Awkward greetings are the hallmark of corporate amurrika. They are so embarrasing. And I definitely hoard embarrassing moments to replay torturously over and over in my head.
Ex-coworker (let's call him N) was in town.
Came into the office to say hi.
Approached my desk with right arm raised high, so I assumed this would be a hug (even though we'd worked together for all of 2 months and never hugged before) so I matched with an equally high left arm.
Only to see his swoop down into handshake formation.
I try to do the same.
Too late.
OMG.
The situation had become too confusing at this point.
N tries to dispel the awkwardness: "You want a hug? I'll give you a hug"
Ok. I guess.
We try to maneuver the one-armed kind of hug that New Yorkers reserve for the type of acquaintanceship where you've worked on like half a project together but you don't know their middle name or their kids' ages.
But I ended up going with the wrong arm.
So while he hugged me with his right arm, I went with my right arm also.
Just imagine what that looks like.
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Sunday, July 19, 2015
Giving Up Bad Habits: Soda and Alcohol | the Closing Belle
Hey guys. About 6 months ago (on January 15), I decided to give up soda and alcohol.
I wanted to reflect on my choice and how it's been going. Please give this video a watch (and a thumbs up if you enjoyed it!) I would love it so much if you'd subscribe!
I wanted to reflect on my choice and how it's been going. Please give this video a watch (and a thumbs up if you enjoyed it!) I would love it so much if you'd subscribe!
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Stop living life hedged
I had my one-year performance review at work yesterday. It started out as a pretty standard review, but then my boss asked me about my greater career goals ... and somehow that set me off. I started taking bold tangents. I started psychoanalyzing myself. Holy cow, guys. I'm cray! That meeting, which was slotted to be a 15-30 min review of annual goals completion status, turned into an hour+ long digression. And I bet my manager spent the majority of the second half thinking, "I didn't sign up to be her therapist." LOL, Sorry, B!
And then afterwards I had an emotional breakdown (Shel, what are you doing in life!!) followed by a revelation (Shel, you gotta start taking bold steps!)
OK OK, let me take a couple of steps back.
I am a very risk-averse person.
Here is a shameless silly selfie. Once upon a time back in junior high, I was a bold, bold blogger, with my page littered with selfies. Like, we're talking Kim-Kardashian-level selfie obsession (and I don't mean that in a bad way - I think Kim is absolutely gorgeous and may she be forever bestowed with endless selfie-opportunities!).
That was, until I started becoming more and more scared of taking risks. My senior year of high school, I decided I had to delete all my social media, especially after hearing horror stories of rescinded college admissions driven by incriminating FaceBook photos. For good measure, I also ended up applying to 20+ universities (...yes). Keep in mind that back in my day (and I'm feeling more and more like a dinosaur every time I say this), common app was still in its very nascent stages, so that meant literally 20+ separate applications. Which meant each one was very vanilla, with very bland, easily tweakable essays. I had one dream school in mind (and no, it's not Harvard LOL) and I think I had a pretty good shot. But I couldn't give my all because, well, I was spreading my time across 20 different applications. So I didn't get in.
In college, I spread myself thin taking classes in way too many disciplines and filling my extracurricular time with too many disparate activities. I wanted to double major - and also be premed - and also run 5 or 6 clubs - and also research - etc., etc., etc. This, obviously, was not great for my grade point average ... or sanity.
For my first job, I took what I perceived to be the "safest" entry-level job I could -- the most "generalist" one, despite being the lowest paying of all my offers by a pretty substantial spread. By a strange twist of luck, this actually turned out to be a pretty good decision. Because it got me to where I am today, working on investments and with some of the smartest people I could ever meet. BUT who's to say that I won't still have gotten here if I decided to go to a big consulting firm or direct investment fund?
The buck stops here. I won't live my life so hedged anymore. All my life, my fear of closing off possibilities (closing off college doors by not applying to a million, closing off career doors by taking too "specialized" of a job) has been at best, breakeven, and at worst, very limiting of my potential and achievements.
I have to be bold from now on. Aggressive. Vocal. Opinionated. Unhedged.
These were things that my manager (who is one of my greatest role models - someone I aspire to be in 5-10 years) have cited as things he wanted me to work on from a professional standpoint anyway. It would be the only way that I could rise to become a manager.
I had expected this.
What I didn't expect was the sudden connection I made between this feedback on my work and my own personal feedback on how I run my life. As, as I sat in his office, hearing his words and watching the hustle and bustle of Manhattan outside the window, it dawned on me that this meek, afraid, totally hedged, person who is afraid of making large investment recommendation or redemption decisions ... is the person I have been for over a decade, and the person that I no longer wanted to be.
No more hedging. There are some big career goals I want to reach. There are some big blogging, vlogging milestones I want to pass. And I'm going to go forward loudly and boldly to get what I want. Enveloping myself in the comfort of fall-back plans is no longer an option for me.
And then afterwards I had an emotional breakdown (Shel, what are you doing in life!!) followed by a revelation (Shel, you gotta start taking bold steps!)
