dare to dream

Rachel Esplin Odell: The Man from Song

Rachel Esplin Odell lives with her husband Scott Odell in Washington, D.C., where she is working and preparing for graduate school (see below).  She graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor's degree in East Asian Studies and Government in December 2009, after having grown up on a potato farm near Blackfoot, Idaho. She loves to discuss religion and politics in a spirit of enthusiasm and love.  She has a minor obsession with Breyers' all natural chocolate ice cream and she loves springtime in the nation's capital. 

For the first 21-and-a-half years of my life, I proceeded forward on a straightforward path. While that path involved choices and options, its projection was clear.  Preschool > elementary school > high school > college.  During college, I met my future husband Scott and we were married last July, just prior to my graduation in December.

Now what?

Now I am trying to not be like the man from Song.

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“必有事焉而勿正，心勿忘，勿助長也。無若宋人然：宋人有閔其苗之不長而揠之者，芒芒然歸。謂其人曰：‘今日病矣，予助苗長矣。’其子趨而往視之，苗則槁矣。天下之不助苗長者寡矣。以為無益而舍之者，不耘苗者也；助之長者，揠苗者也。非徒無益，而又害之。”孟子, 《公孫丑上》2

“One must work at it, but do not aim at it directly. Let the heart not forget, but do not help it grow. Do not be like the man from Song. Among the people of the state of Song there was one who, concerned lest his grain not grow, pulled on it. Wearily, he returned home, and said to his family, ‘Today I am worn out. I helped the grain to grow.’ His son rushed out and looked at it. The grain was withered. Those in the world who do not help the grain to grow are few. Those who abandon it, thinking it will not help, are those who do not weed their grain. Those who help it grow are those who pull on the grain. Not only does this not help, but it even harms it." Mencius 2A2

Source: istockphoto

My husband took last semester off from school to work while I finished college.  Now it’s my turn to work while he finishes.  So I am working a few part-time jobs that add up to more than full time – translating academic papers from Chinese to English, transcribing for Federal News Service, researching for a Georgetown professor.  In August, I’ll start a one-year fellowship in the China program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  In a year, after Scott has graduated (and maybe two years if Scott takes a year off to work first), we’ll both apply to graduate schools – law schools, maybe Ph.D. programs.

All that said, do I actually know with any certainty where we’ll be in a year? in two, three, five years? in 10?  No.  And for someone who had my entire future planned out – year-by-year – in grade school, the prospect of pulling on the grain in an attempt to “help it to grow” at times appears intensely tempting.

Photo of Rachel Esplin Odell weeding on a farm outside a small Chinese village

But I resist.  I eat Breyers' ice cream and enjoy a Netflix subscription with my husband.  I listen to Ingrid Michaelson and Mozart on Pandora.  I ride my bike to work.  I read Les Mis on the Metro.  I serve with the youth group at my church.  I do yard work for a neighbor on Saturdays.  I sleep eight hours a night and take Sunday afternoon naps.  I write this blog post.

Conversely, in an effort to not abandon my grain, I weed and water it.  I write and I read and I contemplate and I pray.  I read the news and pen my thoughts in Facebook notes.  I practice being mom with my little sister who is quintessentially adolescent.  I work on my Chinese and meet with professionals in my field of interest.  I seek advice on grad school, on a career, on raising a family – and on the combination thereof.

Source:  istockphoto

There are still weeds in hard-to-reach parts of my field, and sometimes I catch myself pulling on certain stalks of grain.  But I’m working at it without aiming at it directly.  And hoping for a bumper crop.

***
Have you ever reached a point where you had achieved what you set out to do -- and had the 'now what' experience?  What did you do?

Have you ever felt like the Man from Song?  I have.  Why is it important to sometimes aim indirectly?  Any experiences you'd like to share?

Aarean Jergensen: Designing a Dream

Aarean (pronounced AIR e un) Jergensen is the second oldest of five girls.  No brothers. Just girls. She married her high school sweetheart in 2006.  She is expecting her first child in November.  Aarean graduated from Brigham Young University with a bachelors degree in Fine Art Communications; she majored in creative advertising and minored in graphic design. It wasn't until after she graduated college that her love for graphic design evolved.  She recently started a freelance business LaDitta Design, a business that allows her to design what she wants to design -- and she couldn't be happier.  (All of the images in this posts are Aarean's designs, and used with her permission.)

