLikeMe fashion, Andrew Norcross doesn’t want anything you’ve got unless you failed getting there. Best line: “Pain is learning.”

On Generosity and Gold Dust: Lessons From A Mentor Jenny Blake’s entry includes a giveaway of her mentor’s book! Her mentor teaches her about generosity and living the dream.

How To Get and Keep a Mentor (And Why I’ve Been So Guarded Lately) Monica O’Brien submits an older post for your approval. Her advice is on not only how to select a mentor, but how to be a good mentee. Six great tips here.

Thanks again to everyone who participated! If you didn’t make the deadline, no worries. Feel free to post it in the comments section. If I get enough, maybe I’ll do a round-up #2.

Ever late to the game, this is my entry to the Mentorship Blog Round Table I announced last week. The round-up will be posted on Wednesday, March 3.

I contemplated calling this post something in typical Gen Y fashion, like “Personal Board of Advisors” but I’m not sure that’s going to get your head out of the overly formal idea of mentorship that we have. I think we need to open our minds to a new kind of mentorship.

Ever heard the expression “it take a village to raise a child”? Well, I’m fond of my own little saying: “It takes a village to raise a Holly.” I do have a personal board of advisors – not in the sense that I run everything past everyone of them, but most important decisions are run past a handful of them, while others are called on for technical guidance in their field of expertise. And there are quite a few of them. A village you might say.

The Criteria is Simple, but Not Easy

My criteria for mentors is rather loose, but at the same time, very difficult to achieve. You don’t have to have credentials or references… you don’t even have to be older than me or more senior than I am. But you do have to have something very special and rare.

The people I call my mentors have something I want.

The formal definition of mentor is “a trusted counselor or guide.” All of my mentors fit this definition, but that extra criteria of having something I want is critical. That’s why I find it hard to believe when I hear my peers say they don’t want or need mentors. I learned a long time ago that it was much easier to ask someone who already knew how to do something than to try to learn to do it all by myself. I also learned long ago that it’s easier to know where my weaknesses are so that I can find a way to strengthen them.

Spotting People Who Have What I Want

I’m not usually on the hunt for them. I like to think one of my strengths is my ability to observe. I watch people. I watch what they do, not necessarily what they say. Trying to find mentors based on accolades, awards, job titles, and their swagger has always let me down. It’s usually the people I would least expect that have what I want.

“Have what I want” can range from career experience to industry expertise, from health to general attitude about life, even fashion sense. I’m not sure that most of my mentors even know they are my mentors. I never ask them to sign up. I just ask them to get coffee or if I could call or email them sometime. If I can pick their brain or if they’d like to have lunch. Then I go into sponge mode and just try to soak it all up.

The interesting thing about picking mentors this way is that you don’t always learn what you think you’ll learn. My corporate career mentor, for example, taught me how to make the leap to owning my own business. When you target people based on how happy they are with their career, you learn how to be happy – not necessarily how to follow their career path. And when you pick someone to be your mentor because they ooze serenity and peace, somehow or other you learn how to be angry at the right times.

When A Mentor Doesn’t Work Out

It’s not like I’ve got a divining rod and I sort of blithely go through life with successful mentor after successful mentor. I’ve had my share of individuals who never called me back, clearly used me to get something, and others still who didn’t work out for one reason or another. Some of my mentors I’ve outgrown, realizing that they don’t have anything I would ever want. Sadder still, I’ve had mentors who had everything I wanted in life, and I watched them give it up to walk a dark and lonely path I pray I never follow them down.

I move on. I keep searching. And I learn, ultimately, from those people more about what I do and do not want from life.

Meet Holly’s Village, er… Board of Advisors

And now, allow me to introduce you to my mentors and personal board of advisors.

I have two, yes two, therapists. One is a talking therapist for general counseling needs, and the other is specially trained and she helps me get over my totally irrational fear of flying. I pay them to be on the board. Having been in or around some form of therapy since I was 14, I find that having a really good counselor around is good for me. Both my therapists are people I respect and believe I would have a friendly relationship with, outside the laws of professional relationships yada yada legal stuff.

