Month: January 2020

On Thursday Abe had to stay late for the awards ceremony for sales kick-off, so I fed the kids dinner early, put people in pajamas, and watched Newsies with them while giving them each foot massages. Ammon was quite demanding that I give him back scratchies too. It was such a cozy evening and I adore Newsies. After Sound of Music, it might be my most-watched movie from childhood. It was so fun to share it with my kids.

Today all of the kids told me their stomachs hurt, and frankly, so did mine. But none of us threw up, and I made the kids go to school. After I dropped them off, I went to Vasa with my mom and Clarissa. My mom had her trainer appointment and I just did stairs and some ab exercises.

Oh, and before all of this I woke up early and folded laundry for an hour while chatting with my mom. She wants to practice using her voice, and we talked about religion. It was really fun.

After Vasa, we came home and I made bolognese sauce, processed laundry, and tidied. Then it was time to pick up kids, take Lydia in for her cavity fillings, and then drive her to her harp lesson. (I pushed it to the evening because I knew the early morning was not a good idea with our health on the edge.)

After harp, we came home, ate dinner, and just finished putting the kids to bed. Well, Abe put the kids to bed. Now we’re going to finish watching Man on a Wire.

On Tuesday morning we all had a massive dentist appointment for our whole family. The kids all love the Smile Center although Lydia had a cavity, so that was sad.

I let the girls stay home after the dentist even though I should have made them go to school again. They were very sweet and appreciative. I went to the gym with the babies while they were at home reading and came straight home, and then I put dinner on the table. We had souffle, Ottolenghi’s mustardy cauliflower, and chard.

After we put the kids down the Kahlers came over and we played Endeavor with them. It was soooooo fun! We are going to do it again next week. It took a long time because Abe and I were slow learners, but we had so much fun we didn’t mind the midnight bedtime.

Abe had his self care day on Monday! He went to the temple in the morning with his Aunt Andrea, went cross country skiing with Daniel Olson, came home for a nap with me, golfed at top golf with Jay, got a haircut, came home, got a quick massage from me and the we watched Man on Wire. I fell asleep during the documentary, but he told me it was great.

I. Love. Sundays.

Sundays feel different and I’m very grateful for my LDS heritage for that. When it is Sunday, I’m wired to approach it with a feeling of reverence, peace, rest, spiritual seeking and thirsting, and not hurrying.

This morning, I decided to take the time to meditate. Not only did I find great peace, and continually felt myself saying, “I need more of this,” but I also made some great breakthroughs on getting through my panic about my promotion. I should also mention that Lily shared words with me last night that felt like an answer to prayer in helping me heal and recover from my panic attack as well.

Before heading to church, all four kids barged into our room in their dress-ups. While organizing yesterday, I found a big box of their dress-ups, and now that they are out and available, they have been using them like crazy. Here are some pictures!

You will also notice that Lydia, Mary and Clarissa all are wearing matching dresses that just came in the mail. I wish I had also taken a picture of them just in their dresses!

At 11:15 we went to Centerpoint church for our ecumenical Sunday. The kids call it the fun church. It’s fun for me to because there is a band that plays Christian Rock, which I love. The sermon was very beautiful. It was about resolving conflict. The main take away is that when there is conflict, we should assume the best in the other person, and approach the conflict with an attitude of wanting to learn how to move towards resolution and not an attitude of wanting to be right. The insight was also shared that there is no guarantee that there will be peace in every relationship, because it requires the other person to also behave well and love, but you can have peace about every relationship as you do everything you are able to make it work, even if it ends up not working out.

After church we we went to Trader Joe’s for groceries and at Medici Pizza for lunch. I was obsessed with their marinara sauce that came for the bread sticks and put it on everything including my pizza.

Then I rested while Lily read and the kids rand around the house playing. Once I got up, I did some blogging and then Lily and I put dinner on. Lily made an amazing garbanzo in which she cooked the beans with feta cheese and onions, and it was my favorite way I have ever had Garbanzo beans. Also, the Salmon and cooked carrots were great.