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When a dream takes hold of you, what can you do?  You can run with it, let it run your life, or let it go and think for the rest of your life what might have been. -- Patch Adams

When I was in college, a lot of times, I felt like professors were trying to mold me into something that I wasn't, teaching me techniques and certain ways to do things that I didn't particularly want to conform to. I liked doing things my own way, and creating images that were pleasing to me.  I think we all have that drive, to create, or to convey our "self".  My outlet was graphic design. I was terrible at drawing, horrible at painting, and awful at sculpting, but graphic design I was good at. I was good at using the mouse as my tool, and the monitor as my drawing board.

How did you start your business and how do you decide what to charge?
I got a few small jobs out of college that helped me with developing my skills, and then I made the leap, not really knowing how to start.   Small things at first, and mostly for friends and family.  As I got better, I started getting more business through word-of-mouth.  I then realized that I needed to start charging. My dad always told me that if you aren't charging enough people won't think you are good, and if you are charging too much you'll never have work. So I had to find a happy medium.  For example, with blog headers, which I currently charge $45 for, I started out at half that price.  (As one client just shared with me, that's still low, but I'm comfortable with this price for now.)

The more experienced I get, and the more work I have...the more I will start charging.  I find that most people generally correlate cost with quality.  I believe my work is quality; everyone has to believe that about their work, but it doesn't come easily.

How do you do business with family and friends?
I initially felt a little weird charging family and friends, but at the outset they were the only people that were hiring me.  For example, for my first gig, my brothers-in-law hired me to design business cards for their real estate business in the south.  Once I started getting more clients it became easier for me to charge friends and family.  I still do things for free for my family, but because I choose to, not because I feel obligated.

With my friends, I give a 20% discount.   My basic script is, "Yeah, I would love to design that for you...and I'll give you a 20% friends discount too".  Once it's out there, we don't have to discuss later whether they'll be paying.  It puts the ball in their court from the beginning, and avoids awkwardness.

 

As you've started your business what has been one of your best learning experiences?
Learning to set parameters.  When I first started freelancing, a client would come to me, we would brainstorm, then I would design about 4-5 different roughs.  That was my first mistake.  Giving lots of options not only made it difficult for my clients to choose, I also would end up doing more work I should have given what I was charging.  In one particular instance, because I had given so many options, the job took four months (one that typically takes a month) because the client kept changing his mind. When I mentioned to my client that my hours were way over-budget, he angrily said, "You are the designer, and should design until I am happy with the design."  Though I did see the job through, I almost quit on several occasions because I was so overwhelmed and frustrated.

What's important about this job is what I learned:  1)  I now design 1-2 roughs to which the client can say yes or no.  We then proceed or take a different direction; 2)  From that point, the client has six "edits" or "changes" after which any additional changes will require an additional fee.  At first I thought I was being harsh, but it has turned out beautifully.   Now I only have clients who are willing to pay for my work, and who respect me (read:  don't take advantage of me).  I'm certainly happier, but I think my clients are too.

Any other important lessons you'd like to share?
At the beginning, I was afraid to take on too much. I was scared to give it my all for fear that the client would say "I don't like it".  I am gradually saying yes more, and that is a huge step, especially when I don't know exactly how to do what needs to be done.  One of my first paying clients wanted a navigation bar.  I thought "Oh I don't know how to do that, so I guess I'll tell her no".  But the more I thought about it the more I thought, "I will never learn if I don't try."  It turns out the client was so wonderful, and it was a huge break through for me.

Being a freelance graphic designer is much more then being just that a "graphic designer". It is a way I am able to express my creativity in a way that works for me. When I started LaDitta Design I wanted to be able to make my own schedule, I wanted to design what I wanted to design and not what someone else wanted me to design. I wanted to do something I loved. And I am.

***
Have you had the experience of friends, family, teachers pushing you one direction, and your instinct telling you to go in another?

If you were to start a project or a business today, what would be a very simple, first step?

I love the line, "I will never learn if I don't try."  I think we fear being an impostor, and yet when we do try -- don't we often find that we are quite good at the thing we didn't think we could do?