I have a 12-step program sponsor. She essentially acts as my sounding board for any “great” idea I might have or any major life decisions.
I have lots of these so-called great ideas, and she helps bring me back from the brink of some majorly stupid decisions. And, other times, she’s there to guide back to sanity after I go ahead with said stupid decisions. She is responsible for walking me through the 12 steps of the program, and teaching me how she has gotten and stayed sober. She also sort of acts as a spiritual advisor of sorts. Not in a sense that she tells me what to believe, but more like how to go about finding it.

I had a corporate mentor, but now that I’m not in the corporate world, I guess she’s more of a business mentor. I also have a marketing mentor. Both of these mentors were my bosses at the job I recently left. I’m grateful to have developed the kind of relationship with them that is bigger than employment. Both of these mentors have the kind of field experience in marketing I hope to have one day, and I recognize in them how much I have to learn about traditional marketing in order to run a successful digital marketing agency.

I have a social media mentor, who has encouraged and supported me to do things like start a local chapter of Social Media Club, take on freelance work, and found my own business. He has constantly thrown me into the spotlight (and the trenches, for that matter!) time and time again, and shares openly and freely of his knowledge. I’m proud to say he “raised me right” in social media, passing on to me an intense love for the industry and a desire to help others “get it.”

I have a life coach. While I don’t use her as intensely or regularly as I have in the past, she’s someone who I know is only a phone call away when I’m faced with critical life decisions that don’t necessarily fall to my therapists, sponsor, or other mentors. She’s more like a third party who is more interested in finding out what jives with my life path than any one decision over another.

Those are my primary mentors, the ones who have really stood the test of time. I also have trusted advisors in fashion, spirituality and relationships. Members of my family, friends, business partner, and boyfriend often times resemble mentors to me. It’s difficult to say where that line starts and stops between love, friendship and a desire to teach and be taught.

I’ll leave you with this: In the end, the best mentors are the ones who support and teach you right out of from underneath of them.

It’s officially February. If you remember the study I cited at the beginning of the year, most of you with New Year’s resolutions have already let them go by the wayside.

How about those of you who picked a theme instead? How is your theme coming along?

I ran out and bought three books on organization. And all of them sit, partially skimmed. If I looked around myself, at home or at work, and said, “OK, organize it” then I wouldn’t know where to start. It would overwhelm me.

You don’t have to do it all at once.

That’s the great thing about a theme – you have all year to work on it. I don’t have to get it all done right now. Every time something is disorganized, my boyfriend likes to say with a smile, “It’s the year of organization!” And I like to say right back, “It’s the YEAR of organization – not the JANUARY of organization.”

The problem with resolutions is that once you’ve missed a few days of working out or had a few too many trips to McDonald’s you feel like you’ve failed and you quit. The theme doesn’t let me quit. It’s all year, baby! If I don’t fold the laundry for two weeks, it’s OK. I’ll get there. It’s only January.

Your theme is probably a huge honkin’ goal. Break it down. Pick a small portion of it and make it the theme for that month.

Here’s how the Year of Organization looks for me:

January: Home Office
February: Kitchen
March: Car
April: Bedroom
May: Outdoors
June: Laundry room
July: Living room
August: Bathrooms
September: Hallways & closets
October: Bedroom closet
November: TBD
December: TBD

Plan to fall behind… a little.

I’m allowing myself leniency and flexibility in the last two months. I know that I’ll find behind, and I also know that I’ll find something I didn’t expect that needs work. This takes a little pressure off of me – I won’t be doubling up on things because I forgot about this or that, and my year isn’t so full that if life gets in the way (as it so often does) I can take a break.

Don’t forget the little things.

Overarching all of this are the intangibles of organization – organizing my time, schedule, finances and expectations. I work on those things every month. I don’t work hard at them. I keep up the work I did last year (the Year of Finances), making a budget and sticking to it every two weeks. I keep a calendar with important dates, etc. That’s not the sort of stuff that can be done in a month, nor can it wait for a particular month to be scheduled for it.