OK OK, let me take a couple of steps back.
I am a very risk-averse person.
Here is a shameless silly selfie. Once upon a time back in junior high, I was a bold, bold blogger, with my page littered with selfies. Like, we're talking Kim-Kardashian-level selfie obsession (and I don't mean that in a bad way - I think Kim is absolutely gorgeous and may she be forever bestowed with endless selfie-opportunities!).
That was, until I started becoming more and more scared of taking risks. My senior year of high school, I decided I had to delete all my social media, especially after hearing horror stories of rescinded college admissions driven by incriminating FaceBook photos. For good measure, I also ended up applying to 20+ universities (...yes). Keep in mind that back in my day (and I'm feeling more and more like a dinosaur every time I say this), common app was still in its very nascent stages, so that meant literally 20+ separate applications. Which meant each one was very vanilla, with very bland, easily tweakable essays. I had one dream school in mind (and no, it's not Harvard LOL) and I think I had a pretty good shot. But I couldn't give my all because, well, I was spreading my time across 20 different applications. So I didn't get in.
In college, I spread myself thin taking classes in way too many disciplines and filling my extracurricular time with too many disparate activities. I wanted to double major - and also be premed - and also run 5 or 6 clubs - and also research - etc., etc., etc. This, obviously, was not great for my grade point average ... or sanity.
For my first job, I took what I perceived to be the "safest" entry-level job I could -- the most "generalist" one, despite being the lowest paying of all my offers by a pretty substantial spread. By a strange twist of luck, this actually turned out to be a pretty good decision. Because it got me to where I am today, working on investments and with some of the smartest people I could ever meet. BUT who's to say that I won't still have gotten here if I decided to go to a big consulting firm or direct investment fund?
The buck stops here. I won't live my life so hedged anymore. All my life, my fear of closing off possibilities (closing off college doors by not applying to a million, closing off career doors by taking too "specialized" of a job) has been at best, breakeven, and at worst, very limiting of my potential and achievements.
I have to be bold from now on. Aggressive. Vocal. Opinionated. Unhedged.
These were things that my manager (who is one of my greatest role models - someone I aspire to be in 5-10 years) have cited as things he wanted me to work on from a professional standpoint anyway. It would be the only way that I could rise to become a manager.
I had expected this.
What I didn't expect was the sudden connection I made between this feedback on my work and my own personal feedback on how I run my life. As, as I sat in his office, hearing his words and watching the hustle and bustle of Manhattan outside the window, it dawned on me that this meek, afraid, totally hedged, person who is afraid of making large investment recommendation or redemption decisions ... is the person I have been for over a decade, and the person that I no longer wanted to be.
No more hedging. There are some big career goals I want to reach. There are some big blogging, vlogging milestones I want to pass. And I'm going to go forward loudly and boldly to get what I want. Enveloping myself in the comfort of fall-back plans is no longer an option for me.
Thursday, July 9, 2015
A brief motley of updates…
Hey guys. Ready for another blog post that is all over the place? Good, because here’s one coming right at ya!
Youtube: So I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’ve been cranking out video after video. You’re probably asking, what the heck? This is a blog - what’s going on? My response is I really wanted to experience putting up a Youtube video and didn’t intend for it to become such a huge and almost preferred mode of online presence for me. Oh my gosh, guys. It’s like crack. I guess if you really want to hear the whole story from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, you can click right here for my New Youtuber Tag, but the basic gist is that I’ve always wanted to do Youtube. I’d always been in the Youtube scene as a passive participant, subscribing to and regularly watching and commenting/engaging in dialogue with Youtubers in the beauty, lifestyle, and fashion communities as well as daily vloggers. Then, one day, my friend Kas invited me to go to a hackathon with her, and I wanted so much to draft a post to document my experience. I had gotten like 3 or 4 bullet points down when I thought, what the heck, I might as well film myself talking about it. So I did. And I put it up on Youtube!! … and then I privated it almost immediately. But then I was like NO SHEL YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE. So I put it back up. Yes. That was my first ever Youtube video (LINK HERE if you want a few giggles). Not gonna lie, I definitely still cringe when rewatching it, but you know what I learned from being such an accident prone person at work? Humiliation only makes you stronger :) But don’t you worry. I will still be blogging. In fact, I’m hoping that vlogging will keep more more disciplined.
Movin’ and grooving’. Well, really just the former. Guys, I relocated! Which is why from my 2nd video to third, there was a huge change in background. And noticeably more light. I definitely didn’t think it would take as much out of me as it did, but boy oh boy it did. Unpacking took me nearly a month but here I am, all moved in. Why’d I move? Well, as with most/all things in life, it’s a little complicated :) But you can bet your butt I’m gonna talk about it in a blog or vlog once I have time to reflect and word things.
