Monday, November 24, 2008

Grateful For Commas

I lost my job last week. No way, you say. Unfortunately, yes way. Simply put, our company went through an acquisition and the new organization doesn’t have room for everyone. To be fair, I was offered to stay on for the remainder of the year and as well as an equitable severance package.

I will miss my friends, which includes both my colleagues and clients. I’m in the telecommunications field, and there are no two carriers alike which in turn has made my job challenging and interesting both from a technical and business perspective. The variety of people I’ve met has taught me valuable lessons in working with different personalities and abilities. I’ve had to become more patient, knowing when to push and when to back off, as not everything happens in the way or timeframe I always want them to.

The telecom industry has been and continues to be a male-dominated field. I say that strictly from a gender perspective. Early on in my career I took an advanced training class in a specific area of technology, and I was the lone female. More recently I spoke to a group of clients at one of our user group meetings, and I was once again the only woman. Countless times I’ve been in meetings or spoken to larger audiences, the percentage of women has rarely risen above 1%.

Though the ratios continue to give the Equal Employment folks nightmares, I’ve never been treated any differently than my male counterparts – including career advancement as well as compensation. In fact when I left a previous position, I was fairly certain I was the highest compensated engineer, male or female, out of more than 300 engineers in our organization. I’ve worked as hard as my male counterparts to earn high marks among my peers and have what I’ve affectionately termed “good coin” - credibility - with all my clients. Clearly it’s been a fun and rewarding ride.

The equity ownership I had in my company is now defunct, a logical outcome of being acquired in the current economic climate. Last week I was joking with my stepmom that all 262,000 shares I owned would be worth more now as 262,000 squares of toilet paper :). We lightly commiserated about our investments and I noted that while my chances of accumulating some wealth through company ownership have been put on hold, at least our investments, though down, still have decimal points and more importantly commas behind them.

Sitting at dinner that night another thought bubbled up in my mind. If a person’s life is seen as a sentence, it would seem that each chapter or major change in life could be considered a comma, marked by the inevitable period or death at the end. In a sense, I consider losing my job to be a comma - a pause or break in the sentence of my life, not at all The End.

I didn’t always feel this way. I’ve lost a job before and at the time it indeed felt like a death. After the initial shock and subsequent sobbing was over with, I fell into a state of apathy as if nothing else mattered but the roots I had put down in my job that had been suddenly and involuntarily pulled up. I had lived a conservative lifestyle, well within my means, so it was not a money thing. Rather, I had to admit that nearly my entire identity was wrapped up in my job and to lose it so abruptly meant I lost who I was as well. No comma for me back then; though my body continued to live, it clearly felt like a period that signaled the end of my sentence or value as a person.

These days I’ve come to understand that one must live for a cause greater than oneself. Though I gain great joy from cultivating and using the wonderful gifts and talents I’ve been given, they are no longer the foundation of who I am. My view has shifted considerably from “playing Gameboy sittin’ in the middle of the Grand Canyon” (as Steven Curtis Chapman so cleverly sings :)) to deriving my identity from the One who made the Grand Canyon.

If I get wrapped up in the penalties of losing my job, I think about God who gave up His rightful position in heaven and pierced our world in the form of Jesus Christ - a man who lived a perfect and sinless life, and in the end was abandoned by his friends, unjustly accused, and finally died a humiliating and excruciating death – all to pay a debt I could not pay on my own. No job loss compares to that kind of love - “…that a man would lay down his life for his friends…” (John 15:13)

Believing this in my heart stretches my perspective on life well beyond the 80-something years I may spend in this body. The implications are huge. It turns not only a job loss but my entire life into a comma. Though the body I Iive in today will someday perish, my life is far from over – eternity stretches out before me, wildly more beautiful than I could possibly imagine, so that even bodily death becomes not a period but just another comma.

In all our job losses, rollercoaster investments, and even squares of toilet paper, I’m grateful for commas :).