It works!

The interesting thing I’ve found just by organizing my home office in January, is that when my physical space is organized those intangible organization problems are lessened. Rationally I know that if my documents are where I can find them, then things will go faster. But I think it’s interesting that my work schedule feels less cluttered and claustrophobic because my office is not cluttered and claustrophobic.

There just might be something to this organization thing!

Stay tuned for an update on January’s mini-theme, the Home Office. I’ll be posting photos.

Photo credit: Sarah and Mike… Probably via Flickr

As I lay on the couch, piecing together my idea for a post on themes versus resolutions, I went through the various themes I’d had in previous years, out loud to my boyfriend.

“’07 was well, just surviving. ’08 was the Year of Relationships. And this year was the Year of Finances.”

“So what’s 2010?” he asked.

I took a deep breath.

The Year of Organization.

My theme is usually based on the big hairy elephant in the room. Last year, I was over-drafting my bank account at least once a month. I never had enough money to last till the next paycheck. I had zero savings and three maxed out credit cards. I was perpetually without and didn’t have anything to show for it.

Enter 2009: The Year of Finances. It took me a while to figure out what would work for me. I had a lot of bad money habits and I really didn’t want to change many of them. After a few months of trying different things out, I finally got on board with Dave Ramsey. As I related in my previous post, I was able to not only stop over-drafting my bank account, but I paid of the credit cards, got current on my student loans, paid all my medical bills, and socked away almost three months of living expenses. In total, I paid down nearly $5,000 in debt.

So, when I say 2010 will be the Year of Organization, I know it will be a challenge.

The Year of Finances sucked. It wasn’t all la-la-la, I have so much money to throw into things. I had to budget, I had to forgo vacations, I didn’t get to buy any tech gadgets… and I had to start drinking coffee at home. I’m kidding, but it really was a painful change to make. I had a lot of great support from other Ramsey-ites (thanks to Michelle, Ashley and Kendra!), which helped.

Why this theme

As I said in the previous post, you should pick a theme that solves the most of your problems. And most of my problems these days seem to come from a complete and utter lack of organization. And there is mounting evidence that if I don’t make 2010 the Year of Organization, it might kill me.

I have two jobs.
I love my “day” job working in marketing research and don’t see that changing anytime soon. I work for a company that genuinely cares about me; I have a great boss and believe that management wants me here. I also have my own company that I work with after-hours and on weekends, which scratches my entrepreneurial itch but also fills my every waking moment outside of work. Having two careers is tough, and there’s a lot of schedule juggling to make it all happen without losing any integrity or quality in one or the other.

I have time-consuming allergies.
I have six – count them – SIX allergies. Four are environmental (dust mites, cat hair, mold and trees), but the other two are the tough ones: food allergies. I’m allergic to both wheat and soy, which means I pretty much can’t eat anything manufactured, processed or pre-packaged. I take medication for my environmental allergies, which works sometimes. I have to wash our comforter, comforter cover, sheets, special allergy pillow covers and mattress cover in hot bleach water every other week, which usually eats up an entire Saturday. I have to pre-cook my meals for the week, or I end up eating stuff I shouldn’t or not eating anything at all. And if I don’t make everything click exactly right, my allergic reactions usually take the form of intense fatigue.

I can’t say no.
They always tell people to make realistic goals. Saying “no” just isn’t a realistic goal for me. Start a local chapter of Social Media Club? Yes. Start a company? Yes. Put on a conference? Yes. Write some ebooks? Yes. Sit on this special committee? Yes. Take on a new client? Be on a radio show? Plan an unconference? Write for this new blog network? Yes, yes, yes and yes please! I like doing a lot of things. But that takes organization.