Over dinner, we had one of my favorite Come Follow Me lessons yet. I shared a scripture from 1st Nephi about how God will not suffer those who come to Him to perish because He (God) is merciful. Lily shared the universalist perspective, that God is helping everyone everywhere, because we are all coming to God in our own time and way. Mary had the insight that God would only help someone to do something good and not something bad, and that gave me a deep insight that I’m still thinking about which is that God will assist us according to what we are trying to do in the moment we need assistance, not according to our resume of how good or bad we are. I really think there might be something to that. We talked about Trevor Noah’s mother who had many miracles from God, and how perhaps she was so helped because she was so devoted to helping her son break out of the cycle of poverty their family was stuck in in South Africa. We covered a range of other topics including patriarchy, marriage, education and more. The girls gave such incredibly bright comments.

After dinner we had family home evening and watched Mr. Rogers, who is unequivocally my hero. I gain so much from watching his shows and how intentional of a healer and messenger of love, tolerance and forgiveness he is. I hope, honestly, to be like him. He is the best possible thing I can imagine putting in front of my children.

Also, I had the most wonderful conversation with Georgia after the dinner in which she shared he desire to comment more during our Come Follow Me dinners. I’d love to hear more of her thoughts, so I’m looking forward to that! I am gaining a very strong conviction for the power of diversity, and how harmony is so much more rich that unison, and how people can all come together, and humbly learn from and share from others with different ideas that are expanding to all that are in the room.

Now I’ve just finished organizing a bit more, and blogging while Lily is reading and almost done with her 3rd book in 3 days. It’s called Three Women.

Tomorrow is my self-care day. It will include, cross-country skiing with Daniel Olsen, the temple with Andrea, Top Golf with Jay, a movie with Lily ,a haircut and a massage from Lily. I can’t wait!

Today we barely left the house. In fact, I’m trying to remember if we did leave the house at all. We used this Saturday (and I have to say it has been soooo luxurious to have all of this time home with Lily and the family!) to simply be home and organize.

Lily organized the pantry and when I stopped into the pantry, we ended up kissing until the kids opened the door on us 🙂

I worked on organizing the garage, the bedding, or room and more. Lily focused on the kitchen area and we also cleaned up the the whole house from how messy it had gotten from all the children’s play.

I also tuned the harp, put felt padding on the piano bench and piano room chair, and Lily finished her amazing book called, Born a Crime. We laughed so hard as she shared with me the scene about when 5-year old Trevor Noah pooped on the floor of his house and wrapped it up in newspaper and threw it in the trash, and his mom, who was super religious, thought a demon had done it and called the entire neighborhood to pray the demon away. It was hilarious. Lily was laughing so hard while she was reading that she could barely make it through. We also learned about the miraculous survival of his mother when he X-husband tried to murder her for divorcing him.

No pictures from today, but the house continues to get more and more organized!

Today was a very special day for me on the career front. It was the special dinner with my team that I promised them for billing over $1 Million in sales this quarter on a $454,000 quota.  But it was actually far more significant to me than just that. It marked the closing of a chapter, a chapter in which my team, and everyone on it, faced a mighty mountain, and overcame the mountain, both individually, and collectively. I will elaborate on this when I recreate the speech I gave at dinner, and more about this journey can also be found on my December 12 blog entry, 2019.

The day started with me feeling out-of-my-mind depleted. So depleted, that I did not roll into work until 9:40, and when I did finally make it, I felt so wiped out, and unable to face the work in front of my, that I called my dad, who talked to me for an hour about the panic attack I was still having about the worry that I didn’t go through my promotion process with perfect legitimacy (I really think I did, but panic attacks are fear-based and not rational, and require time and outside rational perspectives to help heal). I did almost nothing for the two hours I was at work, but I did spend some time with the team, process some e-mail, answer some questions and submit my forecast. I have to admit, this was a scary-level bad mental health day. I am still in recovery from how all of the stresses of December broke me.

But then at noon, we started our team ski activity. I skied on my own for the first hour or so. It was a miracle. Elixir to my bones and mind to be out in nature, competing with the terrain to master the hills around me. I eventually met up with the guys and skied with them for the next two hours or so. I skied Bishop’s bowl 3 times. It is a black diamond and by far my favorite run at Sundance. I’m actually getting to be a decent skier. I started out painfully bad and it was hard for my team to ski with me, although they did, just to be nice. Now, I’m still not as good with them, but I can run with them for the most part.

