Wednesday, Dec 23, 2015

I engaged in a variety of entertainment today, much of which included diverse casts of characters. I also tweeted and napped.

Tuesday, Dec 22, 2015

I published my first Talented Tuesday post! Woo hoo! I'm making friends by being a friend.

I also watched Oprah Winfrey's Legends Ball for the fourth time. It serves as inspiration for Talented Tuesdays specifically and my career goals in general. Women, especially colorful women, rarely get celebrated as historical figures, individuals who have shaped culture and revolutionized the world.

I want to change that. I'm working on it one step at a time. I don't have pig truffles or diamond gifts or a customized trolley on my ginormous Montecito estate. I do have internet access, prioritized periods of writing time, and appreciative quips about my fellow entrepreneurs. So I'll give what I have: my words and my time.

Monday, Dec 21, 2015

I finished my first Talented Tuesday post. It is scheduled to be automatically this Tuesday morning. I finished the second one, too. Hooray for me!

Still tweeting.

Sunday, Dec 20, 2015

I've started writing my Talented Tuesdays posts, to be published on an automated schedule each week. I am reminding myself, to make a friend, I need to be a friend. I also need to do what I am best at. Ergo, the combination of writing about other people and illustrating how great they are should be a positive, productive endeavor.

Friday, Dec 18, 2015

Pushback means you're headed in the right direction.

I don't know which of the many business authors I'm paraphrasing, but that sentence is relevant to me now. I'm not where I want to be, and I feel like I'm in the right area, but I have been experiencing an increase in resistance lately.

In the words of Kathryn Erbe in D2: The Mighty Ducks, "We look tired. We need to change places. Change it up!"

So, I need to do something new, while I also continue what's working. For inspiration on women in business, I like to refer to Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office, a book by Lois P. Frankel, PhD. Mistake 2, she writes, is Playing the Game Safely and Within Bounds. She uses an extended tennis analogy to show how winners have to play at the edges of the court. You can't win in the middle. Don't revert to playing safe.

I would have liked a reference to Serena Williams in the following chapter in which she discusses the more restrictive boundaries for colorful women, but let me digress to Gene Hackman in The Firm. He tells Tom Cruise to bend the law "as far as you can without breaking it." I don't plan on breaking or bending any laws. Rules, yes. Guidelines, yes. Expectations, definitely.

I also plan to watch The Firm and Top Gun again for approximately the tenth time each before 2016.

Thursday, Dec 17, 2015

I'm on the list. I'm in the room.

That's what I should focus on. But it's hard. I say that often. Yet it's true.

I went to another holiday party tonight. I encountered many of the same people I talked to on Tuesday night. Hollywood is a tiny world, especially for colorful people. One would think we'd be better at supporting each other.

Networking functions are awkward when you don't know most of the people. Even when you do know people, it can be weird, with some of them constantly looking around the room for someone else more important than you, the person standing in front of them.

It's exhausting trying to exude confidence in a loud room with people who have actual jobs and little interest in talking with a writer who wants to become a corporate executive in an area where half of the most senior people are burnt out. Yeesh.

I thought to myself, maybe I should aspire instead to succeed as a writer of individual projects or the best SAT tutor or a college admissions counselor.

And then I thought of the latest episode of Amanda Seales's web series Get Your Life that I watched today, about black and blackish women performers all fighting for an unsatisfactory piece of the Hollywood acting pie. The pie piece was even smaller and sadder than the paltry supporting roles for a handful of underpaid white women.

Then I thought of my daughters someday looking at me at saying, "Mommy, how come no one looks like us on TV? I thought you were going to fix that. I can teach myself the SAT. It's reading and math. Can I have some money for the mall? I'm taking your car. kthxbai."

No home training.

So, yeah, increasing diversity in media is important, and it's something I have loved working in for over a decade. And, if I do it right, it could be economically and socially beneficial. Therefore, I should make a career in an area I love which is growing in population and media attention.

I need to have faith in abundance and help spread the word that there is room for everyone in media, not only for white men and what white men want.

Tuesday, Dec 15, 2015

I went to a holiday party tonight. It went better than the one on Saturday. I met nice people working in entertainment. Many of them had similar advice about my career search: talk to people in the area I want to work in, and try to get a job either in diversity in a different industry or at an entertainment company in a different department. All good advice, though not easy to implement.

I also had a coffee meeting, which reminded me to follow the tenets espoused in The Tao of Pooh: follow the flow of life instead of trying to force people into situations. I need to allow success to find me, instead of attempting to make things happen unnaturally. It's hard because I am a driven person who likes to make things happen by actively pursuing what I want. It's not in my nature to wait for something to magically appear.