I’ve always been “messy” and I’m tired of it.
I don’t want to shatter anyone’s perception of me, but um… I’m really messy. Right now, I have four coffee cups on my desk, a spoon, two open bottles of water, and various tiny pieces of paper with notes on them. I never really finish the process of getting the laundry into the appropriate drawers, if by some miracle I fold them, and I don’t use my home office because I can’t move in it. When I was a kid, my mom coined the term “fire path” to describe the clear lane from my bed to the door in an otherwise unruly bedroom. I’ve always blamed this messiness and disorganization on my creativity… a big brain like mine simply can’t be bothered with details. But this isn’t really who I want to be. And I’ll be the first to admit that a neatly-appointed space just feels nicer.

I know there’s a long road ahead as I fumble through what doesn’t work before I find what does, but a New Year’s Theme shouldn’t be easy. And if I have anything like the kind of success I had in the Year of Finances, then the Year of Organization is going to be a very good one.

If you haven’t shared already, what’s your theme for 2010? Why?

Photo courtesy of austinevan via Flickr.

Every year after Christmas, people sit down and review the past year. They look ahead and come up with an improbable list of to-do items for the coming year. You’re going to run four times a week, not eat fast food, do a monthly budget you live and die by, put 20 percent of your paycheck into savings, spend more time with family, learn to knit, take a Spanish class, get to work on time, get 8 hours of sleep… essentially, you’re going to become perfect.

And then you don’t do one of them. And they all go down the drain because if you’re not going to be perfect, well then why do a bunch of stuff that’s no fun?

At least, that’s been my experience. Every year, I got swept up in the spirit of self-improvement and made ridiculously long lists of things I was going to do differently, learn or stop doing. I made calendars and schedules and stuck to them for about… oh, maybe three weeks.

Which makes me average it turns out. According to time management firm FranklinCovey, only a third of people will even make it to the end of January.

The end of JANUARY.

The cure is supposedly to make a specific resolution. Perhaps pick just one of the resolutions I listed in the first paragraph and go with that.

But that hasn’t worked for me. I have that Gen Y disease of ambition. Just one of those resolutions feels so… flimsy.

Why you need a theme

Here’s my problem with these specific resolutions: they may not be the right answer. Maybe you find that putting 20 percent of your paycheck into savings isn’t going to work because you can’t stop over-drafting your bank account. Or, you find out your knees can’t handle running. Or, you find it impossible to get 8 hours of sleep. And then you just give up.

What you need is a theme, something that sets the tone for your year, and gives you a banner to work under. In the end, what is your overall goal? Is it to be fit and healthy, to have good finances, to feel rested? Make it the Year of Finances, or the Year of Fitness, or the Year of Relaxation.

For the past three years, I’ve picked a theme for my year. And it’s worked.

2007 was the Year of Survival. I got sober in April (a late start to the year, I know), and basically just learned how to live all over again. This theme was more or less picked for me. I can’t take credit for that one.

2008 was the Year of Relationships, as you can clearly see in my blog (here, here, here and here). Having learned to survive, I went about learning how to survive with others. My relationships with men were all over the board as I tried to figure out what I wanted and who I was. My relationships with family and friends got some work also. I think this was a subconscious theme.

2009 was the Year of Finances. Honestly, this was the first year I set a resolute theme at the beginning of the year with an earnest desire to tackle it. I didn’t know how I was going to do it. I fumbled around with Quicken Online and heard about Mint.com and read I Will Teach You To Be Rich, but what ended up working for me was Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover. I didn’t get on board with it until May. But I didn’t give up on my finances because that theme hung over my head all year. I knew that there was an answer and having a theme, and not a specific resolution, helped me gather the research, feedback and experimentation I needed to find my answer.

How to pick a theme

The more my life becomes calm and healthy, the more the areas that need work seem to stick out. I’m not blessed with the kind of clarity in my life where I can just go, “Oh, I really need to work on my finances! I can see how this contributes to my other problems.” Yeah, I don’t have that.

So I sort of feel my way through my life, asking myself what feels bad, where do I feel negative emotion in my day, then trying to trace it back to the source. I felt awful when my bank account over-drafted for the billionth time. And oh, hey! That seems to come up a lot. Maybe I should work on that.

