The Motherhood Society

I'd like to apologize for the tardiness of this post but I was delayed by 1) my laptop battery gave up the ghost and 2) I discovered Twin Peaks on Netflix.

I really connected with Kelly's book on a personal level in Chapter 6. This was a chapter for me and it opened with a line of relief "... the delight and dedication which is motherhood. This is a secret society which words cannot touch, but the heart holds dear." Since I have felt my child moving around, I realized how special pregnancy is. Even those who put their hand on my belly at just the right moment couldn't understand the sensation of an internal kick. This was a time when she is active and moving and alive and only I could hold her and experience her. Her kicks and jabs were between us, like a little secret and this little secret could only be understood by other women who have gone through pregnancy. Naturally, I thought I was jumping the gun and over thinking this into something way more magical than it was. (After all, statistically speaking, how many women are mothers?) Sitting at my kitchen counter at 4 AM eating a spelt pita with almond butter, reading Chapter 6, I smiled. No, I'm right on the money, motherhood from the get go is truly unique and magical! Kelly Cutrone said so.

The funny thing about pregnancy - and I've heard other women say this as well as Kelly - is that you actually get hit on MORE by men around you. It happens absolutely everywhere and it's not guys just being nice to a pregnant lady. This is independent of weight gain, a wedding band or your skin/hair/boob reaction to hormonal changes. Men are attracted to moms-to-be. My boss attributed this phenomenon to pregnancy being the ultimate 'can't have' that makes men want to work even harder to get this woman's attention. I say that men can smell the estrogen and are inevitably attracted to pregnant women who are filled with it. But if men are driven by the instinct to procreate, it's like "Dude, you realize you can't get me any more pregnant, right?"

I think an important point to disclose is that this child was very much planned and I've had a few "false starts" for no apparent reason. So since this one stuck around, I like to think that I'm a little more dedicated to ensuring a healthier pregnancy. For example, I don't eat fast food or sweets and I actually let my trainer sell me on making this pumpkin & flax mug cake that tastes exactly like flax. (I'm only up 20 lbs, yay!) Beyond diet and exercise, watching several delivery videos and fending off suitors lusting after my hormones, I've been thinking a lot about how to raise my child to be a good human being, with a strong work ethic and love for the arts, athletics, nature and world travel, who aims high and is a healthy, productive member of society without projecting my own unfulfilled dreams on her. I mean really, that's all I want.

My mother likes to say that children are simply guests passing through and will choose their own path. In the first episode of Kell on Earth, Kelly echoes the sentiment saying that as a mother to her child she is just "babysitting her for God."

Before I get into my dilemma, I want to make something clear. I don't like to be called a "control freak" - I prefer the term "control enthusiast." After all, everyone needs a hobby right? So as much as I believe in just doing your best, I need to make sure that my best is good enough.

In his stand up special (also on Netflix - see a pattern here?) Weirdo, Childish Gambino/Donald Glover says that there are two things that make a good person: empathy and sympathy. Yes, that hits the nail right on the head! However, in a competitive, self-centered society that has overused the words "depressed" and "stressed" to the point of suspicion, I find these particularly difficult to teach. There are just so many forces pushing from both sides: from the fast food industry paddling corn syrup to the government paddling relaxed food standards, the revealing fashion trends offset by a dose of slut shaming, the judgmental cash hungry shark culture at odds with the clan of entitled mediocrity.

What I mean is striking a balance for survival. I don't want my daughter to lose faith in the world when she learns about war and hunger and rape and racism/sexism and disease and lack of indictments for certain police officers. But I also want her to understand that these things exist, that she can and should work to improve them and that on the aggregate, her life is awesome. I want her to be competitive, hardworking and confident without being cruel and arrogant. I'd like for her to embrace her femininity on her own terms, without it becoming her best selling point. She should be able to eat one brownie, enjoy it and go on with her day. I want her to make a contribution to the world but not feel like she owes something to everyone. I'd like for her to cry if she has to go outside but not hold everything in, waiting to freak out when someone spills juice. She should listen and try to help people, but also have a bull shit filter and not become a gullible doormat.

I don't want it to seem like I have anxiety over this. I don't. This is something that I think about a lot because I like to plan. I know I'll have to cut the metaphorical umbilical cord and that I won't be able to hold her hand as she walks through everything. She'll have to be an independent person making her own choices, I get that. But if God has blessed me with membership to this secret society, with this special little human being to watch over, how do I make sure I'm not a shit babysitter?

