Last November, my daughter’s teacher sent out photographs of the Kindergarten Thanksgiving party. Little kids with cornucopias eating treats. I couldn’t look at the photos. I couldn’t bear it. Mommy Guilt used to ache in my heart. Aching sadness about missing great expanses of my children’s lives. Regret for the haphazard rush of our lives. It was a cost of our dual-income life. On Wednesday, I picked the kids up late from after-school care — just before 6 p.m. I …
Gremlin vs Friend
I got a compliment the other day and a gremlin fell off my shoulder. In coaching language, gremlins are the little negative voices that whisper in your ear and remind you that you’re not good enough – smart enough – that you don’t have anything worth saying so you’d better keep quiet – that you better not risk it because you might fail. Recognize any of those? I had just had lunch with a former co-worker. As we were walking …
Coaching Chicken Little
I have a new favorite client. And I made him cry. We were talking about a pattern in his professional life where he feels like Chicken Little: he sees a bad course of action underway, but his executive management doesn’t listen to him. He’s lived this pattern happen over and over. I said, “So let’s break the pattern.” And tears welled up in my client’s eyes. We were sitting in the Great Hall of Union Station in Seattle – a …
The Problem with Smart Friends
A friend of mine used the word “provenance” at a dinner party last weekend. It’s bugged me ever since. One of the kids had placed a pink foam crown on my partner’s head and my friend asked whether it was a birthday crown or a princess crown. So far so good. And then she quietly wondered about the “provenance of the crown.” She said it quietly. Fluently. “Provenance” isn’t part of my active vocabulary, and is barely part of my passive. It’s …
The Twitchy Writer
Writing has become important again. I hadn’t realized I’ve been craving the exercise. When I’m running, when I’m doing dishes, when I’m falling asleep, words I want to write down are on my mind. Writing them down, in the right order, feels good. Nourishing. I haven’t written much in the last 10 years. I haven’t made space for it while deep in the bowels of corporate America and while raising small children. One of the greatest surprises of quitting my …
Anatomy of a Day
Nothing like a UTI to change your plans. It was supposed to be a writing day, all to myself, the kind of day I’ve started thinking of as a delicious day. But when my 5 year old starting crying “owwie” every time she peed (on the floor), I knew it wasn’t going to be that delicious. 12:05 a.m. Pee accident. Change Z’s pajamas, lay a towel over the puddle, lie back down in it and go back to sleep, Z …
The Sleepy Client
I have a favorite client who talked about feeling overwhelmed at work (that’s a subject I’m expert in!). I asked him what his workday is like. He described coming in around 10 and being immediately barraged with meetings and emails and fires that were all in the “Important/Urgent” quadrant. How do you prioritize when everything is a top priority? Not a particularly insightful question, but I wondered what would happen if he got in earlier. As homework, he agreed to …
Three Reasons I'm a Stud
1. I passed another runner today. I *never* pass anyone. People pass me walking in the other direction. Part of the reason I’m so slow (she says defensively) is that I’m running almost barefoot (read Born to Run if you haven’t already, it will forever change how you look at running shoes), and the other reason is that I have chondromalaysia patella (as I’m sure many of you old ultimate players also have) and was told by an orthopedic quack I mean …
Two Weeks Out
Today is my two-week anniversary out of corporate America. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Is it okay to be this happy? I don’t feel like I’m on vacation, exactly. There’s already a structure to the week – it’s not like I’m reading novels in bed every day. But there’s more room to my life, which has a nice ripple effect. For example: Martin (my partner) walked through the front door after work the other day right …
New Name
I’m changing my last name. I could go on about all the wonderful reasons to do this. Things to with children, husbands, family units and whatnot. Although I’d like to say that I kept my maiden (ha!) name for interesting, feminist reasons, the real reason was that it was too much of a pain in the ass to change it. And the real reason I’m taking my husband’s name now, eight years into our marriage? The domain name “kathryncrawford” was …