Nan Petersen: I Dream in Prose

Nan is an adventurous mother of three young sons who is up for just about anything unless it involves ingesting fungus, listening to jazz music or watching Jean-Claude Van Damme movies. When she isn't mothering, writing, reading, working part time, volunteering with the youth at her church, enjoying the outdoors or keeping the dust bunnies at bay, she writes a blog titled Nomad under the name scienceteachermommy. She has a BS in Biology Composite Secondary Education from Utah State University. She wants to be an author when she grows up.

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I was married just over a year when we bought our first desktop computer.  Within minutes of getting all of the color-coded wires in the correct places, I sat down to write.  I was giddy over the speed at which the stories in my head and in my notebooks made it to page.  Within a few months I'd written a hundred single-spaced pages of a novel that had been in my head for over a decade.

I'm sure my poor husband thought that I hadn't been exactly truthful during our courtship when I casually mentioned my writing hobby.  Years passed and he waited and watched patiently while I created dozens of separate manuscripts ranging from three to three hundred pages.

Source: istockphoto

When one day I announced that I'd finally finished a project, he asked me when I was going to publish it.  I laughed, thinking housewives don't get published, but what I said out loud was, "That isn't why I do it." Had we never really had this conversation before?

"Then why do you do it?"

Long pause.  "Some people have music or woodworking or sewing or art...I am filled with stories."  Another long -- and awkward pause: 'being filled with stories' seemed tantamount to hearing voices.  "Putting them on paper makes me happy,"  I finished quietly.

Then he surprised me, "So what do you have to lose?  I mean, you've already gotten the enjoyment out of it that you can.  Maybe you could make others happy, too.  It isn't like you have to get published to earn a living.  It would just be a bonus."

What did I have to lose? So I sent that first novel off-- as imperfect and unmarketable as it was--and got my first rejection letter. But not the last.

Source:  istockphoto

Now, a decade later, publishing doesn't feel so much like a cherry on top of the decadently gooey banana split that is my passion.  It feels like the thing that is driving me.  I am not sure if it is the dreaming, or the realization of a dream that matters most to me anymore.  My intense focus on the end is starting to suck the joy out of this thing I love.

Recently I was in a bookstore and picked up a novel similar in style to some of my finished manuscripts.  There was an explosion of pink on the cover that nearly caused a gag reflex. I turned the noisy volume over in my hand to read the jacket summary of the witty and plucky heroine's hilarious pratfalls.  I opened to the back cover to see the author's picture.

Except for the fact that she is brunette and living in another state, her biography might have been mine:  right down to her three boys and love of skiing.  Apparently some stay-at-home-moms do publish.  While it seems that such a revelation might have added hope to my desire, the effect was quite the opposite.

I left the bookstore feeling ridiculous.  Who am I to think I have anything to say?  Why did I ever dare to dream that I might be unique?  That out of thousands of manuscripts submitted each year, mine would get chosen?  My dream suddenly seemed like a cliche, quixotic nightmare.  During the long ride home, I was reminded of George Santayana's fanatic who redoubles her efforts only to find she's lost sight of her goal. And for the past several weeks I've found myself asking, "Why do I do this?

Source:  istockphoto

Enter my sweet husband again.  Thank God for loved ones who believe in us, even when we aren't sure we believe in ourselves.  He spent his rare overtime money to buy me a laptop this spring.  Just for when the stories speak to me again.  Because, he gently reminded me, the stories make me happy.

***

What do you love doing?  Is this your dream?

As I read Nan's post I thought of LaNola Kathleen Stone's Rebirth of the Creative Self.  What about you?

How do you remain optimistic and hopeful when the realization of your dreams is not entirely in your hands?

What lessons do you learn as your persevere toward your dreams, even if they are never entirely realized?

Do you have someone who has been there for you, to encourage you until "stories start to speak to you again?"

Julia Gillian: A Book My 9 Yr-Old Daughter and I Recommend

My nine year-old daughter recommended that I read Julia Gillian (and the Art of Knowing) by Alison McGhee.   So I did; I hope this is the first of many books she recommends.