Ask yourself these questions:
- What is causing the most problems in my life?
- What is giving me the most chaos?
- What are the most inconvenient things happening?
- What seems to be happening over and over again even though I try not to?
- Where do I see a spike in negative emotion in my daily life?
- What would give me the most peace if I could find a solution for it?

If you’re having trouble picking between two (or three or four…), pick the one that’s solves the most problems. Last year I was trying to choose between the Year of Finances and the Year of Health & Fitness. When I made a list of the problems each would solve, the Finances Year solved a lot more problems, including some of my health problems (medical care is expensive, yo!).

What happens next…

The amazing thing about having a theme for your year is that it’s about changing your mindset toward a certain area of your life. You’ve decided to change some area of your life that you previously carried an attitude of indifference toward. Lots of things will change.

Take my 2009 Year of Finances for example: not only did I stop over-drafting my bank account (which could’ve been my short-sighted New Year’s Resolution), but I’ve paid off all my credit cards, survived meeting my hefty insurance deductible for health care (thanks to surgery), and stored away almost three months of living expenses in my savings account. And since I decided I needed an alternate stream of income, I started my first business and have a steady stream of clients. Year of Finances indeed!

Of course your theme can fail. The number one reason resolutions fail is because people aren’t committed to them in the first place. If you aren’t committed to your theme, then you won’t move on it.

Move forward with a positive attitude. Remember this is the year you will change your [finances/health/career/love life/insert theme here]!

The great thing is that area of your life will be forever changed, not just temporarily shifted. As I move into my 2010 theme, I don’t stop working on my finances. My attitude toward finances has been changed forever.

Wanna know my theme for 2010? Read the follow-up post here. What’s your theme for 2010?

Photo courtesy of Tojosan via Flickr.

Photo credit: Prosto Photos via Flickr.

For the first time in my life, at 26, I found myself single and with no home to go home to at Christmas. My parents had divorced and moved across the country to different states. My ex-boyfriend and I had split back in April and I was still getting my bearings after 8 months of sobriety. And to add just a little extra something of fun, my birthday is 10 days before Christmas.

Joy.

Christmas is always a rough time of the year for me. In 1998 my family suffered the sudden loss of two beloved family members at Christmas time, one the day after my birthday and the other on Christmas morning. It’s fair to say that we never really “celebrated” Christmas after that. The ornaments, stockings and trimmings never came out of the box in the attic again.

And for the first time in my life, I didn’t have the noise of someone else’s happily unaffected family gatherings to drown out the sadness. Nor did I have the comfort of alcohol to turn to. Not even a warm body to wake up next to on Christmas morning.

Holy crap. I was going to be alone on Christmas morning. For the first time in my life.

I leaned heavily on my mentor, whose advice surprised me. I, like so many other blog titles I’ve been reading this season, merely aspired to survive the holidays. To not feel so lonely. But she turned everything on its head, like she so often does.

“Savor it,” she said. “You may never be here again.”

Coming from someone with a husband of 10 years and two kids, I took her words to heart.

I may never be single again. I may never get to spend a Christmas alone again. I may never have the total command of my holidays to do whatever I wish with them again.

Needless to say, I was a little pissed to be there again the following year, but by then I had figured out how to enjoy my Christmas solo. As a matter of fact, I grew to love spending the holidays alone.

Do your favorite things.
I was surprised to find my local Starbucks open on Christmas Day, so I took full advantage. I rarely get to sit, carefree and unscheduled, in a café with my journal, headphones and latte, without anything else on my mind. Christmas gives us the freedom to do this, if only for one day, obligation-free.

Give yourself the gift of permission to do your favorite activities, free of schedules, obligations, and guilt.

Organize a meet-up.
Guess what? You’re not the only person in your city spending the holidays alone. My first Christmas solo I organized the first annual Sad Bastards Christmas dinner. OK, so it was only me and one other person at a greasy spoon, but it was fun and I made a new friend. I liked it so much that I also organized a Sad Bastards Valentine’s Day tweet-up the following year (there were a lot more attendees at that one). You don’t have to be alone if you don’t want to.