Spirits & Spirituality

I've had a running joke with my friends that "I don't believe in atheists." I like to think that this is an original line but it's really my take on "There are no atheists in the foxhole." What I really mean is that when things are out of someone's control, especially when imminent danger is involved, they pray to God/Goddess/the Universe/the Divine. They never actually lack belief, it is just buried under a lack of experience. In moments of distress, we realize that we need a connection to the greater power but this is true for all times, not just when things go really, really badly.

If you step back for a second - something I suggest everyone does regularly - you can appreciate the care that went into writing a bad-ass book entitled If You Have to Cry Go Outside and including chapters on spirituality. Even the wisest of go-getters forget their spiritual self on a journey of professional success. Most opt for back-to-back nights of binge drinking, clubbing and shopping. As hard as they try to make the most of their 20s in the most conventional, Hollywood teen comedy way, most don't take the time to check in with themselves to see if their choices actually make them happy, and instead emerge empty and burn-out on their job. They simply don't bother pursuing spiritually nourishing experiences. Worship at the altar of superficial desires is a short, exhausting service.

I knew that someone as accomplished as Kelly would have some sort of spiritual routine, likely integrated into her daily life. Most successful people do. One of the executives at my old company, with a reputation for being cutthroat, once told me in the elevator that he started every day with a glass of white wine and an hour long yoga session. He said it has kept him sane through decades of volatility in the commodities markets. What he gained from his spiritual practice of choice trickled down to his workday behaviours. Having a little space for spiritual rejuvenation in your day, in whatever format jives with you, is the best advice least given.

When I started reading the chapter The Truth Hurts: When Did Spiritual Becomes Equated with Nice? I expected Kelly to advise abandonment of all religions for the same reason Christopher Hitchens did. They lead to conflict, oppression of minorities and disrupt social and economic progress. It was heartwarming to know that Kelly instead suggests exploring all religions (organized or not) and drawing from them a wisdom to build your own spiritual experience. We tend to believe that organized religion is for our grandparents and is usually practiced on a fixed day of the week at a predetermined location. Religion isn't about what happens after we die but how we live. I do believe that all religions are worth exploring from that perspective but if we are forging unique personal and professional paths, why shouldn't our spiritual experiences be tailor made?

I believe that a connection with the Divine, by whichever one of those names you want to call it, is an essential part of maintaining your humanity. The Divine wants to connect with you as much as you want to connect with it and likely even more. I never lashed out at an intern or analyst, I never told off my boss, I never slammed the phone and I never cried in the office (you'd be shocked at how many people in high ranking positions do all of those in a day!) and all the while I did excellent work. I give full credit to spiritual experiences that created within me a divine connection to which I could retreat in times of trouble.

What I am striving to describe here is Kelly's step #8 to starting your own religion: "Incorporate conscious contact with the Divine into your daily life." Instead of attending organized worship, I sought out experiences that brought me closer to the Divine and expanded my social stamina (read: kept me sane). Before I even graduated, I went on a six month exchange to a school in Norway just so I could live among the fjords. While working in Toronto, I went to theatre productions and my friend's inspirational stand up comedy shows (Words to Laugh By). When I could work out of the office on the weekend, I spent hours on my laptop hammering out client presentations and press releases in the rooms of the Art Gallery of Ontario surrounded by prized paintings. You can find little sanctuaries for yourself without leaving town.

On vacation, I opted for natural experiences. One year, I swam with sharks in the Bahamas. I've been to Kauai three times (twice alone, once on my honeymoon, and I can't wait to go again) and every time I dedicate a day to a very wet four mile hike along the Na'Pali coast ending in a freezing dip in the Hanakapi'ai waterfall. The first vacation my husband and I took together was to the Cayman Islands. There we went scuba diving 100 ft below surface to hang off the North Wall, a 25,000 ft drop straight down into the ocean. These were the moments when I felt closest to God and that closeness translated into strength to handle my job, my family and tragic world events with composure. It set a standard for how I treated people and how I expected them to treat me. It recharged my battery and gave me the energy to be a better, more patient person to those whom I loved and gave me the courage to part ways with those who simply drained me.