The book begins:

Julia Gillian, her parents, and her dog, Bigfoot, all lived together in a third-floor apartment in South Minneapolis. There was much for the Gillian family to be happy about. Julia Gillian had finished fourth grade and she was looking forward to fifth grade at Lake Harriet Community School. Julia Gillian's parents, who were both teachers, liked their jobs and loved their daughter, who was their only child. Bigfoot, Julia Gillian's St. Bernard, was nine years old and a loyal, healthy dog.

Happy as she is, young Julia discovers there are some things she's afraid of, like what's in the news, and reading the green book which she's quite sure will end with the dog, that is just a year older than Bigfoot, dying.  This book is about a young girl taking on her fears, and reinforcing her sense of self, her identity.  I highly recommend it.  Many of us are no longer little girls, but we still get afraid -- especially when we dream.  As young Julia Gillian takes on her fears, somehow we feel we can too.

Have you read Julia Gillian?

I would not have picked up Julia Gillian, but I wanted my daughter to know that her opinion matters to me. Are there other small ways in which we can validate the children around us?

What books have you read recently that encouraged you to take your life on?

Anything in the mix that your children recommended?

Linda Watkins: As Big as the Ocean Blue

Linda Watkins has a Master of Business Administration degree from BYU and works as a Finance Manager at Cisco Systems in the Bay Area.  She enjoys many hobbies including glass blowing, ballroom dancing, playing the flute, traveling, and shopping for beautiful shoes.  She tries to enjoy running, has completed two half marathons in Boston, and has signed up for a third in Santa Barbara this spring.  She has 14 nieces and nephews and loves keeping in touch with friends across the nation by reading their blogs and tweets.

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I love the flute.  I started playing when I was 10 years old.  It seemed like as soon as I got an instrument in my hands, we were inseparable.  Music came into my life at a time when I lapped up new information.  I was a sponge and practiced much more than a normal 10 year old.  As a result, I excelled and felt I had found my chosen profession at a very early age.  When people would ask, ‘what are you going to be when you grow up?’, I would say, ‘A professional flutist’.

I went on to get a Bachelor’s degree in music (flute performance emphasis) and a Master of Music degree (also in flute performance).  I was single minded in my focus and loved my music education.  I never worried about a career because I was idealistic and thought it would just work itself out.

Source:  istockphoto

After graduation, I started to realize the difficulty in making a full time career from playing the flute, but I was fortunate to get a job at a flute manufacturing company in Boston.  I moved 3,000 miles from my home in Arizona to Boston, where I didn’t know a soul, and worked four years at a company where I learned how to make the instruments I loved. 

It was a great job at first.  I learned new things, had access to the best instruments in the world, and could play any of them I wanted.  I also performed in community orchestras and other small gigs.  I realized quickly, however, that I was in a profession that had no other progression opportunity for me.  Where do you go from making flutes?  A full time job in music wasn’t going to work long term for me and I had to look at other opportunities.  I had other dreams even though I didn’t quite know what they were.  I just knew I needed to feel progression and growth.  It was then that I considered a degree in business.

At this point in my life, I was 30 years old, had been out of school for 5 years, and was solidly designated as a ‘musician’.  Could I dare consider a position outside of music?  Who would even consider me?  It would have been easy at that time to count myself out.  What made me think I could make such a dramatic shift in my life?  How could I get potential employers and universities to take me seriously when I wasn’t even sure I could make the change myself?

There have been several pivotal moments in my life when I’ve had the chance to reinvent myself in small and big ways.  It’s scary.  I don’t always take the challenge, but I have learned a few things.  Above all, I’ve learned to be fearless.  Maybe I won’t be accepted into a business program, but I certainly won’t if I don’t apply.  Why should I be the one to reject me?  I decided not to count myself out.

Source:  istockphoto

I set my goal to pursue a Master of Business Management degree.  I quickly learned that I would have to take a standard test (GMAT) as well as some prerequisite classes before I could hope to be admitted to a program.  I hadn’t taken a math class since my freshman year in undergrad (10 years earlier) and now had to take accounting, statistics, and economics.  It was overwhelming at first, but thanks to my stubborn nature, I started at the beginning and persisted.  I got a respectable score on the GMAT, passed the prerequisites, and got accepted into the Marriott School of Management.