By then of skiing, I was feeling more like myself, which was good, because I had a very important dinner to attend, and I wanted people to have a great time, and I wanted to do my part to make sure people felt loved, valued, and appreciated for all the amazing work they did. I had told the team, that I would treat everyone including spouses to the Foundry, or if people wanted to eat at the Tree Room, I would pay for all the team members, and they could pay for their plus ones. The team opted for the Tree Room.

It was a very fancy and delicious meal. The ambiance was perfect. As comes so easily with my team, conversation, and gut busting laughs flowed freely. Stories were shared like the time that Max, Paul, and Jake hiked King’s Peak starting at 11PM at night and finishing at 11PM the following night and only getting four hours of sleep. They also saw a bear.

I wanted to say some words, but for whatever reason, I felt a bit shy to take the spotlight. I almost didn’t say anything, but then Joe, who has such good emotional intelligence, and new that some words would be appropriate for the occasion, asked me if I was going to say anything. That was just what I needed to get the courage to stand up and take some things. Below is my best effort at a recreation of what I said to the team (from memory). I’ve added a few things here and there to better articulate things not quite fully expressed in my impromptu speech, but this is very close in sentiment to what was shared:

“I want to thank everyone for coming out tonight. I want everyone to know that this story that this team has written, this is exactly why I am in management. It has been an incredible journey to be a part of. We were in such a different spot 2 years ago and even one year ago. In 2018, we billed 80% of our annual number. I started this year, truly wondering how things were going to go and fearing the worst a little bit. I don’t know for sure, but I strongly suspect that everyone in this room, considered quitting at some point on this journey.  Everyone on this team has faced your own individual dark moment. And everyone on this team has chosen to believe in yourself. To bet on yourself. To bet on the team. To bet on Qualtrics, to bet on me. I’ve tried very hard as a manager to allow my reps space and time to develop into what you can become.  But the other side of that is that you chose to give me time to develop and get better, and you bet on me as your manager, and stuck with me. We had zero percent attrition, which is absolutely unheard of. But that’s who we are. It has become our identity. We don’t quit. We climb the mountain. And we do it together.

I’m so amazed at the culture on this team. The way everyone works, together, laughs together, and has bonded. It’s been very hard being a Team Lead 2. Sometimes I’m out on business, sometimes I’m on vacation, and sometimes I’m just completely worn out. But this year this team has really stepped up and clicked on all cylinders even when I wasn’t able to give as much as I wanted. I cannot believe how this team has bonded and executed.

I hope your biggest take away from all of this is that you are capable of anything. You are all young, and as you go farther down in life, you will find that life can through crazy things at you. But I hope that you will use this time in your career, the time on Team Spartacus, the time when both you and the team climbed the mountain, overcame and did what seemed in possible, as a reminder to yourself that you are capable to succeed and overcome in the face of anything. I how you derive strength from your experience on this team, that will propel you forward in the future, both in your career and in your personal life.

I also want to say that it is very stressful to be a salesperson. It is also very stressful to be married to a salesperson. The job comes with a lot of ups and downs. I’m so glad the spouses came tonight, because this victory we are all sharing was a team effort for each of you, and is completely a joint success. Thank all of you for your support and efforts to make your spouse’s and this team successful.

Each of you have chosen a career in sales.  I hope that you always stay in it.  It is my favorite profession. My brother codes for Tableau, and makes more money than I do, and that is an amazing career. But the reason I love sales is because when I improve myself at my job, I am also improving myself as a human. Communication, character, improving at relationships, and negotiation, these things building me in my career also build me in my life.  And when I become an amazing salesperson, it’s impossible to do that without also becoming an amazing human. To me sales is the most rewarding career.

But as you’ve all experienced, it comes with great difficulty. I’ve learned that so much of what we are paid for is simply to own our number. We might get lucky and bill more than we deserved, or we might get unlucky and bill less than we deserved, and there will always be things outside of our control, but we get our big paychecks by letting the business pin full ownership of our number on us as though it is completely in our control. And I hope what you’ve learned from this chapter in our history is that in sales, there will be ups, and there will be downs, but when the down hits, as longs as you work hard, keep believing in yourself and don’t give up, you will always, always always find your way to success, you can always climb that mountain. I hope you’ve learned that you can always weather the storm.