What my generation forgets is the importance of doing the things that make you happy as opposed to things that make you an object of envy. If it doesn't involve immediate benefit in form of material goods, attention from the opposite sex and/or attaining sense of superior status to their peers, it's not worth the time. But my peers leave these moments feeling even more drained and even less fulfilled in their daily lives. I hope my daughter constructs her own unique spiritual haven, in whatever form it is, and learns early that individuals can weather many storms if they have a space for personal calm.

Deciphering the Chaos

"9 to 5, for service and devotion / You would think that I / Would deserve a fat promotion / Want to move ahead / But the boss won't seem to let me / I swear sometimes that man is out to get me" - Dolly Parton, 9 to 5

"Chaos is ordered yet undeciphered" - Jose Saramago

I had every intention to focus my next post on the spiritual discussion (the notion of starting your own religion) in Kelly's book - it hit home, almost as much as the motherhood chapter. But current events got the better of me and I decided that a more natural topic would be young people in the workplace.

All the outrage on Canadiana Twitter these days is the suggestion by Stephen Poloz, the governor of the Bank of Canada, that unemployed youth should consider unpaid internships as a means of progressing their career path if paid options are unavailable. (The full article can be found here.) Although I recognize that some employers do ruthlessly take advantage of labour, I also know that new hires have a tendency to abuse trusting, brave and kind employers.

Over the course of my official workplace career, I've encountered about 10 interns/early stage hires. One or two were fantastic, and the rest were terrible. Three things that unified them all, without exception, was that they had great resumes, top notch academic accomplishments and incredible interviewing skills. We always followed an extensive screening process, including several rounds of interviews, checking references, searching candidates on Facebook and seeing who we had in common on LinkedIn to do more snooping. Literally everyone we hired blew us out of the water. That is, until they started.

Once offers were made and contracts were signed, most decided the hard part was over. Mind you, these were paid three-month internships, at a rate of $50K/year. Usually, these were individuals in their 3rd year of a four year undergrad program. (That's right, none of them had a degree yet!) Over 100 applications would come for each position. We treated our interns well and their duties included anything from getting us dinner (a blessing to leave the office to go for a walk) to updating databases to doing research. It was real world experience to develop essential skills in a very competitive field, with potential for full-time placement or, at the very least, a nice reference and filled white space on a resume.

For me, Poloz's comments echo those of Kelly Cutrone's in If You Have to Cry, Go Outside - and neither of them is being cruel, demeaning or arrogant. The truth of the matter is, young people are generally useless. But they are useless because they are young and inexperienced. I haven't even touched on the fact that they are naive, entitled and can't function without a clear cut path to success, preferably in textbook format. These are the bright ones who can write a flawless resume and don't stumble in interviews!

I admit that I was useless for about the first three months of full-time work. However, I humbly recognized it and made the most of this paid learning experience and that is probably how I didn't get laid-off that December (even when my five month severance package wouldn't have filled a change purse). If a co-worker was doing something new and I had nothing on my plate, I would ask to observe and get a walk through. If I had a quiet moment, I would update databases with information we would need for our clients or teach myself then-complicated Excel formulas that have made my work more efficient and my life generally easier. I would walk around and ask my seniors for help or if there was anything I could get started on. My friends who have succeeded in their fields have done the same. On top of that, we were explicitly grateful to our colleagues for their patience and taking the time to teach.

I have yet to see this phenomenon with most interns. I have the same problems with new hires as Kelly describes with staff in her book. None of them were the first in the office, none of them were the last to leave, none of them asked for more work or took the time to teach themselves anything. Instead, they opted for Reddit and Facebook at every quiet opportunity or texted whoever. When given simple tasks - you know, the ones that still have to be done right because they go into a presentation for our paying client - they would act like it was beneath them and actually grunt at the work. In short, they didn't take their jobs seriously. What are you getting paid for again? 

For those reasons alone, I find the outrage over Poloz's comments completely delusional. "How dare someone suggest that I learn for free?" His suggestion was a kick in the pants and a healthy dose of tough love, which is exactly what my generation needs to complement mantles filled with participation trophies. A great chunk of new grads are not resourceful, not fast learner and not self starters despite what their resume says. If they're willing to pay huge tuition to acquire non-transferable knowledge, why isn't working for free a fair suggestion if they get a chance to develop some valuable skills?