Fitness/health update: Remember when I restarted this blog, I had a big focus on becoming healthier. And I’m happy to report that so far, it’s been going really well! Despite the big move, I’ve continued to do both cardio and lifting. If you saw my June Favs video, you’d know that my Sony headphones have been a godsend when it comes to keeping me motivated. Sometimes, after coming home from a long day, I really just want to sit on on my butt and turn on the netflix. But I’m happy to say that 3 times out of 4, I successfully force myself to go for at least a 3-4 miler. In addition, now that I’m too far away from my gym to use the machines, I’ve been doing a lot more free weight conditioning exercises. There are a lot of great channels on those on Youtube. i’ve also just been trying to be more resourceful with finding opportunities to weight train with common household chores. Like groceries. You know what? I have lost no weight and I don’t care :) I just love being active for the heck of it!
Rejiggerin’ the layout: One huge goal I have for the summer is to dust those code-webs off my HTML and CSS knowledge and make a new layout for my blog that I like. Friends of the inter webs, if you know of any good books, sites or other resources for blog layout creation’, hook a sista up!
9-to-5’ing: OH YEAH, almost forgot to say, another reason I’ve been somewhat absent is that I’ve been (happily) busy at work. There have been a lot of cool projects for me to work on recently so I’ve been spending a lot more time at work. I imagine that some of this extra time will die down in the summer which is usually a pretty quiet time for our team. But for now, still chuggin’ along the best that I can!
So there you have it. Nothing too exciting, but I’ve been loving life. And really, that’s all that matters right? Hope you are all having a good time right now too!
xoxo, the closing belle
Youtube: So I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’ve been cranking out video after video. You’re probably asking, what the heck? This is a blog - what’s going on? My response is I really wanted to experience putting up a Youtube video and didn’t intend for it to become such a huge and almost preferred mode of online presence for me. Oh my gosh, guys. It’s like crack. I guess if you really want to hear the whole story from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, you can click right here for my New Youtuber Tag, but the basic gist is that I’ve always wanted to do Youtube. I’d always been in the Youtube scene as a passive participant, subscribing to and regularly watching and commenting/engaging in dialogue with Youtubers in the beauty, lifestyle, and fashion communities as well as daily vloggers. Then, one day, my friend Kas invited me to go to a hackathon with her, and I wanted so much to draft a post to document my experience. I had gotten like 3 or 4 bullet points down when I thought, what the heck, I might as well film myself talking about it. So I did. And I put it up on Youtube!! … and then I privated it almost immediately. But then I was like NO SHEL YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE. So I put it back up. Yes. That was my first ever Youtube video (LINK HERE if you want a few giggles). Not gonna lie, I definitely still cringe when rewatching it, but you know what I learned from being such an accident prone person at work? Humiliation only makes you stronger :) But don’t you worry. I will still be blogging. In fact, I’m hoping that vlogging will keep more more disciplined.
Movin’ and grooving’. Well, really just the former. Guys, I relocated! Which is why from my 2nd video to third, there was a huge change in background. And noticeably more light. I definitely didn’t think it would take as much out of me as it did, but boy oh boy it did. Unpacking took me nearly a month but here I am, all moved in. Why’d I move? Well, as with most/all things in life, it’s a little complicated :) But you can bet your butt I’m gonna talk about it in a blog or vlog once I have time to reflect and word things.
Fitness/health update: Remember when I restarted this blog, I had a big focus on becoming healthier. And I’m happy to report that so far, it’s been going really well! Despite the big move, I’ve continued to do both cardio and lifting. If you saw my June Favs video, you’d know that my Sony headphones have been a godsend when it comes to keeping me motivated. Sometimes, after coming home from a long day, I really just want to sit on on my butt and turn on the netflix. But I’m happy to say that 3 times out of 4, I successfully force myself to go for at least a 3-4 miler. In addition, now that I’m too far away from my gym to use the machines, I’ve been doing a lot more free weight conditioning exercises. There are a lot of great channels on those on Youtube. i’ve also just been trying to be more resourceful with finding opportunities to weight train with common household chores. Like groceries. You know what? I have lost no weight and I don’t care :) I just love being active for the heck of it!
Rejiggerin’ the layout: One huge goal I have for the summer is to dust those code-webs off my HTML and CSS knowledge and make a new layout for my blog that I like. Friends of the inter webs, if you know of any good books, sites or other resources for blog layout creation’, hook a sista up!
9-to-5’ing: OH YEAH, almost forgot to say, another reason I’ve been somewhat absent is that I’ve been (happily) busy at work. There have been a lot of cool projects for me to work on recently so I’ve been spending a lot more time at work. I imagine that some of this extra time will die down in the summer which is usually a pretty quiet time for our team. But for now, still chuggin’ along the best that I can!
So there you have it. Nothing too exciting, but I’ve been loving life. And really, that’s all that matters right? Hope you are all having a good time right now too!
xoxo, the closing belle
Saturday, July 4, 2015
June Favorites 2015 | The Closing Belle
Hot off the presses (... or, I guess off the iMovie): Check out the things I've been loving in the month of June!
xoxo, the closing belle
xoxo, the closing belle
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