Thank you everyone again for coming out.”

I kept making mental notes to get a picture of everyone after the dinner, but then I completely forgot (dang it!). But here are a couple pictures of food as well as a picture of all the guys that went skiing (just missing Shane):

In the Spring when I wrote out my top ten values and started planning goals around them, I decided one of my values was health (even though I’m so bad at taking good care of myself), and I decided to start having a self-care day just for me at the end of every sales quarter. Because Lily works just as hard, if not harder than me on the home-front, I decided that for me to feel good about such an indulgence, I would insist that Lily take a self care day each quarter as well.

Today was Lily’s self care day.  Her last self-care day was at Ojo Caliente in New Mexico soaking in the world famous mineral pools and we just decided to take advantage of the opportunity while we were there. Today’s self-care day for her was more simple, but still, from her report, extremely nourishing for her.

She started the day with a work-out on the exercise bike, and then showered and went to Barnes and Noble, where she said she was over the moon with joy leisurely browsing for books. Lily is obsessed with books, and she absolutely loves to read. In her life she has found great joy working at the library as well as boarders. She just loves to be around books, and being able to browse on her own, without kids in tow, was luxurious for her. She found a number of books to buy that she was very excited about.

Then she came home and ate Sushi burrito. While she was at Barnes and Noble, I had the kids with me running errands. One of the errands brought me over to our old home, where I found my fancy razor Lily gave me as a gift. Feeling somewhat tired and perhaps pressed for time, I put it in my back pocket to transport it to the new how. Unfortunately, while I was waiting for food in at Sushi burrito, I moved my hand in such a way that I grazed my razor which was sticking out of my back pocket, and sliced the dickens out of my right index finger. It bled for most of the rest of the day whenever I wasn’t putting direct pressure on it. It even continued bleeding lightly the following day. It did complicate the matter of me taking care of the kids a little bit, but not too bad, and I was very grateful for the supplies from Georgia’s first aid kit that I used to patch myself up.

After sushi burrito, Lily read her new book, The Dutch House, which she finished in one day (She reads so fast!). I took the kids outside to play in the snow. I wasn’t much fun because I was feeling tired, and I only had one functioning hand, but I hope the kids had some fun exploring and playing in our new yard.

Around 5:00, babysitters came over and Lily and I went out to dinner at Bloch. It was a super lovely restaurant, I thought Lily looked particularly gorgeous. We had a wonderful time connecting over dinner. I ordered their trout and Lily got their lemon pomegranate chicken dish which she said was the best chicken she’d ever had.

Also, here is a quote that was hanging up at Bloch that I really enjoyed:

After dinner, we came home and I found Clarissa in her room asleep on a chair.

After tucking Clarissa in properly, I gave Lily a massage and she finished reading her book, The Dutch House.  I’m so glad Lily could have such a nourishing day. She pours so much of her heart, soul, and health into this family!

I have been so excited for this day! I have had it on my calendar for weeks that today Lily and I would sit down, snuggled cozy on the couch and write all our back blogs that we have been too busy to write for the past 2+ months. It’s only 12:30, and we are just getting started, but I’m sure that will consume the rest of our day. Also, Lily is finishing her book, In Sacred Loneliness before she jumps into the blogging, so she will be joining me soon!

While we read and write, the kids are watching TV, and having a cozy day around the house. It is snowing like crazy outside! Here is a picture of Mary and Clarissa in mine and Lily’s (temporary while our bedroom is being constructed) bed:

I also want to briefly mention that as I shoveled snow this morning, my neighbor told me to leave my walks because he would use his snowblower on them. He then disappeared for 20 minutes snow blowing what seemed like half the neighborhood before returning to my sidewalk and snow blowing that too. What a sweet neighbor to have!!

I played in the snow with the kids around 3:30. We had an awesome time. I shoveled snow and delivered it to Lydia who was using it to build a snow fort. Clarissa, Mary and Ammon all attacked me with snow each time I made a trip to deliver snow to Lydia. It was a lot of fun for all. Lydia stayed outside after everyone else went in to keep working on her fort:

Also, here is Clarissa who apparently fell asleep mid stool ascension or descencion around 4:30 after playing in the snow.

The other things I want to report on are some spiritual things that have happened with respect to New Years.