I admit, I've never had to have an unpaid internship but that was only because I was creative and resourceful enough to secure paid ones. My first summer gig, after 2nd year, was at the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and it happened because I developed an online product for them that was actually implemented (and is used by many personal clients to this day). That led to contact in the innovation team and then the HR team, resulting in a summer job. When the economy is in chaos and blasting your CV at every recruiter in your desired field isn't working, your first step to proving that you're a pay cheque worthy candidate is creating your own alternative strategy. 

As an expectant mom, of course Kelly's chapters on her hires and this ludicrous response to a reasonable suggestion make me think first and foremost how I will parent my daughter. Why are so many young people turning out to be such terrible members of the workforce? Is it the quality of the teachers? Or is it the school system, which also produces these teachers? Why are these kids so prone to saying things like "Well, no one taught me this" or "I don't know how to do this, so someone else should"? Why has no one taught them to anticipate, to have a sense of urgency, to want to do things before graduation? How do I teach this to my daughter? 

Kelly's chapters on having incompetent interns who all came from amazing schools and had great backgrounds made me consider home schooling. When I read the response to Poloz's words, I started researching home schooling requirements in Ontario. We all know that the work place can be chaotic and if you're going to go big and go far, as most young people have told themselves they will after hearing The Places You Will Go read at graduation, you have to be able to not only navigate but thrive in chaos. Structured workplace lesson plans don't exist in the real world and the training wheels come off almost immediately.

I've asked my parents how I turned out not to be an entry-level failure but they shrug and say things like "We got lucky." So far my husband has suggested that around age three, we leave our daughter stranded in a park and go hide behind a tree and see if she can find her way back to a predetermined meeting spot. Aside from artificial abandonment, how do I teach my daughter to decipher chaos and feel comfortable with lack of structure? How do I teach her to work hard without anyone standing over her shoulder? How do I make her proactive?

I decided long ago that I don't care what my daughter does for a living, whether she's a surgeon or a make-up artist, as long as she makes the world a better place and she strives to be the best in her field. How do I instill in her the notions of give and take: you give your all to get results and for that, not for your presence, you take a paycheque? How do I teach her not to settle and continue to push her boundaries with curiosity and will power? 

Kelly's book was meant to be an inspiration for young women making it in the world but I am at a point where I will have to inspire a young woman. (Great job, Cutrone, a parenting book and an inspiration for a generation all in one!) Instilling these values in your child has to start at day one and that's coming up.

I worry a lot that she won't be a warrior. I don't want to be a helicopter parent and I definitely never want to physically hit her. But I want her to learn that paths to following your dreams are not always easy, that the world is results driven and no one gives As for effort. How do I balance it with letting her be herself? How do I decipher the chaos of motherhood in this era?

Don't Be a Statistic - Statistics Don't Matter

The very first chapter of If You Have to Cry, Go Outside captivated me. If you've ever read any sort of memoir (including this blog), you'll know how rare it is for the writer to start off by instilling confidence in the reader. While many say that Kelly's honesty is brutal and 'mean', I find it to be a rare brand of authentic encouragement. "I advise you to stop sharing your dreams with people who try to hold you back, even if they're your parents. Because, if you're the kind of person who senses there's something out there for you beyond whatever it is you're expected to do - if you want to be extra-ordinary - you will not get there by hanging around a bunch of people who tell you you're not extraordinary."

That's special. No honestly, no one ever tells you this straight up. It's bold. It also made me realize how special my life had been to be surrounded by so few "nasty, negative naysayers." I describe my parents as liberal hippies who took the pragmatic route because they had a baby so early. They supported me in trying everything: space camp, karate, my first short film, French lessons,European travel, quitting my job, getting married to a guy outside of my culture whom I dated for eight months, writing/directing/producing a play and, now, having a baby. They ultimately set a standard for me to naturally weed out negative people in my life.

In high school, I became a film junkie. So when I told my parents that I had found a film production summer camp at 16, they were thrilled. Film camp at Toronto's Centre for the Arts was run by a man named John Boylan, an accomplished theatre director and acting coach, all around nice guy and probably the only person I will openly name on this blog. Film camp covered various facets of film production and was staffed by local actors, short film producers, editors and technical specialists who simultaneously worked on productions in the city. After film camp was over, I joined Centre for the Arts' Youth Group and that winter we filmed my only short film called Prey. I wrote the script based on Crime & Punishment, a novel I read for school that really impressed me. Once production was finished, I thought it was over reaching but it premiered at a screening to rave reviews.