Help someone else.
There are tons of volunteer opportunities on Christmas Day. Even though I’m not alone this year, the boyfriend and I don’t really have anything to do on Christmas Day, no family gatherings or dinners, etc. so we’re going to volunteer feeding the homeless. In these tough economic times, it’s tough not to want to give of your time wherever you can to those who have had worse luck than you.

Cook something yummy.
It just wouldn’t feel like Christmas without something yummy. I’m not saying cook a whole turkey, but something small to make you feel like you’ve celebrated. Food can be a comfort, but it can also be a major downer. There’s just something slightly depressing about gnoshing on a turkey sub for your Christmas dinner.

Do something holiday-ish. Briefly.
I do have extended family in town, and while it’s not the same as spending the whole day with your parents and siblings, it’s still nice to spend an hour or two with them celebrating their Christmas. I keep it in small doses to ensure that I don’t get sad or mopey that I don’t have what they have this year.

Savor.
I’ll never forget my favorite moment of that first Christmas alone. The dreaded Christmas morning had come. I made a pot of coffee and poured a piping hot mug. I sat on my stoop outside, watching the wind blow the leaves off the maple tree, warming my hands on my mug, and savored that moment.

I was alone on Christmas and I might never be there again.

It began a year ago. One test lead to a biopsy, which in turn led to 3 months of waiting. Waiting to see if my body would “take care of it.” I ate healthy, exercised, didn’t drink or smoke, so the doctor blamed stress. I turned my life upside down in the quest for stress-free living.

Another biopsy. A surgery.

Fatigue, bone-wearying fatigue, the kind where you barely make it work every day and want nothing but sleep.

A test. Another biopsy, followed by a two-week lapse into the border on despair.

A visit to an internal specialist, a work-up, a second opinion, allergy testing. A surprise ending from the second opinion – there’s nothing to worry about, the first doctor’s approach was aggressive and had severely overtreated me.

Just like that. Release. A clean bill of health.

The soul-tired feeling fell away within a few days… it took some time to sink in, but once it did my heart felt so light. Finally, finally my shoulders relaxed. I think they had been hunched for months, the constant companion of sad and tired eyes.

The actual tired feeling, it turns out, is the result of chronic untreated allergies. I am allergic to dust mites, mold, cat hair, trees, soy and wheat. I started medication immediately.

It’s only been a day, but already the constant fog has lifted. I have energy. Energy I wondered if I would ever have again – energy to blog, to read, to talk, to do laundry – even after a full day of work.

I have energy.

It’s true that you don’t know how valuable things are until they are gone. The nights I would cry out of frustration and exhaustion were more and more frequent. I had, ironically, spent a year trying to figure out how to not pack my schedule, only to find somewhere in the middle that I couldn’t do what I had been used to doing even if I wanted to.

But now it’s back. I have energy.

And I get to start again. I can start from here.

Photo credit: basegreen via Flickr.

My first PSL of the season. I take it with soy.

It’s buttery. It savors heavily of nutmeg. And it’s only available a few months of the year.

I watch the wind blow outside with an overcast sky where there’s usually baking sunlight. Never mind that it’s still in the 90s with 100% humidity. Today is the first day of September. And it’s the first day of pumpkin spice latte season. A big deal for coffee-lovers everywhere.

Every year on September 1^st, Starbucks rolls out its premier fall latte. It’s only around until January or so (I think). Anyone who is a fan of the PSL (that’s an industry term) gets word of the release and is certain to celebrate with their own as soon as humanly possible.

I’m not sure what it is about the PSL that drives other lovers to rush out on September 1 to partake, but for me it signals the return of my favorite season, as well as something much bigger.

Like so many other driven busy-bodies, I have a hard time slowing down and taking in my surroundings, enjoying the day for what it is, and truly being in the moment. Except when I sit down with a hot pumpkiny latte.

For example, I’m sitting in a Starbucks right now. And despite my recent health problems, some seriously active allergies and an uncertain 3-6 months ahead of me, all I seem to notice is the buttery, spicy latte at my side, the Smiths on my headphones, and the grayness of the sky.