Last year, right before New Years, I felt a spiritual impression tell me, “The most important developments in your life this year will be outside of work.”

Perhaps that is always true actually, but it was an important thing for me to process because work felt extremely consuming at the time. I was struggling in my role as a Team Lead II, which is a an extremely difficult dual role requiring me to manage people  and sell my own deals and I was even concerned about keeping my job or having things go reasonably will given the results of the previous year, and given how hard it was to manage all I was trying to juggle without losing my health. I have the late nights working until 2AM or later still burned into my memory and bones.

Amazingly, this year has tuned out to be one of massive success. My team billed about 120% of our annual number, billed 255% of our Q4 number, and landed me a spot on the Bora Bora sales incentive trip. Also, there were many many promotions on my team, including my own promotion to become a Sales Manager, meaning I no longer have to manage a dual role.

Yet, with all that amazing and blessed success, it is amazing to me to report, all of the other much more important things that happened in our lives this year:

• Lily, through her research, integrity and values, decided to leave the LDS church.
• I, through my desire to still have the church in my live and children’s lives decided to stay, but morphed from an orthodox believer to a nuanced believer through the things I learned this year.
• Lily, through her beautiful collaborative spirit and tolerance has been agreeable to me and the children continuing to worship at the LDS church even though she is very opposed to much of what it declares and stands for. To balance out the LDS upbringing for the kids, we attend a different church the first Sunday of every month and have open family discussions so Lily and I have ample opportunity to make sure each of our personal beliefs are transmitted to the children.
• Lily obtained a new beautiful network of friends through the Thrive conference she and I attended.
• We found an eye-doctor therapist for Mary that can help finally heal her cross-eye and depth perception.
• Lydia got into the gifted program at Foothill elementary and started attending there.
• Lily found the home of her dreams, that was also a perfect long-term solution for everyone in the family, and we used my dad as our realtor to purchase the home.
• We had beautiful family trips to the Pacific North West and New Mexico, trips that produced amazing memories and a lot of family bonding.

So, it was an extremely big year.  A year that will go down in the books as a very momentous year for our family.  To me, the thing I am most grateful for, and most happy about, is that Lily and I have never been in a happier place or more in love even though our approaches to faith are now different.  It is deeply meaningful to me that we are modeling to our children that two people who love each other profoundly can stick closely together, actually even closer together, when they have different ways of approaching aspects of life. I want to model that diversity of thought, belief, opinion can be a healthy thing in a marriage, and not a wedge.

This morning I woke up, and I felt another spiritual impression. The impression was, “This will be a year of healing.”

That impression made complete sense to me.  All of the new things in our lives this year for me was like giving birth (not that I actually know what that is like, but I can’t think of a better analogy). So many new and beautiful things emerged, but it was not without intense pain, exertion, stress, anxiety, adjustment and discomfort.

Lily’s faith transition started out very rocky with me in the beginning. My own changing faith continues to be excruciatingly difficult as so much that felt certain before now feels to be in question or false.  Lily too is searching and questioning in places where she used to find comfort and certainty.  Financing and closing on the new home was quite a to-do and certainly the move was a stressful process, especially for Lily who bore the brunt of it. She was moving things over frantically for the week leading up to the move, so it would be reasonably set up the first night we stayed there. She managed that process largely without me because I was so focused on my promotion interview that required a 15 point rubric evaluation that I needed to present a slide deck for and have everything incredibly buttoned up for. All of this was on top of the normal stressed of having 4 kids, dealing with night wakings, normal management, sales and end of quarter stress etc etc etc. I am exhausted.

In fact, I feel broken.  I’m still reeling from a panic attack I had after my interview process that resulted from all the stress. I bumped up my next therapist visit to be sooner just to help with this. I feel deeply tired and ragged, but I feel so so so so grateful for the developments in my family this year, for Lily’s collaborative attitude and the way we are working together despite changing attitudes towards the church, and all of the many beautiful things happening in our lives.  Being a Team Lead 2 and all of the other things on top of it this year were very hard on my health. I’m truly hoping for, and looking forward to a year of healing in 2020, not just for me, but for everyone in my household. Lily, the kids and Georgia have dealt with a lot of change. I also hope for healing in 2020, for anyone anywhere who needs it. May this be a year of healing.