One day, John and I were sitting around and he asked me what I had planned to do after graduation. I told him that I really loved film and I was thinking of going to the film studies program at Ryerson University. Although the rest of the university is fairly unknown internationally, the film studies program had a fair number of successful alumni - among them Vadim Perelman, the director of The House of Sand and Fog, a movie I had fallen in love with. But, I told John, it was a long shot. Film studies was a tiny program (something like 20) and highly competitive and the acceptance rate was around 5%.

His response was simple. "So what?" So what? So what if I don't get in? "Don't think like that. Just get in. Just be on the people who gets in. Get that in your head. Who cares about the acceptance rates? Just focus on being part of the 5%." He shrugged his shoulders. This was his solution. Problem solved.

To learn such an important lesson at 16 and to be reminded of it (almost exactly) 10 years later by Kelly's opening chapter, is probably one of my greatest blessings. I'm all for "doing the math" and keeping budgets, tracking spending, all the works. But fixating on how the odds are not in your favour will get you nowhere, very fast.

Since then, I've learned that the bigger the risk I take, the bigger my reward. I graduated in a recession and the attitude I adopted, to focus on the positive, helped me get not one, but two job offers in a quickly shrinking field. Odds were steeply against me and I just didn't care. I went for it and I got what I wanted. (My parents were not pleased with my decision to go into banking and considered it selling the freedom of youth for security and money.)

After I had quit my job, I ventured into theatre and three days before the debut of my play Happy Foods at the Toronto Fringe Festival this year, I fired my lead actor for not having memorized his lines. (I know, I know, I should've come down on him earlier but he was a friend and I was being nice.) The day before I let him go, I met another actor through a friend and he said he could have all his lines down pat in two days. Our mutual friend confirmed that this actor had what we considered to be a God given memorization gift.

He later explained to me that a healthy brain can retain anything repeated three times and that the only thing preventing this was the barrier we setup for ourselves (and others). Indeed, opening night went without a hitch. The rest of my cast was in awe. He actually memorized my entire play in 48 hours and we had a full day of rehearsals. (To boot, he told me that he can't do this with just anything, only scripts he finds interesting and exciting!) How about that for it being "all in your head"?

Thank you Kelly, for reminding me to ignore the negative words and disheartening numbers and that focusing on averages will only keep you average.

I Didn't Cry So I Could Stay Inside

I developed a habit of watching YouTube videos while getting ready in the morning. It was sometime in December, just before Christmas, and I stumbled upon the first episode of Kell on Earth online. (I know Kelly isn't a big fan of how the show turned out but it spoke to my professional side.) My company was going through restructuring and we dropped a lot of sector coverage and laid off a lot of employees. En fait, my high school friend and I remained as the "juniors" to support an army of VPs and Managing Directors.

If you've ever watched Suits or Wolf of Wall Street you probably think you've got the finance world all figured out. You don't but neither does anyone stepping into the finance world. Some try to describe it as "work hard, play hard." It's true, except 99% of the emphasis should be on the working hard part, 100 hours per week hard. So hard that one year, for over a week, I would stumble home at 11PM with unwashed hair, head-to-toe in Lululemon and get take-out dinner from a very nice restaurant on the ground floor of my apartment building. On Saturday, I was grabbing my daily dose of tuna tartar and, as the take-out girl was giving me my brown paper bag, she softly said "Um, we're closed tomorrow, are you going to be OK?" For her, I had shattered investment banking stereotypes.

When I started work, fresh out of university with my degree in hand, I got only two pieces of advice:
"Don't Panic." - Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
"Hit 'Save' on your Excel a lot." - My boss

So there I am, laptop open, Kell on Earth loaded, make-up kit laid out before me, watching a dark haired PR maven dissect the most vital lessons of my world in a 45 minute episode. Now I put them in simple word format.

Lessons I learned from the first episode of Kell on Earth
You're going to war - no, seriously, it's actually a war
Once you wrap your head around the amount of money you're dealing with and just how much depends on lowly junior analyst you, you realize it's actually a war. No, for real, people have gone to war over smaller sums of money than I was dealing with on a daily basis. I didn't have time to complain about not being taught something. If I wasn't trained, it's my fault that I didn't create an opportunity to learn. I was surrounded by brilliant, hardworking people. Better yet, I got paid $130K my first year on the job (this figure is the street standard). That's a ton of cash! I was earning this money and I was paid to be perfect. It made me feel like a courageous adult and I acted like one. You don't have to love money, but you do have respect it.