What’s your pumpkin spice latte?

From Lantzilla via Flickr.

One hopes to never get disappointing or shocking news, but life is difficult. We’re often dealt more than we think we can handle and are seldom equipped with the right tools to do so. At least, that’s been my experience. We can spend a lot of time spinning our wheels and engaging in unhelpful activities. All we really want after a while is to move on. Here’s how I deal with the first stages of a crisis and get to a place where I can begin actually dealing with the problem.

Note: For those who read my blog, you know that I underwent a surgery I thought would put an end to this year’s health problems. Last week I got word that it didn’t and that I could be in for a longer process than I thought. While it’s not serious, it’s emotionally stressful. I went through all kinds of emotions and wrote all kinds of blog posts. Finally, I realized the only advice I could rightfully give is how to survive the first days of shock and how to move out of it, because that’s what I wanted to read.

Let it out.
It’s natural to be upset, disappointed, angry, frustrated and/or shocked. I was all of these things. I spent pretty much the first four hours oscillating between anger and tears. I always know I’m going to go through this, so I just let it come. This isn’t a stage to short-cut. It will come out sooner or later, and it’s been my experience that later is worse.

Make the space to regroup.
You can’t just jump back into life and work like nothing’s going on, as tempting as it is. In my case, I got my bad news at the end of the day so I took the following day off. I needed the opportunity to get enough sleep, move at a natural pace through my morning and deal with any leftover emotions from the previous day.

Fill up your cup.
While I’m not religious, I believe that we all have a spiritual aspect to ourselves. I tend to think that we have spiritual reservoirs in which we make deposits and withdrawals. After a big withdrawal, it’s necessary to make some deposits. I call this “filling up my cup.” I spend time with family, watch a funny movie (laughter is a high-dollar deposit in my book), read meditation books, and hang around people who I think really have the life thing figured out. I always walk away from them feeling like they’ve rubbed off a little bit.

Process. Process. And process some more.
Emotions are flying, stress hormones abound. I’ve never been able to get a hold on a single sensible idea for more than 10 minutes when something like this happens. After every emotion possible has run out, then start processing them. Examine each emotion individually. There’s usually more than one factor playing into your emotional state. For me, anxiety over my job and leftover emotions from my past were showing up around the real problem. Separate your emotions out, deal with the ones you need to. I can toss out the job anxiety and regrets from my past. They don’t need to be here right now. It’s much easier to deal with one thing at a time.

Research. Ask questions.
Research does not equal Googling your condition. Good lord, no. If you want to send yourself to the padded cell, go for it. Find a legitimate source and start researching your options. Talk to a professional in the field and ask questions. It took me 5 days to ask my doctor what the heck all this meant. From there, I could start researching.

There’s a comfort in knowing. Fear of getting an answer we don’t want to hear can keep us from asking. It doesn’t make the answer any less true, unfortunately. Knowing exactly where I’m at allows me to figure out where I’m going. Think about it: if you asked me for directions to my house, my first question would be “where are you coming from?”

Make a battle plan.
I like the phrase “battle plan” because it suggests you are planning for a fight. And that connotes that you aren’t about to give up and let life steamroll you. This makes me feel empowered, as opposed to overpowered.

Start with the things that you can control. For me, it’s exercise, diet, and stress levels. So my battle plan pertains to those things. If you set yourself up to battle something you can’t control, you will lose in so many ways.

Detail your battle plan on paper. In what ways are you going to attack your situation? What are the things that can take a back seat in your life for a while? Who can you trust for good support? In my case, I write down my diet, my exercise schedule, and how I’m going to reduce stress. It’s important to write it down because at some point you’ll say either “I’ve got this down, I don’t need help” or “screw it, it’s not working anyway.” Been there, done that. It doesn’t work. If you’ve got it, you’ll forget it, and if you think it’s not working, then you should reevaluate, not throw it away.