It’s now been three and a half years since I started business school.  There were some very stressful moments along the way.  I got a 55% on an accounting test (the curve saved me), got rejected by several employers, and was extremely stressed that I didn’t have an internship lined up as quickly as I wanted.  But, I also did some things that surprised me:  I chose finance as an emphasis (which was very intimidating for me), got into a prestigious student investment group, was asked to be a teaching assistant for undergraduate finance students, and took a trip to India to help a social business plan develop.  Looking back, I’m surprised by all that I accomplished.

Source:  istockphoto 

I’m now 35 and working in the Bay area at a large technology company as a Finance Manager.  I love my new career and the financial stability it gives me and continue to follow my dreams, big and small.  I still feel the initial fear of doing something totally new and outside my comfort zone, but I take a big breath and go for it anyway.  I’m not sure what new dreams I’ll come up with this year (maybe ballroom dancing?), but I’m optimistic that I’ll dream big and take a risk.  As long as I don’t reject myself, then I’m way ahead of the curve.

And when you dream, dream big
As big as the ocean blue
'Cause when you dream it might come true
When you dream, dream big

(Partial lyrics to ‘Dream Big’ by Ryan Shupe & The Rubberband)

***
While Linda has decided not to become a professional flutist, her ability to practice and progress and grow has facilitated her new dream of pursuing a career in business.  How can path toward our childhood dreams, realized or not, lead to discovering and accomplishing our dreams as an adult?

What a great question:  Why should I be the one to reject me?  To count myself out?

As you have taken on hard things what have you accomplished that in retrospect surprises you?

What if Linda were to date the dream of ballroom dancing? Wouldn't it be fun to hear her report back?

Had you ever heard these lyrics, "when you dream, dream big as big as the ocean blue?"  Lyrics/music can inspire us as we dream.  What songs are inspiring you?

 

So this is the hero's journey?

In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell writes that the first element of The Hero's Journey is the Call to Adventure:  the call comes from a crisis the hero must choose to face or run from.

I don't know about you, but when I hear Call to Adventure, I think of a task that involves swash-buckling and dragon-slaying.   Perhaps Psyche had similar thoughts as she embarked on her hero's journey, a journey that would require Psyche to complete four tasks in order to be united with her beloved Eros.

Imagine her surprise when she learned her first task was to sort a huge jumble of corn, barley and poppy seeds into separate piles.

Psyche you are going on a journey; you are going to get Eros back.

Ready, Set...

Sort the seeds.

Source:  istockphoto

Was there a point to this?  Or was the task simply meant to demean and humiliate her?

What of bravery and derring-do?

At face value, the task does seem pointless.

But as Psyche completed this task, she no doubt came to understand that knowing how to sift through priorities, to delegate to and trust the ants of her intuition, would hold her in good stead as she completed the remaining three tasks.

Practicing making choices around seemingly mundane priorities may not feel like the ideal way to start our hero's journey, to dare to dream, but the more I consider Psyche's journey, and my own, I'm beginning to think it's the best way.

What are your thoughts?

For those of you who have dreamed of being a mother and rearing happy children, how did that journey begin?  With your children going off to college?  Or lots of twenty-four hour care, changing diapers and sleepless nights?

Or what of launching a career?  Are you immediately calling the shots, moving things forward?  Or doing lots of grunt work and working long hours?

Tensie Whelan: Seeing the Rainforest and the Trees

Tensie (pronounced TAWN-see) Whelan has been the executive director of the Rainforest Alliance since 2000.  Whelan is a member of the advisory board for corporate social responsibility at Fortis, as well as the sustainable agriculture advisory board for Unilever.  She holds an M.A. in International Communication from American University's School of International  Service and a B.A. in Political Science from New York University. Whelan's published  work includes one of the first books on eco-friendly tourism, Nature Tourism: Managing for the Environment (1991, Island Press).

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I am not so sure when the dream started.  Perhaps as young teenager on a canoe trip with my family in the Quebec wilderness listening to loons and wolves sing a duo across the lake.  Or perhaps as a 10-year old visiting my grandparents in Mexico and seeing poverty like I had never seen before, even growing up in the streets of New York City.  Or perhaps it was just being the bossy older sister who needed to find something meaningful to do after her younger siblings grew up.