If you have to cry, go outside
It's a cruel notion men in high stress industries have about women and crying. It makes them seem weak and since women are, to these men, weaker and less worthy of their positions, they will ultimately cry. Years later Sheryl Sandberg would write in Lean In that crying in the office made her seem more human and vulnerable. F-that! (I'm going to be someone's mom soon - my husband has asked me to try to control the cursing.) I never want to see anyone cry in the office. Why? I know you're human and female, but what you're getting paid money (see above) for is to be a professional.

Let me give you an example: I don't want my midwife to cry during delivery. It would freak me out if she did. If she loses control, then who's in control? This is my first time doing this so I look to her to be the composed professional and guide me. Is she crying because she f-ed up so bad? Is she crying because she forgot what to do next? This crying isn't making me - her client - feel any better.

When has emotion ever put anything in focus and improved a situation? Are you crying because you can't handle the stress? Then why are you in a fast paced, aggressive industry? So no, no crying. Save your human vulnerable self for after hours and/or your mom.

Rush to be ready
In that first episode, one of Kelly's account executives complains about having to tidy a showroom when the client didn't even go up there. This particularly made me angry. Especially because it was a great learning experience of how to setup the showroom with the critique she received from Robyn afterwards.

Want a much darker parallel? I cannot tell you the hours I spent creating "back pocket" slides for my boss to take to a client presentation just in case the client had additional questions. In my case, in mining investment banking, a back pocket slide could be anything from long-term forecast on tin prices to analysis of Panamanian politics. For every M&A pitch and strategic meeting, we put in at least extra two hours creating these "just in case" slides. Sometimes they were used, sometimes they weren't, but whatever happened, we were ready.

On one hand this sounds like paranoia and a general waste of time. But I respect people with a sense of urgency. In reality, it is much better to be paranoid than to be careless.

Apologize
I believe in the power of the honest "I'm sorry." Taking responsibility for your mistakes can mend broken bridges and uplift your reputation, especially when it doesn't have to be pulled out of you. This includes apologizing to your seniors as well as your juniors at work. Don't expect your boss to apologize, although sometimes you'll be taken by surprise. But it will show respect and humility, both wonderful qualities. Of course you'll have to balance this with not being a doormat, but with the level of entitlement I've encountered among interns in my days days, this doesn't seem to be a huge issue.

Being able to utter 'I'm sorry' without angst, an angry sigh or an eye roll and taking responsibility for whatever happened has seriously progressed my career. Not only that, it has helped tremendously in my first year of marriage. I know you need to be a warrior, but sometimes the warrior needs to be the peacemaker.

This was my first Cutrone encounter. My God, could I force interns and new hires to watch episode one of Kell on Earth as a requirement? Most of them wouldn't appreciate it until they had lived in a high energy, high reward, high intensity environment - such great art lost on the masses! But yes, I think these are the basic four that should create a solid foundation for an entry-level employee. Of course, I have my own fifth rule.

Know your boss and know when you have a great one
Everyone assumes that I quit finance because I worked for a man and that was the source of all my problems. The man I worked for was exactly what made it difficult to leave and why I postponed my resignation at least 10 times over a course of two weeks. The one thing I want to make clear was that he never said or did anything remotely inappropriate to me. He paid me as much as my male colleagues and often told collaborators (clients, corp. dev. guys, lawyers) what a great job I was doing. He was 6'6" tall and never raised his voice, at anyone. He took time to explain things and wanted me to, and I quote, "Tell me if you don't think my strategy makes any fucking sense." He took particular pride in the low turnover rate of his group, (Most investment banks will see a full change in junior employees about once per year.)

He was open with his expectations and explicit with his hang ups. During one quarterly review, he told me - as he told everyone else - that he specifically wanted everyone to show up on time. The day started at 9 AM. Not 9:01. 9 AM. At 9 AM, he or one of his right hand men would walk out of their office and casually do a round along the analyst pit on his way for a coffee refill in the kitchen. This registered with me and I made it a point to show up at 8:40 AM. One time he actually asked me why I was coming in that earlier. I took the earlier train just in case there was a delay outside of my control because my job satisfaction mattered to him, so his satisfaction with my arrival time mattered to me. So now he knew that if I was ever late, it was because someone had jumped in front of the train and there was no way I could hasten the coroner.