Monday, November 3, 2008

The Perfect Storm - STL Half Marathon Race Report

With an exuberant finish at Sunday’s St. Louis Half-Marathon, my 2008 racing season has officially come to a close. To be honest I have mixed feelings about it. What athlete doesn’t? On the one hand I am GLAD to be able to sleep past 5am, worry less about finding a pool when I travel, take a hiatus from the two-a-day workout schedules, and revel in being able to stay awake past 8:30pm (even on weekends). The most trying (and possibly amusing for family and friends to watch) was the constant need to eat and subsequent feeling of not being satisfied. (A friend at church has a t-shirt that says “Always Hungry” and at one point I was breaking the 10th Commandment – I was seriously coveting the shirt! :)). I could (and did sometimes) go all day grazing from the fridge or my briefcase, depending on what city I happened to be in that week. One night at home I was so tired of having dinner and a dessert (always chocolate-something) and not feeling “full” that I took an entire box of miniature peanut butter cups and simply sat on the couch watching CSI, eating them slowly, pausing for a few minutes to take it in, then resuming – just to see how many I could eat before it was too much.

30 cups later I was done - like a turkey in the oven - but at least I found the end of the rope :).

All joking aside, to do all of the above for 10 months straight is not only physically draining but takes its toll mentally as well. Coach Jen has repeatedly explained to me the mark of a class-act athlete is recognizing downtime to recharge is equally important, if not more so, as the all-out laser focus demands of training and racing.

On the other hand, a small part of me is already thinking about 2009 and the fun out there waiting like a good friend of many years. There are endless races to choose from, and 2 of the 3 A-races on my calendar will be new venues for me, places I’ve never raced. I can hardly wait…really…

This past Sunday was what I call The Perfect Storm. I’m fit from racing all season, leaner than I’ve ever been in my life (this year I took off 9 lbs from my 135lb frame and now weigh what I did in my 20s, except I have wads more tone thanks to swimming 10-12K yards/week), the weather was an outstanding 50F and sunny, I knew the course, and Daylight Savings was ending Saturday night giving me a rare extra hour of sleep the night before the race. It didn’t get any better than that.

We woke up early and drove a whopping 15 minutes to the race site, where I picked up my number and walked back to the car to get ready. I warmed up 2 miles, listened to my Fave Five tunes, prayed earnestly out of gratitude and for a safe and strong race, visualized my finish repeatedly, and finally walked to the Start.

The gun went off and I executed on my plan to run conservatively the first 3 miles. The entire course was hilly, some of them lonnnnnngg. I didn’t care about everyone around me, how fast/slow they were running. I just saw the ground and upcoming mile markers and stayed focused on the plan to leave it all out there, like a fuel gauge slowing running down to Empty. Because it was the last race of the season, the goal was to finish feeling like I couldn’t take another step. Immediately following the Finish is an entire week of NOTHING – no swimming, biking, running, bricks, track workouts, intervals, Masters, NOTHING. Just REST and possibly another week of NOTHING after that :).

I felt great until Mile 7 when fatigue in my legs, ankles really, began to set in. It was hard to keep going but the visualization of finishing, my mantra of being “fireproof” (not blowing up), and knowing it would be terribly difficult but gutting it out anyway – all of that is woven into the fabric of who I am -- and the entire challenge spurred me on.

The last 2.5 miles had some small plateaus but were mostly uphill. I remembered walking this portion of the course when I ran this same race 8 years ago at the age of 36.

Not today. Although very challenging, I dug deep and ran on legs that felt like stilts to the Finish where from 100 feet away I could see Steve waving. I forgot all about the pain and fatigue, and sprinted to the Finish where I promptly lifted the wrong leg for the volunteer to remove my timing chip :).

It was all I had left but I finished in exactly the same time as the spring race and on a more difficult course. I was thrilled.

Time to hang up the shoes, the swimsuit, and the bike for a couple weeks and REST.

It was a fantastic year, and I learned a TON. I’m amazed I’m still getting fitter and faster at 44 years old. I know this won’t be the case forever, but for now…

…I’ll take it :).

Good night everyone!