But my dream has always been to make a difference—in a big way.  In what way, was not clear at the beginning, but I knew I wanted to work in another country. Learn about other ways of doing things.  Learn what mattered.  Why people do what they do.  And what my place in it all would be.

Source:  Rainforest Alliance

While I always cared about environmental issues, and found my first job after graduate school working for World Wildlife Fund in DC and then as an environmental journalist in Sweden and Central America, it was not until my husband, an environmental economist, died in a car crash at 27, that I decided that I was going to go for making a difference for the planet in a big way.  My husband could no longer do it.  So I would do it for him.

Funny thing about surviving a tragedy like having your husband die after 6 months of marriage AND being three months pregnant—you realize you can do anything.  Really, anything.

Tensie and her daughter Lora-Faye photo by J. Henry Fair

So I went after the dream.  His dream.  Our dream.  My dream.  To radically transform how we interact with the environment in order to create a better world for our children and their children, but also all the beautiful plants and animals that share this amazing place with us.

Today, I am the President of the Rainforest Alliance, an international organization that works in 70 countries to transform how we interact with nature and each other.  (And the mother of a lovely 21-year old daughter who looks a lot like her father.) We work with millions of small producers of crops like chocolate, tea, and bananas, with CEOs of big companies, and with consumers, to transform standard business practices.

Photo courtesy of J. Henry Fair

So what does that mean exactly?  It means that farmers, foresters, hotel managers change their environmental, social and economic practices to comply with our sustainable management standard, and we audit them in the field annually.  Lipton has committed to take all of their tea Rainforest Alliance certified (12% of the world’s tea).  Mars has committed to take all of their cocoa sustainable.  Chiquita has had all of their bananas certified by us.  And thus, the farms these companies buy from have protected wildlife and their habitat, reforested native trees, reduced chemical use, improved worker housing and working conditions—and increased their yields in the process!

Tensie Whelan photographed by J. Henry Fair

That is the other part of the dream—we are improving conditions for people as well as the planet.  I have never believed you can separate the two.  And the gratification is instant.  When I visit a Rainforest Alliance certified operation, the people working there are incredibly proud of all they have accomplished.  Their farms or forests or hotels look very different than the norm.  And people around them begin to copy them!  On one of my visits to Colombia, a group of macho coffee farmers wielding machetes began to compete with each other over how many migratory bird species they had identified on their respective farms.   That would so not have happened before Rainforest Alliance came into their lives!

So the dream is one that many others are now dreaming with me.  Together we are translating our dreams into reality.  It's exhausting.  But it feels really, really good.

***

I love Tensie's line, "My husband could no longer do it.  So I would do it for him."  Have you had an experience where you hadn't planned to step up, but when you had to, you found you could?

Tensie's dream is to find a win-win for people and for the physical world in which we live.  What kind of win-wins can you find as you dream?  Where is the win-win to be found in attending to loved ones and to ourselves?

For more on what we can do to encourage our children in their philanthropic pursuits, and in particular saving the rainforest where many of their favorite animals live, or even to find helps for a school project, click here.

Vitamin D for Dreaming

A few months ago I had my first physical exam in nearly a decade.  I know that's way too long, but I don't much like going to the doctor.

While the doctor generally gave me a clean bill of health, my Vitamin D was too low.  It should be at least 30; it was 20.  No big deal, I thought.  Until she told me Vitamin D can increase my sense of well-being by reducing anxiety, depression, and food cravings.  Given its level was 33% lower than it should be, was my sense of well-being 33% lower too?

Source:  istockphoto

Because Vitamin D is found in very few foods (fish, fish liver, egg yolks) I started taking a supplement; spending time in the spring sunshine should further boost levels.

Not surprisingly, my sense of well-being has begun to improve, and along with it, my motivation to dream.  Dreaming requires hope.  Hope like sunshine smiles on us.  When we are depressed, hope is obscured. 

If you want to dream, but can't seem to get there, why not get your Vitamin D levels checked?  Or start spending 15 minutes in the sun everyday?

Vitamin D.
For well-being; for dreaming.
Highly recommended.