These were my little mantras that led to a successful career in investment banking. How do I define successful? I never got yelled at, I didn't get fired, I never got taken off a project and I never compared my existence to that of a slave or moped around the office complaining about having no life. (I find this comparison insulting - you are not a slave, Django Unchained.) I knew what I was in for and I knew how to tackle it. When I did quit, it was in a respectful, contained manner that ended with a pleasant "good bye, let me know if you need a reference." I didn't flip the bird or slam a door. And I never, ever cried.

Setting the Scene

Let me set the scene for you. When I started reading If You Have to Cry, Go Outside, I was 5 months pregnant with my first child, a girl (thank God, I can't do superhero anything) and part of the package is that your growing uterus crowds out your bladder. So most nights, at around 4 AM and sometimes more than once, I had a sharp bathroom urge that every pregnancy app warned me about. Then I crawled back into bed and couldn't fall asleep. Luckily, the screen dimming function on my iPad allowed me to get through a few chapters of the book without disturbing my husband. That is how I read most of If You Have to Cry, Go Outside.

While I read my little fetus moved around and kicked. If you’ve never been pregnant, I would describe this sensation as similar to eating a large piece of steak in one bite and your stomach tirelessly trying to digest it. In the interest of full disclosure, I’m not really into red meat and have never eaten a full steak.

For several consecutive nights over the next few months, I was experiencing internal motion: some from my child, some from Kelly Cutrone.

A little about me to start. (Since this blog is a reflection, my own little reading companion – along with the human fetus reading companion – a lot more about me will definitely surface.) I am interested in almost everything: Marc Chagall, medicinal benefits of Himalayan salt, production of The Seven Samurai, the Vietnam War, Spice Girls limited edition whatever, Peru. You name it - I want to hear about it. Which naturally lead me to a career in finance. 

I didn’t fall in love with finance. I wasn’t part of those guys. I wasn’t a stock picker (I’m not one now either) or an Excel junkie (but I have since become a motherloving guru). I was a huge fan of economics and international development. My undergraduate thesis was called “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems: The Detrimental Effects of Microfinance on Economic Development.” I don’t fit the mold, on the surface. But I am intense and smart and tenacious. I was aggressive (and I think a part of me still is).

I knew a girl from high school who worked as an investment banker. I asked her to keep an eye out for jobs for me and soon she had an opening at her firm. On last interview (of like eight), the one comprised solely of “hot seat” accounting questions, the unthinkable happened. An earthquake hit. No, seriously, an earthquake hit downtown Toronto and my interviewer didn’t notice. We were on the 28^th floor of the office tower and my swivel chair began to bounce and the water in my glass began to shake. My interviewer continued on as if nothing happened, which could only have meant one thing: I had lost my mind. Some people get a twitching eye, others a quivering lip, I was having visions.

Plate tectonics and a global recession couldn't hold me back and I got my investment banking gig. I can’t cover it up, it’s a huge part of who I am. Even now, after 18 months of funemployment. It taught me to ask the right questions, analyze the "too right" answers and hold people's feet to the fire. It was a career move that for three years tested my patience, resourcefulness, attention to detail, late night stamina and general learning ability.

It's a very sink or swim culture and this escalated very fast. My first all nighter was over Saturday-Sunday of my first week of employment. Then I started absorbing everything, quickly. You know how sometimes you look back at yourself, maybe read an old e-mail or see an old pic, and you think “Agh, I can’t believe I said that, that’s so stupid” or “I can’t believe I wore that, it’s so ugly?” Ultimately, you reflect on your improvements over months or years. In my case, it was happening literally every couple of minutes. Whatever I was wondering about at noon seemed absolutely obvious by half past. It was overwhelming each time to realize what an idiot I had been to ask some questions or make certain proposals. Even accounting for the 100 hour work weeks, in office tension and competition, along with an unpredictable work schedule, I miss the learning the most.

Reading Kelly’s book is injecting that growth experience into me, reminding me of lessons I had forgotten and highlighting the ones I had learned but hadn’t fully digested. It’s not that I don’t care about fashion – I'm an art lover and I care about beautiful things – but I'm interested in the business more. My first taste of Cutrone came in Winter 2010 and it had nothing to do with clothing or accessories.

So why am I keeping a journal while reading Kelly Cutrone? I needed to jot down my thoughts and get a dialogue going – even if it is an internal one.