Make a plan for when you lose your head again. You will probably become an emotional mess again at some point, so write down the process by which you got out of it this time (like this post!) so you can refer to it later. Write down the things that made you feel better (family, funny movies, coffee with friends) and the things that didn’t (isolating, eating comfort food, imagining the worst). When you are emotionally stressed, it’s easier to follow some self-tested steps than trying to figure it out all over again.

A friend of mine says that if you aren’t moving forward, you’re moving backward. At the very least, remember to keep moving forward.

I sat next to my mom on the beach and considered how similar we were in regards to career drive and ambition. It was Mother’s Day, and I was five days post-surgery. We were sitting on the seawall because I wouldn’t make it up and down the stairs to the sand. Technically I wasn’t supposed to even be walking yet, but I needed to get out of the apartment.

I buried my feet in the sand and thought about what she was suggesting. “All I’m saying, Holly,” she said, “is that you might want to take it a little easy. Maybe you just slow down this year. Don’t make any big changes. Don’t move, don’t change jobs, don’t start any companies, don’t take on anything extra besides work. Just be for a while.”

Who wouldn’t want to be told to do less, I wondered. Who wouldn’t want the opportunity to be lazy? And there it was. Right there. Lazy. Kicking ass at a full-time professional job, being in a wonderful committed relationship, writing two blogs, and founding a professional organization is lazy? I’ve always pushed myself to be more, better, faster. If I wasn’t the only person doing it, I’d better be the youngest person doing it. If younger people were doing it, I was doing more.

I’ve been teetering back and forth on whether or not the women in my family have bodies that are just not equipped to handle stress, or if we put an extraordinary amount of stress on ourselves which affects our bodies. Two of my aunts have battled cancer, breast and brain. My mother was emitted to the E.R. with chest pains for the first time at 42. The pre-cancerous cells my surgery and biopsy had revealed were most likely the result of stress, my doctor warned me in her office.

I had my first nervous breakdown as a high school junior. I was working part-time, volunteering in an at-risk school, going to school full-time, taking 4 Advanced Placement courses, and taking a night class at the local college. I crumpled like a ball in the living room when my mom scolded me over the laundry. It didn’t really slow me down though. By my senior year I was going to the local college full-time in place of high school classes, with the same extracurricular schedule. Who was I if not all those things – a star student, an impressive application/ resume, a good employee, a girl on the make?

So maybe that’s why I wasn’t surprised when my doctor eyed my chart after the second round of biopsies and said that the past three months of low-stress living hadn’t made a difference. Hadn’t I spent most of those three months stressing out about how to maintain my immense checklist of “low-stress” things to do? Wasn’t it only the last few weeks where I let myself go to whatever the results were, left it in Something Larger’s hands?

One painful, frightening surgery later (which I had um, postponed by a month so I could launch a professional organization), I sat next to my equally driven mother and took her words of advice. She knew. She was still pushing and climbing at 50. “It’s always there,” she said of ambition. “It’ll be there in a year.”

Who am I if not a ladder-climbing employee, a twenty-something entrepreneur, a moonlighting freelancer, The Person in Town Who Knows About That, a woman on the make?

I guess I’m a woman taking it easy.

Tempering my ambition and drive is something I’ve got to figure out in my life, otherwise this thing, this cancer is just going to keep coming up. And the risks are just too great to ignore.

And while I made up my mind on the beach that day, it wasn’t until today I had to act on it. I turned down a $500/mo. freelance gig. And it was in a type of work that I love and have wanted to do more of. I even initially agreed, but backed out after a long talk with my boyfriend and lots of prayerful contemplation this weekend. It was probably one of the hardest things, besides the surgery, I’ve had to do this year.

My greatest fear in giving up this year to maintaining the life I already have is that I will miss out on something, some opportunity, some chance, some big life-changing event. Then I realize that I just went through the life-changing event. I came head-to-head with so many fears over the six months I endured biopsies, waiting periods, immune system boosters, and surgery. In the end, if I don’t learn how to slow down and enjoy what I’ve built, I’ll miss out on so much more.